A year ago, True Detective spawned a cottage industry of close-reading viewers who pored over nearly every shot and line of dialogue in search of greater meaning.
This year? Unless it’s a discussion of how the season two premiere doesn’t live up to the previous season, there’s precious little being taken apart after the first episode.
For a lot of reasons, that’s due to the structure of the show. Right from the start of season one, there were at least a couple of mysteries at hand: the ritualistic murder of a young woman and the narrative puzzle creator Nic Pizzolatto was building with his two leads, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Season two, however, is tracking very differently. The premiere plays no games with time — there’s one flashback, but it serves to illustrate the relationship between Vince Vaughn’s Frank Semyon and Colin Farrell’s Ray Velcoro — and the question of unreliable narrators is moot because the show takes an omniscient point of view.
