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True Detective - Season 2 - We get the Season we deserve - Sundays on HBO

For the most part I agree with the dialogue complaints. Tbh though I actually kind of like how ridiculously overblown it is. The fact that I was an English major in college and I still have to watch this show with subtitles and occasionally google define something is kind of fun and silly to me because NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE.

I don't think it's really that different from season 1 when it comes to dialogue though. Like it's been said multiple times, not having a Marty character is a huge problem when you have multiple Rust-lites. Kitsch is the only one who seems to not use "10 dollar words", but the dude has no sense of humor here and is always down soooooo.
 

Afrocious

Member
For the most part I agree with the dialogue complaints. Tbh though I actually kind of like how ridiculously overblown it is. The fact that I was an English major in college and I still have to watch this show with subtitles and occasionally google define something is kind of fun and silly to me because NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE.

I don't think it's really that different from season 1 when it comes to dialogue though. Like it's been said multiple times, not having a Marty character is a huge problem when you have multiple Rust-lites. Kitsch is the only one who seems to not use "10 dollar words", but the dude has no sense of humor here and is always down soooooo.

See, the thing about Rust is that we saw some of the texts he reads and how he lives. The only form of entertainment Rust had were those books. Remember how empty his apartment was aside from that picture of Jesus?

Seeing that gave enough context to assume Rust wasn't your average Joe and probably off his rocker given the stuff he talks about casually. We don't see anything off-beat about Frank aside from being in a mob.
 

jelly

Member
A lot of Rust dialogue went right over my head in the first season but I kinda got the gist from Woody playing off him. Should have subtitled that like I've done this season.

This season isn't great but I can watch it and be interested in what comes next which could be anything or or least wtf was that silly but worth a go.

The last episode, those parties, really sad to think they are probably quite common. Really dodgy underworld.
 

big ander

Member
the other thing with Rust was that pretty much every other character interrogated his philosophical ramblings. in season 2 Frank and Ray are both Rust figures, and nobody bats an eye at their word soup
 
A lot of Rust dialogue went right over my head in the first season but I kinda got the gist from Woody playing off him. Should have subtitled that like I've done this season.

Yeah but people would stare at him like what the fuck are you mumbling about, Rust?

In this season, it's all taken at face value and comes across as incredibly forced.
 

Squalor

Junior Member
Yeah but people would stare at him like what the fuck are you mumbling about, Rust?

In this season, it's all taken at face value and comes across as incredibly forced.
That's because no one is questioning all of the philosophical, rhetorical, semantic, and verbal gymnastics every character keeps pulling out of his or her ass-mouth.
 

Squalor

Junior Member
Yeah, that True Detective scene is way better than the True Defective one.

But another point I haven't seen people bring up is that Rust's dialogue made sense relative to his characterization. He was established as an intensive, obsessive, well-read detective. He had a dark past that wasn't used as some excuse for his current behavior. Rust was always Rust, but the tragedies amplified that.

In True Defective, we're given broad and generic characterizations about inorganic characters who have broad and generic backstories. The backstories have been used as go-to excuses for their immediate behavior. That could have worked had we had any indication of what these people were like before these tragedies or, at the least, before the show. Instead, everyone's just a brooding sad sack in competition with one another to see who can do his or her best Christian Bale-as-Batman impersonation.
 
Yeah, that True Detective scene is way better than the True Defective one.

But another point I haven't seen people bring up is that Rust's dialogue made sense relative to his characterization. He was established as an intensive, obsessive, well-read detective. He had a dark past that wasn't used as some excuse for him current behavior. Rust was always Rust, but the tragedies amplified that.

Yup. Marty is the audience window into our initial viewpoint of Rust and we're rolling our eyes with him. As the season progresses, however, Marty lets some of that pessimism seep into his own worldview and so do we (which is part of S1's brilliance, IMO). We also learn more about Rust--that he has drug-induced hallucinations, he's an alcoholic, he has insomnia, etc.

Lines like "I don't sleep, I dream" work in S1 because of all of this; we'd probably laugh at them in S2, because they're unearned or just don't fit the world/character that's been built.
 

Squalor

Junior Member
"Never do anything out of hunger. Even eating."

WTF :lol

what does this even mean
Only eat when you're full and don't need to eat.

If you eat when you're hungry, you'll overeat, and you'll seem weak.

No, but seriously, in context, it's metaphorical. I don't think he meant "eat" in the literal sense of ingesting food. I think he meant "eat" in a more broadly generic sense of "consuming" or going after something or trying to get something you want. If you do that when you're your "hungry," i.e., at your most vulnerable, you will do it desperately and seem weak.

That's what I got out of it. Still, it's a bullshit line. Nic Pizzolatto is a hack.
 
The problem is that Pizzolatto went full Milch, and you never go full Milch unless you're actually David Milch.

Plus you don't hire a boy (Vince Vaughn) to do a man's (Ian McShane) job.
 

lamaroo

Unconfirmed Member
McShane knew how to deliver ridiculous lines. The "It's like blue balls, in the heart" should have been a playful line, like someone couldn't think of something good to say, and just said the stupidest thing that came to mind, but Vaughn played it completely straight.
 

Stoze

Member


Not only do we have Marty to react and call Rust out on how batshit he is, but we even have Rust acknowledge his abnormality himself in this very first scene;
M: "Listen when you're at my house, I want you to chill the fuck out. Don't even mention any of that bullshit you just said to me."
R: "Of course not Marty, I'm not some kind of maniac, alright. For fuck sake.

I also think Rust's spouts of ideology are written much better in general. The big exception was "I don't sleep, I just dream", which if you re-watch that scene it's supposed to be entirely comedic thanks to Marty's reaction, and yet lines like that are tossed out every episode and played straight in this season.

