The Watch - An Oscars and 'True Detective' Season 3 Wrap-up | The Watch (Ep. 332)

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

The Oscars were surprisingly smooth and democratic (2:53), but that doesn’t signal any lasting cultural changes (17:49). The finale of 'True Detective' Season 3 was nothing groundbreaking (25:37), but it we do want a fourth season of the anthology series (40:21). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to the watch my name is chris ryan i am editor at the wrigger dot com and joining me on the other line he left his oscar in the jungle it's and green wilds wait did somebody do that last night no I was just like combining True Detective with the Oscars, man. Oh, because, you know, I read this morning that Rami, like, fell after he got his Oscar and the paramedics came, and I thought maybe you were chasing that a little bit. No, no, no, no. I got notes, basically. Yeah, we're going to talk Oscars and we're going to talk True Detective. We're going to squeeze as much out of the Greenwald Orange as we can today.

Andy, you know, I, let's do Oscars first. I did not get a chance to watch these awards live, so to speak. I watched up until Ruth Carter. one for Black Panther costume design, and then I had to go watch True Detective so that we could do the flat circle. But as someone who experienced the three-hour-and-15-minute show, give me your top notes.

What are the takeaways? I want to say, wait, Ruth Carter won for costumes? Because who was the woman from Black Panther who won and then took out her phone to find her speech and then couldn't find it on her phone? And I've never related to anyone more in that moment. Did you see that? It was Hannah Beechler.

Hannah Beechler was like, I have my thank you. Hold on. And then that terror, like, I feel that all the time when, like, I have like a security gate code to my daughter's school on my phone. And I'm just trying to pick her up. But then I can't open the correct note. Like, dude, just use paper. Use paper.

It's much better. Okay. I watched all the Oscars. And here's my takeaway, Chris. After all the buildup, after all the Sturman Drang, after all the criticism, after all the just litany of unforced errors and self-owns that the Academy pulled on the long, strange journey to last night, I thought it was a great show. I thought it was a spirited, brisk, entertaining, diverse, interesting, bright, and mostly democratic evening. And one of the better award shows I can remember in recent memory, both in terms of show itself and in the,

the winners. So when did you realize that? Like, what was it, what was the moment you were like, this is good? Was it Amy Maya and Tina coming out and being the de facto sort of show openers outside of Queen? What was it that kind of got you feeling like this is all going in the right direction? Well, there were a couple things. And honestly, what I noticed first was the vibe. It was brisk. And one of the reasons it was brisk is because even going into commercials, the voice didn't say, coming up, a tribute to the role dentists that played in cinema. Plus, You are so anti-monage, man. I hate montages, and there weren't any.

And also, as much as I've enjoyed, like I thought Jimmy Kimmel did a great job the last few years, there is a sense of obligation that we have to sort of get through this part, and parts that we are not necessarily checking for. Now, I, you know, I was on this podcast, one of my rare appearances on this podcast, not too long ago, saying that I thought it was a mistake not to have a host. And I was deeply wrong because there was a problem. because there was a briskness to it, and it's not just that there weren't montages,

but they were really judicious with the get-off the stage music as well. A couple times they just cut people's mic when they tried to have the third dude talk. When that folks from a vice one for makeup, I think they really were just like, they really dropped the base on those guys. And that was early that they did that.

Later on, though, they seemed really understanding, again, this is so weird, and obviously the people who made the decisions for the award categories and things are not the same arm of the academy that produced and directed the show. But whoever produced and directed the show this year seemed to have a surprisingly firm grasp

on what people want from the show. And what people want from the show is the acceptance speeches. That is the interesting, unpredictable moment, generally. And I thought that the show embraced that and understood it, which allowed for speeches that were both just sort of gleeful and exciting, speeches that were political,

speeches that were moving, and a couple that were boring, but that's sort of part for the course. So I was really surprised by that. And then we can get into some specific things. But I also thought that in general, it was nice that there was a relatively democratic spread of winners. Almost, I believe every, I don't have the raw data, but it seems like every best picture nominee won something. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.

