For the others, contentment can at least be like one of those memories Ani describes to Athena: something that finds you even when you weren’t looking for it and acts as a guide. Unlike Ani, Ray, and Paul, he can’t really reference his best self. When he advises Ray that “Sometimes your worst self is your best self,” he really means it. He feels he’s earned his shot at happiness, but it’s all some abstract fantasy that he senses slipping away. Like Ray, Paul is at a crucial point of defining himself as driven to self-destruction by shame and internalizing what Frank calls “black rage,” or reconciling his many sides and living the best life he knows how.įrank is, in some ways, the most lost of our four ostensible leads. Though there is now no doubt that he and war buddy Miguel have more than a platonic past and, after a long night at Lux, present. This shouldn’t be hard for Paul in particular to comprehend, since his hotel was already stalked by paparazzi wanting info on Black Mountain’s dealings and more details on that alleged highway hummer. And now that they’re at the center of a public massacre, one instigated by their pursuit of a lead in the Caspere case, keeping their heads down is not an option. There are no promotions to be had in exchange for abetting corruption, just as there are no rewards for valor. (That’s facilitated all the more now that Dixon’s dead and gone.) You could tell from the glances of the Vinci brass that their lame-duck assignees to Caspere’s case are getting a bit too close to the truth. Ani’s rattled but seems grateful to have Paul and Ray at her back, now that it’s clear virtually everyone in her department and higher up the chain is ready to stab her in it.Īll eyes are on these three now, so it’s time for them to close ranks, not that different from what Marty and Rust determined once they got the band back together. Whether his actions in “Down Will Come” bring him further shame or help save him from a self-perception of worthless failure remains unclear. What’s almost certain is that Ray might be rethinking Frank’s offer to come work full-time for him after that rough day at the office. But even Ray couldn’t have counted on what they were about to walk into, and who knows how the results will be coded into Paul’s PTSD. In an earlier scene, Ray remarked to Paul that after what the latter had seen overseas, anything over here is a breeze. Still, one wonders about the effects of the stakeout-gone-awry on each of them (never mind the disastrous impact on their investigation). And like Marty Hart and Rust Cohle’s aforementioned, bracing escape from an undercover infiltration gone haywire, Paul and Ani and Ray are now brothers and sisters in arms and harm’s way. Directed by the very capable Jeremy Podeswa (for all ye Justin Lin haters), our protagonists’ mêlée with Mexican gang members suspected in Caspere’s murder - an anarchic scene that spilled out into the streets of Vinci and claimed an untold number of civilian and PD casualties - was a truly shocking spectacle of ultraviolence. Then, after 45 minutes of by-the-books and ho-hum in “Down Will Come,” we get our adrenaline shot in the form of a climactic gunfight. Yet again, he/she hides behind a mask and lets lethal weaponry do the talking. Season two’s third episode, much like its predecessor’s, braced us for what the bad guy might look like. But familiar patterns are beginning to emerge, one that might create a groundswell of buzz deafening enough to overwhelm the vocal consensus of diminished expectations. This iteration of Detective is not the buddy-comedy riff that resonated throughout our time in Erath, and some would argue it’s suffered for that. ![]() ![]() A few hours of occasional tedium, tonal chaos, and ornate table setting has delivered us to where we are now. ![]() Those who’d bailed or bided their time had entered and come back to the fold, and a cult TV phenomenon to rival Carcosan myth heated up last winter’s Sunday nights.Ī year and a half later, creator/writer Nic Pizzolatto is up to his old tricks. The result was a rush of enthusiasm from those who’d persisted through the show’s initial slow burn, which was weighed down with ponderous dialogue and familiar character sketches but buoyed by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s rapport. One week later, the action reached its crescendo via director Cary Fukunaga’s storied single-take shootout. The third episode of True Detective’s debut season concluded with our first visual of Reggie Ledoux, concealed as he was by a gas mask while wielding his machete.
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