Television True Detective | Season 2 Spoilers

That's a bad example, though. he's been in the show multiple times, pretty surprised anyone who paid attention doesn't know who he is (no offense, Uzz).

When Paul was listing all the guys involved in the real estate stuff I absolutely had no clue who most of them were, except for Stan, but that was mostly cause of Frank's heart to heart with his son.
 
I'm usually good with names but other than 3 male leads I have no idea what the rest of them are called. Not even sure what McAdams is called in the show and I call the bald governor as Masuka and the Black cop lady as Brianna.
 
I'll admit that I've not been this confused over the sheer volume of characters/names/sub plots since I watched Inherent Vice.

I wonder if that's what NP was going for, a touch of Pynchon?
 
Cina said:
I dunno, they've ignored quite a lot this season.

There's been no mention of the deadliest shootout in L.A. history since it happened, for example. Felt like a silly plot device thrown in just to get them off the force and skip forward 3 months.
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It's an integral part of the plot still, though. The shoot-out happened because they were looking to bust a dodgy bloke whose girlfriend had been pawning Caspare's stuff. The assumption being that yer man was involved in killing Caspare. Turns out he was also running a crack lab and willing to have a crazy gun battle to defend it.

A few episoded later we find out gangster Mexican bloke's bird was actually pawning the stuff at the behest of a "thin cop", which Frank found out shortly before said girlfriend had her throat cut by Mexican gangsters for dealing with cops.
I reckon the "thin cop" is the guy who offed Caspare.
 
Americano said:
So the Russians are just going to plow right on ahead with a $12 million cash deal the day after both of their casinos go up in smoke?
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This grated me too.

It didn't help that Vince Vaugn went out of his way to draw suspicion in the casino with his unconvincing act "Yeaah everything good, honest, promise!"
 
Yeah for the first 4 episodes I was like drunk Colin Farrell, sexy mcadams cop, closeted viagra motorbike guy, Vince Vaughn gangster, Russian dude from The Dark Knight, Guy with the Crows head, hairy mcadams dad, hot abegail spencer exwife, fat ginger kid and so on. But I got there in the end, no worse than Game of Thrones at times for completely forgettable names.
 
White haired Russian guy is awful at accents, he managed to have unconvincing Irish accent on SoA and he is Irish.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It's an integral part of the plot still, though. The shoot-out happened because they were looking to bust a dodgy bloke whose girlfriend had been pawning Caspare's stuff. The assumption being that yer man was involved in killing Caspare. Turns out he was also running a crack lab and willing to have a crazy gun battle to defend it.

A few episoded later we find out gangster Mexican bloke's bird was actually pawning the stuff at the behest of a "thin cop", which Frank found out shortly before said girlfriend had her throat cut by Mexican gangsters for dealing with cops.
I reckon the "thin cop" is the guy who offed Caspare.
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yeah, I suppose it is, I guess I just expected more backlash than we actually got from it? Calling it the deadliest shootout in L.A. history and then sort of dismissing it to the background felt a bit meh, for me. I wanted to see far more of the aftermath but instead they just jumped forward three months.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It's an integral part of the plot still, though. The shoot-out happened because they were looking to bust a dodgy bloke whose girlfriend had been pawning Caspare's stuff. The assumption being that yer man was involved in killing Caspare. Turns out he was also running a crack lab and willing to have a crazy gun battle to defend it.

A few episoded later we find out gangster Mexican bloke's bird was actually pawning the stuff at the behest of a "thin cop", which Frank found out shortly before said girlfriend had her throat cut by Mexican gangsters for dealing with cops.
I reckon the "thin cop" is the guy who offed Caspare.
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I thought the thin cop was Burris?

I think the identity of Casperes murderer is the classic Scooby Doo reveal detailed in the link on the last page and brought up again in the last episode.
 
Cina said:
yeah, I suppose it is, I guess I just expected more backlash than we actually got from it? Calling it the deadliest shootout in L.A. history and then sort of dismissing it to the background felt a bit meh, for me. I wanted to see far more of the aftermath but instead they just jumped forward three months.
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I think that three month jump forward was seen as a reasonable time period for the subsequent shit storm to die down. Which isn't all that far-fetched when you think about how quickly we stop thinking/talkng about what initially seem like cataclysmic events in real life (e.g. charlie hebdo or Tunisia shootings)
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I think that three month jump forward was seen as a reasonable time period for the subsequent shit storm to die down. Which isn't all that far-fetched when you think about how quickly we stop thinking/talkng about what initially seem like cataclysmic events in real life (e.g. charlie hebdo or Tunisia shootings)
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I don't mind the jump forward at all, I think it helped the show, got rid of a lot of silly side plots in a way, I just think we could've seen more of the backlash of the shooting before they did it. It felt very anti-climactic to me.
 
I actually quite liked Woodruff, disappointed that they killed him though it was obviously coming...

Another good episode IMO.
 
Uzz said:
(I do know/remember Ray's lieutenant, but I didn't recognise him in that scene, and I definitely didn't know his name. I doubt many do/did.)
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He was the guy who came by CF's house and told him that he'll need to vacate since he's no longer on the police force.
 
Why was Tim Riggins so afraid of being exposed as gay that he risked going it alone against 5/6 armed men in an isolated tunnel?
He had nothing worth losing if he were exposed. Reputation maybe?
 
cyberman said:
Why was Tim Riggins so afraid of being exposed as gay that he risked going it alone against 5/6 armed men in an isolated tunnel?
He had not nothing worth losing if he were exposed. Reputation maybe?
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Also, why when you have the advantage (i.e taking the gun off the black guy and having him as hostage, and getting the goons to drop their weapons), would you just not shoot them there and then? There was no need for that running around in the dark. Ok, maybe he feels bad killing them in cold bloody. But he could have shot them in the leg or something or at least found a way to get them to turn around with their hands on their heads or something.
 
