i think i said last week they are going for a david lynch theme and the problem is there is only one david lynch. when a show has to constantly "borrow" other people's ideas and styles its usually not a good sign of quality. there is a difference between paying homage and just flat out theft
they just finished their best season ever and its still a bad show. the acting is mostly terrible, the zombies are what saves it.
Bah! Daryl is what saves TWD. He's so dreamy I got a picture of him at Ross. GF said we could hide it in the bedroom if I wanted. I said no, it's going in the living room!
But, yeah, TWD gets a ton of shit because it randomly does dumb shit they don't have to bother doing. All in all, it does what it aims to do pretty well. Just like David Lynch stuff is weird and sometimes cryptic, but always deliberate and I never just thought shit was there randomly or happened to be poorly thought out or unskillfully executed. Someone brought up Quinton Tarantino and the idea of thinly veiled satire, or re-hashing cheeseball genres in a better crafted, more entertaining way, which is cool because (at times) Tarantino executes his vision; you may not enjoy it, but you can say 'okay, I see exactly what he was trying to do and he accomplished it.'
Is season 2 of True Detective accomplishing what it aims to accomplish? Is it doing what it does very well? Is it succeeding in living up to it's vision?
I personally think no, not at all. And the fact people are just throwing excuses at it like 'it's supposed to be satire' or 'it's intentionally giving the finger to all the hipster fans' or that the dialog is intentionally 'bad' to create a certain mood (which are all arguments I've seen/heard people make) is kind of proof. Nobody really knows what they're trying to do, or why they're trying to do it. Sure, you may still enjoy it, but I don't think they have a concrete vision that we can see unfolding and trust they're executing.
Oh, meanwhile, speaking of borrowing ideas. I don't completely buy it and think it's a bit overblown, but people can google 'true detective plagiarism' if they have concerns. It's a fine line using another writers main themes, ideas or philosophies, especially when in a fiction work set in the 'real' world where in theory that character could have been influenced by that other writer, etc. But it's typically an accepted and supported practice when you're open about it. Some people doubt whether PizzaLotto was open about it, and claim he only cites Ligotti after being pushed into it are pretty valid. But, shrug, the biggest problem with being influenced by another writer is that it only becomes an issue or point of contention when you weren't good enough to reprocess it into something unique.
People do this all the time with Bukowski, here they think if you're drunk and rambling enough you'll get famous(ish) like Buk, when in reality Bukowski read a ton, was a student of his craft, and was very precise and deliberate in what he was doing and portraying, even when it was the image of a lazy, drunk, out of control hack. Trying to replicate that just makes amateur writers look like cheap ripoffs.
Is the real offense that the writer 'borrowing' from others is doing it, or that they aren't doing it well enough to stand on their own?
