True Detective Season 2 Stan Review

“He talked about you all the time. I don’t think you knew him at all.”

Ouch. That line is the thesis of the entire season. In the grand machinery of corruption, nobody sees the cogs. Not even the man turning the wheel. In a season obsessed with fathers and sons (Ray and his boy, Frank and his lost fertility), Stan is the ultimate forgotten child of the noir genre. He doesn’t get a cool death scene. He doesn’t get a final speech. He gets a closed-casket funeral and a widow who will spend the rest of her life wondering why her husband’s boss can’t even fake a tear. true detective season 2 stan

Then she drops the knife:

We see him in the background of half a dozen scenes. He hands Frank a file. He stands in a doorway. He nods. “He talked about you all the time

And when he dies, ask yourself: Did anyone in that show really notice? In the grand machinery of corruption, nobody sees the cogs

Frank pauses. He literally cannot answer. After ten years of loyalty, Stan’s entire job description has been reduced to a shrug.