So we’ve closed out the first season of True Detective.  Turns out none of my predictions from last week came to fruition.  The True Detectives made it out alive, there was no super-trippy mindfuck, and the conspiracy has (apparently) been brought to its knees.  Are you not entertained?

Well, I can’t really say that I am.  After all of the exposition, did we really come any closer to understanding the meaning of life, see the final battle between good and evil, or bear witness to momentous events that shook the very core of our world?  For me, a resounding no.  The creator of the series took a big swing, and what we ended up getting was an 8-hour-long episode of Law & Order SVU, set in the Bayou, with big name actors standing in for Richard Belzer and Ice-T.

What’s most disappointing to me about the finale is that some incredibly interesting visual themes were present that hadn’t really been examined at in the previous seven installments.  Several times during the episode, the camera panned back from Rust to reveal how far outside civilization he was, showing just how a monster of a man is able to hide himself from society for two decades.  As mankind has used various forms of technology to shorten the distances between itself over the past century, we’ve begun to assume that there are no longer remote places for people to hide away.

THAT’S a story I’d like to see told!  Man isn’t everywhere in the age of The Global Village, there are still hiding places, there are still places and people that the Internet or governments or social media can’t touch.  And this episode brought that to the surface, but the series as a whole was so focused on making Rust Cohle an unwilling Jesus Christ, the Yellow King an unworthy Lucifer, and Woody Harrelson somewhere in the middle, that I think it missed it’s true calling.  I think the director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, was getting there, as evidenced by the multiple gorgeous shots of the beautiful desolation that is the Louisiana Bayou that don’t really exist to anyone except those that live there or have lived there in the past.  But writer Nic Pizzolatto wanted to tell a story so big that it imploded on itself.  It’s not quite True Crime, it’s not quite cutting edge sci-fi, and it’s not quite a metaphor for anything bigger than the story at hand, even if it presents itself as exactly that.  And the in-between nature of the narrative made everything fall flat.  Especially all of the “I’m not supposed to be here” hocus pocus-ish nonsense at the end.  The logical conclusion was Marty and Rust, dead from the blade wounds that obviously would have killed them, right?  Can we agree that they probably SHOULD be dead, all metaphysical commentary from Rust aside?  That was a knife wound to the bowels and a hatchet to the chest.  That happens on Game of Thrones, best believe those motherfuckers be dead.

Add to that that maybe this past Sunday, a large section of the Internet thought to itself, “wait, that’s it?”  None of the easter eggs that the TD Defender Unit had latched onto as evidence of the show’s depth ended up meaning jack shit!  This wasn’t Lost, not even a little bit, which is doubly deflating, since the show’s most prominent and hardcore defenders now have so much less to point to to prove the greatness of the show.  The possible swirls in random pictures hanging on random walls didn’t mean anything!  None of your crackpot theories mean shit!  (Honestly, I fall for this kind of shit too, all the time.  I’ve admittedly dedicated far too many hours of my life reading up on something called The Grand Tyrell Conspiracy to make fun of anyone else.  But it is fun when I don’t fall for this kind of shit, and then NOTHING HAPPENS.)

Admittedly, the season had it’s moments.  The tracking shot that closed episode 4 is one of the standout technical achievements in television history.  Casting Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in a limited television series gave the show an immediate gravitas that has never been realized on TV before.  And some of the shots captured of the Bayou are flawless pieces of cinematography, better than most feature film quality.  But the story was presented to us as if it was the definitive tale from which the various branches of the crime mythos tree grows from, and it just wasn’t that.  It was just another serial killer story, and ironically, if it would have been presented that way, I think it would have been dramatically more effective and enjoyable!  I didn’t need Rust Cohle to be the BEST. CHARACTER. EVER.  I’d have liked him to just be Rust Cohle.  Or how about Jim Cohle, or Ricky Cohle, or Stephen Cohle-Bear, did it have to be RUST FUCKING COHLE?!?!?

