Chris

True Detective Weekly 4: Down Will Come

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I'm surprised more people don't think that the firefight at the end was an obvious set up. The cops even talk at the beginning about how "are you sure you want to go in" and Ani says something like "Brass doesn't wanna lose him, we have to go now." I feel like the plan was to either kill our heroes or pin this incredibly messy firefight on them. I'm interested to see how this conspiracy goes (assuming I'm right and there is one). 

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I'm surprised more people don't think that the firefight at the end was an obvious set up. The cops even talk at the beginning about how "are you sure you want to go in" and Ani says something like "Brass doesn't wanna lose him, we have to go now." I feel like the plan was to either kill our heroes or pin this incredibly messy firefight on them. I'm interested to see how this conspiracy goes (assuming I'm right and there is one). 

 

It was somewhat obviously a setup to me, just because it makes no sense for The Powers That Be of Vinci to be hanging around the ops room making ominous jokes, but the fight itself was so clumsy and the outcome so pat, having killed literally everyone on that city block except the three people that were probably intended to be killed, that the show's going to have to do a lot of earn a conspiracy surrounding it.

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I'm not entirely sure I can put my finger on the reason, but I really like the way Frank's wife is portrayed. She seems a lot more fleshed out than the standard mob boss wife character. I keep having these mental comparisons between Frank and his wife and Fisk/Vanessa from Daredevil. In comparison, Vanessa seems way more shallow and thin compared to Frank's wife. (Even though I can't remember Frank's wife's name)

 

I agree, and it hit me hard in this episode. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but, with the other Chinatown vibes in this episode/series, I'm suspecting she'll be part of some grand revelation.

 

So far, I'm digging this season and thinking that maybe the pedestal for the first season is a little too high. It definitely also had bloated and pointless segments but was held together by the individual gravity of the actors.

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Something seemingly no one has mentioned in regard to the last shootout scene is, to me at least, the whole thing very much like a setup. Someone (almost certainly Vinci PD) tipped off the gangbangers that the raid was coming, and possibly even setting them up as the fall guy by planting that watch in the pawn shop.

 

So then Caspere's murder is wrapped up with an almost certainly dead and quite plausible suspect and if Bezzerides/Velcoro/Woodrugh happen to go down too, well, c'est la vie.

 

Given that, the scene felt that it has a bit more stakes/purpose than just being an extreme shootout without real point plot-wise. That didn't makes its extremity totally forgivable (it might has been trying to evoke real and similarly extreme southern California police shootouts of the late 90s, updating to drug runners instead of bank robbers, but it still went a bit far) but it wasn't the total fart for me that it seems like it was for a lot of folks. Maybe I'm reading more into than there is just to make it more purposeful though, I dunno.

 

I agree that our gangbanging suspect is clearly a setup, not least because it's a tip from Teague Dixon, aka the world's least investigatory investigator and who's clearly way more bent than Velcoro. Also it didn't look like it was the same watch as in the photo to me - and I can believe Woodrugh would make that mistake. After all, he's a highway cop, not an investigator. I think you're overestimating the role that Vinci PD, as an organization, plays in affairs, though. They seem generally corrupt to me, not specifically involved in this particular conspiracy, and Velcoro's involvement with Semyon appears to be strictly on a personal basis. So my thinking is that Dixon, knowingly or otherwise, has been run by whoever's behind Caspere's murder, perhaps at a remove. He was given the target and a few plausible corroborating details, and had a chance to make a career-enhancing bust. He would not have known what they were walking into. Also, while I don't rule out the idea that the gangbangers were tipped off, I suspect that may have just been bad luck. Arresting everyone there and shutting the place down would undoubtedly serve the same interests. I see the goal as having been to simultaneously provide a viable suspect for Caspere's murder and to take out the drug lab, because I see the murders etc as being about someone else moving in on control of Vinci's rackets (remember, the mayor says there's another party that's been talking to him about taking over from Frank) and/or personally destroying Frank. Though at the moment I'm not sure how these "parties" that everyone keeps talking about play in, and it seems like they must be an element of the picture.

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I'm surprised more people don't think that the firefight at the end was an obvious set up. The cops even talk at the beginning about how "are you sure you want to go in" and Ani says something like "Brass doesn't wanna lose him, we have to go now." I feel like the plan was to either kill our heroes or pin this incredibly messy firefight on them. I'm interested to see how this conspiracy goes (assuming I'm right and there is one). 

