True Detective Calls Cut On A Disastrous Season 2, Food Network Star Cuts Its Last Pre-Finale Contestant, And The Strain Cuts Its LVP

If you stuck it out to the end of True Detective's second season last night, you might be mad, and you're not alone! Our own Sarah D. Bunting describes it as having "drifted onto the shoulder, then sat there long past the time anyone would have feared an explosion" and (hee hee) "Mamet Babies," but she is certainly not the only critic online who was not a fan. Round-up of finale slams? Don't mind if I do!

"Almost every scene felt padded in a way designed to give extra weight to characters and plot developments too flimsy to support it, and what was intended as literary crime fiction in the vein of James Ellroy instead played like pulp fiction that had very badly overreached." - Alan Sepinwall, HitFix

"But just when it seemed like the series was putting together the pieces and cranking up the pace after weeks of floundering, boom -- a movie-length meditation on failure." - Sean T. Collins, Rolling Stone

"I try not to jump on the "Pizzolatto is the worst!" bandwagon that often, because he's not. The stories he tells can be ungainly, and he sometimes bites off more than he can chew. But when he's firing on all cylinders, it's easy to see why he's been so hyped. The problem is that his particular alchemy really requires absolutely everything going right, and when they don't, well, you get True Detective, season two." - Todd VanDerWerff, Vox

"A lot of talk without much action shouldn't be how we remember the season finale, even if it's how many will remember the season as a whole." - Ben Travers, Indiewire

And if you just straight-up did not follow the actual finale plot because it was one thousand hours long: Slate's Willa Paskin to the rescue!

Elsewhere in TV farewells: Food Network Star made its last elimination before its finale and if you haven't watched it yet, skip to the next paragraph. If you're still here: last night's bootee Arnold Myint recently answered questions from users on our forums!

Less tearful: the world's response to the long-overdue "hair"cut Corey Stoll's Ephraim Goodweather gave himself last night on The Strain!

Hey, buddy. Ephraim's wig has been such an Issue since the start of the series that it got its own entry in our own Omar's post on The Strain's S01E05, one year ago today.

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