True Detective episode 7 recap: The big sleep

As this week's laborious, convoluted episode of True Detective unspooled its latest twists, a single thought kept running through my mind: I'm so tired of this story. I don't care about any of the characters. I don't care about the solution to the mystery. And I don't think this glorified shaggy dog story is worthy of the time and the effort it takes to parse all the long, exposition-laden monologues. Keeping up with True Detective is a little like trying to follow a story told by a hyperactive, overeager 6-year-old; there are so many unnecessary details and rambling detours that you can never be sure which parts are actually important.

Remember our visit to that Mad Max-esque film set with the sketchy director? Remember Ray's quasi-flirtation with the scarred waitress at the bar? Remember Paul's weird, oedipal relationship with his mom? Those are just three examples from a long list of ideas True Detective has haphazardly introduced and discarded this year. Unless next week's season finale has some serious twists in store, those weren't just red herrings; they were full-on wastes of time — the kinds of aborted stories that a better series would excise before production began.

With so little time left to wrap up this sprawling narrative, much of this week's "Black Maps and Hotel Rooms" is a pure exposition dump: characters mumbling to each other about blue diamonds and land parcels and decades-old cases they've reopened. One of True Detective's biggest miscalculations in season two is building so much of the central story on things that happened in the past, without any of our protagonists' direct involvement. Instead of letting the audience watch something interesting — like that high-stakes jewelry store robbery we keep hearing about — the show just puts Colin Farrell in a dimly-lit hotel room and has him repeat what he read in a file.

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If you've hung in there with True Detective's second season, "Black Maps and Hotel Rooms" rewards your patience with one medium-sized revelation. Finally, Stan — a character who turned out to be so much more important in death than he was in life — has been avenged. As pretty much everybody guessed, Stan was murdered by Frank's slimy underling Blake, who replicated the details of the Caspere murder to draw attention away from himself.

The nicest thing I can say about "Black Maps and Hotel Rooms" is that it gives Frank some fun stuff to do. The scene in which he interrogates Blake before killing him offers a smarter, more menacing, and more ruthless Frank than we've seen for more of the season. The chatty violence of the scene plays to Vince Vaughn's strengths a lot better than the weird, garbled slang he was spouting as he wandered aimlessly around Los Angeles in the earlier episodes. Frank has spent much of the season playing catch-up, but he's a lot more entertaining when he's on the ropes and punching back. His revenge on Osip, who outfoxed him on the land deal, is both simple and brutal: murdering Osip's allies and burning down the casino he built.

I wish the rest of the characters would take a page from Frank's book and get a little more hands-on with their problems. Back at the hotel, Ani recovers from her horrific trip at the orgy house and hooks up with Ray. Why are Ray and Ani hooking up? It's certainly not because they've shown anything even resembling chemistry over the course of the season. With a few tweaks, this scene could have worked: Two frustrated allies, who are on the cusp of pitting themselves against pretty much every powerful person in California, blow off some steam with casual sex. But Nic Pizzolatto's sentimental streak gets in the way, which makes the whole subplot feel off. We're clearly supposed to take Ray and Ani's relationship seriously; between the hand-holding and Ani's gentle insistence that Ray isn't a bad man, this is the beginning of an actual relationship, no matter how implausible the pairing might seem.

But while two of our True Detectives are getting intimately acquainted, the third one is gunned down in his prime. In another unfocused detour from the central mystery, Paul gets blackmailed with pictures of the tryst with his fellow soldier. The blackmailers want the contracts he pulled from the orgy house last week, but things devolve pretty much immediately. Paul manages to take down a few of his attackers before being fatally shot by Lieutenant Kevin Burris, who turns out to be the "thin, white" corrupt cop that was referenced last week.

As we look ahead to next week's finale, that's where True Detective leaves us: with the promise of a major clash between Frank and Osip, and a last stand against the widespread corruption by Ray and Ani. There's also, I guess, the Ben Caspere murder, but given how perfunctorily that story has been addressed in recent weeks, I wouldn't expect a brilliant solution.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't really matter what happens in next week's finale — True Detective's second season is a mess, and there's no way a single brilliant finale could redeem the show's myriad failings over the past seven episodes. True Detective's second season is uniquely maddening because it asks so much of the viewer while giving so little in return. If you're going to make viewers track an enormously complicated narrative — and put in the time and work to follow it every single week — you need to give them a story that's worth the trouble.

Oh, and also:

• As noted by Gawker's Sam Biddle, Frank's list of weapons to use against Osip begins repeating itself halfway down. It's a small detail, but it's emblematic of the laziness of this series, and the disrespect to its primary audiences; given how obsessively viewers pored over every frame for Yellow King references last year, did they really think no one would notice?
• Joining Blake and Paul on this week's death list is Katherine Davis, the woman who organized the unofficial task force that brought the True Detectives together. No one seems all that concerned about it.
• Ani's hippie dad complains about his upbringing, complaining that his own father was "harsh" and "strict." True Detective: Where even the daddies have daddy issues.
• Next week's finale is a full 90 minutes long. Plan your evening accordingly.
• Best worst line of the week: Jordan Semyon, in the midst of a very tense conversation with her husband, suddenly begins waxing nostalgic for her days as an Applebees waitress: "I worked at one once. They gave you a shift meal."