When we meet Chandra the Magnificent (Warren William), he is neither Chandra nor magnificent. Instead he is a traveling huckster, a dentist in one town, a hair tonic salesman in another. After being impressed at one carnival by a scam psychic, he chooses the name Chandra from an advertisement and enters his new career with gusto. Chandra's (admittedly rather transparent) scam is to take questions from his audience and deposit them in a "furnace" which actually sends the slips of paper beneath his stage. There, assistant Frank (Allen Jenkins) - when he isn't talking racehorses with Sam (Clarence Muse) - collects the clues and reads them back to Chandra, who listens via a wire emplanted in his turban. Pretending that he picked up these questions from the ether (no one ever asks why a psychic needs them written down at all, even out of sight), Chandra offers advice to the spectators. One night he advises Sylvia (Constance Cummings), a restless young woman choosing between her Chicago-bound boyfriend and unknown adventures elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, he encourages the naive girl to choose the latter and before long she has...in his arms. Will he change her or will she change him?

The narrative is extremely episodic, stitched together by the bigger questions of whether Sylvia will finally wise up to Chandra's nature (revealed to her in bits and pieces) and if Chandra will reform out of love. And yet both questions are answered only to be posed again, quite realistically (since life itself does not conclude with booming music and a "The End" title when a problem has been "solved"). At one point, Chandra - having caused a woman's death (well, to the extent that she herself isn't to blame for modeling her life choices around the advice of a mail-in psychic) - agrees to abandon his career for Sylvia's sake and they move to New York where he becomes a door-to-door Fuller brush salesman. Trading its dusty small-town environs for a wintry Gotham, the movie throws us off-guard. Has Chandra truly changed? When he runs into his old buddy Frank, working as a chauffeur for a wealthy - and mutually adulterous - couple, one of many in the city of sin, Chandra (now redubbed "Dr. Munro") launches a new scheme: using information from bribed chauffeurs to inform the lonely housewives of the Upper East Side about their husband's amorous activities. As you can imagine, this too backfires.

There's a special quality to thirties films, especially those early talkies created before the Production Code - a kind of reckless approach not only to risque content but storytelling style. Maybe that's a generous way of stating that many Hollywood narratives of the time have a tendency to wander. Rather than find a tight throughline and stick to it, they travel from scene to scene somewhat clumsily, unafraid to end up somewhere far afield from where they began. Certainly this quality could be criticized, compared to shaggy-dog stories, and blamed on the studio system's tendency to treat film production like an assembly line with various writers tackling the material in succession. Yet this is a quality I've always enjoyed, appreciating the willingness to jump into new locations or shift the story completely when an idea or motif gets old. There's something fearless about this disregard for meticulous structure, and when done well these ragtag classics - so often produced by Warner Brothers - have a spitfire vitality. Warners' The Mind Reader is no exception.

Geographically, the film is quite literally all over the map. Like its protagonist, the story leaps from obscure Midwestern town to obscure Midwestern town (at one point, causing me to wonder if The Beach Boy's "Kokomo" was actually a sly tribute to a city in Indiana rather than a tropical island). It does so with a splashy onscreen map that evokes Indiana Jones in the modern-day viewer's mind, adding a dash of exotica to the all-American landscape, much like Chandra's mystical mumbo-jumbo. The Mind Reader travels further afield in its second half, not only to New York but eventually Mexico. More importantly, character changes and plot developments arrive quickly and economically - Chandra is a salesman, wealthy conman, fugitive from justice, and alcoholic degenerate in short order, the wild convolutions of character barely sustained by Warren William's suave charisma. Like its main character, The Mind Reader shuffles us through its wild narrative by sleight of hand; we are completely caught up in the energy of the characters and Roy Del Ruth's fast-clipped direction. There are quite a few examples of convenient coincidence, arbitrary plot twist, and bizarre character behavior but The Mind Reader's excellent poker face keeps us engrossed and avoids provoking our credulity.

In this, the viewers echo Sylvia's onscreen state. Chandra has perpetually proven his unreliability to her: when she discovers his initial scam, overhears his discussion of a larger crime, witnesses the suicide of a woman he conned, discovers he has been lying to her again, and even gets set up for a murder he committed. Yet she still loves, forgives, and trusts him in the end, when he appears at her hospital bedside after turning himself in. True, that was an honorable gesture (clouded by the fact that his first instinct was to abandon her). When he claiming he doesn't love her anymore, however, Chandra is performing a complicated bit of chicanery. He hopes that she'll sniff out his sincerity just enough to refuse his "chivalrous" end to the marriage, but not enough to deduce that he is using that superficial realization to lure her in closer. Reverse psychology as its most convoluted yet effective. Whew! Ultimately both Chandra and the movie are smarter than we might initially suspect. Embarrassingly, it took me two viewings to realize Chandra probably hasn't truly reformed when the film is over. This ambiguity simultaneously fulfills and subverts the expected Hollywood happy ending, leaving us to wonder: is this a redemption, a comeuppance, or a sly victory? As the film closes, I too have been fooled by Chandra.

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

This is certainly the darkest episode of True Detective and also very likely the best. There are no brutal murders, mutilated corpses, bloody crime scenes. The darkness is inside and when it manifests itself in violence it only goes so far as a fistfight. But when Hart and Cohle pummel each other in a parking lot, their punches land with more force than all the gunfire of five episodes.

We begin with two scenes that could easily be played for righteous catharsis, but is delivered as something else entirely. First, Hart confronts the two young men who were caught having sex with his daughter. He offers them a choice: allow him to beat the shit out of them or go to prison on statutory rape charges. Of course it isn't really a choice at all - he doesn't want his daughter's sex life made public and he would very much like to punish these two himself. It's many fathers' vengeful dream come true, yet this interaction is scored and shot without any sense of deliverance. The following scene contains the biggest surprise: before he can drive off in triumph, Hart vomits all over the parking lot (the same lot in which he and Cohle will fight a far more evenly-matched bout).

The other early scene is much more disturbing; in fact it feels like the closest look we've had at Cohle's heart of darkness. He has certainly talked a lot, maybe too much at times - his early nihilistic tirades played more like set-ups for Hart's double takes. Even in later episodes his purple prose has been enjoyable and not entirely convincing in its negativity. But this is different. He is questioning a young woman (Azure Parsons) whose infants have all died, one after the other. The latest, at least, died under suspicious circumstances - its apnea monitor unplugged for thirty-five minutes. Cohle takes his sweet time before revealing the charts in a dramatic flourish. It is far more important for him to manipulate the suspect, to insinuate himself into her mind, most importantly to get her to trust him and to feel that finally she has found someone who understands her.

And he does understand her. But as soon as she has completed the confession, crying and shaking but feeling like she has finally been purged, her confessor turns to her with the same calm, patient manner he's held throughout the entire session. Only now his words have changed, echoing Hart's early warning to the two boys, which suddenly seems merciful in comparison. "The newspapers are gonna be tough on you," he says evenly. "And prison is very, very hard on people who hurt kids. If you get the opportunity you should kill yourself." She panics, looks into his eyes for reassurance and finds the final, most painful betrayal possible. Sputtering "What? What?" as he stares her down and turns to walk out the door, she is the body kicking frantically at the air as the noose drops and tightens. This may be one of the starkest depictions of pure cruelty I have ever witnessed.

As with the previous perps, there is nothing inherently sympathetic about this woman and yet it's impossible to watch the scene and not feel chilled to the bone by Cohle's demeanor. A later sequence provides an eerie echo when he visits the girl (December Ensminger) whom he rescued from Reggie Ledoux's sex farm/meth lab. She has been catatonic for years. Yet somehow, with the same charisma used to ply weak-minded criminals, Cohle gets her to spout something about a scarred giant who made her watch as he abused her fellow captive. Then she collapses into a fit and Cohle walks away, frustrated by the abrupt halt to this revelation. Taken alone, the scene would suggest nothing too abnormal about a dedicated detective but coupled with the earlier scene, it underscores Cohle's lack of compassion. In his way he is a deeply honorable, even deeply moral, man. But he is COLD. Not because he doesn't feel pain but because he feels it deeply while relentlessly employing it as a weapon.

"Haunted Houses" mostly puts the investigation on hold even as the mystery deepens. As exceptions to this rule, Cohle pokes around old missing-persons cases and attempts to uncover the corruption of Tuttle's enterprises. This leads to two juicy scenes. In the first, the traveling reverend returns as washed-up drunk, revealing that he uncovered child pornography while working at a Tuttle school. After leaving the school, his ministry was vandalized and harassed. Best of all, in the second scene Tuttle himself finally gets some screentime, verbally jousting with Cohle, whose conspiracy theories and unorthodox working methods are alienating him even further from his colleagues and superiors. Cohle may seem paranoid, but we know he's onto something as he presses the slimy Tuttle. Is the exchange a tad unsubtle with all of Tuttle's right-wing talking points and corporate doublespeak? Perhaps, but I look forward to finding out where this thread will lead. Is it just a red herring? So far at least, True Detective hasn't produced many of those. Every clues appears to lead somewhere.

Despite these tantalizing teases, the episode is mostly dedicated to depicting Hart's and Cohle's epic falling-out. As expected, this involves Hart's marriage - Cohle finally sleeps with Maggie, although that doesn't seem the right phrase for their rough and brief anal intercourse. This is Maggie's vengeance for Hart's renewed infidelity. Unsurprisingly, he's found a new mistress. Surprisingly, though maybe I should have seen it coming, she is the teenage prostitute now fully grown into a comely cell phone sales rep. Her voracious sexual appetite exhausts even the ever-horny Hart. This is an interesting twist that plays almost more like Sopranos-esque fantasy sequence than reality; turns out Cohle's wry "down payment" remark was (pardon the pun) right on the money. This young woman has played her part by breaking up Hart's marriage but given her earlier role, it can't just end there. Her character needs to continue in upcoming episodes. She's very revealing of Hart's character and complexes - call her the Teresa Banks of True Detective.

Even the 2012 investigators sense the importance of sex in Hart's and Cohle's professional breakup, so they bring Maggie in to clear things up. Like her husband and one-time lover before her, she isn't interested in playing their game. (As a side note, the actress has hardly been aged at all for the "seventeen years later" sequences and it's frankly distracting given Woody Harrelson's receding hairline and Matthew McConaughey's debauched appearance). The police need Maggie, as we realize after Hart walks out on them too, effectively ending their role in framing and attempting to contextualize the plot. Their weakness as guides has been fully exposed and now we're ready to explore the mystery without their hollow attempts to guide us.

The final scene reunites Hart and Cohle in 2012 as the latter pulls up next to the former and volunteers to buy him a drink...before immediately reversing the offer, in classic Cohle fashion. As a testament to how wonderfully and expansively the show has established this relationship, the moment feels like a sequel or continuation of a classic duo. We too feel like we've known them for nearly two decades. As Cohle drives off and we follow his truck down the road, the frame remains locked around his rear left headlight. For a few seconds, I though this seemed unusually, and pointlessly, showy for True Detective's style. Until the obvious hit me: this was the headlight broken in the partners' fight ten years earlier, and it still hasn't been fixed. Some wounds never heal - because they don't want to.

Three and a half years ago, I launched an ambitious video project called "32 Days of Movies" which collected clips from almost everything in my collection (at the time). The clips lasted 30-45 seconds. They were assembled in roughly chronological order and then divided into 32 chapters (roughly 7-9 minutes each), ending with a song from the particular era those clips belonged to. At the time, unfortunately, I limited myself to Blogger's video program and there were many, many technical limitations and hiccups. Sometimes the video was so pixelated that the screen became unviewable.

I have decided to fix this problem by re-uploading each of the chapters in higher quality on Vimeo. Just for fun I will be restoring them one day at a time. So the journey begins anew today, with Day 1 - "Dance of the Silents." The video follows the jump, along with explanations of how you can follow this series.



For now you can scan upcoming chapters by exploring the links in The Video Gallery (each chapter features an introduction/description to set up the era being covered). You can also see images from the upcoming films, listed alphabetically, in Cinema in Pictures. However, I would not recommend clicking on the images yet - they still lead to the outdated video clips. Better to let the voyage unfold day-by-day as it did the first time.

The best way to keep up will be to check in with my Vimeo page daily. I will not be posting further updates to this blog, but you to follow the series day-to-day through the hashtag #32DaysOfMovies on Twitter (where I tweet as @LostInTheMovies).

For a more in-depth explanation of this exercise, check out the introduction to the series. I hope these clips inspire you to explore the movies themselves, and that once you do you'll share your thoughts here or elsewhere. Let the dance begin...

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

Cohle and Hart began this story as opposites, the classic odd-couple cop partnership. In 1995, Hart was a backslapping, well-liked family man, a cop's cop but no great detective. Cohle, meanwhile, was an antisocial, fucked-up loner, brilliant and alienating. Their rapport was almost comical. In 2012 they still cut very different figures, maybe even more so than back then. Cohle has gone to seed, unshaven, long-haired, bug-eyed in his paranoia. He fell of the wagon long ago, and ran as far as he could in the other direction as it rolled away. Hart, retired from the force and operating as a PI, is clean-shaven and properly attired. He maintains chummy contact with his old pals in law enforcement.

But Cohle's and Hart's similarities speak louder than the differences. Both look sad, bitter, lost. Both are alone, utterly. Hart apparently does not even speak to his daughters and when he visits his ex-wife, it's only to make sure she didn't say anything bad about Cohle to the investigators. Then again, maybe they aren't quite alone...because once again they are partners. And they need one another more than ever, both personally and professionally.

Cohle has been digging dirt on the Tuttles for years and while he didn't kill Billy Lee he had a hand in his death. After he stole snuff films and child pornography from Tuttle's safe, the old man died under mysterious circumstances. This essentially proves that this family is behind the occult sex crimes (we learn more of the details and scope in this episode than in all the previous episodes combined). It also proves that he is not our prime suspect. He's dead and gone unless the show has a twist to pull, which I doubt, and his narrative utility is served. Instead, our attention and  suspicions settle on the scarred man - the one described by the near-catatonic survivor of the '95 showdown and later corroborated by several other acquaintances.

When Cohle reveals the storage shed in which he collects evidence and charts the progress of his personal, obsessive investigation, there are three words emblazoned on the wall: "Carcosa" on the right, "The Yellow King" on the left, and "Scars" elevated above both in the middle. The creepy drawing of the "spaghetti monster," reported by a little girl in one of the early episodes, is prominently displayed beneath this title. By the end of "After You've Gone" we will learn that we've already seen this man (Glenn Fleshler): he was the seemingly dim-witted lawn mower whom Cohle questioned right before a big break in the Reggie Ledoux case. Only now, moving in closer than we did before, do we discover that the seemingly gentle giant spurts criss-crossed scars across his jaw.

We also discover more about Carcosa when an old woman (former housekeeper to the Tuttles) feverishly identifies sketches of the stick structures and proclaims, "Death is not the end!" As for the Yellow King, not a peep. I'm predicting a bait-and-switch with this: just as Reggie and Tuttle were once our ominous focal points - not red herrings exactly, but guppies in the grand scheme - so I think "Scars" is just one more step on our path to the Yellow King. At least I hope so. That ominous name has been dangled in front of us for nearly the entire show and it's held more promise and intrigue than any other element.

Hart, meanwhile, would like to walk away from his cuckolder but he can't. Cohle tells him he owes a debt, for killing Reggie and prematurely ending the investigation in '95. Hart mournfully agrees to join forces again. After painting an unpleasant picture of Hart for many episodes, this chapter strives to redeem him. Now that he too is a loner and loser, his hypocritical mean streak is eclipsed by his long-standing stoic and dogged devotion to justice. He's still a good ol' boy, but uses that back-slapping charm to dig up important files and lure a lying sheriff (Michael Harney) into a trap. For much of the earlier investigation Hart played sidekick to Cohle's savvy sleuth, mostly covering for Cohle as he alienated co-workers. Hart still plays that role in a different way, but also demonstrates his own investigative prowess. The years as a private eye, away from the bureaucratic crutch, have apparently sharpened his skills.

