Season 2 of HBO’s pop culture phenom True Detective has been called baffling, misguided, even disappointing. Check out my spoiler-filled recap of the season finale after the jump-and then let’s chitty-chat about it afterwards.
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“Rolling Stone: “‘Omega Station, ‘ the eighth and final installment of TD 2.0, could not have more effectively shut down the show’s progress if it dressed up like a cholo, drove it out to the desert, stabbed it, and left if for dead”.
All these four detectives (I consider Frank Seymon an honorary detective) tried to take down the Vinci corruption by attacking it by themselves and collectively.
Obviously, nothing is official. True Detective’s world is admittedly an extravagantly emotive one, and it can be overwrought to the point that its exchanges sound like posturing rather than bleak insight. Meanwhile, Lombardo praised the finale of “True Detective” Season 2. That’s simply because this season of True Detective wasn’t very good. And that was a true, deep hate-watch – if I could have reached through the TV screen and punched Will McAvoy square in the jaw, I would have.
The best thing for True Detective’s future (at time of writing, it hasn’t been renewed) is that, success or not, the serialised format means it can start afresh next year without any of the problems that plagued it. When he comes on their encounter find, however, she’s been filmed and eliminated, her shooter a long time ago. None of our leads really made any strides or changed at all. The only beneficiary might be “Fargo”, since the bar for second flights of dense cable crime shows has been dramatically lowered. I think that was also a attractive part to play.
It doesn’t exactly feel clear what kind of story Pizzolatto was trying to tell with his significantly less critically acclaimed second season.
Going back in plot a little bit, Paul had been the one to delay Ani and Ray’s closeness when he entered the hotel room with brand new documents about Caspere’s business.
But while the 2014 vintage was on the surface a more basic whodunnit, it too proved to be far from straightforward. (Pause.) Hey scarred bartender, I totally just lied to Ani. Should there be a Season 3?
A truly bleak end to a bleak season.
In the past eight weeks, we’ve been treated to macho gibberish (“You should never do anything out of hunger – not even eating”), flowery blather (“Your compensatory projection of menace is a guarantor of its lack”) and some flat-out baffling discourse (“A full moon is the best time to ratify alliances”).
Season 1 was set in Louisiana. It would be different than the first two seasons, for sure, but also somewhat of a return to form for the series as well.
Ballers (HBO, Sunday 10:30 p.m.) – Reggie goes full Nicholas Sparks to get out of the dog house, while Toby Ziegler makes The Rock and Rob Corddry clean up the collateral damage created by what was essentially the 2005 Vikings boat party. Slate found the finale good even if it couldn’t completely redeem the season as a whole. It’s a fitting end since he did so many stupid, illogical things throughout the series for the sake of his son.
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Season one was nearly universally praised. You can count on that!
