True Detective Catch-All (Night Country SPOILERS)

I am still on board. And I think that this season will benefit from a rewatch after it's all over (barring some major mistakes in the final episodes). Colin Ferrell is just knocking it out of the park in this series.

Yeah. I liked this episode I think.

Still hopeful that the payoffs are all worthwhile in the end.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I need some molly.

Before or after a 40 of tequila and a 8 ball of coke?

Still watching. The assault on the mansion was a tad much. More Hollywood then realistic but I'm still on board. Someone needed to get shot in that get away maybe.

Not sure how many of the characters are going to survive come the end. Even last season was somewhat fairy tale with both characters making it out. All 4 main characters surviving this season seems improbable.

I thought last night's episode was almost unbearably intense.

Yes, same here.

It occurred to me that with Frank once again vested in this land deal (someone said he was, right?), if the Velcoro Squad f*cks this up with their documentation stolen from f*ck Mountain, Ray will totally be ruining Frank's life, above and beyond its current state.

So I'm coming at this from another perspective as I've been catching up all last weekend and yesterday (about to watch the latest episode tonight). For those on the fence I think it's the perfect show to binge since it's easier to keep track of the details and you don't notice the rougher edges after watching the third episode in a row. Not to mention that I almost quit after the second episode cause killing off major characters after you get attached to them is something I can only put up with in GoT or Walking Dead.

Speaking of rough edges, my wife and I were trying to decide who would be better in the role than Vaughn. I actually like his "civilized" side but I just don't buy him going all Scarface. Personally, I think they should have brought back McConaughey in a similar fashion to how American Horror Story recasts the same actors in new roles. My wife thinks Christian Bale or Christopher Meloni would have been great.

Sadly, the role calls for somebody in their mid-late 40s, cause Bruce Willis would make a perfect older mobster.

Slumberland wrote:

Yes, same here.

It occurred to me that with Frank once again vested in this land deal (someone said he was, right?), if the Velcoro Squad f*cks this up with their documentation stolen from f*ck Mountain, Ray will totally be ruining Frank's life, above and beyond its current state.

Frank thinks he's back in if he recovers the hard drive and hands it over to the shady business dude, who's worried about being incriminated by whatever is on there. The irony is that Frank tasked Ray with retrieving the drive, and instead Ray just found a whole new pile of incriminating evidence.

Frank's having a really bad run of things here, and he's not too far away from (like Ray) having nothing left to lose.

oh right the DRIVE I almost forgot... almost as important as our beloved Stan (RIP)

Maq wrote:

I thought last night's episode was almost unbearably intense.

Definitely. Whew.

Well that happened.

Holy sh*t.

This show is a post modern viewing experience.

It has no meaning or purpose ; I watch it.

So is it weird that I love the opening way more than I do the show? Going to have to binge watch it all over again cause I am just lost.

Vince... He doesn't ooze bad ass but maybe thats why everyone seems to be stepping up to him? Got all soft trying to go legit?

Blows my mind we're coming up on the finale already.

Reminder: the finale's 90 minutes long.

I saw that coming. No way he could survive two crazy out-numbered gunfights in this show.

I'm liking it.

I know Vaughn rubs some people the wrong way but he's working for me.

Not sure how I feel about the original murder fitting into the entire story. It still doesn't fit or quite make sense so I'm curious as to who and how they will explain it.

Vaughn works as a badass. He can't do brooding and tortured for toffee though.

I'm loving him as this (don't call me a) gangster caught up in analyzing how his life is a trope to the point where he goes right past self-awareness into Vince Vaughn playing a fictional character that is basically playing a fiction character's idea of what kind of fictional character he would be. I can practically hear his character begging to say the "just when I thought I was out..." line from Godfather.

jowner wrote:

Not sure how I feel about the original murder fitting into the entire story. It still doesn't fit or quite make sense so I'm curious as to who and how they will explain it.

I'm starting to wonder if the finale will be the inverse of what happened last season:

Spoiler:

In Season 1, the murderer was stopped though the conspirators remained untouched. What if Chessani, Geldoff, McCandless, Osip, etc. get caught but whoever murdered Ben Caspere remains a mystery?

