A huge part of the True Detective season two viewing experience so far has been trying to figure out what's missing. 'Black Maps and Motel Rooms' was the season's first unqualified great episode, a tense and emotionally gruelling hour that felt as though it was written by the same Nic Pizzolatto who gave us arguably the best television of last year.
What has been missing, above all, is a heart. You can forgive a lot in a show – portentous dialogue, disjointed plotting, a mystery with no stakes – if there's a central relationship you give a damn about. It's not exactly accurate to say that Ray and Ani are the Rust and Marty of this season (this is a time-compressed ensemble piece where season one was really a study of a single relationship over seventeen years), but theirs has been the one dynamic that clicked from early on.
She comes onto him while she's loaded, still high and still half-trapped in traumatic flashbacks, and he turns her down because even if he's not a good man, he is a gentleman. And from that moment you're just waiting for the tension to finally unravel between them – I for one was actively rooting for it. There's something about the atmosphere between Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams, much like McConaughey and Harrelson, that makes exchanges like the below sound poetic rather than nonsensical:
- "You're not a bad man."
- "Yes, I am. Do you miss it?"
- "What?"
- "Anything."
But what I really appreciated were the silences between them. There's no big moment where Ani unburdens her childhood trauma to Ray, which was about as much of a relief to me as the fact that he didn't have to rescue her last week. Something happened to her, and it's both acknowledged and unspoken.
That feels especially precious in an episode that's otherwise heavy on exposition – Ray exposits at Frank, Paul exposits at Ray and Ani, Blake exposits at Frank, everybody just expositing left, right and center because how else are we going to get through the molasses of this convoluted plot? But at least everybody's plot strands are starting to cohere into something like a whole, from Frank's crumbling crime network to Ray's misdirected revenge killing to Paul's Black Mountain backstory.
Frank was actually kind of great this week! Right? He's been such a strange and cumbersome character this season, off in completely his own sphere with barely any connection to the three cops, spouting the kind of dialogue that would leave any actor floundering. But that scene where he coolly destroys Blake, who's so utterly smugly unaware of what's coming, was the first time he's actually seemed menacing and believable as the legendary thug we keep being told he is.
So having discovered that his associates all planned to screw him over, and that his dreams of going legit would never have come off even if Caspere had lived, Frank gets to sit back and watch his kingdom burn. "You might say my ship's come in," he says, making plans to go on the lam just as soon as he's finished sticking it to Ossip and Chessani on the eve of their huge cash exchange with Catalyst. Because if you're going to blow your life up, what better way to do it than literally blowing your life up?
It's probably a good thing for Frank that he never went legit, because nobody on the right side of the law came off very well this week. The noir-esque sense of doom mounts steadily with the discovery that Davis has been assassinated, leaving Ray, Ani and Paul with no protection at all since she was the only person in authority who knew about their off-the-books investigation. They don't have enough evidence to go to the feds, and without that Ray and Ani are just fugitives, Paul their last remaining tie to legitimate law enforcement.
And by the end of the episode, he's gone too. That was brutal, especially once Paul got shot the first time and was still determined to cling on, growling "F**k you, no," as Burris took aim at him again. Almost as sad was the revelation that Paul's military buddy Miguel was a plant, sent by Black Mountain – now operating under a new name, Ares Security – to check up on Paul and make sure he was keeping quiet about the firm.
So, here's what happened as I understand it: Paul uncovers dirt on a pair of cops from 1992, Dixon and Burris, who worked with Caspere and helped out with the jewelry store theft. One of those cops, Dixon, had been keeping tabs on Paul previously and took the photos of him with Miguel, planning to blackmail him with them. Dixon was killed in the episode four shootout, but Dixon and Burris' equally corrupt supervisor, Police Chief Holloway, got hold of the photos and enlisted Ares Security to blackmail Paul with them to try and get the Catalyst contracts back.
And so Miguel shows up with a face like he's leading Paul to the gallows, because he is, and brings him down into the catacombs where Holloway is waiting. You can't go wrong with a good sex and death juxtaposition, and watching Ray and Ani kissing as Paul runs for his life really worked to tie the trio together one last time, after Paul had so clearly lied through his teeth about not caring for either of them. He died because he wouldn't give them up, and so at last we have real dramatic stakes going into the finale, because now this investigation means something.
Other thoughts:
- I'm just thankful that Ray's mustache was out of the picture by the time he and Ani hooked up. She's been through enough in life without having to navigate that facial hair situation.
- Some strong evidence coming through on Twitter that Frank may suffer from a Memento-esque lack of short term memory. Honestly, a neurological problem would explain a lot of his dialogue. (In all seriousness though… for a show once hailed for its attention to detail, that's some sloppy props work.)
- "If you'd just been honest about who you are…" Now is not the time for armchair psychology, Miguel. Also: blackmail is not a good way to make somebody less ashamed of their secrets.
- A few loose plot strands from this week that will doubtless play into the finale… Ani and Ray recognize one of the girls from the party photos as Caspere's secretary from the movie set. And that missing film canister is still unaccounted for, which is presumably the same video footage that Tascha was trying to blackmail Chessani with before she died? Maybe?
- "It doesn't make sense!" I like how many times different characters expressed this same sentiment about the mystery this week. I mean, at least it's intentional?
- Poor, poor Emily. Like being widowed and pregnant isn't bad enough, she had to endure days in a hotel with only Paul's mother for company?
- "Maybe, and this is just a thought, maybe you were put on earth for more than f**king." Love this line delivery from McAdams.
- David Morse is so endearing as Ani's dad, despite the truly ridiculous dialogue he gets lumbered with. I wonder whether we're meant to agree when he says Ani is "the most innocent person he's ever known" – she's not naive, but the description doesn't feel wrong either.
- The reveal that Davis was dead in the car was deliberately reminiscent of Caspere's body in the cab in episode one, where he initially seemed to be sitting up normally.
- I liked that for just a second, we were meant to think Frank had been swayed by Blake's offer of money…. but nope, he just saw an opportunity to get more info out of him. So, do we think Frank will get around to telling Ray that Blake was responsible for the misinformation next week? Does either one of them have time at this point?
Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.
