TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - Season Two

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.

it is more just lazy & bad i think; the closest the show gets to eliciting any kind of feeling or pathos is making you inhabit this acutely uncomfortable scene, & it's all just ungraceful & gratuitous & over-egged. & the direction's so weak elsewhere; torture scenes are incredibly bland & matter-of-fact, determinedly-terse stand-offs aren't tense, &c.

your facility to add flesh to the spare & deeply decomposed bones of this show means ... you are the true detective

if I commit to watch a show I'm gonna get the most out of it damnit!

ha ha. no i like that you're into it, some of these criticisms are low-hanging fruit, & probably it's far enough through that my expectations should be downgraded accordingly. but man it's so disappointing & it's still just like ... so flaccid? like it's the most flaccid show on television, slowly trudging through the motions of something unexciting unsuccessfully, & 60% of every episode is just a waste of time. the end was pretty juicy so that's something. i still like rachel mcadams.

I hope she stays as a brunette. just saying.

also the kid being such a saddo sorta makes Ray's desperation to save him and make him into a "man" of some kind pretty palpable. he's a walking crisis with parental trauma--sort of like the adults minus the accumulated armor of affected competence.

I'm basically just pretending I'm work shopping pizzolatto's script each week. "this part is great! hmm maybe lose this part. put this here not here." etc. seems more fun than cracking jokes on Twitter while half-watching it.

we don't know anything about the kid though. we haven't seen the kid really interact with anyone besides Ray. he didn't even answer the question when Ray was like "Do you like models?"

kid's line delivery of "'kay" after velcoros im your father and ill always love you emoting was so perfect

i just feel like the first-look, one-note-joke casting of a 3D Gary Larson Child, as a counterpoint to Rugged Detective Farrell, is so brazenly on-the-nose & unsubtle, so unrestrained, which would maybe be fine were it not for the subsequent ~1hr of actual involvement in this storyline we have to sit through. i remember seeing some of a mad men episode where don's ex-wife, who had become Unappealing & Large, walked into the apartment he shared with his New, Svelte Wife, 2.0, & the scene consisting of her like forgetting her handbag or something & so creeping in just in time to catch an accidental glance of 2.0 undressing with kind of Moisturiser Commercial Flexibility, just this PSA for youthful slenderness, the whole thing feeling like it was operating at crayon-drawing levels of dramaturgy, like defying believability & being offensive to everyone involved & making the broadest possible point in the most explicit possible way. i feel like now when there's a farrell/son scene, the implicit & stated affection & dedication farrell feels comes through, there aren't (to me) residual echoes of the disappointment & so you're just stuck inside this comic-strip-panel-depth depressing situation with no relief, like the kid's awkwardness dialed up to eleven & No Offence Far Side Child but acted w/o a lot of nuance.

hey btw there is this new show that isn't especially comparable to true detective but which is >>> imo & is kinda interesting because it is about The World Now, it is called mr. robot there is a thread for it hey everybody let's leave this thread

o god no thx

pft no way am i watching mr robot now let me get back to real tv like true de

I'm basically just pretending I'm work shopping pizzolatto's script each week. "this part is great! hmm maybe lose this part. put this here not here." etc. seems more fun than cracking jokes on Twitter while half-watching it.
--ryan

this is basically my approach as well. I still ultimately like it despite all its flaws

Listening to John Adams' Harmonielehre. I'm not sure it's that, it isn't even piano-music.

Wait, why did I think the orgy scene was scored by a piano? Re-checking, yeah, it kinda sounds like first part of Harmonielehre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etxDjB5Riok

stupid shazam

Nahnah, it might be right.

oh! I missed your other post.

if I directed this episode you can be damn sure there'd be an uninterrupted shot of farrell sitting stone faced on that couch listening to the Friends theme.

peeps were drubbing Rmac upthread but she's been very solid imo

has it been mentioned how often Farrell's brogue breaks through, sheesh

if I directed this episode you can be damn sure there'd be an uninterrupted shot of farrell sitting stone faced on that couch listening to the Friends theme.

"When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your yeeeear..."

This would have been great.

I'm basically just pretending I'm work shopping pizzolatto's script each week. "this part is great! hmm maybe lose this part. put this here not here." etc. seems more fun than cracking jokes on Twitter while half-watching it.
--ryan
this is basically my approach as well. I still ultimately like it despite all its flaws

There's still a better than average chance of having some line or moment or expression, some 10 seconds, make up for everything that doesn't work.

any word on a season 3? obviously changes will need to be made, but I hope it sticks around.

it's not going anywhere, still among the highest rated shows on pay cable... though the ratings have been dropping every episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_True_Detective_episodes#Season_2_.282015.29

The point about the kid being too much of a far side downer is otm. The show cheats by having its side characters be unrealistically docile and wimpy to make the heroes seem heroic in contrast.

Look at the social worker, the lady writing down Ray's interactions. When Ray is rude to her she practically whispers a reply to leave her alone, when in real life that may have led to a shouting match or a pushback. Same thing in the first season, where Rust Cohle's monologues were never met with shock or laughter or a "what are you talking about?" Realistic people with real reactions to this behavior would pop the show's bubble of moodiness.

we shd brainstorm what the s3 setpiece undercover-infiltrated community & accompanied drug use will be

Rust Cohle's monologues were never met with shock or laughter or a "what are you talking about?"

idk I thought the totally stonefaced non-reactions of the cops interviewing him was great (and, retroactively, made total sense given that they thought he was a suspect)

hearing rumours s3 is going to team wallace shawn w/julianne moore, reuniting them after their last joint project vanya on 42nd st, plot is apparently a forensic autopsy of pizzolatto's flaws

It's similar to how all the citizens in Nolan's Gotham City are too cowardly to do anything defiant, or get angry, despite living in this comic book hell.

It's easier to turn the dial down on everybody else so your hero seems stronger than to writer a stronger hero that's better than real people.

Stone faced cops were great and appropriate but it's that you cant, thematically, EVER have them shutting down a monologue because it would puncture the whole show that's funny.

For these characers to work -- and it's not just this show but might be how the genre kind of works -- they can't ever pick on someone their own size.

Now I'm thinking about a retired Letterman walking into this world and making comments

"He wants to watch Friends"

my money is on ryan reynolds in season 3.

no way he'll be busy deadpooling

they could swing a left and go for classy-but-cheap actors rather than screen idols desperate for a comeback but if they stick with the running theme you gotta think "who's is desperate enough to FOLLOW colin farrell and vince vaughn on a show no one only a rarified, seasoned few enjoyed, but hasn't already done a lot of tv"

deadpool is coming out feb 2016, plenty of time for ryan to work around that

and even if deadpool turns his cinematic career around, a run on an hbo show is likely to do more for his dramatic rep than the umpteen unseen indie movies he does

s 3 deadpool detective: whales whales whales

i'm not saying he wouldnt be awesome in TD3, but i dont see it happening logistically

yeah that's why i said when deadpool is coming out

if s2 did well they could actually upgrade from vaughn/farrell/mcadams but i can't imagine anybody above their scale would think following this season is the way to go

maybe timberlake

yeah, stunt casting with somebody looking to SHOW THEIR RANGE and make a mark as a serious actor sounds likely.
T.I. maybe