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

- Variety on the news:
However, the deal paves the way for a go-ahead decision for another season of “True Detective.” Sources say HBO has been looking to make a change in the way the show is run, given the critical response to the second season, and has presented Pizzolatto with a number of options. Those options include: him working with a staff of writers, having a new showrunner come in, as well as him going it alone again. In all scenarios, he would remain an exec producer.

Sources say HBO has been pressing Pizzolatto for an answer so they can move forward with production on the show.
 

Blader

Member
Give him the majority of 2016 to write and a writer's room and Season 3 will be just fine.

I'm surprised HBO isn't trying to put a fire under some asses for Season 3. Maybe they're being cautious since a repeat of this season would probably make the brand worthless

It's almost impressive how much damage S2 did to the brand as is. In the span of a year, the show went from HBO's major new hit and the starting point for a potentially long-running anthology series to "well, maybe we'll do another season someday" with basically no one giving a shit.
 

Aurongel

Member
It's almost impressive how much damage S2 did to the brand as is. In the span of a year, the show went from HBO's major new hit and the starting point for a potentially long-running anthology series to "well, maybe we'll do another season someday" with basically no one giving a shit.

Yup, Season 2 wasn't miserably terrible enough to get a definitive shutdown but it was a significant stepdown from the first season which is almost a classic.
 
Via Indiewire: Steve Golin on True Detective

This is from a Q&A at the Middleburg Film Festival. He's the head of Anonymous Content, who produce TD:
Golin said:
Look, I think that the scripts weren't as good, and Nic (Pizzolatto) felt like he really didn't want to go with the one-director plan, which was something that I think really added an extra value to it... sometimes you have a good [season], sometimes you don't. But Nic is wildly talented, but I think that this one just wasn't as good ... Now we're gonna do season 3 and I think that one will be better.
There's a fair bit more to his answer via the link, but I don't have time to transcribe it. It's at the end of the video clip.
 

this_guy

Member
You guys should watch Fargo. I couldn't finish TD season 2 because it was so bad. Fargo is an anthology series done right, and season 2 is shaping up to be one of my favorite seasons of any TV show.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Hey, True Detective Season 2! Did you watch the penultimate episode of Fargo Season 2? That's how you ratchet up tension!

You're hurting my soul. Fargo Season 2 is what I wanted this season of True Detective to be.
 

ezekial45

Banned
HBO President of Programming recently talked about the season 2's problems. Basically stuff we already know, but it's coming from the top.

http://collider.com/true-detective-...utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=collidersocial

Michael Lombardo said:
Our biggest failures — and I don’t know if I would consider “True Detective 2” — but when we tell somebody to hit an air date as opposed to allowing the writing to find its own natural resting place, when it’s ready, when it’s baked — we’ve failed. And I think in this particular case, the first season of “True Detective” was something that Nic Pizzolatto had been thinking about, gestating, for a long period of time. He’s a soulful writer. I think what we did was go, “Great.” And I take the blame. I became too much of a network executive at that point. We had huge success. “Gee, I’d love to repeat that next year.”

Well, you know what? I set him up. To deliver, in a very short time frame, something that became very challenging to deliver. That’s not what that show is. He had to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Find his muse. And so I think that’s what I learned from it. Don’t do that anymore.

And I’d love to have the enviable certainty of knowing what my next year looks like. I could pencil things in. But I’m not going to start betting on them until the scripts are done.
 

Grinchy

Banned
Give him all the time he needs next time and let's see if it's horrible again. If it is, everyone can stop making excuses for him. If it's not horrible again, we get a great show. Win-win.
 

Deku Tree

Member
TD1 was saved by Fukunaga.

TD2 was vintage Pizzaman all by himself, under a short deadline. But a lot of S2's problems had nothing to do with the deadline and simply having one mans bad ideas make it to screen without enough internal criticism. S2 was so terribly bad in the worst ways, short deadline or not.

TD3 needs a writers room, and a single vision of a great director IMO.

I honestly have no faith in Pizzaman to deliver by himself even if it takes him five years to write the s3 script.
 
Is it possible that season 1's writing is considered great because so many of the lines we like were plagiarized from a book? Maybe Pizzaman isn't that good of a writer in the first place.
 

Deku Tree

Member
Is it possible that season 1's writing is considered great because so many of the lines we like were plagiarized from a book? Maybe Pizzaman isn't that good of a writer in the first place.

All or almost all of the good lines are essentially plagiarized from mainly one author but also several others. This has been extensively documented. And all the great scenes should be credited to the director Fukunaga.
 
