Nic Pizzolatto must be in no mood to sit on the couch watching the 2019 Oscars. Originally, like everyone else, he could take a good look at what this "farce" that has become more boring over the years can degenerate with a mentality of nothing to do with himself. But what happened at the Kodak Theater did not interest him in the slightest. On the same night, HBO released the season three finale of "True Detective," and as the show's all-time core writer, he seemed to screw it up.
Nick isn't the first to screw up a long-awaited series finale. In 2010, when the glory of the public television network was still alive, the former hegemony ABC decided to put an end to "Lost", which had caused thousands of people and experienced six years of long-distance running. At that time, "Lost" was exhausted and its ratings plummeted. ABC still prepared a five-hour special program "Lost Night". Enthusiastic audiences forced Obama to postpone his first State of the Union address to find out who was behind the island's bizarre oddities.
Then what happened? All came out of anger and resentment at the religious ending, believing that the feelings they had cultivated for six years had been ruthlessly teased and betrayed. Damon Lindelof, the screenwriter of "Lost", has been called "the biggest digger in history" and has not started a new drama for a long time. It wasn't until four years later that he recovered and wrote "The Leftovers" for HBO. A more personal, and at the same time, more ambiguous religious drama. In the same year, the first season of "True Detective" appeared in front of all audiences with a gesture of reigning the world.
In the American drama industry where the script is the first, an excellent screenwriter is the soul of the entire drama. All the dramas that are talked about often have a strong personal touch to the screenwriter. Photography, actors, costumes, props, and even the director have become tools for the screenwriter to express himself, just like the pen and paper in the hand of the writer only serve the story in his mind. Matthew Weiner's Mad Man, and Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad. Nick, of course, knew the feeling of being in command, like God. The aura of the first season of "True Detective" still hangs over him, but today it looks more like a curse.
In 2010, Nick Bezzolatto and his family moved to Los Angeles to officially start his career as a screenwriter. Before that, he taught creative writing at a small liberal arts college in Indiana while writing his first novel. Born into a poor Catholic family in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1975, he chose to leave home at the age of 17. He then earned a BA in English and Philosophy from Louisiana State University, ready to pursue a career in writing. However, the unexpected death of his mentor made him give up the idea of writing and relocated to Austin, Texas, where he worked as a bartender in a bar for four years. It wasn't until 2003 that he picked up the pen again and took a creative writing class at the University of Arkansas.
After coming to Los Angeles, Nick's first job was writing the screenplay for the American TV series The Killing. It's a project of pay-TV network late-show AMC TV, a remake of the Danish TV series of the same name. The first season of "Murder" was well-received, notable for its grim style and slow narrative pace, but Nick wasn't happy on the set. He didn't want to just be a writer and meet the demands of others, but wanted to be able to lead the overall situation. Having only written two episodes of the script, he left the crew shortly after the second season began.
In 2012, Nick finally got that coveted opportunity to write True Detective for HBO. This time he wrote all eight episodes on his own, serving as executive producer and in a supporting role. The first season of True Detective began airing on HBO in January 2014 and was an immediate explosive success. When the finale aired eight weeks later, frenzied audiences even crowded HBO's then-streaming service "HBO GO." Relying on his own creation of "True Detective", Nick once again performed a good show that became famous overnight, from an unknown writer to a first-line screenwriter.
In 2014, the entire American drama industry was at a historical crossroads. A year ago, streaming giant Netflix officially announced the launch of its own original series in an attempt to expand its territory. In just a few months, Netflix has launched such high-quality, well-known series as "House of Cards" (House of Cards) and "Orange Is the New Black" (Orange Is the New Black), including David Hollywood movie stars such as David Fincher, Kevin Spacey, and Jodie Foster participated. It can be described as loud and aggressive.
The traditional five broadcast networks are rapidly losing audiences due to limitations in subject matter and program duration. HBO, the former king of premium channels, has had a tough time, and The Sopranos hasn't produced a good enough serious drama for many years. At the Emmys and Golden Globes, rising stars AMC and Showtime have dominated the charts year after year with "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," and "Homeland." The Walking Dead) is crushed by monsters. HBO desperately needed an original series to prove they were young, and True Detective was just what they needed.
The success of "True Detective" is all-round, thanks to Nick's profound literary skills. Never before had such a serious and literary episode appeared on the TV screen. Like many Americans growing up in the '80s, Nick admits he was heavily influenced by cartoonist Alan Moore. It also explains that his episodes are always filled with corrupt cities, brutal murders, and dark heroes who tirelessly seek the truth. He set the background of the episode to Louisiana where he lived in his childhood, a dark country that is hot and humid all year round, corrupt and backward, and breeds crime.
Detective Rustin Cohle has become the most famous nihilist in TV history thanks to the virtuoso performance of Matthew McConaughey, who was just crowned an Oscar winner for "Dallas Buyers Club" the same year. And skeptics, full of puzzling philosophical arguments. Another protagonist, Marty (Woody Harrelson), subtly became the audience's eyes, witnessing the process of Rust becoming a god as he continued to intersperse the two timelines.
Like all other successful series, a second season of True Detective was quickly put on the agenda. This time, Nick still wrote all eight episodes, and HBO still brought in big names like Colin Farrel, Rachel McAdams and Vince Vaugh . All hope that True Detective will recreate the glory of The Sopranos and recapture the soon-to-be-lost crown for HBO. In the summer of 2015, the much-anticipated second season was launched, but it received extremely dismal reviews. Neither critics nor audiences are interested in the new season's story. After leaving the swamps of Louisiana and whispering to Matthew McConaughey, it seemed like Nick had lost his own magic. The three storylines of the three protagonists are carefully choreographed to appear complicated and messy, and the tough and realistic urban style lacks charm after all compared to the psychedelic southern towns.
