True Detective Season 2 Summary Review

So Season 2 of the highly acclaimed True Detective aired on Sunday night in the US (Monday for the UK), and so after the smoke has settled, how was it?  (WARNING: Minor Spoilers Ahead)

Impossible not to compare to Season 1, which appears to have been knocked down a peg or two by some quarters ever since gaining universal praise last year. Especially around the finale, which apart from the main set piece, was fairly slow paced. Even the well known dialogue pieces that prompted endless discussions have been brought into question over potential plagiarism. Was that due to Season 2? Were people retrospectively seeing through the fog, and changing opinion? Possibly, or perhaps we simply over hyped the original (Personally, I stand by that Season 1 was great television).

The hype for Season 2 was phenomenal after the success of the first, especially when it showed true Hollywood star power coming to the smaller screen. So once the casting announcements were made for such heavyweights as Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Vince Vaughn the internet went a little mental with excitement (Sorry Taylor Kitsch, not quite yet).

As the dust began to settle and we started to get a little more information, it became clear that instead of Season 1’s direction of two central detectives, this would feature three with a Gangster portrayed by notorious comedic actor Vaughn. Immediate thoughts were how would he adapt to a serious role, in a series that is dark in tone with laughs few and far between (if at all).

In addition, we were told that whilst Nic Pizzolatto would be writing all the episodes as he did in Season 1 (apart from 2 where he had a co-writer in Scott Lasser), whilst directing took a very different format. Season 1 was purely directed by Cory Fukunaga, Season 2 had 7 directors for the 8 episodes.

Given the context, I got back to my initial question of how was it? My answer: It was ok.

Ok I’ll elaborate. Firstly, I’m trying to keep this separate from season 1 since it’s meant to be an anthology, but in some aspects it’s impossible not to compare them.

A big difference that helps establish this as its own series is the setting. Based in California (LA was purposefully avoided), the main feature being these vast sprawling highways and open ended landscapes mixed with an industrial inner city. The locations for the season were fantastic, and the cinematography which captured that was great. Every director seemed to have at least one token highway shot which was sort of unnecessary.

The plot itself, starting with the discovery of a body which turns out to be a corrupt city manager is what brings the main characters together. And without going into specifics, what exactly ties them together to this case and the larger series outline.

However early episodes were slow to plod along with fairly poor character development, a raft of supporting characters and a fairly convoluted plot. The dialogue was clunky, and whilst trying to clearly hit some of the highs from Season 1, just appeared to miss repeatedly.

As the episodes went on, things did improve, but for an 8 episode season there isn’t a great deal of time to get things right. The final 2 episodes were the seasons best overall, in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean we simply ignore the rest. Too many initially developed plot ideas seemed to just vanish, the high speed rail line being one example. Too many supporting characters were given next to no screen time, yet we’re meant to care to certain outcomes by the end. In fact, there is plenty of fun being pointed to the character ‘Stan’ who is referred to in almost every episode, including a trip to his family’s home, yet is only in 2 scenes as a standby character. How are we meant to care?! And that’s without speaking about Caspere’s killer, which follows a trend set in some murder mystery’s, but only the most absurdly eagle eyed would be able to work out ahead of the reveal in episodes 7/8, once more very little screen time and most of the ‘reveal’ was done prior to that character even having a second scene in the season!

The plotline gets complicated unnecessarily, and whilst it might be needed to really show how shady various factions and situations can be, the concept of mob money invested into developments etc, once more it didn’t really work. In fact, the whole character of Frank, played by Vaughn, really wasn’t really needed. And served as almost an afterthought vs the 3 detective leads. He was given some awful dialogue early on in the season, whilst Vaughn struggled to make us care about his character, and for a while many couldn’t see him outside of his comedy guise. By the time he started hitting the right notes and even have us root for him at times, it was a bit too little too late.

Looking at the 3 detective leads, there were some good points. Farrell played Ray fantastically through a series of situations bringing about different emotions and issues. His voice going weird in the final episode, and somehow having a ginger child aside, he was the character you could really empathise with to some degree. He also had great chemistry with both Vaughn and McAdams and really helped drag through some parts of the season. Speaking of McAdams, she was also pretty good selling the tough character of Ani. And then comes Kitsch’s Paul, who like the others had a dark incident in the past, though his is left the most ambiguous in terms of specific details. Whilst he was fine, and did lots of moody staring and not saying a great deal, he was also not hugely needed or intricate to the plot, and his big scene in episode 7 towards the end only happened due to a bit of a far fetched plotline.

Focusing for a moment on the finale itself, did it do what was required to bring things back on track? To an extent. But there was a feeling that some of what happened was a formality. It was never going to be a happy ending for all, the tone is bleak, the backgrounds are bleak, there's a huge theme around lack of father figures, so this was no different. You could probably have predicted about 70% of it before watching. It tied things up, sure, but due to a couple of ridiculous 'eureka' moments, and some well timed situations which pushed our belief. However apart from that, there were a couple of very good scenes which played out well, a favourite being Frank in the dessert. Though part of me will always wish Ray didn't just lazily jab at you know what with his knife and actually make an effort, might have changed things and seemed a bit lazy.

Focusing a bit of that 'eureka' factor, or TV luck (or deus ex mechana to some degree ), some fairly large pieces of Season 2 were based on ‘luck’, or more accurately risky writing from Pizzolatto. Clearly aiming to expand upon the True Detective universe (not literally, but in terms of story scale etc), increasing the character count and the plot lines, just seemed to perhaps be a touch too much for him to pull off. He was given creative freedom, and who can blame HBO after what he delivered in 2014. Budgets didn’t seem to be an issue for one of the biggest TV networks around, and the pulling power from the cast would ensure solid viewing figures. Yet I still feel it had so much more potential than it showed.

Overall, Season 2 started off poorly, fixed up midway through to be a fairly run of the mill police procedural and finished better – but not greatly – to give the whole season a slightly above average rating.6.5/10 if you want a number. Some great set pieces, improved character performances in the latter half with the direction and cinematography keeping things looking great really helped drag this through but I think Pizzolatto really needs to think long and hard about Season 3, if he wants to do it, and perhaps bring another creative force in to help with some of the pieces he seemed to struggle with this Season. I’m sure HBO will back it for another season based on initial comments, and I think it can still pull in the star power it’ll want, as like I said – not a disaster this year, and you do have to tip your hat at the risks he took and the ambition of the project, however sadly it just didn’t work for me.