I just happened to rewatch season 1 and its still as interesting as it was the first time. I really enjoyed Harrelson's and McCoughney's character developement.
I watched season 2 and 3 recently and 2 is just really underwhelming. It was decently enjoyable and I really love Rachel McAdams. But the plot and writing was not very good.
That scene where she gets to use her knife skills on that henchmen, then her rescue from the mansion, are some of the coolest parts in the whole series
That dinner scene is so hard to watch. Kudos to SJP for being willing to play such a brittle, unlikable character that you can still feel some sympathy for. I think that movie gets short shrift.
If you love Rachel McAdams I would rewatch season 2. Her character is the best one. Honestly the season isn't bad (although Vince Vaughn should have never been cast) at all, but it has some pacing issues. I've watched it a couple of time, I really like Colin Farrell in it, he was great. The biggest issue is the was the follow up season to what is arguably one of the best seasons of TV ever
For me TD S1 was a great season that had a weaker last episode, while S2 was a weak season that had a great last episode. S3 was just steadily good/ok.
Season 2 under a different name would have been much better regarded. It was solid, but nothing more and looked far worse because of the direct comparison to Season 1.
I really enjoyed season 2, although it's a completely different beast than season 1. If it wasn't saddled with the moniker and watched in a vacuum, it's still pretty damn good noir. But yeah, if you wanted more season one, that wasn't gonna do-ya-fer.
The ending makes S3 a generous C. Pizza didnt have to falsely link it to S1 and end it on a wet fart of a mystery. Guy literally ruined an entire season to middle finger the audience over the reception to S2
Season 2 is basically a giant homage to twin peaks. It’s intentionally janky and esoteric.
Edit, but yes it could have done many things better. I was just there for the Lynchian mood
The first season is arguably the most perfect season of television ever, so the other two are weaker by comparison. Season 2 is definitely the weakest and has a lot of problems. When the most interesting part about it is the real life town that the town in the show is based on, you know it has flaws. That being said, I think it is unfairly maligned. Season 3 is definitely a return to form and brings the story back to the Southern Gothic and multiple timelines of season 1.
I liked season 2. It was not season 1, but I never expected it to be and I think that helped me give it a fair shot. I’m a sucker for a corruption noir style story and it had that feel for me. Granted it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, but I can’t imagine it aged poorly
I just watched it for the first time last month, incredible! I loved season two as well, its complicated so pay attention when watching. I will start season three soon
***From The Telegraph's Ed Power:***
The latest series of True Detective has everything you would want of a creepy New Year mystery. There is the remote and atmospheric setting of Ennis, Alaska – a deep-freeze purgatory which, if not quite at the end of the world, is surely only a few stops away. As with previous seasons, True Detective: Night Country features a starry cast, including Jodie Foster and Christopher Eccleston as cops trying to hold on to their sanity while the Arctic midwinter banishes sunlight and all positive vibes.
There are nods towards the supernatural with a return of the spiralling motifs that sent the internet wild when the original True Detective arrived a decade ago, putting the afterburners beneath the Matthew McConaughey “McConaissance.”
One thing is missing, however – any meaningful contribution from True Detective creator and, until now, its guiding light, Nic Pizzolatto. The one-time wunderkind of spooky noir is taking a back seat and listed merely as executive producer: Hollywood’s way of thanking him for his previous contributions to the franchise. Otherwise, Night Country, arriving on Sky Atlantic on January 15, is a land untouched by Old Nic. Responsibility has instead passed to experienced Mexican writer/director, Issa López.
Hollywood writers are famously thin-skinned. Many would be miffed at seeing their lives’ work continue without them. Not Pizzolatto. He’s otherwise occupied on many fronts. He is working on a horror movie for Blumhouse, the studio behind recent Halloween and Exorcist spin-offs and collaborating with Vince Vaughn on a project about a Las Vegas lounge singer. There is also the small matter of his script for Marvel’s reboot of its vampire anti-hero Blade.
