True Detective promises heavy lifting but shrugs off its weightiest issues
TV Reviews True Detective“The Final Country” feels like it’s breaking new ground showing teenage Becca Hays (Deborah Ayorinde) as Wayne drives her to college, his truck loaded down with furniture and boxes. The absence of adult Becca looms over the third season, starting well before Wayne lost her at Walmart. It’s one more thread tying Wayne to Tom Purcell, whose daughter disappeared at 8 years old and repudiated him by phone a decade later. Strategically reserved until late in the season, grown(ish) Becca’s appearance feels significant. Maybe for a future viewer who can down the season in one long gulp, it will be significant.
When Wayne gets sentimental (and scared), Becca tells her father to stop worrying and start unpacking. “You’ll feel better once you’re lifting something heavy,” she says, knowing him well enough to cut to the truth. Then Becca disappears again (until next week’s finale, presumably). Through no fault of the actor, this isn’t a character; this is a prop to hang Wayne Hays’ feelings on, and his fear. Always his fear.
Mahershala Ali has done a staggering job playing a man embroiled in a mystery that’s half conspiracy and half missing memories, a man pulled from one decade to another with no warning. Whether speaking or silent, Hays’ expressions are layered and complex, even when so much of what he expresses is carefully contained fear: fear of intruders, fear for his life, fear for his family, fear for lost daughters—his and Tom’s.
Most of all, throughout the season, he’s fearful for his mind and his memory. He’s afraid he won’t remember enough to solve the mystery; he’s afraid the mystery is something better forgotten. He’s afraid of the spreading blankness that is his memory, and afraid of the answers beyond that blankness.
This fear—mortal terror and beyond—is best conveyed late in “The Final Country,” after Hays and West creep up on the sedan staking out the retired detective’s home. After a feigned failed confrontation with the driver (actually a successful ploy to get the car’s plate number), Wayne turns to find his partner gone, along with everything else. He’s not alone on his street; he’s alone in a vast, devastating nothingness that spreads out to every side.
Seeing a flicker of light on the edge of that nothingness, Wayne Hays strikes out for it and walks into 1990, watching from a distance as his younger self burns the suit bloodied in the death of Harris James. And as 2015 Wayne gazes at the scene, the Wayne of 1990 looks uneasily around, feeling someone watching. It’s a loop. For Wayne Hays, time isn’t a flat circle. It’s a labyrinth, and there’s a monster inside it.
With just one episode left, the nature of the monster is getting clearer, but even here, writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto is pulling some punches.
There’s a certain exhilaration, and a certain terror, in watching West and Hays turn the tables with their targeted traffic stop. There’s some grim satisfaction in seeing a well-to-do white man, as secure in his position as he is in his skin, being played by a couple of cops just looking for an excuse. Refusing to comply, reaching for a weapon: These are the offenses West and Hays manufacture to justify what they planned to do all along. The metaphor is clinched by Harris’ words as he kneels, cuffed to a post in the lonely old barn where they’re trying to beat the truth out of him. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” he coughs, pleading to be released from his cuffs and allowed up.
But in the end, this scene chickens out. Harris James, bloody and wheezing, isn’t succumbing to the vicious beating. He’s not begging for his life, not really. Wily to the end, James talks his way out of his cuffs and attacks Hays, forcing West to shoot. And shoot. And shoot.
It’s a small plot point but a big loophole. These men, you can almost hear the writer say, didn’t set out to kill Harris James. They wanted to question him. They wanted to “ask hard, like we used to.” But his death is his own doing, a choice they were forced to make, not a natural consequence of their violence.
That isn’t ambiguity. It isn’t poetic. It’s narrative cowardice.
Amelia Hays can face the depth of her husband’s guilt, even if the writer who created them can’t quite. Waking in the dark to find Wayne stripped to his boxers, burning the rest of his clothing in a barrel, Amelia is able to take in the scene and its terrible implications and say simply, “In the morning, we have to talk. Will you talk to me in the morning?” And when a mysterious phone call interrupts that talk, she understands Wayne, and his fear, well enough to let him walk out one last time.
As Wayne asks Amelia for that permission, knowing that walking out will kill his marriage but staying will do worse damage, Mahershala Ali shows yet another form of the submerged fear that characterizes Wayne Hays. He’s quiet, calm, and firm, but even as he’s asking, his fear sits in his eyes: fear that she won’t trust him one last time, or maybe that she can’t.
She does. She has to, if only narratively, because a woman who’s awakened in the middle of the night to find her husband burning evidence knows how dire his situation must be, even if she doesn’t know why. And she knows the rest of their lives hinge on that phone call.
Amelia, who wrote her first book about the Purcell children, believes herself the keeper of their story. It takes Margaret (Emily Wilson), Lucy Purcell’s best friend (and another True Detective character so insubstantial, she barely exists), to point out that she’s not. Everyone has a story, and everyone believes themselves the best steward of their story. “Somebody’s got to stay,” Margaret tells Amelia, explaining why she stayed in the neighborhood when even Tom moved out. “Somebody’s got to remember.” The two women wrestle over that Halloween snapshot of the Purcell children (and two adult ghosts shadowing them) with telling determination.
Elisa, with her many interview subjects and sheaves of research, thinks she’s the one telling this story. She never even noticed that Wayne Hays has been playing the long game, stringing her along with half-told stories while he quietly, patiently pumps her for information. The instant she spills her suspicion—that the disappearances lead to a human trafficking ring catering to pedophiles, complete with a link back to the first season—he’s done.
The instant she spills the info he’s been waiting for (her conclusion that the disappearances lead back to a human trafficking ring, complete with a tie back to season one), he’s done. “I’m tired of walking through the graveyard,” Wayne says. “The story’s over for me.”
Wayne Hays’ story isn’t over. That’s next week, and I expect the finale to do a lot of heavy lifting that earlier episodes shrugged off. I hope so; we’ll all feel better once we’re lifting something heavy. This week, it was more of the same: a beautifully shot, beautifully performed miasma of uncertainty—not the heady, complex ambiguity of the imponderable, but the lax indecision of a writer who doesn’t know quite what he wants to say.
Stray observations
- “You feel like you let Tom down. This is how you make it right, Roland,” Wayne tells his partner… the same partner who told him, “This is our job. It ain’t here to make you right.”
- Elisa’s theory notwithstanding, it seems obvious that Julie was taken for “Miss Isabel” Hoyt, who lost husband and daughter in a car accident three years before Julie’s disappearance.
- A sad but not remotely surprising end for poor Tom Purcell, who worked so hard to pull himself “out of that hole.”
- “You manipulative, egotistical, uppity fuckin’…” Roland doesn’t have to finish that sentence, because they both know where it was going, and because “uppity” said it for him.
- For those who didn’t recognize the voice on the phone, that’s Michael Rooker as Edmund Hoyt.
168 Comments
I’m thinking the connection to the first season is just an Easter Egg and a red herring and not a revelation that we are going to get payoff to season 1. It does seem like Miss Isabel Hoyt had Julie at least for a time. The whole “Mary July” thing also seems like it might connect to the idea of a Mr. June. Almost like Julie is talking in riddles with the pink rooms and such — probably not really fully understanding or knowing what happened to her in some ways.I’m interested to see how much Wayne knew before his memory failed.
Unless a big swerve is coming, he knows the whole story, but dropped it because Hoyt knows he killed James. He cut a deal, but forgot it, and then Elisa comes along and stirs all this up and he starts investigating again.
Possible. Although I could also see a version of events where he was just told to forget about it, potentially paid off and that was that. Only now he can’t remember that part.
That makes total sense. To me the big question being dangled in front us this whole season has been pretty simple: what is Hays forgetting* that is critical to our understanding of the case? It would be weird if his condition turned out to be just a way of developing his character and in no way relevant to the case and how it’s being presented to us through his eyes. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s made for an interesting story unto itself, thanks in no small part to Ali’s awesome performance, I’d just be very surprised if it didn’t turn out to be case-relevant.)With that primary question in mind, a secondary one has been marinating in my mind the last few weeks is: does Roland know about the thing that Hays is forgetting?** The next branch: if so, is he not revealing it in order to protect Hays from some kind of guilt or pain, or is he hoping to avoid some consequences of his own if Hays remembers? *Whatever Hays is forgetting, is it strictly random memory loss due to a medical condition, or is he (subconsciously) choosing to suppress something that is just too painful to recall? I’m very interested in stories about PTSD and his experiences in Vietnam were mentioned early on but then kinda dropped…….I get the feeling a payoff is coming in that area.**My guess is yes.
