The Uphill Battle of True Detective
When the first season of True Detective premiered it was obvious right away that HBO struck a vein. For the short time that it was on, the first season was impossible to escape. It wormed its way into our culture and bit hard. The only problem now is that it has to find a way to stay there. It’s considerably less difficult to create a normal show in which the audience has time to become attached to the characters and looks forward to seeing them again season after season. With an anthology show like True Detective, the pressure is on to create something that can capture its audience at twice the speed of any other show. Season 2 of True Detective has to find its hook quickly or the game is over. True Detective could never survive on a network. Even American Horror Story, also an anthology, re-uses actors from older series in new rolls so you’ll at least retain an attachment to a particular actor.
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When a band releases an amazing first album but a lackluster followup, it’s called a sophomore slump. Television is not immune to this. Right now everyone is waiting on baited breath for season 2, eating up any casting news that comes their way. But if the payoff isn’t up to snuff, it will have all been for naught. You can be certain that creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto is painfully aware of this fact. With a new set of characters in an entirely different location, season 2 will only have Pizzolatto’s writing to link it back to that fantastic first season. Fargo head Noah Hawley recently implied in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that if Fargo has a second season it would not be a continuation of the first and would most likely use different characters:
"“…it would be disingenuous, I think, to do the continuing adventures of…. It would stop feeling like real life.” – Hawley"
What’s important to realize here is that even if Fargo switches its characters up and begins a new story, the audience is already invested in Fargo and the small towns surrounding it. Due to the popularity of the film, the series had its hook almost before it even aired. True Detective has no such luck. There have been few television series that have ever had the amount of pressure to perform that True Detective has. This could also be related to why Pizzolatto doesn’t see the series continuing past 3 seasons, or at least doesn’t see himself being so deeply ingrained in it for later seasons. Hopefully the current amount of anticipation will aid the show when its second season premieres, but its going to be, and has always been, an uphill battle.