Previously on True Detective: Woodrugh is gunned down by police lieutenant Jeff Hunt while Ani and Ray get busy in the second to last episode of the season.
This episode’s first scene started this season finale on uneven ground from the very beginning. In what may have been the most boring conversation of the entire season, Ray and Ani discussed their pasts. I really wouldn’t have had a problem with it if it wasn’t for the fact that we have heard it all before. Ray’s backstory was beat over our heads more times than thought humanly possible and Ani’s backstory was severely underdeveloped. This pillow talk discussion between these two added absolutely nothing to our understanding of the characters or the overall plot. Add their boring dialogue on top of the incredibly strange editing (Ani and Ray getting dressed in a completely different scene with their boring discussion playing over the top) and I was completely and totally bored.
Moving onto the next scene, Frank and Jordan have an equally boring discussion about who is going to leave town first. This may have been an interesting scene if it had happened in the very beginning, but since we are at the very end of the season, I didn’t care about it. Frank and Jordan have argued about something in just about every episode this season (babies, violence, work, whatever Frank is grumpy about) and even more annoying than the total randomness that brings about these conversations is the sense that we are really supposed to enjoy these scenes. By no fault of Vince Vaughn or Kelly Reilly, the arguing has felt completely off the wall and unreal. They are both extremely talented actors and it’s disappointing to see them get stuck with such boring dialogue.
One of the things that was so mind blowingly awesome about last season was the complexity of the case that Marty and Rust were investigating. For some reason, while it was a strength of last season, the complexity of “Who killed Ben Caspere?” has been a major player in the downfall of True Detective this season. After watching the final episode and learning about who killed him and why, my only response is, “Ok. Am I supposed to care?”. This season has stretched this question out so far and so long with so little return that I simply did not care about the answer.
The one thing that I can say that I enjoyed about this episode was the scene in the airport. I gave up trying to understand all the twisted webs of corruption, so I didn’t enjoy it because the dialogue was so amazingly great or because the drama was really awesome, but I liked the scene as a nice action scene piece. Once the shooting (and knifing) started, it was hard to not enjoy the intensity of the shootout. This episode was definitely not short on shootouts. Even better than the airport shootout was Ray’s final showdown in the woods with Jeff Hunt and a bunch of other cops. The fact that this shootout was teased all the way back in episode three gained some brownie points from me for foreshadowing and obvious forward thinking, but the ending to the shootout was quite underwhelming. While Ray didn’t stand much of a chance against that many cops, he wasn’t doing half bad until he decided to ditch all cover and give up. He does this right after somehow deciding to be a good father again. It’s this kind of inconsistent writing that has plagued Ray’s story all along. He’s an indecisive character and, while that doesn’t always mean an indecisive character equals inconsistent writing, it’s just seemed too obvious that Ray’s journey was setup by a bunch of guys sitting around a whiteboard coming up with ideas. I liked the voice recording that he tried to send to Chad (again, nice forward thinking all the way back in episode one I believe), but doesn’t it seem like it would be fairly easy for someone to get the voice recording off the iPhone and over to his son anyway? Obviously that’s nitpicking, but I rest my case.
The end to Frank’s journey was honestly just as incoherent as the beginning. When we first met Frank he was a man at the top of the food chain and, somehow, he still didn’t interest me once he was at the very bottom. The same could be said about Frank in his final scenes. He’s a man that is at long last ready to leave his current life behind him and, of course, he is unable to do so, because no one in True Detective can ever escape the past.
And that’s the end of season two of True Detective. I can’t even honestly call that an ending because nothing of consequence actually happened. Ray and Frank are deader than dead while Ani and Jordan are walking around in a crowd with music playing. The way that this season of True Detective ended would be equivalent to me just ending this review mid sentence without finishing my
How unsatisfying was that? Ask Paul Woodrugh.
Rating: 6.2/10 - A season long mystery with an underwhelming resolution combined with copious amounts of boring dialogue made for a dud of a finale. Without the shootout, it would have been lucky to receive a 6.0 from me.
Worst quotes:
Anything said by Ani or Ray in the first scene