It seems pretty much a certainty that Julie didn’t understand what happened. She doesn’t know her brother is dead and seemed to blame Tom (“the man calling himself my father”) for what happened.
I also wonder how much Lucy was brainwashing her daughter as part of this. There was the implication that the cousin might have been at least Will’s dad. I’m wondering if she said he’s not your father to her in the midst of all of this. I also think that Lucy probably had something to do at least with how Will’s body was positioned (mirroring the picture) and obviously the letter even if it was an accident and he wasn’t supposed to get hurt.
I’ve been fairly certain from the beginning that Lucy was involved, whether tacitly or otherwise, so I think her telling Julie some big lies is pretty believable (poor phrasing on my part). I can’t recall now how old Julie was at the time of the murder & kidnapping, but there have been plenty of real-life stories about kids being taken and eventually believing whatever their kidnappers said re: their parentage and history etc. So the whole “that’s not my dad!” thing could ring true.Watts connects with Lucy and says he can give her daughter a new life with a rich father/family (Hoyt, procuring a replacement for his granddaughter so his daughter won’t go completely insane). Lucy, being a depressed addict, says yes in exchange for money/dope etc. She either doesn’t care about Will because she’s ashamed that he’s a product of an affair, or she genuinely doesn’t know that he’ll be put in harm’s way in this deal. (The perpetrators, meanwhile, know that they can silence her via blackmail if she objects to the outcome.) The connections to the pedophile ring that Rust and Cohle waged war against in S1 are a slight red herring because, even though this ring certainly exists (IIRC when S1 ends it’s acknowledged that they didn’t get everyone) and was even probably utilized to kidnap Julie, the endgame of the perpetrator (Hoyt) was different this time. He wanted a young girl, alright, but in this case the motive was to supply his daughter with a replacement. But, maaaan…….I don’t know, maaaan…..*puff puff pass*
“but in this case the motive was to supply his daughter with a replacement.”For someone as rich and powerful as Hoyt, there are plenty of much more safe and legal means of doing this. You may be entirely right, which would make this story incredibly over-the-top nonsensical.
I do think it’s worth questioning how much involvement Lucy had and whether or not Will was supposed to be there. Because I agree, easier/legal ways probably, but if you have a desperate woman looking to offload a kid to what she sees as a better life, it may have been orchestrated as a more straightforward disappearance. I suspect things went pear-shaped because Will was present and ended up getting killed. If Will had gone with her and Julie had just disappeared and Lucy didn’t hang around to cooperate with detectives and Tom still had another kid to worry about so he couldn’t just spiral, it probably wouldn’t have had the same weight that it did. It would just be a missing kidnapped girl. At least in Lucy’s head, Julie would be living a much better, richer life.
Right? Why not just adopt? Can’t really disagree, but until we see the finale it’s hard to say. There could be angles to it we just don’t know about yet. Maybe Hoyt’s daughter somehow fixated on Julie. Maybe Hoyt couldn’t adopt for legal reasons. Maybe he was feeding multiple urges and wanted to kill one child while also obtaining another. I mean, it’s Michael Rooker…….that fool is capable of anything.
I took when she said “the man calling himself my father” to reference Kindt, the DA that took the mic after Tom stepped down, and we were just supposed to think she meant Tom. But now I don’t know anymore.
Kindt never called himself her father.
Forgive me, I wasn’t more clear. I thought maybe perhaps if he was involved with her disappearance, he said he was her father to her as some kind of brainwashing thing. Not that he said that during the press coverage.
Ah, I would certainly not have come up with that hypothesis!
the connection to the first season is just an Easter Egg and a red herring and not a revelation that we are going to get payoff to season 1.Agreed, and I would be genuinely disappointed if any more references to S1 of any kind were made in the finale. This season has been excellent and deserves to stand alone. The pop-culture navel-gazing is already bad enough, we don’t need nostalgia candy for something that happened five whole years ago.
I think it is interesting to suggest that there might be a larger conspiracy at play, but I don’t want a tagged on “Oh and Marie Fontenot was hanging out in these pink rooms too before the stuff in Rusty’s videotape of her.” Because it is interesting if unconnected that 1990 is chosen as the year for that and 1990 the year it looks like Julie was spotted as having gotten away from her captors. But as interesting as I find speculating, I don’t think it will make for good TV.
I think they’ve already established the conspiracy – Hoyt and his people kidnapped Julie, and while plenty of people (Harris, for example) are aware of it, they’ve been well compensated to keep quiet. That’s a conspiracy. Re: the pink room, I think what I said before – that Hoyt may not be running the larger ring, but it was at least utilized in part to get him what he wanted; he may just be a client himself at this point – would still stand and make sense without having “Marie Fontenot wuz here” scratched into the wall. In any event, I am definitely looking forward to the finale.
The only part I’m not convinced of is the “larger ring part.” It might come in to play, but I think like Season 1, there won’t be pay off for that beyond solving the immediate case. I’m hoping I’m wrong!! I’d love some more connection to Season 1 and some more info on that side of things.
“But his death is his own doing, a choice they were forced to make, not a natural consequence of their violence.”What? Harris wouldn’t have been in that position if Hays and West hadn’t kidnapped him, beaten him, and threatened to kill him. So his death is ‘a natural consequence of their violence’. What is your complaint here?
It’s the same complaint this reviewer has had all season. It is not the exact show she wants. So, if it is any different than she wants, it is bad somehow. I mean it is patently obvious that his death is due to them. He would not be there had they not pulled him over to ‘interrogate’ him. But no, he needed to be beaten to death to satisfy the story our reviewer wants, rather than shot to death. Either way, I wasn’t too sad with him getting killed…..
This has been a big issue on the AV club for a while. I forget who reviewed last season of Atlanta, but they docked the Barbershop episode because they saw the title and were disappointed the whole episode didn’t focus on the actual barbershop. That episode, imo, is one of the tops of the season and the reviewer focused on how it wasn’t as good as it should of been because it wasn’t what they wanted.
Also, there weren’t enough Klingons in that episode of …….That is what criticisms of this sort come down to.
I’m starting to think reviewers can’t take an objective look at a tv series, it’s like the creator/writers didn’t realize they are only to write for a small group of people who get paid to bitch about tv shows.
It’s the same complaint this reviewer has had all season. It is not the exact show she wants. So, if it is any different than she wants, it is bad somehow.
he needed to be beaten to death to satisfy the story our reviewer wants
DING DING DING
I think there’s a good deal of truth to what you’re saying & I’m not looking to make a case that they’re right to constantly complain that the show isn’t telling the story they’d like in the way they’d like it to…but on this one item I have some sympathy for what I think they’re driving at…you can’t expect us to see no parallel between two policemen beating a man to the point where he claims he can’t breathe & the tragedy that made “I can’t breathe” a hashtag…but even with such a character as we’ve been lead to believe that one to be apparently having him die from a premeditated beating would paint our protagonists in too dark a light for the show’s purposes…so he has to force the issue & allow one to shoot him to save the other & the other to shoot him as a reflex in the heat of the struggle…thus making neither fully or singularly responsible & leaving both in a grey area as far as straight up murder is concerned…since they don’t get the answers they want it’s plausible that they didn’t intend to kill him all along but it’s hard to see how they ever could have walked the situation back even if they had…false arrest/imprisonment & all the rest has to make any information they potentially gleaned fruit of the poisoned tree as far as a court would be concerned, after all…so to make the reference when the victim is an embodiment (of sorts) of white privilege & the cop who isn’t (most likely) gay is a black guy seems likely to have been knowingly done & having him die the way he did instead does make that reference come across somewhat half-hearted…
Oh sure, that kind of nuance I like. Indeed, I looked over to my wife and we both noted the irony of the situation.
Show writers can’t win on this site. Either the story goes in a direction the writer doesn’t want to see, so it is deemed “tone deaf”. It’s either “too slow” or as they love to say here, it’ll go too fast and the result won’t feel “earned”. The reviews talk about Pizzolatto, or Ryan Murphy, or whomever runs The Walking Dead, the writers, the producers. If a minority character gets killed off that’s when the real bitching begins (even though more often than not, the actors playing those characters were merely moving on to new projects).Last year, almost all reviews had mandatory Trump references in them, whether they needed to be or not. Sometimes they were mashed in there haphazardly. It’s like these articles need certain keywords in order to show up in internet searches. Like they’re playing with clickbait formulas instead of exploring the characters and stories we HAVE, instead of whining about the characters and stories they WISH we had.