Just as episode five's sprawling timeline and narrative twists/turns surprised us after the low-profile cop-show conventions of episode four, so this hour reverses the focus and tone of the last. Episode six emphasized the personal lives of the detectives at the expense of much actual detection but "After You've Gone" plunges headlong into the ever-expanding case. Maggie makes a few fleeting appearances and she'll probably still have a role to play. But aside from a montage of Cohle's and Hart's sad-sack workaholic lives, their personalities emphatically take a backseat to the procedural aspects.

I was wrong about nine episodes, by the way...there are only eight. One to go. If I have a worry about True Detective it's that in the effort to tie some things up too neatly it will let others fall by the wayside. Can one episode resolve all these plot threads, provide a satisfactory denouement for these two memorable characters (who will not be reappearing in season two), and most importantly deliver on the hints of wild, unfathomable black magic simmering under the state for two decades? This episode is as enjoyable as the others, and certainly more revealing than episode four, but it doesn't quite convey the flavor of those juicy early episodes or carry the gravitas of those intense middle chapters.

The final episode of the series arrives after meticulous narrative, character, thematic and stylistic buildup. To use Cohle's thinly-veiled euphemism for his own impending suicide the show still has something to see to before getting on with something else. I've been grateful that True Detective is a short series, focusing on a tight story while giving itself room to breathe. But now I find myself wishing we could have more. If I still feel that way after this final hour, I hope it's out of greed rather than necessity.

I recently rewatched Death of Salesman (1985, dir. Volker Schlondorff) for the first time in several years, in prepration for a non-narrated video essay. I was struck by how visually rich this film is, despite the fact that it falls into that much maligned "filmed-play-for-television" category. The glowing colors and stylized sets are gorgeous, creating a poignant, stylized universe within which we can witness the Loman family's psychodrama. Here are 33 images from the movie...

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

"You're looking at it wrong," the dazed, emaciated Rust Cohle tells his sturdy-looking friend Marty Hart. They are crouching outside the beautifully-lit hospital under a starry Louisiana sky. At least Hart is crouching; Cohle is collapsed in a wheelchair, barely out of his coma as he recovers from severe stab wounds. Hart was wounded too, but less severely, whereas Cohle has just finished describing his near-death experience with all the fervor of an atheist in a foxhole. And now Cohle is applying the same optimism to the firmament overhead, in which Hart has noted that the dark has much more territory than the light. Cohle continues, softly, "Once it was all dark. I say the light's winning."

Well, I was looking at it wrong too. Knowing that these characters were only on the show for this run and assuming (correctly, as it turns out) that the case they are investigating would be solved in these episodes, I also took it for granted that we would be getting answers on everything, that the big picture would be revealed. With the end of the last episode I was worried that True Detective would not be able to resolve all of its threads satisfactorily in less than an hour. What I didn't expect is that it wouldn't even try.

The Yellow King, whose reveal I had been eagerly awaiting, is never mentioned once. This is maybe the first time he has dropped off the radar since the early episodes. The secret cult, vaguely referred to as unhinged amalgam of Santeria and Vodun (those must be the mildest ingredients), remains obscure; the biggest hints came last episode. Despite all the evidence accumulated against the Tuttles, the penultimate scene suggests they will successfully spin their way out of any association with Errol Childress, the psychopathic serial killer on whom the hundreds of suspicious disappearances and ritualistic murders are pinned. If Cohle and Hart had the wrong man in episode five (albeit one who was clearly into the same vile shit as Errol), this time they get it right. But this vicious hillbilly is still just a guppy in the murky waters. Somewhere off in the distance the big shark swims - and I'm guessing his fins are yellow.

So we don't get big answers or eye-opening new perspectives and with that in mind it's easy to see why some people were disappointed with this conclusion. But I'm ok with it. It helps that I realized what was going on early in "Form and Void." We open with a bizarre scene of Errol and his wife/sister (Ann Dowd) which seems like an outtake from another flamboyant, much more baroque show - shameless Grand Guignol as the trashy bumpkin wanders around his ramshackle house spouting off in Shakespearean English. This is a trip - we're in Silence of the Lambs/Buffalo Bill territory now, and I dug it. Not what I was expecting, but I enjoy it when a work is willing to branch out in tone. Besides, Errol's cartoonishly colorful abode is just a hint: the real triumph of production design is revealed as his lair in the backyard, if you can call this massive expanse of overgrown ruins, a labyrinth of near-Amazonian splendor, by such a domestic moniker.

From that first scene it's clear the episode is going to emphasize Errol Childress as the dragon who must be slain, the ogre in the cave whose death will signal the end of our tale. I was nervous that the show would absurdly attempt to pin everything - leadership of the cult, statewide corruption, etc. - on this isolated yokel. Then it finally dawned on me, as it probably should have long ago, that True Detective is not going to be a series of unrelated miniseries under the same authorship. The characters will change, but the underlying storyline and backdrop will continue to expand. I suspect we haven't heard the last of the Tuttles (although I assume we will be relocating along with re-casting for season two) and I'm positive we haven't heard the last of the Yellow King. At least, I hope...

So I settled in for a fairly rousing and memorable capper to this particular component of the saga. If I felt any lingering disappointment in the end it may have been more with the characters - since this will be their last hurrah. I'm not sure how I feel about Cohle's not-quite-deathbed conversion into optimistic spirituality. Matthew McConaughey delivers his big, well-written speech superbly. I liked the description of entering a deeper, richer darkness where his father and daughter welcomed him - this is a much more evocative and texture image than the cliched entry into bright light would have been. But something does feel pat, a quality shared by - come to think of it - Cohle's earlier cynicism. This is a character who has always talked a lot. But his emotions are most revealing and effective when we view them from an angle, not when they are being explicated so overtly. Still, this speech works.

Hart, I'm also ambivalent about. I really like this character but in two different ways. I like him when I loathe him, when he's unlikeable, a sonofabitch who gives himself all kinds of excuses but ultimately has to confront his fundamental weakness. I also like in a more conventional sense, as a flawed but good guy you want to root for. The series seesaws between these two presentations of Hart but ultimately comes down hard on the second in this final episode. On a basic level, this is satisfying. There is redemptive heft to the family gathering around his bed, as he tells them everything's going to be all right before breaking down into sobs (the dark, ominous score beautifully undercuts the potential sentimentality and emphasizes a profound sense of of unease). Calm and wise by his friend's side at the end, Hart's conclusion feels earned on a certain level. Having come to care about these characters, their hard-won camaraderie warms our hearts.

On the other hand, come on! The Hart we saw around the middle of the season bordered on Tony Soprano territory, a seething overwhelmed mess of a man, clinging desperately to his sense of power while flailing in the darkness. It was a powerful characterization and - I don't know - the kinder, gentler Hart who closes the series doesn't totally convince me as a natural evolution of the darker portrait we glimpsed before. Also, I'm calling foul on the young prostitute showing up again as his mistress seven years later, only to disappear again from the story, a totally wasted plot twist. Likewise there was a nasty streak, a truly cold viciousness to Cohle which has been papered over here. He isn't just a wounded soul hurting only himself, a man who needed to confront death to find the will to live. Along with the honor and sensitivity was a genuine force of destruction and poison. Errol, holding him in his clutches, demands, "Take off your mask!" By the end of "Form and Void" I felt more like everyone had put a mask on.

I don't begrudge any story an uplifting end and it's easy to see why, with all the black evil swamping the dim beacons of light, creator Nic Pizzolatto felt the need to amp up the wattage. But if the happy ending feels forced it may be because it makes me realize I didn't quite know what kind of show True Detective wanted to be. And now I'm not totally sure True Detective knows either. It is an incredibly assured piece of work, and the consistent writer/director team makes it all feel a piece. The show deftly weaves together influences as diverse as The Wire, The Sopranos, and Twin Peaks into one tight, filmic narrative. But there's still a difference between a gritty, adventurous, wildly inventive genre piece and something like The Sopranos which goes over the edge into outright experimentation, pushing the envelope until it leaves us exhilarated and exasperated, wandering what the hell we just saw. At its best, True Detective does this too but ultimately it settles for just a little less than groundbreaking art.

If I'm being tough on the show - tougher than I expected when I began writing this - it comes from a place of admiration. I can't wait to see where True Detective goes next, how it unfolds unique stories against the big picture, details accumulating over a long period if and when it chooses to surprise us by weaving old threads back into the tapestry (I hope so). This is an excellent series but more importantly it's a hell of a first season, setting the bar high with a wink that tells us it's only going to get higher. There's a great shot, maybe the best in the series, when Cohle enters the killer's lair and wanders lower in the composition so that only his eyes poke out above the bottom of the frame. It's a moment to send a shiver down your spine in anticipation of what's to come. If nothing else in the atmospheric and startling climax really lives up to that shiver, that's ok too. It's a promise of what's to come.

Every month, I will be offering one post on Twin Peaks...up until Showtime re-airs the original series. Then I will post extensive coverage of each episode (mixing new reactions with my many older pieces) immediately after they air. Stay tuned.

Starting with True Detective a few months ago, I am now keeping (and eventually publishing) a viewing diary on every series I watch for the first time. Part of the reason for this is my regret that I didn't record my initial reactions to Twin Peaks several years ago, even though I had just started blogging at the time. With this in mind, I recently opened a thread on the World of Blue forum, asking other Twin Peaks fans to recall their first reactions to a couple dozen major turning points on the show. The replies were fantastic, and eventually I decided to answer to my own question.

So here are my own responses, as I recall them. Some were positive, some were negative, and some were much harder to categorize (unsurprisingly, the Fire Walk With Me entry is nearly as long as the others put together). Some of these responses overlap with material I've written before for this blog - while others don't - so if you've read a lot of my Twin Peaks writing before you may want to skip around. Needless to say, it's all spoilers from this point on so if you haven't seen Twin Peaks yet, watch before reading. And learn from my mistake by recording your own reactions as you do...

Oh and one more thing. In the near future (possibly a month from now) I am going to sample lots of different responses into a big compilation post, showing different fans' reactions to various turning points. Frankly, it will be a much broader and more fascinating look at Twin Peaks fandom than I'm just able to provide on my own (not that that's stopped me from posting this as well!). IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE SHARE YOUR OWN RESPONSES TO THE FOLLOWING POINTS either here or, preferably, on the thread linked above. I will eventually mix and match from all the different participants.


Leading up to Twin Peaks

I watched Twin Peaks in 2008 by renting DVDs from Netflix. I saw the whole thing in the space of about three to four weeks, so obviously my experience was rather different than someone watching it in 1990-91! But the experience actually began two years before I watched the full series, when I rented the old pre-Gold Box Artisan set from Netflix (which did not include the pilot episode).

I can't for the life of me exactly remember what/why/how I decided to watch Twin Peaks. I don't think I'd ever seen any clips, though I must have seen an image of the Red Room at some point [actually I think I'd heard it featured a "dwarf" but hadn't seen any pictures of the scene]. I was not a TV person at all, but it was doubtless through some film connection that I was drawn to Twin Peaks.

The big connection, of course, was Lynch. I hadn't seen that many of his films at this point, just Elephant Man when I was a little kid, Mulholland Drive (which I'd watched several times and was one of my favorite films), and Blue Velvet (which disappointed me the first time I saw it). I would watch Eraserhead within a year but I don't think I'd seen it yet. Nonetheless, on the basis of Mulholland Drive I knew Lynch was brilliant and that something about his atmosphere/style just connected with me on a gut level, like a dream.

I also liked the idea of the woodsy locale and was intrigued by the hook of the sad, wistful Laura Palmer mystery; when I was a kid I had seen some TV movie (not Twin Peaks, although it would have been around the same time) in which a girl goes missing and is never seen again, and all her classmates feel a sense of loss and it always haunted me.

So, without further ado...

2. The appearance of Bob in episode 1

I'm going to discuss the pilot further down the line, because I didn't watch it until after ep. 1 & 2 (only the Artisan set was available at this time). Watching ep. 1 I wasn't sure yet if I would like Twin Peaks. It felt a bit more soap-y and "early 90s TV" than I expected (I particularly remember getting this impression from the jail cell scene with Bobby & Mike for some reason). Plus it's always odd to enter in media res. Everyone's talking about Laura Palmer (this is the episode with those weird flashbacks/video montages) and things that happened the day/night before; I'm not sure if I even realized at first this wasn't the pilot but it became clear pretty quickly.

I wondered if Lynch had just executive-produced the show or if he actually played a role in its development. There was something there, but I wasn't hooked.

Until...

Good God, when Bob's face popped up on the screen I literally leaped out of my chair and yelled so loudly that my roommate heard me from the other room. In that instant I knew I was going to like this show and that it would definitely be Lynchian because that moment reminded me so much of the creature-behind-the-dumpster in Mulholland Drive. I'd never seen anything like this on a TV show before.

3. The Red Room dream in episode 2

This scene sealed the deal - I knew this was going to be my favorite series and an unforgettable experience. But I also remember the opening of the episode, with the entire Horne clan sitting around the table munching on Brie & baguette (or about to, anyway). This was visually the most interesting thing I'd seen yet on the show, and when "Directed by David Lynch" appeared on the screen I was not surprised. This started something of a game for me when I watched the full series - I would always try to guess if Lynch was directing before the final credit came up. Usually it wasn't that difficult to determine, but I remember being surprised when his name appeared on ep. 9 (the fairly low-key opening didn't strike me as Lynchian at the time) and also when his name DIDN'T come up after the Eraserhead-esque opening shot of Todd Holland's ep. 11.

However, this game would not resume for 2 years as I stopped my initial viewing at ep. 2. Not only was the pilot unavailable at this time, season 2 hadn't yet been released on DVD so I knew I didn't want to wade further in, only to get frustrated when I had to stop prematurely. The Gold Box came out a year later but for some reason I didn't pick up with the series until '08. Oddly enough, as I realized later, looking at my Netflix account, I rented the pilot two years to the day after I had first started watching the series. Spooky... (I also watched the killer's reveal six years to the day before The Entire Mystery blu-ray was released).

1. The pilot

I liked this episode, and it filled in some gaps certainly, but I don't think I was as taken with it as I had been by ep. 2. It's definitely Lynch's most restrained, somewhat aloof episode of the series (I discuss this in the pilot thread in dugpa's "Episodes" section). Much more Blue Velvet than Mulholland Drive. Most of all, though, I really admired how Lynch & Frost's screenplay unfolded so meticulously and precisely. This may have been the beginning of my curiosity about what role Frost played in the series.

One thing I distinctly remember from my first viewing of the pilot: breaking out into a grin and sighing with relief when Cooper appeared in his car. Everything had been so grim and moody so far, which was alluring, but this felt engaging in a whole different way. I don't remember my impression of Cooper from the earlier viewings of ep. 1 & 2 but this was probably the point where I got hooked by his character.

4a. The season finale - the fact that Laura's killer was not revealed

I am pretty sure that when I started watching Twin Peaks I did not expect the killer to be revealed at all. And I was fine with that. In fact, for some reason I was initially under the impression that Twin Peaks had been cancelled because Lynch declined to solve the mystery. And that made sense to me, I felt the point of the show was that yearning to know the unknowable and that this fueled the entire mood and atmosphere of the world.

