Too many cyclical discussions about parenthood, virtue and despair, not enough actual detecting for me. I get that this is a show about the detectives themselves and not so much the case, but when the case becomes completely irrelevant to the whole story the \’it\’s not about the case\’ thing comes across as a cheap \’get-out-clause\’ for the writer.

The actual story was also, bizarrely, incredibly convoluted and somehow simultaneously spare, to the point of almost being merely an empty vessel in which to throw the characters. S1 worked so well because the plot was much fuller, the mystery much more of a key component of the show, that when you throw Rust and Marty into it they\’ve got to untangle themselves from the web to solve the mystery. S2 felt like a lot of the \’mystery\’ was just extraneous details, ones which the detectives could only ever clutch at and never quite reach. Which is why, when the \’mystery\’ was finally solved it felt so empty for me.

That said, I don\’t think the series was a complete flop. Farrell and McAdams both did well, and special mention must go to T Bone Burnett for another really atmospheric soundtrack – yes, Lera Lynn\’s segments were probably too frequent without actually doing anything, but her songs were very evocative of the smoky, corrupted city of Vinci. It\’s just a shame that they were probably the thing most revealing of the landscape – everything else about the city felt rather stale, borrowed from L.A. Confidential and other pulp/noir classics.

If only Cary Fukunaga had stayed…