And I'm not trying to be like, millennial, everyone gets a participation trophy thing here. But in the arbitrariness of these awards, sorry, Kyah, in the arbitrariness of these awards, that was sort of, it actually kind of was a bomb, right? Because I think that there were a lot of good movies nominated, there were some bad movies nominated, but people were passionate about all of them. And on a year that felt so argumentative and fighty from the beginning, that was not a bad, not a bad outcome. Now, we can definitely get into some specifics.

But in general, I was so impressed by how brisked the whole thing. was and that yes, we live in a post-movie star culture, except for Julia Roberts. And the show seemed to understand that. And so it gave us best-case scenario Hollywood of like young, bright, diverse, talented people who are on the come-up as opposed to, you know, let's bring out Jack again and I'll make jokes about how Jack's there and maybe drunk. I don't think Jack's been there for a couple years. I get what you're saying.

And I think that if you ask 100 people across the country what the Oscars mean to them, you're going to get a hundred different answers. And some of those answers might just be like, what's the Oscars at this point? But I do think that the show matters. And I do think that it makes the case for the movies is still like pretty much the central popular culture medium of the country. I was really struck by Olivia Coleman getting on stage and saying,

I have an Oscar and just sort of like that watching that hit her. And it kind of, I do think that it still is sort of, of like one of those iconic achievements in our culture that you can have. I personally now feel like the length of the award season makes me feel like by the time of Oscars night, it's sort of like, if I can borrow an idea from the Wrights-Ricky Sanchez podcast, I basically feel like I'm stuck in a room with jigsaw from the Saw movies. And it's like, what do I want to cut off here to get out of this thing, all right? And it's like, you're basically hoping for the best possible outcome in a and by the time it actually happens they're like I'm so tired of talking about

these same six movies but I kind of came out the other side of this Oscars kind of thinking like you know what man it is pretty cool that the tax is the ping ponging back and forth between Green Book Roma Bohemian Rhapsody whatever and we talk about it and we talk about it and we talk about it and we game theory it out but then the benefit is really a lot of other people hear about free solo and a lot of other people hear about Mining the Gap and a lot of people might go check out the favorite now and a lot of people might check out Roma who

didn't already and those are that's really the bullhorn effect that the Oscars has I think not only for the night itself but for the entire months leading up to it is still a really effective promotional vehicle for movies that really deserve attention.

Yes and I think good movies that speak to the moment are a better ad for movies than montages of classic dance routines. And I like dance routines and movies. And by the way, it was an outrage that Stanley Donan wasn't in the, in a morium montage. You could squeeze another face in there, dudes. Like, he died the day before the ceremony.

Anyway, one thing that I was thinking is I was watching it. Oh, and sorry, I was just going to say that, like, to that point, like, Guillermo del Toro's introduction to the best director Oscar was quite a quite a nice and genuine and kind of almost moving summation of this, where he said he had to be there. because what it treated is as a director and filmmaker to be presenting an award to one of these people, all of whom made deeply personal, interesting movies, whether you know, however you want to rank them

in terms of preference. Yeah, and I also felt that when Regina King won, the sort of the warmth that she seemed to feel for her fellow nominees was really sincere and quite moving. Yeah, and, you know, I was thinking about this a lot, and I think that you can look at the author, When you're looking at the Oscars, I would go from the more specific and obscure categories as you move from them all the way up to Best Picture, the universality of the award fins, meaning they should never, ever, ever eliminate the best short film award because whatever Dreamers, weirdo kids win that are going to be the most genuinely excited because it's the most impactful on their career.

and frankly, it probably means something. It probably means in the same way that like the screenplay awards are always, I think, a little bit more artistically in line with, certainly with me, but maybe with other critics or people who see a lot of movies, which would mean not me. But the people who vote on that really have an opinion about what might be the best. And when you get to the, but when you can move all the way up the chain,

the winner of best picture is not going to reflect, honestly, anyone's idea of what the best movie of the year is. It's an artificial construct. What you're getting is the best, you know, you're getting some kind of soggy consensus out of a very, very large and diverse electorate. And when I say diverse, I don't mean the diversity that has dominated the conversation and rightly so. What I mean is diverse in terms of age. And there are a lot of old people in the academy. And I'm not even going to say Green Book is good or bad.

