True Detective Recap ‘Church In Ruins’: Welcome to the Knife Party

In the latest True Detective recap, Ray confronts a few more of his demons, Ani gets an invite to an exclusive party and Paul gets closer to the blue diamonds….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

A lifetime of bad choices.

Ray Velcoro might as well get that moniker tattooed across his forehead after seeking revenge on a man who allegedly raped his wife 11 years ago before a downward spiral sent his marriage, his career and just about everything else down the toilet.

The first of Ray’s many wrong turns happened when he first encountered Frank Semyon more than a decade ago and he took the gangster’s information about the rapist he believed was responsible for attacking his wife. Ray killed the man as if that would bring about some sense of closure, but instead it only fractured whatever relationship he had with her, the child they would soon share, and any sense of responsibility he once had as a cop.

Killing a man out of vengeance might satisfy some primal blood lust, but it also took a once honorable cop and turned him into a morally corrupt pawn. While his life circled the drain, deep down Ray knew he had done at least one good thing by eliminating the filth who violated his wife all those years ago.

Except as it turns out, Ray killed the wrong man.

The real rapist was caught and confirmed by DNA just recently and so Ray decides to confront Frank to kick off the latest episode of ‘True Detective’ to find out if the man he’s called boss and friend for the past 11 years started their relationship by telling the worst lie of all.

Ray knows that killing that man, even if he felt justified, was the reason why he’s never been able to look in his wife’s eyes again and why he always has questions whenever looking at his son Chad. Now he knows he not only took another man’s life, but he wasn’t even the man Ray should have killed in the first place.

According to Frank, he was tipped off by someone inside his organization and he passed along the information because while he might walk a very thin moral line, he still doesn’t believe a rapist should just get to go free. If he gets a cop on his side in the process, all the much better, but Frank promises that he was just trying to eradicate a piece of scum who attacks women and shouldn’t live another day.

Given the 1000 yard stare Ray is giving Frank during the entire conversation, the born again gangster knows this impromptu meeting is probably going to end in one of two ways. They either come to an agreement that Frank didn’t set Ray up so he would have permanent leverage over his head and this was all a mistake made in error or these two old friends were going to start firing their weapons until one or both of them is dead.

“I don’t want a shootout in my fucking kitchen, Raymond, and I don’t want to see you die. By me or by one of my other guys. I didn’t set you up and I ain’t your suicide ticket.”

~ Frank

Ray eventually takes Frank at his word although the tension is palpable as they agree to let the past fade away and instead look towards the future. Now that Ray mostly believes that Frank didn’t set him up, he desperately wants to know who did. So he sets Frank on a mission to find the man who gave him the tip in the first place 11 years ago. In exchange, Frank needs Ray to find the hard drive stolen from Caspere’s sex house that likely has a lot of very powerful people on it doing some very naughty things.

The true circumstances by which Ray Velcoro and Frank Semyon came together will likely remain a mystery, but it’s clear these two men need each other more than they are willing to admit. In a world where everyone seems to hate him, Ray needs someone like Frank to look out for him. And as Frank points out after both men put their guns down, Ray may be the only friend he has left.

With that, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘True Detective’ titled ‘Church in Ruins’:

Let’s Start a Riot

Following last week’s discovery of a blood soaked cabin in the woods, Paul and Ani want answers but there aren’t many to give. The blood inside was from a woman, but the forensics team says the rest of the place is too contaminated to expect any real answers. To make matters worse, Katherine Davis — the cop who charged them with continuing the case — isn’t worried about dead girls or unsolved mysteries. She wants to connect Caspere’s murder to the people inside her government that are taking back alley payoffs in blood money to make sure crimes go away.

She charges Paul to continue following the blue diamonds that went missing while Ani remains on the hooker beat with an invite to an exclusive party where some of these rich men who might be paying off government officials are going for fun. Ray is still the man who is supposed to find Irina, the girlfriend of Lito Amarella aka the Latino meth maker charged with Caspere’s murder that no one really believes murdered him.

Since Paul’s been knocked off the bike cop beat, he’s now an insurance investigator for the police and it actually comes in handy with this case because he’s able to trace the origin of the blue diamonds and where they originally came up missing.

