MovieChat Forums > True Detective (2014) Discussion > Season 2's main problem

Season 2's main problem

posted 5 years ago by Mister Babadook (2621)
14 replies | jump to latest

And i just watched it again over the weekend cause i'm showing a friend all of the seasons, but just again the biggest problem with it is you don't give a single shit about the person whos killed or why they was killed, Casper. While you're watching it you're just like "Why do i give a shit who killed this sleazy city manager?". And he's the big mystery the entire season who killed this guy? but you just don't give a shit.

In season 1 you had this young girl getting killed and while she wasn't a nun she was still a young girl and you felt sympathy for her and wanted to know who done this to her and to other girls, and in season 3 you got two innocent kids going missing/possibly killed. But in season 2 its just some middle aged sleazy corporate guy, why should anyone care who killed him? and the reveal of who did it was lame as hell anyways, and again you don't give a shit when you find out who it was cause you never cared who killed him from the start.

You can say alot is wrong with season 2, the story is kinda all over the place and theres alot shit going on thats confusing and hard to follow and theres too many characters etc. But as i said the overall main mystery and case to solve was centered around an old sleazy man you didn't give a shit about, that was the biggest issue.

[–] Knish (1721) 5 years ago

Could be, for me I just didn't find a story in it. If someone asked me to tell them what season 2 is about I honestly couldn't tell them.

[–] Mister Babadook (2621) 5 years ago

Yeah its cause it doesn't feel like its about 1 thing, theres like 5 or 6 different things kinda all going on at once and its messy, some secret sex party's, corrupt police force, a mobster's life crumbling, a man dealing with losing custody of his kid who may not even be his, a man dealing with being a closeted homosexual, and a woman dealing with being raped as a child and trying to navigate in this male driven career. Then on top of all that theres the murder mystery we're supposed to care about but we don't.

There was just way too much going on the season which made it hard to follow or understand what was going on.

[–] Knish (1721) 5 years ago

Who was the closeted homosexual? Guess I forgot.

[–] Mister Babadook (2621) 5 years ago

Woodrugh, Taylor Kitsch's character.

[–] Knish (1721) 5 years ago

Yeah, you're right.

Guess it proves season 2 was just too much of nothing. A closeted homosexual character was treated as an afterthought.

[–] Threadkiller (2951) 5 years ago

It was inevitable that season 2 wouldn't live up to the great 1st season but it had a few interesting characters. In particular I found Collin Ferrell and Vince Vaughn's character arcs to be interesting, which alone made season 2 watchable for me.

[–] Mister Babadook (2621) 5 years ago

yeah nothing was gonna be as good as that first season, i agree.

I also agree Collin Ferrell and Vaughn's characters was most interesting of the season and their storylines was the most compelling, and there was some great moments from season 2, one of my personal favorite moments is when Velcoro's in that bar talking to his dad after he was shot while that Conway Twitty song is playing, everything in that scene was great, the acting, the lighting and dialogue, it kinda made you feel like you was watching something on the same level as season 1 for a moment.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

I'm actually a fan of Season 2 and I was disappointed to have slept on it for so long.

I think your opinion is spot on. I think right from the get go, it soon becomes clear that S2 isn't really about the crime and some "sleazy corporate guy". It's about the chance meeting of these four very different people. You learn about their struggles, their past, their attempts to be something better, and their ultimate failures. S2 is basically a tragedy.

I don't think Woodrugh and Bezzerides were written that well, especially not Woodrugh. But the arcs for Ferrell and Vaughn really made the show for me, and I think most were looking for something based on expectations of S1, if not a retread. S2 is more of a character study, and consequently, I think something people overlook is that Ferrell and Vaughn had far more complex characters than Harrelson and McConaughey. (Not saying that the latter pair were poorly written or whatever, but S1 was more about the mystery so the characters were what were appropriate there.)

