Finished True Detective S3.
Season 3 was good. The characters were interesting. However it fell short of S1 because, honestly, the majority of S3 was about people rather than the crime. It's more an exploration of a character through time, and how the case affected his life and his mind.
Which was good because the actors were good. But I did get the feeling, somewhere in the middle of the season, that it was kind of wasting my time and stretching things out so they could have X episodes. The big reveal felt like kind of an anti-climax:
They just walk in to the house 30 years after the crime and basically everything they needed to know was right there. It all wraps up with a nice bow....and then you have another episode after that is basically just "old man has family and friends and memory problems."
I think TD knows how to play its fans. They set up all this weird shit knowing fans will read in to it, and then at least in this season come up with a fairly normal explanation for it all.
It was effective but if they do this again for another season, I may check out. There didn't feel like much of a pay off in S3, but again, it was very much a character-focused narrative and so the character arc was way more important to the show than the nuts and bolts of the crime.
Whatever though, it was a more enjoyable watch than S2 by leaps and bounds.
I suppose I'd rank all the seasons this way: S1, S3, S2. S1 still wins because it had the right blend of: characters you find interesting and care about, a mysterious crime and a surreal edge that kept you guessing exactly what you were dealing with.
It might also be an issue than neither S2 or S3 really have an antagonist. In S1 you see some things from the perspective of the antagonist and that kept you at least somewhat rooted in the actual murder mystery. That's absent in S2 and S3, which really puts all your focus on the detectives and they have to carry water for the whole show. I know the whole gist of the series is that each season is supposed to be different from the others....but so far nothing has been as effective as their first run at it.
I'll be interested to see what they try next.