It seems the blue diamonds, worth $2.5 million mind you, were heisted from a jewelry store at the start of the Los Angeles riots back in 1992.

The cop who was in charge of the investigation remembers the robbery very clearly because it still shakes him to this day. The husband and wife owners of the jewelry store were executed by professionals while their two children were hiding in a case, watching the entire thing unfold. The woman was pregnant at the time of the murder and the blue diamonds were the biggest thing stolen from the store. The cop also remembers that the security tape was stolen, which tipped him off to the idea that whoever did this was premeditated and calculating, especially with timing considering that just hours later the riots made it to the jewelry store and the entire scene was compromised. No suspects were ever named and no person of interest was ever listed. The two kids ended up in foster care and the blue diamonds were never found.

Or at least they weren’t until now.

The Search for Irina

Frank takes over the search for Irina while he asks Ray to worry about finding the hard drive that he needs to get back in with the Catalyst group so he can reclaim his stake in the rail land that will secure his future outside of any criminal enterprise.

He nails one guy to a table to get the information about a safe house where she might be staying, but when Frank arrives he runs into some old friends — the Mexican gangsters who showed up in his club a week ago saying that they made a deal with Santos and need him to honor it. The irony of the situation with guns drawn and everybody’s eyes locked on each other wasn’t lost on Frank.

“That’s one off the bucket list — Mexican standoff with actual Mexicans”

~ Frank

Frank decides going into business with these guys is cheaper than getting into a shootout, plus it might lead him to Irina and hopefully the real information about who killed Caspere. So he agrees to let the Mexicans deal whatever drugs they want in his clubs, three nights a week for a year with no cut going to him. They agree and promise to get Irina on the phone with him.

Later that same day, Frank gets the call he’s been waiting for and Irina has all kinds of information for sale.

It seems (as suspected) her pimp, meth dealer boyfriend wasn’t the mastermind behind Caspere’s murder (shocked) and instead a thin, white, plain clothes cop gave them $500 and a pile of merchandise to pawn and they could also keep the money from that as well. In other words, Lito didn’t kill Caspere and these two were made out as patsies from the very beginning to get the heat off of whoever really did kill the former city manager. A thin, white cop makes things interesting because that could be any number of people we’ve seen this season.

Frank convinces Irina to meet with him where he’ll show her pictures of the cops he believes might be conspiring in this entire ordeal. The only downside is when he finds her, Irina has her throat slashed and Frank’s new business partners are responsible. They didn’t kill her to keep her quiet or to piss Frank off.

No, she had to die because she admitted to working with the cops and that’s a big no-no in the drug business. So Irina had to go but as a result Frank is no closer to identifying the person or people responsible for killing Caspere while making off with his $5 million investment.

Last Goodbye

As much as the cops working alongside him would probably enjoy Ray focusing on solving their case, he’s much more concerned with settling a few old debts after finding out that the man he killed didn’t actually attack and rape his ex-wife.

The first stop for Ray after leaving Frank’s house was a visit to the local county lockup where the real culprit responsible for raping his ex is being held until trial. Ray confronts him and introduces himself by saying that he thought he killed him a long time ago, but here he sits, alive and well.

Ray promises that he’ll finish the job he started 11 years ago and the rapist better pray for life in prison because the day he steps outside a jail cell is when things will get really interesting for him.

“If they don’t give you life, I will have every inch of your flesh removed with a cheese grater starting with your prick. I’ll cut off your nose and your lips, your nuts, too, and I’ll make sure you live. If they give you life, I might do it anyway.”

~ Ray

Ray spends some uncomfortable time with his son Chad when he realizes that everything his ex-wife has been telling him is true. The little boy is scared and apprehensive whenever he’s around his father and even on Ray’s best days, these two aren’t connecting any longer.

So following a supervised visit with his boy, Ray decides to forgo the trial and custody hearing by drinking a fifth of tequila and snorting enough cocaine that Rick James would probably tell him to slow down. After destroying his house and the models he once built with his son, Ray calls his ex-wife and offers her a final deal to get out of their lives forever.

When the paternity test comes back, she keeps the information to herself. Don’t torture Chad with the details that his life may have started in the most violent and disturbing way possible just so they can get Ray out of their lives for good. If she promises to allow Chad to live the rest of his life believing that Ray is his dad, he will withdraw his suit for custody and never see them again.

