HBO’s True Detective is the kind of show that makes casual viewing impossible. It’s deeply layered, full of imagery that serves as clues to the program’s central mystery, and zips back and forth through time, recalling past episode details. Fans of True Detective are a diehard bunch who have been captivated since episode one, patiently anticipating whatever awaited them, but unfortunately during last night’s season finale, the strain on HBO’s streaming service was so much so that the site couldn’t handle such popular demand and promptly crashed.
If you’re more of a Rust Cohle than a Marty Hart, you’d be able to handle the inconvenience with lots of wandering philosophical rants about time being a flat circle, eventually connecting somehow to an explanation about what kind of men drink Lone Star Beer. But since True Detective became something of a phenomenon over the past 2 months, there’s probably a decent chance you handled the outage with lots of yelling and breaking of household objects.
The bright side of all of this for HBO is that it all but proves such a massive hit deserves a second season; which series creator and sole writer, Nic Pizzolatto, is already in the process of crafting. Word has yet to come down on who will star in the show’s second season, what possible mysteries could await, where it will take place and if the Yellow King will have a distant cousin that pops up to confound viewers for 8 more episodes – but only that ominous flat circle of time will tell.
With True Detective being the mind-boggling, hard to watch pulp drama that it is, maybe it’s a good thing we’re getting a little break until diving back into the darkness once again. Maybe a little time will let new viewers catch on to the next big TV show phenomena, bringing in even more ratings for the next impending season – let’s just hope HBO’s servers can handle the hype this time. The last thing we need is another outrageous crash just when all is about to be explained!