I will say that even by my own informal straw poll, holds love it. What can you give me a little bit of insight into it? to your polling methods? Are you like a U-Gov for Green Book? I went outside of a senior center recently, and I, no, I mean, you know, once you get up to that rarefied air of best picture where everyone is voting, that's when you run into the stuff that people who go to the multiplex or vote with their dollars are not, they're not in on those conversations.

And it's not just the people who are quoted anonymously in the Hollywood reporter saying, I'm voting for Green Book because I don't want anyone to tell me what I'm not allowed. delight anymore, but also the people who say, I'm not voting for Roma because I don't want to reward Netflix for their disruptive influence on cinema chains. It's a level of voting a political agenda, and I don't mean that for it to be as weighted as it sounds, but voting against Netflix is also a political agenda. That's what's happening up there. Look, I was texting you this morning about this, and I am all for proxy wars because

it's really all we have at this stage. I am all for taking things way too seriously in the cultural field. It was my job for many years, and it's something that I still enjoy doing. I am still personally offended that the fish-fucking movie won last year, because, guys, I can't imagine Green Book is worse than that, but that's just me. But what made me crazy is, and I feel like you said this in a more rational calm, not naming names way, and maybe you can come back and say it again. But I love Roma.

I think Roma. I think the favorite is probably a masterpiece also. But if Roma had won best picture last night, Donald Trump would still be president. Like, this wasn't going to fix stuff, you know, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I just don't, I just don't, I just don't, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I think that there are a lot of older voters in the Academy and people seem to genuinely like Green Book. And so that one best. picture, but Roma won three trophies, the favorite one, a surprise upset. You know, it was a remarkably diverse, diverse group of Oscar winners last night. Change is incremental and go back over the last 50 years of Oscar winners and name the years

where you think the best movie of the year won Best Picture Trophy. That's not generally what it's about. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the political aspect of this and you even invoked he who shall not be named. Not that we were in a version to talking about Trump, but. Sean Fantasy? I think that one of the things

that's sort of a hallmark for the moment we're living in right now is this second to second analysis and updating of processes that usually take a

really long time. Like you're saying, change is slow, change is incremental. And I think actually, like, it's really good that there are people out there

who are like, I don't, I'm no longer interested in change being slower incremental. And I think that that's an extension of this.

I think that the frustration towards Green Book winning is an extension of the larger frustration people have with we've been

waiting a long time for progress and see look this is where it got us you know what I mean all the little like hey don't push too hard too early too soon

whatever like that's how we kind of wind up where we are with all these compromises and all these sort of like hey you don't want to don't want to push things too hard and I so I kind of am into that

I'm kind of into it just being like nah fuck that Now, does it make for a good award show? No, it can feel kind of incongruous. And I actually, to be fair, I'm trying to remember the last time when you were talking about, oh, if Roma had won, like, I'm trying to remember the last time where I was like, wow, the thing that everybody liked won all the awards. Oh, well, two years ago, Moonlight won best picture. Yes, but that even the shock of that was almost, it almost offset the enormity of the moment because of the sort of the size.

show to it, though. It's true, but I'm just saying you can't un-you-can't un-make that happen. No, that's bad tensing. But look, it happened. Like, the same academy that voted Moonlight Best Picture, voted Green Book Best Picture. The same, and Marcia Laudeley won an Oscar for both. So maybe he's the magic sauce, you know. But just like, God, I'm sorry, I'm making this political in a way that I didn't intend to.

No, it's okay. I think it's inevitable. I voted for Trump, right? Like, the same, theoretically, that's the same, the same. you know, plus or minus a few 10,000 Russians, those are the same people voting complete polar opposites from each other. It is a big, messy electorate in both cases. And, you know, I choose, again, I have the privilege of choosing to do this because the movie business does not affect my life, celebrate the good things that happened last night. And again, I think that it speaks very highly

of the academy that they put forward such a, such an interesting, forward-looking and diverse group of presenters and rewarded similarly a forward-looking group of artists. I think that that speaks to the change that we all hope to see in our institutions more succinctly and optimistically than whoever got the last trophy of the night. And then I guess so I would ask you this.