I’m also still excited for season 2.  I hope the hype-train doesn’t set it up for failure.  I feel like we’re all going to bed on Christmas Eve expecting a new car, or an X-Box, or a fucking iPhone, and yeah, a new winter coat is still a great gift Mom, but it’s not a fucking iPhone.  I don’t wanna be that kid, but it might be too late.  I want Harvey Keitel and Robert Duvall, dammit!  Or Frances McDormand and Naomi Watts!  But what if we get Black Detective #1 and #2?  That would be great, but would probably still be a let down at this point.  Regardless, even though I didn’t fall in love with the show this season, I will be happy to come back for more next time around!

Episode 6/10 Hatchet Wounds

Season 7/10 Yellow Kings

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True Detective, an enigmatic creative roller coaster, from both a quality standpoint and a content standpoint.

Having had a day to digest episode 7 (I spent my Sunday night watching the Oscars and still haven’t seen the last 10 minutes of Dynamo Daryl Dixon’s Dirty Dance of Death) and had a glance around the Internet, I’d say that my opinion of this installment again differs with the popular stance.  The difference is this time, I enjoyed it and the masses were bored.  My problems with the first few episodes of the show have largely disappeared, as McConaughey’s Rust has given up speaking like he’s the resurrected and handcuffed corpse of Andy Warhol being buttfucked by Ellen Page’s Juno on peyote.  It also helps that Woody’s Marty has given up treating women like every other TV cop that has ever been a TV cop in the history of TV cops.  I haven’t been quiet about my disdain for that which has previously been done better by someone else, and this episode did a bang up job of sealing off the shtick.

I thought Ep 7 did a nice job of freeing up both characters to drive their stories to an endgame.  Marty was brought back to respectability and maybe came to an understanding that there’s no justification for continuously fucking over the most important people in your life.  I could have done without that part of the story entirely, but it was used as the source of the schism between Marty and Rust.  Yes, a little creativity would have gone a long way there, but it wrapped before the finale, which is better than leaving it open ended and giving some level of tacit approval to Marty’s reprehensible behavior (boys will be boys has always been and will always be bullshit).  We were also given clear indication that while Rust might not have been the classiest dude in the Klondike and the bayou over the past couple decades, he also (probably?) isn’t a copycat serial killer, and also (probably?) hasn’t been going vigilante on the Tuttle clan.

At this point, we’ve seen a little more than the tip of the conspiratorial iceberg, and playing “just the tip” is only fun for so long.  And since we’ve only got an hour left from this season, I only see a few options left.  It’s finale speculation time!

1. First option is, Marty and Rust lay waste to the Tuttles and both go out guns blazing.  It was super clear in Ep 7 that both had crossed a line that they were aware they may not be able to return to, so there is a level of commitment to closing the case with both of them that might result in death.  But it’s fairly clear that neither of them knows how deep the conspiracy goes, so it’s a little far fetched to think that they’re going to be able to shake the foundations of the Louisiana state government in an hour.  Odds of the Thelma and Louise ending: 20/1

2. Second option is, Marty and Rust close in on the Tuttles, but in a surprise ending, they take out some of the lower levels of the conspiracy, but some surprise Tuttle muscle takes them out and prevents them from brining down the whole Kevin Spacey.  Okay, Okay, the whole House of Cards.  We then fade to black with Scarred Tuttle giggling over the lifeless bodies of Marty and Rust, with pools of black blood forming and trickling into the swamp.  Odds of the Antagonists Winning: 20/1

3. Third option: The Cosmic Clusterfuck.  Personally, I love this one.  Rust has been warbling and rasping for weeks now about the circular nature of life, and how time doesn’t exist in one direction, and how everything that has happened has happened before and will happen again.  What if he’s right?  I’d love to see a psychedelic pastiche of the case taking place over billions of years.  Sometimes Rust and Marty bring down the Tuttles.  Sometimes Rust is the killer, sometimes Marty is the killer, sometimes Marty’s psycho daughter is the killer, sometimes Black Detectives #1 and #2 are co-conspirators.  Sometimes there is no killer and Rust goes insane.  The common theme is that there is no common theme, we’ve just seen the current incarnation of this series of events play out.  Last time it wasn’t like this, and next time it won’t be like this, and time is a fluid thing, motherfucker.  Odds of the Cosmic Clusterfuck:  There’s no fucking way they have the balls to do this.

