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

5. The Writing And Dialogue Is All Over The Place

Much of True Detective's appeal was due to Nic Pizzolatto's pseudo-intellectual writing. Beneath the interesting murder mystery premise, philosophical concepts and the mysteries of life were wrapped in easily-digestible lines such as 'time is a flat circle'. The writing admittedly borders on self-importance and pretentiousness, but it managed to work. In season two, this approach is forced at best, and unintentionally hilarious at worst. It almost feels like Pizzolatto let all the acclaim over the writing in season one get to his head, and now he's blinded by the conundrum of actually believing every word he writes sounds like gold. The main mystery is clumsy and overly complex, the cliff-hangers and twists feel cheap, and all the story beats are so messy that it seems like they were written by an amateur in Screenwriting 101. But the worst offender is the ridiculous and heavy-handed lines spoken by the wasted cast. There's Ray's enlightening 'pain is inexhaustible. It€™s only people that get exhausted'; Ani's insulting 'when you walk, it sounds like two erasers clapping'; Paul's unsubtle 'I just don€™t know how to be out in the world, man'; and another Frank Semyon special 'Sometimes a thing happens, splits your life. There€™s a before and after'. Christ, even Daniel Day-Lewis can't make a miracle out of horrible writing like that.