So you talk about that. What were some of your favorite moments of the night then? Obviously Olivia Coleman. Obviously, you mentioned... Look, Olivia Coleman, I want to speak to that, just because she's tremendous, because she is, you know, incandescent as a talent. That was one of the first pure surprises pop culture, in a good way. Pop culture has given me in a long time.

I don't know when, maybe it goes hand in hand with the, just the complete, like, that there's an Oscar season now and that everything is being hashed out and ripped apart and discussed constantly on Twitter. But like, prior to the last few years, I didn't maybe know enough to realize that there was this drumbeat of award season where the same people started winning the same awards at Gotham, Independent Spirit, Golden Globes, whatever, like that led to the inevitability of Oscar night. And then the Guild Awards, yeah.

Right. But the last few years when we have, you know, when we were hosting after shows and things, there was very little surprise in the acting categories. And again, last night was three out of four, where exactly as everyone predicted them to be. But so for that moment to be totally gobsmacked by what happened. And then for the winner herself to be gobsmacked. And then to be so outrageously, incredibly delightful and appropriate in the moment to sort of laughing at it being like, I can't believe this happened.

But with the same level, as you mentioned at the beginning of appreciation, it's just awesome. I mean, she is one of our great actors. She can do comedy. She can do drama. She can do anything. Her performance in the favorite is kind of a supporting world. But it's she deserves trophies. And that was a thrilling moment.

Yeah. It's also, I think Sean and Amanda talked about this last night in a really interesting way, which is essentially like by the time you get to the Oscars night. especially in the acting categories, if those things have been solidified, like, Meherzhal Ali is given his speech several times by that point. You know what I mean? So it's hard to, even if the enormity of him now being a two-time Oscar winner hits you and hits him, it still doesn't have that lightning and a bottle effect that I think Olivia Coleman did.

I would also say one of my favorite moments in terms of winners and acceptance speeches was definitely Spike Lee winning for adapted screenplay. and seeing him jump into the arms of Samuel L. Jackson and kind of have, God, what is it, like 30-some years of movie history kind of come rushing to the present. And just their collaboration over the course of Spike's career. And they've had public disagreements, but they've also had this incredibly rewarding thing

where Spike essentially launched Samuel L. Jackson into a kind of stardom with some of his early performances like in, jungle fever and stuff. And it was just, it was a really, really, really cool moment, even if I have no idea what Spike Lee said in the first, like, bleeped out portion of his speech. But look, that was incredible. And it's worth to remember the Oscars rarely get it right, or at least even when they do get it right, they don't get it right in the ways you'd expect, right? Like, there are many filmmakers whom you and I love, who are Oscar winners, but they're not Oscar winners for the thing they're known for, right? There are a bunch of directors who have

one for writing. And so Spike Lee deserves to have the adjective Oscar winner before his name. He should have had it a long time ago. It's going to be for this movie that neither you or I loved. And that, by the way, pity be the dudes whose script was rewritten by Spike Lee and then arbitrated into a shared credit because they knew they get an Oscar out of it, but they do not get within 10 feet of the microphone. But seeing him win was wonderful if you've been a fan, wonderful.

if you're just a fan of like seeing emotional, surprising things happen like that at a word shows. But also it was a reminder. Again, this is a corny observation potentially, but of like the shared culture of Hollywood in the best possible sets. Like, as you said, they have feuded before. They've disagreed about things. Spike Lee walked out when Green Book won and that had to return to a seat.

But he is not, he cares, which is why he's so angry about things and why he's ornery about things within the world of cinema. Obviously, I'm now trying to divorce this conversation from one of politics in the larger world. But he wants to be included. He wants to have a seat at the table. And he wanted to win an Oscar as he should. And I really enjoyed his presence there.

