MAJOR SPOILERS for last night’s episode of True Detective, “Maybe Tomorrow”

Well, as it turns out, that thing that sort of happened last week didn’t really happen. I mean, it did happen and we saw the blood spurt out of Velcoro’s gunshot wounds and everything, and then the show opened on his seemingly lifeless body the morning after… and then he woke up. He had been shot by, like, rubber bullets or buckshot or something. He had broken ribs and he was hurting but he survived. So there was your easy resolution to last week’s cliffhanger: Colin Farrell is still with us and will probably survive the season, although he did have a half-dead dream where he was told by his father that he (Velcoro) would “go first” or something. That he would die. Which wouldn’t surprise me at all.

What does surprise me is how little police work is being done. It feels like we barely got ten minutes of police procedure (if that) to fifty minutes of character study. And to be honest, these characters are very poorly drawn and they mostly seem like rip-offs of other films and TV shows. They aren’t interesting “character studies” especially since a lot of the “plot” just seems to be “characters spinning their wheels.” This is where some good police procedure might help propel the story forward. What do we really know after this episode? That Paul Woodruff does about an hour of police work a day and then he just broods on his bro-date with a male ex-lover (like that wasn’t telegraphed from the beginning)? That Bezzerides and Velcoro have chemistry together but it’s not exactly sexual? That Velcoro’s ex-wife doesn’t want him to see their child? That Bezzerides thinks Velcoro is basically a harmless burnout and she’s not out to get him? We sort of knew all of that before this episode. Even the big “chase scene” wasn’t all that interesting.

Yesterday, I read this interesting theory about the two seasons of True Detective and whether they are connected. As in, maybe there’s a multi-state conglomerate of powerful, well-connected men obsessed with the occult, killing prostitutes, wearing raven masks and putting antlers on dead bodies. I don’t think the seasons are connected, just because I think Nic Pizzolatto’s hacky writing is getting progressively worse and he wouldn’t be able to accomplish the layers of conspiracy needed to make it work.

Yeah, I’m still sticking with it though… I’m not sure why. Despite the uneven writing, I have taken a liking to Velcoro and Bezzerides. I don’t really care if Paul and Frank live or die though. Vince Vaughn’s character – Frank – has sort of gone off a cliff for me. Blah.

Photos courtesy of ‘True Detective’/HBO.