See my posts above (if they show up) but yeah I’m with ya.
But his death is his own doing, a choice they were forced to make, not a natural consequence of their violence.
That isn’t ambiguity. It isn’t poetic. It’s narrative cowardice.Is it Emily? Is it? That the writers didn’t mirror the tragic death of say Eric Garner you find that cowardly? Is this some desperate mandate that you feel dramas now need to revisit/signal contemporary examples of terrible police brutality as if people forget (I can’t breathe isn’t obvious enough?) — all the while willfully ignoring the fact that Wayne Hays is so shattered and consumed by guilt while burning his clothes that it remains a memory so pungent it still haunts him as he walks the pitch black streets his mind even in his advanced stages of sundowning.And what if that did happen? That would remove from the narrative how calculating and diabolical Wayne Harris was to his last breath, clearly hiding something of great magnitude.Emily you have throughout these reviews criticized this show for issues that you don’t feel are emphasized enough to your liking, your single issue prism concerning race. This when virtually everyone posting have clearly commented on the racial layers that have weighed heavy in these three time frames some subtle and organic, others more apparent. You aren’t being woke, you’re being disingenuous.
You’re really hitting the nail on the head with Wayne being consumed by guilt over the Harris James death (one James most definitely deserved), since we even see old man Wayne in the great scene a couple episodes ago in Amelia’s office with the “ghosts” of the dead. The only one Wayne touches on the shoulder and says “I’m sorry” is the caucasian man in the suit which looks an awful lot like Harris James.Then we get the clothes burning scene this episode you mentioned, to further hammer that home along with all the actions and behavior from Wayne throughout the season.I’d go further to say that judging this Harris James thing before seeing next week’s finale is even more of a head-scratcher, since I’m sure there will be more information and reveals that — just like every other part of this story — will enlighten this and other events over the course of the season. Who knows what Hoyt will say to Hays since they are like two superpowers that have nukes with mutually assured destruction capabilities, and can probably admit anything to each other in that car. As some have commented Hays may have had to withhold (I think I heard that word last episode…. hmm) information and then even forgotten some very important details in 2015.
I’m still sitting here blown away that the reviewer experienced this scene as racial catharsis rather than the route of the guilt and turmoil Hays has been haunted by all these decades (well, on top of Vietnam). If anything, there was some satisfaction that the guy who seems to have murdered Tom Purcell got what was coming to him. But it’s still an empty “victory.”
On a second rewatch last week I told my wife, “There’s one guy in a suit in the back.” She attributed it to dreams being random, but I figured since it’s a TV show it had a specific meaning. I didn’t notice he apologized to him!
Well put. This article goes into the annals of Misbegotten AV Club Reviews alongside Sonya Saraiya’s ‘WKRP In Cincinnati needed to do more social commentary’ and David Sims’ ‘30 Rock spends too much time telling jokes’.
“Parks and Rec fucked up by making Leslie pregnant” published 1 day before they time jump past it
And don’t forget Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya’s hatred of Outlander every week because a time traveler from the 1940’s (Claire) only complains about slavery in 1760’s NC, not magically ends it somehow? I guess? I never really got what she wanted the show to do to solve it. (It’s a time travel fantasy. . .so there’s that)
“SIIIIIIMMMMSS!!!”
Ah, the good old days, where Sims would scold Seinfeld reruns for not being woke enough, except we were still using “problematic” then. Woke wasn’t a common term yet.
I’m certain SIIIIMMMMSSS thought all humor was problematic. He was ahead of his time!
I love when AVC “looks back on the legacy of [whatever]”. You know it’s going to be a “Find the Unacceptable Stuff People Said in 19XX”.
It’s the weaker—perhaps softer is a more generous term—move from a writing perspective even without the contemporary tie-ins (I can’t tell whether Emily was considering them as separate issues). Not only is the “we had no choice” setup of the villain dying as a result of their own betrayal played out and a cliche of the genre, but it avoids forcing the characters to truly contend with the gravity of what they are doing.If they beat Harris to death trying in vain for answers, that tells us something new about the characters.
If they can’t get answers, and Hayes is willing to kill Harris to protect himself and Roland—maybe even against Roland’s wishes—that tells us something about Hayes and about his relationship with Roland.
But them behaving stupidly and uncuffing someone they consider guilty of several murders—when it turns out he’s so lightly injured that he can take on Hayes, who is obviously larger and in better shape—not only doesn’t make sense from a character perspective, but it completely sidesteps forcing the characters to make moral and strategic choices.
Yeah, undoing the cuffs was a DUMB move and I wish that scene had been better written.
As they were undoing the cuffs and the camera zoomed in on his hands, I fully expected to see his fingers go slack and then we cut back to Hays pulling away in horror to see that he’d died of internal bleeding. Everything that came after was lazy writing imo so I kinda agree with the reviewer in that respect.
Not only that, but he uncuffs him while armed. That seems like a dumb idea.
it turns out he’s so lightly injured that he can take on Hayes, who is obviously larger and in better shape—not only doesn’t make sense from a character perspective, but it completely sidesteps forcing the characters to make moral and strategic choices.
I agree that their lack of care in taking off the cuffs doesn’t align with their character, but A) it doesn’t matter if Hays is bigger at that point – once Harris lunges for the gun, everything changes. This isn’t a boxing match with all its attendant preparation. If you were strapped and someone smaller than you, weak from a beating, suddenly grabbed your weapon, it’s chaos. And B) it in no way avoids the characters making moral choices. They made their moral choice before even pulling him over on the road, and it could be easily argued that Harris dying due to their fuck-up is in fact not only NOT an escape from consequence, but the single greatest moral consequence that could possibly have resulted from their choice. As for “contending with the gravity” of what they did, that struggle literally started the moment Harris died. Every single second of the remainder of that episode – beginning with Hays and Roland arguing and ending with Hays getting into Hoyt’s car – deals with the consequences of what they did. A more belligerent version of me would ask “dude, did you even WATCH the rest of it???”. But obviously you saw it and just came away with a different interpretation. I just don’t understand how one can think Hays and Roland escaped significant ramifications. Hell, even as the scene unfolded I was annoyed with Roland for blaming Hays; I wanted to shout “take some goddam responsibility for your actions!”. What annoyed me was that he was deflecting the guilt. Plus we see Hays burning his clothing, clearly in a morally dark place, refusing to tell his wife what happened. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Hell, it’s strongly hinted that Hays loses his family over this. They’re not even done with the ramifications. Lord knows the finale ain’t gonna be kittens and rainbows……..
I kinda agree with this but also with the larger point AJ is making wrt to the critic’s overall approach to her reviews. Trying to mirror the Eric Garner incident would’ve opened up its own can of worms imo but it’s pretty clear to me that there’s a version of that scene where Harris dies only from injuries sustained from Roland beating him senseless.
Or perhaps, the narrative they chose to go with (one that’s still unfinished) opted to portray the officers as two guys who wanted to take it far, but not that far. And they mistook a lifelong assassin for the security guard he was pretending to be and let him go. And then events unfolded.Or any number of things. I can’t stand second guessing and presumption of authorial choice. Maybe none of those things was even considered. Just judge the whole for better or worse after it’s finished. But don’t try to fan fiction it.
A large problem is that the show doesn’t make clear that the characters have an endgame in mind for the Harris interrogation. It’s clear by their reaction to having killed him that they didn’t mean to (or maybe didn’t mean to before they got the info they wanted?)—but what were they going to do with him when they were done with him? Let him go? Take him in? How was that going to work? So their reaction to having killed him was puzzling.
Yep, this trope has been done to death – I was certainly disappointed when the show took the typical approach to culpability for an unplanned murder. If you’re going to spend several episodes hinting at and building up to a big “villainous” moment for your protagonists, at least have the balls to follow through on it instead of doing a cheap copout.
“There’s some grim satisfaction in seeing a well-to-do white man, as secure in his position as he is in his skin, being played by a couple of cops just looking for an excuse.”
I’m sorry, but this is fucking terrifying. If you get ‘pleasure’ out of police brutality because it’s aimed as a white person/upper class person, you really need to do some soul-searching. That isn’t social justice, that’s payback. It obliterates the idea of the individual and makes them into a type to reap vengeance upon. The hypocrisy of this point of view should be apparent. ‘Fuck him because of the skin color he was born with’ cuts both ways, and it’s never excusable. So no, I don’t take ‘pleasure’ out of anyone meeting police violence. It isn’t magically okay or even ‘satisfying’ if the victim is the ‘bad’ color.