4b. The season finale - Cooper being shot

On DVD, this certainly was not as big of a deal as it would have been in the spring of 1990 but I'm sure I rushed to return the disc in order to get the next one quickly. I don't remember any real impression of Cooper's cliffhanger, but I do know that I loved Frost's direction of the episode and considered it the best non-Lynch episode of season 1. I think ep. 7 plays best on first viewing, when we are totally hooked on the various plots and want to know where it is going. At this point I believed "all roads lead to Rome" and that everything related somehow to Laura's mystery. I thought, even if the final answer is never revealed, various clues will keep tying everything in together and indicate some even larger mystery.

5. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer - did you read it before watching season 2? Did it point you in a certain direction?

I didn't read this until last year. I can't imagine what I would have thought if I'd read it before season 2. Even if you don't draw the connection between Leland and Bob, the abuse angle is hammered home pretty strongly so I think maybe it would have made the tone/narrative of ep. 14 seem less shocking than it did.

6a. The season 2 premiere - the very long opening with the waiter

This was probably my favorite episode of the series up to this point. While I enjoyed the tone of season 1, I was generally more taken with avant-garde surrealism than tongue-in-cheek postmodernism, so I generally preferred the hypnotic style of this to the pastiche-y Invitation to Love stuff. If the Red Room was a big turning point in knowing "I'm going to love this show" the opening of season 2 was another confirmation. It felt like pure cinema to me.

6b. The season 2 premiere - the appearance of the giant (which certainly takes the vaguely supernatural air of the show in a new direction)

I think I felt the same about this as I did about the waiter. It wasn't so much the narrative detail (although I loved the idea of making the mystery more cosmic) as the style: it was like oh yes, now we're just sinking into the bath of Twin Peaks and letting the water run over us.

6c. The season 2 premiere - the violent flashback to Laura's murder, with Bob making his first sustained appearance

I have no memory of my first reaction! Even weirder, when I re-watched the episode for my episode guide a few months later (I found it a big disappointment on second viewing, though it's grown on me again) I didn't even mention this scene!! And last year, when I viewed the episode a third time it still didn't really register for me. In my mind, I conflated this sequence with the dream in the following one, where Cooper sees the blurred Bob. Only when I listened to a podcast about ep. 8, in which people raved about this scene, did I go back and realize, oh yeah, this is its own distinct sequence and actually a pretty memorable conclusion to the season opener. Now it's one of my favorite parts of Twin Peaks.

I don't know why it left such a shallow impression on me the first three times! All I can conclude is that I responded to Bob jump-scares and creepy, unexpected moments and this was more of a sustained terror which didn't have the same effect on me.

At any rate, seeing Bob kill Laura must not have surprised or shocked me in any way. I guess at this point I had already concluded he had something to do with her death.

7. Bob crawling over the couch in episode 9

This, on the other hand, my God it terrified and thrilled me! I had the same reaction as I did to Bob's first appearance in ep. 1 and it instantly became my favorite moment on the show. But I also loved the "Just You" number beforehand, which reminded me of the "Every Little Star" sequence in Mulholland Drive, with the 50s music playing and characters exchanging long, dreamy stares. I'm always taken aback by how much people seem to hate it, I guess because of James' falsetto. It felt purposefully corny to me, yet also very sincere and winsome in that perfectly Lynchian way. I felt it did a great job setting the mood for Bob's appearance.

Unfortunately, I liked the Bob sequence so much that I looked it up on YouTube...and at the end of the clip a link popped up for a video called "BOB Kills Maddy." My first Twin Peaks spoiler.

8a. The killer's reveal in episode 14 - the fact that it was Leland

Nonetheless, I still didn't know who Bob was - or if he was anybody other than himself (though ep. 13 seemed to suggest as much). I knew that it couldn't be Ben and with Maddy being murdered, I can't say Leland was a total surprise - after all, Maddy was staying with him. Plus ep. 13 & 14 really start to push Leland in a creepier, more menacing direction. But I think part of me still expected Bob to be a standalone killer and not to inhabit any host, despite Mike's scene at the end of the previous episode. I thought he might materialize and kill Maddy and than somehow Cooper would have to hunt for a killer spirit without human form, which could have been interesting in a very different way I guess.

When Bob popped up in Leland's mirror - or really, as soon as Leland started looking in the mirror, straightening his tie - it was kind of shocking. The thought of Leland being Laura's killer must have occurred to me as a possibility, but I just didn't think the show would go there. It made me feel a bit queasy and uncomfortable, especially since I'd been so excited to watch this episode (at one point or another it had become clear to me that who killed Laura Palmer was going to get an answer...and soon). I kept thinking about all Laura's statements about her romance with the "mystery man," and the fact that the killer had raped and tortured Laura, and Cooper's earlier quotes from her diary and it was just like...oh shit. They went there.

8b. The killer's reveal in episode 14 - the fact that it was also Bob

I think from his very first appearance I knew Bob had something to do with Laura's death. Plus knowing he was going to kill Maddy...this part of the reveal was not a surprise at all to me. I mean did it surprise anyone - other than Howard Rosenberg? [context: Rosenberg was an L.A. Times columnist who insisted that Bob was giving Laura CPR in the episode 8 flashback.]

8c. The killer's reveal in episode 14 - Maddy's murder (maybe the most disturbing thing I've seen in a TV show or even movie)

Interesting that I wrote that in parentheses because at the time I don't think I had the same visceral reaction to it I would later (only on last year's viewing did the full weight of the emotion really hit me). It was grisly and hard to watch, certainly, but I would say it numbed rather than jolted me. Just pretty exhausting, really. Plus I was still reeling from the Leland reveal! And, as mentioned, it had already been spoiled for me.

A word on the next scene, though: the emotions of the Road House really sunk in for me, and crystallized everything Twin Peaks had been about - this nameless sense of grief and loss that haunted everyone, and became the undercurrent to the magical melancholy mood. I also loved the Road House sequence just before the killer's reveal, with Donna lip-syncing "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" to James. Those characters never bothered me the way they did others. They felt like they belonged to the same Lynchian world as Jeffrey & Sandy in Blue Velvet, and provided a great gateway into Laura's world (especially since, after the pilot and like one stray season 1 scene, we never actually see any of the show's teenagers in high school).

9. The way the discovery & capture of Leland/Bob is handled in episode 16

This was my first big disappointment with the show. By this point I was definitely invested in the mystery narrative as something other than just a mood-generator and I expected a much more satisfying resolution. Cooper remembering his dream felt like a deus ex machina and the episode felt like it was trying and failing to be Lynchian; it was way too bombastic. I think I may have been a bit relieved, though, to find out Bob was purely a possessive demon although Cooper's line to Truman was a bit jolting/discomforting. I couldn't yet accept the idea that incest was a part of this entertaining world.

Anyway, it did seem like Bob-on-the-loose was a great narrative angle to pursue for the rest of season 2. I fully expected the show to highlight "the darkness of the woods" and explore the cosmos of Twin Peaks in new and exciting ways. It seemed like solving Laura's mystery had just opened up even bigger mystery.

10. Leland's wake in episode 17, with the comic subplots emerging and the writers trying to move past the mystery

My heart just sank the moment the two brothers started fighting. This may be one of the moments of my first viewing I remember most distinctly because I didn't see it coming from a mile away.

11. The realization that the Cooper-Audrey storyline was not going to play out

I don't think I caught on to this the first time. I enjoyed their flirtation but I didn't know where it was going and when it ended so unceremoniously I was distracted by all the other things going wrong with the show. Only after a few rewatches did I realize what a missed opportunity this was.

12. The stretch of episodes 17-23 (you know the ones)

As soon as the killer had been revealed, I switched all of my Netflix discs to Twin Peaks so that I could just marathon the series because I was so excited and curious to see where it went next. Becoming a lame attempt at Andy Griffith with the quirkiness pumped up didn't even occur to me. But I still expected things to come together or surprise me. I thought there would be twists, that somehow there was more to Evelyn, or later JJW (I expected him to maybe be a secret villain that would kidnap/hurt Audrey or something). What a bummer to realize there wasn't.

I also did not like the Josie/drawer pull episode, which felt like the show officially jumping the shark. At least before, all the bad stuff hadn't involved the supernatural elements, allowing them to remain unsullied by the show's general decline. Throwing in the Little Man & Bob felt like such a desperate gimmick and was delivered in such an un-Lynchian way. I probably wondered if the show was just done at this point but I don't think I ever considered not watching the rest. I can't remember if I read anything about the general direction of the show while I was watching it. I think after the Maddy spoiler I tried not to Google Twin Peaks at all.

13. Where you felt the show picking up again

Around episodes 24 & 25. Certainly Cooper getting back in the suit and David Lynch coming back to town as Gordon Cole was a big turning point. I loved the Shelly/Gordon scenes. (I think at the time, the pine weasel riot & JJW overshadowed the more promising aspects of #24 but I can't recall.) The big deal was that we seemed to be heading somewhere once again. The Lodge stuff was cool, and Annie at least brought a renewed sense of suspense into this world as I wondered what Windom would do with her. I don't think I liked Windom Earle though - too goofy with his costumes and monologues. But I definitely felt like I was enjoying the show again from episode 25 or so forward. Nonetheless, I completely skipped all of these episodes - indeed, everything after Leland's death in ep. 16 - when I watched the series again and did my episode guide. So last year I saw them for the first time since my first viewing. They weren't as bad as I remembered, but they still felt just as pointless.

14. The finale (and I know it was a 2-parter in '90 but I'm particularly keen to hear how the Lynch half played)

For whatever reason, I had a strong suspicion that Lynch would return to direct the finale, and that it would be memorable, and I was not disappointed. Since I had been hooked in to Twin Peaks by the directorial style, I just loved his bold choices in this episode - opening on the close-up of Lucy/Andy, the hilarious long takes of the old man in the bank, the wide lens in the living rooms, etc. And of course, the Black Lodge! I can't remember if I was surprised to see all the familiar sights again but I do remember getting a sense that Lynch knew this was his last hurrah and ended it with a bang. Turning Cooper into Bob felt completely Lynchian to me (only recently did I learn that this wasn't his idea, and that he probably didn't like it).


15. Fire Walk With Me

Feeling that the show had declined so sharply after resolving the mystery, missing Lynch's presence behind the camera, and having been fascinated by the "aura" of Laura (ha, that rhymes) I was naturally very excited to see the movie. I had picked up some sense that it was controversial somewhere, I can't remember where or what, but had no idea how much it was hated. I knew, obviously, that it was a prequel.

I don't totally recall my reaction to the early scenes (after watching the film, I felt they were unnecessary but that was partly colored by having just sat through all the Laura stuff - I think I was probably into them as cool Lynchian setpieces while they were unfolding). Overall, the first half of the movie felt very refreshing to me, what a treat to be back under the spell of David Lynch after such a dry stretch (not including the finale). When Laura showed up, it was so cool: as much as wanting to solve the whodunit of the show, I had been drawn in by the presence of this mystery figure who meant so many different things to so many people, who was always present yet frustratingly just out of reach.

But I was also aware that the movie was walking a fine line here. Was it just going to be a perfunctory re-telling of events we already knew? Were the actors now a bit too old for their parts? Was Lynch too distant from the pilot to re-capture the mood of Twin Peaks? And while Sheryl Lee had been perfectly cast as the alluring school portrait/frozen corpse, I had no idea if she could actually carry a movie. Her performance as Maddy hadn't impressed me very much and certainly she had never had a notable career outside of Twin Peaks, suggesting that she was more a screen presence than a true actress. I don't think I terribly minded the absence of Cooper and the ensemble and the show's usual mood/style, but I wasn't sure yet if Fire Walk With Me was going to work.

During all the woozy walking-to/around-high-school scenes I had my doubt. It seemed like maybe Lynch was just indulging his own fetish/desire to explore Laura's secret world. I expected to enjoy the movie for the curio aspect if nothing else, but wasn't sure if it would really live up to the first half of the series.

I'm not sure what the turning point was. It may have been as early as Laura's goofy dialogue with James ("a turkey is one of the dumbest birds""Gobble, gobble") which is as weirdly affecting as it is goofy - you suddenly realize that Lee is playing it straight instead of winking at us as the show would have done. It may have been her smiling at Bobby, which has the quintessentially intense Lynch slow-burn quality to it. I think by the angels speech, though, I was hooked. Wow, I thought, this movie is going to be really good and hot damn, this girl can act! I was blown away by Mike in traffic, Laura's dream (really everything with that "open door" picture which terrified me on this first viewing in ways I can't quite explain - like the most uncanny image I'd ever scene in a movie), and ESPECIALLY the Pink Room (even though this was the time of the New Line DVD with the incorrectly-mixed dialogue) which struck me as the most hypnotic and brilliant sequence I'd ever seen in a Lynch film, which put it in the running for most hypnotic and brilliant sequence ever. And most of all, every scene delivered further indication that I was witnessing an extraordinary performance by Lee. I had no clue that this was in store for me, and it was such a thrilling discovery.

You'd think with all of this that as soon as the movie ended, I would instantly declare it a masterpiece. But I didn't. The problem for me was that the film re-awakened and plunged into all the dark stuff from ep. 14 that I had managed to push aside. I watched plenty of dark and disturbing movies up to this point, so it wasn't the subject so much that bothered me as the fact that, by presenting it in the context of a half-joking, whimsical murder mystery, Twin Peaks had gotten under my skin and made the reveal feel unusually discomforting. For whatever reason, ep. 16 led me to conclude that Bob was Laura's real tormenter and that he used Leland to kill her (I think I compartmentalized the rape part, and concluded that he was abusing her as a spirit, outside of any physical body). As I wrote in my review of the time, "the sense was that Laura's troubles originated outside of her home."

Well, the "wash your hands" scene destroyed that impression in one fell swoop and left me really shaken...


16. The Special Features disc

Obviously I didn't include this on my original list but I want to end on this note, because it was very much a part of my first viewing of Twin Peaks. After I had (semi-)digested FWWM, I watched the final disc of the Gold Box and was swept back into the show's magical universe. But with a much fuller context of how popular it had been and how complicated the process of making it was. This added another dimension to my appreciation because the offscreen story was clearly as wonderful and strange as the onscreen story! I remember being particularly taken with the "season one" part of the "Secrets From Another Place" documentary, watching the construction of this whole world on an L.A. soundstage, seeing their imagination become tangible, suggestive, yet not-quite-real. (It hadn't really occurred to me just how fabricated the world of the series was: if it bothered me to notice "the sets" when I popped in the first disc in 2006, now it thrilled me.)

This more than anything was the catalyst for me to immediately start the show all over again and begin analyzing it episode-by-episode. Although there was a half-decade break between this and my past year of Twin Peaks obsession, the process really begins there.

"Then it finally dawned on me, as it probably should have long ago, that True Detective is not going to be a series of unrelated miniseries under the same authorship. The characters will change, but the underlying storyline and backdrop will continue to expand. I suspect we haven't heard the last of the Tuttles (although I assume we will be relocating along with re-casting for season two) and I'm positive we haven't heard the last of the Yellow King. At least, I hope..."

Those words were published by me a week ago, but they were written back in March - immediately after I finished watching the final episode of True Detective. As I recorded that viewing diary I stayed away from coverage of the series, trying to avoid not only spoilers but a sense of wider context. Only after I was done did I read articles and reviews and interviews, watching the special features on the disc and discovering how other people reacted to the material. One of the first things I discovered was that, by almost every single account, True Detective IS going to be a series of unrelated miniseries under the same authorship. And yeah, I definitely consider this a disappointment - one which has caused me to look back on the series with at least a touch more bitterness and frustration than I expressed in my final review.


