“You shouldn’t have seen that. Try and forget it.” That’s what Roland West says after Tom Purcell walks in on photos of his dead wife and possible daughter.
For inveterate puzzlers, “If You Have Ghosts” provides some choice dates and details to enter into your spreadsheets or tack up on your bulletin board. Lucy Purcell died of a presumed OD just outside Vegas, less than a year after cousin Dan O’Brien’s last known sighting there. Mary July, the “nutty” girl believed to be Julie Purcell, tells stories of herself as “a secret princess” “from the pink rooms.” Someone claiming to be Julie (“that’s not my real name!”) rants to the police hotline about “the man acting like my father”; at Will’s funeral, their grandmother speculated that Julie might not be Tom’s biological child. Roland and Lori (Jodi Balfour) met in 1980 when West and Hays fingerprinted the congregation; they split up two years later and reconnected three years after that, right around the time West “pulled [Purcell] out of that hole.” Will’s backpack and a partly burned sweater—“the evidence” that posthumously convicted Brett Woodard of Will’s murder—appears to have been planted, and a cop who witnessed its discovery in 1980 disappeared in 1990.
That’s a lot of nuts and bolts, a lot of dates and names and overlapping timelines. You shouldn’t have seen that. Try and forget it.
True Detective is always strongest when it favors character-building over mystery-building. Whatever happened to the Purcell children is a tragedy. And whatever happened to them—whatever was done to them—is a mystery, in the sense that it’s unsolved. But it’s not the mystery.
The real mystery, the mystery that matters, is what Wayne Hays did, what his partner did, how those actions changed their lives, their families, their futures. How those actions became their lives. Everything else—even what happened to Julie and Will, even what will happen to Tom—is just so much framing narrative.
From the moment Wayne Hays joins Roland West’s 1990 task force in “The Hour And The Day,” their dynamic has been one of tension and balance. In that first meeting, detectives and camera alike shifted focus between West and Hays. In “If You Have Ghosts,” that uneasy but unintentional shifting of powers becomes a split between the two until Wayne and Roland face off over the possible discovery of Julie Purcell.
“I’m just saying I don’t want us fixating,” says Roland, the boss who’s indulgent but only to a point.
“Until we find her, this is her,” Wayne responds, a man speaking to his equal.
Roland West doesn’t withhold those grainy stills from Tom Purcell just because he wants to spare the man some suffering. Tom hasn’t seen his daughter in a decade; “he could make it into her even if it’s not.” Not everything is a puzzle, susceptible to tireless peering and fiddling.
When the two old men reunite in 2015, their conflict is reduced to its simplest terms:
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes.”
That’s the energy of “If You Have Ghosts” summed up in five words. The episode spends its hour-plus exploring the ways two charismatic personalities, two strong wills, can pull a conversation, and a situation, from one extreme to another.
Roland holds his task force’s attention only until Wayne Hays opens his mouth, and retains authority over his former partner only by mutual silent agreement. The AG’s big press conference (once again held against the task force’s advice) gets upstaged by a former colleague intending to overturn Woodard’s conviction. At dinner with Roland and Lori, Wayne repeatedly shuts down conversation about the ongoing Purcell case, escalating his reasons from “no one wants to talk about that” to a reluctance to shop-talk to the absurd “It’s classified.” From dinner chitchat to last words, “If You Have Ghosts” showcases the struggle to retain command, to control a conversation, to make the last move and have the last words.
In the assault on Brett Woodard’s booby-trapped home, writer/director Nic Pizzolatto delivers a competent, even shocking action scene. But that’s all it is, with none of the taut drama of Cary Fukunaga’s justly famous six-minute tracking shot, nor the brutal efficiency of another of season one’s raids. It’s coherent, it’s startling, it’s gruesomely clear. And it’s almost meaningless, seeing these nameless local vigilantes and back-up cops get blown up or blown away.
The only meaning comes from the quiet culmination of this violence. For Wayne Hays and Brett Woodard, both Vietnam vets, the scene’s sudden, irrevocable slide into bloodshed is far too familiar. Their conversation ends, as Woodard intends it to, in his death at Hays’ hand. But even their tough-guy talk is just another of the episode’s battles to control conversations.
Little Henry and Becca Hays are old hands at changing the conversation. When Wayne and Amelia come home bickering, the two children break up their squabble, and their parents immediately switch from sniping to offers of medicine and comfort. It’s the most effortless of the dynamic shifts in the episode, and it shows how practiced these children are at ending their parents’ fights. It’s easy to imagine the Hays children passing the same notes found in the Purcell kids’ rooms: don’t listen, I’ll always keep you safe.
As the Hays family snuggles down in “the big bed” together in 1990, Wayne Hays fumbles up his stairs in 2015, frantically flipping switches as he searches for his family. Through the open bedroom door, he spots all four of them, himself included, listening to Amelia read The Jungle Book.