4. Final Option: Since they won’t do number 3, I’d like them to give a semi-satisfying ending to the case that sees Marty and Rust catching Scarred Tuttle and bringing down the entire incest-ridden family.  But the episode runs over five minutes or so, and we get an extra scene in which it is very cautiously and sparsely revealed that the conspiracy reaches much farther than even Rustin Cohle suspected.  Marty and Rust make it through to be available for surprise cameos in future seasons, and then we have a thread of continuity that carries over to two new True Detectives next December.  Like the grand FBI/Greek conspiracy that The Wire teased but never really got around to digging into.  Odds of The Saga Continues: 10/1

What am I rooting for?  Obviously some unexpected and expertly filmed action sequences like we got in 4 and 5.  I’d like to see a cliffhanger that leads into season 2, putting a temporary bow on the Marty and Rust characters but leading us nicely into season 3.  And I’d LOVE to get a tease as to who the next two detectives are, but I think that might be hoping for a bit too much.  Regardless of the outcome, I’m extremely excited by the decades-old television industry walls that True Detective has cast down, and look forward to others following the blueprint.

8/10 Zero Turn Lawnmowers

The post True Detective S1E7 Review, “After You’ve Gone” appeared first on screensnark..

So when it comes to true crime TV drama, I’m obviously tough to please.  At this point, I’ve seen all of The Wire, and I’ve seen all of The Shield.  So if something new is coming at me in the same vein, I’m instinctively looking at them by comparing them to the best of what I’ve already seen.  Maybe that’s not fair, but that’s me.  I have a very tough time judging something new on its own merits, because I want everything to be as good as it possibly can be, and I’m disappointed when something that could be flawless falls short.  The mistake I made with True Detective was judging it from a “True Crime” perspective.

Because True Detective has shown at this point that it isn’t really a cop show, and detective work isn’t really intrinsic to what the show is.  The best I can peg the show up to now is something along the lines of “cerebral/occultist action drama”, but the true appeal is that it doesn’t really fit into categories.  I’ve lost the “OMG this is going to be fucking awesome” hope that I had before the series premiered, but the fact that True Detective is breaking new ground and transcending preconceived notions of what a TV series can be is leaps and bounds more important than the actual product anyway.  We can now have 8 episode mini-seasons of TV made with cinematic quality featuring world class production teams and A-List actors that don’t adhere to decades-old established “this is okay for a TV series” guidelines.  That is a colossal accomplishment.

But the fact that new ground has been broken doesn’t always mean that the product is flawless.  I thought this episode was half baked at best, falling back into some of the script and dialogue ruts that held back the first three episodes.  The detective fucking his partner’s wife, even with it being provoked by the wife, has worn out its welcome in all forms of media.  This was like Rick Vaughn fucking Roger Dorn’s wife, except with Jameson replacing Budweiser, a dirty countertop replacing a waterbed, and the lighting dimmed to just above crypt-level.  So has the parking lot brawl that follows, as well as the rouge cop first confronting authority only to be rebuffed and eventually forced to resign, driven by his own integrity.  That kind of Detective bullshit is so True that I’ve seen it dozens of times over the years.  So far, the show has been great when it has refused to follow television/film convention, so to lean on it now is disappointing.  Rustin Cohle, meet Suzanne Dorn:

That said, I was pleased to see that the flashbacks were allowed to continue for another episode, as the disparities between the present telling of events while watching them play out as they actually happened has been consistently entertaining and at times thrilling, with the action sequences of eps 4 and 5 being the obvious high points.  Not only was the action fantastic, but the real time lies being told that conflicted with the action were then icing on the cake.  And the show really, really misses the action, especially after we’ve already seen it be glorious in previous episodes.  Once I’ve been shown something like the tracking shot at the end of episode 4, coupled with my disappointment with the first three episodes, I want more of the former.  I got it in ep 5, but it was conspicuously missing in ep 6, which made me feel like this was just a bunch of filler before we get our grand action confrontation to close the season.  And wasn’t the first confrontation of present day Marty and Rust just a complete and total letdown?  I’d rather they just said nothing and stared at each other than give us the lines that we got.