The brush-off given to the wider context of Dora Lange's murder was quite dramatic after the big scene early in episode 7 (which I had thought was a kickoff rather than a conclusion for those elements). I assumed Nic Pizzolatto had to be withholding information for future seasons, so that different detectives in different locations could pick up various threads of this bigger mystery. Not only was I apparently wrong about this, it isn't even something that feels like a problem to a lot of other viewers - many of whom argue that the information we got about the Yellow King, the Tuttles, and everything else was sufficient to lead us to Errol Childress and give Cohle and Hart a much-needed victory.

Frankly, I'm not sure why it was necessary to drag in that mythology if it was only meant to decorate an absorbing but relatively routine procedural. It seems like a bait-and-switch - "here's this ghoulish crime which is going to lead us into a deeper understanding of a secret web of power and the uncanny visionary states that accompany it" somehow turned into "oh no, you had it backwards - the shadowy conspiracies, and murky intrigues, and mystical mumbojumbo were just tools to help us solve that ghoulish crime." Pardon me, but I don't find that approach quite as rewarding.

Ok, I've vented. I still think True Detective was marvelous television, superbly performed and directed and - despite my frustrations with some of Pizzolatto's choices (with characterization perhaps even more than world-building) - a screenwriting tour de force. Recently I was compelled to watch the opening credits on YouTube and I was instantly swept back into the intoxicating mood and atmosphere of the show, into that feeling of eager anticipation I felt every time I popped a disc into my player. If I don't think the ending was fully satisfying, it doesn't invalidate what came before; it just makes me feel that maybe a richer conclusion is out there in the ether - and maybe we will see it yet (True Detective has at least one more season to go after this next one, and it's always possible Pizzolatto will change his mind - or that he's had some connective tissue up his sleeve all along).

Finally, a word on director Cary Jo Fukunaga, whose overarching voice will be missed on subsequent episodes (not only because he won't be present, but because no other seasons will be supervised by a single director). I think his role in making this series a small-screen masterpiece has been underrated and I also wonder if, at times, he wasn't an effective and necessary counterbalance to some of Pizzolatto's more precocious and/or pat dramatic turns. My favorite episodes of the series were 5 and 6, when plot took a back seat to character development, and their magnificence owes so much to Fukunaga's raw, subtle, complex treatment of relatively simple scenes (like Hart confronting his daughter or Cohle extracting a confession from the killer mom). Pizzolatto was a man with a plan, and he gave True Detective its tight, cogent yet ambitious narrative path, a relief in a landscape littered with shows that overstayed their welcomes. But my favorite moments of art are often moments of unexpected discovery and I'm glad that, however briefly, True Detective made room for these too.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to watch the new season and I hope I can avoid spoilers, even the general kind (already I'm hearing whispers that it will be disappointing, but I suspect that sophomore-slump backlash was inevitable, regardless of actual quality). I will probably post a season 2 viewing diary in a year or so, maybe right before the next (and final?) season is ready to air. I hope I will be watching much sooner than that, but we'll see. Anyway, the first season will be a tough act to follow.

Speaking of which, my next episode guide will be a resumption of my Neon Genesis Evangelion series (begun and abandoned in 2012, but now completed and ready to unfold over the year of its own apocalypse). This subject will be quite different - an animated rather than live-action show, two decades old rather than contemporary, an entity I've already seen several times rather than one I'm experiencing with virgin eyes. The form of these posts will be different too, incorporating conversations with other bloggers. As for similar features, Evangelion's ending is also quite controversial but in this case at least, I feel the conclusion is the best part - especially when the film is included in that judgment. And I will be covering that film as well, quite extensively in fact.

That all starts next Wednesday. For now, let's take a final stroll through the haunted halls of True Detective, soaking up those unforgettable images one more time...

fan art by (l-r) Renny08, Mine Yoshizaki, Scott Campbell

Apparently, by sheer coincidence today is "Evangelion Day" (the first episode takes place on June 22, 2015). My recap/discussion series on the show resumes in two days. Meanwhile, check out my archive of Neon Genesis Evangelion material.

Tonight I was going to review United Red Army, but had trouble activating the subtitles so it will have to wait. Instead I'll use the opportunity to share some musings on "fandom." These will be brief, speculative rather than deeply informed, and focused on the rather random sampling of Twin Peaks, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Star Wars (specifically, the prequels) rather than the big three - or so I'm told - of Star Wars (emphasis on the original trilogy), Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings. I don't know much about fan culture in general - until recently it was not my thing, and even now it isn't something I participate in beyond a few exceptions (maybe just one). So these are very much the observations of an outsider although I have some experience with all three of these fandoms. More importantly, I have a great curiosity about them, how they work, and particularly the existence of different groups within these fan communities, what those groups mean, and how they overlap. Let's take 'em each in turn.


Twin Peaks

I've heard theories that there are two basic types of Peaks fans: "pie & coffee"& "Black Lodge/Blue Rose mysteries." The fanbase has also been divided, somewhat confusingly, into "Twin Peaks fans"& "David Lynch fans." A difference could also be noted between those whose favorite character is Cooper and those whose favorite character is Laura. Essentially, when you get right down to it, at bottom (how many different ways can I say this?) these are various ways of positing a divide between those who prefer the TV series and those who prefer the film.

There's some truth to these contours but they are also quite misleading. The fandom is pleasingly messy - some of the people most forgiving of the second season's flaws, and most taken with the soap opera plotting, absolutely love the movie. Some fans who dislike Fire Walk With Me are nonetheless enthralled with the dark side of the show. When I explored the archives of early nineties internet commentary on Twin Peaks (yes, there was an internet then...sort of) I discovered that almost all the hardcore fans loved the movie (at least within this sample), something I had not thought was the case. Among those who view Peaks' primary importance as giving voice to Laura Palmer, there is still great affection for and enjoyment of Cooper's cheerful bromides, and the cozy small-town atmosphere of the show.

At their best, Twin Peaks fan communities (particularly the tremendous "World of Blue" forum on dugpa.com, without which my Journey Through Twin Peaks video series probably wouldn't have been possible) taught me how to reconcile my appreciation for the varying aspects of Twin Peaks, how to see them as part of a greater whole and not simply contradictions/rejections of one another. Initially the wide disparity between the tone and style of the film and series gave me whiplash (to some extent it still does). This disparity made me feel like I had to choose between these worlds - the idea of Twin Peaks as fun entertainment, enjoyable to parse for clues and theories, focused on a broad ensemble of characters and the idea of Twin Peaks as profoundly moving and upsetting art, something to be experienced and overwhelmed by on a visceral level, anchored entirely on the subjective experience of a single character. But the more I saw fans engaging with the work, the more I realized the power and strength in this tension, that it was less a contradiction than an expansion to consider the series and film as part of one saga.

Still, that gap exists especially for first-time viewers. Last year I attended a screening of the film in a library. Most of the attendees hadn't watched the movie yet but were obviously fans of the show and they showed up in homemade costumes to gorge on donuts and coffee before the movie (one librarian, dressed as Nadine, was drawing the shades before showtime when suddenly the ridiculousness of the situation occurred to her and she turned around to shout, "My drapes!" Cue appreciative laughter). The host had not yet seen the movie, and when the lights went up afterwards, she was clearly shaken and almost apologetic about staging the screening. Throughout the early part of the film, there was a great deal of laughter and even in the later parts every single time something supernatural occurred the audience broke out in relieved guffaws. The early Laura scenes received that too (how could "Gobble, gobble" not?) but around the time Laura gives her angel speech to Donna silence fell over the room. I'm really not sure how most of the viewers took the movie (although one acquaintance, who won the costume contest as Pete Martell with a plastic fish in a percolator, said he really liked it - despite having almost stopped watching the series halfway through, when it got too frightening). They were at least respectful, which isn't always the case.

All of the fascinating tensions and contradictions of being a Twin Peaks fan were present that night, and I'm certain they will be highlighted again when the series returns. Right now, the casual conventional wisdom about Twin Peaks focuses on the quirky eccentricity of the humor, the excitement of the murder mystery, the lovability of Agent Cooper, the vaguely-eerie-but-not-too-offputting darkness of the woods around town. Gifs and tumblr posts tend more toward stylized celebrations of mood and atmosphere than heartfelt identifications with the depth of character and theme (a big contrast with Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I'll discuss in a moment). The fandom still seems pretty small, though it's been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years. Hopefully when Showtime airs the new series, this interest will explode and with that growth will come greater awareness of and astonishment with the need to navigate Twin Peaks' many different modes (a difficulty which may be taken for granted by a lot of fans who have grown used to its demands and detours over the years). What makes Twin Peaks fandom so rich and interesting, like Twin Peaks itself, is that it isn't easy.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

The samecould - and has - been said about Neon Genesis Evangelion (which I will begin covering episode by episode later this week). The show deceptively begins with a story which tweaks but still obeys anime conventions (or so I'm told; I'm still not that familiar with much anime) before eventually diving deeply into psychoanalysis and avant-garde animation in its final arc. The film that followed the series, End of Evangelion, has often been compared to Fire Walk With Me in its effect and relationship to the show. Apparently the finale and the film were quite controversial at the time, and you'll still find a lot of fans who don't like the last two episodes - but the movie itself seems to be more widely accepted.

What intrigues me about Evangelion fandom, which I've stumbled across only recently (following my yearlong trek through Twin Peaks) is how self-conscious, self-analytical, and (sort of) self-critical it is by comparison. I think this is partly because it has a firmer foundation in anime fandom than Twin Peaks has in any other genre or medium (it's very much its own thing), so there is more awareness about how all this stuff works. For example, there are quite a lot of Eva think-pieces which criticize fans who "miss the point" of Evangelion, celebrating it for shallow reasons while missing the deeper resonance and the many ways that creator Hideaki Anno subverts tropes, forcing the viewers to question not only the work but themselves. And it's true, Anno has been quite vocal about his frustrations with the "otaku" culture of Japan: its fetishization of both female characters and military hardware (something Evangelion itself at once critiques, embodies, and subverts) at the expense of engagement with ideas and society.

But it seems like most of the Eva fans I've encountered get this, so as they proclaim their frustration with those who don't, I have to wonder to what extent they are strawmanning. By many accounts, the "come for the mecha action, don't stay for the hallucinations" approach is a real thing in Japan but among American fans, already a small selection pool, is it really that common? Again, I don't know. I just find it interesting that the fans need this sense of division, of those who get it and those who don't, to define the work and themselves.

Another aspect of Evangelion fandom which fascinates me is the phenomenon of "shipping," which seems to define a huge portion of the commentary on, and celebration of, the show. "Ship," for those who don't know, is short for "relationship" and concerns itself with pairing the two characters most meant for each other, presumably romantically. Evangelion confuses matters by putting numerous characters in suggestive and/or lovelorn situations without fully committing to any one pairing (at least on the series; the film might be another matter). These pairings speak to fans' different desires for the characters (and maybe themselves) - linking Shinji to the confrontational, temperamental Asuka works for those who think he needs to get out of his shell while pairing him with the beneficent (albeit ultimately dangerous) Kaworu satisfies fans who want him to get the unconditional love and support he desires.

I've also discovered a lot of Eva fans concerned with cultural identity (the best Eva analyses I've found are on a Tumblr called "Talk Trans Eva to Me"), taking the show's invitation to analysis even further. They observe how the characters' personalities are both shaped by the surrounding world and the demands/expectations it places upon them, and expressive of deep-seated hurts and needs. Considering that Hideaki Anno created Evangelion in part to express his own struggle with depression, this affinity is unsurprising. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised there isn't more Twin Peaks analysis/celebration in this vein, honing in on and sympathizing with a characters' psychological struggles and attempts at self-realization, especially surrounding Laura Palmer (although there are definitely some fan tributes out there that do this). But then again, the sheer quantity of fan engagement with Evangelion far outpaces Twin Peaks for whatever reason - there seem to be exponentially more essays, videos, and pieces of fanart for Eva than for Peaks. Perhaps when Lynch and Mark Frost bring back Peaks - and Laura (though we don't yet know how) - more of this approach will emerge.

Star Wars

Star Wars fandom is also, albeit subtly, interesting in this regard. Lately, Bob Clark (whose conversations with me on Evangelion provided a gateway into its fan culture) has pointed out to me the greater proclivity of prequel fans to engage in LGBT-related fanart (here's a recent post he shared and commented upon). He doesn't see this as much (or at all) among fans of the older trilogy and suspects it has something to do with a generation gap, among other things. He also sees a general underdog quality to prequel fandom, which he himself expressed by contrasting Anakin Skywalker with conventional fan favorite Han Solo in a meme/post created a few months ago.

I'm not a great admirer of the prequels. I revisited them a few years ago, and found some things to like, but overall they still disappointed me (to be honest, only the 1977 film still seems like a full-fledged masterpiece in my eyes). But increasingly I am intrigued by the existence of Star Wars fans who don't fit the dominant narrative of a resentful, snarky, "Lucas-raped-my-childhood" fanbase. Partly this is spurred by Bob's own passionate advocacy, partly it is a result of my distaste for the inherent anti-auterism of the "Force Awakens will restore the magic of Star Wars" crowd, partly it's just natural curiosity about a phenomenon that is mostly overlooked. But it is true at this point that anyone under the age of, say, 20, grew up with the prequels and that a lot of Star Wars fans are less into purism or nostalgia than the Gen-X contingent that dominates the conversation (or else they have a different purism or nostalgia in mind)

A piece of prequel fanart that I discovered (and featured above) takes place in an alternate universe where Anakin and Padme stay together, and he does not become Darth Vader. It's interesting in that it indulges in a sense of what-if and fan creativity similar to a lot of the original trilogy fans, but with a very different set of references and (possibly) preferences. Frankly, as I said, I don't know that much about the world of prequel fandom. It's been suggested to me that it skews younger, more culturally progressive, certainly more upbeat in tone, and (obviously) more loyal to George Lucas than the more vocal Star Wars fanbase that Disney, J.J. Abrams, and the mainstream media seem most interested in catering to. But can anyone provide more evidence or perspective either for or against this viewpoint? It seems like not only I, but a lot of other people, are mostly in the dark.

Meanwhile, as the new Star Wars film approaches I find myself quite irritated with the mentality that Disney has "rescued" the franchise from its creator. I wrote about this extensively back when Lucasfilm was sold, but just to briefly reiterate and expand... I'm all for criticizing Lucas' creative decisions. But doing so while trying to claim that he has somehow betrayed the "real"Star Wars is having one's cake and eating it too. The "real"Star Wars is his, and the rest of us are along for the ride. Don't get me wrong: I think it's great that fans can engage with work on their own terms, revise it, tweak it, subvert it, celebrate it, through fanfiction, fanart, video essays and various other tributes and/or analyses (I'm a bit more lukewarm about fanedits, especially when they are presented as "replacements" for the director's vision, but we'll save that topic for another time). That is probably my greatest discovery of the past year, ever since I started to tentatively explore Twin Peaks fan communities: the ability of fans to make a work seem even more alive by engaging with it, and with each other.

But the greatest engagement, the most magical aspect of the whole process, is that - in almost every significant case - the works that are being mythologized by enthusiastic fans, expanded into something that spans the mind's horizon, began life not as committee-assembled consumer goods, honed and marketed for mass appreciation (although this is usually how they end up) but as the product of unique, fairly independent individuals - and usually, one individual. To lose sight of that core truth is not only to disempower the creator but to disempower the fan. It suggests their only role is to take part in this collective, so-much-bigger-than-one-person enterprise (which somehow always seems to align with a streamlined corporate marketing machine) rather than to participate in a community and then see what they can do with it themselves. Every fan is a potential creator and that's the creators' greatest gift to the public: not so much the work itself as the inspiration it provides, and the realization that individual imagination offers immense power and possibility.

As I begin reviewing the episodes, this post will serve as a directory for subsequent entries.

