Does True Detective Season Two try too Hard?

By Reuben Levine | Jun 30, 2015

True Detective is a serious show about serious people. That has always been true, but it’s a tone that True Detective season two has so far been struggling with. There is so much internal turmoil in True Detective’s second outing that it sometimes feels that it will be crushed by the weight of it all.

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True Detective season two tries to be taken as seriously as possible, and it’s comfortable layering darkness upon darkness to drive that point home. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. Take, for instance, Semyon’s opening monologue in last Sunday’s episode.

There is something about that monologue that doesn’t work. It’s likely a combination of things: too long and too dramatic. By the time Semyon gets the portion about being chewed by rats, the scene has overstayed its welcome and tips dangerously close into become an inadvertent self-parody. Its lack of subtlety speaks to the current state of True Detective.

That’s not to say that what True Detective needs is comic relief to solve this problem. True Detective’s first season did a fine job of balancing it all without resorting to jokes or humorous situations. It’s worth noting that the dynamic between Marty and Rust did help with that.

True Detective season two doesn’t quite have a relationship like that. The most closest it gets is the strained relationship between Ray Velcoro and Frank Semyon. The two of them make the most interesting combination this season, but they’re both so grim that it doesn’t necessarily offer any relief.

True Detective is having trouble finding the proper balance for all of this darkness. It could work itself out as the season continue, and the end of the second episode did a lot to shake things up. But there is a point when the characters can become so intense, so grim, so intent on self-destruction that it becomes too alienating to enjoy.

The second season of True Detective is flirting with that line.

Next: True Detective season two has trouble with those car scenes.

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