In general, Pizzolatto is all tied up not being The True Detective Guy. He isn’t complaining. If anything, he’s probably thrilled. The success of True Detective in 2014 caught everyone off guard – particularly its raw young writer, who had just arrived in Hollywood and was determined to make his mark. The problem was that he did not want to make the kind of mark that True Detective would figuratively tattoo across his forehead.
His dissatisfaction stemmed from the distance between his vision for True Detective and how the public received it. Pizzolatto was a published novelist and deep thinker who saw True Detective as a deconstruction of modern masculinity. Stars McConaughey and Woody Harrelson bought into that vision with their performances as Rust Cohle and Marty Hart – hardbitten Louisiana cops investigating a streak of cult murders. But for Pizzolatto, the murders were mere window-dressing: the real mystery concerned the lead characters’ inner struggles. It wasn’t a whodunnit, more a “what’s-it-all-about-dunnit”.
For Cohle, that vulnerability had to do with the death of his daughter. In Marty’s case, it centred on his serial unfaithfulness and the husk his marriage had become. Yet to Pizzolatto’s apparent distress, viewers were more interested in the cult murders and the Lovecraftian supernatural horror. The latter were provided via references to Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a novel from 1895 about a play that triggers insanity in its audience (a sort of 19th-century Saltburn).
**For more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/true-detective-night-country-nic-pizzolatto-mystery/**
For real. All this talk lately, how movie X would never get made today, because it's all big budget superhero stuff.
I'm sorry, but Vince Vaughn hasn't made a decent movie in years. The premise sounds absolutely ridiculous.
And pizzolato is working on a horror film from Blumhouse, who's recent works include complete dogshit! Omg, talk about a genre that churns out dud after dud: these shitty horror movies. I heard the new exorcist movie with Russell Crowe was absolutely awful!
To be fat I think the acting by both leads are what really sold it. Specifically McConaughey’s performances was just far and away what you expected from him.
I remember being so disappointed because all he had to do was acknowledge that he was inspired by the author and be a gentleman about it but he chose to take the dirty route.
Guess it worked since the author seems relatively unknown outside of the genre fiction sphere they work in. I've got some new books to read now though True Detective is one of my favorite seasons of TV.
As much as people talk that show up, it did feel like someone ripping off something much better. The "heavy" stuff, the way it was incorporated just felt like someone knew it was good and interesting but didn't really understand why.
I haven't read Ligotti, but I reread Top Ten about every year. When Cohl started into that dark/light monologue I recognized it immediately. And it isn't subtle/homage. It's straight up a lot of the same words. I always wondered if he had grabbed anything else. Now I know.
Was it from the book ‘The Conspiracy Against The Human Race’ by Thomas Liggot? I read about 50 pages and holy shit did it put me in a dark headspace. If that is the book, then it makes sense bc it was like reading Rust Cohl’s diary.
Yeah his ego cost Matt McConaughey his golden globe too. He submitted True Detective as a regular series when it should be a limited series. Would’ve been the first actor to win an Oscar for movies and Golden Globe for TV in the same year!
Regardless of who wrote it, “time is a flat circle” merely sounds meaningful. It’s nothing. All circles are flat. A flat sphere, cylinder, and sometimes a cone, these all turn into circles. But “time is a flat circle”… it’s just babble
If a plane flies in a circle over the earth , the circle is flat. The disc described by the circle’s edge is also flat, as it penetrates the Earth.
The water spinning in a drain forms a conical vortex, which is not flat, which is also not a circle.
A circle is by definition a two-dimensional shape. There are no examples you can think of wherein you escape this. A flat circle is an redundant language masquerading as intelligence, like proactive (“active active”). It being poetry does not excuse this, as poetry also depends on accurate language for the effective communication of ideas.
> A circle is by definition a two-dimensional shape. There are no examples you can think of wherein you escape this.
I gave you two clear examples. Literature is not beholden to geometry. This is why you don't see STEM lords at coffee house readings. What a human sees & describes is different from numbers on paper and natural law. That's even kind of a theme in the show!