Despite regularly blogging, tweeting, and uploading videos (well, maybe not so regularly with the videos, but I'm working on it!), the truth is that I'm technologically backward. Because I don't have cable, couldn't access HBONow on my computer, and refused to resort to my phone's screen, I did not think I would be able to watch True Detective's second season until it hit DVD. But over the past week, as I listened to an old podcast on season one, noticed that some of my favorite podcasters were launching new podcast on the show, and attempted to tune out any spoiler-y buzz about the new season, I finally caved. Where there's a will there's a way, and so I have begun watching True Detective in less-than-optimal conditions (still not on my phone though!). Tomorrow I will post my reaction to the first episode, already written, and on Tuesday I will review tonight's episode. From then on, every Tuesday - sandwiched between a random Monday post and Wednesday's Neon Genesis Evangelion series - I will be reviewing a True Detective episode from two days earlier.

There have already been rumbles of discontent about the direction of the new season but I'll save my own reflections until tomorrow. For now, I really look forward to watching True Detective this way, even if the series itself ends up being disappointing. I haven't viewed a show while it aired since Lost (which I never finished) so it will be interesting to partake in the conversation as it unfolds, and offer my own humble contributions on this blog. Hopefully you'll share your own comments, questions, and answers below. I'd also like to recommend the True Detective Weekly podcast and forum by the folks who fostered such a great community around their Twin Peaks Rewatch, which just concluded. If nothing else, this will be a great dry run for Twin Peaks next year as I attempt to gather my thoughts and filter in, and out, other opinions in real time. Can't wait!

Meanwhile, if you want to read my thoughts on True Detective season 1 (which I watched on DVD this spring) check out my recently-completed viewing diary. See you tomorrow...

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

True Detective's second season finds itself in a unique position. On the one hand, it has nothing to do with season one: different characters, different location, with the freedom to engage in an entirely different visual style and mode of storytelling. Even the director of season one, Cary Jo Fukunaga, is gone, to be replaced by a series of other directors (unlike that memorable first season, one filmmaker will not be overseeing the entire narrative). This could almost be seen as writer Nic Pizzolatto's "follow-up project" to the acclaimed miniseries that aired a year and a half ago on HBO. On the other hand, the title alone brings certain expectations with it, and if the new season abandons too many of True Detective's touchstones - the ongoing central mystery spread over eight episodes, the dual cop protagonists, the hints of corruption, conspiracy, and occultism haunting the show's psychosphere - many viewers will be disappointed. Is True Detective simply Pizzolatto's canny method to package his separate stories for a built-in audience? Or will there be a singular sensibility, style, and even story structure linking these disparate seasons?

The season two premiere answers some of these questions affirmatively, others negatively, many ambiguously, and some not at all. When the episode begins there is a feeling of continuity, fostered by the familiar-yet-different opening credits which seem very much like a reincarnation of the previous year's opening theme. Almost everything else in the episode works against this sense. The big surprise for me was that the season's marquee names, Colin Farrel and Vince Vaugh, are not playing partners. In fact, they aren't even both police officers: Vaughn is Frank Semyon, a criminal whose new (semi-)legitimate business hits a couple slight snags - first when a crusading journalist publishes a story about citywide corruption that may implicate his partners, second when one of those associates - City Manager Ben Caspare - disappears and, in the very least scene of the episode, turns up dead. Perhaps the particulars of Vaughn's role were publicized ahead of time but I would have to imagine it was a shock then if not now, given how feverishly everyone embraced the partners-in-crimebusting standard of season one. After all, the Twitter-trending #TrueDetectiveSeason2 hashtag last year was entirely devoted to hypothesizing - sometimes quite playfully - which two actors could replace Matthew McConaughey & Woody Harrelson as the next "true detectives."

Farrel appears, more conventionally, as washed-up cop Detective Ray Velcoro, formerly of LAPD and now working for the police force of corrupt, miniscule L.A. satellite city Vinci. Unlike season one, which began with the crime and an intriguing 17-years-later frame story focused on that crime, season two begins with Det. Velcoro's personal problems, showing us his attempts to bond with his semi-estranged son, expand his visitation rights, and (in a flashback) avenge the rape of his wife which occurred 9 months before his son was born (there are hints that, biologically, Velcoro's boy may not be his boy at all). Velcoro achieves this revenge, offscreen, with the help of Semyon, so it isn't as if they are completely disconnected. We see them together twice through the episode, first when Semyon hands a younger, uniformed Velcoro the picture and details on the alleged rapist, and later, in the present, after Velcoro has returned the favor by beating up the reporter who threatens Semyon's livelihood. If season one flirted with casting its two stars as unsympathetic brutes before essentially confirming their heroism, season two offers two largely unysympathetic characters as its central figures right off the bat.

Semyon is a criminal who can't even engage our affection as an underdog outlaw. And Velcoro, on the "right" side of the law, is even less likable: when he isn't doing his masked part to ensure the lack of a free press in Vista, he is beating the father of a bully to a pulp while forcing the boy to watch - a gesture that might render him a tad more sympathetic if he hadn't already called his own son a "fat pussy" in an effort to get information. Like both Hart and Cohle, Velcoro is an alcoholic, and like Hart (but not Cohle) he seems to be in denial about its effect on his family. As if aware of how offputting these characters might be, Pizzolatto introduces two more central characters who seem to be filling out a four-lead ensemble: Detective Antigone Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) of the Ventura County Sherrif's Office and Officer Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) of the California State Highway Patrol. Both are troubled. Bezzerides, whose mother killed herself, angrily confronts her estranged sister (working as an online porn actress) and father (leader of a vaguely cultish New Age religious group), while Woodrugh is apparently haunted by war experiences (he makes cryptic references to "Black Mountain" - a Blackwater-inspired mercenary group?) and sexual performance issues he is concealing from his girlfriend.

Both Bezzerides and Woodrugh appear to be on the level, though, apparently too much so. After they are connected to the flagrantly corrupt Velcoro at episode's end, sparks are sure to fly. Indeed, it looks like True Detective's partnership-of-opposites will be a trio rather than a duo, with Semyon sitting on the sidelines as an ambiguous ally/opponent to their investigation. This is potentially a pretty interesting combination of characters, but the episode takes its sweet time arriving at their union: only when Caspare is found dead near a beach do all (or any) of them appear in the same scene. It's worth noting that as the camera cranes up from this apparently nighttime, we see the sky lit up in the background: it's actually dawn, even if the light hasn't reached the crime site yet. This slyly underlines that the entire episode has been a prologue, establishing the characters and their milieu before launching us into the central investigation. As already noted, this is the opposite of the previous season, which began with a bang. Will the slow pace of the central thread, the byzantine web of relations, and the less visually impactful crime scene alienate an audience primed to expect something as iconic and punchy as that pilot?

For about half the episode, I didn't find myself especially engaged. The stories felt too fragmented, and none of them was particularly compelling on its own. I expect one of the criticisms of season two, at least of this episode, will be that it feels too diluted, both watered down and spread too thin: four characters instead of two, a scattered sense of location lacking the palpable atmosphere of Louisiana, and a murder that isn't nearly as compelling as Dora Lange's (a mutilated old politician in a park does not have the graphic power of a naked woman in a burnt-out field with deer antlers attached to her head). But I'm willing to be patient and wait to see what Pizzolatto has up his sleeve. There are promising threads that could go either way. I like the idea of seeing these strands before they come together (now that we know they will come together), and of joining three characters who seem very different from one another (instead of the usual buddy-cop routine of two opposite guys in their thirties or forties). Semyon's role intrigues me but it hasn't been played to much effect yet. The idea of Velcoro having one foot in the world of law and the other in the world of crime (not to mention the extent to which these two world bleed together) is an intriguing concept and it will be interesting to see him navigate between these two realms.

Aside from the opening credits, there are other signs that this True Detective will be cut from similar cloth as the first. Bezzeride's dad (David Morse, playing the potentially parodic part with as much sympathy and nuance as Shea Whigham brought to season one's tent revivalist) introduces a note of spiritual ambiguity, suggesting that Bezzerides will play the spiritual-skeptic role Cohle performed so memorably before. The father's religious group is also connected with a young woman's disappearance, so it's possible this element will be incorporated into the investigation too, leading to some compelling complications for Bezzerides. Caspare's home is a veritible den of sin (one tabletop prop had me temporarily convinced we were witnessing a dream or hallucination), evoking the lustful, abusive Tuttle family of season one. And Velcoro's shady past and broken home offer fuel for side stories and investigative routes, as did Cohle's undercover history in season one.

Still, at this point it all feels like potential. Had this been the premiere episode of season one, rather than season two, the show probably would not have caught on. It doesn't grab and hold your interest as that initial episode did and lacks any essential hook until the final scene. The result largely feels like a well-produced episode of a very standard network procedural but - for now at least - I'll take it on faith Pizzolatto has something more ambitious in mind. One of my frustrations with season one was that it was so intent on resolving its opening mystery that it allowed many other storylines to scatter away and remain (to my mind anyway) largely unresolved. Maybe season two will do the opposite, beginning with a scattered sense of disparate threads and then wind them together into a central mystery and revelation, so that the sum ends up greater than the parts. That certainly won't be a bad thing. Here's hoping.

My review of episode 2 will appear tomorrow.

With its mission clear and basic exposition out of the way, this second episode is a more satisfying experience than the first. It also makes the premiere look sharper in retrospect. Now that we're able to see the characters interacting (which not only provides dramatic momentum, but allows them to come out of their shells), the laborious set-up of the previous hour feels more justified. Even minor moments, like Woodrugh interacting with Velcoro's partner, are revealing and intriguing. Bezzerides and Velcoro have the most notable pairing, sharing many of the investigative duties throughout the episode. When Velcoro compares her e-cig to "sucking a robot's dick" she doesn't actually come out and tell him to shut up, but you can see it in her eyes; it seems like maybe they will be the closest thing to a Cohle/Hart pairing this season. Well, at least it seems that way until the ending...but more on that in a moment.

We also get to know Vinci a little better. There are only ninety-five permanent residents and the modus operandi of the town is to squash worker's rights, pollute the environment, and keep the money in the hands of those who already have it - as long as "the law" gets its fair cut. To make sure the political point is not too obscure, either Pizzolatto or director Justin Lin includes a prominent photo of the mayor (Ritchie Coster) shaking hands with George Bush. That mayor, by the way, is an example of how little restraint Pizzolatto applies when writing dialogue. This has already become a locus of criticism for season two. This potentially interesting character (although Coster might push him a bit too far in Don Vito direction) isn't allowed to insinuate anything in his conversation with Semyon. It's all spelled out; not just the details of their corruption, but the travails of the mayor's son and apparently his own history with...psychedelics? I can appreciate that Pizzolatto wants to include the whole scope of the California scene, from grimy metropolitan politics to the hippie subculture but sometimes it feels like he's trying to jam together too much.

More problematic than what the characters say is how they say it. "Some people can't handle the deep trip," the mayor philosophizes in the middle of a verbal showdown with Semyon (talking about his son, whose coke-fueled hit-and-run was covered up). "I fear he is a destroyer. In my day, you understand, it was about consciousness expansion, tracing the unseen web. Children are a disappointment. Remain unfettered, Frank." There was a lot of dialogue that toed the line in season one, but between Matthew McConaughey's delivery and the other characters' propensity to roll their eyes it worked. Now everyone is waxing grandiose, and the performances and direction can only take it so far. Detect This!, a True Detective podcast I've been listening to recently, played a clip of Bezzerides' father lecturing her and dumping huge chunks of artificially artful exposition about her past. It was a bit of a struggle on the show itself but listening to it without any visuals, the scene was really quite cringeworthy. You want your actors to sell the script, but when they're the only thing standing between a reserved acceptance and laughing out loud at the screen, you're in trouble.

Ok, enough of the potshots. Googling for actors' names, I've already glimpsed some criticism of Semyon's opening monologue, in which he recalls his traumatic childhood while staring at two water stains in the ceiling (which, a bit too on-the-nose, dissolve into Caspare's empty eye sockets). Compared to some of the other monologues, at least, it worked for me - garish and over-the-top (I can't wait to see the inevitable parodies of season 2's ruthlessly bleak outlook) but still compelling in its grisly detail. I'm not sure if Vince Vaughn is miscast yet, but in general I think he's giving it his all. The character offers an intriguing combination of smooth calculation and matter-of-fact ruthlessness: gangster-as-businessman rather than the gangster-as-psychopath. In that sense the stunt casting works.

I also found Velcoro easier to digest this time. Others noted how cliched he seemed in episode 1, but this time - with less emphasis on his family, and more on his job - his individuality and complexity swim into focus. He knows he's a bad cop and, even though he denies it to his ex-wife, a bad man (in a scene that plays much more strongly than it has any right to, thanks in part to Abigail Spencer's excellent performance). Season 2 may redeem him somehow, but it's still refreshing to see a main character who is not "kinda a bad guy" but just plain straight-up bad. Even his desire to be a father to his son is pure selfishness - as the boy's distraught mother pointed out, if he really cared about him he'd get the hell out of his life.

Bezzerides and Woodrugh are not quite as colorful as the two antiheroes but interesting threads are developing there too. Rachel McAdams is quite good in her less flashy role, never overplaying the potential brittleness of the character nor trying too hard for audience sympathy. She's certainly the most admirably professional member of the investigation she is leading, and you can see her demeanor start to rub off on Velcoro by episode's end, maybe reminding him of a time when he was more "decent," as his ex-wife puts it. But Bezzerides also has her dark side, and her hypocrisy; at the end of the episode, we see how easily an inquiry into Caspare's vice connections shades into a prurient descent into hardcore pornography. Coupled with her first scene in episode 1 (in which a sexual partner is unnerved by something she tried to do in bed), it seems that maybe her condemnation of her sister arises from a personal sense of shame.

Woodrugh remains the most isolated of the four protagonists. We do get to see him interact with his uncomfortably touchy-feely mother and frustrated girlfriend, and we start to glimpse why he may have needed artificial stimulation to sleep with his lover: it is strongly suggested that he is a repressed homosexual. He mostly broods in his own corner, and I'd have to say he's the least compelling character so far although there's plenty of potential there too (particularly learning about his experiences as a wartime mercenary). Meanwhile, there are many procedural elements to this episode - as a shrink, hooker, and political acquaintances all hint at Caspare's desire for sexual subjagation and voyeurism - but not too many details about why he was killed. The strongest plot thread results from Semyon's realization that his land deal has died with Caspare, driving him back into the underworld he was trying to escape. For the most part, though, right now the investigation serves to reveal the detectives' characters rather than expose too much of the mystery.

Then, of course, in the final moments of the episode Velcoro is shot inside Caspare's Hollywood apartment, which Semyon sent him to investigate. A set-up? A last-minute ploy to take out an unreliable ally? After all, Velcoro has just told Semyon that he's done being his errand-boy. The corrupt cop doesn't see the point anymore, since he has nothing left to lose. What's interesting is that only as the character gives up on his life does he discover a capacity for doing the right thing. As with Cohle last year, Pizzolatto depicts despair and nobility going hand-in-hand; will Velcoro be martyred for this semi-awakening? He is felled not by one shotgun blast, but two, the second at point-blank range. Is he wearing a bulletproof vest? Is the gunman using real bullets, or is this mean to be a warning to Velcoro?

I couldn't see any blood either on Velcoro or on the wall behind him, just a lot of a smoke. Incidentally, look at the feathers on the shooter's shoulder - I'm guessing it has something to do with the bird we saw in Caspare's limo; either a mask or a stuffed avian perched on the shoulder, pirate parrot style. (the screen I was watching this on was unfortunately pretty dark, but when I rewatched this clip it was perfectly obvious - albeit still somewhat cloaked in shadow - that the shooter was wearing a giant bird mask, a detail I absolutely love - ed.) The preview for next week continues to tease us, featuring no shots of Velcoro at all, with an officer saying "one of our men was shot" rather than "one of our men was killed."

