True Detective Season 2 Is Actually Great, You Only Hate It Because of Season 1 

Summary:

• The first season of True Detective was an unprecedented success, so viewers expected the second season to be just as brilliant.
• The second season fell victim to high expectations – the genre changed from mystery to police drama, a genre too familiar to most viewers.
• While the second season didn't give viewers what they were looking for, it raised many important questions and, unlike the first season, presented a truly intriguing detective story.

Until 2014, few people knew about Nic Pizzolatto, the Yellow King, Carcosa, and that Matthew McConaughey is actually one of the best dramatic actors of our time. But in 2014, the first season of True Detective, created by Pizzolatto, was released to undoubtedly go down in the history of the cinematography.

True Detective Season 2 Was a Victim of High Expectations

After the success of the first season fans demanded an equally brilliant continuation, but in the end, most of the audience was not satisfied with the second season. What did the director do wrong, and was it wrong at all?

True Detective is an anthology that changes the story and characters each season while maintaining the overall tone, so most of the details that viewers have come to love have changed.

True Detective's second season fell victim to "High Expectation Syndrome." After the brilliant eight episodes released in the spring of 2014, which won dozens of awards and ranked among the best TV projects of the past few years, viewers were unprepared for the fact that a very different detective awaited them in the new season.

True Detective Season 2 Blunt Genre Change

The main thing that has changed is the genre – the second season differs in tone from the mystic swamps and ritual murders of the first season. Mysticism was replaced by police drama, a much more familiar genre to viewers, which no longer gave the feeling of something new and fresh.

Despite the show's title, the first season did not focus on a detective story. If you ask most viewers, they will say that the girl was killed by some man with scars. Few will remember how Rust Cohle and Martin Hart came across him, and even fewer will call the detective line intriguing.

But that's not what True Detective was about. It hypnotized with Cohle's monologues, reflections and allusions. At the same time the second season lived up to its name – True Detective became a real detective story, and not the most predictable one.

True Detective Season 2 Cast

The second season did not lose another one of the main advantages of the show – brilliant characters. Rachel McAdams, the romantic comedy actress, transformed into a bisexual woman tormented by the ghosts of her past, vaping on an e-cigarette and inflicting multiple stab wounds.

But most of the attention was on Colin Farrell, whose character even rivals Rust Cohle in terms of depth and elaboration.

Season 2 Was Just Different

So is True Detective season 2 bad? Absolutely not. After the first season, some expected references to mystical books hidden in the background, others expected Rust Cohle's mind-expanding speeches.

The second season delivered almost none of that, but it did deliver something else – it made viewers think about the relationship between fathers and children, stirred up eternal conflicts within families, and most importantly, it maintained a suspenseful, mysterious detective line until the very end.