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True Detective Weekly 1: The Western Book of the Dead

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True Detective Weekly 1:

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The Western Book of the Dead

True Detective Season 2 is off to a contentious start. Nobody is quite sure to make of what appears to be an even bigger departure from Season 1 than was expected, but we still find plenty to like (and some to be cautiously optimistic about) in this wide-ranging introduction to a tale of municipal corruption and bad cops.

(Soundcloud page hopefully coming soon!)

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I hope they talk about how everyone whisper talked and we had to have our tv turned up about 3x as loud as we normally do just to hear anything.

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Unlike the second season of True Detective, this podcast is off to a really great start (lol). I appreciate that even when everyone was discussing the parts of the episodes they did not like, there were never easy or lazy criticisms; everyone came with thoughtful deconstructions of what didn't work for them that felt much more satisfying to listen to than a lot of the dismissive responses I've seen to this episode. It's clear that the True D crew is trying for something much more ambitious this season that might not pay off, but I have to credit them with going for broke and positioning their show so far outside what season 1 represented. I'm so happy that there is no hyper competent Rust Cohle on this show and that Rachel McAdams does not have to play the female saint to the male sinners surrounding her. Everyone is so damaged and that could lead nowhere or it could lead somewhere interesting, but at least for now it feels really different from what's on television.

 

I have to wonder if a lot of the negative reaction to this episode doesn't come from the fact that there are no easy answers on who the audience should root for. Even when Marty and Rust were doing bad, bad things in season 1, it was still easy as an audience member to want them to succeed. I'm not sure if I want any of the season 2 characters to succeed and I'm really excited about watching a show that is written that way.

 

Also, it's nice to watch one of these crime mystery shows where for once the central dead character is not a young woman.

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Been lurking on these forums since the Twin Peaks Rewatch started. They're great!

 

Was anyone else really irritated by that closing shot? It feels like directorial self-congratulation to conclude with the characters looking meaningfully at one another - as though we're supposed to know what this means except "tune in next week" - followed by the camera whipping around, circling and zooming out. It wouldn't feel out of place in the actual Fast and the Furious films and it attempts to generate that same sense of being on the precipice of something epic. If the episode had done even a serviceable job of making me care about these people it'd be tolerable, but as it stands it just reminded me how little interest I had.

 

Also, I think it was Sean who mentioned  being annoyed by the slow zoom in on the faces of Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn's characters. That, too, feels indulgent and even arrogant in its assumption that we care enough about these people for the shots to feel like anything but wasted time.

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Been lurking on these forums since the Twin Peaks Rewatch started. They're great!

 

Was anyone else really irritated by that closing shot? It feels like directorial self-congratulation to conclude with the characters looking meaningfully at one another - as though we're supposed to know what this means except "tune in next week" - followed by the camera whipping around, circling and zooming out. It wouldn't feel out of place in the actual Fast and the Furious films and it attempts to generate that same sense of being on the precipice of something epic. If the episode had done even a serviceable job of making me care about these people it'd be tolerable, but as it stands it just reminded me how little interest I had.

 

Also, I think it was Sean who mentioned  being annoyed by the slow zoom in on the faces of Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn's characters. That, too, feels indulgent and even arrogant in its assumption that we care enough about these people for the shots to feel like anything but wasted time.

To me it was simply conveying the implicit antagonism these characters foresee with officers from three different jurisdictions colliding on the same crime. I see what you mean about feeling like a shot borrowed from a Fast and Furious film though.

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What was up with the actual tiny woman floating in a bowl of milk? It's clearly a composite shot and not a doll. All I can think of is it's an "outrageous" (as Chris described the Maltese Falcon in the car) nod to Lynch and the tiny people in Mulholland Drive, but that's a weird stretch. Bizarre.

 

AK3FgJ3.gif

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I was very interested by the fact that the show mostly focused on fella butts in this episode, as opposed to feeling the presence of overwhelming male gaze. Even the scene where they busted the webcam house didn't linger salaciously on the women and mostly allowed themselves to cover up, very much unlike season 1 that would focus on the naked women on the show. Even the gif above ^ doesn't seem as arousing as it just seems weird. I know the rest of that guy's apartment is full of erotic art, but I was really struck by how much they focused on man butts.

