HBO's True Detective

In hindsight, S1 was carried by Woody and Alright Alright Alright. But it was hard to realize they weren't going to stick the ending until the last couple of episodes.

 

Truly terrible. It was like the ending of Silence of the Lambs, but only the maze was outdoors.

 

I thought the story was good, but the ending left way too many unanswered questions. Seemed like they needed 50 percent more episodes to flesh everything out that they threw at the viewers.

 

Don't underrate Alexandra Daddario as Harrelson's mistress.

 

Plus the other one who asks for the F in the A, and Michelle Monaghan is easy on the eyes too... but then the last episode has the flower-making.

 

Smoke show

 

This is true of a lot of TV shows today. TV critics are far, far too soft in some of their reviews of certain dramas.

 

which profession is the worse abuser of abstract, nonsensical writing:
TV critics
Whiskey critics
Music critics

I can barely read any of them without laughing. TV critics always try to place a show within some larger social context (i.e., this show is resonating now because such and such shit is happening in Williamsburgh); whiskey critics say things smell smokey more often than John Cheever in his short stories; and music critics try to describe how a goddamn song is supposed to make you feel, when music is the most subjective shit in the world.

Movie and book reviews can often be off the mark in their assessment of a work, but I can actually read them and enjoy them -- usually for how the critic places them within the history of the form -- without laughing out loud or rolling my eyes.

 

I loved S1. S2 was alright but got really lambasted because it feel so far below the mark set by S1.

If you're going to build series by trying to translate that kind of weird fiction genre vibe, loose ends are necessary. Unanswered questions are part of the format.
In a weird fiction/cosmic horror context, reality and existence are essentially unknowable. That is part of the horror, how little we can actually perceive or understand.

I'll give it another shot, because I loved S1 so much.

 

The biggest gripe with S1 is Rust's transmogrification at the end.
There was no epiphany and his 180-degree character turn was not earned by the story.

 

And that he survived at all after being gutted like a fish.

 

That, too, but I was willing to write that off in my suspension of disbelief.