'True Detective' Detective: A Midseason Massacre

Warning: This recap contains storyline and character spoilers for this week’s episode of True Detective.

We should be careful what we ask for: We spent the first 45 minutes of Sunday’s mostly uneventful True Detective hoping for a little action — and then we got it, in the form of an extended (and very bloody) gun battle that left cops, criminals, and innocent bystanders dead. Ray, Ani, and Paul were visibly shaken afterwards… and so were we.

But are we any closer to finding out who killed Ben Caspere? Let’s flip on our visor siren and go digging for clues in episode 4’s storylines.

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Frank’s still struggling with his wife over having a baby (he rejects adoption because “I don’t take on someone else’s grief”), but he doesn’t have time for domestic issues; he’s too busy shaking down his old business associates for extra cash to compensate for Caspere’s death. All this clumsy strong-arming is gonna come back to bite him, right? Anyway, he’s back to running drugs out of his nightclub — which has no chance of ending badly.

And Paul’s still struggling with his sexuality: He wakes up after spending a drunken (and intimate) night with his old war buddy. The guy reassures him it’s fine: “Be what you want. It ain’t bad.” (That’s what we’re saying!) But Paul can’t handle it, and when his old girlfriend Emily tells him she’s pregnant, he spontaneously pops the question, telling her he loves her. Her reply: “I guess I love you, too.” Yay…? Don’t they look happy, guys?

Ani’s got some issues, too: She’s been hit with a formal complaint of sexual misconduct by that guy she slept with, Steve — who turns out to be her subordinate, so she’s suspended pending an investigation. And she visits her webcam-girl sister Athena, who assures Ani she’s just doing it to save up to go to CalArts. She does mention she’s refused to do some “real hooking” parties, too; might this somehow connect to the weird sex stuff Caspere was wrapped up in?

We know there’s more to learn about the creepy Dr. Pitlor: Chessani’s daughter Betty says her mom went to him for schizophrenia, and ended up killing herself. And Ani’s guru dad Elliot knew Dr. Pitlor… and Caspere, too, as it turns out. He took some seminars at Elliot’s retreat. Ani blurts out: “Jesus, that’s some f–king coincidence.” (We’ll say!) Could Ani’s enlightened dad be hiding some dark secrets? Jack Donaghy was right!

Surprisingly, Ray actually has the best time of it among the main characters this week. He gets to offer Paul a swig of vodka from his glovebox full of vice (“Pick a cure”), and spend time with his son Chad before creepily vanishing into the bushes. And he has a nice big green and black aura, too! Everything’s coming up Ray!

But overall, despite a few intriguing breadcrumbs here or there, this week’s episode was a bit of a snooze — that is, until Paul found Caspere’s watch at a pawn shop and ID'ed prints on it: Ledo Amarilla, a pimp with a folder full of priors. The thinking is, one of his working girls spent the night with Caspere and tipped Amarilla off that he had a lot of valuables ripe for stealing. They ripped Caspere off, and killed Caspere in the process. But that doesn’t explain the genital mutilation. Or the eye-burning. Or Ray getting shot with riot bullets. Or a lot of things.

Still, the cops track Amarilla down to a seedy warehouse, and Ani, Ray, and Paul lead a well-armed raid to bring him in. Only when they approach the warehouse, a shooter with a machine gun pops up in a window, mowing down a pair of cops and sending the rest scrambling. A chaotic firefight ensues, with the cops taking heavy fire and Paul finally shooting the gunman while Ray and Ani rush in.

More bad guys (including Amarilla) exit the building, pile into an SUV, and speed away, with Ani in hot pursuit. And why is she running straight after an SUV with a man hanging out of it firing a machine gun at her? You’re not invincible, Ani!

The SUV careens into a bus full of passengers, and then it gets really bloody, as the men spray bullets into innocent bus passengers and a crowd of protesters nearby. After a lot more people get shot, Amarilla takes a man hostage, holding a gun to his head while Ray and Paul close in. Finally (and confusingly), Amarilla shoots the hostage, and Ray and Paul put about a dozen bullets in him. The fight is over. They have their man… or do they?

You know, it’s supposed to be an entirely new story, but Season 2’s structure is actually very similar to last season’s so far: The detectives are working a strange murder case, they get a clue that leads to a violent firefight, and the case is seemingly closed… but since there are four episodes left, we know it’s not that simple.

Ani even asks Ray in next week’s preview: “Do you really think we cleared the Caspere case?” After all, Dr. Pitlor is still out there. And we haven’t gotten to the bottom of Mayor Chessani’s involvement, either. And you just know Frank’s criminal enterprise is going to dovetail with the investigation at some point. No, we’re not done here, folks. Not — if you’ll excuse the expression — by a long shot.

Loose Clues:

* Listening back to it, Mayor Chessani’s “Let’s be careful out there” to the cops before their raid sounds almost taunting. Did he tip off Amarilla in hopes of cutting off this investigation before it points to him?

* We were struck by this image of three circles, first in the map of environmentally contaminated sites Caspere visited before his death, and then a pair of coffee stains and a coffee cup on the table in front of Frank before he met Roy from The Office:

What does it mean? Oh, we have no idea — but we wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to implicate Caspere’s real killer.

* RIP, Ray’s schlubby partner Dixon, who took a fatal head shot in that gun battle. Guess Ani will have to find someone else to treat her like dirt from now on.

* Mayor Chessani’s daughter Betty, who tells Ray and Ani that her dad is “a very bad person” at the medical marijuana dispensary? She’s played by Emily Rios… aka Jesse’s ill-fated girlfriend from Breaking Bad! Let’s hope she gets to lighten up with a silly comedy after this, because these shows are heavy.

* We weren’t keeping count, but Ani must’ve said the F-word a hundred times in this episode. Boy, Regina George has got a mouth on her!

* Frank’s Vocabulary Lesson of the Week: He actually asked his henchman Blake if he knew what the word “louche” means. It means “not reputable or decent,” for the record. But yes, we had to look it up.

* It’s a shock to see Ray without his mustache in the preview for next week. Why would he shave off that magnificent thing? That’s the biggest mystery of all.

True Detective airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.