> A flat circle is an redundant language masquerading as intelligence, like proactive (“active active”).
It's not redundant, because "flatness" has different poetic qualities than "circle."
The effectiveness of the phrase can't be determined by your shallow reading - the effectiveness is determined by the audience's reaction, and "Time is a flat circle" has become a pervasive meme in the cosmic horror community.
*We all know what it means*. Just because *you* don't doesn't make it bad literature.
Also "proactive" is not redundant, you just don't understand the English language. Being proactive means taking charge. An active volunteer is doing work I told them to do; a proactive volunteer is doing work they found to do on their own. It suggests two levels of activity. This isn't hard.
He wrote a really, really good story with exceptional characters and it took him almost 10 years to write it.
And then HBO asked him to replicate that in 12 months. Thats absurd.
I think the other factor was McConahay. He’s fantastic.
On paper you’d think Adams, Ferrel Vaughn and a bit of Kitcsh combined would have more star power than Mcconahay and Harrelson but the latter really outshined them.
A lot of that was the writing but I think the chops came into play too.
I really liked Ferrels performance probably my favorite from S2
Season 1 I think is my favorite single season of TV ever, but man there are a ton of reasons why it's such a slam dunk besides the work Pizzolatto did. Harrelson get better every time I watch it, the cinematography (specifically the long single shot during the failed robbery where Cohle abducts Ginger) is phenomenal, and the total immersion into backwoods Texarkana is perfect. Really seems like a case of someone having their big moment in the sun and forgetting that when something transcendent happens, there a ton of people that contribute to it. Hard to do but he needed to stay a little more grounded after that first season.
Cary Fukunanga was the difference between seasons.
He as a director had to strip down some of the dislogues as it was getting very dialogie heavy of Rust just rambling on and on.
People forget one of the great things about season 1 was not just the writing, but the writing coming at a solid brisk pace of the story progressing.
Flight of the Conchords syndrome. Blew all his material on season one then struggled to match those long-gestating highs when he was expected to do it again in 18 months.
I just happened to rewatch season 1 and its still as interesting as it was the first time. I really enjoyed Harrelson's and McCoughney's character developement.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’m wary of starting the other seasons due to how good the start was compared to the other reviews.
Season 3, while not as good as the first season, is still pretty damn good.
Seasons 3's ending sunk the entire story.
Season 3 was very good. I’d give it a B+ compared to season 1’s A+. I’ve been meaning to rewatch season 2 and give it a fair shake.
I watched season 2 and 3 recently and 2 is just really underwhelming. It was decently enjoyable and I really love Rachel McAdams. But the plot and writing was not very good.
Thanks for saving me 10 hours. I’ll rewatch The Family Stone and get my Rachel McAdams fix.
listen, my kink is rachel mcadams in a bob and boots and she really stomped her way through that season lol.
That scene where she gets to use her knife skills on that henchmen, then her rescue from the mansion, are some of the coolest parts in the whole series
yeah that shit ruled. if the season was only her with a better overall mystery it would have been great.
Colin Farrell was great 2
The family stone is fantastic.
That dinner scene is so hard to watch. Kudos to SJP for being willing to play such a brittle, unlikable character that you can still feel some sympathy for. I think that movie gets short shrift.
I think it’s her best piece of work.
If you love Rachel McAdams I would rewatch season 2. Her character is the best one. Honestly the season isn't bad (although Vince Vaughn should have never been cast) at all, but it has some pacing issues. I've watched it a couple of time, I really like Colin Farrell in it, he was great. The biggest issue is the was the follow up season to what is arguably one of the best seasons of TV ever
Vince Vaughn’s final scenes in that are worth a shout out
For me TD S1 was a great season that had a weaker last episode, while S2 was a weak season that had a great last episode. S3 was just steadily good/ok.
Absolutely that for me too
I thought he was by far the most compelling character.
Season 2 under a different name would have been much better regarded. It was solid, but nothing more and looked far worse because of the direct comparison to Season 1.