The pleasure she got is sick because she never references the fact that this guy is certainly a murderer, and a corrupt, evil man. She simply says she basically got off on a white man getting beaten by cops.
Yes this. This statement and the ‘hope’ or glee behind it is absolutely ZERO difference from Liam Neeson going out looking to beat up any ‘black bastard’ he encountered. It’s utterly the same concept.
yep. and if your argument is ‘it’s okay because white people are the majority’ or ‘it’s okay because some white people are racist shitbirds’…you have serious, serious problems you need help with.
What the hell are you talking about? I agreed with your whole statement.
sorry, i meant the theoretical you. phrased it badly.
Ah! Ok, no prob. Remember, here be trolls lol
I read a review like this as a symptom of the notion that the primary purpose… the mandate… of fiction is “woke” sermonizing (that’s hard not to view as virtual-signalling) with honest storytelling being secondary.
I haven’t read any previous reviews (on this or any other site) but regarding this episode, I’m going to agree. Of course it’s a consequence of their (violent) actions. They had a plan, they pulled him over, they isolated him and tried to beat a confession out of him. Any cop with a lick of sense goes into that situation knowing it could go south in all kinds of ways, including the death of their prisoner (be it accidental or otherwise). As you said, the guilt that Hays feels is obvious. To think the screenwriter dodged some sort of responsibility here is just a bizarre reading from anyone, much less from someone whose job it is to critique the material. This is on the level of Zack Handlen’s truly strange inability to understand some of the most basic (and truly unsubtle) themes of a show he had been literally covering for years (The Walking Dead).So no, it’s not narrative cowardice. She may be right that it’s not poetic, but since that wasn’t the aim it’s a worthless criticism. I will agree with her, though, that it is not ambiguous. Unfortunately, it was so unambiguous that she had to go invent a lens through which to see the material, and completely misunderstand it in the process. Ugh.
Well put. This is why Emily writes for what’s left of the AVClub while Nic Pizzolatto makes a hit TV show.
You aren’t being woke, you’re being disingenuous.
– The A.V. Club
“Uppity said it for him”. I mean… WHAT THE FUCK?
I think you’ve misinterpreted what was being called narrative cowardice dude because you’re itching for a fight (or maybe some ‘likes’ on the post) rather than paying attention. I think this is the key part:“a small plot point but a big loophole. These men, you can almost hear the writer say, didn’t set out to kill Harris James … his death is his own doing, a choice they were forced to make, not a natural consequence of their violence.”
The contemporary race issues and connection had already been written about, the point here is that the writers gave those two a moral ‘out’ for killing Harris James, both for them but more importantly for the audience. They allow us to excuse them viciously beating him to death because ultimately his death was in self defence.
If they wanted to stay true to the exploration of violence and it’s repercussions throughout all 3 series, wanted to really explore just how far these guys had gone, or just make a much stronger narrative then Harris James should have died from his beating before he could talk. Irregardless of any wider social discussions it would’ve made for a stronger more impactful moment, it would create a more sincere conflict in the viewer as the people we are routing for did a terrible thing (or did they? Given the circumstances etc) it’s just a much better way for that scene to go and would give an even punchier end and set up to the finale.
By making them shoot him in Self defence a viewer gets to have a way out of confronting the fact that these good guys aren’t so good, “they had to kill him he was gonna shoot them” rather than “holy shit their obsession drove them too far and they just beat their best lead to death.”So yeah, I agree with the reviewer here, it was a cowardly cop-out and a better show (sopranos, the wire for obvious examples) would’ve allowed for the protagonists to play out the dark path they were heading towards and create more conflict for the viewer.So yeah, instead of desperately trying to pick a fight with a reviewer because apparently you don’t like the idea on confronting race related issues in america head on and reading about it makes you uncomfortable, maybe take time to count to 10, deep breaths, and read what was actually being said in the review.
She can’t write reviews for shit. I’m sorry. I’ve tried dancing round it but fucking hell. Hays’ relationship with his daughter is strained. We know that. His lack of recalling memories of her doesn’t make her a PROP (another of her favorite go tos), it just makes NARRATIVE SENSE.Then of course, the barn beatdown gets the social justice treatment.Just review the fucking shows instead of all this real world issue baiting bullshit.
She’s a white woman trying to talk about racial issues. What else would you expect from her?
It’s literally what she does in each and every review. This one is actually less egregious than most. She had police brutality and the N word to work with.
This is actually pretty good.
You nailed it. Every review since Kinja bought AVClub have gone down the tubes.
Its been stated many times before but Ali and Dorff have such incredible chemistry.Amelia is genuinely concerned and spooked but her personal interest/gain still remains her top priority. Very much looking forward to the glimpse behind the curtain next week. That phone call was thrilling.
Season 3 and 1 covered up a lot of flaws with some amazing acting.
I found it jarring that Amelia was annoyed that Wayne didn’t come home to watch the kids, and promptly left them unattended in the car outside a shady bar to persue her own agenda.Also note that Emily found this too unimportant (or too uncomfortable) to even mention.
I’m not sure I’d go with jarring myself but I do think the lack of notice that aspect got above the line is odd…whatever became of Amelia (& whatever led to Wayne’s estrangement from his daughter) hasn’t been revealed in full but his decision to work late & ignore the pager read to me as significant…he does end up doing some “real work” but I got the impression he chose to stay & plug away at it in part to try & prevent her going out to further her own investigation, which has repeatedly been shown not to sit well with him…Amelia’s own fear when she can’t see the kids being at least a clue to the extent that she knows she’s putting more on the line than she should be to scratch her own version of that itch, it seems as though it might be (for want of a better word) polite to acknowledge something the show has spent considerable time developing with a line or two…if there’s one thing all three seasons seem to have in common after all it’s that the question of who is invested in getting to the truth (& why/how they are/do) is in many senses more interesting than the truth they uncover…
Man, Tom Purcell’s death hit me hard. I really connected to that character and, even though I knew whose body it would be, the reveal still got to me.A tremendous episode, coming at the end of a tremendous season. I’ve found a lot more depth to this season than the reviewer has. Woodard’s arc was powerful for me, and I wish we got to see more Native characters on television dramas. Generally, I was somewhat worried about how True D would deal with race since it’s not something it has much touched on in the past, but I think it’s done an exceptional job of it.I went into this season hoping for yet another creepy mystery. It delivered on that. What I didn’t expect was the beautiful portrayal of friendship. That has gotten to me week after week.A unique comeback for this show. Eager to see how it concludes.
Seeing Tom’s lifeless body – even though you knew it was coming – was a tough pill to swallow. And West looked devastated. Also agreed that Woodard was effectively presented as a true tragedy. Even if this season’s mystery ends up falling a little flat, it’s an achievement in memorable characters.
I think the only reason seeing Tom dead didn’t hit me harder was because I had no hope for him anyway. Unless the finale changes something about his arc, it’s just a brutal end to an awful situation to which there really was no decent end. Just eternal fucking hell.
I wish they hadn’t shown Harris James behind Tom at the end of last week, or Tom breaking into the basement. That was telegraphed a bit too heavily that Tom wouldn’t be with us this week. Maybe we’ll get to see a struggle and Harris admitting to Tom what happened.
I can see how it would seem the more narratively cowardly way out to have our protagonists effectively forced to kill Harris rather than it happening almost entirely from their own decisions, but the show already did that with Reggie Ledoux in season 1.Speaking of that, I would prefer if this isn’t a repeat of that pedophile ring plotline (as Elisa suspects), and I agree that Miss Isabel’s involvement points to something different.
It seems that Nic Pizzolatto was more enamored with the idea of tying this into Season 1.
I’m going with half red herring/easter egg here.Hoyt may have gotten Julie from someone who snatches/buys children for pedophiles (and may be connected to season 1), but not for molesting her, but for his wife to replace his dead daughter.I’d also like to know is how/when she got away, what happened to her afterwards, and if she’s still alive in 2015.
The usual stellar acting and cinematography…. If it comes to pass that the girl was kidnapped and her brother murdered just so Ms. Isabel could have a replacement daughter – that is ridiculous. Why would you conspire to commit all those crimes to get a daughter who could never be allowed to see the light of day in their common home town? You’d simply adopt or go illegally buy a child from some place where the parents have no means to ever search and recover them. I know that would be the end of the story, but if that IS the end of this story, then they should have written a better story, because that would be terrible. I hope they come up with something better than that, but it looks like it might be some out-of-left field concoction if it’s not the replacement daughter thing. They don’t have much time left to work with.
