No matter what the actual reveal (Burris or set photographer), it's going to be underwhelming.
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True Detective - Season 2 - We get the Season we deserve - Sundays on HBO
- Thread starter Cornballer
- Start date
You misspelled a word ther-- oh... wait... I stan corrected.
No, this is total projection. Here you've decided that you don't like the guy and that he has a huge ego, and then proceed to attempt to frame every decision around that. It's stupid. Does he have a big ego? Probably. Does that have anything at all to do with why there are multiple directors? Not remotely. Before season 1 was even done airing, both Fukunaga and Pizzaman already voiced concerns that it would be impossible to do multiple seasons the same way.
One director shooting the entire season of a series is not only a huge amount of work for the person, but logistically it makes it impossible to get it done in a year because you'll be shooting entirely sequentially with a single crew. There's a reason no one does this. Fukunaga already said he wasn't coming back for another season because he had other commitments, and everyone acknowledged that it would be highly unlikely any other director would want to take on something similar, so future seasons would have multiple directors like every other show.
There are other anthology shows on televisions too. American Horror Story and Fargo for example. They don't do it all with one director either. It's just not something you do if you want to be able to meet a networks annual demands.
Kadayi
Banned
Indeed. Also amused at the notion that anyone is actually being forced to watch the show. Seriously this thread has taken a dive of the top board into morbid boyfriend territory with the amount of unending vitriol being directed at Pizzolatto to the detriment of anything else. Lives desperately need to be got if in a day and age where there are infinite distractions available people seemingly have nothing better to do with their time than bemoan a show and a show runner they quite clearly despise ad infinitum ad nauseum.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
What's so difficult about showing up to work 7 days a week?
Why can't one director do it.
The behind the scenes crew does it already.
Why can't one director do it.
The behind the scenes crew does it already.
Anton Sugar
Member
I think there is a lot of hyperbolic vitriol here, but at the same time...I think most of us are just bored. There's little to talk about regarding the show (speaking for myself, of course), so I think posters are just having fun and passing time.
It's like an off-season sports OT in here now.
It's like an off-season sports OT in here now.
He could have done it, but the fact that there was tension with Pizzolatto and Fukunaga was getting work outside of True Detective meant his directing every episode of this season wasn't feasible, especially since they had to produce the whole thing in little more than a year while the production for the first season was about two years.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
I said i was guessing, ducky
I admitted that most TV shows do different directors.
though him and CF not having the greatest of relationships has been documented elsewhere.
I was just going off of that. Adding to that the articles written about him wanting to work alone and not liking the writing room style of TV writing that is commonplace, i dunno, it's not hard to see an ego that thought he could pull this season off on his lonesome.
But yeah dude I was just thinking out loud. Christ let a man have an opinion.
Hey, no one is stopping you from thinking out loud, but I don't think that means it's not subject to other people wanting to engage to discuss or critique the points! 
Like I said, he probably does have an ego. You can't do something like True Detective S1 and not have an ego anyway. But -I- really think that has nothing at all to do with there being multiple directors. Writing all the scripts himself though? Sure, that's 100% on him.
Like I said, he probably does have an ego. You can't do something like True Detective S1 and not have an ego anyway. But -I- really think that has nothing at all to do with there being multiple directors. Writing all the scripts himself though? Sure, that's 100% on him.
SimonChris
Neo Member
You're under quite the misapprehension.
Most of my critiques of the show and most of the conversations I've had here haven't been blind broadsides.
We're analyzing the show. The thing is that when the show you're analyzing isn't good, there isn't much to say. The scripts have been the biggest problems this season. The writing runs through it. And since the writing is oftentimes cliché and clumsy, everything else winds up suffering for it.
Of course no one is forced to watch the show. No one here has implied that at all.
Kadayi
Banned
I'm pretty sure I'm not referring to you specifically, so maybe back up a bit there.
I must of missed your posts in between the endless bitching ones about Pizzolatto. I'm all for critiques, but I don't think the show it quite the slow-mo car crash people make out. From my perspective the issue is more to do with the pacing than anything else. The build up was too slow and indulgent in the first half of the season and that's caused a lot of problems with respect to closing the story out given the ambitions of the plot. What Pizzolatto requires is the same thing he needed in season 1 and that's an editor to keep the excesses at bay and the story on track.
Really?
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
hey, i never said i was being forced
Anton Sugar
Member
"Alright, Cary, first character: Ani, a hard-nosed cop. I was thinking we could introduce her by hinting at some weird sex fetish via an affair with a co-worker, and later we find out she was raped as a child. She's strong, though. BTW, her full name is Antigone."
