True Detective 2x8 'Omega Station': A Platform Not Structurally Sound

True Detective 2x8 has solid shining moments but ultimately crumbles under the weight of the season's several failings.

Reviewed on little sleep but a lot of good pizza.

And so we reach the 'Omega Station.' The final place. At the least, 'Omega' tries to amend for the sins of the season it concludes, staying simple and easy to follow, and providing at least a tangible, if not complete, sense of closure. Which is something the Season 1 finale failed to do. We're left in the 90 minutes' final moments with some measure of hope that the battle can and will be won. The only problem is that the episode's road to that closure is almost as bumpy as the stale, boring, and unrelatable string of episodes that precluded it.

'Omega' sets the tone of a terminus by having the Ray/Ani pillowtalk focus on confession. The choices that brought them to an off-the-grid motel room in a dirty bed with someone who's still kind of a stranger, if not to each other, then to the audience. Still, though, it partially works, if for nothing else but getting mileage out of the idea I touched on last week of Ani as a somewhat innocent, if not harmless, crusader traversing a gritty world she doesn't fully understand. She was never crooked, and she always had a sense of righteousness. If Paul was the incorruptible watchman, the 'martyr' that Jordan claims to have no need for, then Ani is next in line to carry the torch. So Ray tucks her into bed, like the father he was never allowed the chance to be to his own child, and prepares to duke it out with the corroding forces of those in power. With the record straight between them, they can end their short (and heavily contrived without chemistry) relationship on about as best a note they could hope for.

Same for Frank and Jordan, who meet at a literal station that had a nice ambiance of nostalgia to it, like one of those train platforms from the old west that those John Wayne types hovered around before going out for the duel. Much of their farewell is overacted in a poor attempt to compensate for poor writing, but there were solid moments. Jordan makes it clear how much she loves him. 'There's us, and everything else is grey.' I may not have cared much for them before, but that line finally got me shipping their happy ending at least a little bit, pulled in by the idea that love stands above the muddy waters of real life, from the sickness of the world. Even if that love is not safe from that, it remains. There's finality in that idea, a belief in the light that the show can ride on against the bleakness of its story and setting, a hope continued with that epilogue in Venezuela.

It's just all too rushed. And clean.

As Ray and Ani were tracking down Laura, the surviving girl from the '92 heist, and found her far too easily and quickly, I theorized that much of the last three episodes probably could've been stretched out over an extended period of time, at the welcome expense of the first five episode's primarily dull pacing. A lot of the earlier pretentious and heavy-handed conversations could've been cut, along with the redundant visuals of two characters sitting opposite a table over a cup of coffee where booze was lacking. Which would've helped 'Omega' a lot. Because from tracking down Caspere's real killers, to an absurd bloodfest in another station, to an attempted heist of the big baddies who screwed everyone over, this final act all happens too fast. Even many of the lines (especially by a seemingly exhausted Ferrell and Vaughn) are delivered as if rushed, like everyone knew 90 minutes wasn't nearly enough time to cover a lot they left to the last minute (PUN!) and they had to hurry. This uneven pacing not only highlights the shortcomings of an entire season that disappointed, it also removed any tension we might have felt in an episode built on the analogue of approaching a 'final platform.' That analogue is nice, if a little repetitive in the episode's settings, but I just didn't care what happened. I wasn't invested, and I wasn't left in suspense as we approached the station.

The best part of 'Omega' is Ray and Frank banking on a partially established relationship, so of course this is where the episode slowed down a bit and took some time. When the two were in the same room, all season, there was at least a little bit of magic, and Pizzolatto's writing improved with these scenes that tapped into the whole concept of the show, the 'grey' that Jordan mentioned. Where morose detectives and morally-ambiguous mobsters mingle, and reflect on who they are as people, contextualizing their roles and actions in the broken society through which they walk. Real soul-searching. Conclusion: Ray and Frank are just two men who were thrust into the meat grinder of this evil world by greater, darker forces that built that world. Two men who just couldn't stop moving, lest the tide drown and wash them away. Just keep moving. It becomes too much, and the two decide to turn and fight the tide. It's what True Detective wants us to remember, to not stand for the bullshit that pushes us at its will. All resulting in an entertaining, if sadly short, cabin shootout where we get a little bit of cathartic wish fulfillment watching powerful, world-eating men get what they deserve: a bullet to the face. And Ray and Frank walk out of it, and leave on the simplest terms we recognize and respect: a handshake.

