by Brendan Foley
When discussing True Detective, creator Nic Pizzolatto has stated that the unifying principle between all the seasons, no matter how disparate the plotting or wide-ranging the subject matter, will be Story, and storytelling. This was clearly displayed in the first season as Rust, Marty, and Maggie each looked into the camera, literally, and spun tales of varying tallness about the events surrounding the investigation into the Yellow King. And along the way, there were all sorts of myths and legends interwoven into the fabric of the story, with the show again and again returning to the notion of people writing their lives into a narrative.
Season 2 has been more subdued on this front, with only Ray Velcoro’s infrequent monologues into his tape recorder serving as the nearest corollary to the interrogation room speeches of the first year. For a while, I was curious if Pizzolatto had simply dropped the theme all together, allowing the dense plotting and backstories to take precedence over that thematic singularity.
Nope.
What episode five of the second season of True Detective makes clear is that each one of our true detectives is living a fiction. Some self-imposed, others manipulated into such a position, but everyone has told themselves a story about themselves and tried to cordon off the areas which do not align.
But as some poet once said, the center cannot hold. Past is prologue and the careful delineated lives are folding into each other.
We pick up a couple of months after the shootout and, as expected, everyone’s lives are much the worse for wear. Ani has been shuffled off into evidence storage and sexual harassment seminars (during which she is sexually harassed, only to give it right back because Ani is awesome) and has given up the e-cigarettes for the real thing. Paul is stuck investigating insurance fraud, still living under the false allegations of the actress who claims he tried to seduce her (a claim that would evaporate if Paul could open up about his sexual identity, but which he simply cannot) and getting even more and more hemmed in by his upcoming marriage and fatherhood.
Ray, meanwhile, has tried to make good on the fresh start that getting shot in the chest seemed to signal. He’s living (mostly) clean and has quit the police force entirely. He works now as a sort of P.I., collecting rent for Frank and doing investigative work on the side. His ongoing custody fight continues, and for reasons not immediately clear to him his wife has only intensified the attack, going so far as to demand a paternity test.
And Frank, well, Frank’s still plying his trade, still trying to claw back to the stature he nearly had. He’s hustling in the club, he’s trying to scout money for another bid at the big land deal, he’s still pressing his Vinci contacts for information. As the episode got going, Frank is the only character pushing the Caspere investigation to get reignited after it got ‘resolved’ with a whole lot of dead people.
The episode spends a little too much time re-establishing the new status quo and getting you up to speed on where everyone is situated as the second movement gets going. I’m assuming there will be important things to come from the shady guys who show up at Frank’s club to size him up and potentially shake him down, just as there will presumably be more to come from Paul realizing that his trailer trash mom stole the $20,000 he brought back from the desert and frittered it away. But in the context of this episode, the first half seemed to be doing a bit too much wheel-spinning.
Thankfully, things picked up as our intrepid true detectives pushed their way back into the case. I know there have been some complaints that this season’s crop of characters aren’t as engaging as last year, but I’ll confess a genuine thrill when Farrell, Kitsch, and McAdams lined up in some nondescript neighborhood to be re-reassigned to uncovering the truth about Caspere and the City of Vinci. Paul and Ani are in because they need to be back investigating or else they’ll shrivel up and die.
Ray gets back in because State Department Lady promises that if he helps the state investigation, she’ll help him retain custody of his son. And why, Ray wonders, would the state want the help of a guy that they believe is a corrupt, murdering monster?
Because, Basil Exposition Lady explains, since they know Ray didn’t kill his wife’s rapist (seeing as how they just caught the guy), maybe he isn’t so bad after all.
Ray, who in fact did kill the guy he believed raped his wife is…put out by this revelation.
Yup, turns out that rascally ol’ Frank Semyon tricked Ray into, probably brutally, murdering an innocent man while Ray’s wife whose name I don’t know’s actual rapist went scot-free for a decade plus.
Ray’s mounting horror and explosive rage contain some of the best work that Farrell’s done on the show to date, and that guy’s been doing great work the entire time. The Ray scenes have always had a charge that the rest of the season has lacked, and his rampage across Vinci is riveting stuff. Can’t wait to see how far he’s willing to let the rage carry him when he actually confronts Frank next week.
It will be a welcome change from whatever was going on with Frank this week. Here’s why I admit that the Vince Vaughn casting continues to not really pan out, and with only three episodes left in the season, it’s hard to imagine what fireworks could come that would transform this performance and this storyline. I just do not give a shit about Frank’s money problems, or his desire to have kids, or any of his concerns about family or whatever. The show has gone out of its way to underline again and again that Frank is a despicable creep, so why on earth should I care about him and his wife (Kelly Reilly, turning in the single worst performance of either season. You can’t even blame the writing the way you could for Michelle Monaghan in season 1. This is just a bad performance, front to back). I guess it’s possible that Pizzolatto was banking on Vaughn’s innate charisma carrying Frank, making him as loveable as he is monstrous.
Nope.
Thankfully, Farrell, McAdams, and Kitsch are all firing on all cylinders right now, and their investigation is leading to both juicy information and visuals. So you have Ray beating the crap out of Plastic Surgeon Doctor (played by Rick Springfield, which I guess means things to people in their 30s) and learns about the human trafficking of young girls into Vinci for ‘parties’ (which include the mayor’s son and the Euro-trash gangsters that messed with Frank). Ani and Paul learn that Detective W. Earl Brown was withholding information before he got his face blown off, and that tip leads them to the old commune where Ani was brought up, which leads them to a murder shack, complete with ominous birds and blood sprays.
We’re in the closing run of the show, and the blinders are off our characters’ eyes. The delusions and illusions that they have maintained are breaking apart, and the histories they sought to bury are coming screaming to life. Lord only knows what damage will be required before they can be put back down.