One more concern I have is that 2 more episodes is very little time to lay out an entire grand conspiracy.  I think this episode made it clear that Rust probably isn’t the original (or copycat?) killer: he isn’t a giant with scars on his body, he confronted the obviously guilty head of the church, and has been given independent corroboration of child porn activities within the church by the drunk ex-preacher.  I don’t know how effective the reveal of a primary villain will be considering we only have cursory details of his identity at this point.  What I’m hoping for?  That there isn’t a nice bow wrapping up the package this season.  I hope we get a surface resolution to the Rust/Marty story, but I hope the big picture conspiracy plot is carried over to next season, with a new locale, cast, creative vision, etc., and I’d even like the door to be left open for the Rust and/or Marty characters to return in the future.

That would add one more notable wrench in the typical creative machine that has driven TV for the last five decades. So while I may not always appreciate the content, I certainly respect the creative vision.

Episode 6: 6.5/10 Pairs of Top o’ the Asscrack Handcuffs

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After digesting the fifth installment of True Detective, I finally felt the satisfied sense of contentment that I get after I’ve watched compelling TV.  I still feel that the first three episodes, with clunky ridiculous dialogue and tired late 30s white male detective with issues tropes, were a long, long way away from being even above average artistic television, while the tracking shot that closed the fourth episode was a fantastic and unsustainable high.  There’s just no way that the show could have maintained that level of intensity for four more consecutive episodes.

So the recipe for success for the fifth episode was a solid and steady segment of the story that made leaps in the plot, significant reveals to add to the depth of the main characters, and laid the groundwork for the last three ep stretch.  And…that’s exactly what we got.

We got another fantastically unorthodox action sequence that finally resolved the original set of 90s murders (or did they?).  I could have done without the slow motion machine gun masturbation shots, but overall the action scene closed one story but gave further explanation not only to what happened to Cohle and Marty, but also to their current set of circumstances.  We’ve (probably) found out why their investigation stopped when neither of them seemed to be truly satisfied with the outcome.  And this episode managed to accomplish all of this without completely removing the veil of mystery that has been present throughout.

So at this point, we think there is a larger conspiracy at work, but what kind of conspiracy jeopardizes itself by allowing very public ritual killings take place?  We think that Cohle is still just doing detective work, but has he crossed the line from incredibly dedicated detective to infatuated and obsessed copycat killer?  And it certainly seems that there’s a good chance that Cohle and Marty are still working the case together and have been in secret for over a decade, but neither are reliable narrators during their interviews, so it’s difficult for the audience to figure out which lies are cover ups and which are just outright lies.  And during all of this, there seems to be an undercurrent of occult nonsense that might be there just to make the audience dig up the whole back yard looking for clues.

I also love that the current day story line finally got jump started in this episode, with the hooded accusations being thrown at Cohle directly and through Marty.  It’s fun to find out the chronology of the interviews themselves, since I don’t believe it had been previously revealed that the Cohle interview took place before Marty’s.  I could still do without the verbose bullshit from Cohle, but now there’s a possibility (a ray of hope) that he’s using all of the metaphysical nonsense as a smokescreen to shield himself from anyone who might come sniffing in his direction.  And not only do they think that he’s behind the current string of killings, but they think he somehow managed to be the original murderer too!  I don’t think even superhuman Rustin F. Cohle could pull that shit off.

Finally, it was interesting that both of the interviews have been wrapped up at this point.  It effectively ends the possibility of having additional flashback segments, since the narration that justified them is over.  That means that the final three will be taking place in the present day.  Obviously that could mean anything, but I enjoyed a lot of the interviews themselves and I’m sad to see them go.  It also is starting to feel like MAYBE they should have done 10 episodes, but I’ll wait and see what happens.

I’m obviously glad that the show has turned in a positive and intriguing direction, but the unique quality of the format and presentation would have been enough to have me on board for future seasons.  Can’t wait to see where this goes.

