The anthology’s fourth season thrives on its ability to exist as both a brisk, thrilling genre piece and a weighty, philosophical drama.
Season three of True Detective plays to the first season’s strengths, but it also feels like an admission of defeat.
True Detective’s first season had a methodical and measured approach to tracking its villain, but this season doesn’t know when to stop changing things up.
This is an irritating table-setting episode in which the characters constantly explain how the pieces fit together.
Everything you need to know about the inconsistencies of the show can be summed up by the two standoffs that occur in this episode.
Throughout this season of True Detective, a singular point has been drilled into our heads: “We get the world we deserve.”
Good and evil have often been described as two sides of the coin that is humanity, and “Down Will Come” certainly puts that theory into practice.
Finally, there’s Frank, who’s still in what he referred to as a “papier-mâché” state of being—neither coming nor going.
Ultimately, what gets Frank out of bed is an echo of Leonard Cohen’s sentiment in the show’s theme song, “Nevermind.”
All the central characters have moments here in which they, for all intents and purposes, might well be dead.
There’s an engaging trashiness to season two of True Detective, but the overall production feels overbearingly self-serious.
Glancing over this year’s Emmy nominations is to marvel again at just how much the television landscape has changed in 20 years.
True Detective tickles a kind of hard-boiled hysteria, but it never dives headfirst into madness.