True Detective Recap: Your Worst Isn’t Your Best
When Frank tells Ray, in an attempt to get him to leave his job as detective and work for him full-time, that “sometimes your worst self is your best self,” I couldn’t help but hope that this was in some way true for the show itself. But it’s not. The show’s worst is the show’s worst.
Last week things started to shape up, clues were given, we started to latch on to some information, there were hints that this season might actually start building a compelling detective story – it was a much needed step forward.
My hope was short-lived.
Episode four could possibly be the most stunted delivery this season, from best to worst in the space of a week. In short, this episode takes a step back. Very little happened to move the plot forward; its slow pace incapable of building any compelling or riveting television. We know this show to be a slow burn, we do, but a slow burn is a bore when the storytelling delivers no suspense, and no compelling plot to force the viewer into the story. This season’s core problem is its plot and its stunted storytelling, not the actors or direction. They only work with what they are given, and like us, they are given very little.
Rant done. Time to dig into what little happened this week.
Paul is running further away from his real self, pretty similar to the show in that regard, after he wakes up in his fling’s house, still gay, and still trying very hard not to be. He rushes out of the house, gets back to the club, and his bike is gone, stolen. During a meet-up with his girlfriend, or technically ex-girlfriend, or more technically fuck buddy to prove to him that he’s not gay, she informs him that she’s pregnant. He wants to keep the baby and get married because he just realized, in that moment, that he actually really loves her. Problem solved, he isn’t gay no more. Right. This is not going to work, Paul.
Ani keeps digging into the Vinci mayor, this time speaking to his daughter, also a pretty zoned out crack head, I presume. She talks about her mother being committed to a mental hospital for schizophrenia when she was only 11 years old, and her father being a “very bad person”. For her trouble, Ani gets a sexual misconduct charge laid against her by the cop she slept with. Of course, he was just a poor old subordinate. He didn’t have a choice. Departmental leave for Ani, but she can still be a part of the special state investigation, which Ray told her was a “shakedown”.
Things are not going smoothly for Frank either. With his investment money gone, he has been forced to get down and dirty again. Frank is back to being a full-time gangster. He has his club back, makes deals to get drugs to run through it, and tries to sell someone land. A pretty non-eventful episode for Frank.
Back at the HQ, Paul finds a lead. One Mexican pimp’s girl was found selling some jewellery with Caspere’s prints on it. Pimp’s name is Leo. And yes, Ray runs to Frank with the information. He wants his henchmen to find this man.
The police, including Ray, Ani, Paul, and that useless detective whose name no one knows, march on the building where the pimp is supposed to be at. From the second floor window, someone shoots at them, and naturally, a shootout ensues, wherein several cops are killed, including that deadbeat cop. Ani chases down the car the pimp is in as the car crashes into a bus. More shooting, and another dead cop. The pimp uses one of the people on the bus as a shield while Ray and Paul angle forward. Knowing he’s a dead man, Leo shoots the human shield in the head before Ray and Paul unload on him – shooting him pretty dead.
The episode-ending shootout seems to have been shoved into the episode to deliver some flash, and deliver it did not. The clunky sequence had very little motivation and purpose. As usual, there was no suspense building up to a senseless shootout. A lead which seemed so minor ended up being a bloodbath for no apparent reason.
After episode four, almost halfway, we’re still not any closer to solving, or at the very least, building a case that is gripping and tight. Nic Pizzolatto is burning himself, rather than producing a slow burn worth being labelled a slow burn.