This is the centerpiece of the episode—not the gory explosions at the Woodard place, not the quietly fearful conversation between Hays and Woodard that concludes it. Not even the reunion of Hays and West, old men with lined faces and tired memories. Because in this scene in his bedroom, all three incarnations of Wayne Hays appear: the quavering old man watching from the doorway, the husband and father lounging with his family, the stunned detective fresh from a shoot-out.
But there are more than three versions of Wayne Hays, just as there are innumerable versions of us all. Just minutes before, we’ve seen Wayne play two roles in one moment, sending off his babysitting mother-in-law with smiles and hugs, a mask of silent contempt ready to drop over his face just as it drops over his wife’s.
As Amelia tells Lori over dinner, she wrote her first book about the Purcell case, and about “us.” If there’s any mystery left in True Detective that matters, it’s the mystery of how it becomes us, and how to reconcile the many versions of us. In “If You Have Ghosts,” True Detective loses sight of its core mystery: What is happening inside the head of Wayne Hays, a gifted detective and a compelling persuader, as he tries to remember what he’s done and who he has been.
Stray observations
- The disaster at Woodard’s home is later known as “The Woodard Altercation,” as a generation of U.S. military involvement was euphemized as “the Vietnam conflict.”
- Wayne and Amelia’s love scene is smartly handled: a few seconds of intense connection, then a door that shuts us out.
- “Nobody was compelled to look too hard” could be a policing motto in this nation, as well as an explanation of how quiet, systemic racism flourishes under our eyes.
124 Comments
Here’s my stupid suggestion: Old Wayne being back in the documentary interview after they quashed it a few episodes back indicates that not only are we moving freely between the three discrete timelines, we’re moving *within* them as well, jumping back and forth. If that’s the case then Old Wayne May have drawn the wrong conclusion from Amelia’s “children should laugh” book excerpt. He assumes that the mother wrote the suicide note (to push Scoot into moving on?… not great logic there, Wayne) but I think it’s more likely that Amelia’s conversation with the mom took place *before* the note was received, and that it was Amelia who sent it, not because she had anything to do with the disappearance but because a false flag ransom note makes the case juicier for the book she was already planning to write. She’s indicated stability problems in her past and has copped to harmless fabulism (pretending to be other people), what’s to stop her from veering into a bit of harmful fabulism?
The problem with this, and it’s a more general problem with the season I think, is that timeline trickery only really “works” in the context of Wayne’s dementia, his wandering, etc. On occasion the perspective of the show has turned away from Wayne’s toward Amelia, Woodard, and the Purcells, but there’s not much indication that *those* perspectives are as troubled. Why would Amelia’s scenes be out of order?Also: did anyone get a Memento vibe from the old Wayne / old Roland scenes? Like the show wants us to see the two as generally estranged, while trying to conceal the strong possibility that they were accomplices in something that Wayne can’t remember but is trying to uncover, and Roland is going to try and manipulate him now that he knows the secret’s at risk? I have to assume this season is moving toward 1990 Wayne making some sort of bad move / coverup.
While the three timelines are centered on Wayne, they do show events disconnected from Wayne (like the conversation between Wayne’s son and Roland, which Wayne would have no knowledge of what was said). So it doesn’t seem to be a situation where we’re supposed to question the events as being “troubled” or suspect.In the 1990 story, I’ve had the feeling Roland has been full of shit the entire time. Roland is telling Wayne they’re going to do everything to find the truth, while in reality he’s lying to Wayne and really is doing the bidding of his superiors, and probably was trying to use the situation to get Wayne to go along and rubber stamp the new findings.
No the problem is turning over the fact that someone planted evidence in the Vet’s house to make it look like he killed Will is embarrassing to the department and goes against his superior’s mandate which will cause the entire thing to collapse. He can’t get the truth if he doesn’t have the ability to investigate. Its a much more careful balancing act then you think. Especially since we know in the 90s they murder someone who they think is responsible…
Wayne remembers its in the conversation. They killed someone and have been covering it up for 24 years…
I think that’s the most likely answer…he does say he remembers what they did & to not talk about it…& Roland is particularly bothered that he spoke to the documentary folks about “that guy whose name you just mentioned” who disappeared around ‘90…but I’m hoping there proves to be a bit more to it than that…
not to say that you can’t be right about the bulk of that, potentially…but unless I imagined it he went to see the woman making the documentary after he pitched his fit & agreed to further sessions on the understanding that she’d give up her research as a quid pro quo since she had access to facts he didn’t know/remember…so it doesn’t have to require time-skipping to get him back in a room with a camera crew…[iirc & all that…]
I was thinking it was after she read the note, and repeated it because it was in her head. Julie Purcell seemed like she felt guilty for not being a great mom. She snapped at Amelia. In the book that part seems to be left out. There is the question of is anyone a reliable narrator in this show. We know Wayne doesn’t remember everything, we also know he did something with Roland and they are lying about it. Amelia wants her book to sell. Roland has mentioned that keeping his mouth shut helped his career.
