TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - Season Two

the dead weight of the consistently terrible dialogue just crushes the life out of it, an unintentional horror show that left me groaning every two minutes between longer spells of being bored rigid.

in a world where Christopher Nolan makes a living who's to say what terrible dialogue is?

idk whoever wrote this shite makes it look like the dialogue in Batman's Stinky Dark Follow-through was the work of Arthur Miller!

I think that i agree with everyone

But mainly brad, and nv raises a huge point

If you liked S1, like I did, why would you decide in advance not to like S2? That makes no sense.

― clemenza

I cannot answer this for u clem.

This is ur journey

I can't remember how this thread goes, but although someone certainly could have decided not to like s2 in advance, I don't think anyone could have accounted for the particular type of badness exhibited here

It's sui generis if nothing else. And definitely one of the most memorable seasons of TV in the past decade or so

It kinda does for moody cop shows what twin peaks did for soaps

But unintentionally and not exactly

Are my thoughts my own
Am I steering this thing

Did i dream this belief
Or did i believe this dream

Obv with brad here btw, the four leads got a hard time from various sources for their performances in this and every one of them had moments or episodes where i was all in for them

McAdams was good.

The bland dude was so bland that when I read dmac's post about four leads I had to google it to remember his character.

Colin Farrell as Ray Velcro was terrible. Truly one of the worst written and performed roles ever. The equivalent of being trapped in an elevator with someone being emotionally moved by a Decemberists album.

Vince Vaughn's performance was beyond good and bad, like some Dr. Manhattan-level of non-judgment, but also feel like it should be sent to Mars for the good of humanity.

vaughn is so good in this imo that i can’t help but think ppl brought prior baggage to the table

in no way does this season deserve to be brought up in any proximity to the name “nolan” come on

like, for one thing, this season is funny

i guess noodle vague was making more of a general state of the world comparison there lol

farrell plays someone who is indistinguishable from a bottomed-out version of crockett in miami vice. i love him in this mode, very little for me to complain about. the scenes with his kid somehow strike the balance between being totally fucking hilarious and very sad. i found this way more interesting than woody’s marital troubles in season one or whatever

not sure i can understand thinking it's one of the worst written or performed roles ever... if so, your bar for this is really high to me. not sure what the decemberists have to do with it either

obviously the dialogue in this is extremely extreme but while blockbuster dialogue may also be selfserious (or as in the mcu a homogenized glibness slurry) it could hardly be accused of being rococo. or even self-indulgent! that stuff is indulging someone else; god knows who. anyway i do understand people being repelled by the style but in that case you might think they'd go easier on the actors, who all have impossible jobs.

farrell/kid scenes are genuinely lynchian: endless pauses and yeah that funnysad superimposition that's never allowed to collapse. but i'd have to watch whole thing again to rly get any closer to why i was riveted.

I think its pretty bold and well executed- farrell, a fine actor of very strong instinct imo, is playing a guy who fairly hates his kid instinctively, a guy who would certainly have beaten the shit out of this kid as a classmate.

hates his kid and yet is desperate for an emotional connection with him that he may never acquire... wonderfully conveyed

the kid's near-total indifference to it is also what expands the comedy and the tragedy

there are a lot of contrived paths for that kind of plotline and imo true detective season two took none of them

https://i.imgur.com/dz3GoHg.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/LCblucD.jpg

also look at this goddamn show

Kid has long ago retreated

Farrell's frustration with himself having engineered exactly this situation transfers to his reaction when his kid is actually bullied

The lack of the usual trite resolution is good, yes

The bland dude was so bland that when I read dmac's post about four leads I had to google it to remember his character.

Colin Farrell as Ray Velcro was terrible. Truly one of the worst written and performed roles ever. The equivalent of being trapped in an elevator with someone being emotionally moved by a Decemberists album.

Vince Vaughn's performance was beyond good and bad, like some Dr. Manhattan-level of non-judgment, but also feel like it should be sent to Mars for the good of humanity.

