S02.E07: Black Maps And Motel Rooms

[Hobo.PassingThru]

 

What makes you think they wanted Paul to find the body? How would they know he'd be on a late night ride and end up in that rest area?

That would be quite a development if it turned out Paul was set up to find the body. True, we are led to believe that Dixon started trailing him (how creepy is that?) after Paul made the homophobic comment in that warehouse meeting among Dixon, Paul and Ray and Ani. But, it is doubtful that he was being set up, even with the weird starlet situation. The thing that still bothers me is that from the outset, the Black Mountain thing was always hanging over Paul's head and somehow his involvement was well known by those who needed to know (his superiors and the lawyers for the starlet).

[sjohnson]

1. They care about the hard drive because they can use it as blackmail or bait for those involved with their parent's murder.

2. What makes you think they don't care about the diamonds? The diamonds were in Caspere's safe deposit box, and then in the police evidence room and are now gone.

3. What makes you think they wanted Paul to find the body? How would they know he'd be on a late night ride and end up in that rest area?

1.I was very much under the impression that they wanted to kill their parent's murderers, not blackmail them. As for being bait, I don't know why they would think it would be something there parent's murderers would be desperate to get, unlike the blue diamonds, which connects to the jewelry store murders. 

2.They had Caspere, who I picture trying to bribe his way out. When all is said and done, the dude was just an investement broker.

3.If they didn't, then it is very surprising that someone so intimately connected to Catalyst security found the body. I suppose they could know the same way Burress knew which door Paul would come out. You're right it's shaky, but I'm pretty sure any explanation is going to have some very shaky reasoning, very odd behavior and unanswered questions. 

 

I suppose Pizzolato thinks he's writing a character piece, but we can't definitively judge that until we see what the characters have actually accomplished. For instance, we can't decide whether Paul was the gay guy who redeems himself by a heroic sacrifice to save the heroes. Or whether he was just a patsy all along..

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

I was really looking forward to Ani/Ray sexy times. Listen, if I have to sit through this mush, I should be entitled to some thoughtless eye-candy enjoyment. Shut up. I should. Instead we got extended, director's cut awkwardness, way too many bizarre closeups, the unsexiest sexy times it's possible I've ever seen. This is Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams for Pete's sake. At the very least, this should have been the one enjoyable moment I could take away from this season. But no. WHY!? Why did you have to ruin it for me with that boring, drawn out sloppiness?! Such a shame.

^^^This. So much this.

This is HBO. Colin Farrell isn't opposed to nudity (having done full-frontal nudity in the past) and damn if he wasn't fine in this episode. Rachel McAdams is beautiful too and I was totally feeling their whole "we're both fucked up people who are scared out of our minds, in fear for our fucked up lives, and need some comfort in the form of sex." McAdams didn't even have to go full nude (I don't think she's ever done a topless scene). I would have enjoyed seeing the man be the one to be more exposed for once on HBO. The potential was there for some really hot hooking up, but instead.....ugh....anything you can see on network TV. How many random topless chicks did we see at that party? We saw both of Marty's side pieces take off clothes last season. But these two hot main characters hook up this season and nothing.....

How disappointing.

Edited August 6, 2015 by MyPeopleAreNordic

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

What if Blake raped Ray's girlfriend? Pursuing red hair theory, and also that Blake is sadistic, going for Stan's eyes, etc.

Do you mean Ray's ex-wife?

To me the strangest scene & funniest moment was when Paul's fiancée Emily had her psychic jolt after Paul died.

That psychic jolt scene, as you called it, was awful if not downright embarrassing.

I'm pretty sure Ray's wife's attacker is the guy in jail who Ray visited - he is a serial rapist and was linked to her rape and others via DNA. I don't think Blake or anyone else is going to turn out to be her attacker.

Plus Paul's storyline was a waste. The show had nothing to really say about him being closeted and seemingly with no resolution what really was the point. But hey we get a magical James Frain.

I'm still waiting for VV's wife to turn on him for maximum cliche value.

Paul's storyline was a waste and disappointment. The first episode made me really excited about Paul's character, who appeared to be a wounded veteran and former Blackwater guy who had seen some shit, been scarred (literally and figuratively) while in Afghanistan, and now had ED. But no, he's just a cliche closet case, nothing to see here. So much wasted time. Taylor Kitsch did his best with it.

I wish Paul hadn't also put his mom in the motel to keep her safe....I'd have left her out in her trailer to fend for herself if I was him. And it also seemed like unnecessary torture to confine the pregnant fiancé in the room with her. I know if you had locked me in a seedy hotel for days on end with my mother-in-law when I was pregnant and hormonal, it would not have ended well. In the end, Ani and Paul both immediately found it necessary to hide/protect their parents, even though they were crappy parents (although Ani's dad apparently turned out not to be as crappy & deeply involved as we expected).

As for Jordan being in on it, well, at least that way her character would have a larger purpose in the storyline and wouldn't have needlessly eaten up so much screen time. Unless of course, Jordan and Frank end up adopting Paul's baby somehow (which I think would be even more cliche than Jordan turning on Frank). It bothers me so much that Frank hardly ever speaks in complete sentences. Does Pizzolato think that's how gangsters always talk?

There's just way too much "character clutter" this season. If Ray & Ani were the main characters and the cast of supporting characters was cut by half, this could have been better streamlined and just better overall. Look, I LOVED season one and like Pizzolatto. I went to grad school where he went to college and I grew up in south Louisiana. The southwest Louisiana he wrote for season one was so on point and a character in the story in its own right. I WANT to like everything he does. And there's plenty that is or could be likable in season 2 - if someone had come along as an editor and helped him streamline the storylines and condense characters. Maybe because season one got such great critical reviews, no one felt the need to try to reel in what Nic P was trying to do this season. It's full of great ideas, potential storylines, and potentially great characters - there's just too many of them going on for 8 episodes.