I really enjoyed him being there, you know, joking around from the crowd with Barbara Streisand. Like, he should have been there. He should be there much more often. Yeah. And because he is a crucial part of the movies for us in our lifetime. And it's weird that it took this long. long for him to be recognized and for him to even be invited in. But again, it doesn't matter what he

won for. He won. And I think that's, I think that's terrific. Any other moments you wanted to shout out before we head on to True Detective? Well, I mean, just, you know, I was really happy, the favorite one. I was really happy to see Rachel Wise and Emma Stone's love with Luffy Coleman and yours was crying. Yo, Emma Stone was delightful when Livia won. Yeah, that was awesome. it's such a cool the more I think about that movie the more I think that that might end up being like sneaky the best movie in the year

because it's just note perfect I thought Quarone was great I mean we said it at the time like Roma is not an easy sell and it is a multiple Oscar winner and that's a really good thing I I mean I have to say

I thought it was a pretty good night for guests of the watch I thought a lot of I thought a lot of former guests of our podcast We're doing pretty well up there, from Rami to John Mullaney to Jakey J. Up there in his tucks for Spider-Verse. So I thought, you know, as usual, it just reflects back well on us. You think Jake Johnson regrets not becoming the watch co-host and instead going on to do Spider-Verse?

I have to tell you, I saw, I ran into him, this is life. I ran into him at kids gymnastics the other week, and he definitely seemed like he was fully retired from the business. Like, he definitely had, you know, you know, some people put on the business. baseball cap to like avoid paparazzi. He looked like he just put on the baseball cap because he woke up in the morning. You know, like he was, he was delightful to see him. Yeah. So he's really enjoying this ride.

I think he's very happy about it. How do you feel, is there, is there a cultural reset? Is there anything like after last night, have things changed tectonically as the conversation shifted? I just feel, I personally feel like, then we talked about this last Thursday when we're doing our anticipation index. I was like, let's get into the new shit. Like, even... the non-visual Irishman teaser.

I was like, let's go. Let's go with Fossie Verdon, which had a great teaser last night. All the HBO stuff that got released, the sort of teaser that they did that had Watchmen, VEEP, the Deadwood movie, holy shit. Like, all this stuff that's coming,

like, I'm just like, I'm ready to, I feel it's this weird thing in culture. You're always moving forward, where we always lament the fact that we don't spend time with these TV shows, especially the Netflix shows that go up in a blink and everybody's watched them.

and we're scratching to catch up with them. But it's, it's Oscars night that I feel like that. That's the night I'm like, let's change the channel towards the new thing and let's start this new conversation about the new art that's coming out. I agree with that. I would just say as a final note, though, I felt some of that energy at the Oscars in a way that I really enjoyed. Like Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson coming out, and I'm like, they're movie stars.

Let's see what they're going to do for the next 15 years. Like Ryan Cougler wasn't nominated, but everyone was thanking him and his presence was so clear about what what the opportunities he's given and he's continuing to give to people to change the face of Hollywood like Ludwig Garansson who you know five years ago was doing the score for community on NBC and now I think he's doing the Mandalorian which there's no higher uh no higher there's no higher honor in our business yeah seriously I just thought that there was kind of a glamorous night and I thought that this new generation of younger talent held its own on the stage like even you know, Aquafina and John Malaney, which even if you told me a year ago, like they would be

presenting together at the Oscars, I'd be like, boy, they, it would suggest to me that maybe people had said no, but in fact, they were great and people enjoyed them. And they will probably be on a stage like that together or separately for the next 20 or 30 years. And that's a good thing. All right. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And then Greenwald's going to come back. And we're going to talk really quickly about True Detective season finale. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Bud Light. Did you know not all alcohol products are required to list their ingredients? This was news to me.

Bud Light, though, they're changing the game. They believe that we deserve to know our beer's ingredients, so they put an ingredients label right on the packaging. Bud Light, brewed with hops, barley water, and rice. No corn syrup, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors. Find out what ingredients are in your beer, Bud Light. Enjoy responsibly. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Microsoft Surface.

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it was a really funny experience because I think, you know, me and Jason Concepcion and Sean Yu and the whole Flat Circle crew, we were over at the Ringers Chapel stage getting ready to shoot Flat Circle after the episode. So we didn't get the episode in advance. And at one point, I think Jordan Liggins,

who's our research, the sort of director of research for the Flat Circle, was like, where would you put your... No, Snowden asked me this. Where would you put your anticipation level for this? Like one to ten. And I was like eight.

Eight. I think that they saved up a lot of the juice for the finale and that there's going to be some big twists and all the timelines are going to collide and we're going to get a strong connection to season one. And a lot of this stuff is going to be... It's just going to be an amazing episode with a lot of action and a lot of intrigue.