― Rocky Thee Stallion (PBKR

All terrifically wrong takes should be written this well imo

love that this show ends with the two female leads off on some lesbian coparenting journey in venezuela, a happy ending

No thats what turned it into a modern horror, actually

I liked this at the time (except for that goddamn singer in the bar) but don't have HBO at the moment so can't re-watch. It's definitely one of my favorite Vaughn performances.

I usually agree with Brad on most things but man I hated this season. You almost have me thinking I should revisit it though. I thought season 1 was a let down in the end but I thought the general tone and feel of that season transcended the rubbish bits; but season two didnt seem like it accomplished that at all to me. I honestly can't even remember what it was about. Season 3 is the only one that was wholly successful. I was just thinking about this show yesterday morning and wondering if they were ever going to do a Season 4.

i love the singer in the bar it's such a good trope, especially when she's singing to an empty room of upside down chairs in the last episode

maybe i am at this point overrating true detective season 2 but this is the first time in memory that a television show has had the same effect on me as great genre cinema. it's telling that i'm not the only person itt comparing it to mann. collateral, miami vice, even heat are movies that tell crime stories where the surreality is not the focus (cf. lynch) but is instead a part of the texture of the reality they're creating, down to the staging, acting, writing, and the way the light is filmed (+ the most beautiful overhead shots of los angeles highways)

Have you seen S3 yet?

not yet!

I thought S3 was an improvement every which way, especially in performance (Mahershala Ali, Carmen Ejogo) and visually. I posted this still on the S3 thread.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/ali.jpg

also, for the people who hated every moment of s2... even the shootout in episode four?

Honestly, (spoiler hidden) when Farrell's character got shot I was genuinely shocked because the tone they'd set made it utterly plausible that that could happen. It had real impact. (And it wasn't even disappointing that that turned out differently. It still worked.)

Also, Rick Springfield is fucking incredible in it.

I dislike Vince Vaughan and find Colin Farrell unwatchable (to the point that I can't even get through 10 minutes of The New World) but I'm gonna start hate-watching this tonight, yay thread

I think youd need to set each season of TD totally separately tbh

S3 is very, very good but has elements that grate because, and id need to check the thread to see my thoughts at the time, they were v obviously at times setting up outcomes that were v clearly going to be snatched away and the writers going "aha" at you

The "aha" here is exactly as brad described. Zero fuckin twist, that air of impending doom and gloom? that's where we are heading, ppl. A slow, straight story in many ways.

Checked there- thread has only 198 posts ffs, deserved more than that imo

Third one, as i noted, is a lot nicer to everyone involved and earns that right.

The time/memory elements are really well done. Ali is wonderful, everyone else is better than good.

Has everyone seen vaughn in brawl in cell block 99 because imo taken with this thats a hell of a one-two

colin farrell is 1) good and 2) very hot :(

am i allowed to put screenshots in spoiler tags, lets find out

https://i.imgur.com/xfSj1no.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Win0ce8.jpg

what i'm trying to say is: masterpiece

lol that didn't turn out right oh well

Has everyone seen vaughn in brawl in cell block 99 because imo taken with this thats a hell of a one-two

I saw it. Someone — I forget who or where — said that the version directed by John Carpenter would have started at the 45-minute mark of Zahler's version, and that was dead on. Vaughn was pretty good in it, though.

In searching i found a couple of posts by yourself that were not fulsome in praise alright

I liked Colin Farrell in Minority Report! And he was fine in In Bruges. idk why I find him unwatchable. Sexy? nooooo

Brad calling this a masterpiece is giving me blue balls, in my heart.

Colin Farrell could act that

This is good so far, bf likes it more than S1, personally I'm OK with Colin Farrell as long as his character stays drunk and the hot cop looks like Jonsi fucked Sam Rockwell

Do u refer to the surly norse god tim riggins esq

Oh is he in other things? I would not mind watching them