True Detective

True Detective Season 2 polarized much moreso than its first outing, to the point Season 1 director Cary Fukunaga hasn’t even watched it, let alone considered returning. Now, another notable director snubs his nose at Nic Pizzolatto’s sophomore slump, as horror icon David Cronenberg admits to passing over a “bad” script.

The universal disappointment of True Detective Season 2 owed at least somewhat to the absence of Season 1 director Cary Fukunaga, who himself acknowledges his continued producing credit as perfunctory. HBO hasn’t offered much in the way of any potential True Detective Season 3 news, but don’t expect Fukunaga to return as its saving grace.

Amid the many flaws of True Detective Season 2, most would agree on the lack of Season 1 director Cary Fukunaga’s uniform vision, reportedly owing to a dispute between he and creator Nic Pizzolatto. Now, both men clear up a supposed Season 2 potshot Pizzolatto took at Fukunaga, but it still feels pretty chilly in here.

The Hateful Eight media tour has begun.

There’s little way around it; last night’s True Detective finale “Omega Station” cemented Season 2 as the tarnish on a once-bright franchise, dimming its luster in ways surely to be analyzed and over-analyzed for months to come. And hey, as long as we’re laughing at True Detective’s attempts to take itself seriously, why not throw some Star Wars into the opening titles?

The critical derision of True Detective Season 2 came to a head last night with the untimely “Omega Station” finale, but did Nic Pizzolatto’s once-revered drama redeem itself, as HBO promised? Here’s how every major character ended the Vinci-set season, for those dying of heart blue-balls.

Its second season commonly derided as a dumpster fire, with only two episodes left to heave in, True Detective strikes a far different tone in conversation than only a few short months ago. That said, HBO still hopes for a third season with creator Nic Pizzolatto, calling Season 2 “enormously satisfying.”

Here’s the thing: comparisons between Season 1 and Season 2 of True Detective are inevitable. The first season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO detective drama was a near-perfect character piece in which the cultish serial killer mystery was an added bonus. And although this is an anthology series, so far we only have that one season to go on. Comparing the technical aspects and general quality of Season 2 to Season 1 is fair, but there’s been a lot of complaining that the second season is downright bad (it’s not). The problem is that everyone loved that first season so much that they just instinctively want more of the same.

I feel sorry for those of you who may have made the unfortunate decision of hanging around Twitter or Facebook before watching tonight’s episode of True Detective. There’s absolutely no way you could avoid spoilers about the ending of “Night Finds You,” but if you’ve made it this far, I trust you’ve already seen the episode, which makes this a safe space to discuss what the hell just happened.

HBO’s True Detective smashed time into a flat circle by its blockbuster first season, but did you know that creator Nic Pizzolatto originally intended the story as his next novel? Or that Matthew McConaughey’s Rustin Cohle only drinks eight beers over the course of the series? These are just some of the case files pulled from the twelfth episode of ‘You Think You Know TV?,’ which investigates the occult drama of of HBO’s True Detective!