Every part of every scene in this just felt like there was nobody to tell NP "no".

Like, so the Mexicans didn't know about the diamonds... that guy just wanted a suit that didn't fit him? He was like 4 inches shorter than VV! That whole scene played so weird, like improv or something. They drove him out to the country to kill him for burning their club, but then he told them about the cash so they were gonna let him go, then one of them pointlessly ****s with him about the suit, then he fights back about the suit, gets stabbed but not killed, and the just leave him there so he could have a flashback scene that made it seem like he was the main character all along.

This show felt like it was assembled piecemeal from various halfformed ideas NP had but he got rushed into making the show without an actual beginning-to-end story.

There's a famous anecdote about the film The Big Sleep where the person adapting the book for the screen asks the writer of the novel, Raymond Chandler, who killed a particular character, and he says 'Oh, I have no idea'. I'm not making excuses for Pizzolato, clearly there are some giant loose ends in this plot. I don't really have the need to unravel these because I don't think this show was about how the plot came together in the small sense, why one person was here and not there, etc. It was more about how the small forces interacted with the large forces.

Fly, my read on the scene wasn't that the guy wanted the suit, he wanted to humiliate Frank by forcing him to walk naked (or half-naked) to wherever he was going to end up.

I think he was going to strip him naked then kill him anyway.

Plot holes are fine to a certain extent. It's fine to have loose ends, take dramatic license, have incredible coincidences, whatever. These things don't matter as long as the story is compelling. And TD's problem wasn't any of these flaws, it was that the story and characters ultimately weren't compelling. That's the fundamental problem, not this plot hole or that plot hole. Create characters that the audience cares about and is interested in and everything else will fall in line. No one says omg Walter White did this or that SO UNREALISTIC. Not because he didn't do a ton of stuff that was super implausible but rather because we were too busy caring about what happens next to the characters.

Breaking Bad was cartoonish almost from start to finish, much more than this show, and it was something people (including me) would bring up from time to time, but I didn't much care, either. I do care about its cartoonishness when people want to talk about it as the best drama of all time, though.

The difference between Breaking Bad and True Detective Season 2 is that TD has 4 protagonists and 8.5 episodes to cover that ground, whereas Breaking Bad has 1 protagonist and eventually got over 40 episodes. I didn't care about TD's characters at first either, but by the end I did, as their worlds began to intersect. I kinda wish TD would do a 2 season arc next time out (has it been renewed for a 3rd season yet? I can't remember); it takes so much work to establish new characters as people who are interesting and worth caring about.

The VV final scene was terrible for so many reasons. Here's a central character getting killed and my first question when I saw the villains was, "who are these guys"? Then I remembered, "Oh yeah - the Mexicans. They wanted to sell drugs in Franks' club or something, right?" Then he gets killed by a random henchman over his suit? There could not have been a less interesting way to have a main character meet his demise. Unless you count Woodrugh maybe.

But you cared about (or at least we're interested and engaged by) Walter white halfway through the first episode. THAT is the difference between the two, not the run time.

I mean, sure, but you're comparing a show with the best drama pilot I've ever seen to one that definitely does not have that. Shows like Mad Men, The Wire, and The Sopranos do not start off particularly strong either. The problem is that while these shows offered hours and hours of payoff for the initial investment, TD offered about 3.

I'd say there really was no payoff.

I mean how much screen time over the season did they spend trying to get us to care about Frank and his wife? A lot. And we didn't.

Couldn't disagree more about Mad Men, although that pilot was more about creating a fascinating world for the story to inhabit. But Don was interesting to me right off the bat.

Sopranos pilot was relatively weak (but nowhere near as weak as the TD season 2 premiere) but the following episodes were quite good.

But anyway, whatever, I really really disagree with you that it would have been good to have a third season with this dumpster fire cast of characters.

Although obviously a STAN origin story would be obviously welcome

Stan and Nails prequel

If you're desperate to see Stan, just look out for the Capital One commercial in an old style prison. It had about the same vibe/outcome for the character minus death. Makes about as much sense as his arc in the show.

That isn't what I said. Obviously these characters can't come back, most of them are dead, and the way this story functioned wouldn't work over 16 hours regardless. I'm just saying that if there is a Season 3 of TD, establishing several new characters and a new locale and so on, I'd like for that story to go on for more than 8.5 episodes.

Frank's scenes with his wife and Woodrough in general were probably the weakest parts of TD season 2 in my eyes. I thought his final (non-hallucinated) scene with her was good, and I thought the fact that she was covering him during Velcoro's confrontation with him made that bond appear stronger as well, but that monologue about the rat to begin Episode 2 - yeah, not great. That's just it though, the show had to resort to these things partly because it didn't have a ton of time (but still had considerably more time than a movie, ldo).

thats a tough comparison as BB had one of the best openings to a pilot ever and it was entirely focused on the main character.

I don't even remember how this season of TD started lol.

Well I didn't bring it up, someone else said


Which is preposterous. The difference is breaking bad made us care about the characters and their story from the first handful of scenes.

lol, no, you brought up Walter White first. It's an unfair comparison, so let's drop it.

Maybe it's an unfair comparison but bro YOU MADE IT. And I brought up the audience being invested in walt's story immediately because THAT is the reason that BB is much better. Not because BB had a longer run. BB was astronomically better than TD after the first season, which was only like 5 episodes of TD

Fine whatever, I'm the one who made the comparison even though you brought up Walter White first. It's a dumb comparison for the reason that CDS brings up - it's a totally different story. We're following 1 guy in Breaking Bad. It's easier to do a story about one guy. Here we're following 4 relatively disparate people, and all of them are introduced in episode 1.

The Wire is a better comparison, almost everyone says that that show starts weak, and that's because we're following multiple people, none of whom we know who they are and we're not really given reason to care about any of them initially. Then we are, and the show becomes very strong from that point on. Here, to me, we got that slow opening, then a few cool episodes and then it ended. That's all.

And it's not just one guy. I care more about Saul, or badger, or gomie, or Marie than anyone in season 2 of TD. Let alone any of the other major characters like hank or Jesse or skyler or mike

do you think that someday looking back after 5 or 6 seasons, s2 of TD will be the "Polish / white person / docks" season of the series? where you just had to have a slightly different taste to appreciate it?

I think that just overhead shots of LA and freeways, maybe a few cool camera shots of various grungy la locations, all set to the music of that guitar girl would have been superior to this season

oh sorry, deleted fast bc i didn't think my post was all that helpful lol

just don't think all the issues i have with the character development and plotting of this season will lessen over time, just wasn't interesting or good

don't really see the comp to Wire S2

i was pretty much joking about wire s2 but yes that season was an outlier in content and a lot of people had a problem with it, which i didnt, just sayin, a lot of people did. though wire s2 was an outlier more in content than in just quality/suckfest

'You brought up Breaking Bad first'

'No, I didn't, but let's drop it, it's a bad example, for the reasons already mentioned'

*keeps talking about Breaking Bad*

Hitting that 'view post' button is always gonna be a mistake.