“Please just say yes and I’ll leave your lives forever”

~ Ray

She agrees and Ray feels some sense of relief because he knows all he’s going to do by fighting to stay in his son’s life is tear him apart at the seems. At least now, Chad will go on living and believing that he has an asshole cop for a father rather than a man who attacked and raped his mother.

The lesser of two evils is still the much greater good.

A Woman Drowning on Dry Land

The next phase of Ani’s plan involves using her sister Athena to get invited to one of the escort parties that she believes Caspere used to organize and frequent and might lead her to more information about the people behind his murder. Her sister warns her that these parties are serious business — the girls are frisked thoroughly before entering and the men inside have already paid and expect nothing less than easy sex.

While Athena is explaining all of this, Ani is busy practicing her latest knife techniques, which prompts her sister to ask why she’s so desperate to be alone? Why does every move Ani make necessitate a future with no one in it?

Ani doesn’t have the answers and she’s not going to dig any deeper to get them because the only thing on her mind right now is getting into this party and finding out who killed Ben Caspere.

She uses Paul and Ray as backup and they head over to the meeting spot where Ani encounters Frank’s No. 2 man Blake before being led onto the bus and shipped to the house where she will be expected to perform any number of deeds on any number of men.

Once inside, Ani finds out that these parties are not only exclusive — where the former attorney general and future governor hangs out as well — but the girls are dosed with pure Molly before being sent out into the room as party favors for the men in attendance.

As the drugs start to take effect, Ani is barely holding on while one oil magnate takes a liking and leads her to an upstairs bedroom. Luckily she grabs a steak knife on the way to the room before excusing herself to the bathroom. Inside, Ani is struggling to keep her vision straight while she has flashbacks to a man who was clearly a part of her father’s hippy commune that abused her while she was a child.

No wonder she hates her father so much because she clearly blames him for putting her in that situation in the first place.

She tries to shake the visions free but then Ani spots something else even better.

Vera — the missing girl whose sister has been looking for her for months is at the party, drugged out of her mind and barely cognizant enough to stand up. Ani quickly realizes Vera might be the key to this entire case so she gathers her up, stabs the over aggressive oil man and another guard when they get too handsy as she makes her escape out of the house.

Outside, Paul and Ray make their way to the house to keep an eye out while Ani is doing her thing and they notice a deal going down between Osip — the Russian mobster who was once in cahoots with Frank — and McCandless, the head of the Catalyst group who are buying up all the parcels along the rail line. The $12 million deal far outweighs the $5 million Frank was going to invest so this might give another look at the people who sold out Caspere or had reason to want him dead.

Osip makes one comment that did stick with me during the episode when he said ‘$12 million doesn’t fit in a briefcase’. Maybe it was just an off handed remark, but it made me think that maybe $5 million would fit in a briefcase and maybe it was in reference to Caspere and Frank’s money that was with him when he died?

Once the Russian mobster and the executive leave the room, Paul breaks in and steals the documents and makes a run for it while helping Ani and her found missing person Vera escape the house of ill repute.

Ray picks them up on the road and they get away despite gunmen shooting at them from a distance after they are discovered. Ani is still woozy from the drugs and remembers that she might have killed someone inside. Vera is barely coherent and Ray’s blood is pumping like an oil derrick.

And there’s Paul Woodrugh with a file folder full of documents for the land where Caspere had maps and they had investigated just a few weeks before and every contract was filled with signatures from the people we have to assume are the most powerful in all of California, who don’t want any of this information to leak out.

Now if they only had that damn hard drive, our true detectives would have the would-be governor, a greedy corporation and a Russian mobster by the balls.

Notes from the Scene

Another favorite line from this week I didn’t include in the recap but just had to put here.

“I’m going to put my other hand up now. Don’t you fucking shoot me, Raymond”

~ Frank

The song playing while Ray is drinking and snorting coke is ‘Human Being’ by the New York Dolls

The song playing at the end of the episode is ‘Black Grease’ by The Black Angels

Only two episodes to go for this season of ‘True Detective’ so tune in next Sunday night for penultimate recap in the series.