In addition to our weekly recaps of True Detective, this season we will also be pulling out important life lessons that you, the viewer, can learn from the events of each episode. These lessons will range from helpful to very, very not helpful. You are welcome.
Shortly into the Season 2 premiere of True Detective, we saw Colin Farrell’s character, Ray Velcoro (who I will be referring to as “Ray Velcro” for the entirety of the season), sitting in a conference room, meeting with the attorney he hired to help secure more/any visitation rights with his son. From this shot, and the events in the episode that followed it, we learned two pretty important things.
First of all, we learned that someone at True Detective, probably either Nic Pizzolatto or director Justin Lin, has a pretty decent sense of humor. I mean, a troubled, mustachioed detective sitting at the end of a wooden table in a conference room, with a hilariously outdated screen over one of his shoulders and a collection of law-related material stacked up over his other shoulder? Where, oh where, have we seen that before, framed in almost the exact same way?
Yup, the ol’ Rust Cohle special, which they (a) doubled down on with a quick, mustache-less flashback to the moment his particular troubles started brewing (part of me wishes they had gone to even more extreme hair-based measures to show the passage of time, like giving him a mohawk that no one acknowledged, as though it had been his “thing” for a while); and (b) quickly discarded, so they could move into what this season is actually about. It was a neat little way to acknowledge all the baggage the show is lugging into the second season… the hype surrounding the first, the iconic performance by Matthew McConaughey, the whole #TrueDetectiveSeason2 thing, etc. A tip of the cap to the Lone-Star-slugging elephant in the room, if you will.
But the second thing we learned from that shot, which is far more important to both the show and life, in general, is this: never trust anyone wearing a bolo tie.
Here is a complete list of people who wear bolo ties:
- Scoundrels
- Ne’er-do-wells
- Miscreants
- Scalawags
- Philip Rivers that one time
- Politicians trying to be folksy on the campaign trail
- Rapscallions
- Hitmen
- Yellow good-fer-nothin varlets
- Young white city-types doing it ironically
- Yahoos
- Oilmen who will drink your milkshake and fire guns in the air and may or may not be cartoons
- Your one uncle who lives in Texas
- Chief Ken Hotate of the Wamapoke tribe on Parks & Rec, who fibbed relentlessly in the name of screwing with people, which was hilarious, but still made him untrustworthy
And now you can add to that list “Detective Ray Velcoro,” to the extent he doesn’t fall into one of the above categories. It’s a tough call. He’s a crooked alcoholic cop who silenced a reporter because he’s in debt to an organized crime boss and beat the hell out of a guy while wearing brass knuckles because the guy’s kid bullied his son, which he also did, worse. You could say he’s kind of part-scoundrel, part-miscreant, but it doesn’t feel like either of those really get dark enough to be a good fit. Scoundrel in particular has a heck of a range, from violent criminal scum to, like, an 11-year-old who steals pies off of windowsills. Although I suppose that last thing would fall more under “rascal.” Probably depends on how many pies you stole. And if you were wearing a Bolo tie at the time. I’m sure there’s a formula somewhere.
But it gets even worse. Look at that screencap again. The Bolo tie is hanging halfway down his chest! HE CAN’T EVEN COMMIT TO A BOLO TIE! My God, what kind of monster selects a Bolo tie out of his closet, then doesn’t even pretend to tighten it up? Wearing a tie like that is almost exactly the same as not wearing a tie, which means he did it less as a fashion statement and more as a statement statement, that statement being: “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RUN. RUN AWAY. NOT ONLY AM I WEARING THE TIE OF THE LOWLIFE AND CHEAT, BUT MY LIFE IS IN SUCH SHAMBLES THAT I CAN’T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO TIGHTEN IT UP EVEN A LITTLE AT A MEETING WITH A LAWYER WHO IS TRYING TO PREVENT MY WIFE FROM TAKING MY SON AWAY FROM ME. RUN.”
I repeat. Never trust anyone wearing a Bolo tie.