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I was very interested by the fact that the show mostly focused on fella butts in this episode, as opposed to feeling the presence of overwhelming male gaze. Even the scene where they busted the webcam house didn't linger salaciously on the women and mostly allowed themselves to cover up, very much unlike season 1 that would focus on the naked women on the show. Even the gif above ^ doesn't seem as arousing as it just seems weird. I know the rest of that guy's apartment is full of erotic art, but I was really struck by how much they focused on man butts.

 

Yeah, I liked this is as well. It was maybe one of the only things that I was positive on in the episode.

 

I was worried that reading Pizzolatto's book and short stories might have soured me on this second season, but I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone in not really liking this episode. When I finished his solo projects I was left with the overwhelming feeling that the first season of True Detective was really made wonderful by the performances and the direction.  Pizzolatto CANNOT resist writing a character with a dead/missing family member who spirals out of control because of it. I had hoped that we'd get through at least this first episode without him trotting out his trick pony AGAIN, but nope, Ani's mom killed herself.

 

I still have hope that this season might go somewhere and that I'll be able to enjoy it. The first season was really something pretty special, and his novel--while largely unimpressive--does have a fantastic, grounded ending.

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What was up with the actual tiny woman floating in a bowl of milk? It's clearly a composite shot and not a doll. All I can think of is it's an "outrageous" (as Chris described the Maltese Falcon in the car) nod to Lynch and the tiny people in Mulholland Drive, but that's a weird stretch. Bizarre.

 

AK3FgJ3.gif

 

Wow! What a weird shot, I definitely thought it looked weird but just assumed it was a weird doll. Ray says something like "Do you see this?" and I don't remember his partner replying, so maybe this is meant to be somehow in Ray's head?

 

On this being not a very good episode, I read a nice take on this being essentially a pilot, not a second season premiere. So Pizzolatto presumably had been mulling about Rust Cohle and Marty's story for a while before getting a chance to put it on screen. But this time he has to write an entire new TV series, characters, etc. without a writer's room to bounce ideas off, all in one year. Pilots are usually pretty hard to get right and he basically has to pull it off all over again. I'm happy that this exists as an experiment, even if I might not entirely enjoy it.

 

I do hope it gets better, though, and the actors get better at pulling off these characters. There're a couple of really off-putting lines in this first episode and none of the actors were able to quite make them work the way McConaughey was in Season 1. 

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So I don't know if this is the Western Book of the Dead referenced by the title of the episode, but it seems thematically relevant. It seems like the logical next step of Rust's philosophy; if Rust was a man in the midst of Chapter IX, Season 2 seems to be dealing with the despairing refugees described in Chapter XI. 

 

Some went to DEATH, some to PSYCHEDELIA (a beautiful country with a synaesthetic landscape), some to NIRVANA. Some even went to UTOPIA. And so nonsense was worshipped instead of sense (they called it the absurd). REASON was abandoned – because, you see, it couldn't give answers to the really big questions after all.

 

When Ani is introduced, there's a lingering shot on a copy of Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, who's thesis is that bushido (the way of the warrior) is to live as though already dead, willing to die at any time. 

 

Ray is disappearing into a bottle. 

 

Paul is desperate to cling to his post on the highway, which gives him peace.

 

And all around them: absurd New Art, nonsense is worshipped and the Manipulators try to build Utopia, content to treat the human beings in the way like ants. 

 

I'm a weirdo who dug Rust's bleak pessimism, and I'm happy Season 2 seems to be willing to continue to wallow in that existential misery. 

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I was wondering if you were going to actually go on with the podcast after seeing the first episode. It would feel so disheartening to me.

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So I don't know if this is the Western Book of the Dead referenced by the title of the episode, but it seems thematically relevant. It seems like the logical next step of Rust's philosophy; if Rust was a man in the midst of Chapter IX, Season 2 seems to be dealing with the despairing refugees described in Chapter XI.

 

 

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/22/western-book-dead-true-detective

 

Apparently there are multiple Western Books of the Dead.

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When Ani is introduced, there's a lingering shot on a copy of Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, who's thesis is that bushido (the way of the warrior) is to live as though already dead, willing to die at any time. 

