We seem to live in an era where the snap judgements required of weekly recaps, social media watching and the massive competition for pageviews mean that we are quickly developing a binary view of entertainment. This seemed especially true of Game of Thrones this year, which seemed to swing from hailed as better then ever, to condemned as a spent and hateful waste, pretty much on a scene-to-scene basis. We can add to this the second season of True Detective, which has been loudly pilloried by much of the critical set, even as they hail its first season as even better in retrospect, apparently, than anyone said at the time. So to recap, last year True Detective was a flawless (nope) masterpiece with an host of perfectly drawn characters (also nope, especially outside of the main pair) that was the best show of the year, and maybe ever (still nope). It was excellent, but it certainly wasn't flawless, but season two shows different and now ones, without always carrying forward the strengths, which may be root of the storm that broke over it.
So. we leave the moody Southern-Gothic-with-Wierd-Fiction-Mixed-In feel of the washed out Louisiana Bayou and head for the more well-trod neon streets of California Noir. The influences change up too; David Lynch, James Ellroy and Michael Mann all fight for space, from the multi-threaded narrative, to the somewhat tortuous plotting, to the stark, orange drenched nightlights. There is a familiarity here, a sense that we've seen these stories before and the show will have to work hard to surprise you, and it puts most effort into straight-forward obfuscation, rather than clockwork plotting, to keep you in the dark. There is a murder which crosses jurisdictional boundaries, unlocking a whirl of corruption, crime and thwarted ambition, and everything sort of flows from there.
Avoiding the plot too much, as it's a detective show (it's in the title!) I will however say that whilst it does mostly tie up in the end, it does take a long time to get there, which means we get a few too many exposition dumps at the end, and too many circular dead ends in the beginning. This can be fine, especially in the noir genre, it can also be frustrating if the audience is as befuddled as the characters. The show also needed to play both sides a little more, I think - with a criminal character, a couple of cop characters and one who is both, they're still all opposing "the conspiracy" in their own way, whereas making at least one of these characters more of an insider may have served the audience better.
So then, the characters. I intimated above, the two leads of the earlier season where that seasons big selling point, at the cost of pretty much all the others, and on the whole I think this season does a better job on a wider and deeper cast at the expense of it's core characters themselves. For me, two work, and two, well, not so much. Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) and Ani Beziredes (Rachel McAdams) are both big successes for pretty much the same reasons. They're interesting twists on common archetypes - corrupt cop and hard-ass female cop respectively - that get a lot of depth out of their respective damaged backstories without every weakened what they currently are. Both performances are outstanding, and both get a handful of big, key, moments that the show totally lands. They're a big part of why the show works at all.
On the other hand we have Paul (Taylor Kitsch) and Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) both of which have similar issues. Paul is the weakest character - hell, I can't even remember his surname - largely because a comparatively interesting concept never really becomes any more than a concept. It's an interesting shout to have a closeted gay character in a world that really doesn't care anymore, and make that something that reads an internal dysfunction rather than something imposed from the outside, but he never gets enough time to develop and Kitsch can't bring out that of a performance that demands he's physically locked down so much. Frank, similarly, feels shortchanged by a lack of time for a more complex character. It's also clear that "Bad Frank" is more fun and interesting than "Respectible Frank", and spending the first couple of episodes from the latter, rather than the former, gives you a bad first impression of Vaughns performance.
In the final analysis I enjoyed True Detective a lot. Its slow start doesn't help it, as the character work it lays in doesn't become layered much in the way of plot propulsion. However it consistently delivers some great scenes, and into the back half of the show several great set pieces on top it. On it's own merits it is well worth seeing. Does it live up to the standards of it's first season? No, it doesn't. It tries to address some of the issues with those episodes and whilst it manages on some fronts (female characters especially!) it also brings in some new flaws unique to itself. But, I liked it, and I hope they get another go next year, with a new setting and characters to pick over once again.
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