8/10 Papania and Gilboughs

Marty’s Division Bell Tour shirt? 6/10.  Would have figured him for a fan of Dark Side for sure, not a post-Roger Waters bandwagon guy.

The post True Detective S1E5 Review, “The Secret Fate of All Life” appeared first on screensnark..

I was all set to rip the shit out of True Detective this week.  I’d given it a reprieve two weeks ago, probably against my better judgement.  There was no episode on Super Bowl Sunday, allowing all of my problems with the show to fester and ferment into a cross-pollinated fireball of alcohol-fueled bacterial malaise (I don’t know what that means either.  It’s what came out).  And it was up against the triumphant return of good-but-usually-not-great Walking Dead Season 4.

And then the show decided to get good.  To ditch all of the existential hocus-pocus bullshit dialogue (speaking of bullshit, during each previous episode I’ve found myself speaking back to McConaughey’s Rust Cohle as if I were McConaughey’s character from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.  When he said something about the eternal nothingness that is the human soul, I say “bull-shiiit”.  Underrated rom-com, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days).  They sped up the collapse of Woody’s marriage, and instead of depicting his wife as the quintessential “I’ll never leave you” wet blanket, we instead get a powerful woman saying “fuck you fuck you fuck you get the fuck out, you mothafucker”.  Total 180, that.  And we get the final 15 minutes, which certainly were the best 15 minutes of TV I’ve seen this year.

I’ve given this quite a bit of thought, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an action sequence play out on film like the 15 minutes that closed this episode of True Detective.  To shoot an extended action scene with both a direct focus on Rust and his captive that goes along with a big picture perspective that captured just how crazy these situations can be is quite an accomplishment.  While it did come off as a little manufactured, the end result was mind-blowing, and was obviously the highlight of the series so far.  I could probably go back and watch that stretch of action four or five times just to completely appreciate the direction and comprehensive vision required to put something like that together.

Real life shootouts and riots are chaotic events that can’t be scripted.  To attempt to cram them into a predictable structure usually feels like forced John Woo bullshit.  But to place the focus on the chaos itself and allow the viewer to feel the desperation/confusion/panic that comes along with it feels particularly authentic, and when the protagonist seems to thrive on the chaos, it automatically elevates him.  THAT’S how you make a badass come to life on screen.

The rest of the improvement in this episode results directly from improvements in the pace and a focus on minimalist dialogue.   It seems pretty basic, but I can only take so many plodding soliloquies no matter who is delivering them.  No matter how slow he inhales a cigarette, no matter how cool his facial hair is, and no matter how many times he contemplates man’s place in the soul-crushing emotional vortex that is life on earth.  James Gandolfini made Tony Soprano’s tough guy emo 100% believable, but he also had countless hours in Dr. Melfi’s office to flesh out the depth of the character.  Matt McConaughey has 8 total hours of screen time to navigate the same highwire act, and it isn’t a coincidence that the show dramatically improves when the showrunner slams on the action gas and dumps most of the emotional garbage.

I still find it more than a little insulting that the two black secondary characters interviewing the two white primaries have been given almost nothing to say.  At best, those two guys are black because someone in the casting department said “oh shit, we better get some black guys”.  At worst, it comes off as the plantation owner (especially Woody) talking down to his property.  I’m sure some of that is intentional, but at some point, the story needs to be driven by Black Detective #1 and Black Detective #2, since we’re obviously headed to Rust being accused of something, and I’d like that to happen sooner rather than later.

But overall, hot damn!  This is what I was expecting when the hype train was rolling in early December, and I can’t wait for more.

9/10 Cocaine Snorts

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So this week I continued to get bombarded on multiple fronts with comments like “what do you mean you don’t really like True Detective?”, and “are you kidding me, this True Detective shit is awesome!”.  So obviously there is a large disconnect between me and the viewership at large when it comes to this show.  By and large, there are two specific items I look for when going through my internal critique of a TV show:

1. Is this idea new?  Am I being shown something that I haven’t seen before?  And if it isn’t new…
2. Is what I’m being shown better, or at least as good as what I’ve seen before?

