True Detective (Season 1)

this show probably has the least gratuitous nudity/violence of all of the more recent hbo dramas

and that girl that harrelson's character had sex with is naked pretty much all the time on banshee

It is my least favorite of the series, but not a bad episode by any means.

Yes, the spaghetti scene is probably my favorite scene as well. Although the investigations were all pretty great. "If you get the chance, I recommend killing yourself."

I shall once again reiterate that there is nothing inherently wrong with gratuitous nudity.

I'm not sure if wrong is the correct word, but nudity is a powerful tool in a visual narrative. (Like gore, for instance.) If it is there, I expect it to serve a narrative purpose, or it starts to feel weird.

I also respect equal opportunity nudity. If it is the women and only and always women who are naked, it gets a side eye from me. Also if the nudity is always physically perfect people.

I think "The Americans" was a show that used nudity judiciously and effectively.

There's nothing inherently wrong with nudity. There is something wrong with gratuitous slickly shot sex scenes.

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Originally Posted by Qrazy

There is something wrong with gratuitous slickly shot sex scenes.

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Nah.

I don't believe sex or nude scenes require narrative purpose. It is as valid as a way to entertain viewers as fight scenes and hands rustling through leaves of grass are.

Well then you're advocating for an incredibly lazy form of storytelling that doesn't interest me. I think everything in a film/show should serve a purpose and create unified and inextricable whole. Tension is different from titillation and the degree of titillation one can wring from a narrative should not be the creators end goal. Superficial excitation by it's very nature avoids the act of genuine exploration.

I like it.

Fair enough.

This is amazing.

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Originally Posted by number8

This is amazing.

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"Time is a flat circle, but so is my heart." :lol:

Pizzolato hints that next season could have two women in the lead. He's since deleted the tweet, though.

"High praise from a bartender."

So ready for the finale.

Damn, Mcconaughey's breakdown at the end. Welcome to your Emmy.

Kind of a wonderfully simple and understated end. Beautifully done.

[

Show Spoiler

Loved the discovery of the old Civil War fort as "Carcosa."

]

I think it's pretty much a perfect season. Such a wonderful surprise at this time of year. Definitely getting it on disc.

Suspenseful finale. Fantastic visuals. But ultimately hollow, like the entire show, in retrospect. This show is just filled with too much hot air for me to love it.

I wish they had colored in more of the sprawl and the rituals, but overall this is one of the best TV seasons I've ever seen.

Perfect way to end it.

The last scene was great, but other than that, meh.

Per Sepinwall:

"...it still felt more simplistic and formulaic than previous episodes had suggested. After the fact, Rust and Marty talk about how they didn't get all the members of the conspiracy, and the TV news reports suggest that the Tuttles have already shut down any attempts to connect them with the Childresses, but in the moment, a show that had been so very complex and strange so often boiled down to unkillable Rust Cohle in battle with the superhumanly strong monster Errol Childress."

Didn't want it any other way. Superb.

It's the last show that I would have expected to end on a somewhat hopeful note, but damn that last scene was crushing. Great ending.

I think the fact that they took it in such a straightforward direction in the end made a lot of sense and works better the more I think about it. "The oldest story", "time is a flat circle" etc.

I found the last two episodes...kind of meh. The rest were good.

Finished the season, and not much to add. It was exceptional. Could go down as the anchor piece of The McConaissance. Harrelson deserves equal praise for taking the more thankless role but really rolling with it. Monaghan was fantastic -- played my favorite character of the series. I thought some of the stuff they did on male/female dynamics was actually the most interesting of the season. I do think they set up the Tuttle stuff to be more intriguing than it ended up being, but the finale being so well done, particularly as to the interplay between Cohle and Hart, makes that fairly forgivable.

I appreciate you singling out Monaghan. Been rooting for her since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and think she is underappreciated here due to the heavy one-two punch of the male leads.