TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - Season Two

when i watch this season i feel like i can visualize the printed screenplay as i'm watching it

like nic pizzalato hunched furiously over a mechanical typewriter typing furiously imagining he is delivering scorching line after scorching line, it all hangs so beautifully in his head, and then vince vaughn goes and gets cast

xxp I kinda liked the "apoplectic" moment it was absurd but in a good way imo

when i watch this season i feel like i can visualize the printed screenplay as i'm watching it

― 龜, Monday, July 6, 2015 10:50 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, it's just appallingly writery

thanks! xpost

I think we all agree that Vince Vaughn is only in his element on TD when he's playing playing with comic and wise-guy scenes and lines.

Years ago, I left a "Dodgeball" DVD running in the family living room, and my mom, who had never seen VV in anything, pointed out how insecure he was as an actor. In the bloopers he's gearing up for an intense scene (the final dodgeball game, prob) by saying "Screw you" to Ben Stiller, to get himself psyched. Mom pointed out that he needed to work himself up as an actor, and there was something amateurish and insecure in going about it that way.

In the scenes from this that require heavy lifting from him as an actor (the recycled Rust Cohle monologues) you can sense he's afraid and a bit nervous, but the show takes advantage of that, and even in casting him knew what it was doing, because when Vaughn needs to look paranoid and on the brink he's quite good. As an over-the-hill conman who got by on charisma but probably can't anymore, he was typecast and it can work.

i think there's something to that, but nic couldn't commit to writing him as 100% conman so he has all these scenes where he needs to project gravitas and it's just so bad.

having him kick that big dude's ass was actually kind of useful, we need to know a little bit about why this guy should hold any weight at all.

You'll notice that Vince Vaughn came on the scene when Robert Downey Jr. wasn't around to be in stuff, and that the RDJ revival has coincided with Vaughn looking a bit lost in Hollywood. I think RDJ could've handled the monologues and some of the darkness that Vaughn struggles to do here, but then Downey is about half a foot shorter than VV and could've looked ridiculous in some scenes as a tough mob boss.

xpost, yeah, the fight scene gave vaughn a good excuse to exist in the show and as the casting choice.

The Confidence-Man who's losing confidence.

Now I wonder if VV was hurt when Jon Favreau made those Iron Man movies with RDJ. If Favreau's time with VV was handy in writing and directing the over-confident, Malibu playboy character.

Robert Downey Jr as a hard-drinking True Detective would be so dark it would make Rust Cohle look like one-half of the Dukes of Hazzard.

This show is so horrible, you're all idiots for discussing it

:)

"Dozens of idiots, punching thousands of keystrokes alone in dark rooms over this show. Hoping to connect. Trying to make sense of it. They won't." - R.C.

the opening scene, singer aside, felt lifted out of the closing scene of no country for old men, where tommy lee jones talks about the dream of his father. except this dream story was horseshit ("i see you, running through the trees. you're small. trees are like...giants"). then 20 min later farrell's dad gives us "no country for white men, boy." brutal

Loved the depictions of how openly corrupt-power gets exercised in this bureaucracy: the mayor leans over his police chiefs desk and yells "that cunt, is walking the plank!" with a glass in one hand.
"well, deseritees is running the case sir."
"deseritees is gonna be running a yogurt stand."

the gangster showdown at the end was well written, the pacing of its buildup and release felt believable. but it was pretty lol how only VV's henchmen decided to bring guns, seems a little amateurish not to bring a pistol or something there boys.

feel like if he was 25 years older, dicaprio could pull off vaughn's character with no issues whatsoever. the shift from the bullying, cathartic fight, to the silent angst of the closing scene, is leo's territory. and he'd lend some levity to the pretentious dialogue while making it just real enough for the viewer to buy into it.

leo's a good call

shouldn't a basic tenet of writing a short mystery series like this be that the main plot needs to move along significantly at least once per episode? did we learn anything new that might tell us who killed the guy?

amazing that BALLERS got to a point in its plot where a drug-fueled-orgy episode happens before true detective did this season

rdj wayyy too echt for true detective. like so on the nose. like that is what he was for ten years, in the singing detective & in the george clooney movie, The Guy Who Could Talk Fast & Smoke Like A True Detective. i'd rather watch someone kinda offbeat & separate in provenance take a swing at this & miss than see it just become full noir dress up.

guess i have a reason to watch ep 3 of ballers now xp

Hoping for a crossover episode between the two, with a fight/orgy in an empty lot near the Staples Center.

i know this isn't the ballers thread but i'm so disappointed at the lack of actual football drama in ballers.