To me that seemed like them giving Ani shit for bringing along all this force to arrest one guy, not them being in on the setup.

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To me that seemed like them giving Ani shit for bringing along all this force to arrest one guy, not them being in on the setup.

Hmmm, maybe I read it wrong. I'm not sure. I hope its a setup, because I'm interested in the corrupt government angle, and not in the alternative.

 

It was somewhat obviously a setup to me, just because it makes no sense for The Powers That Be of Vinci to be hanging around the ops room making ominous jokes, but the fight itself was so clumsy and the outcome so pat, having killed literally everyone on that city block except the three people that were probably intended to be killed, that the show's going to have to do a lot of earn a conspiracy surrounding it.

I liked the fight. I liked that it was different from the big stedicam showpiece of last season. Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but I found it really exciting. It definitely hinges on what they do with it in the coming weeks, though. 

 

One detail I loved about the firefight was Ani and Frank were almost sick at the end of it, and Paul just calmly put his gun away. Guy's been in wars, you know.

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Every fourth episode of True D must end in a gun battle. Every midpoint of True D must end with the suspect being killed by the cops before they can get answers from him which later leads to the TWIST that the dead suspect wasn't the guy behind the crime.

 

Hopefully this continues to it's logical conclusion and the show continues to mirror the structure of the first season, because that would means the next episode is a time jump 17 years into the future. The rest of the series takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk 2032.  Vinci is a corporate free-commerce zone fully independent from the United States.  Everyone's smoking ecigs and "robot dick" is no longer just an expression -- it was foreshadowing.  

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Hopefully this continues to it's logical conclusion and the show continues to mirror the structure of the first season, because that would means the next episode is a time jump 17 years into the future. The rest of the series takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk 2032.  Vinci is a corporate free-commerce zone fully independent from the United States.  Everyone's smoking ecigs and "robot dick" is no longer just an expression -- it was foreshadowing.  

 

The American Sniper poster is also still up on that billboard.

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The one thing I keep coming back to is how the past few episodes I would describe only as "treading water" like we're not going anywhere new but the show seems to just want to revisit the same details over and over.

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Hmmm, maybe I read it wrong. I'm not sure. I hope its a setup, because I'm interested in the corrupt government angle, and not in the alternative.

 

It was definitely a setup to at least one degree (we can be pretty sure the guy they were trying to nab didn't kill Caspere). I just don't think that it's one being perpetrated by the Vinci police department on an organizational level or that they were telling Ani that because they knew what she was walking into.

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I definitely read the "are you sure you want to go in so strong?" as being Vinci PD chief (and pals. The mayor and mayor lackey were there too right?) being worried about the amount of casualties In their big setup, since the drug dealers seemed quite ready and prepared for the police showing up. The only angle of this that makes it interesting at all is if this was a big setup to make this whole thing and our detectives go away without questions. that then went terribly wrong and ridiculously neatly left *only* our three heroes standing.

But yeah, the extreme casualty of it all left me thinking it was supposed to illustrate that our heroes were never supposed to apprehend him or even get out alive. And my reading of it being a setup made me enjoy the desperate and doomed firefight more than anyone else, I guess! I agree it was ridiculous in many aspects but I wasn't bothere by it from a plot standpoint, because I feel like it's a clear signal to Ray and Ani that they're actually on the right track investigation-wise (or a sign they shouldn't bother lest they end up dead?)

EDIT: Dixon even says "Let's just wait for him to come out." and Ani says "Nope, PD wants us to go in." which makes it all sound like a setup that got out of hand because of the larger police force they brought with them.

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Given the initial setup, I would have expected the story to have progressed much further in the first half of the season. Up until the hippie cult revelation and the gunfight of this episode, the story has been basically this:

 

Ha, this sounds about like True Detective's approach to storytelling this season. It's like they have two basic templates for scenes.

 

Template A:

 

Ray and Ani go to location and meet shady character.

Shady character tells them Caspere was a pervert, without offering any variations or clues.

 

Template B:

 

Semyon goes to location and meets weak character.

He leans on weak character in passive-aggressive fashion even though their business association was supposed to be over.

 

Ugh, the final scene made me cringe. How lucky for all three main characters come out in the end without so much as a scratch! Good thing too that Velcoro's broken ribs did not hinder him any during the action.

 

My favorite bit in the gunfight segment was Frank's somewhat confused look after the explosion and him telling his wife to go inside. I'm not entirely sure why.