I'm trying to figure out how the series could get away with dispatching a major star so early, and whether this would be a bold move or a cheap trick. The character gets a tiny bit of closure in that bar scene, but not enough to justify his death as anything other than purposefully fucking with the audience. I think he'll still be around next week, and that this was a warning to him (I think the killer is using blanks or similarly non-lethal ammo, though someone with better knowledge of artillery than I will have to verify if they could have the effect on him that they do). But I think he'll be largely inactive as he recovers from whatever injuries he sustained, forcing Bezzerides to dig into Vinci's corruption without him as a guide. Perhaps she'll form a working relationship with Woodrugh. At this point the element of True Detective which most intrigues me is the interweaving of these different characters, and the potential they have to bounce off each other.

The central mystery could improve, but so far I'm a little weary. All the most interesting bits (the cultish religion of Bezzerides Sr., the interlocking corruption of the Vinci elite, the psychosexual shame of Caspare) remind me of the stuff Pizzolatto dropped like a hot potato at the end of season 1, without ever really digging into. If one of Caspare's contacts drops a casual mention of the Yellow King, I'll start to perk up about the intrigue, but for now it's the still-barely-tapped ensemble dynamic that has me cautiously optimistic for the prospects of season two.

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

In the discussions accompanying these episode guides, Bob Clark has said that Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno grew tired of taciturn, enigmatic Eva pilot Rei, whose mystery envelops much of the first six episodes. Supposedly he was ready to move in a new direction. When it comes to episode 8...mission accomplished. The title character, a German redhead/hothead who is Rei's opposite in every way, commandeers the series down an interesting detour and enriches the themes already developing in its early episodes. Anno has gently guided our hero Shinji along the path from cowardly isolation to mature interaction, but Asuka Langley Soryu batters this quiet character development with a Teutonic hammer. By the end of "Asuka Strikes!" the Second Child has forced Shinji into her cockpit, manhandling him physically and psychologically, even forcing him to wear a double of her own, busty flight suit. But it will only be the beginning of her assault on his privacy and hesitation.

Continuing the trend of the previous episode (which was otherwise a one-off), episode 8 shows NERV officials interacting with older, distrustful international authorities. In this case, Misato is confronted by the UN Fleet transporting Asuka and her advanced Eva-03 (a red mecha-beast as bold and angular as she). Misato doesn't seem too flustered by the admiral's gruff complaints about "babysitting" Shinji and his classmates (who are oddly along for the ride), but she is more alarmed by the unexpected appearance of Kaji. He is a lanky, ponytailed fellow NERV officer who has some shady links to Gendo and a much-exploited sexual history with Misato herself. One of the more cartoonish interludes in the episode occurs when he makes a crack about sharing the bed with her, and everyone's face freezes in a funny-pages exaggerated expression of shock and discomfort.

Misato is not the only one dealing with sexual tension - from her first appearance in a bellowing skirt which unintentionally flashes her masculine peers (and provokes Toji to drop his pants in return), Asuka notably increases the hormonal pace of the Evangelion universe. And yet this is a sexuality the otherwise horny 14-year-old boys seem determined to resist - Toji's provocation results from revenge rather than lust, Shinji appears more uncomfortable than aroused by Asuka's teasing threats and aggressive proximity, and the boys are horrified rather than delighted by Asuka's appearance in their classroom at episode's end. Clearly Asuka's assertive demeanor doesn't really fit their fantasies of demure, submissive schoolgirls.

If Asuka will represent both a threat and an opportunity for Shinji (unlike the - sometimes - mature Misato and distant Rei, she's a peer who must be grappled with in a different way), he will also challenge her. Even this early, there are suggestions of jealousy and insecurity - most notably when Kaji (the only man she openly crushes on) casually reveals Shinji's Eva-handling skill. If Asuka will develop into Evangelion's most compelling character it's less because of her symbolic value to the other characters, or even her dramatic personality, but more because of her own all-too-human flaws; in some ways, the self-loathing desperation revealed beneath her bluffing braggadocio will render her the most relatable member of the show's ensemble.

For now, however, she retains her shock value and as the episode races by, we get a new Angel attack in which she's able to prove her mettle and collaborate with Shinji for the first time. This Angel is a toothy sea creature blithely ploughing through an armada of battleships, and we're so focused on the outcome of the battle that we may not notice this is the first time Shinji has shared piloting duties with another person. (Furthermore, buried beneath that level is the realization that Asuka is relying on his assistance; she drags him along so arrogantly and authoritatively that he - and we - forget to ask why she's so determined to share her first triumph with the "dull" boy she dismissed on the ship.) They defeat the Angel, of course, at the last possible second, allowing a safe return to Tokyo-3 and a disturbing rendezvous between Gendo and Kaji which reveals a fetal creature described as "Adam, the first man." Though the episode ends on a lighthearted note, Asuka's charismatic and entertaining debut plants the seeds of destruction for the early episodes' fragile stability.



me: And then there was Asuka.

Bob: I was gonna say "...and God created Asuka". More fitting with the religious overtones, and it makes Asuka look a lot less bitchy to compare her to Brigitte Bardot.

me: What interests me about this episode is how lighthearted her introduction is. She very much brings a down-to-earth levity to the increasingly mystical, eccentric Eva universe and yet... ultimately she's a harbinger of destruction for the fragile stability established in the first few episodes.
There was a rhythm established in the first arc which she disrupts. Necessarily so in a lot of ways, for both Shinji's personal development and for the false sense of confidence in NERV imposed by that early arc.

Bob: Yeah, that's part of what I was getting at before. The first 6 episodes constitute an arc of Shinji getting into the groove of Nerv and Tokyo 3. Episode 7 shows him in that pleasant groove, and it's possible to imagine a whole show that shows him meeting all his challenges in that spirit. Then episode 8 throws a monkeywrench into that with Asuka.

me: Kaji plays a part in that too. Moreso than we initially realize, but even here he disrupts both Misato's alternately carefree & lonesome bachelorette persona, and the authoritarian but supposedly good-guy world of NERV (already the previous episode poked a few holes in that).

Bob: Something that stuck out to me when watching it in Japanese this time, instead of English, is that Misato calls Kaji the same thing that Asuka calls Shinji all the time-- baka.
I realized this time that his running away from the battle is played off comedically-- oh, Kaji, he's such a card, flying off in his cool jet when it seems like everyone else is going to die. But it stands in direct conflict with the main epigraph of the show ("You musn't run away!") and comes off mainly as a joking echo of Shinji's passivity.
It's also easy to see Kaji as a play on the archetype of the dashing rogue-- Han Solo with a ponytail. Plenty of those types in anime as well, and the fact that he's portrayed here as a spy playing both sides, as we gradually find out, makes the way he's played with interesting. He's not just the dashing, sexy man's man. Or if he is, the way Anno plays with him is important.

me: Asuka disrupts Shinji's groove, but he disrupts hers too (passive as he is) - she's notably alarmed by his reputation and it's interesting that when she decides to face off against the Angel, she drags him along.
She does it so abruptly and with such confidence that we almost don't question it, but when we look back on it we realize she's kind of using him as a security blanket. It's an early suggestion of the insecurity which will eventually cripple her.

Bob: He actually disrupts her groove by being passive, sorta. Everyone else around her has such an outsized ego and personality (Toji even flashes his junk at her, for god's sake), and he's so introverted and inside his shell that she can't help but become almost obsessively aggressive towards him.
She's the irresistible force, and he's the immovable object.

me: And at the same time, it's the first (only?) time he'll share a cockpit with a co-pilot. The idea of him being forced to let down his hedgehog's guard is taken further than ever before.

Bob: We may be getting ahead of ourselves here-- when Ritsuko points out that their synch-rate was extremely high for both of them, in retrospect we can kinda see that it's the combination of the two of them together. So there's something to that match up, and something we'll see repeated in even more humorous terms in the next episode.
There's just so much to get to in this episode, though, we might as well start over from the beginning. What's the deal with the UN carriers all being named after Shakespeare plays, except for Asuka's one, which is named after a song from "Wizard of Oz"?

me: Ha, did not notice that at all. What are the names?

Bob: I heard Cymbeline, Othello, and Titus Andronicus. Or at least I read them in the subtitles. And I'm pretty sure those aren't in the dub at all.
Those are, by the way, two of the most fucking obscure plays of his. And this was before the Julie Taymor film, so they're legit in showing off their knowledge.

me: I remember Titus Andronicus.
What's Asuka's ship called?

Bob: "Over the Rainbow"
To me, that almost seems a perfect bow on something that I think bears out throughout the subtitled version of the episode-- she comes off a lot less as "Asuka from Germany" and more like "Asuka from America". There's much less of her actually speaking German, for one thing. Only that one scene in the cockpit, I think.
There's that weird country twangy guitar song that's played on the bridge and in the classroom (that was oddly used to introduce PenPen, of all characters).

me: Well, either way she's a Westerner so that's something.

Bob: Well, culturally there's a big difference between a character being presented as American and German in anime, even ignoring the WWII allusions (which are obviously there with the whole naval angle).

me: Interesting points. In an odd way, this may feel the least "Japanese" of any episode so far.
What do you feel those differences are?

Bob: What they mean, or examples from stuff outside Eva?
I mean, you can see a lot of nods to German and European culture in general in a LOT of anime. "Fullmetal Alchemist" takes place in some kind of alternate universe version of Germany, with lots of magic and steampunk. In one of the movies the main character even meets Fritz Lang and watches him direct "Die Nibelungen" at UFA.
It's fairly longstanding in other films, as well. Think of the waltz on the soundtrack of "Face of Another" and the whole Bavarian beer hall they go to.

me: And what do you feel that differences means - what's the particular significance of both German & American archetypes in Japanese works?

Bob: Well, I really feel like I'm talking out of my ass here, but there's the whole not-quite-historically-accurate story of Perry's American fleet opening Japan out from its cultural isolation, so the whole image of this girl coming across the Pacific with an American fleet is going to mean something right away, again even without the wartime analogy (although that's definitely there).
So it means something that Asuka is introduced as this cultural outsider on terms that are associated, somewhat, with breaking out of isolation-- that's what's going to happen to Shinji, and it'll have both good and bad effects.
The fact that she's an outsider and on a ship named after the song Judy Garland sang in "Oz" I think isn't entirely accidental. Another outsider coming to a bizarre world. And heavy association with the color red (she's wearing red slippers even).

Murderous Ink: The names of characters in this series also provide the cultural connotation not so obvious to non-Japanese audience. All characters first names are in Katakana, instead of Kanji (which is rare). Each name has a specific reference to historical or cultural background. For example, Soryu Asuka Langley, being three-quarter German, a quarter Japanese, has a strange combination of names. Soryu is the battleship of Japanese Imperial Navy, while Langley is U.S.'s. Asuka is one of the common names for girls in Japan, but it also carries the meaning, 'tomorrow'. Asuka is also the place of the earliest Japanese government in the 6th century. These provide a strange mixture of extremely Japanese-esque feel and straight-forward American (not German) rationality.

me: Why do you think Shinji's classmates are along for the ride? One thing I noticed - with their sharp reactions (especially Toji's) to Asuka, they distract us somewhat from the fact that Shinji doesn't have much of a noticeable response. In fact, he has very little to do in this episode - even his battle with the Angel is mediated through Asuka.

Bob: Mainly they're around just to serve as additional comic relief, I think, and to provide a context for the outside world that Asuka's coming into. She has a very different reaction to Toji and Kensuke than Shinji-- she slaps Toji, then whines about Kensuke when thinking either of them might be the fabled Third Child. Brings her reaction to him throughout the episode in stronger relief.
Kensuke's presence is also funny in the way it shows a particular Japanese kind of obsessive fandom for military hardware, something which I think Anno himself has admitted about himself at times, and something which has special meaning in a country where by law there is no standing army.
(And remember the pivotal role the "Special Self Defense Force" will have in the show).

me: I didn't know that (no standing army).

Bob: Something like that. It's still a matter of debate to this day. I think Miyazaki even made statements against trying to have an army again after "The Wind Rises" was released over there.
That's part of what Yukio Mishima was protesting in his coup/suicide spectacle.
At least I think.
Anyway, it's an interesting sticking point in the episode, and the emphasis on the naval conflict here brings into more focus the way in which all the Eva-versus-Angel battles so far have been preceded by some kind of military-bureaucratic pissing contest between NERV and some other agency.

me: Why do you think Shinji is so passive in this episode? I mean, other than when Asuka drags him into the cockpit, he says or does very little. Even when everyone has those very exaggerated reactions to Kaji's "bed" comment, he remains calm. It's like he's an observer the whole time.

Bob: That bit in the episode about her bringing him into the cockpit, and making him wear her plugsuit-- an implicit bit of crossdressing-- reminds me of stuff Camille Paglia has written about the implied female-domination overtones of a lot of romantic literature (romantic as in the historical period).
Yeah, it's necessary for him to take the backseat here as it's Asuka's intro, but remember that when they're in the Eva, he's the one who more or less takes the lead, with her reduced to acting immature and hitting him while he tries to pilot.
That's very different from how she's introduced in the "Rebuild" movies, also-- she's introduced right out of the gate as a virtuoso Eva pilot who can do pretty much anything and look cooler than anybody else. Here, she has a lot of bluster but she doesn't accomplish anything on her own.
That whole plan, by the way, is helping to cement a general pattern that will be repeated throughout the show for a while, and deceivingly feels like what ought to happen in every episode ad infinitum, if this were a regular anime (or regular show of any kind)-- an Angel attacks, the army is unable to beat it, Misato comes up with an insane plan that can't possibly win with Bond music in the background, and the Eva kids risk life and limb to accomplish it.
The way that the battle is handled does a nice way of making this a sort of "second pilot" of the show, a good way for people who didn't see the first few episodes to come in and get information. We see the importance of electrical power to the Evas, we see the underwater city and the implications of some apocalyptic event that happened before. It brings you up to speed at its own pace.

me: Stylistically we haven't talked about much - but I noticed how "cartoonish" - for lack of a better word - many moments are here. Particularly reaction shots.

Bob: Well, for one thing, it has a higher production value than a few of the past episodes. This is the start of a new "cours" in the production schedule, I think, which means more money went towards it (although ironically, I think the one is also famous for having repurposed shots from other Gainax shows-- Anno's own "Nadia" for one thing).
It's interesting seeing this episode with the full on conflict between Misato and the UN naval commander and seeing how she's developed in 3.0. They even have the same "hat drooping over one eye" look that's a nod to "Space Battleship Yamato", something Anno has repeated again and again in other shows (Nadia and Gunbuster).
The tarp-covering Unit 2 as it's introduced playing leapfrog on the carrier decks gives it a very stylish, mysterious "martial artist master in a cloak" look. I remember seeing that and thinking of Sheik-- shrouded alter-ego that Princess Zelda assumes in "Ocarina of Time", which came out around the same time as NGE did.
And that pose that the Eva makes as the prog-knife comes out-- it's almost exactly a match for the pose that Unit 2 makes in the intro montage. So it shows how we're catching up to the "clues" in there that MI mentioned before.

me: I like how the episode is a sleight-of-hand in many ways too. With Asuka, with Kaji. We're getting to know them in broad strokes, but it's also suggesting more subtle character points we won't really understand till later.

Bob: Right. We get everything about them in a high comedic register.

me: Yes, they seem to bringing some down-to-earth, lighthearted pizzazz to the Eva world. When in fact their ultimate role will be anything but that.