And it wasn't necessarily that I thought that was the only way it could end, but that was what I kind of interpreted the slow build to be. You know, after the two Sonnier episodes, there was kind of a little bit of a wall, and then I felt like 5, 6, 7 really started to build up. And then 8 wound up being an incredibly divisive

and an incredibly subversive, I think, episode of television. Now, that does not necessarily mean that it was not a bad episode of television, which is a really valid read on that. But I'm still unpacking it because I was going into it being like, hold on to your butts. And then afterwards, Jason and I just sort of sat there and talked about like,

okay, I guess like the real mystery is like the mystery of these, you know, barely held connections we have between one another and throughout our lives. You know, like relationships that we have and the weird things that can happen in your life that can destroy those relationships or strengthen those relationships or what have you. Now, I don't know, so you tell me as someone who watched this after the Oscars with no vested interest,

what did you think? I am surprised ultimately that True Detective Season 3 was a roughly 10-hour, meditative, haunting reflection on how you should always listen to your wife. I never would have expected

that that's what this show was. And I think that there are two ways of looking at it. And I think that because of my sort of, I can't tell if it's because of my casual almost investment week to week in this show, or if it's because I am watching it through different eyes, you know, trying to be a creator myself, I feel much more gentle to it than I think I might otherwise. I know the review of it that I could write.

And I'm not drawn to writing it. Because I do appreciate that after all of the misdirection and all of the hours and all the conversation, what seemed to motivate Nick Pizzolato in this season of television was, as you said, the way time is the real killer in the parts of your life that matter, right? That it was about the marriage. It was about the family. It was about male friendship above all else. That is quite a misdirect from the show we thought we were watching for a number of episodes.

It's also a misdirect from the show we were watching for the last few seasons, which I frankly don't think we're about that at all. I think they were about often spectacle and conspiracy and plot above all else. Yeah, and it was also a misdirection from what happened in the beginning of the episode when they said the sort of little bumper that they run before the episode, focused in on Eliza showing Wayne the website with Marty and Rust from season one on it. And you're kind of like, okay, here we go. we might even get a McConaughey citing and none of those three people wound up being in the episode.

Now, on a purely like nuts and bolts level, I think there were some things that we could criticize here. Yeah. Like the people who done it, such as they did,

are not characters that were even in the first episode. No, they tell it like it's the conjuring. It's like, Isabel this ghost who is wandering these halls, yeah. That's kind of a, that's breaking a rule of mysteries, which is fine to do, but that's sort of a, that's sort of a big one. Two, it's pretty wild that the entire mystery that we, that they spent quite a bit of time exploring. And again, this was an 84 minute finale, was just downloaded to us in a monologue by a character we had barely seen. Which is not completely foreign to the.

mystery novel experience. Correct. There are lots of, like, I mean, almost every James Elroy book, the protagonist finally finds the guy who went missing on page 25, and that guy is like, here's what you need to know about everything that's happened over the last 450 pages. It's Agatha Christie as well. I mean, it's like, let's, I'll explain to you what happened. It's a strange choice for a visual medium, but it's worth noting.

And then ultimately the fact that the last piece of the puzzle was also not given to our main character. It was the ghost of his dead wife literally telling him what happened. It was a little bit like it reminded me a little bit of the movie phone episode of Seinfeld where Kramer's like, why don't you just tell me the movie you'd like to see? those were wild wild choices that I definitely bumped on narratively speaking and then underneath that I think that what ultimately tripped me up about the season was that I'm look I'm ultimately really happy that I went on this on this journey for a number of reasons mostly you know performance based but also for the fact that at the end of the day a writer creator who whose interest

I feel like I've often not been aligned with mine was interested in something that I also am interested. Now, that's a very selfish way of looking at art or television. I'm not saying that's the litmus test for anything. But the fact that he was ultimately making a show about friendship and family and, you know, personal relationships and all that. Like, that's, that was a real curveball that I did not expect. I think ultimately it was undone to some degree by the fact that at the end of the, I keep saying 10 hours because cumulatively, I think that's what it was.

