True Detective Episode 2 Recap - Shit Stunk.

I literally just woke up from the nap last night’s True Detective put me in. Brutal brutal episode. Which sucks double because not only was last night a let down, but when you’ve only got 8 episodes, a huge whiff on one of them is bad news. Think of it this way – True Detective Sunday nights are twice as important as NFL teams. Think about how upset you are when your football team fucking stinks on a Sunday afternoon. Thats what happened with TD last night, except there’s half as many episodes. Last night was a butt fumble from Nic Pizzolatto.

And this is not a situation where I need action and death and guns and all that nonsense. Thats what all the True Detective fanboys say to me when I dont like something about the series. “Not every episode can be all sex and action!” Game of Thrones dorks say it too. There’s an enormous difference between slow burning episodes that develop the plot and the shit that we got last night. Last night nothing happened except for a stupid twist ending that we’ll get to in a minute. Other than that the only things I even slightly remember was another laugh out loud bad monologue from Vince Vaughn to open the episode which set the bar impossibly low. A dickless dude. And more one liners bombing from Pizzolatto. The “can’t go fly fishing without flies” and “Maybe it’s just a little too close to sucking a robot’s dick” lines knocking last week’s “astronaut” line down in the Nic Pizzolatto Thinks He’s A Better Writer Than He Is Power Rankings. I mean seriously…sucking a robot’s dick? All this dialogue reads likes a Sorkin script, except not only is it painfully unrealistic, it doesnt really have the wit to make up for it. They just come off as totally ridiculous. I can’t believe people are letting this guy get away with it.

So I either get the fanboys acting like I’m a neanderthal with the “sex and action!” comments, or I get guys like this:

I’ll be honest, I dont even know what that means. Siskel over here talking about “Char Dev.” Get outta town. I’m no TV critic. But all I know is that was boring TV last night. These are the same people who loved The Fly episode of Breaking Bad and think its the most brilliant thing ever. Sometimes episodes of your favorite show just suck, and its ok to say that.

As for the big twist ending that people seem to think redeemed the episode, I think its a total lose-lose situation. Lets say Colin Farrell is dead (He’s not) – well then that just sucks. He was by far the most interesting, most volatile character in an already fucked up show. And the only thing worse than killing off Farrell in just 2 episodes would be having him survive 2 point blank gunshot blasts. I’m sure some mix of a bullet proof vest with some bean bag bullets or something is gonna let Farrell survive, which is just lame. Just like cheap shock value twist ending with a “j/k!” to start episode 3. My biggest pet peeve these days is when an episode, or in some cases an entire season, is slow and uneventful and then they just rely on a huge surprise at the end. Homeland did that when it started to go to shit. They blew up the CIA at the end of Season 3 and it had absolutely nothing to do with anything that happened the previous 9 episodes and everyone was like WHOA HOMELAND IS BACK! Thrones did it this season, to a lesser extent. A lot of the storylines at least built towards some of the bigger moments at the end of season 5, but it was basically like “alright the first 7 or 8 episodes sucked, BAM heres Whitewalkers. BOOM, this guy is dead.” Last night was all over the place, pretty boring, and then a couple gunshots is supposed to save it. I thought the premiere was such a tight episode that set the stage wonderfully and established everything you needed to know about each character and then last night was the total opposite. Blah. Can’t even talk about the rest of the plot because I wasnt really paying attention half the time. The only other thing I “picked up on,” and I use the quote un-quote because it was about a subtle as a sledgehammer, was that Tim Riggins is gay. I thought that was possible after the Viagra in the last episode, but I quickly felt like an idiot for thinking that and thought it would be much more reasonable and realistic that he was traumatized from something at war. After his “there was a fag hitting on me and I didnt like it!” comments I think we all know what road we’re going down with him.

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I know last season was a slow start but there was never a moment where I hated season 1 like I hated last night. I won’t give up, because so far its just been one good one bad, but I have this bad feeling its gonna end up being a Hate Watch for me. Just tuning in to see which Pizzolatto lines bomb every Sunday. Its probably gonna be one of my Twitter Shows. TV shows are either shows A) I put my phone down and cant be distracted while watching it, or B) I’m dicking around on Twitter checking what people are saying about it and what not while its on. Praying its more A than B.

PS – I remember watching a behind the scenes thing with McConaughey last season talking about how he was tempted to try to do more with the script in the first few episodes because it was pretty uneventful, but he knew that he had his big episode as Crash looming and he knew he needed to be patient. Hopefully this season has a “Crash” episode for these guys and they don’t look back.

PPS – Admittedly I did not give Vince Vaughn much of a shot coming into this season but I think he’s awful.