Note: True Detective episode 3 will go up on Thursday. I haven't watched it yet.

My second video for Fandor went up a few weeks ago, but yesterday it was posted on the site itself. The reception so far has been very enthusiastic, which is certainly encouraging. Here is what I wrote about it:

It’s all in the eyes, and this case they belong to Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), a housewife-turned-saleswoman in Satyajit Ray‘s classic film The Big City. Her personal growth is charted through her gazes, whether they are exchanged with husband, customers, boss—or even her own reflection. Throughout The Big City, Ray uses eye contact to establishes familiarity, intimacy and shifting power dynamics; the story of the film is told through the way the characters look at one another.

And here is the video, along with a couple images...

This series is an episode guide to the Japanese anime television show Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995 - 96) and the spin-off films. Each entry includes my own reflection on the episode, followed by a conversation with fellow bloggers Bob Clark and Murderous Ink.

The Asuka-Shinji odd couple routine continues, but no longer is it simply assertive Asuka vs. submissive Shinji. If the last episode witnessed Asuka blasting into Shinji's increasingly stable and secure personal universe, now it's her turn to adjust. Shortly after arriving in Tokyo-3, and being unofficially crowned the queen bee of the school (to the point where she can unbashfully refer to herself as "the gorgeous Asuka"), Asuka and Shinji are sent into their first official battle together. Just like their first engagement, improvised at sea, the life-and-death struggle is treated rather lightly, as a pretext for character growth and interaction. Unlike some of the earlier episodes, we don't really feel much is at stake here aside from the characters' egos (which in a teenage context, may be enough).

Initially, Asuka proves the top dog by impulsively lunging after the Angel and slicing it in half. Yet within seconds the Angel is reassembling and striking back - and then, in one of the episode's many clever narrative strategies, we view the aftermath in retrospect rather than real time: the two cowed pilots are presented with humiliating photos of their defeat, with the two Evas jutting out of the ground miles apart where the Angel has effortlessly blasted them. In front of these projected slides, the 14-year-old worldsavers bicker and for the first time we see Shinji standing up to Asuka, whose brazen arrogance rendered him mostly passive and silent in their previous outing. Now, her hotheaded aggression shown up in the heat of battle, Asuka's no longer able to batter Shinji into submission.

And so, just at the moment they feel themselves becoming enemies, they are forced to become close allies. Misato forces them to share her apartment, to dress in like fashion (80s girl workout get-ups, by the look of it), and dance DDR-style in perfect sync to audio-video prompts in the hope of perfecting their fighting instincts before the Angel's inevitable return. There's an interesting moment where Asuka throws aside her headphones in frustration and Rei steps in to demonstrate that perfect synchronization is possible - she and Shinji effortlessly match one another's movements, and an awed and frustrated Asuka vows to avenge this insult to her "pride."

As in the previous two episodes, Rei recedes in the background as a supporting character but after a one-shot cameo and complete absence she's at least something of a presence here. Mostly she serves as a foil for Asuka, who tries to introduce herself early on (to no avail) and is later intimidated by Rei's perfect compatibility with Shinji. For the first time, we are getting real evidence of Asuka's insecurity - particularly when she mysteriously appears in Shinji's bed in the middle of the night, apparently sleepwalking and talking in her sleep. He almost kisses her (the first time we've seen him respond to her romantically or sexually, after all her provocation) but backs off when she mumbles confused, pained feelings. Moving himself to the floor next to her, he grumbles to himself, "She's just a kid after all."

Of course in the end Shinji and Asuka achieve their perfect synchronization - well, almost. They defeat the Angel in the sixty seconds they're given, perfectly edited to a joyful Beethoven pastiche (the sound design of this episode is wonderfully creative and propulsive, from the score to the skittish sound of Shinji's tape player rewinding as Asuka's body rolls close to his under the sheets). However immediately after the attack is thwarted, the NERV staff are holding their heads in their hands and groaning, faced with images of the intertwined Evas and sounds of the adolescents bickering in embarrassingly personal terms (Asuka gets Shinji to admit he attempted kissing her the night before, and her hectoring voice is represented onscreen by an amusingly angry hologram). Though their relationship will darken and deepen overtime, it is here that the strangely compatible yet combative connection between Shinji and Asuka first makes itself heard.



Bob: Well, my first thought is something that builds off of what you said before, about Asuka's first episode being very "cartoony". this one kinda goes out of its way to top that one.

me: In animation, or personality, or both?

Bob: Basically we have a very loose treatment of physics throughout, mostly in a jokey manner. Say, the way that the Evas are both toppled over by the Angel, feet sticking way up in the air in water and land. Or the way that Asuka yells at Shinji on his screen or via a hologram, and in both cases she seems to be able to physically accost him without actually being next to him. It's like something out of a Looney Tune, and it helps put into relief the absurd lengths of the premise here.

me: I agree about the cartoonish tone. I noted that in this & the previous episode, the Angel attacks seem less "serious" than before - more a blatant pretext for (often humorous) character development & interaction than genuinely world-threatening events.

Bob: Yeah, this Angel, and many of the others that will come, has a much more deliberate, self-conscious feel to it. The attack and its nature are part and parcel with how artificial a lot of the show is, a pretext for character development. And here, watching it again, I was really impressed by how deftly it interweaves the parallel strands of Shinji/Asuka and Misato/Kaji, and how well the comedy masks the pretty deliberate intercutting.
I mean, we've already seen in the last episode how both Asuka and Misato call their guys "baka", and it's repeated here. And the scenes of Shinji about to kiss Asuka in her sleep and the two adults making out in the elevator is also pretty obvious (elevators and escalators are pretty omnipresent symbols throughout the show). But the way that the Misato/Kaji story intertwines with the kids and the main Angel attack (Kaji coming up with the plan) is a neat little touch, and Anno handles it nicely delicate.
I'm sure that MI can tell us more about the certain kind of scruffy anime male that Kaji represents. So far in the show he's such a caricature of rugged masculinity, but not one that's used for any comedy really. He gets to keep his confidence and not get made fun of at all, and often you see guys like him played as fools to some degree.



me: One thing that interests me about this episode is how we're kind of now on Asuka's arc, rather than Shinji's.

Unlike him, she begins on a high note with her victory at sea. But just as he has to rise from his lack of confidence, she has to fall from her overconfidence. And both had/have to learn how to relate to other people.

Bob: Oh yeah. This episode is really about Asuka finding a connection. We focus on her throughout the first stage of the mission. We see her hassling with Japanese customs of privacy. We see her pout when it seems Rei might get the mission instead of her.

me: The envy of Rei's synchronization with Shinji is a nice moment. Not least for how it finally lets Rei have a moment (however brief) after 2 episodes of non-existence!

Bob: Likewise here, when Rei synchs with Shinji perfectly, it makes Asuka's hurt reaction really sink in. Maybe she won't get to be a star of the show, after all.

me: Same time, Shinji's more of a character here than he was last episode where he played the most background role he's played yet. That said, I'm trying to think if we see him at all outside of Asuka's context. I don't think we do. Even if he's more of a co-player this time, we still see everything in relation to Asuka.

Bob: Well, that's part of the whole nature of the show from this point on. All of the kids are co-players, and that's part of the subject of the show. Socializing with others means you're not always the center stage.
The way that Shinji retreats to the background or middleground of this episode and the way that Asuka's place on the mission is threatened by Rei helps make this an episode that subtly introduces the idea of the kids' mortality in a way that previous episodes, even with more dire danger at hand, didn't quite. The math is there in our heads now that future episodes will capitalize on later.
me: What math do you mean?'

Bob: The mental math, I mean. Looking at this, it's easy to see some of it as foreshadowing of how these kids are pretty expendable to the adults.

me: Do you feel that's highlighted more in this episode than previous ones?

Bob: I mean that there's elements here that are subtle, but help introduce the expendability thing later on. Shinji is more receded in importance here, and Asuka's place on the mission isn't totally secure. Add those together, and it's easy to imagine how the show could've evolved (no matter what its plans were in production) with either one of them dying off without the end of the show in sight.

me: I think we get some of that earlier though, with Commander Ikari. Speaking of which - where is he, and whence (dramatically, narratively speaking) his absence? Notably, the last 3 episodes have felt less intense, anxious than the first 6.

Bob: I think it's mostly about that. Obviously it's possible to try and fill in the blanks and imagine what the hell he's up to vis a vis Seele and all the various plotting, but mainly him being gone just allows for a much lighter feel.
It lets the characters come to the forefront and allows us to not really think about the ongoing mysteries as much.

me: This feels like a very creative, clever episode in terms of how much of the information is presented and the visuals & audio are designed.

Bob: Yeah. And the level to which visuals are used informatively and expressively really highlights how well the animation is parcelled out. They have to scrimp and save in a lot of places. The way the episode begins with the two boys' photographs is a really clever way to reserve animation but still have something that works creatively.
A lot of Asuka's posturing expressions might be motivated by having cool design moments that still don't requite a lot of movement, but those bits also help draw out how "normal" she can look, and how vulnerable that makes her. It's kind of hard to see now so many years after she and the rest of the characters have become iconic, but those little moments in Misato's appartment stand out to me because in those bits she isn't the "Asuka" that we know of after years and years of fandom.
me: Which moments specifically?

Bob: An easy indicator for me is any moment where she doesn't have her trademark hair-pins-- I doubt we ever see her without them in the Rebuild films, where she's pretty much Iconic with a capital I. But more deeply, any moment where we see here genuinely vulnerable and hurt, rather than just a pissed off, sexed up version of Lucy Van Pelt-- her childish demeanor at the table when Misato lays out the plan, or how she runs off almost crying when Rei shows her up.

me: Anything else you want to say or point out about this episode?

Bob: "Both of You Dance Like You Want to Win" sounds like it ought to be the most awful dance-reality competition TV show ever made.


It is well-known fact that, for NGE's title sequence, Anno borrowed the design elements from Kon Ichikawa's movies. It is an image of white big letterings of Kanji characters against black background, informing names of casts and crews and the title of the episode etc. This design template was staple format for Kon Ichikawa's movies title sequence, which gave them distinctive style and atmosphere.

In each case, and especially for NGE, the use of the specific font (Mincho family), the big letters arranged in kinked geometry, striking contrast of colors, all contribute to cerebral deconstruction of "letters", Japanese Kanji. I believe this creates the sort of sense of detachment, distancing the graphics from meaning.

This graphic-design oriented approach to the title sequence reminds us of another great creator, Saul Bass. In his case as well, the use of specific font (typography) carried a substantial weight. A certain typography invokes a certain atmosphere, a feel, a context. NGE redefined such functions of graphic design elements not only in Anime, but also in pop culture.

The use of Mincho font is a cunning one. This set of font family is used in school textbooks for liberal arts, literature and history (as opposed to the use of Gothic fonts in math and science). I myself find Mincho font to be more literary, somewhat neurotic, definitely engaged.

I believe NGE was one of the earliest examples of total design coherence providing the feel of the world it is describing.

There is a certain mordant self-awareness to this episode's title, though it would be better called "Maybe Next Week." After the anticipation-charged debut of episode 1 and the memorable close of episode 2, episode 3 feels very much like a placeholder. In this it resembles "Who Goes There" from season one, with a crucial difference. That chapter of the investigation embraced its episodic function by telling a standalone story in the midst of its ongoing saga (in that case, Rust Cohle's infiltration of a biker gang, culminating in a memorable heist). I was frustrated by this decision at the time, wishing that the show would continue to focus on the big picture. But in retrospect, that approach is preferable to merely treading water, as "Maybe Tomorrow" does. The last line of the episode is that very title, as if the characters themselves know they haven't made much progress in learning who killed Ben Caspere - or, more importantly, hinting at why we should care.

The stakes of last week are almost instantly lowered, as most of us probably suspected they would be. Velcoro is not dead; he was sprayed with buckshot either as a warning or perhaps to make a show for the camera taping him while he "died." That camera, and the drive connected to it, were stolen while Velcoro was passed out, and he seems obsessed by what else they may have captured inside this possible snuff film studio. Velcoro, already souring on his corruption at the end of "Night Finds You" is now openly defiant of Semyon and less committed than ever to the police culture of Vinci. He begs to be taken off the job and is hesitant to sell out Bezzerides when his police press him for clues; likewise, while she calls him a "burnout" Bezzerides does not seem particularly keen on exposing him to her authorities (one of whom presses her to seduce information from him).

By the end of the episode Velcoro and Bezzerides' emerging camaraderie proposes an interesting twist on last season's buddy formula, both a repetition - like Cohle and Hart, working conditions subtly bond together these two very different people - and a variation - because unlike Cohle and Hart, Velcoro and Bezzerides aren't really being forced to get along; their bosses would actually rather they didn't. This is, so far, the most compelling angle True Detective season 2 has going for it: the intersection of interest and how individual loyalty often trumps institutional loyalty. I'm not sure if that's true, but it makes for pretty good television. We even get hints, in the preview for next week, that Velcoro and Woodrugh will have some of those legendary True Detective ridealong chats.

When Woodrugh bumps into Semyon in a club (the cool gangster easily stares down the "angsty cop," as a savvy hustler calls him) we are reminded that actually these four characters have not interacted too much yet. To the extent I am anticipating the upcoming episodes it is to see how these personalities play off of one another. None of these characters looks to be as singular or memorable as (obviously) Cohle or even the underrated Hart, but Farrell and Vaughn are doing their best to develop complexity with the oft-broad material they are handled while McAdams moves in the opposite direction, carving a complex, nuanced, and highly watchable interpretation of a character whom I suspect would feel much flatter and thinner on the page. Kitsch still struggles to hold our interest, but his role is the most one-note so it's hard to blame him.

Anyway, Woodrugh does get a bit more interesting this episode, due entirely to the interplay of his macho homophobia and the increasingly clear source of that homophobia. A meet-up with a war buddy suggests (well, pretty much outright states) that they had a romance in the desert and that perhaps Woodrugh is as traumatized by this memory as by the violence he took part in. And when he's tasked to question hookers, he realizes that he has much better luck with the male population than the females even though everyone in this episode assumes that his good looks will charm the ladies. I like how Kitsch plays this moment. If we're going to see the character inch out of the closet this season it may be due more to professional duties than personal commitment.

Likewise, Velcoro grows more sympathetic and seems more human when he's playing cop than when he's playing dad (or Semyon's hired thug). The dull stereotype of episode 1 is becoming a richer character when he stops trying at his family life and starts trying at his job. Semyon, on the other hand, seems less and less an efficient, professional criminal-gone-straight - still with one foot on the wrong side of the law but relatively likable. Instead he comes off as a ruthless, truly bad guy, ripping gold teeth out of his minion's mouths and, even worse, darkly threatening wives and children while leaning on businessmen he has helped. Vaughn, whom many worried would seem non-threatening in the role, is genuinely effective, translating his height into a threatening presence and his sarcasm into an intimidating viciousness. But his tongue still gets tied by the the verb-less street talk Pizzolatto crams into his mouth. Vaughn just doesn't seem like a man who rose from the gutter and he stumbles with some of the dialogue.

If I haven't spoken much about the case itself, that's because there isn't much to say. What do the characters discover in this episode? That Caspere liked to party, something we heard early in episode two and have been hearing ever since. Everyone the investigators talk to offers that same insight, over and over and over - the mayor's debauched son, the hustlers at a decadent nightclub, the pretentious director of a movie Caspere was funding (whose man-bun some have taken as a barbed reference to season one's director Cary Fukanaga). We get it. The man liked hookers, and - to quote Chauncy Gardener - he "liked to watch." It's possible I missed something, but I didn't feel the episode offered any new insight into Caspere's place within the corrupt ecosystem of Vinci, or the role of his sex life in his death.

