TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - Season Two

I have to say I've fallen head over heels for the lera lynn songs. particularly "it only takes one shot." just beautiful, that one

Remembered today that one of the names mentioned in the first casting rumors for this season was Benicio del Toro. Interesting to think of him playing Vaughn's character, making him more of a Stringer Bell trying to get into legit business with the old California families and getting screwed.

maybe being unintelligible would help

kind of unbearable to have to contemplate how much more intriguing the guy would be played by b.d.t., like he is a guy you could watch gaze inscrutably from a hollywood hills window for forever without feeling impatient

BdT would have given that wing of the story some serious emotional heft that Vaughn just isn't appropriate for. I would totally buy on with Vaughn's character as someone who could motormouth into power but really his wife is the one pulling the strings (thought Kelly Reilly was great in Above Suspicion). So I got to the rat cellar scene and oh no, they're going to make them do that? I guess all that old dialog was left in.

Anyway, gave up on the show until a couple days ago until I had a moment of inspiration best described as "420'ing it all in One Big Shot." I am now here in the thread, carry on.

Paulie's "You know, Sung Tizzoo! The Chinese Prince Matchabelli!" Is so singularly amazing, it needs to be in the Smithsonian.

fuck iPad copy/pasting.

I agree Del Toro would have brought a lot more to the role, but he is only 48, which still feels way too young. Vaughn is only 45!

i just looked up McConaughey's age, which is 45. Though of course he was playing much older in many key scenes...and he has a beautiful drawl, which goes a long way in carrying this dialogue. (Would have been fun to let Farrell play Irish, now that I think about it...)

ok, i am going to say that was actually pretty good the whole way through

"these contracts…..signatures all over them"

agreed. the John Adams was an inspired choice, xp

"these contracts…..signatures all over them"

― johnny crunch, Sunday, July 26, 2015 10:07 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i was waiting for the rest of this line for like a minute

i am willing to suspend disbelief and go w/paul not really "getting" contracts

I thought that was exciting! like if Tom cruise escapes that mansion with the names of the illuminati.

it was exciting, agreed. when the floodlights went on i was like oh shit gotta get out of there. no clue who directed this one but that was a much better suspense scene than anything they've had so far.

Nic P. clearly pro-waterboarding for information.

Also would like to have seen a montage of Velcoro working off his bender to be a decent partner to the team, or else having Taylor K. keep having to wait for him to catch up and hide his hacking cough.

i did feel like any bender i had ever gone on was put to shame by ray : /

I love ray's tragicomic sordidness.

Episode KICKED ASS
Eyes wide shut vibes

totally, and i liked how it borrowed the kubrickian theme of the orgy itself being a kind of gateway to the unconscious, repressed memories, etc.

that and molly, obv

Needed Velcoro on his bender to take a sharpie and try to draw his mustache back on.

and that shot of them speeding away in the dodge under that giant (red?) moon. such pulpy goodness!

"these contracts…..signatures all over them"

― johnny crunch, Sunday, July 26, 2015 10:07 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i was waiting for the rest of this line for like a minute

― call all destroyer, Sunday, July 26, 2015 10:16 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am willing to suspend disbelief and go w/paul not really "getting" contracts

― call all destroyer, Sunday, July 26, 2015 10:17 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol its also just like the bare minimalism dialogue style, it def started working more for me this ep

it was exciting, agreed. when the floodlights went on i was like oh shit gotta get out of there. no clue who directed this one but that was a much better suspense scene than anything they've had so far.
--call all destroyer

do you watch thrones? it was the dude who did the crazy ice battle scene in thrones most recently.

in terms of overall quality that might've been the best episode. the dialogue worked really well (in part bc they didn't assign vaughn any $10 words - he seemed to really fit in all his scenes) the scenes meant to be tense were wonderfully tense, all the performances were the best versions of what I hoped they'd be early on in the season

velcoro's cycle of indulgence and collapse and resignation was moving. the failson scenes were a little weird, but I mean, it's meant to seem awkward and uncomfortable and accomplished that goal.

ray's bender & that shuddering sob was farrell gold, so good & heartbreaking

the music tonight, the industrialish stuff & then the dreamy classical music in the house felt like i was watching some weird cross between Lost Highway & The Big Sleep

bezzarides flashbacks :( creeped me out man

gah so in

pulpy getaway was glorious

the score in the final scenes was apparently from a Douglas Sirk movie.

or should've been --

"misread a tweet." -</Paul voice>

SPOILERS AND IDLE SPECULATION:

What may be setting up, as referenced a few weeks ago, is the Oedipus myth. In Julian Symon's history of crime novels, he points out how it's essentially the urtext. Something probably well known by PizzaLMAO

Roy Fuller has pointed out the similarities between the detective story and elements in the Oedipus myth, "the illustrious victim, the preliminary riddles, the incidental love interest, the gradual uncovering of the past, the unlikeliest criminal," and has suggested that it is "a harmless and purging surrogate for the Oedipus myth in every writer and reader's life."