After going through a torment from heaven to hell, HBO decided to hide "True Detective" and let Nick spend more time polishing the script. This is also a risky decision. Temporarily leaving the public eye means that the popularity will quickly subside. No one can guarantee how many audiences with weakened memory will be saved by the appeal of the show when it returns. During this dormant time, little news about Nick came out. He worked on the screenplay for "The Magnificent Seven" from The Seven Samurai, and then wrote the screenplay for the film "Galveston," which adapted him 's first novel. Neither movie received much response, and the new story of "True Detective" is still a long way off.
It wasn't until three months ago that Nick Bezzolatto came back with his True Detective. At this time, the American drama industry has undergone earth-shaking changes compared with 2014, and the era of the gods has come. After the end of "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men", no series has the capital to sweep the army. The decline of traditional TV networks has become settled, and the loss of audiences is irreversible. Netflix is still expanding its reach without real recognition during awards season. The newer streamers Amazon and Hulu are spending like crazy, trying to build their own empires. Apple and Disney, who were watching from the sidelines, were staring at each other, ready to join the battle at any time. HBO's "Game of Thrones" (Game of Thrones) has captured a large audience, but its reputation has been declining.
They wanted to follow the "True Detective" template for some new series, but neither "Sharp Objects" nor "The Night Of" performed well enough. Meanwhile "True Detective" pioneered "anthology" miniseries that are becoming more and more popular. Short, stand-alone episodes like "American Horror Story" and "American Crime Story" have replaced the dozens of episodes of the past with protracted and disconnected episodes as audiences. their new favorite. Whether the new "True Detective" can return the king, everyone has to put a question mark.
On the surface, the third season of True Detective shares too many similarities with the first. The story also begins with the protagonist's recollection, and is also a cross-narrative of multiple timelines (the number has changed from two in the first season to three), and coincidentally even starring Mahershala Ali ( Mahershala Ali) won the Oscar for acting. Nick seems to be trying to replicate the success of the first season with a formula, at least until the finale.
The story originally took place in Arkansas in 1980. Unlike Louisiana, which was hot and humid in the first season, it was depressed and deserted. After the abolition of apartheid, the gap between blacks and whites remained deep. Wayne Hays, a black scout returning from the Vietnam War, is tasked with investigating the disappearance of a sibling. In the following decades, the investigation of the case has been suspended and restarted due to various irresistible reasons, but it has always missed the truth. Until 2014, the elderly Wayne was still living in the shadow of the case.
If it just simply met the needs of the audience and copied the successful elements of the first season in a new way, then the third season of "True Detective" will never be criticized today. In fact, Nick is by no means a writer who just plagiarizes himself. After the success of the first season, his ambition is not just to write a wonderful detective story as simple as that. After clearing the similar fog on the surface, you can find that the first and third seasons of "True Detective" are completely different.
In the first season, although the protagonist Rust appears to be an agnostic deeply troubled by modernity and plunged into nothingness, the thirst for truth has not wavered in decades. The story follows the classic process of victory over evil, and the story of an unpopular and unfamiliar protagonist saving the world has been familiar and accepted by the public. When the final puzzle is revealed and Rust solves the case and becomes a "god", the audience's sense of satisfaction can spontaneously burst without any thought, without any doubts and confusion.
The third season, on the other hand, took a more adventurous path. Compared to Rust, who is full of misanthropy, Wayne seems to be closer to a normal person. He has his own children, his own family, but no philosophical beliefs. In the 2014 timeline he is not even a hero, but an old man who walks tremblingly and is suffering from amnesia. What he really needs to fight is not the outside world, but the uncertain memory and the vague self-identity. This is clearly a more modern literary motif.
Memories and oblivion replace the story of the struggle between good and evil as the core of Nick's message this season. This also explains why there are so many ambiguities in the entire episode, why all the clues laid out have not been fully concluded, and why the revealing of the truth has become bland. In the face of vague memories, no facts are certain, everything is in the fog. In the ending scene, Wayne finally found the missing girl, but because of amnesia he forgot his purpose. This is irresistible passive forgetting. And the girl in front of him has started a new life, actively choosing to forget the tragic past. The case that spanned decades has come to an end. The two people face each other and stop talking, and they look at different interpretations of forgetting behind their backs.
It turns out audiences didn't like Nick's carefully crafted, character-driven, internalized expression of a concept, just as they didn't like the internalized ending of "Lost" nine years ago. Nick overestimated audience acceptance and underestimated the development of the television industry. Or to put it another way, even in the golden age of American drama, the television screen is still not suitable for complex interpretations of modern themes such as "self", "memory" and "forgetting". Even with a pay-TV network's savvy audience, the one-episode-a-week approach makes it difficult to keep viewers engaged and active at all times. They want definitive answers, not ambiguous questions.
That's the conundrum for Nick Bezzolatto: how can a creator with a strong self-expression build on success without getting bogged down in self-repetition. Most of the time, the creator and his audience are on opposite sides. After knowing what they like, audiences tend to think of more similar works rather than better ones. This inevitably limits the creator's play.
For Nick, the third season of True Detective was a try. It had a good beginning, but not a good ending.
This article was first published on the official account of Deep Focus DeepFocus, and the text and pictures have been slightly changed.
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