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True Detective: Omega Station (2015)
Someone tell Nic
This is just a really dull story with complexity taking the place of plot. Here's what TD (currently standing for Te Dium) needs to change:
1)Someone tell Nic when the basic idea is just pants.
2)Someone tell Nic when the dialogue is embarrassing.
3)Someone tell Nic that more characters do not make up for less plot.
4)Someone tell Nic that complexity does not conceal a weak storyline.
5)Someone tell Nic that the actors, however gifted, cannot hide any of the above.
6)Someone tell Nic never to make a crime plot about a lesser crime than the one posited. People wanted a grand creepy story about the eyeless corpse and the bird man. The diamonds, the money and the corruption were secondary, and should have stayed that way.
7)Someone tell Nic to let characters unfold through what they do in relation to the story. This is called 'Plot'.
8)Someone tell Nic not to waste time or opportunities. Once the viewers catch on, they won't let you get away with it again.
9)Someone tell Nic to avoid using lots of directors. Stick with one great one. For a crime story this means pace and tension as well as evoking atmosphere.
10)Someone tell Nic that hubris is a crime in any form of artistic endeavour.
What a waste.
True Detective: Black Maps and Motel Rooms (2015)
Sheds light
The problem with these great episodes is that they shed too much light on earlier failures; Woodrugh bites the big one (probably) and we should care more. So much time was wasted, so much half written dialogue that said nothing, that now when Woodrugh dies, it's no big deal despite the pathos of his hidden world... in the end, he's just a classily disguised extra, like the red t-shirt guy who always gets killed in Star Trek while Kirk and Spock save the day.
There's so much plot and so much person stuff, where the hell was it all before? Now it has to be crammed in, busy busy busy, and it's great to have this pace, but there are so many faceless officers and let's face it everyone's involved, and there's diamonds and hookers and Russians and gangsters and gougings, and all I can ask is, how come this was so stilted for so long? It's building up to an amazing end - I hope - but some real damage was done by early unnecessary padding.
Anyway on to the good stuff:
Semyon was, I think, meant to parallel Rustin Cohle's pontifications. But Cohle's a one-off; no good trying to echo it. Vaughn gives it his viciously elegant best, and there's a grandeur in Frank's ruin. I'm looking forward to seeing his end, or his new beginning
Ani and Ray: Predictable - almost boring tbh - NP's got to sort himself out about his male and female leads; they don't always have to make out. Still, this is very human, with the booze and the tension and the sadness. Tender.
Vera; I love the way some hookers just want to be hookers. It will be OK if no-one messes up, it's a sweet deal, she didn't want to be rescued... she may be kidding herself, same as Athena may be kidding herself, but at least these women aren't just vacuous. They're human beings trying hard to be vacuous, not quite the same thing.
The betrayal of Paul and the tunnels; best bit, classic shadows in the dark stuff. Always check behind the door.
Strong episode, I'll be watching it again tonight.
Edited to add: Tried to watch it again, kinda lost interest within the first 10 minutes. There you go.
True Detective: Church in Ruins (2015)
In the Boom-Boom Room
The best episode of the season so far. Everything works, pace, atmosphere, action, plot...sure there are shaky points, but you don't notice unless you're looking. At last it's working, enjoyable crime drama.
Vaughn's had a hard job with Frank Semyon's often creaky dialogue, and Farrel's been desperately shovelling his way out of an avalanche of cop-memes since the beginning. In this episode, both make it work. Semyon becomes a man you know almost made an empire and could do it again. He's persuasive and charismatic and not just because the plot says so. Finally I believe in him.
Farrel just gives it everything; Velcoro towers in his moment of pain and weakness, and becomes so strong, so real, I can't recognise the dwindled cop-on-the-take stereotype we met in episode 1.
In fact, there are no duds this week; McAdams delivers with real confidence (weird though, that Bezzerides calls herself by her sister's name in such dangerous circumstances. It's a pretty unusual name, not hard to trace) and Kitsch just keeps going; he isn't working with much, but Woodrugh is coming across as a standard troubled strong good guy. We're pointed towards him as a possible creepy link - 'a skinny white cop,' is described. Could be anyone of course, but I'm still trying to work out what this character is actually for. Still, that's not Kitsch's fault.