This is why I was never the most devout Law&Order fan, and why I outright hated House.  Those shows in one way or another replicated themselves every week.  They’re great hangover shows, because they fire familiar synapses in the brain and don’t rock the boat too much (or at all, we get it House, you’re a fucking renegade, and you’re going to crack this goddamn case if it’s the last goddamn thing you do.  Seriously, please let this be the last goddamn thing you do).  But once the show has peaked, that was it, never gonna do any better.  I’m just not that interested in watching retreads of plots that I’ve already seen a better version of, unless I’m trying to avoid revisiting last night’s 17 Buttery Nipples.  After all, one can only consume so much butterscotch schnapps.

That being said, there is obviously plenty to like about True Detective.  So with that in mind, I’m going to split my weekly critique in two.  We’re three episodes in, so I feel like we probably have a good idea of what we have at this point.   And since to date I’ve been so harsh with this show, I’m going to dedicate this week’s review to everything I love about it.  But reader beware, unless there is a huge shift in direction, next week I am unleashing the antler-adorned hounds on this motherfucker.

First, the interview segments in and of themselves are fantastic.  Just sticking a camera in front of Harrelson and McConaughey and letting them talk was certainly the best idea that the show’s creators had.  The garbled existential bullshit coming from young Rust comes off as the drivel of a naive college freshman that just got out of his first lecture on metaphysics.  But when the grizzled and weathered older (and obviously unfortunately) wiser Rust is shown during the interview segments, the same commentary is both insightful and haunting.  Of course that is intentional to some degree, but the interview commentaries are so effective at showing what life has done to Rust, that it becomes incredibly and exceedingly difficult to reconcile that these two people are in fact one and the same individual.  The conclusion being that Matthew McConaughey has done such a flawless job portraying his character’s burned out husk, that it’s hard to believe that he was ever anything but the husk.

The counterpoint is obviously Woody’s Martin Hart, who has retained his humanity over the years where McConaughey’s Rust lost his.  The examination of how one person, when confronted with a series of events, is able to remain upright where another collapsed in the face of them is fascinating, especially (or because?) Martin Hart is so obviously falling apart during the series of flashbacks.  Woody’s interview segments are never going to be as flashy as McConaughey’s, but they can be just as effective at shedding light on the relationship between Hart and Rust and why it crumbled.  Equally interesting is the fact that even though the relationship did crumble, Hart readily goes to the wall defending Rust, showing loyalty where it just as easily could be non-existent.

Finally, one specific plot point stood out this week, and it was obviously the cliffhanger, which has to be seen to be even vaguely understood.  I’m including a picture at the top, but with no real context, it’s totally what the fuck.  Yeah, it’s shocking, but that’s not why I’m intrigued.  What really is riveting to me, and what has me sold for next week, is that we know this crazy motherfucker is NOT the real serial killer.  So even though this tatted up dude is trolling around his yard half (mostly?) naked, with a weapon, and with a fucking gas mask on, we know without a doubt that he’s either not the killer, or there is a damn dedicated copycat on the loose decades later.  I’m still pretty dead set on Rust being the killer, but I’m happy that we’ve now been (informally) introduced to a potential batshit insane villain who will be on full display next week.

There!  That’s what I love about this show!  And I didn’t even mention the latent racism of two middle age southern white guys explaining the ways of the world to two silent and captivated black men!  I’ll be back next week, and I’m hoping for more of what’s above, but expecting more garbage like the “OMG OUR MAARIGE IZ BROKEN” nonsense that was the Woody and his Wife bedroom scene.  I’m also waiting with baited breath for the inevitable speech in which McConaughey or Woody explains what it means to be a “True” Detective.  I’d lay even money that it’s in episode 9 or 10, and I’d say that McConaughey is the slight favorite to deliver it, but I could see Woody dropping that knowledge on us almost just as easily.