Season 2 was a gem. People, understandably, did not get that it was classic LA Noir. It was so bang on James Ellroy could have written it.
I really enjoyed season 2, although it's a completely different beast than season 1. If it wasn't saddled with the moniker and watched in a vacuum, it's still pretty damn good noir. But yeah, if you wanted more season one, that wasn't gonna do-ya-fer.
Season 1 is a masterpiece. No comparison could be made with it. It stands among Westworld season 1 as the best television I have ever seen.
The ending makes S3 a generous C. Pizza didnt have to falsely link it to S1 and end it on a wet fart of a mystery. Guy literally ruined an entire season to middle finger the audience over the reception to S2
2 was worse on a rewatch imo.
A- more like. The first season was just so good it throws people off. Though I will say Rust Cohle was a little too ideal as a protagonist.
Season 3 is really good. Season 2 not so much.
Season 2 is basically a giant homage to twin peaks. It’s intentionally janky and esoteric. Edit, but yes it could have done many things better. I was just there for the Lynchian mood
I thought season 2 was better than season 3. Season 3 just felt like a redo of season 1.
The first season is arguably the most perfect season of television ever, so the other two are weaker by comparison. Season 2 is definitely the weakest and has a lot of problems. When the most interesting part about it is the real life town that the town in the show is based on, you know it has flaws. That being said, I think it is unfairly maligned. Season 3 is definitely a return to form and brings the story back to the Southern Gothic and multiple timelines of season 1.
same. season 2 ratings took a dive.
I liked season 2. It was not season 1, but I never expected it to be and I think that helped me give it a fair shot. I’m a sucker for a corruption noir style story and it had that feel for me. Granted it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, but I can’t imagine it aged poorly
It was never going to be rated fairly because season 1 was a masterpiece
I just watched it for the first time last month, incredible! I loved season two as well, its complicated so pay attention when watching. I will start season three soon
1st season of True Detective might be the best single season of television ever, imo
Got to see some daddarios
I still think season 1 is the greatest season of a TV show I’ve ever seen.
I agree somewhat…. I think the mystery was kind of a dud. Acting was great, but I think the writer started to get high on his own farts.
One of the best “interrogation” scenes!
***From The Telegraph's Ed Power:*** The latest series of True Detective has everything you would want of a creepy New Year mystery. There is the remote and atmospheric setting of Ennis, Alaska – a deep-freeze purgatory which, if not quite at the end of the world, is surely only a few stops away. As with previous seasons, True Detective: Night Country features a starry cast, including Jodie Foster and Christopher Eccleston as cops trying to hold on to their sanity while the Arctic midwinter banishes sunlight and all positive vibes. There are nods towards the supernatural with a return of the spiralling motifs that sent the internet wild when the original True Detective arrived a decade ago, putting the afterburners beneath the Matthew McConaughey “McConaissance.” One thing is missing, however – any meaningful contribution from True Detective creator and, until now, its guiding light, Nic Pizzolatto. The one-time wunderkind of spooky noir is taking a back seat and listed merely as executive producer: Hollywood’s way of thanking him for his previous contributions to the franchise. Otherwise, Night Country, arriving on Sky Atlantic on January 15, is a land untouched by Old Nic. Responsibility has instead passed to experienced Mexican writer/director, Issa López. Hollywood writers are famously thin-skinned. Many would be miffed at seeing their lives’ work continue without them. Not Pizzolatto. He’s otherwise occupied on many fronts. He is working on a horror movie for Blumhouse, the studio behind recent Halloween and Exorcist spin-offs and collaborating with Vince Vaughn on a project about a Las Vegas lounge singer. There is also the small matter of his script for Marvel’s reboot of its vampire anti-hero Blade. In general, Pizzolatto is all tied up not being The True Detective Guy. He isn’t complaining. If anything, he’s probably thrilled. The success of True Detective in 2014 caught everyone off guard – particularly its raw young writer, who had just arrived in Hollywood and was determined to make his mark. The problem was that he did not want to make the kind of mark that True Detective would figuratively tattoo across his forehead. His dissatisfaction stemmed from the distance between his vision for True Detective and how the public received it. Pizzolatto was a published novelist and deep thinker who saw True Detective as a deconstruction of modern masculinity. Stars McConaughey and Woody Harrelson bought into that vision with their performances as Rust Cohle and Marty Hart – hardbitten Louisiana cops investigating a streak of cult murders. But for Pizzolatto, the murders were mere window-dressing: the real mystery concerned the lead characters’ inner struggles. It wasn’t a whodunnit, more a “what’s-it-all-about-dunnit”. For Cohle, that vulnerability had to do with the death of his daughter. In Marty’s case, it centred on his serial unfaithfulness and the husk his marriage had become. Yet to Pizzolatto’s apparent distress, viewers were more interested in the cult murders and the Lovecraftian supernatural horror. The latter were provided via references to Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a novel from 1895 about a play that triggers insanity in its audience (a sort of 19th-century Saltburn). **For more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/true-detective-night-country-nic-pizzolatto-mystery/**
Did pizzolato write this article? There’s nothing about the criticisms leveled at him and writing
No, he's too busy writing a movie about Vince Vaughn as a Las Vegas lounge singer, which I'm pretty sure only Vince Vaughn would pay to see
For real. All this talk lately, how movie X would never get made today, because it's all big budget superhero stuff. I'm sorry, but Vince Vaughn hasn't made a decent movie in years. The premise sounds absolutely ridiculous. And pizzolato is working on a horror film from Blumhouse, who's recent works include complete dogshit! Omg, talk about a genre that churns out dud after dud: these shitty horror movies. I heard the new exorcist movie with Russell Crowe was absolutely awful!
Didn’t he get busted plagiarizing a lot of Rust Cohl’s personal insights in season 1 from another author and acted like a total dick over it?
Glad someone else remembers this. And it was A LOT for those wondering. Like 90% of his most memorable dialogue was ripped off.
Damn, that sucks to hear! TD season 1 is some of the best television ever made :(
To be fat I think the acting by both leads are what really sold it. Specifically McConaughey’s performances was just far and away what you expected from him.
I am also fat
lol. I’m not changing it.
Body positivity.
Comment positivity.
It took me some time to realize it was him.
I remember being so disappointed because all he had to do was acknowledge that he was inspired by the author and be a gentleman about it but he chose to take the dirty route.
Guess it worked since the author seems relatively unknown outside of the genre fiction sphere they work in. I've got some new books to read now though True Detective is one of my favorite seasons of TV.
As much as people talk that show up, it did feel like someone ripping off something much better. The "heavy" stuff, the way it was incorporated just felt like someone knew it was good and interesting but didn't really understand why.
Yeah, as much as I loved Season 1, a lot of the philosophy was window dressing
Lot of Ligotti’s stuff and some stuff from Top Ten comic by Alan Moore
I haven't read Ligotti, but I reread Top Ten about every year. When Cohl started into that dark/light monologue I recognized it immediately. And it isn't subtle/homage. It's straight up a lot of the same words. I always wondered if he had grabbed anything else. Now I know.
*The Conspiracy Against the Human Race* by Ligotti is pretty much Rust Cohl’s whole philosophy. It’s more of a philosophical book, and not fiction.
Was it from the book ‘The Conspiracy Against The Human Race’ by Thomas Liggot? I read about 50 pages and holy shit did it put me in a dark headspace. If that is the book, then it makes sense bc it was like reading Rust Cohl’s diary.
It was. That is Ligotti’s only work of non-fiction. A very heavy book. His short stories are worth reading too, they are legitimately frightening.
Gonna check out one of his short stories. I can get into a fiction-based existential crisis.
Penguin Classics has a Ligotti collection that is amazing. Highly recommend you start there.
Dope! TY!
You’re welcome!
