True Detective 3
Jan. 15th, 2019 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootWhen I talk about perfect TV, I mean The Expanse, and before I meant The Expanse, I meant True Detective Season 1.
The latter remains stand alone. Rustin Cohle is a magnificent creation magnificently delivered but he wouldn't work without Marty Hart right beside him. They're horrible giants. Their landscape is strange and big, their lives are strange and small, everything is strange and yet familiar, like a place you return to in fever dreams. The light takes you to the story, always reminding you that you cannot and will never understand all of it. In the end this is the art at its best.
Season 2 had the light right and the environment right. It was perfectly set for a great story, but lacked everything else. Season 2 was an empty stage.
Now everyone is talking about how TD3 is a return to form; for 'return to form,' read 'return to formula'. I notice even as I write how my energy begins to run out when I focus on TD3. We have shocking ritual abuse crimes, we have that whole sense of Blue Velvet/American Gothic running through it, we have great actors inhabiting less absorbing characters. We are back but without Rustin and Marty. It cannot strike as hard, I cannot care as much. This needs to be as good as its predecessor but its own self, its own creation. Maybe that's an impossible ask. Two episodes in, and still not enchanted, I'm waiting to see.
The latter remains stand alone. Rustin Cohle is a magnificent creation magnificently delivered but he wouldn't work without Marty Hart right beside him. They're horrible giants. Their landscape is strange and big, their lives are strange and small, everything is strange and yet familiar, like a place you return to in fever dreams. The light takes you to the story, always reminding you that you cannot and will never understand all of it. In the end this is the art at its best.
Season 2 had the light right and the environment right. It was perfectly set for a great story, but lacked everything else. Season 2 was an empty stage.
Now everyone is talking about how TD3 is a return to form; for 'return to form,' read 'return to formula'. I notice even as I write how my energy begins to run out when I focus on TD3. We have shocking ritual abuse crimes, we have that whole sense of Blue Velvet/American Gothic running through it, we have great actors inhabiting less absorbing characters. We are back but without Rustin and Marty. It cannot strike as hard, I cannot care as much. This needs to be as good as its predecessor but its own self, its own creation. Maybe that's an impossible ask. Two episodes in, and still not enchanted, I'm waiting to see.
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