• Interview Scenes – 9/10 Pitchers of Draught Beer
• Flashback Police Work Scenes – 7/10 Loosened Neckties
• Flashback Family Life Scenes – 4/10 Scorned Women
• Overall – 6.5/10 Revival Tents

The post True Detective S1E3 Review, “The Locked Room” appeared first on screensnark..

So, obviously I’m in the minority, as the series premiere of True Detective didn’t exactly knock my socks off.  I’m still a little bit baffled, as I’m not entirely sure what was so captivating about the hour that we saw last week.  Yes, there is dark imagery, yes there is a ritualistic murder, and yes yes yes there was Woody and McConaughey.  I definitely get the feeling that the vast majority of the audience is very much in love with the idea of two major manly movie stars doing a dark true crime drama on HBO, rather than loving the actual execution.  Granted, there’s enough here to make it exceedingly watchable, but haven’t we been over this ground before?

Specifically, do we really need to watch “troubled” men talk about “difficult” topics?  Don’t we have 7 seasons of Mad Men with Don Draper attempting, however unsuccessfully, to justify his infidelity?  C’mon Woody, we know the cop job is rough on a cracker, but let’s be real, you just can’t get enough of those epically fantastic tits!  And oh sweet Jesus those two globes were obviously the real stars of the show, to hell with the two boobs that are getting top billing.  Also, as mentioned last week, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, minus the vaguely southern accents, already made this as a movie!  And they had two Oscar winners to round out the cast!

I’m probably being too harsh.  Dexter just had a massive coronary crossing its finish line, Homeland has gone up in a cloud of Syrian mustard gas, and Mad Men is ending, albeit in potentially the most drawn out fashion in the history of modern art.  Breaking Bad has left us all longing for something intense and fantastic, and Walking Dead has shown that it’s comfortable being the safest of all zombie shows (not really a criticism of the last one, but it’s obvious that AMC isn’t going to take any risks with its ratings-grabbing undead cash cow).  While there are plenty of tremendous shows on right now that are under the radar, the market is basically bereft of anything with a high concept, a big budget, and huge amounts of hype and bombast.  At least until Game of Thrones comes back.  Please, please, PLEASE Game of Thrones come back soon.  I love you.

My main problem with the show can be summed up by, oddly enough, summing up the show.  Matt and Woody are cops.  They find a body, and it’s horrific. They’re looking for the killer.  Matt has problems.  Woody has problems.  The murder has to be solved quickly, because of pressure.  Let’s go look for leads!

And that’s essentially the plot.  Yes, there’s iconography.  Yes, there are vaguely religious motifs.  Yes, there is the new (to drama) technique of using single-cam interviews to flashback to a multi-cam past.  And yes, Matthew McConaughey is skinny and brooding and troubled, and Woody Harrelson is Woody Harrelson.  But good TV drama is built on plot, with depth and nuance and surprise and suspense.  To date, there are very little of any of those things in True Detective.

Another issue, and maybe this is just specific to me: any good mystery is good because we want to try to figure out who the bad guy is.  So the initial job of the author, or filmmaker, or showrunner is to immediately present us with a few characters who might have committed the crime.  And maybe it was Rust Cohle that did it.  (Fucking Rust Cohle?  ARG.) It would be an interesting twist, to find out that your protagonist is the serial killer, but as of now, would it really be a twist?  I’m outright expecting that McConaughey is the killer, until I’m presented with additional options.  So two episodes in, there is no mystery to the mystery, and that’s unfortunate.

Final big problem.  Maybe I’m naive, but I thought TV was past its almost gleeful tendency to actively treat women as if they are and forever will be the lowest form of humanity, without exception. But I guess I was wrong.  As of now, True Detective has tacitly approved of the notion that women are meaningless unless they are not only murdered but ritualistically killed by a deranged (and obviously and eventually male) sociopath.  Or alternatively they have a historically great set of tits.  I’m all for the murder victim being a woman.  I’m obviously okay with the tits.  But goddamn, can’t one of the interviewing detectives at least be a woman?  Does every secondary female on the show have to be either a wife that is cheated on by her husband or a white trash prostitute?  Perhaps the creator of the show identifies a little bit more with the serial killer than he does with any perfectly sane woman.