Is it possible that season 1's writing is considered great because so many of the lines we like were plagiarized from a book? Maybe Pizzaman isn't that good of a writer in the first place.

most art is paying homage or "lifting" art from others. It's not what you take from but what you do with it that matters.

Quentin Tarantino made a career of this and that doesn't mean he's a hack, hell he's one of my favorite directors of the last two decades.
 

Deku Tree

Member
most art is paying homage or "lifting" art from others. It's not what you take from but what you do with it that matters.

Quentin Tarantino made a career of this and that doesn't mean he's a hack, hell he's one of my favorite directors of the last two decades.

Perhaps, but all the awful tropes and out of touch with 2015 themes that were explored ad nausem in s2 tell us that he's a hack.
 

Zaph

Member
While I really like this recent uptick in anthology shows, regardless of Pizzolatto's talent, I have to wonder if creating entirely new characters, settings, mythology etc is just far too difficult on a yearly schedule.

Given how much I'm enjoying Fargo, I was really happy to hear about the delay to season 3.
 

obin_gam

Member
I still can't believe he didnt use one of the most cool and creepy settings in the California area - Bohemian Grove - as a thing in season 2. If you're going to do a conspiracy, fucking go all in man!

I hope whatever the third season becomes - if it arrives at all - it will be more brave and high concept.
 

Deku Tree

Member
While I really like this recent uptick in anthology shows, regardless of Pizzolatto's talent, I have to wonder if creating entirely new characters, settings, mythology etc is just far too difficult on a yearly schedule.

Given how much I'm enjoying Fargo, I was really happy to hear about the delay to season 3.

Anthology shows are always hard, not only because you have to do casting all over again, but also because your audience is not invested in the characters from last season so they are less forgiving of bad writing.
 
Perhaps, but all the awful tropes and out of touch with 2015 themes that were explored ad nausem in s2 tell us that he's a hack.

oh im not defending season 2 but clearly it was a clusterfuck from top to bottom.

I'd at least wait till the next season of TD airs before I can call him a hack. He'll have plenty of time to come up with it this time around so there will be less excuses if it, too, ends up being a complete turd.
 
most art is paying homage or "lifting" art from others. It's not what you take from but what you do with it that matters.

Quentin Tarantino made a career of this and that doesn't mean he's a hack, hell he's one of my favorite directors of the last two decades.

Paying homage to something and plagiarizing something are two very different things. Tarantino doesn't plagiarize. He writes everything himself.

You should look up the plagiarism accusations against Pizza. He takes entire paragraphs from other works.
 
Paying homage to something and plagiarizing something are two very different things. Tarantino doesn't plagiarize. He writes everything himself.

You should look up the plagiarism accusations against Pizza. He takes entire paragraphs from other works.

QT literally steals shots from other films, like they're is no denying that he is lifting shots.

While it's scummy for NP to not properly credit those who he is lifting his writing from he's not exactly sitting out there on his lonesome in regards to this stuff.
 

Deku Tree

Member
QT literally steals shots from other films, like they're is no denying that he is lifting shots.

While it's scummy for NP to not properly credit those who he is lifting his writing from he's not exactly sitting out there on his lonesome in regards to this stuff.

NP would never want to be compared to QT though... People were acting like NP was Walt Whitman, which was the problem.
 
I've shit on Pizzolatto in this very thread for lifting from Ligotti, but I still think S1 has some solid writing in certain areas that seem to be just from him.

It also has some pretty shitty writing in some scenes, too. People get dazzled by how good it is that they forget "my family's been here a reeeeeeal long time heh heh heh", the retirement home lady going all "oh yes, I do seem to remember a spaghetti face man from 30 years ago", etc.
 

Rymuth

Member
So today, it's been six months since the season has ended and I'm going to use this opportunity to sort through my feelings.

They say the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Well, in the Sitcom thread, I saw this post

Check out True Detective, S2.

And I was like, 'wait, there's a second season for TD?' and then it hit me. All of a sudden flashes of Stan and Blue Balls of the Heart came rushing back. I think it's a testament to this season's failing that it took a random post for me to recall its existance.
 

Shenmue

Banned
After discovering Fargo I don't really care about True Detective anymore. Especially after that horrible Season 2. As if Colin Ferrel's career could drop any further.

The best part of Season 2 was that there was a Gundam model kit in it.
 
Haven't heard much about TD in a while, but this was slipped into an article about HBO's new head of programming:

- The Buzz on HBO's New Programming Chief Casey Bloys
While juggernaut Game of Thrones and the final season of Damon Lindelof's Peabody-winning drama The Leftovers shouldn't require too much of Bloys' time, other decisions, including the fate of True Detective, now fall to him. (HBO sources suggest a new project from creator Nic Pizzolatto is more likely.)
Maybe that's it for True Detective and HBO tries to get Pizzolatto to create something else? Just a rumor from 'HBO sources', but the longer we wait, the more likely it is that HBO moves on to something else.
 

