True Detective

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
It's real good I think. At least, until so far. I dunno why but I dislike most of recent (HBO) series. The only series I have ever completed were Twin Peaks and The Soprano's. I never understood the hype around series like Breaking Bad for example. This is something else though. Here's an article about some of the references to weird literature inside the serie, could be a spoiler I guess so don't read until you have seen the series up to episode two: http://io9.com/the-one-literary-reference-you-must-know-to-appreciate-1523076497
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Started Breaking Bad and it's ok but if it doesn't pick up a lot I aint gonna make it through. So much hype, was basically expecting the second coming of Christ but as a tv show.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
Started Breaking Bad and it's ok but if it doesn't pick up a lot I aint gonna make it through. So much hype, was basically expecting the second coming of Christ but as a tv show.

I guess that's the thing with a lot of shows, everything is so hyped but I guess that's because they perfected the cliff hanger and some other tricks to keep people watching. Try True Detective though, it's really strange and unsettling until now, proper weird atmosphere and I hope it will go full mental.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I certainly will but I want to make it at least to the end of the first series of BB. Don't like leaving things unfinished for some stupid reason.
 

allegiant

Evenly Distributed
Yep, binged the first 5 a few days ago.

Assumed I had a fairly good grip on what was happening until I started reading some of the fan theories and screenshots dissecting each episode. Only then did I realise just how many subtle details I'd casually overlooked.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
LOOOOOVE it. Best show since 'Game Of Thrones' came on the scene.

Best performance of McConaughy's career (wot I've seen). Brilliantly directed. Up until the last episode I thought it was cliched sort of stuff elevated by its execution but it seems like the plot/material has definitely thickened with the revelations that have happened.
 

Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
i've rinsed the first 5 episodes this week. As brilliant as episode 4 is (wow! 6 minute tracking shot etc), episode 5 is even better...

just brilliant
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Really despise BB and the American House of Cards. Can't stand fascination with malicious white men and relentless ambition right now.

True Detective I have cosmetic issues with, but beyond that, I actually am really really fond of it. The writer of the show though, I read his novel and.... YEeeeeeesh. It makes me nervous for Season 2 since they're going to swap out director and cast. Or at least I believe that's the plan.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I have no idea how they're going to end it all in this last episode, seems like they're just getting started to me (or maybe that's just what I wish)...

I'm hoping all these references to cosmic horror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcosa) are going to lead somewhere supernatural/super-creepy, would be an amazing climax to a show that, when it started, I thought was basically an extremely well done trad crime-drama.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
re: Crowley's comments on House of Cards and the changing of the guard on T.D... Ironically I wouldn't mind seeing David Fincher take a crack at it. I loved the way he depicted obsessive police procedure in ''Zodiac'' and (to a lesser extent) ''The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo'. Plus we KNOW he's great at creating tension and creepy atmosphere.

(sorta)SPOILERS

My prediction is that Rust and Marty will definitely not vanquish whoever is behind the murders, but will discover a cult/possibly a THING that the cult worships and both be killed (unless one of them is the murderer, which is possible). Then I'd imagine the next season will feature new true detectives discovering evidence of the same cult... Much in the same way that Lovecraft stories feature a variety of cursed people discovering hints of the same unspeakable gods.

BTW, bringing in Lovecraft as an obvious influence possibly casts the issue, raised in Emily Nussbaum's New Yorker piece (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/criti...40303crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all), of the show's apparent misogyny in a new light. Of course, Lovecraft's work is full of 'problematic' attitudes towards race and sex - arguably the stories are so powerful and fascinating precisely because they sublimate his darkest, more fearful feelings into tentacle-spouting fantasy instead of openly expressing them. At least, this is a fashionable interpretation of Lovecraft's work. I wonder if a similar psychoanalytic approach could be taken to 'True Detective'? Not so much towards the show's creator as towards its lead protagonists, both of whom have very strange attitudes towards women and who find those feelings ghoulishly echoed and exaggerated in the spectacle of a cult raping and sacrificing young women.
 
I was as cynical about Breaking Bad as anyone else, more so if anything. It really kicks off in the second disc of series two where it starts to compare pretty well with all the other highly regarded US TV shows. The third season is good but can't match that peak. I get the feeling that the reason it's so popular with people is not because of the outstanding good bits (which are often in short supply) but because people have low standards and are perfectly fine with the majority of the show which is merely okay.

And as this is likely to become the generic TV thread (lets face it it'll be one-two years before non torrent using non sky sub paying civvies like me get a look in with True Detective), I'll say that one of the key strengths of Boardwalk Empire is that so many of the characters are fresh off the boat. Yay or nay?
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Yeah I think Fincher's departure from HoC completely makes the show bankrupt, so having him invest himself in TD for a whole season would be quite fascinating.

I think a lot of the problem of a show like T.D. though comes from Pizzolatto. I've read his interviews and his work a bit now and I like the guy but he's in this very thing I don't get. This White Male Against The Grain Post-Atheist Thing. This isn't a man who has compulsion to exist outside of an idealized version of himself and how he wants to cut through the world that he so obviously holds disdain for. That's fair and all, but in doing so, he totally makes the rest of the world seem like a bunch of background scenery for his protagonists, and likewise women, persons of color, children to an obvious degree.

I was jokingly complaining about this on tumblr, but in the 6 minute long-shot, which by the way... Don't get me wrong, that was fantastically executed in ambition, result, and just everything else. But you have a Louisiana Trap-House in either 95 or 98 (memory fails me), full of dudes with not one Louisiana accent, and playing "Enter The 36 Chambers". Now the fact that the show's soundtracked by a country industry staple (who btw, does excellent work here and on Nashville, pretty much my two favorite TV shows of the moment) and the author is as stated and while I don't know the director's background, I also don't believe he was going for anything other than something that compliments the scene... But any bit of research into rap of the mid to late 90s shows that Louisiana has it's own essential scene and the notion of dudes listening to a at minimum three year old album like that seems a bit far-fetched to me. It kind of shows just how much these three collectively didn't care enough to think they were being inaccurate. This writer, bless him, he's talented, but he's so into his own little niche life that it's ridiculously exclusionary of a non-white male perspective.

At least for now.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I feel like this has been the case in other HBO style shows I've seen - where thugs are listening to KRS One's latest material and Reflection Eternal instead of Jeezy or whoeverI dunno, maybe I've just got a one dimensional idea of what drug dealers listen to but to me it comes off like the white/middle-class writers have given the d-boys their taste.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Oh no, there's always a certain level of disconnect between the people they're trying to present, and their accuracy to them. The Wire always had this issue where you have someone like Wee-Bay who had a Jacky Jasper (Kool Keith sidekick) poster in prison or listening to Def Jux records while they're having a party... It's ridiculously unrealistic.

The big difference though is that in shows like The Wire and Treme, there's a defined attempt to speak for people who traditionally get left out of America's thoughts... True Detective is not about that, and Pizzolatto seems kind of contemptuous of humanity. I get that's his THING, but it also speaks of a lot of lofty-tower mentality that I have to eyeroll a little bit at.
 

allegiant

Evenly Distributed
My prediction is that...

You're miles off, Corpsey.

It's going to be a far simpler, almost 'typical' conclusion than many people would've imagined - myself included. I never should've bothered with any of the conspiracy theories, regardless of how compelling they were.
 
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