True Detective Season 2 - 10 Reasons It's A Huge Disappointment

8. The Side-Plots Aren€™t That Interesting Either

With a bit of a dud main storyline, you would hope that the side-plots could at least be more interesting. Unfortunately, Pizzolatto wastes a great opportunity by coming up with side-stories that are thematically related, but half-baked at best. In an attempt to shed light of his dickish behaviour, Ray's story of his kid and ex-wife is clumsily handled. What kind of dad screams at his bullied kid for being a "fat p*ssy" before making the bully watch as he beats the stuffing out of their dad? Similarly, Ani's gruff exterior can be explained away by her traumatic hippie past and her messed up family. Such family stuff is so on-the-nose that it feels nothing more than a bad case of 'daddy issues'. To top off it off, Frank and Jordan's side-story of trying (but failing) to conceive, is quite simply just boredom personified - not to mention being unnecessarily drawn out. At this point it feels like a disservice to Jordan as a character, who was initially built up to be something more. As for Paul, how about a heavily scarred man who struggles with intimacy due to his struggle with reintegrating into society after a war? That would've been far better than the unsubtle reveal of "Oh... now Paul is gay", as we focus on his struggle with sexuality being the root cause of his self-destructive tendencies.