Church In Ruins

Warning:  This review contains spoilers.

You want milk, sugar? I know that’s a weird way to start a review but it’s also a weird way to return to the most gripping cliffhanger this season of True Detective. This entire season I think I have been very generous in my reviews, considering how much I didn’t like the last season I have been giving True Detective the benefit of the doubt. Now that six episodes have gone by and I have only really enjoyed the third, I think my generosity has come to an end.

At the end of episode five, Velcoro and Semyon were ready to have a very interesting talk and instead they essentially had a brunch meeting. Semyon, either didn’t know he had given Velcoro the wrong name or he talked his way out of it. If he genuinely didn’t know then that entire plot point was a giant waste of time and True Detective has just been cock teasing it’s audience for fifteen minutes. Where as, if he did talk his way out of it, that was a very disappointing chat because Semyon has been proven to have the gift of the gab this entire season and that would have been the most obvious outcome. Either way, I don’t care anymore.

As for the crow master’s creepy cabin in the woods, it turns out to have been nothing but Nic Pizzolatto and Scott Lasser’s sneaky way to give Bezzerides her invitation to a filthy old men’s’ sex party later on in the episode. Notice that this episode, Pizzolatto needed some help writing which I find a rather odd fact. Lasser has also helped write the fourth episode, Down Will Come, which up until the shoot out was another dud. Considering Pizzolatto has had no trouble writing the other six episodes and the entire first season on his own it makes me wonder whether he has been struggling this season or whether HBO has had a hand in fiddling with the show’s nether regions. My money is on the former, since HBO generally has a reputation for staying out of the creative teams way.

Back to the episode and Velcoro’s out for revenge on what has been revealed as the man who really raped his wife in True Detective Personal Struggles Street. Episode six has finally helped me realise what’s going wrong in season two of the show, there are too many threads of story going on at the same time, each one overlaps the last and as more add up, the show gets more and more tangled and convoluted. It’s quite a shame because I really did think this season’s characters and plot had more potential than the first but each episode has me going to Wikipedia to read over the recap as soon as I’ve finished just to make sure I haven’t missed anything and not in a fun way like Bioshock Infinite. At least with the first season, I could watch the episode, hate it and move on with my life. This problem, I think is the reason people who enjoyed the first season are disappointed as well.

Now we can move over to Woodrugh, who pretty much does nothing the entire episode. He is relegated to generic cop work and his shallow sexuality storyline is even put on hold. It’s the same for the Semyon’s child talk, which is both a relief and proof that neither of these storylines were ever any good. Only Velcoro and Bezzerides have demons that come out to play. Velcoro has come to terms with the fact that he’s not going to win the right to see his son and even if he does, maybe his son doesn’t necessarily want that to happen. This doesn’t feel like the end of it and I can imagine another bollocks, faux happy ending in a similar vein to the first season. When Bezzerides is not having weird knife fights with the wooden man, it turns out she may have been sexually assaulted as a child. COME ON!!! True Detective, again proving that women are nothing but victims of poor writing and that they can’t be strong characters unless they have a dark past, Mrs Semyon is the last hope.

Both Semyons are still hard at work and they go to talk to Stan’s surviving widow and son, two month’s after he was killed, two months! What? Surely this is far too late, I had even forgotten who they were talking about. Mr Semyon does some other stuff but I’m at the end of my tether here. I’ll just mention the weird orchestral score that was playing under the sex party and get out of your way. As far as I’m concerned, True Detective can either go two ways. There is enough meat left on the bone for Pizzolatto to present two last episodes of enthralling police drama, mob crimes and murder plots, here’s hoping. Or much more likely, the dull personal dramas will get in the way, along with every other boring thread of plot and we will all be disappointed.