Fukunaga:
No, I'm referring to the thread in general. Of course there's been bitching about Pizzolatto. He's responsible. Had things turned out better, there would be endless praise for the guy.
Once the episode is done and the little bit of analysis one can give this season has passed after a day or two, there isn't much else to say. Sure, people could say nothing, but we're already on NeoGAF, so it's not as though it takes a Herculean effort to post again about what's wrong.
The main editor from this season was also there last season. The pace is a mess because the writing is a mess. The plotting is all over the place and has been difficult to understand for some people though I haven't had a problem with that. But those are script issues. It's not as though the editing and transitions are bad or sloppy. It's that there isn't much going on in so many scenes. And given how Pizzolatto has had almost free reign of this who season, I find it hard to believe the "good" stuff was cut.
Had the characters been treated like actual people from the beginning, most of the other complaints would have been background noise, but when your characters and plot are both lackluster, all the bad is going to get magnified.
Are you actually taking that figurative language literally? Come on. You're smarter than that. At the same time, that person, whoever it was, has invested quite a bit of time and effort into the show, so he has resolved to see it through. That's not hard to understand.
"Alright, Cary, first character: Ani, a hard-nosed cop. I was thinking we could introduce her by hinting at some weird sex fetish via an affair with a co-worker, and later we find out she was raped as a child. She's strong, though."
Fukunaga:
Well now we know that the the majority of the greatness of s1 was due to Fukunaga and McConaughey, and Harrelson too.
And even pizzamans best rust chole lines seem to have been lifted from "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti.
And even pizzamans best rust chole lines seem to have been lifted from "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
"Alright, Cary, first character: Ani, a hard-nosed cop. I was thinking we could introduce her by hinting at some weird sex fetish via an affair with a co-worker, and later we find out she was raped as a child. She's strong, though. BTW, her full name is Antigone."
Fukunaga:
I now want Gyllenhall to star in a season of True Detective if Pizzaman isn't writing it.
DoktorEvil
Banned
He'd made one hell of a serial killer if Pizzaman ever decided to pursue Gyllenhall.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
I just want a really well done post mortem on this season when it's all over. I think that the behind the scenes of this season might have been more entertaining than the season itself.
Anton Sugar
Member
Has anyone read Galveston? It's in my backlog.
I read some Laird Barron, which Pizzolatto said was a big influence on him, and was really disappointed. Felt like he just wanted to be Lovecraft but laid the pulp on too hard for me.
Oh god, I want this now, too.
I read some Laird Barron, which Pizzolatto said was a big influence on him, and was really disappointed. Felt like he just wanted to be Lovecraft but laid the pulp on too hard for me.
Oh god, I want this now, too.
Marty held season one together. Rust was exciting, but Marty kept us grounded.
Anton Sugar
Member
I feel you. Even accounting the stuff from Ligotti that "influenced" him, there are still a number of great moments in S1 that are from his writing alone, Marty in particular.
DoktorEvil
Banned
I had chills watching that. Felt the same way I felt after Nightcrawler.
I need a True Detective serial killer story featuring Gyllenhall now. Cmon Pizzaman, this will be how you redeem yourself.
Chance Hale
Member
I really think 90% of Frank's lines are just him trying to come off as worldly given the confused reactions of the people he is talking to. Ie, the camera cutting to Nails making an awkward face and Blake flat out saying something like"what" Valcero has a few bangers as well but the season doesn't have four Rusts.
Frank's dialogue has become a lot more jovial and less longwinded since he's given up on becoming legit. He's no longer trying to pretend to be something he's not.
Frank's dialogue has become a lot more jovial and less longwinded since he's given up on becoming legit. He's no longer trying to pretend to be something he's not.
brianmcdoogle
Member
I agree with this to a point. A lot of criticism online and on forums is "I like this" or "I don't like this" without that much delving into the particulars. But at the same time, a lot of my complaints that I've been levying just go ignored, and after a point, one has to wonder what's the point? And maybe other have had that feeling and just make stan and pizza man jokes all the time without providing much of any more criticism. I can't speak for the motivations of others, but that's about where I sit. If no one wants to engage in greater depth on why they like or dislike something, other than just to state that they like or dislike it, then I guess it just defaults to jokes.
