'True Detective' - Season 2

All Those Bad Crits

I'm not sure what to make of all the bad crits season 2 has been receiving. A lot of them seem centred around the fact that it's unlike Season 1 in so many ways. Some have been more scathing than others, but I'm yet to read a crit that makes a defence of the creative choices of season 2. It is a very different animal to season 1 - yes, we all loved season 1 - so the expectations were rightfully high but perhaps largely misplaced.

The most disappointing part of that difference for me is that the over all story has nothing whatsoever to do with the story of Season 1. Season 1 had so many mythic elements that fused into the occult and traditions of American Gothic as well as the Cthulhu mythos which made it resplendent. The continuous philosophical excursions made by Rust made for some delicious cogitation on the meaning of what we were seeing.

To be disconnected from all that wonder is a little sad. But that doesn't mean this season is so bad as to incur the contempt of all these critics. I guess I liked it and appreciated it a lot more than those critics. It's funny how they have jobs writing about TV and have so little idea as to what they are watching. After all, if you didn't get it and didn't like it, it's not much of a crit, is it?

Anyways.... the usual spoiler alert!

What's Good About It

The interesting choice with the series that they opted to completely start up another story with different characters. The casting choices are reasonably weighty, while the change scenery is incredibly stark. If the open blankness of the South in season 1 was haunting and evocative, the industrial sprawl in season 2 is menacing and raw.

The new characters are a revelation. They are in of themselves gripping and interesting figures, loaded with ambiguity. The moral ambiguity of Colin Farrell's detective Velcoro, the sexual ambiguity of Taylor Kitsch's Paul Woodrugh, and the emotional ambivalence or Rachel McAdam's detective Ani Bezzerides makes for compelling viewing. The urban industrial backdrop makes for the most harrowing of landscapes as it builds inexorably to the climax and denouement.

The supporting plot line of the gangster Frank ands wife Jordan is also gripping and full of interesting turns. If it were not for this subplot, we wouldn't get a picture of just how deep the corruption and conspiracy goes in the story. It goes so deep, event the principle outlaw cannot overcome its effects. The corruption is big, the compromised state is a plaything of he moneyed interests, and the little people get squashed. There is no justice, there is only retribution.

As a palimpsest of the post-GFC world, nothing could be more on the mark than the problematic with which the main characters wrestle. If the corruption goos all the way to the top and every stopping between, how can any investigation survive? What moral obligation can a detective exercise, becomes a very pressing issue.

What's Bad About It

Season 1 established that at least in the 'True Detective' series, there is metaphysical evil. In fact, after harping on for most parts of season 1 about the fundamentally meaningless-ness of existence, Rust encounters the sublime darkness that is worshipped by the cultists and he is transformed into  believer in death. It's one of the most amazing turnaround stories on screen. This series comes nowhere near that sublime aporia and awe-filled gaze into the heart of darkness.

In its place in season 2 is a more prosaic piecing together of an unspeakably awful conspiracy that is man-made and thoroughly degrading to humanity. The absence of the sublime drives the story into rather tepid retreads of other noir stories; but it never reaches into the heart of darkness like season 1 does. It's not that the evil isn't spooky in this series; it's that having seen the hint of the spookiest evil, it never comes close to discussing it; and that's the great shame. The missed opportunity to really develop the theme.

What's Interesting About It

Now having seen two seasons, we're getting a better view of the outline of the overall concept. It is in most part, a film noir sensibility played through a discursiveness on the nihilistic impulse in humanity. The characters have fairly primal needs and fears that drive them, and they barely keep it together for the story to unfold. All of the protagonists are like deer in the headlights, stunned at the sudden need to act. The antagonists are many and much less delineated than the protagonists; they remain murky and hard to fathom, their motives constantly shrouded by the apparent randomness of violence.

The patter of Frank played by Vince Vaughan gives us a view into what the world of gangsters might be, post-Tarrantino. Post Modern and self-reflexive, Frank seems to lurch from one state of discomfort to the next while offering expert commentary on his plight. Even his relationship with his wife comes with a commentary, almost in the third person; the self consciousness is oddly compelling as it is deeply ironic.