And I actually totally forgot Pizzolatto could write funny scenes until I re-watched this clip.
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
Okay.

J2ghBAY.jpg
 
McShane knew how to deliver ridiculous lines. The "It's like blue balls, in the heart" should have been a playful line, like someone couldn't think of something good to say, and just said the stupidest thing that came to mind, but Vaughn played it completely straight.

McShane would've nailed the blue balls line on Deadwood, and his lackeys would've looked at him confused, and it would've been amazing.


Here, Colin Farrell just takes it all in depressing stride because pain is inexhaustible and only people get exhausted or something I DON'T KNOW

Did y'all see that moon though? It made me apoplectic, brehs. Apoplectic as hell.
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops

There's so many great lines there, everything Rust says there is quotable.

It's so sad how far Pizzaman has fallen.

I'd consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist... I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself - we are creatures that should not exist by natural law... We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everbody's nobody... I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction - one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

This is my all time favorite Rust line.

This place is like somebody’s memory of a town and the memory’s fading

This part of the above monologue is also one of his best lines.

I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction - one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

Then you get shit like blue balls of the heart now.
 

big ander

Member
Chad cleans up. that Chad looks like he'd interrupt a Ray rant to slap his coked out father and tell him to speak like a normal fucking human being if he's gonna insist on talking over Friends
 
I don't understand why Pizzaman didn't simplify the dialogue. The dialogue in S1 was very naturalistic.

It's very stagey and speechy in S2.

And the fact that they have utterly just wasted Birdman.
 

lamaroo

Unconfirmed Member
McShane would've nailed the blue balls line on Deadwood, and his lackeys would've looked at him confused, and it would've been amazing.


Here, Colin Farrell just takes in all in depressing stride because pain is inexhaustible and only people get exhausted or something I DON'T KNOW

Did y'all see that moon though? It made me apoplectic, brehs. Apoplectic as hell.

I'm feeling a little apoplectic myself.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
I'm feeling a little apoplectic myself.

Easily the worst line in the season. Nobody talks like that, and then to have someone else respond to it...it just felt awkward. A burnt out Cali police officer and a gangster are not going to talk like that.

Rust spoke like a philosophy major, but everyone else was "normal." So it was entertaining to watch his character bounce off other people. When everyone in the show speaks like they swallowed a thesaurus, it become tiring.

I'm less negative on this season than most. But the most frustrating thing is when it tries to hit those high notes of dialogue like Season 1 and just fails terribly.
 

Imm0rt4l

Member
Did Quentin Miller ghostwrite season 1?
Lol.



Has anyone read Pizzolatto novel, Galveston? Personally, I really dug it. I wasn't expecting this season to be as good as the first but not this either. What makes it worse is his plagiarizing and still failing. It's not that the subject matter isn't interesting to me either. I think he needs to focus on fewer characters. Season 2 is spread too thin.
 

mujun

Member
See, the thing about Rust is that we saw some of the texts he reads and how he lives. The only form of entertainment Rust had were those books. Remember how empty his apartment was aside from that picture of Jesus?

Seeing that gave enough context to assume Rust wasn't your average Joe and probably off his rocker given the stuff he talks about casually. We don't see anything off-beat about Frank aside from being in a mob.

This. Rust's use of big words was an integral part of who he is. I think that the way he speaks is totally in line with the back story he has.

Not the case in season 2. Seems awfully random at times.
 

TheFixer

Neo Member

mujun

Member
Helps that Pizzaman plagiarized the entirety of Rust's dialog for that scene:
http://lovecraftzine.com/2014/08/04...tective-plagiarize-thomas-ligotti-and-others/

That doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. Not like I'm an expert on the subject or anything but it seems more like he's been influenced by Ligotti and isn't plagiarizing him.

Everyone does this. Pretty much any creative idea you have will be a combination of other people's creative works you've seen over the course of your life.
 
That doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. Not like I'm an expert on the subject or anything but it seems more like he's been influenced by Ligotti and isn't plagiarizing him.

Everyone does this. Pretty much any creative idea you have will be a combination of other people's creative works you've seen over the course of your life.

Some of it is so close that you can tell entire ideas were lifted from Ligotti.

I'm all for inspiration, and I don't know that a case could be made that he actually (by definition) plagiarized him...but if you read "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race", you will find entire paragraphs that "inspired" Rust's monologues. Even before all the "he plagiarized Ligotti" accusations came out, I was taking screenshots of the page and sending them to my friends/fam with the message "THIS IS RUST".

Having said that, the dialogue, overall, was of a much better quality than S2. S2 feels like Pizza ran sentences through some kind of thesaurus machine and then never read them back to himself.
 
McShane would've nailed the blue balls line on Deadwood, and his lackeys would've looked at him confused, and it would've been amazing.


Here, Colin Farrell just takes in all in depressing stride because pain is inexhaustible and only people get exhausted or something I DON'T KNOW

Did y'all see that moon though? It made me apoplectic, brehs. Apoplectic as hell.

if you read this

1.jpg


in McShane's Swearengen voice, it's almost not that bad

also, today i learned that David Milch called Pizzolatto "one of the best writers I've encountered"
 

Dr.Acula

Banned

Between that, and this famous scene, I was cracking up. Their odd-couple dynamic was genuinely funny. There's no humor this season.

That being said, this last ep was clearly the best. There was some more interesting and exciting stuff going on with the Mexican gangs and the orgy party. It actually felt as if the characters were out of their element and possibly in peril. Surprising because the ep began with that clunky breakfast under-the-table gun stand-off that was the very antithesis of tension.
 
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