 

 

By the way, have we figured out yet what happened to the missing girl from the first episode? If not, then do you think she was there just as a way to introduce us to Ani's hippie dad or will she play a larger role in the latter part of the season? I hope and expect that we will hear at least something about her soon.

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I liked the email about Caspere being like Laura Palmer. At first it seemed an obvious point - well yeah, they are both characters whose deaths initiate a mystery, like every other murder mystery out there! But the more I thought about it and the points made by the letter-writer, the more interesting the comparison is. After all, Dora Lange in season 1 really WASN'T like Laura. It was explicitly stated that she was chum in the water and outside of episode 2 we learned almost nothing about her. Laura, on the other hand, was someone who tied together everyone in the community (both publicly and privately), whose sexual kinks implicated her neighbors, and whose hidden life bespoke a deep sadness and pain. The obvious differences between her and Caspere - a powerful older man - are actually a neat way of bringing out the similarities. Despite his penchant for orgies and the ominous nature of that snuff house, the idea of Caspere as a passive observor - perhaps even on the receiving end of sadism - suggests a fundamental weakness, almost making him seem more like a victim of something than a perpetrator. With this email in mind I'm actually hoping we learn more about Caspere, a character whom I was becoming bored with as I waited to see how he tied the larger conspiracy together.

 

By the way, have we figured out yet what happened to the missing girl from the first episode? If not, then do you think she was there just as a way to introduce us to Ani's hippie dad or will she play a larger role in the latter part of the season? I hope and expect that we will hear at least something about her soon.

 

I'm wondering if she's the killer, which I've heard a few people suggest already. Although with the way they've been keeping the shrink out of view lately, it would kind of seem like a waste if they didn't make it him. I just really want the show to surprise us in its back half after its slow build-up and I'm kind of hoping the missing maid turns out to be a cold-blooded murderer (albeit maybe with high-minded if vengeful purposes).

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How did the scene where Woodrugh is running away from the press make it into the episode? It was so poorly presented that I just had to actually laugh out loud at what I was seeing.

 

Like Chris and/or Jake, I thought this was a dream sequence at first, way earlier than the press appearing. When they showed up, I was convinced it was a dream sequence. Then I was really surprised when we cut to Ani and Ray.

 

The further we get into the season, the more I hate the first episode. It was so long and bloated. In this episode, we get reintroduced to Ani's family, all the same ground is covered, and both scenes do a better job than the ones in the pilot. Speaking of the pilot, lots of this episode felt like it was shot before the pilot. Farrell didn't seem to understand Velcoro for much of the early episode and he his accent was going wild. Might be my imagination, but his stache didn't seem as full.

 

Wow, this is a really fascinating observation that didn't even occur to me. I know season 1 was shot with all the '95 stuff first, and then they went back and shot the 2012 scenes (in other words, it wasn't shot episode by episode). I would love to know the shooting schedule for season 2. It feels so all over the place that I too have to wonder. Each episode feels like starting anew and there is no sense of the actors growing into the characters or the story/direction coalescing. Pizzolatto seems really lost without Fukunaga.

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I'm really disappointed at how contained the conspiracy feels this season. Even though technically it involves whole swaths of California, it still feels very claustrophobic because both the directing and the writing are not doing a good job demonstrating the depths of corruption that are present. I'm hoping that the setup is leading to a conclusion where the detectives never even glimpse the true extent of conspiracy.

 

I've been thinking about this too. Why did season 1 have this feeling of ominous pent-up dread, of something lurking around every corner whereas season 2 lacks that sense of deep mystery and fear? I think location has a lot to do with it. Rural Louisiana (like woodsy Washington in Twin Peaks) has that sense of isolation and emptiness where where whatever sinister forces are lurking there are all the more creepy because of the quietness, the calmness of the environment. In corrupt, violent, crowded L.A. somehow it doesn't feel the same way. Even though theoretically an urban environment should have more places for that darkness to hide. I'm having trouble explaining it, but I do think atmosphere has a lot to do with the plot problems you're talking about.

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So after hearing the podcast and some reading here, I kind of feel like an idiot for liking this episode (and the last scene) quite a lot, so I figured I join the discussion.