Of course they could have done that. But the rich girl wanted THAT one (even went out to scout with the handler). Which is what led to all of these complications. You’re forgetting that rich people treat the rest of the world as play things.
Yeah, but that’s kind of an entertainment cliche in a show that is supposed to be gritty reality. I mean if we’re in for “Die Hard” or Marvel stories you have an expectation of ludicrousness. It’s in the DNA of that kind of story. But here it’s like a record scratch or WTH moments. And, if they were indeed scouting around, then Miss Isabel probably didn’t even know about her, hence the scouting. They’d have scouted somewhere where the authorities wouldn’t end up looking for a missing child in the same place where said missing child was going to spend her life. Pizzolatto has twice hinted at conspiratorial sex rings of the rich and powerful twice now, without going there in Season 1, (which was really nonsensical with Harrleson’s daughter’s behavior.) And now Season 2 seems to be the same thing.
Yeah I can’t refute your point there. I’m hoping it makes sense but I don’t see how in 75 minutes of remaining story.
The other item this would invalidate was the “accidental” death of her brother and the prayerful pose. They would have to cold-blooded murder him if they were taking his sister, so, I mean, really? Smashing a kid’s head in on a boulder for this? IF this is the big crime, it’s a lousy payoff after all these weeks.
Totally. She didn’t just want a replacement child, she wanted a replacement child that *looked like her dead daughter*. And Julie Purcell looked like her dead daughter.
Her dead husband was no doubt having sex with Lucy and is likely the father
Oh shit, you’re right.
If this is how it ends I would have liked to have known more about the Hoyt family. It could have been over in 4 episodes. I’m confused as to why a Mr. June would help Isabel take a child. This seems like going above and beyond for your employer. What could justify going along with that? Is there a connection between lucy or her cousin and the Hoyt family could they be related in some way? Is Julie’s father a Hoyt? That still doesn’t make sense
This season jumped the shark at the end of last episode, when it unambiguously revealed that James was behind Tom Purcell’s demise. It robbed this episode of all narrative tension and then DOUBLED DOWN on eradicating any narrative/moral ambiguity when James revealed he was faking the extent of his injuries to get Hays’ gun.And Roland’s (unspoken) racial slur seemed out of character and completely tacked on to attempt to add some kind of social relevance to this very stupid mystery. Really? Roland decides he has no choice but to abduct James with Hays? What about going to the FBI? What about sharing their intel with the powerful ex-D.A. private attorney who represented the junkman’s family and seeing if he could help?Sure, it seems possible that the narrative will re-introduce some complexity when we find out that perhaps Mr. June, Hoyt and James were involved in a plot that might not have been as nefarious as we were led to believe. Fine, except that twist seems A) to be coming a mile away and B) requires the story to be even more full of plot-holes than it already is. And this shit looks like lorraine cheese from where Kang is sitting.Ali is great along with McNairy and even Dorff. But this story is losing air fast.
I rolled my eyes pretty hard at West almost dropping the N word. It’s entirely out of character. He’s given no indication he’s even subconsciously racist. Did this show just feel it needed to point out that every white person imaginable is auto-racist? It was a needless and tacky gesture, boring button-pushing.
I think West should have been hurt that Hays even thought that. Yet another sign of their relationship eroding.
Not really out of character. He couldn’t even get himself to say to the word. At that moment he felt used by Hayes, someone he thinks of as a friend. At that moment he wanted to hut him any way he could. And the only thing he could think of is using the n word. But he couldn’t even say it
It was so clunky. But still not as clunky as when Tom let the N-word slip and then wept in apology. This show is trying real, real hard to keep its white Arkansas 1990s hicks likable for a 2019 Twitterverse, and the dissonance is painful. Imagine this show made as a 1970s American New Wave movie, how much more honest and ambiguous and brutal it would be.
I think his scene with the group of black people at the trailer park (and moreso their car ride afterwards) showed West certainly had some deep seated racist thoughts. Now I think those were thoughts he was trying not to let color his behavior, but they certainly seemed there to me watching it at the time.
I don’t know. I don’t think he was thinking it out of any racist thoughts. West wanted to hurt Hayes. He believed that Hayes put him in that position when he played up his obligation to Tom Purcell. He was pissed, and he knew those words would cut Hayes because they would be coming from a friend.
I don’t think it’s outrageous to interpret Roland “going there” with not necessarily being racist, but wanting to say the most hurtful thing he could to Hays with all of the pressure, stress, and trauma they had just experienced. Roland rightfully felt manipulated by Wayne after Tom Purcell’s death and then the Harris thing goes completely south. Woof… that could make anyone say some shit they don’t mean in the heat of the moment.I think the biggest takeaway for all this is in 2015: Wayne apologizes for exploiting Roland’s close relationship with Tom in the run-up to Harris James. “I didn’t realize how different we were, I hope we can move past it.” “We’re past it, bro,” West replies. There’s a lot still here to read between the lines, but their reaction and friendship to one another speaks volumes.
Could have gone all Die Hard with a Vengeance: “I was going to say ‘Asshole’!”
Its out of character for a white cop in the 90’s to have racist thoughts out of anger? Sorry, a SOUTHERN white cop. No, it was very in-character. I think it just makes other white people uncomfortable to see a character they identify with do something they’ve probably done in their heads before, too. 🤷
You should really try to bottle that telepathy and omniscience. The world needs more self-appointed experts.
It robbed this episode of all narrative tension
This episode gave the audience an entirely new motive for the crime. That’s the opposite of removing tension.and then DOUBLED DOWN on eradicating any narrative/moral ambiguity when James revealed he was faking the extent of his injuries to get Hays’ gun.
See all of my previous posts on this topic.Roland’s (unspoken) racial slur seemed out of character and completely tacked on to attempt to add some kind of social relevance
I think a white Arkansas cop who has been wearing a badge since at least 1980, even if he’s a decent guy and not consciously racist, when he finds himself in Roland’s situation and has been pretty pissed at Hays before this even happened, might find himself ready to spit that word out just out of pure anger. The fact that he didn’t say it actually makes more sense to me – he was supremely angry, and knew it would antagonize Hays, but also knew it would be a horrible thing to say. That’s not a writer’s attempt to clutch at social relevance, that’s just living in the real world.Just my two cents.
Unconscious racism aside, I will say that his face during that scene was the most Stephen Dorff face imaginable, and I loved it.
Ha! Ultimate Dorff Face. Seriously, though, I cannot fucking believe how great he has been on this show. My gf and I always clown on him, he’s one of our go-to sources for bad acting/no-career jokes. But he has been killing it from the first episode, like he dug up some long-forgotten talent and finally decided to show everyone what he’s capable of.Ali should get all the hardware come next award season. But as amazing as Ali has been, Dorff has gone toe-to-toe, and it’s been a real treat.
I totally agree. Stephen Dorff has always been at the top of my list of worst actors. And I cringed when I read he was cast in Season 3. But he’s been great. Just a fantastic job by him. My wife thinks he’s taken acting lessons, while I think he’s finally been cast in a part that fits his strengths as an actor. Either way, Dorff deserves all the accolades he’s been getting. He’s been fantastic.
‘That’s not a writer’s attempt to clutch at social relevance, that’s just living in the real world.’Enjoy this show to your heart’s content, but please be mindful of how obnoxious that sentence may sound to people who respectfully disagree with you about TV.
I’m pretty sure Hays is suspicious of everyone, including the cops and the DA. Harris James was a dirty cop, who planted evidence on Woodard, then got hired by Hoyt somehow. Remember that scene where the three head honchos bullied Hays to close the case on Woodard despite what seemed like planted evidence? If this is a pedophile ring, it’s got to go deeper than just Hoyt.
It did seem slightly out of character, but I think if you come from a family or area where that word was used vocally, it is unfortunately part of your vocab. When Tom called Hays that word in the police car, he said it in a way that was designed to hurt someone. Often times, people just want someone else to hurt with them. And I took Roland’s N word similarly.
“True Detective forces confrontations and falls a little flat”“True Detective is playing with puzzles instead of exploring mysteries”“True Detective digs into story but squanders opportunities”“True Detective promises heavy lifting but shrugs off its weightiest issues”“True Detective bad, a different series I’m watching in my head good”
B+, B, B-, B+, B+The grades make the headlines even more hilarious.
Do you not remember what that grade means? A B essentially means “good work, but you could have done better.” Nitpicking aside, these reviews basically say “It’s a good show, but it would have been better if they’d done these things the way I liked instead.” That sounds like a B to me.