It might turn out I'm completely wrong but my feeling is that there won't be any mystical elements like in season 1.  That book, and other bits of the episode, felt like in-your-face jokes about what isn't going to continue through the seasons.  Her being introduced with them felt like a direct reference to Cohle and his books/talks on parapsychology and mysticism (? can't actually quite remember what they were), the joke being that Ani is fallible, didn't find any answers in them, etc.

Similarly there's almost immediately an introduction to a mystic cult, except this time it's a commercial and apparently innocent one, and laid pretty bare from the start rather than being the ultimate discovery.  And there's the lawyer scene, which seemed to be a joke about the old season's format of interviews prompting flashbacks not continuing: she even says 'you might have the wrong idea' [about the show's format!!!!].  Even the floating nude seemed like a reference to Cohle's hallucinations, given that they never revealed it was a video projection - but then Lynch is also a good call.

I love that that floating nude is a real piece of art (I thought I recognised it).  I'd love to know the painting in the flat, if that was real.

Other than those the actual episode just disappointed me, in a similar way to Sean: sure, I will watch the rest because the pulpy bits could still be used well as in season 1.  But if this was the pilot to any other show I would never watch the second episode.

One thing I laughed at was that the 'senior staff writer' was called Dan Howser......

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RE: How Shitty!Cop (Colin Farrell's character, I have no head for character names) gets away with what he does

 

I really got the strong sense that the cops are part of the corruption the journalist wants to dig up and that his character is basically their bulldog/strong arm/enforcement type that they have get his hands dirty for them. I don't know if they know what kind of other activities he gets up to off-hours though.

 

Edit: I didn't catch Maltese Falcon in the Caspere car scenes, I started laughing because it straight up looked like Weekend at Bernie's.

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Just finished the episode, and will listen to the podcast later (hopefully the soundcloud upload gets sorted out soon).

 

Quick thoughts: Antigone looks set to be an interesting character, for reasons Sarah mentioned above.

 

Did not care for most of the dialogue this episode, characters became interesting and believable when they were actually doing something (trying not to compare it to season 1 too much, but the dialogue really worked for me back then).

 

The cinematography (I presume for the entire second series) is done by Nigel Bluck (who happens to be another antipodean, along with first season DoP Adam Arkapaw). Didn't really captivate me, but that might be down to poor direction. I'll see how it goes when a different director is at the helm, but it's not looking promising. Bringing up season 1 again, there was really masterful and interesting cinematography straight out of the gate in the first episode, obviously continuing throughout that season.

 

Great comments in this forum! Really like the interpretation put forth by d L c, and that Dan Howser bit gave me an internal chuckle when I saw it.

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Elizabeth Moss was rumoured to be playing the Rachel McAdams role for a while so all through the episode I was imagining what it would be like with her in the role then I started thinking about top of the lake and then I wished I was watching top of the lake.

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there were some really bizarre notes in this episode. Vince Vaughn goes 'what the fuck, an 8 part series?' when he reads the newspaper about Vinci's corruption, then a police officer repeats this line almost verbatim later in the episode. Lynch Milkbath lady above. Colin Farrell breaking the 4th wall by shushing the camera. At least the raven mask its probably some eyes wide shut shit and will feature in the plot, but I have no idea what to make of the rest of this. Weird for weirdnesses sake isn't something I'd associate with the first season at all.

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Colin Farrell was shushing the junkie on the street across from the reporter's apartment, but it did have that extra look of him doing it to the audience as well.

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Thank god for the initial reaction in the Episode 1 podcast. I was worried that I was the only one who disliked it.

 

I wasn't sure about the first episode of the first season, until about halfway through when I knew that this was destined to be one of my favorite series of all time. This show was special in a curl-up-on-the-couch, prepare some snacks, allow no distractions, watching ritual, kind of way.

 

I kept waiting for season 2's first episode to hook me in the same way, though I only grew more disheartened. Maybe it's the influence of the TPRW Podcast and experience, but a crappy second season, complete with a morose dude on a bike at night, made it feel like the same scenario as Twin Peaks - another show where I was iffy, started to fall in love and then grimaces as my testes were trod upon. I'll keep watching, optimistically, though.