Some of the clues we've discussed, and I think, knowing this, that Pizzolatto is doing is giving all four leads their own version of the story. Frank's symbolism with the blinded eyes and the marks on the ceiling are there, as is Caspar's eye-gouged corpse, but notice Ray having killed the wrong man (and the second suspect, the real rapist, still doesn't match the red hair of his son. It's possible his wife was raped by him but that the son was conceived by a third man. Our earlier suspect Blake. That revelation would also thematically mirror the Kirk Douglas "Detective Story" movie he was watching with his dad).

Ani's flashbacks to her childhood trauma: that man in her Freudian hallucination resembles her father. That the origins of her problems could be traced back to a sexual relationship with her father, that he was an accomplice or the head of organizing these parties, and that he may have killed her mother, would be another, reverse, fulfilling of the Oedipus myth.

And Paul insinuated incest with his mom might be another hero's journey into the myth. His latent and repressed (More Freud!) homosexuality and hidden history of war crimes -- those make room for a similar "what have I done?" Oedipus ending for the character.

All four characters are "searching and searching, and it's themselves."

we get the world that we deserve

do you watch thrones? it was the dude who did the crazy ice battle scene in thrones most recently.

― extremely lag∞n postings voice (slothroprhymes), Sunday, July 26, 2015 11:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah thanks! that was great too.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CK5aEJtUwAAk1rC.jpg

the score in the final scenes was apparently from a Douglas Sirk movie.

which scenes do you mean? I had to shazam the music in the orgy scene because it was so instantly distinctive and interesting and got john adams' harmonielehre.

it only took half a season for this show to get good; I hope it stays good.

def improvement idk abt good tho, stiil more or less a pile of cliches lying on the floor

guys this was the worst one yet--only the last 20 minutes were good. the rest was a mess

bzzzt incorrect

i thought the standoff over coffee was good

breakfast nook non shoot out was dumb
the whole shack in the woods this is my crime scene blue diamonds was dumb
kid wanting to watch friends was dumb
tequila n coke and smash models was dumb
ani stabbing a block of wood in her house was dumb
the party and all after was the best part of this

still don't know who any of these people are or what they give a shit about

I thought the episode was OK, but the big rescue/escape from the orgy house felt like pretty standard TV fare to me. Coulda been the last 10 minutes of Law & Order SVU or w/e. (Also seemed comically easy to get in and out of the place.)

oh also the contracts line was LO fuckin L and not in a good way

a kind of half-funny, half-lame, late 90s internet/Leno gag would be to show Ani going going undercover with the girls to the sex party and it turns out they're all just going to film a new season of ABC's The Bachelor.

― Cunga, Monday, July 20, 2015 10:13 PM (1 week ago)

someone needs to make a comedy mashup of UnReal and last nite's ep

jelani cobb ‏@jelani9 37s37 seconds ago
It's bad when they say "Only two episodes left" and you feel relief.

lol

def improvement idk abt good tho, stiil more or less a pile of cliches lying on the floor

― lag∞n, Monday, July 27, 2015 10:44 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

guys this was the worst one yet--only the last 20 minutes were good. the rest was a mess

― a (waterface), Monday, July 27, 2015 10:49 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

first half of this was Such Garbage, every baritone masculine stand-off was like the serving staff at jack rabbit slim's karaoke-ing pacino & de niro in the restaurant in heat. really fascinatingly bad & so badly miscalculated when it comes to emphasising family drama, casting the saddest child in the world, every bit part being the world's grizzliest actor. just so monotone & narrow & boring & unadventurous & tired & dull.

casting the saddest child in the world

Using this kid and the way he acts feels so emotionally manipulative

hmm I don't get that--i haven't worked it out but it feels pretty pointed that the kid is obviously a "disappointment" to Ray which makes his feeble attempts to connect that much more pathetic.

thought Frank's "you're my only friend" (or was it "best"?) was sorta moving and interesting. did he mean it? it almost makes sense.

I mean obviously there's some stockholm syndrome here but I can see the bones of a really good show and so I'm enjoying that as far as it goes.