At last Pizzolato is reminding us of why TD got its reputation in the first place; right now, it's all good.
True Detective: Other Lives (2015)
Hope I wake before it dies...
Last episode was like watching Punxatawney Phil stick his head out on Groundhog Day Thank god, thank god, action at last, a shoot out, something, anything! Great action, great responses, excellent, and this episode is a solid follow-on. It still suffers from the fractured and stilted earlier episodes, but it's a definite improvement.
But for something that has been so repeatedly described as not like its predecessor, TD2 has a skeleton formula very similar to TD1; Our main protagonists follow leads/clues which end in a highly dramatic shoot-out and some perps to blame. Only problem is,it's a false trail. Time passes, the world thinks the whole thing is sorted, but our heroes know better; now they have to start again to find the real villain in a world of corrupt cops, big money and old secrets. Sound familiar?
Oh sure it's been tweaked - ineptly. 4 main characters not two, a division of 3 and 1 rather than 2 working together, and a truncated period of time. But that isn't enough to disguise the echoes of the earlier structure, so much more successful because of sharper writing and much better direction. Having 4 main characters meant there was a need for tighter discipline, not all this David Lynch meets James Elroy drool. I mean seriously, Frank Semyon talking about the watermark on the ceiling again? Only now the watermark has gone? Is this a symbol for the rebirth of his marriage? Who cares? There's nothing wrong with ordinary conversations in drama - except of course Frank Semyon never says anything ordinary. The man can't visit the john without ruminating on his past, his future, and the way things are. He suffers from chronic profundity, and unlike his co-sufferer, Rustin Cohle, it doesn't come across as real. It comes across like a man wearing someone else's teeth.
Likewise, no-one cares about bicycle boy's Mama, and if she is supposed to be interesting, we should be finding out while he weaves his way through clues and the plot. Same with all their lives. It's to Colin Farrell's credit that he carries this episode with a lot of charisma and ability, in fact all the actors seems more comfortable and confident in their roles - probably stems from finally getting to play detectives in what was meant to be a season of True Detective, not Mooching Detective or Frustrated Detective, or Daddy Detective or whatever it nearly turned into.
It finally feels as though the story has begun. It's taken a long time, and a little lustre has dimmed - we know now that TD can fail, that it can be tedious and overly self involved. Hopefully these are lessons that can be remembered for season 3.
True Detective: Down Will Come (2015)
About Time
Much much better. Sharp, shocking, still nowhere near the sublime moments of the first season, but pacey and engaging, at least for the second half of the episode.
We needed episodes 2 and 3 to truncate a lot of stuff between them, instead of the padding which has almost driven this season into torpor. Episode 4's a necessary rescue. It's not brilliant, but it's very interesting. The actors are being allowed to act, the plot is being allowed to move, and with the exception of the strange tale of Frank Semyon, the whole thing is finding shape.
Semyon has this extraordinary charisma and then loses the plot over avocado trees. The sugary coffee quip isn't cool, and the writer responsible for it needs time out. Vaughn's not bad; he's just being given lines that could sink a rubber turkey. Despite that, he creates a hypnotic Man Who Would Be King. His ruin is as close as everyone else's, but while they wade through it, he towers above it, even after his crash course in dentistry.
This is also the first time I have found the performances of McAdams and Kitsch even remotely interesting, while Velcoro is emerging from a cocoon of stereotypes and developing as a core of the show. The axis is all about him and Semyon, polar opposites connected in the room of the yellow light...I am looking forward to seeing how their intersection works out. As long as it doesn't dissolve into whining guitar and whining song and endless yellow light and half finished sentences.
Nuance can be overdone. Sometimes a shootout's the answer.
True Detective: Maybe Tomorrow (2015)
Move or Die
It's as though Pizzolato realised that the Cohle/Hart magic was irreplaceable, and decided to turn TD2 into a David Lynch tribute instead. The loss of Fukunaga's direction is truly desperate. Justin Lin has done the season no favours, playing with yellow light and blue light and long chords and close-ups so long that even when something finally gets moving in episode 3 (I don't know if he is still directing at this point, because stuff happens and the guy seems opposed to action on principle) it has a sense of grinding gears, tortuous and slow.
