Season 1 of True Detective mastered the art of the time-jump so well that it managed to combine plot lines occurring at three different points: 1995, 2002, and 2012. Last night’s “Other Lives” doesn’t set as ambitious a vision for the second season, but it does clear the clutter a bit from the buildup to the midpoint shootout. It takes place more than two months later, as all four characters have professionally moved on from the task force investigating former Vinci city manager Ben Caspere’s death. But like Rust Cohle and Marty Lang, nobody around Vinci seems ready to simply let past traumatic events stay there.
The most underutilized character so far this season has been Kelly Reilly as Frank Semyon’s wife, Jordan. She’s credited as a regular alongside Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell, and Taylor Kitsch, but so far she’s been relegated to cuddling with Vaughn as he recounts his traumatic childhood or assisting in obtaining a sperm sample for in vitro fertilization. Luckily, her role has been somewhat upgraded in the fifth episode, as her disdain at keeping books at the Lux can’t be hidden. She and Frank are back in the thick of things, and have moved to a smaller house in Glendale. Frank is collecting rent under the guise of “security” and running drugs and girls out of the Lux—all while fending off the Mexican cartel that had an arrangement with the mysteriously missing previous owner. Jordan doesn’t want to be a gangster’s wife—a label Frank resents—and uses that sobriquet to hold a mirror up to her husband.
Vaughn is giving his all here, and he plays Frank as a guy who is just never going to quit because of the impoverished level he started on as a kid. But the character’s best moments have all been when dropping the tough-guy act, and that happens most often around Jordan, like when she pushes back against his aversion toward adoption. Caring about Frank comes from underlining why his relationship with his wife is a way out of his tortured upbringing, and the only way to do that is to elevate Reilly’s character—and with her the emotional impact of anything that happens between her and Frank.
A few months on, and Paul Woodrugh (Kitsch) is in the same depressed position, only with less support. His legal case against Lacey (Ashley Hinshaw), the actress who got him suspended from his highway patrol gig, is still ongoing, but also in limbo. Since last week’s shoot-out, he’s now considered a hero on the force, but that doesn’t stop the Lacey’s lawyers from hounding on his past employment at an embattled private defense contractor guilty of civilian casualties. It’s unclear where all this is going, but it’s definitely not going away—especially after Paul calls her a “fucking liar.”
At home, Woodrugh is trying to make the best of a life dealing with his girlfriend’s pregnancy, his impending marriage, and his future mother-in-law—all while self-medicating with copious alcohol. But the real bad news is that his mother found a stash of $20,000 he hid in her trailer, and spent it all. Their ensuing fight reveals how little they care about each other—and how easily they’ll go for each others’ jugular. She takes a jab at his sexuality, he lashes out about her loose lifestyle, and so on. But everything going on with Paul just makes him a conflicted figure unsure of his identity who clings to the ongoing investigation as the only potentially reliable, worthwhile, and sensible part of his life.
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Seeing Ani (McAdams) at a sexual harassment seminar initially seems like another one of Nic Pizzolatto’s excuses to shoehorn in tone-deaf opinions about why the world isn’t as simple (and patriarchal) as it used to be. But she’s defiant despite going through the motions of her punishment, dutifully putting in her time in the evidence room and checking up on loose ends. Digging through items she receives related to the missing persons case she and her partner came across in the season premiere, she gets another hit on just how deep the corruption goes. Then pictures of jewels that disappeared from Caspere’s safe deposit box and a state senator show up in disposable camera photos taken by a missing woman. Finally, she and Paul track carrion birds to a blood-stained shack on land marked for the rail corridor. It’s not as symbolically ritualistic as the locations from last season, but it’s indicative of the same kind of messed-up stuff that Ray stumbled on in the apartment where he got shotgunned.
The trickle of new evidence is enough to get the old team back together, and the lingering questions of that horrific shootout do manage to galvanize Paul, Ani, and (to a lesser extent) Ray into an off-the-books investigative team under the State’s Attorney’s office. But once again, the most intriguing takeaway is that in order to take down Big Corruption, the SA has to offer Ray some kind of favor—namely, stepping in to take care of the custody dispute with his ex-wife. The attorney general looked into Vinci in order to get money—Ray refers to the guy now making a bid for the governor’s mansion as coming to town with his hand out—and there are pictures of a state senator mysteriously involved in exclusive parties with mystery girls. Back in March The Hollywood Reporter put out a story that this season would involve “a deliriously vast, Eyes Wide Shut-caliber orgy.” Well, here’s True Detective hurtling headlong into that sequence, with Ani dangling her sister—who got out of cam girl performing and got accepted to CalArts—as bait.
There has never been a better demonstration of Colin Farrell’s innate talent as an actor than what he’s been doing with the moribund material he’s been supplied on True Detective. Whether it’s dissenting at the news of reopening a covert investigation into Caspere’s death, looking exasperated in a custody hearing, or showing up wide-eyed to confront Frank in the last shots of this episode, Farrell has undoubtedly taken the reins as the most compelling character, regardless of whether the plot wants to make him the protagonist. The basic sketch of his backstory had already been revealed, but once the State’s Attorney, who was at one time trying to flip him as an informant on Vinci, tells him that his ex-wife’s rapist has been apprehended, the episode shifts and relies entirely on Farrell’s reactions to pack the final punch.
Shell-shocked by his ex-wife’s rape, Ray not only sought help from a small-town criminal like Frank to find the guy, but killed a (now presumably innocent) man, and told his wife about it in such a way that it ruined their marriage and his life. All of that comes through in the scene between Farrell and Abigail Spencer, who plays his ex-wife Gena. It’s the best pure dialogue scene all season, and most of the credit goes to Farrell’s performance. It’s unclear what he’s going to do now, having tracked Frank’s potentially mutinous employee and beaten information out of Rick Springfield’s cosmetic surgeon, but one thing is for certain: a few moments of Farrell and Vaughn staring at each other from the end of last night’s episode heightened the anticipation for the finale more than this season’s rotten egg episodes mustered in full hours.
