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| Forget Farrell and Vaughn, here's how True Detective can stay great | Forget Farrell and Vaughn, here's how True Detective can stay great |
| (about 9 hours later) | |
| The months of ardent speculation about season two of True Detective have finally come to an end. HBO has just announced that season two will feature Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro, a crooked cop involved with the mob. He will be joined by Vince Vaughn, who will play Frank Semyon, a mobster who is trying to go legit and whose plans are upended by a murder. | The months of ardent speculation about season two of True Detective have finally come to an end. HBO has just announced that season two will feature Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro, a crooked cop involved with the mob. He will be joined by Vince Vaughn, who will play Frank Semyon, a mobster who is trying to go legit and whose plans are upended by a murder. |
| The fate of True Detective’s second season now rests in the hands of the star of box office duds Phone Booth, Alexander and a Total Recall remake that no one wanted. In Bruges is pretty great, but lacked the sort of impact to make it a classic. In more commercially successful films, like Horrible Bosses and Minority Report, he’s been cast only as a supporting character. Farrell does not have a reputation for selecting good material, which raises concern about what we can expect from the next iteration of the hit HBO series. | The fate of True Detective’s second season now rests in the hands of the star of box office duds Phone Booth, Alexander and a Total Recall remake that no one wanted. In Bruges is pretty great, but lacked the sort of impact to make it a classic. In more commercially successful films, like Horrible Bosses and Minority Report, he’s been cast only as a supporting character. Farrell does not have a reputation for selecting good material, which raises concern about what we can expect from the next iteration of the hit HBO series. |
| Vaughn, a drooling bullmastiff of an actor, has certainly been in some big box office hits, but isn’t really known for his prowess as a thespian. His most recent movies were cinematic gems Delivery Man and The Internship which made as much money as a slightly busy lemonade stand on your local Main Street.To make matters worse, the first two episodes will be directed by Justin Lin, who directed Fast and the Furious 6 and the pilot for CBS’s decidedly mediocre new show Scorpion, in which a waitress chases a landing plane in a Ferrari convertible so that she can connect a computer to a wire dangling out of it. | |
| We’re trusting the future of a beloved franchise to these nogoodniks? | We’re trusting the future of a beloved franchise to these nogoodniks? |
| Part of what made season one of True Detective great was that bona fide movie stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey deigned to do television for it. You knew the script had to be amazing if these two were taking time off from winning Oscars. Their considerable talents as actors is part of what made the show so successful. | |
| Now that the show is going to have an entirely different cast and story, we have two guys whose careers have stalled and are hoping to get a boost by doing some prestige television. It reeks a little bit of desperation on everyone’s part, especially after the #TrueDetectiveSeasonTwo guessing game that imaginatively cast every big-name actor in Hollywood, what we got was bound to disappoint. | Now that the show is going to have an entirely different cast and story, we have two guys whose careers have stalled and are hoping to get a boost by doing some prestige television. It reeks a little bit of desperation on everyone’s part, especially after the #TrueDetectiveSeasonTwo guessing game that imaginatively cast every big-name actor in Hollywood, what we got was bound to disappoint. |
| But all is not lost (yet). There are still some things that creator Nic Pizzolatto can do to make sure that season two is just as good, if not better, than season one. | But all is not lost (yet). There are still some things that creator Nic Pizzolatto can do to make sure that season two is just as good, if not better, than season one. |
| Get a great director | Get a great director |
| What really cemented True Detective as top-notch television is the cinematic genius of Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed every episode of the season (and won an Emmy for his troubles). Fukunaga’s soaring landscape shots, dreamy flashbacks, and skill with making the Louisiana summer look authentically disgusting and oppressive unified the season with a visual language that was stunning and individual. Having one person with a real vision behind the camera is what season two needs, even if it’s someone with a totally different but equally distinctive style as Fukunaga. Maybe someone like Neil Marshall, who directed the amazing Game of Thrones episodes featuring the Battle of Blackwater and the siege of The Wall. Or maybe Michelle MacLaren, a veteran of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and The Leftovers. | What really cemented True Detective as top-notch television is the cinematic genius of Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed every episode of the season (and won an Emmy for his troubles). Fukunaga’s soaring landscape shots, dreamy flashbacks, and skill with making the Louisiana summer look authentically disgusting and oppressive unified the season with a visual language that was stunning and individual. Having one person with a real vision behind the camera is what season two needs, even if it’s someone with a totally different but equally distinctive style as Fukunaga. Maybe someone like Neil Marshall, who directed the amazing Game of Thrones episodes featuring the Battle of Blackwater and the siege of The Wall. Or maybe Michelle MacLaren, a veteran of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and The Leftovers. |
| Keep it weird | Keep it weird |
| While True Detective was as much of a standard police procedural as any of the other cop drams on TV, what differentiated it was all that “Time is a flat circle” talk that everyone quotes. It walked the line between being grounded in a gritty reality and indulging in the supernatural that really set the show apart. Pizzolatto said that this season would be about “the secret occult history of the American transportation system” so we’re well on our way. The show also never offered any easy answers when it came to its more outré plot points and that’s what made it so much fun to debate and theorize about. Let’s hope that we get just the right amount of clarity for it to make sense, but not so much that it turns into the 19th season of Supernatural. | While True Detective was as much of a standard police procedural as any of the other cop drams on TV, what differentiated it was all that “Time is a flat circle” talk that everyone quotes. It walked the line between being grounded in a gritty reality and indulging in the supernatural that really set the show apart. Pizzolatto said that this season would be about “the secret occult history of the American transportation system” so we’re well on our way. The show also never offered any easy answers when it came to its more outré plot points and that’s what made it so much fun to debate and theorize about. Let’s hope that we get just the right amount of clarity for it to make sense, but not so much that it turns into the 19th season of Supernatural. |
| Make LA fresh | Make LA fresh |
| Farrell also confirmed that the season will be set in Los Angeles instead of rural Louisiana like the first season. The backwater aesthetic and story of the show was a major part of it, and something that really set it apart from all the other urban crime dramas that litter the TV landscape. LA especially is home of the modern noir (including everything from Chinatown to Drive). The show is going to have to find that vein that makes the city of Angels seem new and gritty again in an original way that hasn’t been done before. It’s a tough order, because it’s up against so much competition, but hopefully that weirdness will play into it. | Farrell also confirmed that the season will be set in Los Angeles instead of rural Louisiana like the first season. The backwater aesthetic and story of the show was a major part of it, and something that really set it apart from all the other urban crime dramas that litter the TV landscape. LA especially is home of the modern noir (including everything from Chinatown to Drive). The show is going to have to find that vein that makes the city of Angels seem new and gritty again in an original way that hasn’t been done before. It’s a tough order, because it’s up against so much competition, but hopefully that weirdness will play into it. |
| Hire more women | Hire more women |
| There was much noise made about True Detective’s lack of female characters and its treatment of the ones it had. Season two has long rumored to have a major female character (possibly played by the amazing Elizabeth Moss), so lets hope that she’s a fellow detective or someone with a little bit more empowerment than the nags and vicitms of season one. And since we’re talking about hiring women, maybe get one as that visionary director. Jane Campion had tremendous success with the Sundance show Top of the Lake, which was very similar to True Detective. Maybe we need someone like her to give this thing a more feminine spin. | |
| Get Bill Murray | Get Bill Murray |
| He just makes everything a little bit better, doesn’t he? | He just makes everything a little bit better, doesn’t he? |
| **This post was updated following HBO’s Vince Vaughn announcement at 3pm ET | **This post was updated following HBO’s Vince Vaughn announcement at 3pm ET |