True Detective Recap: Super Gritty. Super Melodramatic. Super Sad Blow Jobs.

This is a recap of the third episode of True Detective‘s second season. Spoilers.

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Ray is dead and his father is telling him to look out for the giant trees. He glances down at his bloody knuckles, blood that’s not his own, while someone who looks like an Elvis impersonator sings a Bette Midler song in the background.

Somewhere in L.A, David Lynch is throwing a mug of organic black coffee at the TV, screaming “GET OFF MY LAWN!”

True Detective’s more Lynchian moments have been the best moments of the season so far. Murder is fun and all, but if you’ve got the opportunity to show a two-minute homage to ‘80s country singer Conway Twitt, then yes, please do that; Mr. Golden Globes, give this show a lifetime achievement award.

Nah, Ray’s not dead — but he is changed. His dad reckons that he was born nervous, but who can blame him? No one has his back; no one is even remotely impressed that he survived. “Maybe you lacked grit,” his death-dream dad says. Really, you could say that of  ‘I’m definitely not gay, shut up’ Paul, ‘I hate my dad/all men/you’ Ani and ‘AM I TEENAGE GIRL??’ Frank: they’re all scared of being accused of not having enough grit, so they’re overcompensating by faking it and acting hard.

Ray is done with faking it, because either way he just ends up lying in a pool of his own piss.

Ani stomps up to him and asserts that how DARE he check out a location without her because SHE is the commanding officer, without even a, ‘Yo, I’m glad you’re alive’. Ani is basically a Replicant with a high maintenance hairstyle. “Well, I got shot,” Ray says with raised eyebrows. “Took one in the sternum, so my heart aches.” Then he calls her Xena. Ray is MVP this week, every week.

He’s mad. Like, really mad. He’s mad that Frank gave him a tip-off that almost killed him, so he eschews their regular banter for a glass of water. “Booze takes the edge off,” Ray says. “I wanna stay angry.” Frank may tell Pretty Scarred Waitress that Ray has been murdered, but it seems like the opposite. He’s been imbued with a new life force. Well, as much as a guy who builds sad airplane models by himself can be.

“How are you even alive?” a doctor asks Ray. “Do you want to live?”

To which Ray makes this face:

I guess that means yes? Ray knows that his bosses flat out don’t want him to solve this case, and asks to be taken off it. “I’m no Columbo,” he says, further proving that Nic Pizzolatto has not engaged with popular culture since 1980s primetime reruns.

Ray is fully aware of his own pathetic-ness, but he knows he doesn’t want to end up like his bitter former-policeman dad who thinks no real police work has existed since the L.A riots. “No country for white men,” he grunts, while watching Kirk Douglas catch fake criminals on TV. Because we all know that the REAL victims of racism are white cops, right guys? Hahahahaha RUN RAY, RUN

Ani’s whole life mission is to prove just how gritty she really is (how miffed did she look when Paul mocked her e-cig?), which is why she baulks at her boss’ advice to seduce Ray for intel. Ewwwww, can you imagine? He probably smells like stale cigarettes and urine. If she’s going to be treated like “a cheerleader on an oil rig” at work, then she’s making sure she’s erasing any softness in her private life; including breaking up with Steve in the kitchenette at work (added humiliation provided by Elvis, who inexplicably yells, “Momma’s boy!” as Steve leaves).

Ani’s tough talk has already made an enemy in Mayor ‘I’ll bring my own glass’ Chessani, who wants her to “walk the plank”.

And what about Mayor Chessani? As if having multiple photos of he and George W Bush wasn’t shady enough, he also made a lot of late night phone calls to Caspere’s sex den before he died. This leads Ani and Paul to pay a visit to his Bel Air mansion.

We need to talk about Mayor Chessani’s mansion.

Mrs. Chessani is a Russian woman who wears floor-length ball gowns during the day and enjoys cutting out pictures from magazines. Like her husband, she likes to drink in the morning and is a bit disoriented. “You guys have a party here last night?” asks Ani, looking at the flower petals on the ground and the mountain of liquor bottles. “No?” says Mrs. Chessani, before inhaling from a suspicious looking plastic bag.

Looking for some more people to judge, Ani finds Chessani’s studious daughter (re: she’s holding a book) and his son, who has just thrown someone who looks like a ‘Blurred Lines’ model into the pool. Chessani Jnr. looks like The Situation and talks exclusively in African American slang. “Take some Xanax and chill yo’ ass,” he tells his stepmom. When Ani asks him why he’s white he says, “Ha, just kidding, sometimes I put on this accent”.

Safe to say Caspere was involved with Chessani, and with Hollywood studios who rented him cars and a whole lotta prostitutes (I did love the studio director’s rationale that of course there were girls at their parties because “they’re over half the population”. Good save, manbun). So many prostitutes, in fact, that Paul spends most of his day and night tailing sex workers for information, with the help of two male prostitutes who don’t buy “this angsty cop drama you’re rollin’”.

Paul is good at getting information, mostly because almost everyone he meets wants to fuck him. List of people who make sex eyes at him in this episode alone: Mrs. Chessani, the topless girl in the pool, four female sex workers, two male sex workers, Ani (against her will), Frank (probably). This gets complicated when his former military buddy Miguel starts reminiscing about the cool mountains they saw in combat, and those three days — you know, the ones he still thinks about a lot? Look, maybe he just meant hiking. Maybe they just went on a really memorable three-day hike. But judging by Paul’s violent reaction, it was probably not a hike. Poor Miguel.

Frank, meanwhile, is also at the end of his tether. His Russian “half anaconda, half great white” money pot is pulling out, his associates are dropping like flies, and he can’t figure out if he’s next. He can’t even jizz into a cup! “I take a shit and there’s a gun to my head!” he screams at his wife.

These two talk to each other like no other human couple in existence. When they fight, they use the word “embed”.

Frank’s badass-ness has been all talk until now, so it was interesting to see him actually breaking bad and pulling out gold teeth. Much more interesting than watching he and his wife try to nonsensically communicate, as they’re both confusing, frustrating, and basically human embodiments of the Mac spinning wheel.

Who killed Caspere? Who cares! I’m just enjoying running through the makeshift camp with my WOEs, while gravel-voiced men sing about their sins in the background. The car that took Caspere on his last trip has been torched by a masked man anyway; Ani and Ray are no closer than we are.

If the last few episodes have been sleepy doses of whiskey, then this week was a sharp cup of coffee. Damn fine coffee.

Most confusing line of the episode: “Look, I’m not Vice. I don’t give a shit who fucks who around here.”

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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 about Drake, Gilmore Girls and cheeseburgers at@sineadstubbins

Read her True Detective recaps here.