 

I'm biased against some of the characters already. I went in cold and as soon as I saw Colin and then Vince Vaughn, I grew immediately skeptical, assuming I'd know exactly how their characters would be acted. Sadly, I wasn't mistaken. The first season, by contrast, gave me newfound respect for Woody & Matthew, neither of whom I much cared for previously (a fault I'm now convinced was my own, especially in WH's case). What I'm hoping for most, I think, is the redemption of one or more of these awful human beings during the course of the investigation.

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Great podcast. I am hoping this doesn't turn into a Twin Peaks season 2 situation where I enjoy the podcasts much more than the actual episodes haha.

That said, I didn't hate this premiere by any means. Certainly not as much as anyone on Twitter declaring their fury (glad I mostly avoided the reaction till I was able to watch it today). But it did disappoint me in ways I didn't expect to be disappointed. Like, as I think Scott said, I didn't expect the storytelling to feel so off. I thought I might not be keen on where Pizzolatto was taking it but that I'd still be hooked in by the narrative momentum, but I wasn't really. Sadly, except for the open ending it felt remarkably like a conventional network cop show to me.

I was curious how Fukunaga's absence would affect proceedings. It's interesting to consider that the listlessness of the narrative is down to that but honestly I think it's more a writing problem. Instead of starting with something punchy and iconic like season 1, we start with a bunch of disparate, not entirely engaging threads and then glimpse they might wind together into something more intriguing. I agree this could prove interesting in retrospect so I'm trying to withhold judgement. But I can see why people would be alienated right out the gate. The absence of that immediately identifiable hub also made a lot of this hard to follow for me. I watched it on HBO Now and had to rewind several times because I felt like I missed something (usually it was a single vague line or split-second image).

Where Fukunaga's absence might be most acutely felt is in the performances. I didn't find any of them to be remotely as engaging as Harrelson's or McConaughey's. Granted, that's partly the script - these characters don't have the snappy dialogue or sharp personality traits of Cohle or Hart. But I think it's also direction. There was a real feeling that those s1 characters knew who they were from the first frame, and the actors got it completely. In this episode it feels like they're still figuring it out and don't really have a handle on their identity yet.

Glad someone else mentioned the milk thing - that really threw me!

As for what Vinci is, at the end McAdams says "What the hell is Vinci?" And Farrell responds "It's a town. Supposedly." Or something to that effect, suggesting it is indeed a fictional little city on the periphery of the L.A area. I love Chris's Chandler comparison; that's what it felt like to me too, and why it's one of the elements of the episode I quite liked.

Rachel McAdams' character, incidentally, is supposed to represent Ventura County. That's I guess where the body was found but probably not where the Vinci is supposed to be located (since it would be odd if she never heard of a city in her jurisdiction).

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Colin just can't fully hide his accent can he? I was worried about this season before watching just because I had no idea if the elements I really liked from season 1 would be included. I really liked the nowhere setting, the Lovecraftian ancient mystery cult and well acted characters. So far I looks like this will be more of a straight detective show, but we will see. I am tepid on the first episode since it is a lot harder to link four characters that don't work together.

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When the discussion of the town came up my first thought was similar to Jake's. Dashiell Hammett was also known for creating fictitious towns that were reminiscent of real places while also alluding to some greater archetype. Red Harvest is a perfect example with the opening description of Poisionville:

 

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

 

And then later.

 

The city wasn't pretty. Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess. The result was an ugly city of forty thousand people, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that had been all dirtied up by mining. Spread over this was a grimy sky that looked as if it had come out of the smelter's stacks.

 

 

I am fairly sure this kind of description would be very similar to what Nic Pizzolatto would have written in the script. 

One thing that we've touched on only tangentially is True Detective's relationship to pulp noir fiction. In its day pulp noir was just that: pulp. The writing wasn't suppose to be high art, it was suppose to be accessible to the masses. In a lot of ways True Detective season 1 was a departure from that with the level of polish and sophistication that was put into the entire season. It will be interesting to see if this season will return to its more pulpy roots both in terms of content and delivery. Justin Lin seems like a signal that may be the case but we shall see.
 

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there were some really bizarre notes in this episode. Vince Vaughn goes 'what the fuck, an 8 part series?' when he reads the newspaper about Vinci's corruption, then a police officer repeats this line almost verbatim later in the episode. 

 

I didn't notice until you said it... True Detective Season 2 is also an 8-part series.

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