They’ve built up his memory issues so much that I’m fully expecting a reveal that he is an unreliable narrator, I just really hope that it doesn’t end up being something completely out of left field and that they’ve been leaving enough breadcrumbs that it feels satisfying to finally find out what really happened.
Pizzoloto certainly is hackey enough to crib from something like The Snowman.
Since Wayne seems to think the shirt and backpack were planted AFTER the “altercation” and claymore going off (that backpack did look pretty damn clean), wouldn’t that imply someone connected to law enforcement is either the perpetrator or covering up the perpetrator as part of a conspiracy?I doubt just anyone could have walked up into the crime scene after the incident.
Yes, of course it implies someone connected to law enforcement is either involved or just wants the case to hurry up and end.
These reviews are a joke. About the procedural elements, Sharp Objects and Homecoming did the same hiding information, but I suppose the reviewer has many moral prejudices about the author (he hates women!). The two old men crying in the porch is one of the most powerful scenes of this year, and the attack was great in its efficient brutality, without showing off.
And btw (STOP READING IF NOT INTERESTED IN THEORIES), to me it’s pretty clear there is a child trafficking ring leaded by the DA, and Julie was talking about him in the phone call. See also the “detective in plain clothes”, the planted stuff and the many deaths around the case.
True Detective Season 1 had similar sex trafficking red herrings with Woody Harrleson’s daughter – and it went absolutely nowhere.
Wasn’t that more suspicion of sexual abuse rather than trafficking?
The two old men crying in the porch is one of the most powerful scenes of this year, and the attack was great in its efficient brutality, without showing off. This season of True Detective has had me in tears more often than I care to admit, the writing and the phenomenal acting of Dorf and Ali has me completely captivated.By this point I don’t care how neatly the show manages to tie the mysteries and the timelines together, the ride so far has been worth every penny of the price of admition.
-which in my case was zilch, using The Woman’s HBO account and all, but it’s the best zero bucks I’ve spent on anything in a long time!
The first paragraph there is a direct quote from Peter W, curse my eager fingers!
For me, that was the best scene. So much zig zagging and back and forth, and then the empathy that Roland has for Wayne. It was so powerful.
This season has been absolutely heartbreaking. I looked after my father who suffered from dementia for 4 years until he passed away, these scenes have been triggering to say the least.
My god, I feel for you.
Not the same, naturally, but my grandfather had dementia and it got ugly.
He had some underlying problems with depression for sure, but he was a second father to me and the most generous man I’ve ever known.
He ended up killing himself while my grandmother was just out to visit a neighbour.
So I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for misty eyed, confused old men.
Yeah, bro. I mean, why do you hate women? Its not so much that Im mad as I just feel bad for you.
You do know that the Partners took the cousin out into the Vegas Desert and blew his brains out for what they think he did…
I hope to god your theory is wrong, as that theory is by far the most obvious takeaway after just watching episode 1 or 2. While this show is more about the relationships and such, I still hope figuring out the mystery still plays a huge role and that it wouldn’t be so insanely easy after the first episode or two.
Yep, that’s my theory too—there’s a child trafficking ring and the mom was part of it/knows what happened to her kids. The jackass who is the AG is in on it and so is the CEO of Hoyt, or, whatever his name is from that chicken processing plant.In the previous episode, Wayne & Roland questioned that guy who lived at the end of that road, near the woods. He mentioned a fancy brown car that he’d spotted more than once. Who was that? Hoyt? I also got the idea that the police (unbeknownst to Wayne & Roland) were involved in the kids’ disappearance in the trafficking ring.
kill yourself
Pizzolatto really likes his shootouts, doesn’t he?
Are you joking? It’s literally the shortest action sequence in the entire series, and the entire point of the scene is NOT the action, but the character interaction between Hayes and Woodard. You bigots are getting downright cartoonish.
3 seasons 2 shooutouts in S1, 2 shootouts in S2 one shooutout in S3, yes how awfully gratuitous. Oh wait no, that’s nonsense. It’s pretty informative reading the nitpicking in the reviews and comments as to just how much Pizzolato gets under the skin of a certain type of reviewer/audience member who needs to be pandered to when it comes to morality.
Even if it’s wrong to say he likes shootouts, I’m not sure how that makes the OP a bigot…
Morbidly funny moment of the episode: Member of vigilante mob – “What’s happening?” (Gets bullet through the head).
Woodard was a human landmine just waiting to go off and the morons walked right into it, figuratively and literally. A whole lot of widows and orphans were created that day. Somehow, I don’t think that the widows readjusted their racial prejudices or the kids learned to be kind to Native Americans after the Woodard Altercation.
