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It’s time for this season to stop being a flat circle. Review by Brandon Wolfe It would seem that rumors of Ray Velcoro’s death were greatly exaggerated, which is something the Internet tends to do. The truly rumpled detective, it turns out, was blasted twice at close range with “rubber buckshot,” leaving him with light bruising and some cracked ribs, but otherwise no worse for wear. This is, of course, patently ridiculous. Whatever the form of ammunition, the blasts we saw Velcoro absorb would have almost certainly been fatal, or at the very least would have resulted in devastating bodily injury. Also, if the mysterious parties who killed Ben Caspere, among others, were as ruthless as we’ve been led to think, then why would they cut Velcoro a break like that? The net result of his shooting stands as a really cheap cliffhanger ending and a crushing blow to the show’s own internal logic. For what is thought of as a high-caliber prestige show – or what was once thought of in those ter

The series is back, but without all its key ingredients. Review by Brandon Wolfe Anthology series seem to work at cross purposes with the modern appeal of television. For bygone shows like The Twilight Zone , the format made perfect sense on an episodic basis, allowing for the telling of a different mindbending tale each week, but for most viewers today, TV characters are seen as buddies to spend a few years checking in on, to watch grow and evolve. We become attached to these fictional people and enjoy spending 30-60 minutes of our week in their company. Their lives become extensions of our own. It’s one of the unique traits of television over films and books, that experience of observing characters on a weekly basis over an extended period of time. The anthology format is antithetical to this. By reshuffling the deck, that sense of intimacy and familiarity is lost. This is the approach that HBO’s True Detective has opted to take in its second season. Gone are detectives Rust Co