Finally watched this ep.

1. Has anyone said Broke Black Mountain yet? Cuz come on.
2. Homeless camp obstacle course!

APOPLECTIC

I thought they would make more of a comic bit about McAdams's delayed reactions (to Ray getting shot, and then later on saving her life) but it was all sort of over-angsty and inert.

he tackled her to get her out of the way of a blindside approaching truck and then they more or less just stand in the same place looking away from traffic

I thought they would make more of a comic bit.. but it was all sort of over-angsty and inert.

― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, July 7, 2015 11:52 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true detective s2

Thought during the first episode "I hope this ends up around the Russian River" with a cult commune, but this makes sense too.

ehhh commune in in n cali in a town where the call later comes from more likely its just connected to that commune than some nearby retreat for mucketymucks, crow mask to owl statute is a pretty tenuous connection too, some pixs of gw bush idk man

however

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJU0eUAUwAAwQAu.jpg

a YOGURT STAND I SAY

i appreciate this show for inspiring fevered theories tho thats a good quality

anacondwhite vs greataconda

jared and George would make a good detective team imo

lebron james & peyton manning

Maybe Vince Vaughn's character will run into Vince Vaughn the actor at Bohemian Grove.

David Carradine hologram is the 40 foot owl

this is okay. i prob wouldn't watch it if it was just straight down the line okay tho, it has some v good stuff and some v dumb stuff and averages out at okay, but there're not many shows that have anything v good about them at all so i am happy to stick with it. if it trundles thru its run averaging at okay, occasionally upchucking something cool, and is then resolved in any kind of satisfactory manner, it will overall have been better than s1, such was the bullshit of how that ended.

i loved the bloat of the film set detour

friend i was watching it with was positive the ponytailed alcoholic asian director was a jab at fukunaga

that's been in most reviews i've read of this

he still has a production credit on this right?

Yeah, he's still one of the executive producers; so are McConnaughey and Harrelson.

i've been waiting to read this thread until i caught up. i really like it, warts and all. i love the tension between the state and municipal bureaucracies. i generally hate vince vaughan with a burning passion so i'm pleased to be merely ambivalent. the writing is occasionally hilarious (apoplectic two times within 5 seconds) but it doesn't bother me. rachel mcadams' character is going to be amazing if they ever spend some time on her. it occurred to me late in episode 3 that i didn't know anyone's name except for Casper

director's lines didn't make him look bad, really

given show's 'appalling writeriness' (otmly noted above), i took
"to tell you the truth, i drink, so it makes my recollection unreliable"
as script (yet again) sounding a key thematic motif (re unreliability of recollection/ knowledge of the past)

btw lol maybe half great white half anaconda is like a pizzolatto sphinx figure

also i swear the opening of ep3 (purgatory club) was written and directed by david lynch

it's pretty laughable how desperate to be Lynchian it was

eh, i just took it as a pretty obvious homage

took the director drinky comment thing more like "I"m not really interested in helping you." But maybe it is a jab at Fukunaga? Hell maybe he's in on the joke.

it's funny in general how unable to escape his influences Nick P is (especially given his comments before the season about there being NO REFERENCES this time out)

like this bit of dialogue from Vaughan where he tries to do Milch

"Shouldn't a reasonable man infer from Osip's arrival and departure and fucking failure to make good on our terms as being connected not just to Caspere, but prefiguring Caspere? In a causal sense. I'm saying... do you think Osip could have done Caspere?"

The bird-mask shooter in the kinky murder house seemed appropriate and acceptable, but the weird white mask of whatever on the car arsonist was pretty silly. Like, why do that? Put on a normal mask you can run across the city in. Don't make it so hard on yourself.

xps ps that's not appalling writing, it's a perfectly fine line, but just corroborates my feeling that screenplay/world here is suffocatingly written/woven, e.g. to convey certain philosophical worldview

maybe lack of closure/explanation in terms of conventional detective mystery tropes in 'true detective' is compensated for (at least in season 2) by like a too tight text, overexplanation in terms of themes & characterization

(cf david lynch whose worlds elude closure/explanation in both senses)