Did True Detective Really Just Do That?

Okay, so here we’ve got the last scene from tonight’s True Detective, in which an Unexpected Event of Great Significance happens, which I will be wildly speculating upon in 1.5 paragraphs or less, so don’t get all sassy with me re: spoilers. Okay.

Not much to report about this episode until this transpired. Rampant unhappiness, flagrant grittiness, ominous backstories for everybody. Your lead actors are mostly charismatic humans playing wildly against type and trying to see who sucks the least at it; my personal feeling about how that’s all going doubles as the title of my favorite Minutemen album. Vince Vaughn is brooding himself to sleep, Taylor Kitsch is brooding everyone else to sleep, and Rachel McAdams just makes me nervous, in that I suspect the narrative culmination of whatever sex/porn thing she’s got going on is going to make Twitter unbearable for 72 hours or so whenever it culminates. My wife did laugh pretty hard at “Just so you know, I support feminism, mostly by having body-image issues,” which counts for a lot, except the guy who said it just got iced, so what the fuck.

Or maybe ol’ Ray Velcoro didn’t. Your problem now is this show’s got very little going for it without Colin Farrell to kick around, but even less going for it if it’s willing to do the whole fakeout thing and have it turn out Birdman just shot him up with rock salt to Send a Message or what have you. IMDB says Colin’s in for the long haul, but I’ve always greatly enjoyed IMDB subterfuge, like that one final-season Breaking Bad episode that allegedly had a bunch of dead characters listed as appearing in it, leaving message boards to speculate it was gonna be some bonkers dream-sequence thing. Note also that Abigail Spencer, who plays Ray’s ex-wife, just told Vulture future episodes will delve into her/their backstory, which is pretty nefarious as gaslighting goes if gaslighting’s what it turns out to be. Otherwise, brace yourself for hella flashbacks.

IDK, man. Best-case scenario here probably is that we go the Twin Peaks route and next episode we meet Carl Velcoro, Ray’s cousin, who helps solve the crime and/or gets killed by the killer, too, but in the meantime looks and acts and most importantly recites dialogue just like Ray. Otherwise, from now on this show is McAdams and Kitsch driving around making stilted small talk while she vapes, and I don’t think Kitsch—or anyone else on earth—is quite as adept at selling lines like “Maybe it’s just a little too close to sucking a robot’s dick.”