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

7. The Female Characters Are STILL Underserved

Among the few criticisms of True Detective's first season, critics kicked up the biggest stink over the lack of good female characters. Nic Pizzolatto's attempt at addressing this criticism in season two started off on a positive note with the introduction of Ani Bezzerides and Jordan Semyon. Unfortunately, it started going downhill from here. McAdams' character of Ani has a dark traumatic past, can put a man down in sixty seconds, and is an all-round tough chick. This should add up to a pretty awesome female character on paper, but one can't help but feel that Pizzolatto is overcompensating just a bit. Despite some attempts at character development, Ani is so rough around the edges it feels like the character was originally written as a male, before Nic replaced all the 'he's' in the script with 'she's' instead. Pizzolatto's treatment of Jordan Semyon is somehow worse. After initially looking like the puppeteer behind Frank Seymon's empire, her story eventually amounts to nothing more than a drawn out version of 'I want a baby'. But with her own gems like 'everyone deserves to be touched', at least Jordan can sprout out lines that would make Frank green with envy. Rachel McAdams and Kelly Reilly are fine actresses that deserve better material, and kudos to them for making the most out of their roles - but what we've seen really isn't good enough.