The only real plot advancement occurs in Semyon's storyline, as one of his associates is found dead (though the men around Semyon are so faceless I couldn't remember who he was). Semyon also openly speculates that Caspere may have been killed by the Russian gangster who came to town in episode one and was skittish about deal-making even before Caspere showed up. Much of his screentime is spent with his wife, their relationship fraying from the stress of Semyon's business collapsing - and from his inability to impregnate her even through artificial insemination. This is a bit of a retreat for her character, who seemed to be more of a partner in early episodes and is now reduced to pouting around the house with baby issues. So far Semyon's story feels very disconnected from the rest of the cast, and as their interlocking relationships grow more compelling, that distance becomes a liability.

Many noirs contain impenetrable plots that are difficult to follow and/or not especially alluring in their actual mystery (municipal corruption is a constant theme of L.A. detective fiction). Instead, these tales rely on atmosphere and character to generate excitement. That seems to be what Pizzolatto is going for here, but the trophy wives stomping through mansions and set photographers whispering of decadent parties do not feel as fresh or interesting as the trailer-park madam or grieving bayou fisherman of season one. And Janus Metz Pedersen, taking over for Justin Lin, does not imbue any of these sequences with visual interest or an eye for detail. The one memorable scene is the episode's cold open, an Elvis impersonator (okay, okay - Conrad Twitty impersonator - ed.) writhing in the spotlight as a bleeding Velcoro commiserates with his father in a bar.

The surreal setpiece (which turns out to be a dream - a first for True Detective, if I'm not mistaken) is a clear nod to Tony Soprano's bold hallucinations on another HBO show, but the one eye-catching detail grows thin very quickly, and the location (that bar, again?) is fairly unimaginative. Its ability to spark our curiosity and inability to sustain it may unfortunately be reflective of the show itself. To achieve greatness or even satisfaction, True Detective needs character, atmosphere, and mystery. Right now it is barely coasting on only one of those qualities (the first - and that's due in large part to the performances). I didn't find episode three as disappointing as episode one, knowing roughly what to expect by now, but it also wasn't as promising as the best bits of episode two. I will say I enjoyed watching the episode as it unfolded but I never felt deeply invested.

I think episode four will be really crucial in determining what season two has to offer. Will it be just another routine cop show, with good actors and some interesting tangents to nibble on, or will it surprise us with something deeper and richer? We're approaching the halfway point and sad to say, the smart money is on the former. That's fine in and of itself. But at the end of season one I wrote that it was a tremendous kickoff for a great series, with the best yet to come. Specifically, I cited that arresting shot of Cohle entering Carcosa, his eyes just above the camera line, as a hint of what True Detective was capable of. I hope I was right, but am afraid I was viewing the beginning of the end.

The film begins in brutal fashion with the rape and murder of a serial killer's first victim (or so it seems). If the filmmakers - in this case director Tai Kato and his co-writers Haruhiko Mimura and Yoji Yamada - want to make sure we don't sympathize with this murderer, they couldn't have picked a much better way to open their story. And yet following the death of the victim, so far the only person whose face we have seen onscreen, we get several shots of the killer, Isao Kawashima (Makoto Sato), including one iconic close-up featured above. The trick of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho comes to mind. If our only possible protagonist has been removed, won't our allegiance shift to the next character we meet and/or spend a sustained amount of time with? Will this be true even if he is a cold-blooded criminal? In a way, the entire movie is a test of this thesis, with a few other troublesome twists thrown in for good measure.

This year (and a bit in past years) I have taken to reviewing mostly obscure films that I saw thanks only to Allan Fish and/or Sam Juliano at Wonders in the Dark. I, the Executioner, subtitled "Requiem for a Massacre," appears to be one of the most obscure of these. I first heard about it from Allan's 2010 review, which to date (at least until this is published) remains the only online write-up of this film. There are no comments on Letterboxd, IMDb, or MUBI - and information on Kato himself is limited, although he seems to be best-known for yakuza (Japanese gangster) films, a category that doesn't fit I, the Executioner with its lone wolf killer. Indeed, there is no mystery to the killer's identity, as it is revealed early on. The mystery of the film is in his motive: what connected the victims (five will be brutally slain over the course of the film, although not all of the murders are shown - and the first is by far the most graphic). And why does the suicide of a 16-year-old boy keep getting mentioned?

Another source of tension is the killer's growing interest in Haruko (Chieko Baisho), a young cook/waitress at the restaurant he frequents. Initially we are struck by her adorable mugging in the kitchen, but before long it's clear that she has her own dark side to contend with. Is Kawashima attempting to connect with another lost soul, or is he targeting her as a future victim? For a while, we may not be sure. But Kawashima also visits the home of the dead teenage boy, suggesting a more human side amidst his psychopathic killing spree. Meanwhile the manhunt draws closer and closer as the police quiz suspects and suss out connections between the dead women - whom we meet, before they die, sharing a secret we aren't privy to. Clearly they have some idea why they might be future victims, yet they don't want to share this knowledge with the police or with their husbands. What's going on?

As a thriller, the film weaves various threads together marvelously. And stylistically, it's a stunner, characterized by arresting off-kilter compositions, moody, flashy lighting, knife-like jagged cutting, and oversaturated flashbacks which place us in the tormented minds of the characters. But as a morality play, something it seems to strive toward at times, the film falters. Spoiler alert: Kawashima is slaughtering these women because they raped that teenage boy, leading to his shamed suicide soon after. An effective point is made about the characters' indifference toward sexual assault of men ("If it was my sister, I'd avenge all the rapists myself," one cop admits, "but if it was my brother?"). But this also feels like a flimsy premise on which to make a stand, especially given the viciousness of Kawashima's murders and the fact that his form of assault is far more common in reality than middle-aged women gang-raping teenage boys.

Is it unfair to apply reality to a fictional film? Perhaps, but the boldness of the film's role reversal invites such critiques, not to mention the use of rape as a tool of revenge against people who are less, not more, powerful than the protagonist even if they themselves abused their own power with the shy, provincial delivery boy. And making these victims rapists themselves ultimately provides a rather thin veil for the killer's misogyny ("Slut!" he hisses at one victim, an odd epithet to choose). This is especially true when we find out he murdered his newlywed wife thirteen years ago, apparently because she was cheating on him.

At its best, the film watches this character ambivalently, careful not to romanticize him too much. His manner is brusque and rude, even toward characters he ostensibly likes, and it's clear that he is primarily fueled by personal demons: the suicide was only a mere acquaintance whose unfortune death triggered a more deeply-rooted rage. The most interesting character in the movie might actually be Haroku, who killed her hoodlum brother five years ago and is serving a probationary sentence (perhaps because the judge knew how cruel the victim was toward his family). You might think this vengeful killing is what links her to Kawashima, but there's another possibility too. We are told that until she murdered him, she was her brother's greatest defender and so perhaps it is this that draws her toward Kawashima, another violent, offputting individual.

These dual, even contradictory, impulses - empathy and rage - are shown in much starker detail with Kawashima's actions. But it is through Haroku's eyes that we are able to potentially reconcile the contradiction. Both emotions have the same source: deep psychic wounds that cause us either to identify other people as fellow victims (or fellow victimizers), or define them (and ourselves?) solely as the enemy. Kawashima can't navigate this emotional deluge and allows himself to drown in it. Haroku, placing flowers on his grave at film's end, may be soaking wet (it's raining in the final frames) but she isn't running for cover. She's learned to exist in this storm and so she is the film's only real survivor and perhaps its only hero.

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

I thought this episode would decide True Detective's season two potential for me, determining whether or not I should have any expectations beyond standard cop procedural. After all, nearly halfway through the series nothing really big had happened so far - except for Ray Velcoro getting shot, which proved to be little more than a red herring tease. If episode four didn't introduce some juicy new material, or offer a mindblowing twist, I felt it would be time to accept that were not going to get anything on par with season one. Instead, I am just as uncertain as ever. The season still hasn't convinced me it has something more compelling up its sleeve than the conventional small-city corruption noir plot, and the characters remain potential - perhaps they are all just too reserved compared to Cohle and Hart. Nonetheless, for reasons both subtle (breathing room for character moments) and obvious (that catastrophic shootout in the last ten minutes), I'm not ready to dismiss the season's potential. I've already glimpsed some negative headlines, but for me this was probably the best episode so far - not to say it was great.

In a welcome surprise, Woodrugh becomes the most interesting character. After angsty brooding for three hours, he finally seems unable to maintain the facade. Endless teases about his homosexuality are more or less - pardon the pun - put to bed. The first scene finds him waking up in his friend's house (it looks like his war buddy from last episode) - out in the living room he faces morning-after caresses and the winking rhetorical question, "We put out some fires last night, or what?" Oddly, the dialogue and screen action still coyly evade a blunt depiction of what the tough-guy cop is repressing. If this is to reflect the character's own refusal to truly own up to his desires, than it's pretty effective; if Pizzolatto is still trying to make us wonder, it's silly; and if the screenplay actually has some other twist in store, then it's ridiculous. Kitsch finally is allowed to show a bit of Woodrugh's sorrow, and the character becomes poignant for the first time since we've met him. The discovery that his girlfriend is pregnant is the first twist all season that truly feels earned. It genuinely surprised me and suggests all sorts of interesting potential for Woodrugh's arc. Who knew this would be the most promising material of episode four?!

Velcoro, on the other hand, has taken an odd turn, enjoyable in the moment, perhaps a bit disappointing upon reflection (the jury's out). The first episode bluntly told us he would not simply be the flawed-but-essentially-good "angry man" archetype, but every episode since has been striving to make him just that, although his mellower mood makes it more palatable. Maybe this reinforces the wisdom of slowly unveiling Woodrugh's secrets, because Velcoro hasn't really had anywhere to go since he was shot, if not earlier. Nonetheless Farrell continues to really sell Velcoro, and his rapport with McAdams is subtly respectful and even affectionate in a very low-key, believable way (he also has a nice scene with Kitsch, although it's odd to see Velcoro becoming the serene moral center of this ensemble). I like that no romance has developed between Velcoro and Bezzerides, and hope that none will, even as we learn she's slept with several cops in her department. Bezzerides...I still don't quite feel that she's gotten her due. She keeps her head down and does her job, and that's partly what defines her persona, but it would still be nice to see her truly thrown as off-kilter as the other characters have been.

We learn more about Bezzerides' family in this episode, and discover that (surprise!) her father's New Age institution may have some links with Vinci's political corruption and Caspare's grisly death. A brief exchange between the shaggy guru and Velcoro is one of this season's few genuinely funny conversations; Bezzerides Sr., it seems, is deeply impressed by Velcoro's colorful aura which "takes up the whole room.""What do you think green and black means?" a genuinely befuddled Velcoro asks the disenchanted daughter, who scoffs, "I don't know...you're a mood ring?" Although there is still some questionable pontification (my eyebrow arched a bit at the "memories have us" soliloquey), this episode generally features a lighter touch with the dialogue. Maybe that's because Pizzolatto has collaborated with another writer (Scott Lasser) for the first time in True Detective history...although this is such a rare occurrence I wonder if it doesn't have more to do with something unusual about this particular teleplay. Maybe the violent, elaborate shootout that closes the episode in stark fashion?

The inevitable, and rather unfair, comparison will be with the one-take nighttime raid that closed episode four of the last season and naturally this scene can't compare. The gunfire is captured in more conventional fashion, and is a lot less imaginative in conception as well as execution (it's a raid gone wrong rather than a doubly-disguised sting operation in which a character has to both escape and take a hostage). Nonetheless, I found it terrifically effective and intense. The body count is quite ruthless - Nic Pizolatto must really hate Metro-riding protestors given how many he executes in the space of a minute or two - but because True Detective has always tended toward minimal-but-suggestive violence this outburst of savagery is all the more effective (even the similarly high body count in season one's raid mostly consists of folks shooting at each other, rather than pedestrians caught in crossfire). And the concluding image - aside from a totally unnecessary freeze-frame - is a strong, and almost blackly comic echo of the first episode. Our three detectives are brought together again in a single frame, but this time it's because they are the only survivors of the carnage.

I imagine this convenient coincidence is going to get a lot of scoffs this week (along with the nearly video-game savagery of the civilian casualties, and perhaps the ethnic profile of the criminal gang). And I guess that's fair. But what has been troubling me so far about season two isn't that the show won't convince me, but that it won't make me care. I am not particularly concerned with how realistic or even believable this universe is, I just want it to be interesting; too often these episodes haven't generated the heat. This sequence had me paying close attention and wondering what would happen next. Likewise, the investigation became more intriguing for me this time as well. Velcoro and Bezzerides travel up to Fresno to check out Caspare's land deals and someone mentions spiritual gatherings "up north." I like the idea that maybe we'll get a wider view of California even if the little evil city of Vinci remains our focal point. One of the things that appealed to me about season one was the expansiveness of its geographical outlook, its idea that a local crime was just the type of a statewide conspiracy. Still, this feels like something that should have been building much earlier. True Detective has so many balls in the air right now; it's frustrating that the previous episode devoted so much airtime to repetitious allusions to Caspere's perverted parties.

The awkwardly-titled "Down Will Come" may inch forward on the cops' investigation but now Semyon's storyline has stalled. Why are there two scenes, nearly in a row, of Semyon shaking down former allies - especially when we already had several last time? They begin to feel like filler after a while, repeating the same information, giving the same impression. The most generous interpretation is that these scenes formally echo the character's own wheel-spinning but that doesn't make for enjoyable viewing. It doesn't help that Vaughn's performance really seems to slip this time around. The passive-aggressive schtick, which was pretty effective when he first unveiled it in episode two, has become a dull routine - more annoying than intimidating. Semyon is substituting needling nastiness for actual authority and while this could convey his desperation and impotence, I'm not getting the sense that this is intentional. Instead, characters' reactions and Semyon's own lack of self-awareness suggest that he's still supposed to be threatening. Maybe director Jeremy Podeswa doesn't have Justin Lin's or Janus Metz's ability to coax intensity from the unusually cast performer.

The lack of Cary Fukunaga - or any continuous director - has been much commented upon in the past few weeks, especially in the wake of what has widely been perceived as a dig at season one's director (apparently parodied by the ponytailed, prickly filmmaker glimpsed in episode three). At this point it feels like a real liability even if, yes, most shows switch directors all the time. The writing certainly has something to do with this as well, but season two suffers from a real lack of consistency - especially with the characters. There is no sense of picking up where we left off; each episode begins anew and the actors certainly have nothing like the comfort in their roles that McConaughey and Harrelson evinced halfway through season one. As a result, Pizzolatto's writing comes off as less assured too. The end of this episode and the preview for next suggest that he is aping the structure of season one with an apparent resolution halfway through followed by characters struggling to figure out what's really going on. But the setup doesn't feel nearly strong enough for this sort of shift (for one thing, this bald dude who got shot in the street - I don't even know his name! - is no Reggie Ledoux). And a clean-shaven Colin Farrell has nothing on McConaughy's bedraggled 2012 visage when it comes to suggesting fallout from a case prematurely solved.

I honestly have no idea where this is going, and if I loved that feeling in season one I am uneasy with it in season two...because this time it doesn't seem like True Detective knows where it's going either. "Down Will Come" demonstrates that this season at least has the potential to go big and - maybe - go broad, rather than just meandering its way to a limp finish. Personally, I am fine with waiting till episodes seven and eight to get real breakthroughs and payoffs on the details of the investigation. Last season, episodes five and six were focused on character - putting its detectives in compelling situations and shining new light on their troubled personalities. That's where I hope the next two episodes of this season will invest their energies. Whether this can be done without the strong guiding hand of a single director remains to be seen.