Oh, did anyone else pause the show when Vaughn was giving over his shopping list? Funny enough it was the same list repeated twice, had things like Benelli M4 shotguns, AK-47s, M4 rifles, kevlar, gas masks, flashbangs.

I'm struggling to form an opinion about this season and this episode in particular.

I think my primary issue with the show is that it just feels so... just chock full of tropes. The gangster going clean, then things fall apart, then he goes out in a blaze of glory? The cops going after corruption only to be set up by the Man? The male and female leads with their backs to the walls and one night left, who will of course sleep with each other? Almost every single character they've met turning out to be somehow involved in the whole thing?

I'm so confused about it all. There's a lot of stuff to like here in the individual performances, the cinematography, the music choices, even the dialogue in individual scenes where the characters have a chance to feel "real." But It's like there's the outline of an interesting story, the building blocks of some compelling characters, only they filled it all in with every cop trope they could think of.

At first I thought everything felt rushed, and I kind of still feel that way. Season one had its share of cop tropes too, but it took it easy. I feel like this season may be suffering from "just gotta get one more trope in" at the expense of having compelling personal interactions between the characters. It's close, but it just kind of misses the mark for me.

Still, I find myself thinking about it a lot. I'm looking forward to the last episode. But so far it's just OK, and not great, and even if the final episode is amazing I don't think my overall opinion of the series will change much.

I just really need Vaughn to tell us he's leaving Vinci or to tell someone else they should leave because the place is dead anyway.

Well that was a thing.

gore wrote:

I think my primary issue with the show is that it just feels so... just chock full of tropes.

I thought of this comment tonight when they opened with a cigarette after sex. Holy sh*t, can't get more movie tropey than that.

Stele wrote:

Well that was a thing.

gore wrote:

I think my primary issue with the show is that it just feels so... just chock full of tropes.

I thought of this comment tonight when they opened with a cigarette after sex. Holy sh*t, can't get more movie tropey than that.

I think they're always trying to mess with them. Like this time Ray stopping off to see MY BOY! is what makes the kinda sorta happy ending possible, right? Usually when someone deviates from the plan for a reason like that he screws everything up, or at least winds up in a basement with Zed. This time the trope worked the other way: he notices the ground is wet which leads him to discover the tracking device (did they puncture the gas tank while putting it on?), but if he never gets out of the car to see MY BOY! he never has the chance to discover the tracker, if I've got the sequence of events correct?

I thought the tracker was put on after he got out at the school? Also was weird there was so much water there but it looked dry when he was down there checking it out. Don't think I'll bother rewatching the season.

Maybe, but then how did they track him to the school in order to put the tracker on? Just a hunch he'd stop by the school, and they were there at the right time long enough to catch him? Not that I know how it got there otherwise, but if so, that's disappointing.

Well what do you expect in an L.A. Noir, a happy ending?

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Maybe, but then how did they track him to the school in order to put the tracker on? Just a hunch he'd stop by the school, and they were there at the right time long enough to catch him? Not that I know how it got there otherwise, but if so, that's disappointing.

They were watching the school in case he might show up to see his kid. Ray said this while he was talking on the phone with lady cop.

Rat Boy wrote:

Well what do you expect in an L.A. Noir, a happy ending?

Kinda! Last season they messed with all the tropes. This season they...didn't, so much? Was this a...moderately pleased ending?

Baron Of Hell wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Maybe, but then how did they track him to the school in order to put the tracker on? Just a hunch he'd stop by the school, and they were there at the right time long enough to catch him? Not that I know how it got there otherwise, but if so, that's disappointing.

They were watching the school in case he might show up to see his kid. Ray said this while he was talking on the phone with lady cop.

Yeah, that's his best guess though, not anything we or he saw, right? Don't get me wrong, it makes the most sense that's what happened, just that makes it super trope-y instead of flipping it like last season. Wouldn't be the first time this season was conventional when last season wasn't, but it's disappointing if it was conventional right at the end when it looked like it wasn't.

They showed the SUV drive by as he was walking up the street towards the school, the same SUV they were following him with. Definitely watching the school. Stopping to see the kid is definitely what caught him. He left two kids fatherless (and poor) because of it. Dumb.

Millions in the trunk. Just get out of the damn country and you can skype your kid all you want, pay for him to fly first class to Venezuela to visit you all the time, etc. Very stupid ending for Ray.