This was supposed to happen yesterday. I believe my scheduled day to blog on the Pandamoon Group Blog-a-ganza is Sunday. I hereby promise to (try to) henceforth blog on Sundays. Yesterday, however, on the last Sunday in June, I had some major television to catch up on, and, you know ... priorities. The day was leading up to culminate with the second episode of True Detective, I was tragically behind in Orange Is the New Black, and I haven't even had time to sit down and watch Deadly Adoption (I can promise you will all hear about it when I do, though). So, the bad news is that binge watching most of a season of OITNB and then trying to breakdown the rat king of an LA flyover that is True Detective does not allow one time to churn out a blog post before the day closes in on you. The good news is that the combination of those two shows did allow me to glean a bit of a writerly observation.
***I will first warn the reader in an act of utter empathy and congeniality on my part that there are VERY mild spoilers ahead. If you prefer to be surprised by every minute detail of your television viewing, you should probably veer off now. For the rest of us, we'll stick with mostly cursory views of the two shows mentioned previously (True Detective and Orange Is the New Black). ***
Ray Velcoro has zero f's left to give about my blog post.
Let me start off by saying that I love True Detective. The first season came at me like my television soulmate. It had mystery; it had noir; it had flawed characters who smoked and made tin soldiers out of cans of cheap beer; it had McConaughey AND Woody Harrleson, for God's sake. Yellow King! Carcosa! Biker Gangs! It was like that episode of Pokemon that gave all those kids seizures. And season two has real promise. I know it has been somewhat panned by critics, but I am in. I was even in before Rick Springfield came on the screen as a creepy doctor/therapist (Want me to like your little television program? Cast Rick Mother F***ing Springfield as a creepy weirdo doctor. Done.). But, with all that said, I'm going to talk badly about it in the way we are allowed to talk badly about our own family members. There is a quality in good writing (especially good television writing) that is lacking in the first two episodes of True Detective. It is a quality that was done so perfectly in the first season (at times) and one that makes Orange Is the New Black so brilliant. So, for contrast, I'm going to break down, in reverse order, the good, the bad, and the ugly of nuanced writing in my recent television viewing by looking at (mostly) spoiler-free moments from these two shows.
Vince Vaughn, acting serious. Us, taking Vince Vaughn seriously. Who blinks first?
First the ugly. Episode two of True Detective begins with Vince Vaughn pointing his eighteen eye bags up at us as he stares at a pair of water stains on the ceiling. He proceeds to tell us, via a barely there and underused Kelly Reilly (Mary Watson from the Robert Downey, Jr., Sherlock Holmes movies and the lead in the sleeper horror movie, Eden Lake ... I don't even know if she has a name in this show yet ... she is, so far, only there to provide drinks, button cuff-links, and lovingly stroke furrowed brows with a delicate girly finger until it disrupts the brood-flow ... Yea! Feminism!), a story about being locked in a basement by his drunken father, where he had to strangle rats to keep from being eaten and now he doesn't know if he is really here or maybe he's still there and he's dreaming and the world is made of paper-mache or some shit ... I don't know, I drifted off. Couldn't spoil it for you if I wanted to. What this all amounts to, though, I do know. It's a traditional backstory for the comic super villain. This basement story is what makes this bad guy so bad. It is meant to make us simultaneously realize that he is a bad ass and a sympathetic antihero. It does neither. Because it opens up Vince Vaughn's "Mystery Box" (not dirty). The TV-writing genius J.J. Abrams gave a TED Talk about what makes for great writing, and he focused much of the talk around the idea of a "mystery box." He proposed that the best writing does enough to call our attention to a character's or a story's box full o'mystery, without going so far as to give us full view of what's in that box. Therefore, in other super villain origin stories, we get three different versions of "Want to know how I got these scars?" We get hints and passing mentions of a beloved sister to Hannibal Lecter. We don't get the full-on story complete with philosophical analysis. Even the obviously eye-like water stains get a fade cut into the acid-burned eyes of the Mr. Body of season two. Hey, look you guys! It's, like, symbolic or something cool like that! Imagery! Did you see it? What we did there? Watching it, I felt like the dad in the State Farm commercial ("Look, Dad, it's Grandma!" "I know who it is.")
Surprisingly, the character with the most subtlety is Regina Freaking George (the WONDERFUL Rachel McAdams). Surprising because, a.) woman character on True Detective; b.) see, Regina George; and, c.) her name on the show is Antigone. No, for real. But with the only notable exception being Tim Riggins' (or Taylor Kitsch or Paul Woodrugh or True Detective Ponch) creepy-ass scene with his mom, the only mystery box left (almost) fully closed is that of Ani Bezzerides (again, for real). She gives us the only line in two episodes that leaves you thinking: "I don't distinguish between good and bad habits." This is the kind of Rust Cohle line we've all been waiting for. It has nuance. It has subtlety. And, for once, she doesn't follow the line with a hammer-to-the-head explanation of exactly what she meant when she said it. It is the glimmer of hope in the episode. So much of what we are seeing has the noirish beauty of maybe not Chandler, but maybe at least of Ellroy. While there is definitely a feeling that this show wants to be a classic The Lady in the Lake type of L.A. mystery, but it's feeling a little more like an L.A. Confidential noir throwback (and, hey, that's nothing to be ashamed of). But if we can get a little more of those hints and whispers and a little less explained symbolism, maybe ... just maybe ...
Perfect use of subtlety and semicolon.
When done right, subtlety is everything. For an example, one that True Detective could actually learn from, I will pull one small moment from Orange Is the New Black which will not spoil anything of real importance. Because it has nothing to do with plot development. While True Detective spends up its vagueness on plot details, leaving me about as confused Colin Farrell's ginger kid appears to be, OITNB never skimps on those points. We know exactly what is going on at all times. Where the writers of this show spend their nuance points is with character development (listening, Pizzolatto?). The Netflix show has, from the beginning, used Lost-style flashbacks to fill in character development holes gradually. During season three, we get a little added development on the once-disgusting-but-now-lovable Joe Caputo. Not only is it a sign of great writing that a maligned character can turn into a beloved character, it's a sign of great writing that the writers never force themselves on you. They allow the viewer to build the character in their mind through hints and glimpses. For example, in a Caputo flashback, we catch one brief glimpse of a young Joe's wrestling coach. It was obviously a high point in the man's life. And this coach was apparently a father figure and idol of his. How do we know this? Is it described to us in painstaking detail by a character staring gloomily at a ceiling? Nope. It's one thing. The wrestling coach has a handlebar mustache. That's it. It's all we need. We know, in that nuance, that Joe Caputo has patterned his facial hair and, presumably, aspects of his life after this person from his past. It's a fleeting glimpse into a mystery box. Just enough. Great writing.
And there's my weekend. I obviously have my shit together. Life's all in order. My only solace is that I can occasionally pull a tiny bit of inspiration and/or learning and/or writing fodder from some of the things I binge watch. And, thanks to this blog, I can share my crazed TV analysis with all of you. And, for that, Netflix, we thank you.