A point's being lost here. This is the golden age of television drama, right? The characters are illuminated by their responses to the plot. Write the characters and move, move, move the plot and the audience will connect. Still life is not TV. In this case, it's barely art.
Chasing a guy wearing a kaonashi mask is not drama. For god's sake, all the perp needs to do is take the mask off, and our hapless cops wouldn't know where to look. They're already facing challenges crossing the road.
I remember Hart and Cohle, and keep watching but if this had been season 1, I'm not convinced Pizzolato would have got a second shot.
True Detective: Night Finds You (2015)
Definitely Maybe
Yellow light and yellow teeth and yellow books, it's like the whole city of Vinci reflects the glare of a malign cosmic banana. In season 1, Carcosa is beautifully evoked in passing references. Now it's like we are in the heart of it, and it's bright, jaundice creeping in everywhere, strangely slow and poisonous.
Good news is, it really is moving forward, by which I mean we see part of something happening at the end of the episode. I like the discovery of the Hollywood house, the animal heads on the walls harking back nicely to the Courir Le Mardi Gras masks in Season 1, and a nice shock ending.
The writing's really patchy. What are they trying to achieve with Frank Semyon's dialogue? He occasionally slips into a kind of 'Youse guys' patois, which make him sound like a refugee from the Ant Hill Mob. Velcoro at least gets to speak like a normal person, even if he's just collided with yet another antique cop/father gone-to-the-bad meme. Now, having assaulted a school bully's parent and addressed the kid with memorable lines about 'inserting'* his father with his headless mother's corpse on the lawn, he is prevented from seeing his own son, a development that astonishes him. Who knew? Don't go expecting too much from Ventura county detectives, seems they're easily surprised. So far the most useful piece of information has come from a gangster who, on seeing water damage on his ceiling, prefers to ruminate at length on his traumatic memories rather than just fix the damn thing. We may be here for some time...
I guess Nic Pizzolatto couldn't be expected to create another Rustin Cohle/Marty Hart dynamic, and it would have been dumb to try. But what is he trying to create in its place? Does he even really know? This season is in danger of contacting Hannibal syndrome if it doesn't get going. I'm holding on, but two more episodes at this pace will be a real test.
*I suspect a direct quote may not meet website standards.
True Detective: The Western Book of the Dead (2015)
Never Mind
So I've watched the first episode of season 2 a couple of times now, and find myself hoping that the introduction of the four main characters is a line-up of suspects rather than some painfully patched together sleuthing team. Some of these may turn out to be True Detectives, some may not; one at least may be the problem. Check out the opening song, the excellently chosen Nevermind; 'I live among you...well disguised...' Guess it's a possibility.
I have never seen Vince Vaughn play anything other than deadpan or smug. This is different. There is a delicious cipher-like quality in his face under all that yellow light (Yes, yes, we get it!) He becomes almost hypnotic with his subtly strained manners and his curious mask of a wife. Let's hope it goes beyond great photography.
Colin Farrel is half man half moustache, collapsing under the weight of all those weary cop memes, but he gets the most insane lines and gives us all a lesson in how to handle child bullying so I'm in.
Burnt Out Bicycle Boy is less impressive. Those scars, his sexual issues and crazy expressions may link back nicely to the perp in season 1. There, that's as interesting as he gets.
And what about Girl Cop? Why is it that whenever we meet a woman in TD, we relate to her first and foremost through her sexual connections? Maggie was a fine piece of character build, but she was defined by her relationships with Rust and Marty. This makes sense to some degree, they were the main protagonists after all, but what's the reason this time? Why do we need to know about Girl Cop's sexual preferences prior to any other info about her? She has weird sexual tastes, and she likes guns, and of course she has daddy issues, and she has a sister in the porn industry... it's all desperate frisson territory, which doesn't bode well for the writing.
