The second episode of the second season of True Detective ended with a Game of Thrones-style cliffhanger: Our murderer wearing the bird mask walked into Ben Caspere’s second apartment — the sex dungeon where he gets his kink on once a month — and shoots Ray Velcoro in the chest with a shotgun at point-blank range.
The question that will probably consume the Internet all week is this: Is Ray dead? Did True Detective just pull a Ned Stark? Or, more accurately, a Spooks, a British show that cast a well-known British actor only to kill her off brutally in that series’ second episode?
Maybe? Nic Pizzolatto has put himself in a weird no-win situation here. Either Ray is dead, and the Internet will explode with fury because the show’s biggest star — and, to some, the best character — is already dead, without having contributed much to the series besides an unforgettable line (“I’ll come back and butt f*ck your father with your mother’s headless corpse on this goddamn lawn”). On the other hand, if he’s still alive, then Pizzolatto will get heat from the Internet for the cheap, fake-out death.
You do have to admit, however, that it certainly injected some much-needed excitement into the second season.
For the record, there are two lines from earlier in the episode that offer clues, but they cut both ways: 1) In the scene before he died, he told the woman with the scar that he was tired and the only way he’d ever get a vacation was if he “croaked,” and 2) earlier in the episode, he told Ani that “a good beating always provokes personal growth.”
The question is: Did he just get a vacation or some personal growth? We’ll find out next week, though, for the record, scenes from the next episode offer no clues.
Putting aside the fate of Velcoro, however, let’s break down the episode.
The episode offered a lot of exposition, leaving a huge amount of clutter to cut through. Here’s the gist of what’s going on: Ben Caspere, our dead city manager, was holding $5 million of Frank Semyon’s that he was supposed to hand over to Catalyst in exchange for parcels of land in Vinci that Semyon would have used in the development of the high-speed railroad project. Caspere was basically acting as a bank for Semyon, but Caspere died before apparently handing the money over to Catalyst guy, Jacob McCandless (though, in my mind, that’s still an open question; Catalyst may have taken the money, but they aren’t telling Frank, despite their contrary assertions that they are not “gangsters”).
Frank is now out $5 million, and in order to get back in the game, he has to come up with $10 million to buy the parcels of land (and remember, his friend in the Russian mafia, Osip, was already waffling on the deal). The easiest way for Frank to get back into the action here is to find Caspere’s murderer and hopefully his money.
Meanwhile, not only is Frank currently without the money to play in development pool, he’s in $10k to Vinci’s corrupt Mayor, and the Mayor is not the kind of guy who would cut Frank any breaks based on their history together, even though Frank helped the Mayor’s son out of a jam.
The Mayor is a really bad guy, up to his neck in graft and corruption.
Frank is shaking some trees to help Velcoro locate Caspere’s murderer, so that he can recoup his money, pay back the Mayor, and get his deal moving. Frank followed that trail to a prostitute at the Poker Club, formerly ran by Frank, and now ran by Danny Santos, the charming fella with these teeth.
Santos and his prostitutes had intel on Caspere’s second location, which Frank passed along to Ray, who’s not that excited about the clue anymore, however, being that he has nothing left to gain in his relationship with Frank because he’s no longer in need of money. His ex-wife is about to take full custody of his “son” — Ray’s only reason for living — so Ray is left without much reason to get up in the morning, much less press forward on this case.
Ray, meanwhile, has jurisdiction over the murder case because Velcoro was investigating Caspere as a missing person. Velcoro — who is compromised both by his relationship to Frank and by his relationship to the corrupt mayor — is not being asked to “solve” the murder, so much as he’s being asked to ensure that the murder doesn’t blow back onto the city of Vinci.
Ani is running point in the case as a Ventura detective. She knows that Ray is compromised, and she’s suspicious of him. Ani and Ray begin their investigation with the shrink, who — HOLY SH*T — was played by Rick Springfield (“Jessie’s Girl”).
The shrink didn’t have a lot to offer to Ray and Ani, except to confirm that Ben had a real addiction to prostitutes. Besides a tenuous connection to Ani’s father, he also had some creepy office art:
DID YOU SEE THE BIRD IN THE PICTURE IN THE BACKGROUND?
Look familiar?
Meanwhile, in a separate case with Detective Ilinca, Ani is investigating a missing woman.
This investigation didn’t advance too much, except that we learned that the missing woman called her roommate to ask if someone was looking for her a few weeks before she disappeared. Presumably, her disappearance is tied up in the entire investigation. Remember, she also has a connection to Ani’s father, which means she’s also tenuously connected to the shrink with the bird art.
Elsewhere, Paul Woodrugh has jurisdiction over the case because he found the body of Caspere, and the state is using him to shoehorn their way into the investigation so that they can collect evidence in their corruption case against the city of Vinci. We also found out that Paul has a messed up relationship with his mother, his PTSD likely dates back to his days in the desert working for Black Mountain Security, and that his PTSD is so severe, it cost him a relationship with this woman.
Bummer.
Woodrugh has largely been useless on the case so far other than to offer a really great anecdote and help figure out that Caspere spends $4k a month on hookers. He’s brooding eye candy and clearly comes from the Joey Tribbiani fart-smelling school of acting.
(Alternative theory: Given his defensiveness about the guy who hit on him, his relationship with his mother, and his inability to get it up with a super attractive girlfriend, maybe Paul is gay. If so, WORST TWIST EVER.)
Everything in the episode obviously leads to the final scene, in which Ray walks into Caspere’s second home. That second home not only had a sink full of water, but its own bird decor.
It also had a web cam, which Ray discovered right before Bird Man filled him with shotgun pellets (allegedly).
Is Ray dead? (SPOILERS)
The Nic Pizzolatto ‘Erasers Clapping’ Inexplicable Lines of the Week
— “I support feminism, mostly by having body-image issues,” Ray, after learning why Ani is obsessed with knives (they are equalizers, should she get in a scuffle with a man).
— Smoking an e-cig feels like “sucking a robot’s dick.”
–Ray: “You know that expression about flies in honey?”
Ani: “What the hell do I want to do with a lot of flies?”
Ray: “Without flies, you can’t fly fish.”
Okay.
