'True Detective' Detective: Case Not Even Close to Closed

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

Previously on True Detective: A whole bunch of people we’ve never met got killed in a shootout that didn’t make a whole bunch of sense. Now that our Tragic Trio of cops have had a week to catch their breath, it’s time to assess the damage. Was Ledo Amarilla really the guy who killed Ben Caspere? (Of course he wasn’t. We’re only halfway through the season!)

But we’re not alone in asking: At least three characters wonder aloud this week if Amarilla is really the culprit — which is a pretty good indication that he isn’t. Meanwhile, things got a lot more complicated on a number of fronts, so let’s dive into episode 5 and sift through all the long speeches for clues.

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We pick up in the bloody aftermath of last week’s shootout, aka the Vinci Massacre. Actually, as we learn from a news report Frank is conveniently listening to, 66 days have passed since the shootout, and things are different. No-mustache different!

Frank and his wife are splitting up, judging by the moving boxes stacked up in his house. Ray has quit the Vinci PD (“Better to walk before they make you run”) along with his facial hair, and now works security for Frank. Paul’s wearing a suit and is no longer working in the field. And Ani’s banished to the evidence room and attending mandatory sexual harassment training — where she goes off on a big rant about the “length” and “girth” of male genitalia, so she’s not exactly grasping the concept.

Paul tells his trailer-trash mom he’s getting married, and she’s thrilled! Just kidding; she thinks it’s a terrible idea. He’s too handsome to get married, or something. But things really go south when Paul discovers his mom has taken the 20 grand in cash he “brought back” (stole?) from Afghanistan. He goes ballistic on her, and she returns fire, blaming him for being born and ruining her dancing career. She also alludes to his “weirdness” (i.e. his gayness), and he storms out after calling her a “f–king poisoned… cooze!“ Yes, we went back and double-checked with closed-captioning; he said "cooze.”

Awww… another beautiful family moment, brought to you by True Detective.

Speaking of which: Ray is in family court trying to get custody of his son. His ex-wife drops the big one: She wants a paternity test. If Ray’s going to win custody, he’ll need a lot more money for lawyers, so he approaches Frank for more work, and Frank has him tail his shady henchman Blake to see what he’s up to. Plus, the state’s attorney comes calling to see if Ray can help Paul and Ani reopen the Caspere case… and she’ll help him out in his custody fight if he does.

Ray agrees, and when he agrees to something, he doesn’t mess around: He accosts the creepy Dr. Pitlor in his clinic late at night and throws him around his office looking for more dirt on Caspere’s “hooker parties.”

Pitlor spills the beans: Chessani’s son helps set up these parties, and they have a boatload of blackmail material on some very influential people from them. A point echoed by big-shot land investor Jacob McCandless, who offers to throw some prime real estate on the high-speed rail line Frank’s way if he can recover a hard drive full of “home movies” from these parties that Caspere had when he died. And Ani also asks her webcam-girl sister if she can still get an invite to work one of these “hooker parties.” Bottom line: This is HBO; odds are we’ll be seeing a “hooker party” in all its glory soon enough.

Even though she’s not technically a detective at the moment, Ani’s still looking for that missing maid from the premiere; the maid’s sister received a mysterious packet of photos, along with a party invite. The photos include a shot of some rare blue diamonds — ones that happened to disappear from the Caspere case evidence locker. And when Paul asks a local dealer about the blue diamonds, he says another cop was in here asking about them months ago: our dear departed schlub, Teague Dixon. So did Dixon make off with the diamonds before getting killed last week? We may have underestimated that guy.

The trail leads to Ani and Paul checking out a secluded cabin in the woods. Ani follows the flight of a few carrion birds to what we can only describe as a “torture shack”: a barren room with a chair adorned with duct-tape restraints and blood spray on the walls. Could this be where Caspere’s genitals met the wrong end of a shotgun?

Meanwhile, a disturbingly large amount of screen time this week went towards Frank’s marital woes, which we just can’t manage to care about. His wife Jordan doesn’t love that he’s back selling drugs and girls out of his nightclub again, and she tells him the truth: She’s the one who can’t have kids, after three “operations” (read: abortions). Frank talks about his “design” so much, he must be binge-watching Hannibal:

Jordan wants him to reconsider adoption (remember, he likened it to “taking on someone else’s grief”), and even says an adoption could’ve saved Frank from his own effed-up childhood. Frank tears up (!), and the two reach a sweet reconciliation. But again, this whole storyline just feels like it’s from a different show; unless her abortions were performed by Dr. Pitlor, we don’t see any of Jordan’s story tying back to the main mystery in any meaningful way. So why are we hearing about it?

Well, it does tie back a little bit this week, because Frank is snuggling in bed with his wife, fantasizing about buying a farm and growing organic produce, when there’s a violent knock on the door. It’s Ray, who just found out his wife’s rapist — who we assumed he killed years ago — is alive, and was just arrested. Ray seemed to be confused by this news; he’d know if he hadn’t killed the guy, right? So he confronts Frank: “You and me need to talk.”

We think we know what’s going on here: Ray did kill someone he thought was his wife’s rapist, based on Frank’s information — but it wasn’t. So who did he kill? How did Frank benefit? And for God’s sake, when is Ray going to grow that mustache back? Just three episodes left to get some answers… we hope.

Loose Clues:

* One of the high-priced lawyers representing that thinly-veiled caricature of Lindsay Lohan in her allegations against Paul? He was played by Matt McCoy, who just masterfully played disbarred attorney Pete Monahan this season on Silicon Valley. He knows a thing or two about binding arbitration! And inserting tampons soaked in grain alcohol into one’s rectum.

* There were a number of laugh-out-loud ridiculous lines this week, but none more so than this one, which Vince Vaughn somehow delivered with a straight face:

Please tell us this season’s blooper reel has ten takes of Vaughn and Colin Farrell busting up after that line. (And please tell us this season has a blooper reel.)

* And Frank’s Vocabulary Lesson of the Week just preceded that line: “It stymies my retribution.”

* Mayor Chessani calls Frank “boychick” at one point, which immediately brought to mind Boardwalk Empire’s Philly butcher Manny Horvitz, who called Jimmy Darmody the same thing. Manny ended up killing Jimmy’s wife and participating in Jimmy’s murder, so for Frank’s sake, let’s hope things turn out a little better for “boychick” this time.

* During his dinner with Emily’s mom, Paul came up with a foolproof method for surviving an evening with your in-laws:

* When Ray drops by to beat him up, Dr. Pitlor is reading a book by Carlos Castaneda, who was famous for his works on mystical shamanism and psychedelic drugs. Hmmm… could that tie into the shared history Pitlor has with Ani’s mystical shaman father Elliot?

* Burning question: California banned smoking in bars two decades ago, so how are Ray and Ani allowed to light up in the Purgatory Bar? It doesn’t make a shred of sense. But like so much of this season of True Detective: It doesn’t have to make sense; it just has to look cool.

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