A big twist to me would have been if James Frain would have somehow ended up being a good guy...since no one ever expects Frain to play a good guy.

Edited August 6, 2015 by MyPeopleAreNordic

[Free]

There's just way too much "character clutter" this season. If Ray & Ani were the main characters and the cast of supporting characters was cut by half, this could have been better streamlined and just better overall. Look, I LOVED season one and like Pizzolatto. I went to grad school where he went to college and I grew up in south Louisiana. The southwest Louisiana he wrote for season one was so on point and a character in the story in its own right. I WANT to like everything he does. And there's plenty that is or could be likable in season 2 - if someone had come along as an editor and helped him streamline the storylines and condense characters. Maybe because season one got such great critical reviews, no one felt the need to try to reel in what Nic P was trying to do this season. It's full of great ideas, potential storylines, and potentially great characters - there's just too many of them going on for 8 episodes.

 

Exactly, because there are more characters to focus on, there were more storylines thrown in and that's very problematic for a show with only 8 episodes to effectively pace.

[terrymct]

So, I re-watched the episode and more and more I'm convinced that the trouble with this whole series is the writer's shifting of direction. In the HBO interview I linked earlier in this discussion, he said he started out with the idea of an occult group behind the transportation system. In last week's episode, I didn't understand why all the powerful guys would go to an orgy together as if it was a sex based Rotary Club meeting. It makes "sense" if they were all in an occult version of the Rotary Club. You know how it seems sort of out of the blue that Ani's father ran a commune and later a New Age retreat? What if the occult stuff was supposed to have started among a group at the commune? I think all the bizarrely unrelated personal plot lines about the primary characters are something the writer smacked in there when he decided to go "character driven" rather than with the occult slant. Frank's completely two dimensional wife and the whole conception soap opera drama is supposed to deepen Frank. That's a late add on. The motorcycle cop's whack-a-doodle mother, the potential war zone atrocities, the sack of money, the closeted gay with a pregnant wife, maybe a little of that was related to the occult stuff, but more likely it was supposed to be that character's depth. I think the rape of Ray's wife and his going after the man supposedly responsible with Frank's help was an original story line, but most of the rest was embroidery added after the switch. We've been looking for ways for all these threads to connect back to the main story but most of them never will.

The season is half a$&ed because he changed mid stream, tried to keep a bunch of what he'd already written, and didn't take the time to go through to see if his end product was tight and made sense. There is no way the bad cop would know what exit from which the motorcycle cop would emerge. His fiancé and mother are parked in that hotel forever unless the writer wants to show them crying when they find out the news. Frank's wife continues to look at him adoringly no matter what she walks in to see. She will never ask the obvious questions. Ani's Dad will never ask which of his friends or fellow life travelers raped his daughter. He's just not interested what the guy looked like, although he does feel bad about it. The real father of Ray's son won't turn out to be one of the major characters and won't play much or any role in the finale. Ray and Ani hung out in the hotel and schtupped rather than worrying about their friend/partner the motorcycle cop because they had to show Ani's dis-function resulting from her rape and Ray's thorough brokenness. The mysterious company behind the railroad conspiracy (and its Blackwater mercenaries) are the re-written company version of the occult group, they're who we'll hear about next week as the big reveal. The vast majority of the personal stuff was fluffy filler that is a failed attempted to enhance the primary characters.

Edited August 8, 2015 by terrymct

[WatchrTina]

 

 

where are the blue diamonds now?

We don't know. Our guys found them in the safe deposit box,

Wait, there was a safe deposit box?

 

And at some point "rats came"?

 

I'm so confused.  This show . . . words fail me.

[Free]

The season is half a$&ed because he changed mid stream, tried to keep a bunch of what he'd already written, and didn't take the time to go through to see if his end product was tight and made sense.

 

Geez, no wonder it's such a complete mess with plot threads that seemingly go nowhere instead of a much tighter story that it should've been.

[Lemons]

 How many random topless chicks did we see at that party? We saw both of Marty's side pieces take off clothes last season. But these two hot main characters hook up this season and nothing.....

How disappointing.

 

I liked that their scene wasn't anything like the sex scenes at the party.  It looked like 2 people who needed each other at the moment, 2 people that cared about each other.  Not just mindless sex like Ani was used to.

This is a good recap. 

 

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/08/03/true_detective_season_two_a_guide_to_the_plot_of_this_confusing_season.html

[Cardie]

Wait, there was a safe deposit box?

 

Yes, Caspere had one and our three True D's got a warrant to open it and log the contents (among them the diamonds) into evidence. It was no big deal, of course, for the corrupt Vinci cops to go into the evidence room and take them. The stuff that Burriss gave Irina to pawn was from that stash. He knew it would be spotted as Caspere's and lead the True D's to assume the Mexicans had something to do with Caspere's death, thus setting Ray, Ani and Paul up to go into the meth lab ambush.

[Philbert]

Oh for f**k sake how could James Frain possibly know where Paul was going to surface from a set of underground tunnels that run under "the entire city"?

 

 

 

Because it's James Frain, master of evil. If there is deviltry afoot, Frain is one step ahead no matter where you turn. For he is James "Father of all that is mutherfcking evil" Frain.

 

Too much?

 

:)

[carn.lac]

Here are my thoughts and predictions leading up to the finale: http://www.lippsisters.com/2015/08/09/the-glory-in-the-flower-on-innocence-lost-in-true-detectives-black-maps-and-motel-rooms/