Yeah, I think ultimately it was. Maybe. I don't know who Wayne is or why we spent that much time with him. Well, and I think that to be fair, Amelia gets it that. You know, Amelia is like you're doing what you're doing because you think you learned it in the movies and ultimately you're empty. And that was obviously as cutting as she possibly could be.

But I think that there is, when you're doing as much timeline jumping and I feel like they really got away from practical action. And I don't mean that in set pieces, but I mean that in these guys are rooted in a place are doing a job are completing tasks

and that's how you sort of learn character to me. Like I think that that's a way in which you find out who people are just seeing how they interact and then I thought you could see some stitches on the outs showing last night. I don't know anything about the production

or the process of the late part of the season but I felt like there were a couple of voiceovers that were like trying to stitch together scenes that felt very late in the game and there was a lot of Roland and Wayne sitting in a car

going different places but like with no explanation as to like how two senior citizen men just seemed to be able to pick up the job of police officers with no one noticing after that had been such a major issue over the course of the last 20 years as people being like, don't investigate this case.

Yes. Well, or that the conversation with Mr. Hoyt is ultimately just a conversation that circles and does nothing. Right. You know, it's hard to make, it is incredibly honorable and artistically worthwhile to make a show about how things are ultimately pointless or the struggles we come up as we try to make things matter in this world. It's another thing to actually make that, to pull it off and sell people on it.

And I think that it fowndered a little bit on that. that. And the timeline thing, which is, you know, really interesting for storytelling, I agree, also foundered because we suddenly had a fourth timeline that didn't really add much. The 2005. But in the end, when we're, you know, in an episode that was very, very well-stuffed, let's say, the only things left to show us were things we didn't necessarily need to know that, like, Wayne didn't like being in the typing pool, you know, or that Wayne and Amelia once had a conversation where they were like, we're not sure if we like each other or we should stay married.

Right. Where they just talk about the thing that we've been watching. Like, they showed us and then later they told us. And then for me, the ultimate indicative was I'm not sure if Roland needed an origin story for his love of dogs. Like, I think most people like dogs. I think that that was, so that one of the big sort of, things that people were chewing on on Reddit

was whether or not Roland was gay and whether or not that was supposed to be an under like a sort of an ambiguity or whether or not there were suggestions that Roland was in love with Wayne or that he felt somehow abandoned by Wayne I'm sure Nick Pizzolato was answered that question

somewhere in his Instagram comments which is where he does most of his communicating about true detective but... Is that true? Yeah he goes he just jumps in and he's like Amelia passed away happily in her sleep in 2008. It's like, it's just like,

he's just dropping jewels in there. But, um, the role in character, I thought was maybe the strongest part of the season in some ways because, no, I agree totally. I thought he, it constantly kept me guessing in a good way.

And they did a lot of showing and not telling with him, whereas Marishelow was forced to do a lot of telling. And, you know, I, the more and more I kind of think about it, the more I think this was just way more Terence Malick than it was Alan Pakula or, you know, crime show of choice to just pick, pick a crime director out of nowhere

and say that. It was way more ambient and way more philosophical and reflective. And nowhere is that better on display than the very last shot of the season and possibly even the series. What did you think of that very last moment? I think that you're doing the Lord's work making that comparison to saying that it was more, you know, meditative and Terence Maliki. the problem was that's the type of storytelling that requires a Fukunaga or a Sonia,

or at least, at the very least, a single directorial vision. This season didn't have that. And so it became much more, you know, interrogation scene, interrogation scene, interrogation scene. So the moments of lyricism or poetry that we saw on the screen were more jarring than they ought to have been. I really liked the last shot. Yeah. I really liked it. I mean, it was the coolest thing I had seen.

I mean, it was definitely, I was like, I immediately looked at the time because I was like, oh, my God, are they going to do a Vietnam sequence? And Jason and I even looked at each other and said, did he never come back? But obviously, that's, you know, that's not the case. I think that a lot of people have been saying, this is like him folding back into his mind one last time, you know, as we see. Yes, but I do think that it's a missed opportunity for the visual storytelling to match the written intention. because I wish that we had been left with a clearer stylistic set of decision-making so that when he sort of loses track of where he is with the real Lucy at the end, I knew that that was true or wasn't true.

