Last week's True Detective ended with a tense, brutally bloody shootout in the streets of Los Angeles — a cliffhanger that seemed like it would alter the fundamental arc of the season. Having established a new status quo, True Detective does the only thing it can: return to the old status quo as quickly as possible.
A time jump is a useful device in a storyteller's toolbox, and it's easy to understand why True Detective elides the immediate aftermath of the Los Angeles shootout (which would, at the very least, have overwhelmed any public interest in the Ben Caspere murder). Sixty-six days isn't a huge amount of time, but we quickly learn that each of our four protagonists has endured some major life shakeups in the interim. Ray quit the police force, got his addictions under control, and shaved off his mustache to become an all-purpose goon for Frank; Frank and Jordan have moved out of their swanky mansion and into a modest apartment; Ani is splitting her time between a sexual harassment seminar and a dead-end assignment in the evidence locker; and Paul, characterized by the media as the hero of the Los Angeles shootout, has a high-profile new job investigating corporate fraud.
But while True Detective feints at some big changes, the Ben Caspere murder case — and the collective sense of dissatisfaction over its "resolution," which no one believes anyway — continues to hang like a rotting albatross around each of the main characters' necks. The rest of the world has moved on, but Ray, Frank, Ani, and Paul still haven't, and the remaining episodes seem poised to dive into the conspiratorial heart of California's biggest kinky sex/political power players' club.
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This week's "Other Lives" is tighter and more propulsive than any of the episodes in the first half of the season, which helps to disguise its lack of actual forward momentum. Sure, there were a few cursory leads: some sketchy blackmail pictures, a mysterious bloody chair in a cabin in the woods, and the shocking revelation that Teague "sleaziest cop in history" Dixon was even dirtier than his colleagues suspected.
But as the season has gone on, it's become increasingly clear that Nic Pizzolatto is much more interested in the interior lives of these characters than he is in the season's big whodunit. That means that your appreciation for "Other Lives" depends largely on how much you care about Ray, Frank, Ani and Paul. Your mileage may vary, but as someone who feels like these characters are still mumbly, two-dimensional ciphers who sound way, way too much like each other, I'm impressed that "Other Lives" holds together as well as it does — even if it failed to draw me in as much as True Detective's few truly fantastic moments.
The biggest (and frankly, most predictable) twist in "Other Lives" is that the man who Ray killed for raping his wife was innocent of the crime. From the beginning, True Detective has framed that decision as Ray's original sin: the moment that pushed him down a career of police corruption and obliterated his marriage in the process. His reaction to the news is impotent rage that leads him to the doorstep of his original source: Frank Semyon. The episode ends before we learn whether Frank made a genuine mistake, or just manipulated Ray into doing some of his dirty work — but however their conflict resolves, they probably won't be swapping stories over bourbon anytime soon.
Not that Frank has much time these days anyway. As usual, Frank is stranded in a story of his own — but unlike the dull, strangely repetitive scenes of him extorting random strangers that have popped up over and over the last few episodes, Frank's problem in "Other Lives" is pretty clear. Unfortunately, it's also one of True Detective's other irritating subplots: the endless, elliptical conversations about whether he and Jordan should have a baby. After revealing that she had three abortions in her twenties, which may be the reason she can't get pregnant, Jordan successfully reopens the adoption conversation. The new candor catapults Frank and Jordan back into the honeymoon phase of their relationship. We've never seen them happier — so given how this show works, let's just assume Frank will get killed off 10 minutes into next week's episode.
Back on the detectives' side of things, Ani has responded to her demotion by throwing herself back into the Caspere murder case. As usual, the line between her personal and professional life is nonexistent; when she decides she's going to penetrate one of the sex parties up north that everyone keeps hinting about, she enlists her sister Athena's help to end up on the guest list. While Ani and Athena's contentious relationship seems to have softened — she even smiles a couple times! — Ani still staunchly refuses to have any contact with her father (at least, I presume, until she discovers he's implicated in the Caspere case).
Of course, Ani's unhappy relationship with her hippy-dippy dad can't hold a candle to Paul's creepy, oedipal relationship with his mom. In a scene that escalates so fast it leaves both characters in tears, Paul snaps over $20,000 she stole from him, and she reveals that she knows Paul is gay. It's a well-acted scene, but like so many of these personal detours in True Detective's second season, it left me scratching my head: With no apparent connection to the central narrative, is this really interesting enough to spend so much time on?
That frustration leads to the broader problem apparent in "Other Lives." True Detective's second season is more than halfway over, and there are a ridiculous number of plot threads left to resolve. In the next three episodes, True Detective needs to start winnowing down and setting the stage for a compelling resolution. There's nothing about this season that makes me anticipate the disciplined storytelling that would require, but I'd love to be wrong.
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