aren't most of those reviews based off the first 3 eps? (i believe reviewers were sent a 3 ep screener - so most were left hopeful and giving it the benefit of the doubt like us) :P

I'm sure this will get roundly shouted down in here, but for me:

Episodes 1 - 7 S1 >>> S2
Episode 8 S2 >>> S1

There. I said it.

lol

I mean it's fine you think that, on matters of taste there can be no argument, etc.

But for me it is really hard to judge episode 8 independently just because I didn't care about the characters and didn't really understand their connection and motivations to the plot. Like if you cared about Frank and his wife or Ani and Velcro and wanted them to stick it to those evil cops then sure, maybe it was good. I don't know.

But the Vinci cops were really the only guys I where I actually understood what their motivations were. They were corrupt cops who wanted to keep doing corrupt stuff. I get it! Paul and Ani and Velcro and especially Frank I just either have no idea or don't care.

So when Season 2 finished production and all the execs are watching it together as a final reviews. What do they say to each other? How good it is? Do they know they have a disaster on their hands? Do they realize how they totally miscast VV?

True story, when VV notices he was dead, I looked out the couch and there I was... Apparently I had stopped moving way back around the first dumb shootout.

You know, I found myself rooting for both Ray and Frank last night. I was interested to learn the results of the paternity test for Ray's son and was glad when they came back to be his. I can't for the life of me figure out why his character would think it is a good idea to ever get behind the wheel of his own car again, and assumed he sealed his own fate once he did. I was interested to see whether his final message to his son would deliver, although driving out of the city seemed like a pretty bad choice to make that work.

I wanted Frank to get away and meet his wife, although it felt unlikely he would make it. I couldn't figure out why he went suicidal over the suit, but I forgot about the diamonds in the pocket. Seems like he could have at least tried to sneak those before taking the suit off.

I wasn't really rooting for Ani and Ray to reunite per se, but I guess I was also rooting for her to escape. I guess I was just rooting for the underdogs. Of the main characters, she did fewer bad things than Ray and Frank, so maybe she deserved to survive over them, but on the other hand you could make a case that Paul was shown to do almost nothing bad over the season (unless I'm forgetting something) and he still got killed, so I guess "deserve" doesn't really have anything to do with it.

Will tune in for S3.

A hit squad is following you and you decide to drive to a remote place to be gunned down. Not a federal building or police HQ where you are safe.

Well he is wanted for murder (I think?)

Gonna say the Mexicans did not know that as they left him dying in the desert with $3.5mm of diamonds he then used to plug his stab wound. Makes the whole suit thing... odd.

Beyond that - how loltastic was it that maybe the secret to Velcoro's son apparently being accepted by his peers is the confidence he got by carrying a police badge covered by a hunk of lucite the size of a softball? Sure - judgmental teens definitely would come around on a pudgy misfit who's carrying around an huge hunk of plastic wherever he goes....

That not the most loltastic part of this.

Velcoro parks his car a few blocks away from the the school and walks there. There must be many side streets like that around the school but somehow the bad guys are just at the right street. Of course this is the Lt who seems to know exactly where everyone is going to be at any time.

Also why was this a 90 minute finale? Just so we could have that ridiculous dialog with CM and RM in the bed and then the loltastic train station scene with VV? Those two scenes were the first 20 mins of the show.

Yeah, Ray's SOL wherever he goes. he chooses to draw them away from Ani.

I just read in the Grantland article that the LA Times reporter in the hotel with Ani was the same one who Ray beat up early in the season. Guess we were supposed to remember him.

As far as spending an and half watching TV on a sunday evening I thought it was very entertaining. Obviously the season was a disaster but I enjoyed the last 2 episodes very much

I kind of assumed Frank and Ray were both followed from where they made the switch? That's the only way either encounter makes sense imo (although they don't really explain it) ie the Mexican gang randomly tracking down Frank is even less probable than waiting to see if Ray stops off at the school (unless I missed something).

Edit: more I think about these endings the less I like them. Was painfully obvious when he pulled off the highway to visit the kid something terrible was going to happen. I think I would have vastly preferred if Ray just noticed he was being followed and brought the shootout to the woods to deflect heat from Ani instead of involving the kid and the ridiculous tracer aspect.

Rbk, dan, bixby:

I don't think the suit thing was about protecting the diamonds for himself. I think at that point he knew he was gonna be left for dead in the desert and it was just a **** you I ain't goin' out like a little bitch statement to the Mexicans with the added bonus of they don't get the diamonds.

All,

Caspere's blue diamonds: not pawned, just a waste whatever happened to them

Redhead's diamond ring: thrown away into the street

VV's diamonds: left in his pocket for the coroner or vultures to find

!!!

El D,

Obv NP hates diamonds more than he hates e-cigs!

Because Frank called Osip a "****," I was expecting one of the jewelers to appear in the desert and go through his carcass, grab the diamonds then turn to a vulture, thank it and warn it not to eat the blue balls around the heart.

Frank finally got his first cavity and it killed him.

When he was hallucinating Jordan, I wanted him to see two water stains on her dress covering her tits; then have him say "I wish I was back in the basement."

Woodrugh's story line's purpose, I believe, was to allow the show to intentionally present the all-important theme: "If you'd just been honest about who you are, nobody'd be able to run you."

Bezzerides and Woodrugh found some blue diamonds in Caspere's safety deposit box, and were held as evidence.


The shot of Chessani in the pool was a reference to Sunset Blvd., imo.

But then he wouldn't get killed like he dreamt he would back in episode 3.

In that episode, Velcoro's dad's watching William Wyler's Detective Story starring Kirk Douglas as a detective going hard after an abortionist doctor, not knowing his own wife had gone to that doctor for an abortion, and that maybe the reason for her infertility. In this movie, cruel and criminal minds drive wives to lunatic asylums. Chessani had his previous schizophrenic wife committed; she committed suicide just like Ani's mom.

I noticed Ares operatives are incompetent as ****. And tortuous storytelling is torturous to some.

Could have sworn she said the money was for plastic surgery for her face but I dont really pay attention.

||,


Thanks! That's what I was trying to remember.

And yeah, lol at those highly trained blackwater operatives. They have an 8 on 1 search pattern that leaves them completely vulnerable to the old hide behind a tree and jump out attack. How did these guys make it back to America alive?

nope she clearly said he gave her the $$ to buy the bar like right after a scene where he tells her he's gonna sign the bar over to her.
for the love of God someone pls explain that.

Subverting tropes? You have to remember, this show isn't about who owns what, or who committed a crime, or "plot". It's a character study.