Duck_President_ t1_jdptz0c wrote on March 26, 2023 at 6:22 AM

Reply to comment by strwht12 in The third season of True Detective was excellent by TheShowLover

Season 2 completely missed the tone and what made season 1 great.

In the first season, our two protagonists fabricate a cover story about their heroic deeds, rushing through gun fire, taking down a machine gun bunker like Captain America, when in reality, they executed someone who was completely helpless. What they did was the antithesis of heroic. Its a clever take on the typical crime genre.

In Season 2, they show the fake cover story, except its not fake, they play it straight and it actually happens. Dozens of cops are mowed down in the street by machine gun while literal bombs are going off. But our protagonists with their detective skills manage to dodge bullets and kill the baddies. You know, something you might see in a typical trashy crime thriller show. That scene was so bad I stopped watching the show after that ep.

Dostus-dilih t1_jdumcil wrote on March 27, 2023 at 9:28 AM

The point of the scene in S2 wasn't whether or not it happened though. The point was that it did and it was bad but it was just covered up. It's basically much more noir-ish and i had no problem with it yet ironically leads to the biggest problem of the show - for most of the air time no one actually wants the case solved or are actively repressing attempts to solve it so the plot meanders on useless stuff leaving you with a general sense of confusion until the leads are like "fuck it" but then it comes apart for them quickly anyway and they end up losing horribly because the whole state infrastructure is just one corrupt festering temple. The way violence is handled towards the main characters in the second half is certainly not a typical thriller - 3/4 main characters die pointless, non-heroic deaths due to their pride, ego or honour and the last is forced into hiding as a vagrant with their life utterly ruined following being drugged and having to murder a man to avoid sexual assault and nothing changes at all. It's sloppy and pretty flabby around the edges with some weird dialogue but the structure itself is classic noir.