It felt very like a little bit in between that he either did forget where he was or he decided to let her live in peace. I didn't feel the intention, although clearly there was intention. Similarly, at the end, I wish that there had been a little bit more of a clear, choice that this is what I don't need to be handheld but I would I in terms of what yeah why did Henry keep the piece of paper what was up with Becca crying in the car with him and why mirror the kids the Purcell kids riding away on their bikes with with Henry's kids riding way on their bikes and that being the thing that triggers this sort of last memory that we see Wayne having

there was a lot of like are you just are you not sure? Do you not trust us to handle that? Like, what was sort of the ultimate point there? It felt muddled, which is unfortunate. And I can't stress enough that I think that, you know, I have had hyperbolic reactions to the show in the past. No, I feel like I'm on another planet talking to you about this. Well, I can't tell if I've mellowed or the show has mellowed or both.

But or this is just a, you know, a factor of seeing things. in a different way. I think that, you know, being a critic, I was much less patient with things because there was always more things to watch. And as everyone listening knows, I don't watch anything anymore, so I have plenty of time. No, but genuinely, like, I think that I, what I was trying to chase and watching it was trying to figure out what the intention is, what are they going after, what's the best case version of this. And, you know, if anything, I felt slight frustration when I felt like the show didn't reach it. You know, I think the most successful thing about it was the friendship between them that I didn't feel like the main it didn't that didn't feel like the

focus early enough on you know actually that's not true the first time we meet them when they're shooting rats or whatever there's a real sense of like young men who are friends because they're together not because of any other reason otherwise they would never know each other and I kind of wish we could have stayed on that that there were so many other things to get to and red herrings to introduce that it I lost a little bit yeah I was happy to get some of it back in the end particularly, I guess, I don't know if it was last week that we talked about it the week before, but when the old dogs ride again, like that was probably the show at its best. So the last question I have for you, and we kind of touched on this one,

I laid out my five-point plan for a true detective going forward. But after seeing this episode, do you want another season? Yes and no. I mean, it's interesting, I mean, I'm fascinated by this show now. I'm fascinated by what it was, what it tried to be, and what it seems to be settling into. You know, I guess my answer is yes. I guess I do because I'm really curious. Welcome, brother. But I mean, we're kind of diagnosing, we're diagnosing a creator, natur from the work, which is kind of what we do is a society these days and what we do on this podcast. And I don't, I feel like it's an incomplete diagnosis. I'm curious now

what actually is motivating him and what since every season has felt deeply reactionary. to the one before. I'm curious what the reaction... This one, I mean, the finale felt reactionary to the season itself. The finale was sort of like, you guys, I hope you had fun, you know, with satanic ritual abuse

and the West Memphis 3 and looking up conspiracies from the Midwest in the 1980s and all that stuff. But in the end, it was really just about this guy who in part never fully came back from Vietnam

and the few connections that he made in his life afterwards and how they were altered and saved or put into crisis by this murder. And that was, I don't know whether or not he felt like he needed to sell people on one version of it so that he could do the version he wanted to or whether it was a middle finger or whether he was like, no, it's all part of the same story. And he just, I don't know.

I mean, like, there's too much stuff in that show for it not to be a bat signal to get on the internet and look up stuff and try and figure shit out. I mean, the crooked spiral stuff, all the connections to season one, they were there. That was not people digging. But in the end, it didn't really seem to matter as much as Wayne and Amelia in a bar trying to work shit out. Yeah. What a fascinating thing it was. Yeah.

I think people are going to be like, I'm really curious to see how it ages and I'm very curious to see. He mentioned it in a Pizzolado said in an Entertainment Weekly interview at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the season. He was like, I have an idea for a fourth, but I don't know if I'm going to do it. Andy, what a thoughtful and a lovely conversation. If you had $100 on Andy loving getting into True Detective in 2019, you can collect your winnings. If you had $200 on John Mullaney and Aquafina being on stage at the Oscars like I did. You're rich. Exactly.

Greenwald, thanks so much, man. We'll talk to you on Thursday. Great. This was really a great job, Bernski. It really was. Sometimes I'd just say it. It just felt like it.