As for an attempt again for further dialogue, I'll just briefly restate a few of my opinions throughout the episodes:
1: Does anyone else feel the sexual politics are very conservative and retrograde? Sex is a completely negative thing in the show. Velcoro's relationship with sex is through a rape of his wife, Bezzerides is from childhood molestation and her vague kinky/risque sexual advancements hinted at in the first episode, Woodrugh for, you know, being game, and Semyon for failed blowjobs and infertility. That's just the main characters and not all the sex party antics that take place on and off camera. What is the larger mission statement by having sex be so perverted or destructive? Is it just "everything is fucking" and everything is then bad?
2: What purpose did Woodrugh serve the show? He was an entirely redundant character for large parts, a vessel for info-dump speeches to catch the audience up to speed or explain plot points, and his characterization has just been a self-hating homosexual who succumbs to the cliche of being martyred like many other gay people on television, film, and books.
3: I've been critical of the writing all season (not just the bad lines, but the byzantine narrative threads and characters.... also, typing all of the names out for characters in this post, I realize just how much I feel the names of the characters with the exception of Bezzerides feel on the nose) but the direction has been all over the place. I still maintain that the shootout in episode four was badly mishandled, with little attention payed to spacial awareness of the camera in relationship to the actors, but even smaller things, like direction of the actors has been rough. Vaughn's best two episodes have been the last two episodes, where I would argue that the direction has been some of the best in the season. McAdams who has been mostly positive suffered in episode 5 (I think) which wasn't a well directed episode in that beach scene where her sister tells her she's been accepted to college; it's a wide, flat, boring shot that features McAdams giving a real clunky and completely inappropriate line delivery that the director should have realized was awful, either in editing or on the set, and fixed.
There's lots of things to complain about the show, and lots of contrivances in the plot. But, some of this stuff happens in other shows and movies. People laughed at the apoplectic line early in the show, but no one really explained why? Is it because you've never heard or used the word yourself and so you thought it was odd? Was it because you found a detective using the word inappropriate? I would think the former because lots of people posted that google trend search that showed a lot of people looking up the word, but just because you have never heard of it doesn't make it some totally inappropriate thing? Was it the delivery from Farrell or the repeating response from Vaughn?
Someone brought up the Newsroom threads and that was indeed a slow-moving train wreck that was impossible not to watch. But with that, it was mostly clear that it was solely the writing that derailed it. Everyone made fun of the Monday morning quarterbacking of ACN and so they reversed it in the series and had them screw up so outstandingly so that it became just as impossible. The finale ended up at a funeral with everyone in a garage singing and playing instruments! Everyone knew everyone or some expert to readily explain away impossible coincidences. Yet, despite that, you could see nearly all the actors working their butts off to save it, and the direction, since it was confined and unambitious, never felt like a huge detriment. Even the people who hated that show would not say Daniels, Mortimer, Pill, Munn, and Waterson were bad, but that their characters did and spoke some unbelievable garbage.
I think and why I continue to watch True Detective is that this season has been an interesting failure. Yes, one could say the main culprit is the writing, but that doesn't excuse everything else. And, with a lot of the half-watching people do (because it is now a thing to post while watching a show, missing lines of dialogue or acting or direction in the meantime), the basic plot because a problem for some. Though how much of that is the show and not the audience is up for debate.
He already did Detective Loki
Anton Sugar
Member
Absolutely, and I am concerned that this is going to be another loose thread that won't be addressed in the finale.
As JDSN and others stated early in the season, I was/am hesitantly curious about the origin of whatever Ani's sexual "thing" is. We have her sex partner saying he didn't know she was into something and her dismissing him quickly, her drinking whiskey while looking at BDSM porn, the revelation that sex partner is really just a fuck buddy to her but he didn't think so (plus her banging her partner), her awful "big dicks" joke in sexual conduct class, and the revelation of sexual abuse and/or rape as a child.
I am really, really hoping that it doesn't draw some connection between sexual abuse/rape and a (perfectly healthy) fetish, but that seems to be what the show is trying to tell us...or not. Who knows? It may not be addressed again.
It seems obvious that he wanted sexual to be a throughline this season but it has been handled so haphazardly that I don't know what he is trying to say or even discuss.
However, I mentioned on the other page that Pajiba pointed out something interested: Athena Bezzerides is probably the best woman that Pizzolatto has written. However, she is still VERY quick to tell Ani "I'm not a whore/it's only webcams", as if being a porn star or prostitute is a bad thing.
Woodrugh could be completely removed from the plot and nothing would be lost. Everything his character does and finds could EASILY be moved to Velcro or Ani. His character is a huge disappointment.
Like some gaffer said: Woodrugh is literally killed because he can't come out of the closet. His lover even goes "If only you'd been honest" or some shit like that.