These reviews really mystify me. I’m completely captivated.This is a return to series form for me, and if the last scene with old men West and Hayes doesn’t win Ali and Dorff an Emmy, then there’s no justice in this world. That was some masterclass moving acting. It’s a broken record to continue to sing Ali’s praises, but Dorff should get a ton of A level work after this career performance. I’m slack-jawed by his work here, and I feel guilty for hesitating on hearing of his casting.
Agreed. I’ll go so far as to say it rivaled any scene with McConaughey and Harrelson in season 1. It was that good.I can’t wait to see how their past plays out after the myriad of clues and portents these episodes keep doling out.
Same here. Assuming they can stick the landing, this will probably be my favorite season of the show. These reviewers need to let go of their agendas and just do their job.
Letting go of agendas? On Kinja? Not happening.
No kidding on Dorff. As I watch him in this, I just find myself wondering ‘where the hell has he been all these years?’. I expected Ali to be fantastic, but Dorff has been a revelation.
He’s been golfing.
Ha! It took me a second, but now I get it. Can’t go wrong with Tim Conway & Harvey Korman .
Smoking e cigarettes.
I loved him in Somewhere back in 2010, a strong performance that didn’t kick off an A-list comeback; really happy to see him now nailing the kind of role any actor would dream of.
Same on Dorff. When I heard he was cast, it really gave me pause about whether or not I even wanted to watch. I’ve never liked the guy.
But, man, he is outstanding in this series. Every minute he’s on the screen is a treat.
Smoking?
I said the same thing the other day on Twitter. Where has he been? I know he’s had acting jobs but I really hope he gets some recognition and more A list acting jobs.
For me, season 1 was a clear A. Season 2 was probably a C-/D+ sort of effort. As of now, I’d say season 3 is a B/B+, so I’m not that far off the letter grades the reviewer is giving, but if I were writing the reviews, they’d be more positive in tone. For as good as Ali and Dorff have been, I still think McConaughey and Harrelson were better. I liked the Yellow King/Carcosa mythology that cast a bit more of a supernatural light on season 1 (even if things were resolved in a non-supernatural way). And I liked the philosophical issue of nihilism/anti-natalism that was at the heart of season 1 better.
I’d give season one an A and this season more B+/A- thus far, but subjective grades aside, season one is a masterpiece for all the things you say and it’s one of my favorite seasons of TV ever, and it would take something spectacular to reach that height. Like I’ve said before I just want this to be close, it doesn’t need to be better, and so far it’s doing that.
I was nearly in tears during that scene at the end of the episode with the old men. Absolutely Emmy-worthy performances.
They should win an Emmy for that scene alone. Ali is fantastic. And Dorff…I didn’t think much about him before, but, damn, he’s good too. They’re both haunted by the case and the things they’ve done and they’ve both dealt in different ways. This season is on the same high calibre level as the first season. I can’t wait for the next episode.
Scoot McNairy’s powerful performance means that I can no longer judge an actor by their stupid, stupid name. It would be easy for an actor to go really big with such a performance—sobbing, screaming, breaking down—but this is subdued performance that nonetheless conveys the character’s feelings of grief and powerlessness.Ali essentially has to do three versions of the same character—the bolder young man, the frustrated middle-aged man, and the haunted unsure older man—and he really sells it. It’s possible you could spot the different time periods just by performance, without the aid of makeup.And, of course, I’ll no longer see Dorff as the washup actor in e-cig commercials. He brings an easy confidence and weight to his lines.
A-fucking-men. My wife said the same thing – at the end of the scene someone should have walked up and said “gentlemen, here are your Emmys!”
I get where you’re coming from, but on an A – F scale, a B is still solidly above average. I think some reviewers are too quick to give As and I think at times A’s are given relative to a show (i.e. this is an A for a show that is otherwise middling because it happens to be more competent than other shows). I think the review itself hits a lot of the highs and lows. I do think it’s hurt by the fact that I think I’ve seen Ali give better performances.Not that he’s doing badly by any means, but I think when you have an actor who has an impressive resume, it almost acts like a handicap to the show. Season 1 came out when we weren’t quite expecting much for Matthew McConaughy so seeing him do something impressively serious was still a novelty. Even Woody Harrelson as the more by the book cop was a novelty.
Yeah, i just look at the titles and then don’t read them. I’m not really interested in reading week to week coverage from somebody who is not enjoying the show.
Who knew Steven Dorff had it in him? He’s been in a lot of bad crap.
I’m late to watching this season, but I agree with you. I think this season has been great (I also think season two was pretty good). This season is a well-paced slow burn. Dorff and Ali are terrific together, and the scene with them together in 2015 at Roland’s house is fantastic. (The aging makeup has been outstanding this whole time, but that’s another tangent.)
