Six things that might actually be bloody going on in True Detective

Yeah no, the bit where he gets shot by a crow? That's a metaphor for ... I want to say the war in Iraq? Don't worry, I'm all over this.

Look, I lied. I'm quite enjoying season two of True Detective. But I don't know what's going on. Like, to a literal degree. I don't know who any of them are looking for or why, or who the bloke was who got his eyes burned out, or what Taylor Kitsch's character's name is. Or Rachel McAdams' character's name, come to think of it.

I find it oddly watchable though. And not in the same way that when I was a kid I enjoyed Bond films because even though I didn't know what the Cold War was, which by the way I now 100% do, there was enough shooting and sexing to see me through. No, it's more the same sort of experience as when I watch a film like Gus Van Sant's Gerry, in which nothing happens for long periods but I just let it wash over me and enjoy the momentary sensory collapse. Like meditating or watching the snooker.

I have theories though.
Vince Vaughn is looking for a woman called Linda like in the song Looking for Linda



This seems to me an obvious and self-evident truth.
Rachel McAdams is the ghost of her own face


Following this week's revelation that she got nonced up in the woods by a hippy, Rachel McAdams' character, er, Jane ... Janeson, is actually haunting her own face or maybe it's haunting her, like the ghost of a little girl once a regular in sickly infant beauty pageants, who then succumbed to a pan fire in the early hours of Shrove Tuesday some years ago.
Taylor Kitsch is just playing Tim Riggins again


Even going so far as to recreate the classic Riggins "wake up with a hangover and groan before realising you're late for an appointment" move which decorated every episode of Friday Night Lights, Kitsch is in fact just reprising the character. And seeing as I don't know the name of the guy he's playing, it could be Tim Riggins just as easily as any other. Look out for the finale, in which he gets arrested for burying a stolen car and takes the rap for his brother before Coach Taylor saves him somehow, I forget.
It was all the mayor's dream


The mayor of whichever town it is, whose name I don't know, is a drunk and when Frank goes to see him to ask him something about a guy or possibly a woman or another sentient creature or inanimate object, he is asleep in his chair. Is it outlandish to speculate that the entire season is the mayor's dream and he'll wake up halfway through the final episode in time for us to sit through a meeting about proposed district boundary changes? No it isn't.
Kelly Reilly will at some point do something


Rather than just lounge around in her dressing gown with a load of smoky eyeshadow on and sporadically ask Vince Vaughn if he remembered to put the bins out, wondering all the while why they bothered casting an actor of her standard to do this.
Colin Farrell and his son aren't watching Friends, they're watching True Detective


Yeah? They're watching themselves. I know. Possibly the state-appointed monitor for his visitation should put a stop to this, but it is very probable that Colin and his boy are watching True Detective season two. And they're a week ahead of us, so they know they're going to be murdered in a car, which is why they're staying on the sofa, because if they don't get in a car they can't be murdered in one, like in that episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer tells Lister he's seen a future echo of his death and Lister takes his hat off so he can't be killed wearing it. And also they're watching the mayor's dream.
How many more episodes are there to go? Like, two? Fine, bring it. Can we have another big shoot-out though please? It's the only bit I was confident I understood. They were shooting the Yellow King, right?