Neither does the strangely stilted reliance on mood lighting and atmospheric pauses.The art of season 1 flowed with events, it didn't feel like the plot kept checking itself to make sure it was still beautiful. This episode is like a series of set pieces, much more self conscious. Of course I'll keep watching for now. But I hope it's cleverer than it seems.
Game of Thrones (2011)
Enough
I have watched GoT from the start, and sometimes I have been absolutely captivated. Had a wobble at Craster's Keep, but decided to give the show another chance.
There's always been that sense of sexploitation in GoT. Apologists say that this is just how the world of Westeros is; a very violent, very misogynistic place. People in general are treated badly. But here's the thing, in GoT world, men may be slaughtered horribly, children may be threatened and slaughtered horribly. But only one gender gets threatened, raped, humiliated and slaughtered on a regular basis. And that's a bit peculiar when you think about it.
Male rape happens in the most horrible of horrible worlds, as does child rape. But it never appears in Westeros because, quite rightly, most viewers would thoroughly object. So if it's not OK to depict male rape or child rape in a fantasy world, why is it OK to depict female rape in the same situation? Because the audience is used to it? Because the audience accepts it? Because certain parts of the audience may even like it? Sexual abuse as screen filler seems particularly cynical when it has no background in the source material, but covers a very real issue in later GoT; with the charismatic and clever villains gone, the story is slowing a lot. No amount of sexual violence is going totake the place of pace.
Bring on the dragons and the white walkers because if we can't have good writing, we might as well have great effects - and if we can't afford to get the audience used to high fantasy blow-outs, what's the answer? More women screaming and sobbing? Don't bother on my account. Whatever I'm watching, it won't be more of this.
Game of Thrones: High Sparrow (2015)
Second Gear
This episode gets a six simply because we are at the point where stuff needs to happen. Not start happening, actually happen. I feel like Arya with that darned broom, watching things almost occur. One thing is building up suspense, another is addiction to filler. If it wasn't for Cersei and Margery hissing at each other, the arrival of the Sparrows, hints of necromancy in the vault and Jon Snow finally growing a pair, this would be a strangely empty episode. No,I don't want to watch Sansa be handed blankly over to another psychopath no I don't want to watch Tyrion ponder his sudden impotence and no I don't want to watch Arya wash dead people's clothes. Even she can't make laundry interesting. Get on with it.
Gotham: The Blind Fortune Teller (2015)
The One. Beware big time spoilers below
Be warned, Joker Rising! Cameron Monaghan. There may be other contenders but he's got to be the one.
He's the reason for my 9 rating, the reason to watch this, just that little session where it all comes out. Great laugh, great face, great everything. He's got the Nicholson headfurrows without the paunchy embarrassment of a great actor who really doesn't know whether to play it straight or hit high summer camp - and he is much, much colder than Ledger's brilliant depiction.
Nice little nod to the Flying Graysons as well.
Oh yes, and if Dr Thompkins isn't a Harlequin taster, she should be. That girl gets just too excited about darkness and detectives.
Gotham: Red Hood (2015)
Great, except for Penguin and the Fish Eye stew
For the most part, this is a fine episode. The whole Red Hood story is simple, almost throw-away comic book stuff, and yet it works; 'We're stealing the bank's money, not yours' Red Hood becomes Robin Hood, and the people love him. Yes, it's cool. The Reggie/Alfred/Wayne Enterprises meets Monsters Inc plot line has so many clever little chip-ins, and even the Barbara vacuum has an interesting moment, when Selina dismisses Barbara's weirdly creepy attempt to become big sister/ seduction tutor. So far so good.
But Penguin is suffering; transpires he really is a master criminal in the making and not a club manager. Who knew? Also, his limp is becoming more pronounced with every episode and is developing a touch of the Igors.Someone tell him to reign it in.
Penguin's rubbish plottage looks like West Wing compared to what's happening to Fish Mooney. I mean, god, this is a laboured long entrance for the Dollmaker. I'm bored with him and he hasn't even made an entrance yet. But let's look at the 'logic' of it; Fish unites the inmates of the cells into a group with one purpose. Having established this power base with no greater bargaining chip than the fact that it can kill its members, she promptly leaves it all behind and goes upstairs by herself when invited. When she learns they want to take her eyes, she grabs the nearest spoon (What happened to the knife she stole in order to become leader?) gouges her own eye out and stamps on it. I don't care how the writers flange this in retrospect, it's beyond stupid.