You could see the frustration on Roland’s face as he wants to be mad at Wayne for whatever happened in 1990, but when he realizes that Wayne genuinely doesn’t remember, he kind of crumples and gives in. He’s always liked Wayne, I think, and he can’t hold a grudge when the person can’t recall the offense. And Wayne apologizes, sincerely.
I’m not good at theorizing, but the child sex ring seems plausible. Lucy’s grief seemed real, but if there is a ring and she is somehow in on it, perhaps it was less grief than guilt over letting something happen to her own kids, despite her lack of maternal feeling for them. I also really like Amelia. I know that Pizzolatto has taken some (deserved) flak for the women in these shows, but Amelia is great. She doesn’t hesitate to call Wayne out when he’s full of it, but I think under it all they do love each other, at least as much as they can.I’m looking forward to the rest of this.
Hahaha, I’m so happy to see that you lying critics with an ax to grind are still lying about True Detective. Normal people are LOVING this season and you are making complete fools of yourselves. Keep it up and learn to code!
I’m embarrassed by how many of the plot points relating to the mystery I missed, probably because the dialogue can be a little difficult to discern at times.
This. I think I need to turn on closed captioning because a lot of what hear sounds like mumbled nonsense.
Y’all ain’t from the South huh?
negative. talk normal.
That is normal boss.
Normal English is not incomprehensible. Listen, I’m just effin with you, but yeah it’s hard for us (at least me) to get a grasp of what is being said when it sounds like low key mumbling. I think moving forward I’m gonna have to resort to closed captioning. Kinda sucks having to depend on these reviews to cover anything I couldn’t audibly understand.
I get it, I’ve watched some British and Canadian shows where I know they’re speaking English but it’s still hard to understand, but for real, accents are normal. The English you’re used to isn’t the only “normal” English. Turning on captions will help with comprehension overall though, and you’ll get a better ear for it over time.
Juse put on closed captioning, the show is exceptional. The only one with the strong Southern accent is Rtoland. He’s clear. The rest don’t have accents. Wayne’s vocabulary & banter w/Amelia is elevated, mature. Btw, we’re not all Bumpkins in the South. You’re welcome to visit Tx… Austin, Houston, SA, Dallas, you’d be surprised.
Nah I have trouble with almost everyone on the show. It’s not just the accent, a lot of it sounds mumbled to me. I am going to be using CC for the remainder of the season.
I feel like it’s less the accent and more the sound mix.
I really haven’t had any difficulty understanding them, but it is definitely deep south and that’s a bit harder to understand than other southern accents.
And CC misses things. Like a name when they’re conversing on the porch.
I watch each episode with subtitles. It really helps – I recommend it!
I’ve somewhat damaged my hearing (too many metal concerts in the 90s in my 20s) but damned if there are some scenes where I have no fucking idea what any of them said and I don’t have a captions option.
The sound is as bad as the cinematography and makeup are good.
These days, there’s not a show on TV we don’t watch without the closed captioning on.
I’m all about the subtitties.
Try watching Letterkenny without captions. You miss 50 percent of the jokes.
closed captioning. I have to use it a lot. For some reason a lot of tv shows record dialogue at a very low volume nowadays.
I’m not sure you can use CC on HBO Go, can you?
I just signed in and an epi of season 1 was queued up. there’s a box at the bottom right with CC in it, click there and turn it on.
Cool, thank you! I will use this option in the future.
This show is going great actually.
I am really trying to understand what you are even trying to say with this review @emily. True Detective is playing with puzzles instead of exploring mysteries. This I assume is what you’re attempting to make the case for with this review.“The real mystery, the mystery that matters, is what Wayne Hays did, what his partner did, how those actions changed their lives, their families, their futures. How those actions became their lives. Everything else—even what happened to Julie and Will, even what will happen to Tom—is just so much framing narrative.”I agree with you here but I think you are missing the larger point that the framing narrative is integral to the embedded narrative (or as you would call it the “real mystery”). I think it is unfair to say: “That’s a lot of nuts and bolts, a lot of dates and names and overlapping timelines. You shouldn’t have seen that. Try and forget it.”Those “nuts and bolts” are not superfluous details – in fact quite the opposite. Wayne is a man consumed by these details. This case consumed every aspect of his life and if we hope to unravel the “core” mystery: “what is happening inside the head of Wayne Hays, a gifted detective and a compelling persuader, as he tries to remember what he’s done and who he has been.” then we need to follow the bread crumbs right along side Wayne.