The show will obviously continue to be pretty good, and it will fill a TV void that needs filling, but it’s more than a little painful to see so much wasted potential.

6/10 sets of antlers

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The television medium is not well known for its propensity for experimentation and risk taking.  The original formats for the sitcom and TV drama that were developed in the 50s can still be seen largely unchanged on all three major networks today.  That said, the rise of premium cable original programming from HBO, Showtime, Netflix, etc. and basic cable offshoots like FX and AMC has allowed for an expansion in creative freedom for TV creators and also new formatting options unheard of as recently as the 90s.  HBO’s True Detective is the logical extension of these two forces, and aims to take full advantage of both.

Having seen only the first episode, it’s obvious that HBO is treating the first season of True Detective like an 8 hour movie.  They’ve cast movie stars in Woody Harrelson and the suddenly white hot Matthew McConaughey, they hired a hotshot young filmmaker to direct in Cary Fukunaga, and the episodes seem like they will be presented in a long form style atypical of TV.  While other TV shows have borrowed extensively from film, this show is certainly the most prominent to fully embrace it in such a pronounced manner.

The show is centered around a stylistic serial killing set outside of New Orleans, featuring Woody and Matthew as rural detectives (what makes one a TRUE Detective?  Still not sure about that, but hope to find out).  Harrelson fits easily into the middle age cop who’s been around the block a few times with a family to think about, and McConaughey immediately makes it known that he is the eccentric loose cannon who has his own ideas of what it takes to catch a sociopath.

The approach shifts back and forth from a single-cam present day interview setup to a traditional multi-cam flashback setup.  The skies are gray, the music is dissonant and creepy, and the dialogue is murky and cerebral.  At first glance, this is basically Se7en with Woody playing a younger and whiter Morgan Freeman and Matty playing a mentally fucked Brad Pitt.  Oh, and McConaughey’s name is Rust.  Come the fuck on, no one’s name is Rust.

Actually, if Woody and McConaughey could inject some of the easy chemistry that exists between Detectives Somerset and Mills in Se7en, this would be a lot more watchable.  I was more than a little shocked that the worst parts of True Detective are the scenes that the two leads share together.  Their tension in those scenes in particular feels forced and doesn’t feel at all earned, and young McConaughey’s dialogue feels more calculated than an Aaron Sorkin Newsroom monologue.  And even that kind of shit can work if presented properly, but ten minutes in our first real glimpse into McConaughey’s character is him explaining to Woody (aka the Audience) that he is fucked up because the world is fucked up.  This isn’t a play, I don’t need a character to give voice to the inner workings of his psyche for me to understand that he’s off-balance.  Maybe I was expecting too much, but I wanted more than this.

There’s still loads of potential, especially since later in the episode it is revealed that the reason we are flashing back to 1995 is because there’s been a very similar ritiual killing in the present day, and Hurricane Rita wiped out most of the files on the older case.  The parts of this initial episode that work best by far are the interview segments with older Woody and Matthew, and as we move from flashback to the present, it would make sense that the two grizzled detectives would be reunited to take down the resurfaced killer.  That’s a story I’m interested in seeing play out.

We close the episode with a minor cliffhanger promising more peeling back of the 1995 serial killer onion next week.  As of now, this show is filling a void created by the polarization of Hollywood.  Specifically over the past two years, Hollywood has increasingly suffered from blockbuster-itis, shifting all films into either the categories of “summer/Christmas blockbuster” or indie arthouse pet-project.  There was a time when the film version of True Detective would have been greenlit featuring the same actors and director and would have made $150 million on a $60 million budget.  Now that there is no middle ground in Hollywood, we are either blessed or cursed with 6.5 additional hours of a project like True Detective.  Blessed, if it turns out great, cursed if it Breaks Bad.  And we got no allright allright allrights?!?!?  One week in, I’m not exactly sure which direction we’re headed, but I’ve certainly seen enough to be in for the duration.

7/10, except for the scene with Harrelson and McConaughey in the car at around 15 minutes, which gets a 2/10

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