‘True’ BOREDOM
Predictable ‘Detective’ sputters in Season 2
‘True Detective” may be remembered as one of those shows that should have stopped after one season.
Director Cary Fukunaga delivered such a singular product that scored on so many levels — performances, writing, cinematography — that to expect the equivalent in Season 2 is like complaining you can’t order filet mignon at Outback.
This time around, creator Nic Pizzolatto moves the story out of his own backyard — the steamy American South — to LA, a place where he is an outsider, to introduce three incredibly troubled law enforcement officers who are all trying to solve the murder of a city manager found at a rest area on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Colin Farrell is Ray Velcoro, a temperamental detective with a disastrous personal life whose relationship with career criminal Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) is predictably seamy and mutually beneficial. Rachel McAdams, playing against type, is sheriff’s detective Ani — short for Antigone, I kid you not — Bezzerides, an unsmiling boozehound whose hair falls in hacked-off, unwashed strands. Taylor Kitsch is Paul Woodrugh, a highway patrolman and war veteran whose past includes a gay-for-threedays liaison with a buddy, and whose present includes a woman who waits a half-hour in bed for his Viagra pill to kick in before they can get busy.
As these tough-guys-by-the-numbers size each other up at the murder scene, you can see them getting ready to compete to see who is the Most Damaged Character.
Pizzolatto is no Raymond Chandler. He seems to be on unfamiliar territory as he delivers set-ups we’ve seen countless times, especially in
noirish LA stories (“Chinatown,” “LA Confidential”). There’s a pornography subplot, a club-full of hookers, a real-estate development deal gone awry and bribes left, right and center. Three episodes in (out of a total of eight), the suspense builds too slowly — while the director, Justin Lin, an executive producer on CBS’ procedural “Scorpion,” plays up the downbeat mood, zooming in on the bags under Farrell’s and Vaughn’s eyes and making sunny SoCal look as dingy as possible.
All this would be fine in an aboveaverage cop show, but the wacky humor that made the first “True Detective” feel fresh is missing entirely. And we could have done without the constant aerial shots of the octopus-like LA freeways. What is this — traffic as a metaphor?
Of all the actors, Farrell fares the best, bringing some humanity to his boilerplate part as the cop who can’t do anything right. Vaughn should have hung out with the guys on “ray Donovan” for tips on how to play a mobster, since he’s not remotely menacing. As for “McRomCom” McAdams, you can’t fault a girl for trying something different. But she’s a lightweight.
FX’s “American Horror Story” is one anthology series that earned its success by sticking to the campy Gothic tone that allowed its talented cast to have a field day playing different roles each season. If “True Detective” is going to be more than a vehicle for eclipsed stars trying to reignite their careers, Pizzolatto and company will have to dig deeper for a story that entertains —and impresses us as definitively as its predecessor.