Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

True Detective: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 8, 2016

In the spirit of any good detective yarn, I’ll start this review with a confession: we don’t subscribe to HBO at our house, and therefore I have yet to see True Detective’s first season in whole, though I did catch two complete episodes and bits of other individual episodes at various friends’ houses when they first aired. That means I looked on with at least some befuddlement at the accrual of comparisons between the series’ first and second seasons, with many of those assessments coming down distinctly in favor of the first year’s characters and plot mechanics. Perhaps having “nothing” (or at least the show’s first season) to compare True Detective’s second at bat with turns out to be a relatively good thing, for while the series’ sophomore year has its share of issues, it provides a generally interesting tale of intrigue, conspiracy and various roiling dysfunctions that provide good opportunities for an eclectic cast to tear into their roles. Still, there’s a feeling of entropy that begins enveloping this season of True Detective that tends to offer some increasingly preposterous plot “twists” as things proceed, not to mention some stylistic decisions that may actually provoke some audience members into derisive laughter at times. As my colleague Ken Brown presciently commented in his True Detective Blu-ray review of the show’s first season (when a second season was still unannounced), any follow up seasons might well be “underwhelming”, at least when held up to the high standards of the series’ first year.

When Ken wrote his review of True Detective’s first season, it was still actually up in the air as to whether there would even be a second season of the show, and if so, what form it would take. When it ultimately leaked out that first season stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson would not be returning (at least as performers—they’re both on tap here as Executive Producers), it became clear that the series was going to be falling into some sort of anthology status, albeit one without the “repertory” cast that has been a recurring feature of other quasi-anthologies like American Horror Story. While the second season does share some elements of the first season, notably a somewhat bifurcated timeframe that sees past events informing and in fact intruding on current day affairs (in both senses of that word), a lot about the second season is distinctly different than the first.

Two things that immediately set this season of True Detective apart from its forebearer are the number of focal characters (increased from the first year) and its setting. The first season of the show was almost universally praised for its authentic “southern fried” ambience that took place in Louisiana, and so this sophomore season’s gambit of inventing a fictional burg on the outskirts of Los Angeles seems a little questionable at best. The city of Vinci comes off as an active hotbed of corruption, and so may actually remind some of another fictional California town that played a central part in a florid crime ridden melodrama, Sons of Anarchy’s ironically named Charming. Taking the place of the dual cops played by McConaughey and Harrelson in the first iteration of the series are a trio of interlinked police, all with various convoluted histories. Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) is an angst filled detective who is dealing with the after effects of the long ago rape of his ex-wife, a rape which may or may not have resulted in the conception of a little boy Ray has always claimed as his own, but for whom he now needs to fight to gain custody or even visitation rights. Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) is a Ventura County Sheriff Sergeant who also has some family dysfunctions, including a sister who is working in the porn industry. Motorcycle “CHiP” cop Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) is the third leg of what becomes an investigatory stool throughout the season, a stand up guy who is dealing with a perhaps shadowy past as a veteran.

Velcoro has a history with Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn), a (supposedly) former criminal mastermind who has been attempting to go straight (or at least straighter), including being part of a big deal to bring high speed rail to California in a plot point that seems oddly if probably unintentionally reminiscent of some of the subtext of Chinatown. When Frank’s partner, Vinci City Manager Ben Caspere, turns up dead (and mutilated), the project is threatened while the three aforementioned police converge on various elements of the murder investigation surrounding Caspere.

On one level, this season of True Detective hews fairly closely to what I’d call an “Agatha Christie” mystery structure, with past peccadilloes, “secret” relationships (as in actual blood relatives) and various revenge scenarios informing the plot machinations. That’s actually all well and good, even if it’s presented in a somewhat florid manner. What repeatedly trips up this season is its overly self-aware and Arty (capital A) approach toward both exposition and especially character backstory. One of the best examples actually occurs rather late in the proceedings, when Ray and Ani, in a post-coital bout of dual confessions, start to talk about various traumas that have informed their pasts. Not only is the writing almost hilariously clunky, the stylistic choices, which include weird interstitial edits offering skewed framings of the characters (divorced from the context of the actual scene), come off as something like one of those old Saturday Night Live parodies of Compulsion and/or Chanel advertisements.

