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One of the biggest criticisms of True Detective (Season Two) - an eight-episode series that received a serious critical pounding from every angle - is that the story was simply too complex and confusing to follow. A gaggle of tertiary and quaternary characters didn’t have any evident connection to the story. Character motivations were out of place, detached, and unlikely. And the story itself, with dozens of sub-plots woven like the Los Angeles highways frequently filmed as series segues, was somehow too much and too little at the same time. There were a million devices to keep straight, yet many of the details seemed unimportant for the film’s central murder mystery - a mystery which became irrelevant in itself.

But somehow, the show remained watchable. Perhaps it’s the fact it was so self-serious and unapologetic, it bordered on “so bad it’s good” territory. The drama was so overblown and intense in its narcissism, it was practically comedy.

Though there are a dozen directions where one could point fingers of blame at the show’s weaker elements, the complexity of its story, the broad and rushed structure of its presentation, and the consequential lack of viewer investment fused together as one of the season’s greatest combined struggles. There was simply too much happening, too many insignificant details, and too many names with far too little screen time.

“The central story of three very different police officers investigating the death of a corrupt city manager turned out to have enough story in it to fill maybe two or three hours. To compensate for this, Pizzolatto kept tossing more and more things into the season’s story.” - Todd VanDerWerff, Vox

Seemingly innocuous characters would appear once and then be referenced by last-name-only three episodes later, under an apparent assumption the audience would remember who they are. The series should have come with a collection of character flash cards or a Song of Ice and Fire-esque map of families and relations.

How many people forgot about Burriss (James Frain) by the time he showed up to shoot Paul (Taylor Kitsch)? What was Jacob McCandless’s (Jon Lindstrom) connection to the rail corridor deal? How many people remembered Dixon’s (W. Earl Brown) name by the time the detectives realized he was part of the 1992 jewel robbery? What did Pitlor (Rick Springfield) have to do with anything? And for God’s sake, who the hell was Stan?

“Because of the way serialized television works, it’s often tempting to confuse world-building (laying in the background and history of the setting) for storytelling. A good rule of thumb is that if it seems like every other line of dialogue is exposition, you’ve gone too far.” - again, Todd VanDerWerff, Vox

When an audience is detached from the narrative it’s watching, unable to empathize or relate to its characters, and is asked to follow a plot so full of details that it took Slate’s Willa Paskin 4,000 words to summarize, it’s too much of a demand on the memories of its viewers. Both because people as a rule don’t remember facts permanently after hearing them just once or twice, and because most of the viewing audience wasn’t that interested in the majority of True Detective’s minor details.

But that fact leads back to this problem with True Detective’s second season’s structure - you never know what details are going to end up being important, so you’re required to remember everything. The bird mask guy who shot Velcoro (Colin Farrell) is the little boy in the jewel heist picture, who works at the film studio, who Velcoro talked to once in the third episode? Okay. That was five weeks and five hours ago, and has never been mentioned in the interim. Why would anyone remember that? And why does the series think that’s a satisfying reveal for Caspere’s killer? His murder was supposed to be the point of the show. For those who did manage most of the narrative’s various points, that’s not a very satisfying reward.

“The show had so many characters floating around who seemed vaguely important — even if they, like dear, departed Stan, were only referred to by name when they weren’t on-camera — that Bird Mask could have been almost anybody and it would have had the same effect as making him be the film set photographer, whom we hadn’t even seen since episode 3.” - Alan Sepinwall, Hitflix

“Even being charitable toward the absurdly convoluted plot – accepting at face value that our heroes and antihero were navigating a sea of corruption and vice – the payoff felt like a series of scenes featuring characters we either had barely met or hardly remembered.” - Brian Lowry, Variety