True Detective
“Maybe Tomorrow”
(HBO)
B-
It’s never a good sign when the best part of an episode — in this case, a dream sequence featuring Bette Midler’s “The Rose” (performed by a mixture of Elvis and Conway Twitty) — takes place at the beginning. “Maybe Tomorrow” immediately explains how Velcoro is indeed alive. (Is anyone really surprised? Like, at all?) The reason behind his survival: rubber bullets. Except this outing only glosses over why the killer didn’t, well, kill him. This could-have-been-monumental happening to one of the detectives didn’t pan out into anything substantial. Instead, the cast continues to ask suspects about Casper, and the only real takeaway from the shooting is that now Velcoro is hindered by a few broken ribs.
The rest of the episode is Frank Semyon’s (Vince Vaughn) unending stress as the character arrives at the realization that someone is specifically trying to ruin or kill him. He doesn’t know who or why, which makes him an interestingly volatile character. Except, as we see from this scenario, even when he’s angry, he isn’t very scary (he’ll merely box you and pull out a few teeth). Unfortunately, Semyon doesn’t feel threatening at all, making him less and less interesting as the episodes go along. Hell, I was more scared of Rachel McAdams’ Bezzerides this time around. At least she seems capable of cutting to the core of her ex-lovers, provided they push her hard enough.
Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) continues to struggle with his past, suffering immense distress when hurled into sexual situations and environments. Still, his angst isn’t making this season any more intriguing, instead just getting in the way. I’m still holding out for something to make his character more involved, but this episode just didn’t do it.
“Maybe Tomorrow does treat us to a film studio and a slew of other suspects. At this point, you have to think at least one or two of the people we’ve met are involved. Any good mystery reveals the killer, unknowingly, to the audience early on, right? But the issue here is that you really don’t care all that much who it is — at least not as much as Velcoro losing his son in a custody battle — a byproduct of True Detective‘s creators delving so much into these characters’ broken lives.
That said, the mystery does remain intriguing, and the production is solid enough to keep watching. The problem with “Maybe Tomorrow” is that now we have a goofier villain(s) who lights evidence on fire and stands across the street to watch it burn, just so we can have a bland chase scene, culminating in Velcoro pulling Bezzerides out of the way of a speeding semi. It’s all pretty contrived, which cheapens the danger and the mystery shrouding these characters. Still, while episode three may have kept us watching, the hope is that next week will provide something better.