Deku Tree

Member
Haven't heard much about TD in a while, but this was slipped into an article about HBO's new head of programming:

- The Buzz on HBO's New Programming Chief Casey BloysMaybe that's it for True Detective and HBO tries to get Pizzolatto to create something else? Just a rumor from 'HBO sources', but the longer we wait, the more likely it is that HBO moves on to something else.

Maybe it's for the better... too hard for them to re-create the magic of the first season.
And in retrospect a lot of the best lines in the season 1 were stolen anyway.
 

Fjordson

Member
Haven't heard much about TD in a while, but this was slipped into an article about HBO's new head of programming:

- The Buzz on HBO's New Programming Chief Casey BloysMaybe that's it for True Detective and HBO tries to get Pizzolatto to create something else? Just a rumor from 'HBO sources', but the longer we wait, the more likely it is that HBO moves on to something else.
Yeah, seeing people on twitter say that they may have him work on a new series. They have him signed to that deal, might as well try it before cutting loose.

I think he could do something interesting that wasn't an anthology and with a proper writers room.
 
I'd like a S3 but my fear is that he hasn't learned his lesson. He was intimately familiar with the setting of S1 (Louisiana) and spent a lot of time developing two impressive main characters. Deciding to base S2 on a made up California city and double the character total to four was simply not a good idea.

Whatever he does, I just hope he has a better story that focuses on a smaller group of characters. It doesn't have to be two detectives, it could be one. Or it could be no main character detectives and focus on the bad guy. Basically he can do a lot of things as long as he gets the characters right. And the story right.
 
I can't make new threads so

Matthew McConaughey Is Interested In Reprising His True Detective Character

If you’ve missed the haunted musings of a certain handlebar-mustachioed homicide detective on HBO, you are not alone. On Wednesday, Matthew McConaughey confessed that he too misses his True Detective character and flat-circle prognosticator—so much so that he would consider reprising the role of ol’ Rust.

“I miss Rust Cohle, man,” McConaughey admitted on DirecTV’s Rich Eisen Show. “I miss watching him on Sunday nights.”

The sentiment is not only shared by first-season True Detective viewers, but by HBO, which dealt with disastrous reviews when the second season of the Nic Pizzolatto-created drama, starring Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, and Colin Farrell, failed to live up to the first. In fact the feedback to the sophomore season was so troubling that HBO reportedly only agreed to grant the show a third season if Pizzolatto changed the way he runs the series. Pizzolatto and HBO are presumably looking for a season-three Hail Mary, and McConaughey hinted that he reached out to his former collaborator to discuss the possibility of returning, despite the show's anthology format.

“It would have to be the right context, the right way,” McConaughey told Eisen. “That thing—when I read [the original script] I knew in 20 minutes if I can play this guy, Rustin Cohle, I’m in.”

And why is McConaughey so desperate to get back into the disturbed character, which earned him an Emmy nomination? Apparently exploring Rust brought him a lot of joy. . . strangely.

“I was a happy man when I made that for six months, because I was on my own island,” the Oscar winner said. “Luckily my wife put up with me.”

This past January, HBO president Michael Lombardo took the blame for pushing Pizzolatto, who wrote every episode of the series, to crank out the second season too quickly. “I set him up to deliver, in a very short time frame, something that became very challenging to deliver,” Lombardo said. That’s not what that show is. He had to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Find his muse. And so I think that’s what I learned from it. Don’t do that anymore.”

Take a look at McConaughey's full comments about the potential Rust Cohle revival below, and decide whether it's too early for a Big Hug Mug cheers.

Plus, video interview with him about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqMQbjaKV5s

So... Season 3 with the return of Rust Cohle? Maybe it's a possibility.
 

beastmode

Member
Hope there's a third season after M7 has done alright (Pizza wrote the first draft of that script/other guy didn't majorly rewrite it)

I'd like a S3 but my fear is that he hasn't learned his lesson. He was intimately familiar with the setting of S1 (Louisiana) and spent a lot of time developing two impressive main characters. Deciding to base S2 on a made up California city and double the character total to four was simply not a good idea.

Whatever he does, I just hope he has a better story that focuses on a smaller group of characters. It doesn't have to be two detectives, it could be one. Or it could be no main character detectives and focus on the bad guy. Basically he can do a lot of things as long as he gets the characters right. And the story right.
More like a renamed California city. He also lives in California

And tbqh LA is perfect for TD, being the detective fiction epicenter
 
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