Well, the long national nightmare that was True Detective Season 2 is now over. But some of your friends at SportsAlcohol.com didn’t really consider it a nightmare. Actually, we have some pretty positive things to say, as well as some constructive criticism. So investigate one of the internet’s hottest takes as we do an uncharacteristically quick post-mortem on the second season of the show people love to hate for some reason. Marisa, Jesse, and Nathaniel are on hand to discuss the high fashions, low morals, confusing storytelling, and Strong Female Characters of True Detective Season 2. Spoilers abound, for the finale and the rest of the season!
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Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
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So Jesse liked this season because TV in the 90s wasn’t very good? 😉
But really – this was fun to listen to, I’m glad I stuck with the show until the end because it did make me rethink some of my reasons for not liking the second season. You have to admit Vince Vaughn was cringeworthy, though… in particular his scenes that were supposed to carry emotional resonance (mainly with Kelly Reilly) just made me think about how acting must be, like, really hard.
I liked this season because I am unburdened with a serious investment in television as an art form! X-Files forever!
I thought Vaughn made a good gangster (his scene with Farrell at the kitchen table… great!), but the scenes with Kelly Reilly were awful and endless. And I’ve liked both of them in other movies before so I think they were just saddled with stuff that was impossible to enliven.
This may be the first time I have ever agreed with Meg over Jesse. I agreed with most of the podcast about this season, but Vaughn seemed to be a big problem. I would attribute it to his acting because 1. the other actors handled the awkward dialogue fine and 2. he was asked to do something he hadn’t done before.
I definitely think he was overburdened by getting, somewhat inexplicably, way more scenes than the plot really called for (it felt almost like the idea was, well, we got Vince Vaughn to play this part, he’s objectively the most popular actor in this thing, we better give him as much screen time as possible, which doesn’t seem like the way NP would work… so maybe he just, gulp, loved that character the most). But I do think that part with less screen time (and less bullshit about his wife/prospective child) would have been fine for him.
Also I thought the bit with him in the desert was pretty great all around.
I did like the desert scene, except for the part where gave up a million dollars, but would literally rather die than give up his suit.
Based on the podcast, I think those scenes with the wife could best be replaced by flashbacks. I kept seeing Vince Vaughn in a suit, not a gangster trying to go legit. Might have helped if we saw more seedy, 2-bit hood Frank.
Are you thinking about the scenes where Vaughn isn’t with his wife? I thought he was great in those. “You bang down my door for a staring contest?”
I am! In general I thought his line readings were weird!
Also, I don’t like how these scenes are slagged on because I thought Vaughn’s scene partner was better in them.
I also take umbrage to calling it “awkward” dialogue. It’s stylized and difficult, but I think it’s beautiful.
I think we pretty much mean the same thing; it’s not how a regular person would talk and is therefore hard to say. I did not mean it was necessarily bad. My point is that it sounded much better coming out of the other leads’ mouths.
My dad says Ballers is really good.
Separate from the VV talk, I mostly agreed with what you guys said on the podcast. I would probably just lump NP in with all the online critics who misremember S1 and what made it good.
– Setting: very big agree here. Vinci is apparently based on a real municipality in industrial SoCal (and I love municipal corruption stories). I just wish NP didn’t feel so beholden to the real story that it was set in a more visually interesting area. I know California noir is a thing (a thing I even like), but if you told me this season was mostly shot in New Mexico or Nevada, I would believe you. Before Jesse said even said it, I immediately thought Upstate New York for S3. #BestFriendsTeam.
– Framing: Nathaniel nailed this. I don’t know if this mystery was more complex than last season, but it definitely helped that they had a device last season where every characters name was said at least twice as often. They laid everything out in the next to last episode the last time the three cops were together in the penultimate episode similarly to the storage space scene in S1, but I kept going “wait, who’s that?.” Like, I still don’t know the name of the other Vinci cops, which is crucial to understanding the mystery. That being said, I watched S1 three times and if you asked me the killer’s name I’d say Reggie LaDue even though I know that’s wrong. The weird thing was they had the interview + flashback formula in the first episode and just dropped it. Was this a heavy-handed meta thing? The potential jabs at Cary Fukunaga in S2 lead me to believe that every choice is a heavy-handed meta thing.
– Humor: I would be a little harsher here because I thought the first season was really strong in this regard. There were a few interactions between Nic and Ani that were good, but just this just felt bleak and humorless compared to last year.
– The super depressing ending: maybe this is what he meant by we get the world we deserve? People complained about the S1 ended so NP decided to show them.
In conclusion, my blurb for top TV shows 2014 still hold up!