I also appreciate the bad guys keeping their torches on as to give away their position and make Tims job easier when deciding where to hide and attack.
You don't get that much consideration from bad guys these days
 
cyberman said:
I also appreciate the bad guys keeping their torches on as to give away their position and make Tims job easier when deciding where to hide and attack.
You don't get that much consideration from bad guys these days
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:lol: Yeah I thought that too. It felt like playing a video game, you need something to give the bad guys away after all.
 
cyberman said:
Why was Tim Riggins so afraid of being exposed as gay that he risked going it alone against 5/6 armed men in an isolated tunnel?
He had nothing worth losing if he were exposed. Reputation maybe?
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I think the chance of avoiding being exposed was what got him there. Once he saw what he was dealing with, he realised the stakes were much higher.

Have to say I'm bang into this season now. Sluggish start but second half has been great. For anyone considering starting from the beginning, turn on the subtitles. There's a ton of detail I'd have missed without seeing names spelled out and picking up all the stuff they mumble under their breath (there's a lot of mumbling)

Is it me or have they dialled down Frank's flowery dialogue these last few episodes? Am really enjoying his scenes now and they used to be almost farcical.
 
Great theory on IMDB which
states that the brother and sister will turn out to be the heroes of the show -- that the brother killed Caspere for revenge (Caspere had the diamonds which rightfully belonged to their parents). Also that the brother is the assistant camera guy on the film set, which makes a lot of sense.

I have a feeling Ray dies, similar to the dream he has in the 3rd episode where his father is telling him how he sees him getting shot in the woods.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Well, exactly. It was all those "hints at wider things" which made it hard to follow. There were almost a dozen different threads to the investigation you were trying to keep a grip on, until they were all left hanging, then ignored completely in the conclusion. It was infuriating.

This season (so far anyway, I haven't watched the most recent episode) the different clues and plot strands introduced are at least followed through on. They recur and are linked together. You get rewarded for making an effort to remember details from earlier episodes. Which makes it far more coherent and satisfying as a plot.

Still think season one was much more enjoyable because the dialogue didn't feel so strained and the performances were so much better (although I am warming to the acting in this one) but as a police procedural, the plot in this makes a load more sense than season one.
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Agree with all of this. I'm a bit of a crime/ noir fiction junkie, so this feels like a fun TV version of lots of those books (mainly Ellroy's LA stories).

The plot's hard but not impossible to follow, especially as the motivations of the main actors are all easy to understand - The Russians, The Mayor, his son, Frank and his crew, the Senior Cops covering their backs... All we seem to be in the dark about now is who killed Casper. I'm going to guess it's someone not really involved in the main story, but who links a lot of the above groups together... most likely the orphaned boy from '92. Plus that birdman, maybe the same guy.

My main annoyance from the episode was how cringey the final couple of cabin scenes were. McAdams and Farrell have been great, and if that was supposed to be their big moment then the script completely let them down.
 
ThierryHenry said:
WHAT THE FECK IS THAT
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m9NgPWq.jpg

Looks like a fat Seahorse.
 
Been dodging this thread as I've been behind, so I didn't want to see any spoilers. I don't know what the consensus is in here, but this season has been fcuking good imo. Last season was a different animal, this season on its own merits has been good...
 
I thought I didn't like this season as much as the last for a while, but Pogue is absolutely right. Last season I loved most of it because I expected them to follow up on some of the amazing shit they had fed us. This season the tone hasn't been as sinister, but then they're actually following up on it. Everything is a little less sinister and mystic once you see the man behind the curtain, so can't really knock this season.
 
The last two episodes have lifted it out of the mire.

That article is spot on though about it being so difficult to follow all the different somewhat non-entity characters who suddenly become important again 4 or 5 episodes later.

Before I watched the latest episode tonight I read through the Wikipedia synopsis of everything from the last 3 episodes, as I'd kind of accepted that I'd lost track of different strands and characters. That definitely helped a lot.

If you're not sure who someone is that is mentioned, do a quick Ctrl+F on this page to re-familiarise yourself (obviously without spoiling something from an episode you haven't seen)
 
It's been better the last couple of episodes because I've actually become interested to see how the main characters get themselves out of the pickle they're now in.....which is another thing that this season has completely lacked, a genuine sense of something at stake.

Last season we had child abduction, ritual killings and a serial killer.....this season it's some shit about a land deal (which affects who apart from Frank exactly?) and some diamonds going missing.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
Last season we had child abduction, ritual killings and a serial killer.....this season it's some shit about a land deal (which affects who apart from Frank exactly?) and some diamonds going missing.
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I think NP was aiming for much higher than that though, the corruption of the entire town/suburb of Vinci from top to bottom, unfortunately I think it didn't pay off because most people don't really know who these big high up guys are because they've had such limited screen time. It's definitely better now though.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
It's been better the last couple of episodes because I've actually become interested to see how the main characters get themselves out of the pickle they're now in.....which is another thing that this season has completely lacked, a genuine sense of something at stake.

Last season we had child abduction, ritual killings and a serial killer.....this season it's some shit about a land deal (which affects who apart from Frank exactly?) and some diamonds going missing.
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There's been a lot of dead bodies this season too tbf.

What was weird about last season (and ultimately stupid/dissapointing) was that it had similar themes of corruption and evil amongst the powerful but dropped them completely for a generic bogey man boss battle. At least this season seems to be sticking with those themes to the bitter end.
 
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