As you noted – True Detective is always strongest when it focuses on character building rather than mystery building. I don’t entirely agree with this but for the sake of discussion let’s say this is true. I am kind of surprised you thought there was a lack of character building in this episode. Let’s take Roland for example. In the 2015 timeline he is feeding his dogs and then goes to pour himself a generous pour of whiskey to go with his coffee. In the 1990 timeline when he goes to check on Tom we find out that it was Roland who helps him get sober and I believe in a subsequent scene he turns down a drink for dessert. Additionally, in this episode in the 1990 timeline Wayne lights a cigarrette in Roland’s car and Roland rolls the windows down. Whatever did happen in 1990 really changed that man because he’s now he’s living at the bottom of a bottle just like Tom. Lastly, the 2015 reunion scene with Wayne and Roland was absolutely stellar both from a writing and acting perspective. To reduce that entire scene down to the five words listed in your article is a pity. To me, I found it to give much more insight into the “core” mystery as you put it than the bedroom scene which you deem the “centerpiece of the episode.” I am not sure how all three “Waynes” being in the same scene moves the “core” mystery more forward than the 2015 reunion scene? Unless, you are referring to the fact that the 1990 Wayne noticed the door open when 2015 Wayne opened it wider? You didn’t mention that in your article so that probably isn’t the case. Could you explain the point you were trying to make with the whole conversation portion of this article? I am not sure I am following.
I share your confusion about this review, and for what it’s worth: This was the episode that finally sold me on this season. If I had to pick one scene that did it, it was the two detectives reuniting as old men.
Stephen Dorff has been great in this, but even his stellar acting couldn’t distract from the terrible aging makeup they put on him. It was unbelievable looking and took me out of the scene.
Damn, i thought the makeup is awesome in this production.
Same here. My wife and I were blown away by the makeup.
Dorff’s makeup grew more believable as the episode went on. Ali’s has always been outstanding. I see an Emmy in Make Up for the crew.
Especially in contrast to how good Ali’s old man makeup has been. Dorff looked like Johnny Knoxville in the Bad Grandpa makeup.
“Nobody was compelled to look too hard” could be a policing motto in this nation, as well as an explanation of how quiet, systemic racism flourishes under our eyes.”
Another entirely out of left field comment meant to tie a television show into TODAY’S HOT BUTTON ISSUES or whatever. It seriously is starting to seem like they have an editorial mandate to put a social justice stinger near the end of every review at this point. ‘Nobody was compelled to look too hard’ because they had an easy answer for a confusing case – police have done this since time immemorial. District attorneys win elections on hastily-concluded cases. Trying to link it to systemic racism is a reach, sorry.
As far as the review itself, we’re seeminglystill wanting the television show to tell us everything up front. The concept of ‘mystery’ seems confusing to the AV Club. Do you want this to be like a cheesy sci-fi B movie where the professor/doctor/scientist walks in near the end to helpfully explain everything? Because that seriously is how it’s starting to seem.
I agree with some of what you said, but I think the reviewer made a good point a couple of episodes back about the distinction between ‘mystery’ and narrative obstruction/trickery. In a standard mystery story, we’re learning information, for the most part, alongside the characters, discovering secrets as they do. (Hays doesn’t know who murdered Will and took Julie, so we don’t either, and so on). On several occasions, however, this show has deliberately withheld things from us that EVERY CHARACTER ON SCREEN is already privy to: “what happened between Julie and her father,” whoever Wayne and Roland are supposed to have killed together and covered up back in the day, and so on. That sort of narrative trickery – holding things back not from the characters, but from us – is less defensible, and more baldly manipulative. (It may be up in the air whether this applies to the scene between Old Wayne and Roland: I got the impression Wayne remembered whoever he and Roland killed together – “I remember, and I remember not to talk about it” – but not whatever personal falling-out caused them to lose touch for over 20 years).
I’m assuming it was the pedophile they locked up in the trunk of their car, no?
“I remember, and I remember not to talk about it” He was saying that in a hypothetical sense, no?Like, if he remembers what they did, he’d also remember he shouldn’t talk about. Not that he actually remembers anything.
It’s probably both. They weren’t inclined to look too hard because they had an easy dead person to pin it on, and the fact he was a minority in the south just made it that much easier to secure a posthumous conviction. Had it not been for another scene in this episode with the evidence clerk CLEARLY not wanting to waste his time digging up a 10 year old evidence box, I might have been more inclined to agree with Emily. However, we keep getting shown how many shortcuts are being taken despite the fact it’s a case about 2 white kids, 1 who was murdered and the other who is missing. We keep getting shown how the smalltown cops are lazy.
Maybe it is showing that the cops did do something because they were white kids, but not that much because they were poor white kids.
I think its less a mandate and more just Pizzolotto trying to remain relevant but showing more and more how lacking is writing is. He doesnt seem like he understands the issues he is trying to shoehorn in, nor does he understand the historical setting he is shoehorning them in to. Its not like its taking place in the Jim Crow era, but in the early 80’s an interracial couple driving around Arkansas would have had the whole community talking long before the murder. Hell, that part of AR had a pretty active KKK presence up through the 90’s.
