‘True Detective’ Recap: Ray Survives The Shooting; Frank’s Urgency To Find The Killer Increases

True Detective‘s final scene from last week’s episode suggested that Ray had met a premature death after investigating Ben Caspere’s murder at the home he used to take hookers – but did he really die?

True Detective Recap

At a depressingly empty lounge with an even more depressing Elvis impersonator singing “The Rose,” Ray (Colin Farrell) is seated across from his father Eddie Velcoro (Fred Ward), who tells him that he has his hands. When Ray looks down at his khaki shirt, he sees it stained with blood. Back in reality, Ray lays prostrate on the ground of Caspere’s second home. He gasps and awakens, having survived the shooting with a few cracked ribs, as he’d only been hit by riot shells. Ani (Rachel McAdams), who arrives when an EMT is treating him, is irked that he went to the home without her, spitting, “God, it smells like piss” when she walks away from Ray, who had indeed peed himself in the shooting. When Ani goes into the house, she’s further miffed to see a Vinci detective trying to run the show.

When Ani catches up with Paul (Taylor Kitsch) later, she suggests that he put his good looks to work to chat up the “working girls.” She does wonder, though, whether or not his alleged incident with the actress will affect his work in the field, and then suggests that he sue her – “Chick’s loaded.” Paul’s bemused, but then, like Ray, mocks Ani’s e-cigarette use.

Eventually Ani and Paul end up at Vinci mayor Austin Chessani’s (Ritchie Coster) lavish mansion in Bel Air. A drugged and drunken looking woman, Mrs. Chessani (Agnes Olech), answers the door of the home that looks as though there as a party the night before.. She says she only knew Caspere a little, that she’s only been married to Chessani a year and that they’d met at a party. While Paul talks to her,  Ani goes exploring upstairs and finds Chessani’s office, his shy daughter working on something in her room, and his son, who’s just lobbed a hooker from the balcony into the pool. While the girl plays around in the water, oblivious to the hostility, he chastises Ani and Paul for barging into his father’s home.

From papers found at Caspere’s office, Ani and Paul are led to a safety deposit box that contains articles of incorporations for some LLCs, as well as some blue diamonds. When Ani takes the information to her supervisor Katherine Davis (Michael Hyatt), she wonders whether Ray would have staged his shooting, but Ani’s not so sure; she thinks he just a burnout. Upon leaving the meeting, Ani runs into her ex and tells him to keep things professional or else.

Meanwhile, Ray heads to a meeting with Frank, who just threw a fit in a fertility clinic when he tried and failed to produce a sperm sample with the help of Jordan (Kelly Reilly). Ray wants Frank to tell him who else knew about Caspere’s place, believing that he had him set up. “Frankly, I’m apoplectic,” he tells Frank, explaining his water drinking, “Booze tends to take the edge off, I want to stay angry.” When Frank finally reveals to him that Caspere had a lot of his money, Ray lets him know that a hidden camera was taken from Caspere’s West Hollywood digs.

When Ray meets with the mayor, he gets into some serious trouble for allowing Ani to get into his house. Chessani wants Ani completely out of the picture and his No. 1 detective tells Ray to keep working he hooker angle and get it all wrapped. Ray, who’s unsure how to control the case to their pleasure, wants to be taken off the case, but that’s not an option. He admits his desire to be off the case to Paul and Ani later, but he’s stuck in it all the same.

Frank, seriously concerned about his finances, pays a visit to the construction site of a vertical mall he had a hand in getting underway. He wants to shake the contractor down for part of his nut. He resorts to threats when he doesn’t find the man quite as malleable as he would have liked. After his Russian business parter leaves his casino business, he wonders if he could have been behind Caspere’s murder. Not long after, he finds out that Stan is dead as well, further infuriating him. That night he heads to a club he use to run, commanding all of the pimps to ask their girls about Ben Caspere. It’s not his club anymore though, so they don’t feel any obligation to him. The biggest agitator challenges Frank to a brawl, and Frank beats him handily, ripping out his gold teeth with pliers.

Paul happens to be at the club at the same time. After a confrontation with a war buddy who wanted to talk about those three unmentionable nights in the desert, he headed to the streets to try to get some information from the prostitutes. He gets the most help from a male prostitute who remembers Ben Caspere going to the club. There, Paul talks to another male hooker, who used to have sex with Caspere’s favorite Tasha so that he could watch. According to him, Tasha hasn’t been seen in awhile.

There’s another lead with the vehicle that was used to bring Caspere’s body to the side of the road. Apparently, it was stolen from a nearby film set. At the film set, Ray and Ani learn that the director had gone to one of Chessani’s infamous parties, that one of the driver’s had recently quit the film and that the city manager’s assistant was sent to check on the city’s tax agreements from the set after Caspere’s murder.

Before Ray and Ani can go follow the lead on the driver, Ray’s ex-wife shows up at his house with an offer. She wants him to take $10,000 to get out of town and leave the custody battle alone. She explains that investigators were looking into him, wanting to know if he had extra money lying around, if he’d ever been violent and if he sought retribution on the guy who had attacked her. Even if she doesn’t speak out against him, things aren’t looking good for him. Ray rejects her offer.

When Ray and Ani finally find the driver at his mother’s house, he denies that he stole the car and that he merely quit because of a back issue. Before they can press him much further, an explosion happens around the corner. Someone blew the car in question up. Ani spots the man clad in black and wearing a mask and pursues him on foot. She tries to follow him across a highway, and Ray saves her just in time from getting hit by a truck. When she thanks him, Ray says, “You want to thank me, tell me what state has on me.”