 

First off, i think the episode has some really good character defining scenes, but i think those have been talked about already here and on the podcast. So let´s get to this last scene. People have been pointing out that they think the acting is the only redeemable thing about this scene, like the acting of the main characters is only some side note. Especially Kitsch does a really great job following up on Pauls "war made sense to me" statements earlier in the show, portraying someone who seems to be quite at home in such a bad situation. I also feel like the cooperation between Paul and Ray underlines the understanding/sympathy both have for each other, established earlier in the episode during their car ride. The scene serves a purpose for the characters, it´s not a pure "our audience could use some action"-situation. Furthermore we don´t know what is coming and how it will fit in the bigger picture (which seems to be the main concern for a lot of viewers of this season). Another criticism I don´t really understand is that there seems to be some consensus about that it was badly directed. For me, the scene had me on edge the whole time, the built up and the tension when the task force was closing on to that building, feeling like something terrible could happen. Regarding cinematography it also delivered some really good shots, especially follow shots during the pursuit of the car i.e. and overall a good sense of pacing. I agree that it felt like a scene from Heat but I don´t think it felt out of place in that show. I get the feeling that a lot of viewers struggle with the idea of a shoot out or action scene in general in this show - why is that? While I completely understand that some creative choices were questionable and somewhat cheesy, I disagree with the notion that a scene like that has no place in True Detective, because after all it is just a TV show. The whole "over the top"-argument is understandable, but it created a "most fucked up possible"-situation for those characters and if I´m allowed to speculate at this point, I don´t think that this was a coincidence. Why were the protestors there? Maybe because the person who gave the (bad) information knew that this situation would end up in a total desaster. But we´ll see.


Anyway i would love to get some responses to my point of view.

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I don't think I saw anyone else mention that the very first scene of the first episode is of that field of markers indicating toxic soil.

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My favorite parts of True Detective are always Colin Farrell's interactions with his son, and I tweeted about that in reference to episode one. The young actor who plays him is obviously just searching twitter for mentions of himself, retweeting them & following people who love him as much as I do. Easily the highlight of my day. That adorable little round face. Can't get enough of it.

 

https://twitter.com/TrevorLarcom

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Might send this as an email too because I find this really interesting. On this episode of the podcast you mentioned wondering about the original scripts for s1 and how much they differed from what was shot. I was always under the impression the Pizzolatto went off at and wrote his magnum opus and then brought everyone else onboard.

Well, I just stumbled across this interview with Fukunaga (you may have read it already) and got a very different impression from it: http://www.salon.com/2014/01/09/true_detective_director_cary_fukunaga_explains_the_shows_dark_humor/

Fukunaga talks about being involved from "conception" (although later in the interview he implies brought in early but not necessarily first). He was part of the project when it was still supposed to be shot in the Ozarks, and apparently was heavily involved in the casting, even suggesting that he was the one who brought McConuaghey in. And most surprisingly he talks about him & Woody Harrelson giving Pizzolatto notes! (How much you want to bet THAT practice has ended in s2?)

I found this to be the most telling passage:

 

"There wasn’t a lot of humor in the script originally, and that was actually my first note and Woody Harrelson’s first note. Woody was like, “Yeah, it’s really interesting, it’s really dark — but it needs some light in it.” I was like, “I 100 percent agree.” Woody was really responsible for pushing and looking at scenes together to try to find the natural humor in them – -those pregnant pauses and stuff — and so was Matthew. Matthew’s a funny guy to really bring out that side of it — which I think was really important — because it wasn’t necessarily the writing."

 

Like I said, old news, and I don't just want to simplistically cast Fukunaga as the good guy & Pizzolatto as the bad. But this perspective explains a hell of a lot about the differences between seasons 1 and 2 which - despite the noticably similar story beats - are starting to feel like night and day.

 

Most importantly, I think, is Fukunaga's discussion of how season 1 was shot like a film, rather than TV. I don't get that sense at all from the end results of these episodes in which the narrative does not really flow or build, and each week the actors and characters seem to be starting from scratch.

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This is a super delayed revive, but no one brought it up. (note I'm halfway through the season/cast so use spoilers if necessary please)

On the cast they talked briefly about the exchange Ani had about being suspended, where she says "This wouldn't happen if I were a man."

I found that very odd, because surely a sexual harassment case against a man is way more common place? I understand that the dudes male entitlement probably encouraged him to report her, but I would have thought that the actual system would be, if not equal, skewed in her favour for once.

Maybe I'm way off? It just felt odd to me, and then with the following line about her being "allowed to say that" (as a woman), it was a bad moment. I'm retaining benefit of the doubt, but taken together I don't like the implied narrative of her using gender as an excuse when it's 'clearly' irrelevant.

Hopefully I'm totally wrong though.

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