True Detective - 'Night Finds You' and 'Maybe Tomorrow'

"Is this inappropriate?"

Okay, we've had a bit of a break, which may indicate the degree to which this season has not grabbed me the way Season 1 did. So it goes.

"It's my strong suspicion that we get the world we deserve."

The Caspar killing is of interest to many, so our three broken cops are all assigned to it: State claims jurisdiction because Woodrough found the body, promising to disappear the IA case and make him a detective if he plays ball. County makes a deal with State for Bezzerides to head up the investigation in exchange for her collecting dirt on Velcoro and getting an in for State's probe into Vinci PD.  Vinci PD meanwhile want Velcoro to steer the investigation away from any of their embarrassing business and any connection with the Mayor of Vinci. Velcoro's criminal contact Frank Semyon, meanwhile, has trouble of his own, as Caspar died with Semyon's big 'going straight' investment money still in his bank account.

The task force - the main three plus slobby detective No-one-uses-his-name - looks into Caspar's finances and activities, finding regular large payouts and an escort habit. While Bezzerides and Velcoro make a start on talking to the obnoxious Mayor and Caspar's other contacts, Woodrough has a difficult goodbye with his clingy mother and alienated girlfriend before joining them at the other end of California. Velcoro goes to Semyon and is put onto an apartment where he finds a camera, a hard drive, and a gunman with a shotgun and a raven mask who shoots him twice in the chest, doing literally what his ex-wife did figuratively when she told him she was moving for sole custody on the grounds that he's a fucking arsehole.

"'Sup?"

Fortunately, it turns out that the gun was loaded with rubber shot, merely precipitating a vision in which he speaks to his father. It's a bit weird and Twin Peaks. While he's laid up, Bezzerides pals about with Woodrough, and sets him to talk to hookers. "Put your looks to use," she tells him, which obviously makes him uncomfortable. This is a bit hypocritical given how she reacts when the lady from state tells her to dangle sex to get Velcoro to fess up. Woodrough's reaction falls into place, as 'Maybe Tomorrow' outs him to us as a very, very closeted gay. The phone records from the sex flat lead Bezzerides and Woodrough to the Mayor's house, drawing a measured reaction from the Mayor ("I want that c*&@ fired!") and a general escalation of the State vs. Vinci conflict embodied in Bezzerides and Velcoro.

Meanwhile, Frank is concerned that someone is gunning for him when one of his men turns up dead. He gathers his people, but one of them mouths off when he demands they find out who took what was his. "What you got left?" He beats the man unconscious and pulls out his gold teeth, later tossing them into the bin in his house as his wife attempts to make up after an argument.

Bezzerides and Velcoro track down the car used for a dump, but it gets fired. They chase the masked arsonist, but he escapes. Velcoro pulls Bezzerides out of the path of a truck, earning her thanks. "You want to thank me, tell me what State's got on me?" "I don't know."

I think my biggest problem with this season is that no-one seems capable of having a conversation with their significant other without it turning almost spontaneously into an argument. It's not that they're troubled, it's that they seem incapable of employing any rationality before flying off the handle; they're like teenagers. The other problem is that Semyon's story is only tangentially connected to the others, and his philosophising less gripping than Rust Cohle's. Actually, in general the cast aren't quite Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, most tellingly with Vince Vaughn and Taylor Kitsch. I guess the latter is trying to reinvent himself, but he's much better at anguished heroes than complete wrecks. It's almost needlessly bleak.