True Detective Recap: Just Because It’s “Prestige Television” Doesn’t Make It “Good”

This is a recap of the fifth episode of True Detective’s second season. Spoilers.

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You know what? If True Detective’s second season proves anything, it’s that if you wish hard enough eventually your dreams will come true. You’ve just got to believe in yourself, like Oprah.

You think Oprah would have gotten where she is if she hadn’t believed in herself? Now she’s a demi-god. No one is fucking with The Big O.

Where was I? Oh, yeah: pretty much, if Nic Pizzolatto can get away with writing a line like “It’s like blue balls in the heart” and get paid millions of dollars for it, then there really is hope for us all. Maybe this time next year you’ll be driving a Lamborghini. Maybe I’ll be crowned the Queen of England. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

This week we were given an enormous amount of information about Ben Caspere, but it was told to us in an unnecessarily convoluted way. Nothing was brought to its logical conclusion. Perhaps the reason why is the same reason True Detective is so damn easy to make fun of: maybe it’s a dud in prestige drama’s clothing.

The thing is, I’m still interested in who killed Caspere! That porn-hoarding scamp! But the writing in this show makes me genuinely want to rip my ears off my head, chuck them in a blender with a little kale, and suck down a human flesh smoothie.

John Herman from The Awl argues that we need to start treating prestige drama as a genre rather than a measure of quality, because what we consider to be prestige TV isn’t always that good. If we think about True Detective this way, then we can see that it’s actually hitting every cue necessary for nailing ‘prestige drama’ status, but as a plain TV show it’s coming up more hollow than Ben Caspere’s eye sockets.

Let’s think of the classic tropes of this ‘genre’. You want an anti-hero with a traumatic past? Well pal, we have four! Since the snappily named ‘Vinci Massacre’ of last week, Ray has quit his job and his moustache. Are these two events connected? We can only assume. He’s working for Frank now, is about to be evicted from his depressing house and is also losing the custody battle with his ex-wife. To while away the hours, he drives on abandoned highways in the dead of night, recording feel good statements like, “Pain is inexhaustible. It’s only people who get exhausted”. Cool catch phrase, my man.

Ani’s off the e-cigs, but heavily into the liquor since the massacre, and is essentially told by a colleague that if she was more likable, she wouldn’t find herself in so much trouble. Did you know that being a likable women actually stops bullets in mid-air? Lol, neither. Her traumatic hippy commune childhood seems to be fueling her obsession with finding that missing girl from the first episode, Vera, and even her sister seems to be regarding her with alarm.

And Paul? Well, he’s the most traumatic of the bunch! Not only is he a closeted gay man who has to sneak vodka in his iced tea just to get through a wedding conversation, but his peach of a mother stole $20,000 of his “Afghanistan money”, whatever that means, and told him that he could have been “a scrape job” so you know, YOU’RE WELCOME.

Prestige TV is concerned with the end of a great era or the failure of the American Dream, which Vince Vaughn is trying his goddamn best to convey (or is he playing it wooden and bad on purpose? #HowMetaIsVaugh). Like I said last week, the great California farmlands have gone to seed, but now we know that’s because they were poisoned by Frank and his pals on purpose (although one of the perpetrators recently ran himself off a cliff, nothing suss). Frank’s desire to pave over paradise and put up a parking lot is slipping away from him.

Frank is supposed to be bad to the bone, but even though we’ve seen him literally pull someone’s teeth out, I’m still having trouble buying it? Even his casual racism – calling some Latino men “amigo”, and saying “Khe Sanh, motherfucker” to a Chinese person and then correcting his own racist taunt by saying “Go stand in front of a tank then” – seems a bit like, ‘Hey, see! How BAD is this guy? Woah, is this guy bad!”. I couldn’t give less of a shit about Frank deciding he wants to adopt. His stakes mean nothing to me. If only the show spent as much time discussing the major plot points as it does Jordan’s ability to procreate.

One thing that Pizzolatto is taking great pains to emphasise is sexual deviancy — or, more specifically, how female sexuality can bring men undone. Ray’s ex-wife’s sexual assault is presented as the catalyst for their ruin and we’re meant to sympathise with the fact that Ray killed the wrong guy. The guy he wanted to kill has been out there assaulting women the whole time, and Ray is the victim? Dr. Pitlor reveals that Caspere and Mayor Chessani’s son ran high class prostitution parties to strike up deals with powerful men and blackmail them into doing stuff for them. He also insinuates that Mayor Chessani’s wife was incarcerated and sent insane by her husband’s “highly inventive” tastes. The fact that Ani is in a therapy session full of cartoon character sexual aggressors is presented as a farce, like it’s ridiculous to assume that pretty women are capable of sexual assault.

Is Pizzolatto using all these elements to make a grand statement about the use of female sexual assault as a catalyst for male action? Nah. Including all these plot details is enough. *Pizzolatto pats himself on back*

This show sometimes feels like watching a snow globe that never becomes animated no matter how hard you shake it — but behind the layers of nonsensical dialogue the central mystery is interesting. I didn’t love returning to Sad Lady bar (not to be confused with Sad Blowjob bar, very different bar), but I did like Ani and Ray’s conversation: Ani’s disgust that “nobody fucking cares” about a missing Latina girl and Ray’s sad admission that “I didn’t realise you had been on my mind”, binding them together in something that kind of looks like friendship if you’re squinting. I also liked the State Attorney getting Caspere’s Angels together again, while simultaneously passing judgment on all of them.

So, who killed Caspere and what’s the plan? Well, it seems like everyone is looking for the diamonds missing from Caspere’s safe deposit box and a hard drive of blackmail porn that Caspere had on the boss of Catalyst (the transport guy Frank met with). Frank’s assistant Blake is connected to Dr. Pitlor and the Russian gangster who pulled out of the corridor purchase, who are all either hanging out with platonic female friends who are coincidentally much more attractive than them, or are prostitutes. Drunk Cop Dixon who got his skull blown off last week was secretly documenting something (remember him taking the photo of Paul and Miguel?) and had strange Intel about Caspere that he didn’t share. Ani and Paul discover a very Twin Peaks-y torture hut on a property where they traced Vera’s last phone call and Caspere’s GPS ping. Caspere wasn’t tortured there, so who was?

Maybe we’re projecting more interesting onto True Detective than it deserves and we won’t ever be satisfied. Despite the promises of its genre, its execution is often weaker than Colin Farrell’s chin (stick with the facial hair dude, for real). For now, I’m happy guessing who killed Caspere and hoping that it wasn’t a character we haven’t met yet. My money is on highway Jesus.

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True Detective airs on Foxtel’s Showcase every Monday at 3.30pm (express from the US), before being re-broadcast at 7.30pm.

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Sinead Stubbins is a writer from Melbourne who has done stuff for Yen, frankie, Smith Journal and Elle. She tweets from @sineadstubbins