The Conway Twitty impersonator lip syncing “The Rose” deified by the David Lynchian purple blue nebula, may superficially seem like a cheap dressed up redneck mind-fuck, Lone-Star laced with LSD, as season two intentionally commits a slow suicide into the oblivious junkyard of one-hit wonders; not to mention the trippy and densely codified dialog between Velcoro  (Colin Farrell) and his father. But it challenges the audience to lift its eyelids and contemplate a different and deeper sphere of influence. The ditty “The Rose” defines love as a flower, which grows with courage into spring with little sunlight through the bleak winter or, in other words, an endless trial–the song is about change.

With this trippy set-up droning on in the background and dissecting the conversation between father and son, we begin to see True Detective’s hidden work. The symbolic language his father uses in reference to Velcoro paling in size to the enormous trees and coming out dead without “grit” introduces a developing momentum, one that seems each character will experience.

Velcoro’s faux-death bait and switch format may seem like a bad hand job but it’s really consistent with the theme TD is aiming for as the entire episode is viewed through the lens of Velcoro’s relationship with his father. In the previous episode, Velcoro’s secret enforcer was dissembled in a black bird head. A couple scenes later, to no surprise, we discover Velcoro epitomizes an unhealthy lifestyle as his doctor asks him if he even wants to live. But Velcoro awakens with a straightened perspective as he drinks water instead of whiskey with Frank (Vince Vaughn), refuses to accept bribe money from his wife during their custody battle, and looks for wiggle room out of the bad cop routine during the mayor’s roundtable.

Velcoro is grateful for his second chance. Thus, the black bird head represents death, which could swoop down at any moment it chooses and take his life. In conjunction with other unfolding events, we realize darker anonymous forces are shifting the set pieces, either as disciples of Caspere or among a deeper ring of vice that extends beyond our expectations.

His father is a representation of death, albeit, in an internalized form, a retired cop desensitized and vanquished oiled in booze, which is a novicaned and projected logical conclusion of Velcoro. What’s also significant about this scene is his father’s badge frozen in a transparent cube made home in a receptacle. His badge fated to a clear cube suggests that virtue, justice, morality, and ethics are stuck in a vacuum–visible, but we can either praise it or waste it. Thus, season two’s tagline, “we get the world we deserve.”

Frank starts to unwind disparately squeezing an old colleague’s tit for money as he loses his holdings and caving into recidivist tendencies. Frank’s papier mache analogy carries into the episode manifested by the failed in vitro fertilization with his wife.

Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) also suffers impotence grounded in a closet homosexual escapade. His former combat companion tries to open up discussing their therapy and how the idea of accepting the past allows one to cope with the present. But Woodrugh shuts it down, as Bez (Rachel McAdams) grapples with commitment issues.

As each character will collide with their demons so will DaVinci purge itself of its diseases.

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For prior Silver Screen Riot True Detective coverage, find archive reviews below:

TRUE DETECTIVE Season 2 Episode 1 Review “The Western Book of the Dead”
TRUE DETECTIVE Season 2 Episode 2 Review “Night Finds You”

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