Nic implied the “Not My Tribe” confrontation was supposed to be light-hearted. He’s definitely wading in deeper waters that he realises and it’s credit to Ali the scene hit as well as it did.
I don’t get how a town that clearly has racial issues doesn’t notice a black man and white woman driving around where two children disappeared. Wayne’s had to deal with several racist a**holes and he’s a cop. Julie goes white trash racist on Amelia. The town went all in with it’s pitchforks with Woodard who is Native American and a vet everyone is quick to blame him. Those people would have noticed an interracial couple in a nice car driving around town. And with a weird eye. Really?
I love how the writers keep teasing Becca’s death. First she was lost. Then last night she had a respiratory illness. It’s darkly hilarious
On a related note, I do like how the Hays’ family life in 1990 is being revealed as more and more similar to the Purcell family life in 1980. And then in 2015, Hays has no idea where his daughter is (whether it’s because he keeps forgetting she moved, or something bad really did happen to her) much like the 1990 version of Mr. Purcell.
Yet, Wayne’s son told him Becca lived in CA, that he had talked with her a few months prior. Just thought Amelia was dead.
I thought the Woodward scene was really effective, it was played from the POV of Hays, he’s been in war and seen some shit, but the clinical way the massacre was shot built up to the thing that really fucked him up, having to kill a man that he empathized with and believed to be innocent of the Purcell murder face to face when he refused to back down, for reasons I’m sure Hays fully understood also being a minority.
I thought there was another trip wire around the house. Maybe it was that bomb in the backyard, but I thought it would have worked well if Wayne saw it, knew to look for it, due to his reconnaissance background.
I think that’s why Hays was so bothered by Woodard’s choices; he mentions it to Woodard before Woodard dies (“You’re going to make me carry that water for you?”) and mentions it again later in the 2015 timeline, IIRC. He is PISSED that Woodard gives up carrying his own weight and consciously chooses to force Wayne to take up his burden, in a manner of speaking.
There are some basic tenets of successful screenwriting that the big names can ignore, and Pizzolatto is doing that. A lot of people buy in to it, but for a lot of us it misses the mark and come across as tedious and unfocused. It’s a lot of “high art” scenes and acting, meandering for weeks in a mess of a story that has an undefinable plot – or a plot that seems to disappear half way through. If a lesser known writer turned in some the these various HBO efforts and star vehicles of the last few seasons, they’d have been told to clean them up, but these guys are past ever being told “no”. Many times being told “no” is a good thing.
Writer-people can nitpick this, but the story is a mixed-race pair of detectives pursue a case of murdered and missing children across time in the deep South. The plot – I have no idea now. We’re weeks in and little has happened relative to driving the story forward along a plot line of the crime against the kids. We have abused and dead native American war vets. Some nearly unbelievable love stories hanging around. Mental illness. Psychotic grade school teachers? Sex lives of TV producers. And now THIS week (half way through the show and several hours in ) it appears the plot has shifted to an unknown murder committed by said detectives. And we’ll probably spend four more hours or TV time meandering around that plot line, maybe going somewhere, maybe not- and it will end in an absolute WTF? finale like Season 1. For those that have forgotten and claim Season 1 is one of the greatest shows ever, start-to-finish, (spoiler) the crime was ultimately just a random groundskeeper busted by tracing a 20 year-old house paint receipt or something (AYFKM), and culminating in a ridiculous B-grade funhouse slasher ending, with M M hoisted on a pike up the gut, only to be neatly stitched up at the hospital…No. Just no. The first half was great. The second half? No…)
These things have some awesome talent on screen, some great cinematography, and the makeup in this series is incredible (although the sound is not very good this season since so many of us cannot discern much of the dialogue). But the core television show is not up to the sum of its parts because the story and pacing are so purposefully off. I get that some people eat this stuff up in these long meandering mini-series, but I’m not intrigued by seven hours of watching paint dry for three hours of watching someone actually paint.
Your comment would make at least a little bit sense if Pizzolato wasn’t a first time showrunner on S1 and therefore not able to get away with what “big names” are allegedly able to do.
This is his third TD production, has other writing credits, and he has writing and direction control of this series. He’s delivering exactly what he wants.
That would be a good response if you hadn’t been referring to all the seasons of the show in your first paragraph.
They’re not mutually exclusive. He worked on a show that was done that way, and he had control of the next two, and other writing credits, and others have been breaking traditional story telling methods – not always to great effect. What’s your point?
My point is, obviously, that Pizzolato wasn’t past being told no on season 1 therefore the basis for your point is invalid.
I mentioned that there other shows and star vehicles that Pizzolatto isn’t even involved in that are breaking the same conventions, some times to poor effect, and we are seeing some of that play out in the these True Detectives and other productions right in front of our eyes, so yes my point is valid. You just wanted to be pedantic and it’s coming back on you.
