My Feelings About "TRUE DETECTIVE"

MY FEELINGS ABOUT "TRUE DETECTIVE" 

I am among the many viewers who saw the Season Two finale for HBO’s "TRUE DETECTIVE". And like many viewers and critics, I did not really care for it. But unlike many viewers and critics, I feel the same about Season One. 

Season One managed to garner a great deal of accolades from critics and television viewers alike. Quite honestly, I never understood this attitude. I found Season One ridiculously slow, pretentious and a little too complex for its own good. I am still wondering why it took the main characters portrayed by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey practically two decades to find a killer that struck me as nothing more than a murderous lunkhead.

The problem with the Season Two finale is that it ended with the bad guys winning and most of the good guys dead. It ended with a realistic portrayal of how city corruption really works and many television viewers and critics could NOT take it. They needed an ending with the bad guy(s) dead and one or more of the protagonists – either Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch or Vince Vaughn - crying with manpain or woman pain, a’la McConaughey. I suspect that if "CHINATOWN" had been released today, many people would be tearing it apart for its downbeat ending.

I am not saying that "TRUE DETECTIVE" is better or just as good as "CHINATOWN". It is not. Both Seasons One and Two cannot compare with the 1974 movie. But I will say this . . . I understood the finale of Season Two better than I did the Season One finale, which left me shaking my head in disbelief.

I do not like "TRUE DETECTIVE". I did not like Season One, with its ridiculously complex story arc, pretentious writing and slow pacing. These are the same reasons why I dislike Season Two. But I did understand the finale of the second season . . . a lot more than many critics and viewers who would prefer if our movies and television series would reflect society’s illusions, instead of its truths.