The night aerial shots over the industrial wasteland are amazing. They evoke  the opening sequence from 'Blade Runner', but it is actual and real. The brutal industrial facade of modernity is at times savagely beautiful and alarming with its barrenness.

Eaten By Despair

You get a lot of downer characterise the detective genres. They have substance abuse problems - most likely alcohol and tobacco products, but this might extend into recreational drugs. Even Sherlock Holmes was an opium addict so there's some insight there about the nature of detective work. Colin Farrell's character Ray drinks, smokes and takes drugs. He enters the series fully compromised, having committed some unspeakable act against the rapist who fathered a child by his wife - or so he believes. Dramatic irony being what it is, it turns out he did not kill the right man, but also, he is the biological father but he never finds out.
In the mean time, he only has this horrible despair eating out this character.

Desire runs deep in Ray precisely because the genre attempts to grapple with the nature of hope, and hope that emanates from illuminating the truth. To that extent Ray has hat in common with Rust from Season 1. Except in Ray is far less articulate and perhaps not as well educated as Rust so as to articulate his sense of hopelessness. He is aware of how deeply bent out of shape he is, by the force of this despair; he' just not good at explaining himself. Both season 1 and 2 hinges on this despair as the axis on which the story turns. If Ray were happily a crooked cop (a kind of psychopath), then the events would take a different turn. His despair marks him out as being vulnerable to the problems at hand.

Ani played by Rachel McAdam is thus like Marty Hart from season 1, where she is loyal to her appetites and not very concerned about the social damage this creates. The wanton-ness is less pronounced, but it is what governs her, and so she makes a good foil for Ray, but it is important to note that this character dynamic is a transplant from the dynamic in season 1. As with season 1, it is despair that provides the key to understanding the mission of these characters. Without their despair, they cannot dig deep down into their existential selves to do the right thing. It is in some ways very harrowing, but the characters are so gripping we keep watching.

Echoes Of Noir Films Past

The corruption plot and how far it extends reminds us greatly of 'Chinatown'. The prostitutes cut by surgeons to look better for a select clientele reminds us of 'L.A. Confidential'. It is some part 'The Long Goodbye' and some part 'Bullit'. All of those films spawned out of the 40s film noir genre, so the narrative is well-marinated in the juices of Californian crime fiction. The concerns are remarkably similar as it divides society into haves and have-nots, inside and outside, protected and unprotected.

The conspiracy in season 2 is deeply structural. It encompasses the criminal underworld money as well as private developers and bureaucrats as well as politicians and corporations. They are all rent-seekers, united in their cause to ilk the public purse for as much money as possible; so the question that gets posited is how are the police supposed to stop a crime of this scope and magnitude?

The story is believable. Variants of this story could be told anywhere, where business interests and government corruption intersect with such force and alacrity. We assume that the police are there to get the bad guys, but we are asked to follow compromised, broken and bent police officers trying to uncover the sort of corruption that is deeply ingrained in to the structure of our state and economy. There is no resplendent moment in season 2 precisely because this hell is man made. There is no metaphysical evil in season 2, simply the world made by bad men. It's not sublime, it's just grime and crime

The Shadow Of Celts, Shadow Of Canada

The characters have Italian and Greek names, but the thing that sticks out about the actors is that they're Irish and Irish extraction: Colin Farrell who is Irish; McAdams; Vaughn; Reilly; form 4/5 of the leading cast, their surnames screaming Irish origins (Kitsch being the exception). It clashes with the underlying Mediterranean heritage evoked by the character names. McAdams and Kitsch are Canadian, so that too adds to the level of seeming weirdness. In any case, none of them seem smooth or comfortable in their skins or in the skins of the characters. it's very strange to watch.

None of the characters strike you as native to the scene. Instead they feel like drifters and loners that blow into the world of the story. There is something angular and not quite right to their placement. Body language and demeanour betrays them as outsiders. As outsiders their characters are superfluous and expendable but also pregnant with potential to change things. It's an interesting dynamic compared to the run of the mill casting.