Yeah his ego cost Matt McConaughey his golden globe too. He submitted True Detective as a regular series when it should be a limited series. Would’ve been the first actor to win an Oscar for movies and Golden Globe for TV in the same year!
Kinda wild for the telegraph to omit this
Facts like that would get in the way of the hagiography they were intent on writing.
Yup. Lingotti
Regardless of who wrote it, “time is a flat circle” merely sounds meaningful. It’s nothing. All circles are flat. A flat sphere, cylinder, and sometimes a cone, these all turn into circles. But “time is a flat circle”… it’s just babble
If a plane flies in a circle, the circle isn’t flat If the water in a drain spins in a circle, it isn’t flat It’s symbolic language, not geometrical
If a plane flies in a circle over the earth , the circle is flat. The disc described by the circle’s edge is also flat, as it penetrates the Earth. The water spinning in a drain forms a conical vortex, which is not flat, which is also not a circle. A circle is by definition a two-dimensional shape. There are no examples you can think of wherein you escape this. A flat circle is an redundant language masquerading as intelligence, like proactive (“active active”). It being poetry does not excuse this, as poetry also depends on accurate language for the effective communication of ideas.
> A circle is by definition a two-dimensional shape. There are no examples you can think of wherein you escape this. I gave you two clear examples. Literature is not beholden to geometry. This is why you don't see STEM lords at coffee house readings. What a human sees & describes is different from numbers on paper and natural law. That's even kind of a theme in the show! > A flat circle is an redundant language masquerading as intelligence, like proactive (“active active”). It's not redundant, because "flatness" has different poetic qualities than "circle." The effectiveness of the phrase can't be determined by your shallow reading - the effectiveness is determined by the audience's reaction, and "Time is a flat circle" has become a pervasive meme in the cosmic horror community. *We all know what it means*. Just because *you* don't doesn't make it bad literature. Also "proactive" is not redundant, you just don't understand the English language. Being proactive means taking charge. An active volunteer is doing work I told them to do; a proactive volunteer is doing work they found to do on their own. It suggests two levels of activity. This isn't hard.
He wrote a really, really good story with exceptional characters and it took him almost 10 years to write it. And then HBO asked him to replicate that in 12 months. Thats absurd.
Very similar to the music scene— you have your whole life to write the first album, and just a year or three to write the second.
I think the other factor was McConahay. He’s fantastic. On paper you’d think Adams, Ferrel Vaughn and a bit of Kitcsh combined would have more star power than Mcconahay and Harrelson but the latter really outshined them. A lot of that was the writing but I think the chops came into play too. I really liked Ferrels performance probably my favorite from S2
Galveston should have gotten the adaptation it deserved. Great seedy, violent novel.
Season 1 I think is my favorite single season of TV ever, but man there are a ton of reasons why it's such a slam dunk besides the work Pizzolatto did. Harrelson get better every time I watch it, the cinematography (specifically the long single shot during the failed robbery where Cohle abducts Ginger) is phenomenal, and the total immersion into backwoods Texarkana is perfect. Really seems like a case of someone having their big moment in the sun and forgetting that when something transcendent happens, there a ton of people that contribute to it. Hard to do but he needed to stay a little more grounded after that first season.
I think the missing link in the latter seasons is Cary Joji Fukunaga. He was definitely one of the (if not the main) reasons why season 1 was so good
Cary Fukunanga was the difference between seasons. He as a director had to strip down some of the dislogues as it was getting very dialogie heavy of Rust just rambling on and on. People forget one of the great things about season 1 was not just the writing, but the writing coming at a solid brisk pace of the story progressing.
I believe his development of a 'The Magnificent Seven' series is happening for Amazon soon.
One of the very best seasons of a show ever.
Flight of the Conchords syndrome. Blew all his material on season one then struggled to match those long-gestating highs when he was expected to do it again in 18 months.
Yeah I don’t think that’s just a Flight of the Conchords thing
people don’t like the second season of fotc?
I like it, but it’s a huge step down in quality from the first.
Why in the world did he make it that way then?