Everyone in TRUE DETECTIVE is broken in one way or another. The four main protagonists introduced here; Colin Farrell as Detective Ray Velcoro, Rachel McAdams as Ani Bezzerides, Taylor Kitsch as Paul Woodrugh and Vince Vaughn as career criminal Frank Semyon, are miserable, bleak human beings. This unhappiness infects the landscape around them and the people around them, twice are two innocent people severely beaten by Velcoro, a very angry man who the show slowly begins to tear apart.
This slow, brooding atmosphere carries the show but also threatens to derail any potential for character development, Vaughns Frank Semyon says to his right hand man; “Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating“. This kind of nonsensical dialogue is something the show could of gotten away with in its first season when you had Rust Cohles philosophical ramblings but this season is a different beast entirely. Sure, avoiding any comparisons to the first season is important because these are two different shows and you want to judge this season on its own merits but you can’t have your cake and eat it. Nic Pizzolatto, the writer and creator, wants to have a straightforward crime drama we’ve seen a thousand times, but he also wants to keep in his musings on what it means to be human and the world we live in. With the characters the show has established, as they are now, this doesn’t work and giving Semyon what amounts to leftover Rust Cohle proverbs doesn’t help. But what do I know, I just wrote more than a paragraph discussing a line of dialogue.
The slow reveal of the characters this season will follow and their motivations is the main focus in this epsiode,as it lays the groundwork for what will come. Ray Velcoro, for example, is mainly introduced as a decent guy. He’s fighting his ex wife to see more of his son, he argues that he’s been with the boy more than her. When he drops his son at school he tries his best to talk to the boy but he’s mainly unresponsive, he also notices other kids teasing him. But throughout the episode it starts to dissect the man and what he’s really about. He might sound like a loving father but there’s something off about him; the way he casually tosses money at a lawyer to further help him win his son back, as if he’s use to just using money to get what he wants or the way he knowingly states “I welcome judgement”. This is someone looking for a fight.
Later, he beats up a reporter who’s writing articles on police corruption, of which naturally he is involved in, and then beats up the father of the boy who bullied his son, all the while forcing the boy to watch. Velcoro is not a hero.
The natural problem with having to switch between four characters is the potential lack of focus, which unfortunately happens to Taylor Kitsch. His character Woodrugh is a patrol highwayman who formerly served in the army. While not a lot is revealed, the burns covering his torso suggest deep scars, both mentally and physically. He also gets the best scene of the episode, as he drives dangerously fast along the motorway, turning off his headlights in some kind of potential death wish.
Kitsch sells his turmoil well and hopefully he’ll do something interesting with the role. Bezzerides is more of an enigma, a police officer with a failed marriage and countless failed relationships behind her. While busting a potential prostitution ring she finds her sister on webcams for strangers, the sexual content of which she is extremely uncomfortable with. There, it seems is a backstory to be uncovered but for now it’s all hints and poking at what’s behind these people.
The show has a brilliant film noir vibe to it, including a beautiful soundtrack of pulsing drums and jazz. As I mentioned before, the plot appears to be more straight forward this time around, focusing on the hunt for a missing person, the city planner named Caspere. While there is less overall quirkiness to the story, it promises potential in bringing three of its main characters together by the end of the episode instead of having them stayed separate for a while.
Looking forward, the show should be able to accommodate time for all its leads and having them bounce off each other will be interesting to watch. For now, everyone blends into each other, the same four miserable faces inexplicable to single out. Pizzolatto is a clever writer though and while it appears he’s just laying the groundwork for a generic crime drama, I’m hopeful that it was all just for this introduction to the new characters, so that he can scratch away at the surface and show us what lies beneath.    Â
