I've just finished season two, and mind you, I adore season one, despite its anti-feministic setback. I will not be spoiling the series in this post, but rather reflect on stuff like characters, differences between seasons one and two and whether I think the show should be cancelled. As if!
Most of the people who I've been speaking to about the second season have liked it, more with every episode. The start if it all felt jumbled to me, even though it's supposed to be; I can't help but wonder if that's courtesy of the writers ((Of which there are two now, as opposed to just one last time around.)) to make you want to re-watch the season to make sense of things or not, but anyway - things are pretty much wrapped-up by the end of the second season. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.
First, the start. There's this post which is a quite funny read about "the 31 most ridiculous moments of the True Detective premiere". Some of it rings true: the new theme song is a parody of the first one. I refute all claims for original thought on part of the show-making people, and I think it should have been...something else. I'm all for ruggedness where applicable, but this is just a bit...taffy.
I really loved a lot of the pan-over camera action, where you could see the highways, the stacked 18-wheelers everywhere. It almost was like a western film, where you got to see the plains, the desert, where it all went down; I wonder if they used model sets.
Something that hit me, having watched the penultimate episode of the second season, was how every scene always felt like an old-school cowboy film: the characters are always on point, there's no chitchat, everything's ultra-dramatic and everybody seems to have a dark past that will be glanced at once in a while. The characters move like they were figurines from The Sims.
How about Vince Vaughn's dialogue? He's like a living cut-up machine, delivering stuff from Hemingway and the movie "Shane". I have no issues with dialogue that is larger than life in every single way, but hey, "Some people say it's not the size of the boat but rather the motion of the ocean. Well guess what, Ray? I can't even swim. Never even had a bath." - what the fuck? OK, it's not only Vaughn's character, but what the HELL:
You will find more examples (plus explanations of what the dialogue is supposed to mean, I think) right here.
Farrell's entire relationship with his son made me want to yawn to death.
The main reason for my liking this, is probably because of the fact that it's not like any other series out there, not any that's Hollywoodesque in this way. So what if the dialogue is incredible? It should be. I like it that way. They do weird shit? Good.
Man. Whatever will we be perplexed by and uninvolved with next Sunday? #TrueDetective
— Daniel Fienberg (@TheFienPrint) August 10, 2015#TrueDetective #TrueDetectiveFinale #SeasonFinale #TrueDetectiveSeason2 Me + all Season 1 fans ¯\_(?)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/6vrVte9lKu
— You can call me Al (@MrNiwagaba) August 10, 2015THE REST OF THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS: using Rachel McAdams' character to flash back to having been abused as a child, just from taking ecstasy, seemed like such a cop-out; why not drag that into the light in some other way? Bah. Humbug. Also, I love the following quote from this post:
As for all those criticisms he got last year about female characters, he decided to wave his “feminist flag” by allowing the two females live, only you could barely see that flag beyond all the prostitutes fucking greasy old men this season.
Also, letting your female characters live — and having Ani provide some salvation for Ray by having his posthumous baby — is not exactly what I’d call a “strong female character” (although, I will grant that Ani was the best female character in two seasons of True Detective, four-day rape van bender aside. Rachel McAdams was the shining light of season two).
It's a shame no one got around to teaching Colin Farrell how to use Soundcloud on #TrueDetective.
— Steve Feitl (@SteveFeitl) August 10, 2015Hey all fiction, stop having women "save the day" by giving birth to the child of the dead hero. It's the worst. #TrueDetective
— nolan buro (@theclobberinkid) August 10, 2015