Not really, Pizzolato was a lesser known writer in S1 and wasn’t in the position you claim.
Well said. This season is not really gripping my attention. It does for a moment or two and then, like you said, the meandering….
I’m not saying we needed to view a full-blown sex scene between Wayne and Amelia, but how does it make sense that Wayne would close the door on his own memories? He’s not reliving these experiences for our benefit. I think it would actually be more fitting that the memory of their first sexual encounter be vivid and passionate. The way it was presented felt a little too restrained, like we were watching network TV and not HBO. Come to think of it, this season has been way more reserved than past “True Detective” seasons – violence is shown fleetingly, the dead child looks just like he’s sleeping, no nudity. It kind of makes this season seem a bit toothless.
Yeah, I thought that was weird as well. Both as a memory of it and the way it played out in real time. If you’re at home alone with a significant other and you decide to get it on, it seems unrealistic that you’d stop to close the bedroom door. If you’re remembering the first time you hooked up with a crush, it’s also weird that you’d mentally close door just when you’re getting to the good part.*I almost feel like they’re overcorrecting for some of the criticism of past seasons they were too willing to throw gratuitous sex and violence. *This gripe is only partly driven by the fact that I find Amelia increasingly attractive and wouldn’t mind seeing her with less clothing.
That thought was in my head, too, that shifting cultural norms are leading to more sanitized television.
They always have the option of male gratuitous nudity.
The HBO CEO of Tits is rolling in his grave
Seems to be some kind of prohibition of showing black people having sex on film or TV. Even on HBO. I mean, it’s very rare. There are some Spike Lee movies, but that’s all I can recall.
In some ways, I like this season better than season 1 in the sense that I don’t think the ending will be as disappointing. Season 1 built to an elaborate conspiracy that it couldn’t pay off. This is convoluted right now, but I can see an ending that is more satisfying when we get to it.That said, I do think some of the mystery box storytelling has its limitations and the three timelines while interesting can also be grating to a point. The Amelia – Wayne dynamic, for example, still hasn’t coalesced for me in its emotional highs and lows, but I think that’s because its non-linear.
Im good. This show is never getting better. The writing is abysmal and the acting is even worse. Except for Michael Greyeyes as. And now that the cute guy is dead, there’s no reason to watch, at all.
So now there’s the supernatural happening on this deeply shitty show. Jesus wept.
I don’t understand the repeated description of Wayne as charismatic etc. He’s cringy unlikeable. In fact, I’m not even sure what Pizzolatto’s goal is here except to torture the audience with Wayne’s various unreasonable outbursts, over various imagined slights that keep him permanently on edge.
I get it. There are people like this in the world. But that doesn’t make it interesting or entertaining. And the fact that the central mystery (sorry Emily but what happened to the kids is the mystery) apparently is unsolved something like 35 years after the fact makes these multiple flashbacks a bit tedious.
I don’t understand the repeated description of Wayne as charismatic etc. He’s cringy unlikeable. In fact, I’m not even sure what Pizzolatto’s goal is here except to torture the audience with Wayne’s various unreasonable outbursts, over various imagined slights that keep him permanently on edge.
I get it. There are people like this in the world. But that doesn’t make it interesting or entertaining. And the fact that the central mystery (sorry Emily but what happened to the kids is the mystery) apparently is unsolved something like 35 years after the fact makes these multiple flashbacks a bit tedious.
All I came here to say is that claymores are not mortars. Not even remotely. A junglerat like Hays would know that immediately.End.
I got destroyed on here for thinking it was something about the previous marriage and that’s who “did it.” — Standing by it, you monsters!
I agree that the reviews mystify me as well. I did enjoy the paragraph for inveterate puzzlers as it’s helpful to keep track of the tidbits. But I am completely captivated by Roland & Purcell.One thing I didn’t see mentioned here or in the comments was the scene with the dirtbag teenager in 1990; how messed up he was by Roland’s interrogation. I find the racial components of the story more undertone than primary, but a white kid traumatized by “harsh” interrogation and fear of being raped by black men was deliciously ironic (as opposed to the overt trauma the black community has had inflicted by the police). And yet you also felt for the kid, just a great moment in a great season.
Doesn’t resonate with me at all.This is the tamest and most boring of the 3 true detective seasons.Smart writing will only carry to a certain point, then you actually have to deliver something.Right now it’s not even delivering a good murder mistery, which it should. It’s not delivering tension, shock, disgust, anything that can make me feel.It’s bland, and some good performances can’t save it in my opinion.
If a scene like the last scene of this episode was in Sharp Objects or Big Little Lies; this episode would have received an ‘A’ by the reviewer. But since this AV Club reviewer is so short-sighted and sexist, the scene got over-looked and thus this episode never stood a chance of getting a well-earned and deserving higher grade.