I made a similar comment the other day, after you posted this (I’m just seeing it now). You’d think this show was a trainwreck based on the headlines.
Emily, when I see the firestorm surrounding Jussie Smollett and think of the press so desperate to advance a narrative that they suspend belief to promote fiction, I think of someone like you. You’re an ideologue posing as an art critic. It’s boring and thinly veiled. Who would take joy or satisfaction in the abuse of a reasonably successful white man for the offense of being a reasonably successful white man? You represent so much of what is wrong with media and politics in general.
If she was actually a decent art critic, she might get away with it. But, she isn’t. Hey, this is what you all wanted, isn’t it? Non-stop “woke” dissertations in all areas
I mean, it’s not like she’s taking pleasure in this stuff happening in real life. Art is sometimes made for cathartic effect. I didn’t personally get that reaction from that scene, but it seems a little overheated to confuse news coverage with a review of a fictional narrative.
Sure if AVC critics including Stephens had the same laissez faire attitude to other depictions of violence in art it’d be a consistent critical lens that understands depiction is not endorsement and that art can be cathartic, thing is though, they don’t.
I mean, Harris did kill Tom and frame it as a suicide, but I do think she’s enjoying that scene for the wrong reason. It shouldn’t be satisfying to watch because he’s successful, it’s satisfying because that success is built on covering up the criminal dealings of a wealthy benefactor.
“There’s some grim satisfaction in seeing a well-to-do white man, as secure in his position as he is in his skin, being played by a couple of cops just looking for an excuse.”That’s what sticks out to you in that scene? A “white man getting his comeuppance?” As opposed to justice coming to the man who killed Tom? Come on, Emily. That just seems a twisted way to view this show.
This reading of True Detective has been invidious all season—not critical and enlightening, but hardheaded, against-the-grain, nitpicking, second-guessing, and invidious.
Emily Stephens’s feelings about watching cops kill a white dude is the kind of thing that I’d be embarrassed to have written, but in a world in which group-identity tit-for-tat is rewarded, I can tell myself a story about why a television writer might want to virtue signal in this (probably unintentionally and ill-thought out) cruel way. Only crazy racist white people deny that white men have done a lot of evil over the course of history, but when Hays and West kidnap, torture, and kill Harris James, I wasn’t thinking that it was good to see a white man kidnapped, tortured, and killed. I was thinking that the guy who killed Tom and acted to support the procurement of children for nefarious purposes was getting his comeuppance. I don’t know what it says about me that I viewed this on an individual level instead of viewing it on a group level. Maybe it says that I have one fewer axe to grind than does Ms Stephens, and one fewer metaphorical, irrelevant axe to cram into the Procrustean bed of my unfair expectations of True Detective, next to its body, disfigured and mangled, never properly seen through the lens of her resentful preoccupations.
2015 Wayne sees this story more clearly than Ms Stephens.
Procrustean…that alone deserves more stars…
“That isn’t ambiguity. It isn’t poetic. It’s narrative cowardice.”
Its hard to believe that in 2019 a review that basically says “i enjoyed watching white people get beaten and terrorized but kinda dissapointed tbh that they didnt re-enact a real life race incident to really drive the point home” is what passes for a review now
I’m going to ignore the review and point out how tying this universe together with season 1 is a great idea, and it also serves as a pretty bulletproof way to deflect criticism that the show is repeating itself.
I said above that I haven’t followed the online discourse, so correct me if I’m off base. But I think S3 shares some characteristics with S1 that, even if the actual investigations dovetail, are just a little too unlikely.I’ll outline them if you want, but I’m going to guess that you’ve probably already read them, and that they were probably written by people more observant and articulate than myself. Fuck…..I dunno
So, I generally disagree with Emily’s take on this season, but I think her writing is great (loved the Twin Peaks reviews), and am reeeeeeeeeally fucking sick of the attitude she’s getting in these comments. First of all, art can be criticized and analyzed through any lens based on any criteria. Emily is at liberty to discuss race, especially since it’s a major part of the show this season, as well as any other politically relevant aspect of the show. Art creates meaning, very often that meaning can be read politically, as most of our society is tied to the political in one way or another. If you disagree with her points, it would be cool if you like addressed them and refuted them, rather than scream into the sky about how unfair she is and how she “wants the show to be something it’s not.” I see this critique bandied about so much on this site and it is so rarely actually the case. If a reviewer critiques something and says it’s bad or expresses dissatisfaction with how something is handled, they are literally doing their job. They likely want the show to be good, because they’re fucking watching it week in and week out. It’s not fun to watch something you don’t like.PS: To those clutching their pearls that Emily got some satisfaction from the successful creepy white man having a tough time with the police… yea, it was nice for this person of color too. Like Emily, I wasn’t enthused by the vicious beating, but by the way the show illustrated how flimsy the excuses of “quick movements” and “reaching for his gun” actually are. And yea, part of that satisfaction was because he’s likely a creepy child murder man and definitely killed Tom. But yea, when discussing our visceral reactions to art, sometimes we’ll reveal we like to watch rich white guilty men squirm the way the rest of us have to when we’re innocent *THE HORROR*
Police treat white people like shit also, there’s no doubt about it. To say it’s a thrill to see a white man treated badly seems strange.
You can tell how alien racism is to so many racially progressive white people by how they react to race in media.Like, ScarJo-anime casting is so offensive to white people because they need to defend Japanese people’s honor, or extra-judicious murders will be cool if the victim is white?
Not sure why you are ignoring the rest of the context of Hayes and West’s “traffic stop.” The satisfaction isn’t just because he is white. Emily never said that, you did. She specified that he is completely comfortable in his position. As Hoyt’s Head of Security, he feels he is untouchable. Especially when the show has been implying that Hoyt has been working with the police to make the case go away. And also, he’s murdered multiple people to make the kidnapping of a child, and the murder of another, go away. While framing an inncocent, indigenous veteran. So yeah, there was satisfaction in seeing him treated like shit.When Harris James recognizes that it’s Roland, who stopped him, he is relieved, and confused, because as far as Harris knows, they have nothing else to say to him. He knows he legally has nothing to worry about.This scene was also meant to call back to when Hayes and West questioned the innocent black man with one eye, and it almost went south. They were treating Harris Hames the way, everyone feels black men get treated.
Thanks for pointing out that Emily also mentioned he was in a position of power. Let me edit.“You can tell how alien racism is to so many racially progressive white people by how they react to race in media.Like, ScarJo-anime casting is so offensive to white people because they need to defend Japanese people’s honor, or extra-judicious murders will be cool if the victim is comfortable with power and privilege and white?”
She said she was okay with seeing. Harris James harassed during the traffic stop. No one said anything about loving watching him be murdered. And you keep ignoring the part where the police department seems to be in on the whole conspiracy. He wasn’t going to see a single minute of jail time
So I’m gonna ignore the numerous statistics about racial difference in the criminal justice system and the reports of extreme racial bias from the DOJ, bc I assume you can find those by googling, if you’re not already aware. I grew up mostly around white people in a pretty white suburb. No one I grew up with ever had a fear of the police. Most actually liked the police and felt safer around them. Kids in my school would shoot the shit with the officer stationed there. When they broke up our parties, they would stay and talk to parents, bc they knew them. When my friends and I got caught with weed on the side of the road, the officer took our weed and let us off after bonding with us over playing sports at our high school. This is a crucial piece, these cops in my suburb, for the most part, were from my suburb. This is often not the case in underprivileged communities and especially in black communities. Since moving to Chicago, I’ve spent time, reporting, working, and volunteering on the south side, in mostly black communities. Here, I’ve met people who are afraid of calling the police when they get into a car accident. I’ve seen men lift up their shirts to show me the incomprehensible scars that they’ve suffered from literal torture exacted by CPD. I’ve had to listen to a kid I mentor talk about how scared he was when an officer stopped him and his friends, simply for running down the street like, ya know, fucking kids.
Now, let’s be clear, I’m well aware that white people have and will continue to be victims of police brutality and overreach. This is especially the case people from lower income communities. They deserve to be supported and helped. That does not change that the issues with the criminal justice system are absolutely racial, they are deeply tied to race, and that is illustrated so clearly by the way people in the black community relate to the police as opposed to people in the white community.
Except of course Stephens and indeed nearly every other AVC critic believe art doesn’t just reflect and comment on individuals behavior but encourages and reinforces it so she’s claiming to be pleased with encouraging police to act in an extra-judicial manner and commit acts of brutality. Bad news for anyone of colour or not.
