Review: True Detective Created by Nic Pizzolatto; HBO

True Detective (Television Series); Created by Nic Pizzolatto; HBO; First episode date: January 13, 2019

  
Television Shorts

TRUE DETECTIVE Season 3:

...is some Bull Shit for several reasons while being an excellent presentation. It confirmed its fuckery when in episode 7, a corrupt former white cop who is being beaten fakes being near death with pleas of I CAN’T BREATHE...twice.

Up until that point, I kept making excuses that this wasn’t some anti-black tripe masquerading as great art, and I still will not attach that label to this season. The third season of TRUE DETECTIVE matches the first one’s philosophical bent. Where it falls short is in its inability to let black people be the same fictional characters that white ones have been in previous seasons.

Mahershala Ali puts on a spectacular performance, a Morgan Freeman-like Magical Negro interpretation of a brooding man who is in a "Purcell" - purgatory cell, somewhat caused by his fading memory, never looking back at his past and the symbolic role he’s played since the Vietnam War: LRRP: Iong-range reconnaissance patrol.

There are so many brilliant moments in this season, especially the dialogue exposing the tension in Ali’s marriage to Carmen Ejogo, analogous to black male - black female relationships. TRUE DETECTIVE Season 3 eventually falls short because it pulls so many punches when it comes to white culpability in examining racial dynamics.

It’s unfortunate that writers feel they need black people present to examine racism, thereby limiting the scope of black characters.

Recommendation: NONE
Totally your call if you’re already invested in the series.

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Reviewed by Guichard Cadet

Review: True Detective Created by Nic Pizzolatto; HBO

True Detective (Television Series); Created by Nic Pizzolatto; HBO; First episode date: June 21, 2015

 
Television Shorts

TRUE DETECTIVE Season 2:

This season's theme is about revenge and with barely any search for redemption. 

Unlike the previous season that placed two men together in a journey with one facing a moral dilemma and the other an existential crisis, this season is basically a boulder rolling downhill.

TRUE DETECTIVE Season two is basically a western along the lines of TOMBSTONE and THE UNFORGIVEN, and true to form, it has an amazing gunfight. What it lacks in subtlety and originality, as far as criminal topics and detective work, it makes up with a spirited plot.

Just as last season, the actual crime and solving it is the weak point. The acting is superb though it might prove hard to root for or bond with any of the four main characters.

Recommendation: HIGH to HIGHEST

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Reviewed by Guichard Cadet

Review: True Detective Created by Nic Pizzolatto; HBO

True Detective (Television Series); Created by Nic Pizzolatto; HBO; First episode date: January 12, 2014

Television Shorts

TRUE DETECTIVE Season 1:

First let me start by saying this is a great show. Yet, for whatever reason, it seems nowadays most series, whether thirty minutes or sixty minutes an episode, fall apart or from the pinnacle somewhere between the fourth and sixth episodes.

Though this was also the case here as far as the crime aspect of the show and that portion of the detective work, TRUE DETECTIVE is not really about crime but the detective work as it relates to human existence and our character flaws.

The oft-used yet serious topics such as infidelity and the killing of children and women provide the narrative thread yet are the weakest points. 

Stay for the dialogue and the acting, and the scenery, mainly southern Louisiana, the Bayou, etc....all it needed was an appearance of some sort by Lil Wayne's music, 'cause the F stands for Fantastic.

Recommendation: HIGH

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Reviewed by Guichard Cadet