True Detective (2014)
Far From Any Road
This is probably my favourite piece of TV in the last five years. I love the first season so much I'm afraid to watch the second. True Detective is simply magnificent binge-watching, with excellent acting, writing and direction, subtle, fast, clever, sad, horrible, addictive, funny, perfect. Maybe I should just stop this review here.
True Detective is not comfort crimewatch. The characters are as appalling as they are magnetic; being trapped in a car with Rustin Cohle as he pontificates about the futility of existence while Marty Hart swaggers around trying to be the only bull on the ranch, could make Chief Wiggum look like a viable dinner date. There's no 'Book 'em Danno,' moment, no sense that the good will always win through, though the very last moments of the series are radiant in optimism, welcome stars shining in the dark.
One complaint I have heard is that, with its nod to the Lovecraftian mythos, there has been some disappointment that this is not a supernatural horror story.
This is about something darker than a special effect (if that's what you want, no problem, but you really won't find it here) Marty Hart destroying his family in his fight against time, Rustin Cohle destroying himself as he cuts little tin men out of endless beer cans, betrayal and addiction, ruin and loneliness, questions that don't get answered, and yet must be; and when the answers are wrong, they have to try again. That's what makes them true detectives, even if it takes them years.
We don't know what will define future mysteries. One of my favourite shots in the series displays the sun and its reflection in water; in the mythos, the place of twin suns is Carcosa, city of the yellow king, a place or state of madness. We just don't realise we're living in it. Evil doesn't leap at us out of the unknown, it's mowing our lawns and painting our houses, it lives right nearby. And just when we think we know the territory, we find we're far from any road.
Gotham (2014)
Easy on the Cheesy
Sure the acting's a bit big, and the writing's not exactly subtle (Fish vs Penguin? Really?) but Gotham's engaging to watch, and not just for Batman fans. It's canon-loyal without being too devout, and what it lacks in depth it makes up for in fun and pace.
Robin Lord Taylor strides away with this show; his is the definitive Penguin performance leaving Danny De Vito and Burgess Meredith waddling forever in his wake. Edward Nigma is in danger of being adorable, Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Selena Kyle and Ivy are well supported by a wallpaper of characters who bring the art-deco gangster grunge of the city to life.
Lapses include a touch too much from a villainous electrocutioner, who even borrows Hannibal's accent from Silence of the Lambs. Not every smart sociopath has to be a Lecteralike, but as this character will hopefully disappear into the mists of Arkham, it's a forgettable mistake. More serious is the hopelessly lazy writing of Barbara Keen's character. Barbara Keen may presumably be some kind of influence, be it muse or mother, on Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl/Oracle; right now, she is a vapid apology, a stereotypical blonde who has 99 problems but a personality ain't one. This kind of lapse doesn't bode well for the future, but for the most part Gotham remains cute and a little bit clever. While it keeps up the pace, I'll keep watching.
Fortitude (2015)
Get On With It
Fortitude remains interesting, though it relies too much on shock and violence to cover a very slow pace. It's as though the glacier has decided to tell the story of itself and the flea-like humans speckled across its surface; there's a bleak grandeur behind it all, but viewers may lose patience. Mammoth rot or environmental poisoning or demonic possession or whatever, the whole shaggy dog aspect of the series is dangerously close to being a bit dull, until someone stabs someone with a fork or pukes up in their belly or saws their head in half. The sudden gore is necessary; the story could not maintain much interest without it, and that's a real weakness for a drama. For a horror series, it's probably par the course.
The characters don't have enough innate charisma to make us watch for their sake and only Morton seems like a normal person - though I'll bet good money there's something odd about him, because no-one normal ever came to Fortitude. All the other inhabitants have a touch of swampcarny about them; it's beginning to feel like a frozen Royston Vasey. Enough with the snow, the bears, the booze, the relationships, the secrets, the silences, the homage to Twin Peaks, the sheer oddity of it all: yes, plenty has been evoked. Now it's time to tell the story.