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True detective. New hbo thang.

The Octagon said:
In the spirit of left field casting, Season 3 could feature Miley Cyrus and Adam Sandler as heroin-addicted beat cops, in way over their heads in New York's Chinatown district.
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:D

Tbf I think Rachel McAdams was more than hollywood eye candy, (and I'd even say Farrel can do 'that' role pretty well), but Vaughan was a shark jump.
 
Ted Striker said:
:D

Tbf I think Rachel McAdams was more than hollywood eye candy, (and I'd even say Farrel can do 'that' role pretty well), but Vaughan was a shark jump.
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McAdams was very good in this, think Taylor Kitsch was short changed by the script / plot line.

Vaughn took me a few episodes but once I got past the over the top language he used he was good entertainment and quite believable as a former hood trying to go legit. Think his height helped too, he's quite an intimidating figure if you forget the comedy past.
 
Farrell was hands down the best, but like you say it wasn't too much of a stretch for him, and he's an underrated actor sometimes.
 
rolling stone said:
Ben Caspere, the murdered man at the heart of True Detective's second season, got his eyes burned out with acid. To many viewers who stayed with the series to the end, he got off easy.
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This.
 
How is Farell so fucking good?

[spoiIer] knew what would happen to him and Vaughn. No one was going to have a happy ending. [/spoiler]
 
I've bitten the bullet and started watching the new one.

I don't have particularly high hopes but the first episode was intriguing enough. School bully bit genuinely made me go 'wtf?' - I'd expected some retribution but fuck me that was full on :D - and there's enough good acting and damaged folk to keep me happy so far. I liked the spooky girl guitarist singing near the end and the ominous music/long shots of traffic reminded me of the first one in a way that made me feel happily disturbed.
 
Thoroughly enjoyed last weeks binge on series 1. Dark, complex and intriguing. Great story telling telly. Like an 8 hour film. Series 2, although only 3 episodes in is a bit of a let down so far.
 
Chilli.s said:
Struggled on with s2, and it did deliver, eventually, but not in the same league as s1.
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Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me, too. S2 was a cut above most crime dramas but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the first one. There was none of the "You got a shadow on you" spookiness of the first one. Having said that S1 is just about one of my favourite TV series ever so it really had a lot to live up to.
 
Voley said:
"You got a shadow on you"
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american gothic at its finest there, I so hoped they would go with the transport greyhound bus cultist angle. There is a very very rich seam of the american mythos to be mined and season one did that. I didn't even finish series two. I want the freeway hoodoo and biker-satanists where the old things are written anew in the vein of the american dream, crumbled concrete and 'fill er up' offsides in forgotten petrol stations in places where the horizon stretches forever. A good example of this is the use of 'time is on my side' tune in the excellent denzel washington film 'Fallen'. America has a different sort of spooky to us here, and yes its gloriously overdone in American Horror Story and things like Carnivale but never so well as True Detectives srs1
 
.....picked up the DVD of S1 recently & it was a rivetting journey into the dark smelly crotch below the bible belt....but it sort of peaked somewhere in the middle around ep.4 for me & the final destination felt just a bit of a let down....its difficult to come up with a climax that truly pays-off a 9 hour investment of time in the characters....particularly McConaughey's intense performance.....Mordor didn't get blown up or anything & the Yellow King didn't quite cut it for me cf say John Doe in Seven.....another thing was how refreshing to see the real America outside the same old californa / new york film locations.....there's a great deleted scene that sort of exemplifies the brilliant sinister landscape, cinematography & soundtrack that made the programme a cut above....
 
Whilst I disagree with the title (TD Season 2 in no way "sucked", it just suffers by comparison to S1), this is illuminating - An HBO executive explains why True Detective season 2 kind of sucked

Obviously, someone at HBO had to make sense of this critical and commercial misstep, and that someone is Michael Lombardo, HBO President of Programming. In a sprawling interview with The Frame, he wants the world to know that if and when something’s a failure—and he’s not saying True Detective season two was a failure, mind you!—but if it was, well, some of the blame might just fall on HBO’s shoulders.

"Our biggest failures—and I don’t know if I would consider “True Detective 2”—but when we tell somebody to hit an air date as opposed to allowing the writing to find its own natural resting place, when it’s ready, when it’s baked—we’ve failed. And I think in this particular case, the first season of “True Detective” was something that Nic Pizzolatto had been thinking about, gestating, for a long period of time. He’s a soulful writer. I think what we did was go, “Great.” And I take the blame. I became too much of a network executive at that point. We had huge success. “Gee, I’d love to repeat that next year.”"

So part of the problem, it seems, was that HBO produced a TV show, and then wanted the guy who wrote the show to keep doing that on the same time frame as other shows. The natural response would be, “That is called the regular TV schedule, boo fucking hoo,” but honestly, given that Nick Pizzolatto writes the whole thing almost single-handedly, some leeway does seem fair. And Lombardo really does want to do that HBO thing of giving its creators the space they need, which is why he thinks this past season suffered creatively.

"Well, you know what? I set him up. To deliver, in a very short time frame, something that became very challenging to deliver. That’s not what that show is. He had to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Find his muse. And so I think that’s what I learned from it. Don’t do that anymore."
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Hopefully they'll allow S3 to come at it's own pace. I also think losing Cary Fukunaga as a director didn't help, he really pulled off some great visuals in the first season.
 
So are you recommending that someone who hasn't seen any of it watch series 2 then series 1 or would it not work?
 
quimcunx said:
So are you recommending that someone who hasn't seen any of it watch series 2 then series 1 or would it not work?
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In terms of storyline / continuity it wouldn't make any difference, there is literally no connection between the two seasons (anthology series innit) and the tone / themes are very different.
 
quimcunx said:
So are you recommending that someone who hasn't seen any of it watch series 2 then series 1 or would it not work?
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If you like thrilling, complex cop shows then s1 is a must see. s2 is ok but required more concentration to follow and had less engaging characters. I thought s2 only took off in the last 3 episodes. Both have a style that seems to be quite an exploration of the various personalities and their lives and psychological influences. Add the dark and moody scenes and the crazy action scenes, it's an all round win. It doesn't matter what order you do them.
 
Late to the party I know, but I just finished season 1 and was blown away by the standard of writing, characterisiation and acting. Agree that maybe it took a turn for more conventional plotting in the second half, but it's so polished that I can forgive that.

I've never visited the southern states, but I loved the shots of the landscape and how creepy and alien they were able to make Louisiana seem.
 
The Octagon said:
Whilst I disagree with the title (TD Season 2 in no way "sucked", it just suffers by comparison to S1), this is illuminating - An HBO executive explains why True Detective season 2 kind of sucked



Hopefully they'll allow S3 to come at it's own pace. I also think losing Cary Fukunaga as a director didn't help, he really pulled off some great visuals in the first season.
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That makes a lot of sense. Just finished watching S2, and overall it just didn't pull together as well as it could have. But I still was absorbed by it. Some great performances, interesting themes, but the script/structure/dialogue/pacing could all have benefited from more work.
 
S2 was as dire as S1 was brilliant! Let’s hope S3 is a return to form.

True Detective lovers might like Sharp Objects, a recent HBO offering based on a Gillian Flynn novel and starring Amy Adams. It’s very American Gothic. Tennessee Williams would probably approve.
 
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