Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2023-07-13 09:50 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2023-07-13 09:50 am
Entry tags:
The Michael Jordan Of Being A Son Of A Bitch.
My brother Joseph gave me the first season of True Detective on disc for Christmas. 'I didn't know if you'd watched it before,' he said, 'so I searched the tags on your blog to see whether you'd talked about it. I think you'll like it. It's about two men having a very fraught, intense working relationship.'
The title sequence is extremely cool! Striking cinematography throughout the show, too.
More thoughts under the cut! These thoughts were written while watching, so some of my feelings change over time.
I find Cohle slightly unbearable in these early episodes, but I like that Hart hates everything that comes out of his mouth just as much as I do. There's a fun contrast in Hart being very straightforward and direct while Cohle goes off on rambling philosophical tangents.
On the surface, Cohle seems like a character I might like - he's tortured, he's hallucinating - but I think it's hard for me to connect with a character if I feel they don't care about anyone or anything. I prefer Hart; I have a much clearer idea of what he cares about, which makes it easier to care about him. Hart's sense of entitlement can be frustrating, but his compassionate streak helps to temper it.
Now that Hart seems to be worrying about Cohle, I'm connecting a little more with this show, but there's still a distance. I don't really feel welcomed as a female viewer. I've seen things that feel like they're aimed mainly at men before, but this almost feels exclusively aimed at men to me.
Maybe it's just in my head. As cool as the opening sequence is, I definitely picked up on the fact that it featured dancing strippers and multiple shots of female nudity, which immediately primed me to be suspicious of the show's attitude to women.
Maggie sleeping with Cohle so Hart would leave her is top-quality poor decision-making and I enjoyed it a lot.
I like the tension of Cohle and Hart reconnecting and starting to work together again all these years later, too!
I am reluctantly finding myself warming a little to Cohle in later episodes. He's just so extreme, and there's so much wrong with him; he's certainly never boring to watch.
I think I must even have warmed to the overwhelming cynicism that I found so tedious in earlier episodes, because in the final episode he became a little less cynical and I found myself disappointed!
My favourite parts were probably a) the catastrophic decision of Cohle and Maggie sleeping together, and the subsequent fight between Hart and Cohle; b) Hart and Cohle holding the guy hostage on the boat, what the fuck, you guys are throwing yourselves alarmingly hard into this case; c) Hart holding Cohle when they were both seriously wounded in the final episode; d) all the gorgeous scenery shots. Putting 'scenery shots' in this list isn't intended to be a slight on the rest of the show; the scenery shots were really gorgeous.
A high-quality show! Good tension, acting and writing; gorgeous cinematography. I don't think I'm the audience, and I don't mean it's not my thing; I mean it was made with a particular audience in mind, and I don't think I'm part of that audience. An uncomfortable and unwelcoming watch, but well made and interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
The show had a bit of a disadvantage because it's the first thing I've watched since finishing Lost, which I loved a frankly unreasonable amount.
To be honest, though, my brother is indirectly the reason I watched Lost as well! I wasn't in a position to start True Detective straight away, but Joseph's 'it's about two men having a very fraught, intense working relationship' comment made me think 'I do like that sort of thing', which led me to watch Person of Interest, which led me to watch Lost. So, Joseph, if you see this, I have to thank you for not only giving me True Detective but accidentally introducing me to two other shows I hugely enjoyed.
The title sequence is extremely cool! Striking cinematography throughout the show, too.
More thoughts under the cut! These thoughts were written while watching, so some of my feelings change over time.
I find Cohle slightly unbearable in these early episodes, but I like that Hart hates everything that comes out of his mouth just as much as I do. There's a fun contrast in Hart being very straightforward and direct while Cohle goes off on rambling philosophical tangents.
On the surface, Cohle seems like a character I might like - he's tortured, he's hallucinating - but I think it's hard for me to connect with a character if I feel they don't care about anyone or anything. I prefer Hart; I have a much clearer idea of what he cares about, which makes it easier to care about him. Hart's sense of entitlement can be frustrating, but his compassionate streak helps to temper it.
Now that Hart seems to be worrying about Cohle, I'm connecting a little more with this show, but there's still a distance. I don't really feel welcomed as a female viewer. I've seen things that feel like they're aimed mainly at men before, but this almost feels exclusively aimed at men to me.
Maybe it's just in my head. As cool as the opening sequence is, I definitely picked up on the fact that it featured dancing strippers and multiple shots of female nudity, which immediately primed me to be suspicious of the show's attitude to women.
Maggie sleeping with Cohle so Hart would leave her is top-quality poor decision-making and I enjoyed it a lot.
I like the tension of Cohle and Hart reconnecting and starting to work together again all these years later, too!
I am reluctantly finding myself warming a little to Cohle in later episodes. He's just so extreme, and there's so much wrong with him; he's certainly never boring to watch.
I think I must even have warmed to the overwhelming cynicism that I found so tedious in earlier episodes, because in the final episode he became a little less cynical and I found myself disappointed!
My favourite parts were probably a) the catastrophic decision of Cohle and Maggie sleeping together, and the subsequent fight between Hart and Cohle; b) Hart and Cohle holding the guy hostage on the boat, what the fuck, you guys are throwing yourselves alarmingly hard into this case; c) Hart holding Cohle when they were both seriously wounded in the final episode; d) all the gorgeous scenery shots. Putting 'scenery shots' in this list isn't intended to be a slight on the rest of the show; the scenery shots were really gorgeous.
A high-quality show! Good tension, acting and writing; gorgeous cinematography. I don't think I'm the audience, and I don't mean it's not my thing; I mean it was made with a particular audience in mind, and I don't think I'm part of that audience. An uncomfortable and unwelcoming watch, but well made and interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
The show had a bit of a disadvantage because it's the first thing I've watched since finishing Lost, which I loved a frankly unreasonable amount.
To be honest, though, my brother is indirectly the reason I watched Lost as well! I wasn't in a position to start True Detective straight away, but Joseph's 'it's about two men having a very fraught, intense working relationship' comment made me think 'I do like that sort of thing', which led me to watch Person of Interest, which led me to watch Lost. So, Joseph, if you see this, I have to thank you for not only giving me True Detective but accidentally introducing me to two other shows I hugely enjoyed.