TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - Season Two

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)

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?"

― Number None, Tuesday, July 7, 2015 1:36 PM

OTM. we remarked on this as he was saying it. deadwood af. made me wonder what ian mcshane coulda done with the role...

This thread is getting me psyched for this season

Have you begun watching it, or are you excited for where it could still go after only three episodes?

I haven't watched any of it, will likely stop reading this thread soon and buy the whole thing on iTunes whenever it becomes available.

Enjoying this season very much. it's a compelling trainwreck. It certainly has atmosphere in its favor. Whenever there's sunlight onscreen my eyes kinda hurt.

compelling trainwreck is still fine for me, even if this season doesn't pan out. A friend compared this series to a song-writer who has a massively successful debut album based on songs he spent years crafting, and then he's pressured to release the follow-up immediately (that would be this second season of TD in the analogy) and the second album is bloated and the songs are unfinished because they were written too quickly, and suddenly the string arrangements sound pretentious and the the artist's self-indulgent.

But it's a fun mess of a second album.

Welp at least this season isn't on a trajectory of being a crushing heartbreak of wasted potential

compelling trainwreck is still fine for me, even if this season doesn't pan out. A friend compared this series to a song-writer who has a massively successful debut album based on songs he spent years crafting, and then he's pressured to release the follow-up immediately (that would be this second season of TD in the analogy) and the second album is bloated and the songs are unfinished because they were written too quickly, and suddenly the string arrangements sound pretentious and the the artist's self-indulgent.

But it's a fun mess of a second album.

― Cunga, Wednesday, 8 July 2015 04:51 (2 hours ago) Permalink

OTM

glad some folks are intrigued enough to keep watching, as i'm gonna wait and see if their enthusiasm continues before indulging

considering this sophomore slump doesn't even have the original leads, this might be a good comparison point

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_for_Good

def agree that this season was probably a few revisions away from being ideal. but in a way that makes it pretty interesting (witness this thread where half the time we are taking about artistic choices).

i think if this sticks around for another season with pizzolatto as writer (and i really hope it does) and they want to turn it around in a year then he may have to give up some control to other writers. but, really, a good part of the fun of this show is that it's the expression of a single voice in terms of the writing so im not sure how i'd feel about that. everything that makes it distinctive and weird (and, yes, silly) is pretty much down to pizzolatto. I like seeing a writer succeed or fail on their own terms.

yeah it was cool how they used one director last season too, that singular artiste approach for both the writing and directing made it feel more cinematic than most shows

HBO should really spring for lubezki as DP or someone like that next time.

it is really strange even just for gimmick/brand reasons that they didn't go one director this season too. like it had such a good rep.

ya weird

director thing may have been P wanting to assert more control over the process--or HBO wanting cheaper directors? or not many directors wanting to commit? I don't know enough about how this stuff comes about.

also, P seems to me what you'd call a "developing" writer (something sort of clear with season 1 as it was so dense with references to all his favorite stuff) so as this goes on it will be interesting how the subsequent seasons change or "mature" in terms of authorial voice.

but whatever it is that makes him shoehorn a reference to meister eckhart into a detective procedural--i hope that doesn't change!

HBO should really spring for lubezki as DP or someone like that next time.

Adam Arkapaw was maybe S1's secret weapon

this year they've got

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0089458/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr14

i have a recurrent fantasy of malick and lubezki working as a second unit for movies and tv shows. so every now and then you'd get these weird and gorgeous and lyrical transitions from scene to scene.

director thing may have been P wanting to assert more control over the process--or HBO wanting cheaper directors? or not many directors wanting to commit? I don't know enough about how this stuff comes about.

afaik, the decision to not rely on a single director came down to the time commitment and inherent exhaustion of said commitment, due to what fukunaga experienced, some of that may well have stemmed from his disagreements w/pizzolatto but i mean it involves making more or less three movies in much less time than it would ordinarily take to shoot three movies.

or maybe pizzo/HBO thought it would work out like fargo, where 5 directors did two apiece but all the eps in that show are m/l of a piece

(it didn't, exactly)

there has only been one director so far

the true director

no, there have been two

oh wait

it's been justin lin for 1 and 2 and janus metz for 3

ohhh rrrreally? well hey i regret the error. it turns out there can be more than one true director.

i am kinda disappointed, i thought it was the regular guy. what is with all these people.

there really isn't any truth is there, could be we get the world we deserve

feel like janus metz got the gig just because his name was too perfect

Armadillo was worthwhile, nice to see him getting work

This is actually getting better I think. I have a sort spot for diffuse detective stories and i am fully okay with not getting resolution on every little detail.
opening scene reminded me most of the major's dream speech to bobby in twin peaks. nice.

nobody has mentioned the funniest joke -- was i alone in laughing when Ray called Antigone "Xena"?

gay copy was p obviously gay from early on and while i hope to learn more about "black mountain security" i am not really that interested in his love life. or anyone else's, really. was not interested in frank's scene with his wife at the clinic or w/e.