But the way the show decides to come through with the tone of closure, of ending journeys, is predictably forced and incoherent. The Mexican traffickers who tried to rough up Frank earlier inexplicably come out of nowhere for no reason that's tied to the main plot. Annoying enough, but if 'Omega' had gone the route of Frank working his way out of that, I could've bought it more, because it would've tied into an idea that maybe all the shit he learned through the Caspere debacle was to prepare him for this moment. That would've been finality enough. But the show goes cheap and creates drama out of nothing, because a guy wanted Frank's suit. Ray's sense of closure at least worked on his established emotional drive of wanting his son, and protecting the world from evil for his son. But Burris tracking him down still came out of leftfield and at a frenetic pace.

All of this leaves no time for Ani to do anything significant, which may be the (second) most frustrating thing of all. While Ray and Frank go Rambo, Ani's left on the sidelines. Another insulting slight to the potential her character had all season but the writing never quite tapped into. A lot is left to be desired, and 'Omega' provided an opportunity to at least get a bit out of it. Why can't she go to the cabin, fight the baddies she's worked her life to bring down? Based on where she ends up, I get what Pizzolatto was trying to do, especially with the running thread of saying she's still too good to fight the blackness. So it should be left to her to pick up the torch. But there were a thousand more interesting and engaging ways she could've done that.

Yet, Ray's defiant fight allows for a gratefully touching moment as he leaves one last message for his son. 'You're better than me. If I had been stronger... I would've been more like you... Hell, Son, if everyone was stronger, they'd be more like you.' And that strikes at the heart of True Detective. Ideally, people like Ray's son, with humility forced upon him by bullies and insults, would be making decisions. Instead, it's left to the power-mongering bad men that Ray and Frank have to fight back from the rest of us. We're not strong enough. If we were, we'd be more like Chad, and things wouldn't be so grey. That message kept an eye on a future that might be bright, with the notion of the show letting that message reach out. For hope of a better tomorrow, where 'true' detectives aren't needed.

So you could imagine my sleep-deprived fury when the show cops out (PUN!) and decides to not let the message be sent out. It's a very bleak outlook on our prospects for better days. Even if in real life iphone reception would be that shitty, this is fiction. The show could be a little more uplifting than that. And there's no dramatic reason for that message not to reach Ray's son. 'Omega' would still be able to cling onto that sense of closure, and the victory of Chad hearing the message would be pyrrhic at best, since a lot of the criminals believably escape justice. The decision to leave the message unsent was unnecessary and said nothing transcendent. A cheap, hollow gesture to remind us 'Yeah, the world sucks. And sometimes even the little victories don't happen. We live in a bad world.' It's severely disappointing, but draws back on the whole issue with True Detective's second outing. The plot just had nowhere to go, and relied solely on the good graces of the first season and the grim atmosphere of the story to maintain interest. Nothing was organic. Hardly anything that happened had any real purpose. There were fun bits, and gripping moments. But ultimately, we're just left wishing a grander theme could have prevailed in the final episode, that that message had been sent. It would've made everything we had to sit through this season at least lead to a palpable act of extending hope for the rest of us who are still trudging through the grey. Just like Ani said. 'We deserve a better world.'

Yes, and we deserved a better season.

Grade: C+

When I got sidetracked:

-Whatever the sketch bar is paying that guitarist, I want that salary. Seriously, she must've been getting heavy dough to be performing in broad daylight in front of a crowd of stacked chairs, after clocking in some good time over the course of the season. She was my favorite character. That's not a joke. That's a fact.

-Watching those awful world-eating shit-men getting shot to pieces brought me back to a certain moment in Inglorious Bastards.

-Two moments I wondered if 'Omega' was mocking its own season, almost deliberately:

'Honestly Ray, nobody had any idea you were this competent.' He wasn't. Not until episode 7.

'You can't act for shit... you're not convincing.' The character Jordan says this to the actor Vince Vaughn. (This was all intentional... right?)

#review #TrueDetective #TV