There are two things in my life that I consider to be “bloated disappointments that looked good on paper”. Number one is KFC’s Double Down. I mean, it tasted alright, but it certainly wasn’t worth the price nor was it as large as advertised.
As for number two, that would be season two of HBO’s True Detective.
What a letdown after a pretty damn good first season.
The nihilistic tone was so grim you just want to curl up into a ball, the all-over-the-place storyline was incomprehensible, and the dialogue. Dear lord, the pretentious dialogue. Not even Daniel Day-Lewis can sell the line “Never do anything out of hunger. Not even eating“ so Vince Vaughn was always going to fight a losing battle there.
That being said, the cast were awesome and did what they could with the bad material, though I do question Colin Farrell’s decision to go with a seedy mustache.
After letting True Detective lie dormant for a number of years now, presumably so that showrunner and writer Nic Pizzolatto could pull his head out of his ass and get to work on an actual good idea, HBO have dropped the trailer for season three of the show.
And wow.
It’s only 60 seconds of new footage but that snippet is already miles better than season two. The noir aesthetic looks crisp and less obnoxiously dark, the voice over dialogue is actually pretty good, and the brilliant Mahershala Ali is front and centre for the whole season.
The trailer doesn’t tell us much about what the story is, but it clearly shows Ali trying to solve a heinous crime across several time periods. It’s pretty much the same schtick as season one, but hey that was the “good” season so why not go back to what worked.
Interestingly, it looks like Ali will be the only detective trying to solve the crime this season, which I’m perfectly fine with because the man is fantastic and a strong, independent detective that don’t need no buddy.
True Detective season three won’t be dropping until 2019 some time so feast your eyes on the trailer here for the time being.