Another recurring element which may prove to be annoying to some viewers is the way too precious use of singer-songwriter Lera Lynn as the “featured artist” at the watering hole that several characters habituate. Lynn is a talented musician, but her work here is so relentlessly depressive I started to think of her “character” as a ghost stuck in her own version of No Exit, plying her trade in the bar from (in?) hell. In terms of non-singing actors, Farrell probably comes off the best here, offering a nicely grizzled, unkempt portrait of a cop wrestling with several demons. McAdams’ part is almost like an afterthought at times, and she does what she can to build Ani’s various predicaments into something believable. Unfortunately, neither Vince Vaughn nor Kelly Reilly as his long suffering wife are able to overcome the ridiculously pretentious dialogue they’re often handed.

True Detective: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

True Detective's second season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As has been discussed in some online interviews, while the first season of the series was shot on film, the second year was digitally captured with Arri Alexa cameras, albeit with some vintage Panavision lenses that cinematographer Nigel Bluck utilized to give the series a relatively retro, quasi-noir appearance. The results are largely commendable, if not exceptionally impressive, most of the time. This season is swathed in darkness, and for the most part shadow definition is at least above average, though occasional murk tends to creep into dimly lit sequences, especially several that take place inside cars at nighttime. A lot of the season has either been color graded or physically lit to exploit some kind of odd, almost fluorescent, tones at times, and those choices tend to bathe away fine detail in midrange shots, though close-ups still offer abundant fine detail. There is still some unexpected softness and even fuzziness on display (see screenshot 11), some of which might be attributable to on the fly captures by what I assume was something like a Go- Pro on drones (see screenshot 9). In brightly lit environments, the palette pops agreeably enough, though the entire season tends to exploit a more tamped down approach toward hues that fits its gritty subject matter. Contrast is generally solid, helping scenes segue from the sunny California exteriors to more shadowy interior sequences like the bar segments. There are very light dustings of noise on occasion, due to Bluck's propensity (which he discusses in the above linked interview) for shooting in extremely low light environments while pushing the Arri Alexa's ASA settings as far as possible.

True Detective: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

True Detective's second season features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which supports the series' use of both source cues and underscore, as well as more bombastic elements like the huge shootout which serves as one of this season's big set pieces. The fictional city of Vinci has both rural and industrial sections, providing occasional opportunities for deployment of ambient environmental effects of various kinds throughout the surround channels. There's some really interesting sound design going on in various episodes, where music or other non- dialogue elements will morph into something else, giving a kind of hallucinatory feeling to various transitions. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly delivered, and is generally well prioritized (a few lines here and there get slightly buried in a couple of noisier moments). Fidelity is top notch and dynamic range very wide when taking the series as a whole.

True Detective: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc Two

• Audio Commentary on Episode 4 Down Will Come with Series Creator/Executive Producer/Writer Nick Pizzolatto, Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Taylor Kitsch and Rachel McAdams.

Disc Three

• Making "The Vinci Massacre" (1080p; 29:28) is a (spoiler filled) in depth look at one of this season's big set pieces.


• A Look Inside True Detective (1080p; 10:16) is more standard EPK fare than the above featurette, offering interviews with the principal cast and crew and some discussion about the plot and characters.


• True Detective's California (1080p; 3:56) is a music video of sorts, with a bunch of aerial flyovers accompanied by one of the show's recurrent tunes, "Lately".


• Audio Commentary on Episode 8 Omega Station with Series Creator/Executive Producer/Writer Nick Pizzolatto, Executive Producer Scott Stephens, Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn.

Note: There are no supplemental features on Disc One.

True Detective: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are a number of very interesting elements at play in this second season of True Detective, from the central mystery at its core (one which may reference such iconic Hollywood entries as The Maltese Falcon) to at least some of the performances. But there's a feeling of lethargy that starts invading this year, despite some hyperbolic action sequences, and the attempt to stuff so much loaded backstory into the proceedings keeps things oddly bifurcated feeling a lot of the time. Overly precious stylistic choices only tend to further point out how pretentious some of the philosophizing is in this season. As a relative "newbie" to True Detective, I found this season neither as horrible as some folks had described, nor as unabashedly brilliant as many found the show's first year to be. It's hard to build "brand loyalty" in an anthology series like this, something this occasionally clunky second season probably makes even harder. Technical merits are generally excellent, and with caveats noted, True Detective's second season comes Recommended.