Yup. I get a feeling of puritanism and 80's scandalism in the way the show treats sexuality that feels completely out of date and lacks any kind of punch, at least for me.
Kadayi
Banned
I'm referring to editorial of the text versus the show itself. I think Pizzolatto certainly has interesting ideas but he does really require some one else involved with respect to the writing to reign it in. For the most part season 1 went OK, Probably in large part to it being largely written and prepped prior to filming, but even then it went of the rails in the final third when events caught up with the current time line.
If a shows not doing it for me I'll walk away. After all why invest in loss? Time is far to precious to knowingly dedicate it to something you know you're not going to enjoy.
Kadayi
Banned
I think it might be pre-emptive to call at this juncture given events between Velcoro and Bezzerides and the need to see how they play out. Last episode Bezzerides was directly challenged in her beliefs after all. How the characters feel is not necessarily a comment on how we should feel.
I think there was a tragedy to him. A man caught in a desire to live up to the mythology of his absent father. The poignancy though is not for him, more those he leaves behind.
As I expressed elsewhere I think the pacing of the episodes has been an issue. For the most part I don't have a problem with the actors. Vince Vaughn had a thankless task really. I don't think Seymon is an easy role overall as it requires someone who can convey smarts and physical menace in equal measure and albeit Vaughn has the stature, he doesn't convince as the threat. I'm hard pressed to think of someone identifiable who could carry it convincingly. It requires a bull of man.
I think Rachel McAdams has been great. I'm really interested to see how her character evolves beyond this point.
I wouldn't say its obscure, but it's more the sort of word you expect to read rather than hear. Mitch dropped phrases like that in every episode of Deadwood tbh, but no one was getting uptight about that. Mayhap the historical nature of the setting served in that regard to shield the criticism.
I stuck with that for the first season but didn't have any issue walking away from it. The way the female characters were written was cringeworthy.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Though it'd almost be just as interesting to watch Pizzaman squander that potential.
Robot Pants
Member
The way the dialogue of the show was delivered was cringeworthy
Pizzolatto simply can't write female characters.
I really thought he'd be able to come back this season with well-written females after the poorly written, development-less females who popped up in season one, but I was very wrong. Almost every woman in this show has been defined by her sexuality. That's it. Then he threw some characteristics and clichés at a wall for Antigone and hoped they'd stick together to form an organic person. They didn't.
Paul's character arc was just as pathetic.
Pizzolatto simply can't write characters who aren't straight, white males, and he's even having trouble with them this season.
I really thought he'd be able to come back this season with well-written females after the poorly written, development-less females who popped up in season one, but I was very wrong. Almost every woman in this show has been defined by her sexuality. That's it. Then he threw some characteristics and clichés at a wall for Antigone and hoped they'd stick together to form an organic person. They didn't.
Paul's character arc was just as pathetic.
Pizzolatto simply can't write characters who aren't straight, white males, and he's even having trouble with them this season.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Davis was defined as 'black cop', so ha!
I think it was a guy who nosedived off a bridge in a car.
He's the fourth-wall embodiment of the quality and care of writing seen in the previous season. So whenever someone in the show is referencing or mourning Stan, it's them wishing they were part of Season 1.
Wrong. She was shot in her breast. Boom. Boob-shotted.
Holloway: Bad-guy black cop.
Anton Sugar
Member
First episode. She's leaving her fuck buddy's apartment and he's all "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were into THAT" and she's like "No, it's fine, don't worry" kinda stuff.
I don't feel like rewatching, but it's her very first scene.
brianmcdoogle
Member
Other than she sleeps around (which the show keeps telling us about) and that she's had a lot of sex (and likes big dicks) and that she was molested/raped as a child (she she said last episode), there's mention in her first few scenes in a kitchen in the very first episode where she wanted to take sex to a place/level that her current boyfriend/friend was not expecting and/or not comfortable going to because of... something. It's incredibly vague, but she obviously tried something in the bedroom that the boyfriend did not want. Either that's something as simple as a different position or something like female/male penetration or a suggestion of a threesome is anyone's guess. It's in the first episode and you can read the scene as you see fit since it is vague and specifically mentioned only that one time (but her hangups with sex and her past sexual history suggest otherwise). It's announced as big as it can be (like dicks?) without being incredible obvious or with a lantern hanging on it.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
I tweeted the Vanity Fair guy the following:
He tweeted back
He tweeted back
Grinchy
Banned
He was the masked killer. That's why we haven't heard from Birdman ever since Stan died. The season is already over and we don't know it yet.