“Hamlet is not a masterpiece; it’s a muddled tragedy, which fails to bring its disparate sources into a coherent whole. But that’s also why it has become an enigma that continues to fascinate and provoke debate all over the world. Hamlet isn’t a masterpiece on account of its literary qualities; it has become one precisely because it resists our interpretation. Sometimes it’s the weirdness that makes a text go down in history.”

—Umberto Eco, from This is Not the End of the Book (a book that demands to be read in gorgeous hardcover, given the many comments about the physicality of books within). I wonder if the observation about enigma and failure to cohere could apply too to this season of True Detective, which is only charitably coherent. Sadly, though, it is much less linguistically interesting than Hamlet and much less visually interesting than much of what else is in the media.