I mean, nearly every dark and gritty cop show will have the detectives going over the line at some point. As someone whose pretty invested in restorative justice, it takes a bit of a remove for me to watch a cop show, so maybe it’s that I’m already just not engaging with the work at that level. I think the show is actually better than most in that it doesn’t seem to be presenting these oversteps as a cool, good thing. It wants us to view what they’re doing as bad. And in that respect, I understand why Emily would have liked for James to have died more directly from Wayne and Roland’s actions. If he dies because they beat him up and not because he attacked them, then the show more clearly shows the consequences of doing what they did. As it is, I think the message still gets across.As for being pleased with the encouragement of police brutality, I hear ya. As I said before, most cop shows do this, and most really do appear to be encouraging it. And I have to say, even in shows I respect a lot less than TD, I still sometimes get that visceral thrill from seeing brutal “justice” enacted against people I KNOW are bad. As viewers, we obviously have omniscience that the characters don’t. We know James killed Tom and that colors our view of Wayne’s actions. So I make no excuses for myself reveling in seeing James squirm, it’s not a particularly admirable emotion, it’s an ugly one. But it’s also natural and I wouldn’t want to deny its existence either. I think once we move past that initial emotion, we can talk about a deeper analysis of what the scene was saying, which Emily does go on to do, even if I have some issues with that analysis. My point in the OP tho, was that it really shouldn’t have to be explained why someone has a brief moment of satisfaction seeing a rich guilty white man squirm, even if that emotion is a little problematic.
right on.
i actually created a burner account just so i could reply to your comment. i’ve been a lurker for years, but never, ever write anything. lately, i’ve been pretty annoyed with the whiny posts about reviewers “just not getting it” – it gets tiresome. it had gotten to the point where i just stopped reading all the comments. but tonight i decided to skim through, because i thought there were some really interesting aspects to the episode and i wanted to delve into it, read other folk’s ideas. though i don’t agree with Emily Stephen’s entire take on it, she brought up some really good points. your response was perfect, so thanks for that.
I agree that the reaction to the reviewer’s thoughts is tired at this point. I disagree with most of her takes on the season as well, but I’m glad that there is someone thoughtfully reviewing it, and I’m extra glad that we have the comments section to come up with our own interpretations if we disagree with Emily.
Exactly how is race a “major part” of the show this season?
Hard same. The irony of complaining about how Emily’s reviews don’t say what they want them to say while criticizing her for not liking the season because she’s not seeing what she wants to out of it is lost on so many of the commentors.
Its one thing to express an opinion. Its another to use the issues of black men to get clicks. Its also another thing as a white person to demand a black man’s narrative conform to your standard. White people do not get to decide how a black man’s story should be told. It would be different if the reviewer had more of a perspective on race but they don’t. By trying to force this story to become she wants it to be the reviewer is showing her white privilege. Like Roland she expects Wayne’s story to unfold as she sees fit and feels slighted when it deviates. Wayne can never simply be a detective to her he is always a “Black” detective and must follow certain tropes and scripts within her narrow expectations. If Wayne’s story fails to meet the expectations of a black detective than the story has failed in Emily’s eyes because she can’t see past the characters race. Which is actually fairly racist ironically enough.
I haven’t looked back at the older reviews since they were posted, so I can’t speak to those, but I will say that some of the racial analysis in her graph about the major scene of the episode is… confused, to say the least. On the one hand, she seems to have wanted the show to place more culpability on Wayne and Roland—that would be subverting some stereotypes about what it means for a black man to be a detective. A lot of well-meaning white people will be surprised when a black cop or other cop of color does some heinous police brutality bc they’ve been led to believe these things always happen the one way they’re presented in the media. Of course, black cops are still cops and participate in upholding and enforcing a system that oppresses many many people. Butttt, I do think it’s kind of weird that Emily points to the “I can’t breathe” line, connects it to Eric Garner, and then thinks it would be a GOOD idea for the writers to draw that line more explicitly. Harris James should not be compared to Eric Garner in any way and I don’t see the show helped by such a move. What I think this season has done a really good job with that I don’t think has gotten enough praise in these reviews is to show just how bottled up a man like Wayne has to be moving through the spaces he’s in. The toll it takes to constantly restrict what you say and how you act for the comfort of others is really well expressed, I think. Def would be open to discussing Emily’s handling of race in these reviews more if you have more specific issues with what she’s said.
If you’re looking for some insight in this season or confirmation on some of the popular theories, check out the comment section of Nic Pizzolatto’s Instagram where the man himself answers a lot of questions and squashes some popular ideas. For example, Roland is not gay or closeted.
I’d not read any kind of online chatter about the show until tonight but I’m glad that at least the idea of Roland being gay was noticed by someone other than myself. Not that I think he is gay or that it matters, but it occurred to me and it always makes me worry that I’m insane when something like that pops into my head and I can’t find any external confirmation that anyone is even in the same room…..
and another True Detective character so insubstantial, she barely existsYep, that’s what happens to tertiary characters. Like Brett Cullen and the teenagers that took Will’s bike.
Maybe you should write screenplays Emily since you have cornered the market on narrative cowardice. You’re basically, as “Tony Soprano” once famously said: “a telephone tough guy,” all talk, and empty cowardice.This season, and especially episode 7, is brilliant.
These men, you can almost hear the writer say, didn’t set out to kill Harris James.I disagree, because I still haven’t gotten over the nagging suspicion West is in cahoots, and was planning on killing James all along.
I thought that was implied last night when he looks over at West gives a little nod while Hayes is staring daggers at James. And then the phone call, the only way that could have happened is if West said something unless they too were being tailed.
There are obviously lots of questions to be answered next week, but I’ve been wondering how Hoyt knew so quickly and so thoroughly about what happened to Harris James. I get that he’d suspect something is up if he didn’t show up for work, but how would he know for sure that James is gone for good and that Hayes played a role in that? The only possibility I can think of is that Roland is colluding with Hoyt now that he’s been bumped up into a position of power. He tried to dissuade Hayes initially from going after James, but when he realized he couldn’t stop him, he figured the next best option was to off James so he couldn’t reveal anything else.
came here to say that the Hoyt phone call was, for me, the most terrifying moment of all three seasons of this show. goosebumps and felt in my stomach.
Anybody else ever troubled by Pizzolatto’s apparent ongoing affection for police torture & vigilante justice? I don’t think he left any doubt he was pro-waterboarding and pro-summary-execution in Season 1. This episode, and perhaps next episode, possibly complicates the endorsement… but still.
Does the fact that he has cops doing this mean he is pro?
Not that they’re cops, but that Pizzolatto believes they’re heroes. I remember this interview from the end of S1 where the interviewer asked something about Rust and Marty as antiheroes, and Pizzolatto said something like, “I don’t think there’s any ‘anti’ about it, they’re just straight-up heroes.” (Then he goes on to say something — apparently unironically, in his own persona — about the “psychosphere,” at which point I knew for sure that Rust really was just a fantasy self-projection.) When Marty, in a fugue of righteous horror, caps Reggie Ledoux on the spot, and later says he shouldn’t have, Rust says something like, “Fuck him. It was good to see you commit to a choice.” And maybe on the page this scene was meant to shade Marty’s character, to show his capacity for evil, but on the screen Rust’s attitude plays for a fist-pump reaction. There’s other stuff, but I’ve lost this post once already. I’d put a bullet in Kinja’s head Reggie Ledoux-style if I had the chance.
Oh good lord, the “nice to see you finally commit to something” line is the bleakest funniest joke of the whole show and it’s incredibly revealing of Rust not Marty because it shows us his anger and jealousy of Marty who has everything Rust wants but treats it like shit by screwing around on his wife and ignoring his kids. It’s incredible how people’s dislike of the version of Pizzolato presented by critics causes them to completely misread what the show is actually doing.
But I don’t dislike the show. I enjoy watching it. The acting is usually phenomenal, the direction & music & production design are gorgeous. The writing, though, is middling at best. And I dislike the ethics its universe espouses. And even if what you’ve said is true (I haven’t watched s1 since it aired), it doesn’t change that the show tacitly endorses Marty’s summary execution.
I didn’t say you disliked the show. I said you dislike a version of Pizzolato presented to us by some critics and interviewers. The show doesn’t tacitly endorse the execution at all as it’s the catalyst for the circumstances that mean real evil killer gets away to kill again and again and the gap in v.o narration vs onscreen action in episode 5 makes it unmistakable. This is what I mean about how people are misreading based on nothing in the show but on someone else’s conception of the writer. It’s incredible.