[–] agentalbert (2300) 8 months ago

I'm with you on this. I just re-watched S2 over the last few days. It's a complicated story and it helps to watch it in this manner, rather than on a week as when it first aired. I remember being very confused and not really connecting with it at the time it aired, and by the end when everything is revealed, I couldn't remember earlier details that mattered. It's still not the equal of the spectacular S1, but it's worth revisiting.

[–] FilmBuff (6678) 7 months ago

I enjoyed it a lot more than most seemed to when it was new. I think it's about time to rewatch it and see how much more it offers when seen over a short period of time. A story as complex as the one it told suffers when one must wait a week between episodes.

[–] mobocracy (845) 4 years ago

Caspere's death was the byproduct of an "original sin" -- the jewelry store heist -- that drove the entire narrative. Everything was tied to it, Frank's imploding criminal empire and lost land deal, the Chesanni's political empire, the hooker parties, it was all tied together.

If Caspere doesn't die, I think Frank manages to keep his share of the land deal and he's willing to let go of the card room, which was the last of his empire. Chessani doesn't get killed, either, I don't think because I think his death is tied to spiraling chaos of Frank's empire implosion and the attempts to close loose ends associated with the missing hookers. And of course Velcoro and Ani and the motorcycle cop continue on because they never get caught up in the Caspere investigation.

It's debatable whether some things happen anyway -- *maybe* they try to screw Frank out of his land anyway, but it's much harder without Caspere dead. Maybe Frank still gets muscled out of his card room, maybe the cops' careers go sideways anyway.

I liked S2 even more the second time around, but I think its two big problems were:

1) Too many central narratives. There should have been just one, Velcoro and Ani. No motorcycle cop, no Frank, except as background/incidental characters.

2) No sense of the supernatural. Ani's father and his spirtualism should have been bigger in the story line so that the conspiracies around Vinci, the jewelry store heist, and the hookers, tied back into some kind of new age cult.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

I think I could have done with Velcoro and Frank, with Ani being a side character, strictly to support Velcoro's arc. But agreed. I like what they tried to do, but there's too many moving parts, and I don't believe it's all unified as well as it could be for a single season show like this.

[–] mobocracy (845) 3 years ago

I'm pretty convinced this season's narrative arc is a retelling of the James Ellroy novel "White Jazz".

It has a huge number of parallels. In the novel, it's all in LA, but the "Chesanis" are the "Kafesjians" (a similar, maybe Armenian-type ethnicity), the "jewelry store heist" is a bootleg cheap booze business run by an alliance of the Kafesjians and bent LAPD detectives in the past which blinded a kid's father, similar to the kid from the jewelry store heist, and the kid begins exacting a tormented revenge much like the jewelry store kid from TD season 2.

Velcoro is Dave Klein, a bad/dirty cop who is the book's protaganist, and the bad cop from the bootleg booze biz is the bad cops who did the jewlery heist, actively trying to suppress the investigation which would expose past misdeeds.

Frank is more or less the role of the book's Mickey Cohen, a gangster in decline and trying to go legit.

But to your point about a lot of moving parts, Ellroy's otherwise excellent books haven't been given screen adaptations (except the excellent "LA Confidential") because they have a TON of moving parts. Tons of edge characters who play key roles in the larger conspiracy narrative and its unraveling. They're basically not filmable without being butchered or 8 hours long, not to mention the casual racism and violence which would probably not even fly on HBO.

That being said, a true adaptation of Ellroy's entire LA Quartet (Black Dahlia, Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz) would make for a FANTASTIC 4 season HBO series. But it really would take 4, 10 episode seasons to pull it off and even then it would be some tricky writing to keep the plots and characters intact without too much simplification.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 3 years ago

Interesting, I actually haven't read any of those original novels, and I wasn't familiar with White Jazz before you've mentioned it. I'll have to check them out. You make a good point. These miniseries give us far more room than a film would, but if these books are as intricately as you're describing, even that may not be enough.

lol, and this wouldn't be the first time Pizzolatto was accused of plagiarizing something XD