Step aside, Jon Snow. True Detective may have just delivered the WTF?! television moment of the year by snuffing out on a much less lovable character.
But first, the moments that brought us to that shotgun-wielding birdman and his creepy house of kink:
TD has always been a dark show, but True Detective Season 2 Episode 2 opened in near-total blackness of both the literal and figurative varieties, with Vince Vaughn's Frank Seymon recounting a hellish childhood memory that's grim even by the standards of a show that kicked off its pilot with a shot of deer antlers affixed to a naked corpse.
But despite the telling glimpse into Seymon's past, this installment is significantly less character-driven than the previous outing, and with an undeniably cool dissolve that takes us from the water spots on Vaughn's ceiling to the burnt-out eyes of Caspere's corpse, we're into the thick of the season's central mystery.
Yes, the True Detecting has begun, and as with last season, we're wrapped up in what could be a cover-up that reaches the highest levels of government.
Of course, in Vinci, CA, "the highest levels of government" means an apathetic mayor who seems to spend most of his day drinking behind his desk and bitching about his son.
A bit of gumshoe legwork opens some new doors in the investigation into Caspere's death, but it's clear we shouldn't expect any real answers on that score in the immediate future.
As with TD Season 1 (We really want to stop comparing the two, but similarities like this week's anthropomorphized animal imagery make it tough.) the biggest mysteries are of an existential variety, and it seems that doing their jobs may not be in our detectives' best interest.
The show may have put too fine a point on this dilemma when Velcoro asks a room full of suits if he's even supposed to solve the mystery of who killed Caspere.
The audience is left with no such quandary, as there's a lot of on-the-nose dialogue that holds our hands and guides us to what we're supposed think in this week's episode. (Velcoro's wife's speech about how he "used to be good at being decent" could've come straight from The Character Building Handbook.)
Speaking of character development - it's nice of TD to feature a female protagonist this time around, but if they're just gonna turn Rachel McAdams' Bezzerides into a one-note, tough-talking, whiskey-swilling, porn-loving knife enthusiast, then what's the point?
That said, her confession about her fear of being physically overpowered by a man was the closest the show has come to evoking genuine empathy this season.
We're hoping she'll wind up being a departure from the usual Trope Detective character outline in ways that go beyond her gender and fondness for e-cigs.
The episode showcased the series' knack for going overboard, as well as Nic Pizzolatto's talent for weaving together seemingly unconnected plot threads. (The wince on Woodrugh's face when he's brought face-to-face with his mom's herpes sore is similar to the grimace that the gaping genital wound on the gonorrhea-suffering Caspere brought to everyone's faces.)
What role Woodrugh will play as the case goes forward is unclear, but his storyline is quickly shaping up into one of the show's most compelling, and it delivers some much-needed levity via some amusing real-world parallels. (Troubled starlet Lacey Lindel=Lindsay Lohan, shady war profiteers Black Mountain=Blackwater, etc.)
Now for that big shock that HBO execs are no doubt hoping will everyone talking about TD just like they were in the winter of '14:
Yes, Ray Velcoro - the man who was set up to be the closest thing to a central character in the show's ensemble of A-listers - may have just had his ticket punched in the show's second episode.
Velcoro's observation that "we get the world we deserve" could serve as a tagline for this season (In fact, the quote has figured prominently in the show's recent marketing materials.), but does anyone really deserve to go out by being pumped full of bird shot (hehe) on the floor of some stranger's sex dungeon?
It's just one of many questions episode 2 left us with, as the show continues to create more mysteries than it solves (a trend we can expect to continue for most of the six outings):
Is that it for Velcoro? Did we just witness a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan or the guy who chopped off Ned Stark's head? Is Pizzolatto so diabolical as to set up the Velcoro-Seymon-Breathy Folk Singer meetings as the one thing we can rely on, just to cut the pattern short after two outings? Will Woodrugh's mom ever get that thing on her lip treated?
Tune in next week to find out, and watch True Detective online at TV Fanatic to get caught up in time for the third installment of Nihilistic Law Enforcement Theater.
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