The show did not endorse Marty’s execution. The show did not endorse the barn beatdown and murder. I can see how the barn murder was written in a way that people wouldn’t like. At first, I thought they really did just beat him too hard, and accidentally killed him.I feel like often times people who know who Pizzolatto is, and have read criticism of him, then actively look for things to peg him with, like he’s living out some macho fantasy through the show, when the show isn’t endorsing them so much as showing the all too common failings of men. Doesn’t always make them evil, it makes them shits, it makes them imperfect, but it’s not like TD has ever been the Alpha Males Rule the World show people deem it to be.
This episode led me to believe that Edmund Hoyt arranged to kill his own family. Is this right?! If not, what is?
My theory is, the Hoyt patriarch found out that his son-in-law had an affair with Lucy and was the biological father of Julie, so arranged to have his son-in-law die in an car accident that unintentionally caught up his daughter and granddaughter, and eventually had Julie abducted either as a consolation daughter, or on some family pride tip. I’m not sure if this makes sense or not, I’ve got to rewatch a bit and make sure I understand the timeline of Hoyt family deaths.
Boy! It’s a wild theory, though plausible and well thought-out and -reasoned. I hope this interpretation wasn’t meant to be clear. It wasn’t to me.
I just don’t think you pull a brand new motive out of the hat with one episode left. He should have developed that weeks ago. His writing POV is also confused wherein the viewers are at one point learning with the detectives, then learning apart from the detectives, and also being denied information that is known to the detectives. That’s lead to the ridiculous inserted 7 minutes or so of Tom basically cracking the case. But then Tom dies off-camera and they give away the fact in that they let his fake suicide ride by jumping to the future and saying as much. This rendered much of whatever happened in 1990 afterwards a mute point, since Tom’s discovery lead nowhere relative to Hayes and West since they immediately gave up on investigating his death.
And West’s aggressive reaction for killing any further investigation of Tom’s death was completely nonsensical. If he is suddenly part of the conspiracy to hide the truth, why in hell bring in Hayes? If there was a suspected homosexual relationship there to hide, then develop that as part of the story. I thought they might hint at the 1980 driveway scene, but nope. As far as the detectives discovering anything, Tom’s adventure and demise was just a bizarre left turn in the story, culminating in a fairly ridiculous death scene in the barn with Security Cop. His attempt to take Hayes’ gun suddenly ambiguously “exculpates” the two detectives for their actions instead of really bringing that plot point to a hard moral conclusion. If they had straight-up murdered him that would have been a pretty viable plot line for the whole season, with the kids being a handy McGuffin device: Elderly detective (West) realizes his increasingly addled old partner (Hayes) who is filming a documentary, is now remembering things that might land him in prison till he dies. He carefully monitors the developments, working in the background. Does he frame hims? Killl him?
But nope. We’re not doing that story (anymore at least). Now we’ve got something in the 11th hour about a crazy woman with a kid fetish we’ve never even heard of…
The instant she spills her suspicion—that the disappearances lead to a human trafficking ring catering to pedophiles, complete with a link back to the first season—he’s done.
The instant she spills the info he’s been waiting for (her conclusion that the disappearances lead back to a human trafficking ring, complete with a tie back to season one), he’s done. This seems repetitive.
Michael Rooker & Michael Wincott have to be 2 of the best “Nobody Remembers Their Names but Damn I’m Glad They’re In This Picture” character actors going right now.
Narrative cowardice? Where do you come up with this shit?
I really thing Roland is part of this cover-up. He’s the career man, has risen in rank from playing ball and going along with the powers that be. The show makes a point to show his drinking in the 90s – dealing with some guilt? There is a quick look that Harris gives to Roland when Hayes is questioning him, almost saying “he’s on to the whole thing, you know what you have to do.” Harris then attacks Hayes and Roland shoots to kill to end the story. There was no other witnesses to that murder, so how did Mr. Hoyt know exactly what happened? Roland reported to him. I could be off on this, but that’s what I think.
That’s an interesting theory, and it would explain why Roland, although being Wayne’s partner, and the third lead of the show, hasn’t been explored quite as much.Dorff’s performance is great, and he’s likable, flawed but likable, which leaves wiggle room for things about him to come out. I have a few doubts merely because he’s stirring all this up again with Wayne in 2015, but it’s possible.I have loved this season. I’ve watched the whole thing 3 times.
Dorff has been great. I wasn’t a fan of his casting for this initially, but Roland has been a perfect role for him and he’s nailing it.
What a horrible review. You clearly have writing talent, but this review doesn’t say anything concisely, instead preferring to make veiled criticisms about the show not lining up with current social issues.This season features a great dive into so many complex issues, including race, and all you can do is complain that it’s not doing enough heavy lifting while not actually clearly saying what you think heavy lifting would be? Incredibly weak.
“a certain satisfaction in seeing a white man throttled by police” this is a trash article, your analysis is at best sniveling and at worst pathetically shallow
It seems like no one wants to mention the elephant in the room. This case is an alt-right pizzagate fantasy. And clearly the director helped to inspire the pizzagate thing with the first 2 seasons. Its the cross between the occult and the politically connected elite that makes pizzagate (and true detective) so exciting. And for one I’m sick of it. If this show had any guts they would take on the real moral issues of our time: abuse against trans, kids in cages, and climate change. But no they are lobbing up this pizzagate softball to the alt right. Shame on HBO and the creators of this show.
so… they stole the plot to Gone Baby Gone?
I just noticed on the left side of the review, it has the review headlines for the previous episodes, and they’re all negative. You’d think this season was a disaster based on them. That, along with the “Nic Pizzolato is a toxic male” bullshit that gets showhorned into each review, it’s a shame, because the acting and writing on this show is fantastic.I’d also like to say that my criticism of Emily is not meant to “pile on” her. I’ve had issues with Zack, and SIMMMS!!, and many others over the years. I’m an unpublished nobody, so I don’t think I’m better, I just think a lot of reviewers on here are looking to make that next job move, and the path to that is inserting a ton of uncalled for social commentary. I mean, that worked for Sonya Saraiya, and her reviews here were the worst. Still, I made a comment recently that Emily can’t write, which is not true. She can – obviously, but I think enough people are saying the same things in the comments, that she might take some of it as constructive, useful criticism. However, as a delicate writer myself, I understand the resistance.
Every AV Club review is just filled with commenters claiming the reviewer only writes negative comments if a piece of media doesn’t comment on a political issue the way they want, and almost every time the comment doesn’t even make sense.This review: The show took the lazier route with the interrogation.The comments: You’re just mad they didn’t mimic the death of a real life black man, also you like watching white ppl get violated by cops!
I hate to do this but it’s actually your comment that doesn’t make any sense. And I sincerely hope you read this knowing my tone is not to antagonize, but to provide more context to what I, and what I think others, are saying.Basically, you intentionally (because you seem smart enough to not truly be this oblivious) oversimplified what a lot of people here are saying.Emily, does in fact, insert social commentary into everything, whether it is warranted or not. Most of the reviewers on here do it, and with the majority of the people who actually come here to read reviews of the shows we watch, we’d like to see the reviews cover the show. Instead, we get writers that make the same knocks against the writers and creators week after week. We get reviewers saying what direction they wish the shows would go. That’s not nonsense, that’s something many of the reviews for many of the shows on this site do.“Then why do you read them? Then why do you comment?” you’ll say. Or someone will. Someone always does. I’ll tell you, “Because we do like these shows, and quite often the reviews BARELY discuss the episode in question. Instead we get Eric Garner references. We get writers auditioning for better paying jobs on higher profile sites. I’ve been here long enough to see the pattern. The comments: You’re just mad they didn’t mimic the death of a real life black man, also you like watching white ppl get violated by cops!I mean…she did say she got a sick pleasure from watching a white guy get abused by cops. And it’s not even that she said a white guy. Honestly, “white guy” is a pejorative at this point and I’m not even going to bother with that. It’s that she was talking about a character who was a killer, a bad guy, but she chose to say she got sick pleasure from his being because he was white. I’m not outraged, I just think it’s an odd way to view the scene.
The show itself has social commentary. It is literally in every single episode. If you’re uncomfortable or annoyed by a reviewer speaking on the subject matter within the episodes, you need to sit down and identity why you are so uncomfortable. You seem to be preemptively reacting to any and all social commentary on this website. Regardless of what the reviewer actually said.And the fact that you think “white guy,” is a pejorative let’s me know maybe it’s you, and not Emily with the problem.
Well, I tried. Good bye, forever.