LOS ANGELES -- It's hard enough to keep track of an episode of the unintelligible second season of True Detective when there isn't the promise of a sex party at the end -- but when there is, forget it.
"Church in Ruins," the sixth installment of this eight-episode debacle, promised a big Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy scene back in March, when The Hollywood Reporter first revealed that the HBO show was casting up porn stars for the job.
We got an early tip from the episode itself when Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) and her webcam-performer sister start talking sex-party strategy. Of course, a bunch of other ridiculous stuff happens before the orgy.
Go ahead, no one will blame you for skipping down to the sex parts. But just in case you still care about where this show is actually leading us:
Velcoro and Frank Semyon play Greedo and Han Solo with guns drawn under a table. No one shot -- first or otherwise -- and a wobbly truce was formed.
Frank pays a long, dramatic visit to Stan's grieving wife. No one knows who Stan is. He's probably not even in this show.
Velcoro's supervised visit with his redheaded non-son is a bust when the kid wants to watch Friends. Immediately afterward, Velcoro goes home and inhales enough cocaine to kill an entire Studio 54 dance floor, then calls his ex-wife to say he won't fight for custody. Hey, we get it: No one told you life was gonna be this way.
Frank tortures some intel out of a guy that leads him to a house where there are some other guys who lead him to a girl who's dead. I don't get how this connects to anything, but there is a sex party scene coming.
The guy who Taylor Kitsch is playing (I no longer remember his name) interviews someone about something. Next up: Sex party.
FINALLY, the Sex Party
Bezzerides gets through security and onto a bus full of hookers that's bound for an undisclosed mansion location. Velcoro and the guy Taylor Kitsch is playing are tracking her, because evidently this orgy is connected to something else about the show. But whatever.
She arrives at the mansion, where several old, probably impotent men are gathered, our first clue being the blue mints:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.viagaras.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.viagaras"]
The girls are lined up and dosed with molly via a direct-in-the-mouth spray. No faking!
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.mollyspray.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.mollyspray"]
Though there are dozens of Eastern European women to choose from -- many of them perfected at Rick Springfield's Plastic Surgery Emporium -- the men are already fixating on Bezzerides. Of course they are, this is TV.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.fixate.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.fixate"]
Bezzerides' molly is kicking in -- blurry vision! Discordant music! Just like in real life! -- and despite the fact that she is an established substance abuser and sexual deviant, none of this is turning her on.
In fact, quite the opposite. She's horrified as the Eyes Wide Shut-meets-One Eyed Jacks mashup starts going down in earnest:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.horrified.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.horrified"]
One handsome young fella who took a liking to our heroine -- "you're a real woman" with "something going on behind the eyes," Nic Pizzolatto wrote -- starts chatting her up, because that's all you have to do at one of these parties, apparently:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.suitor.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="" alt="TD.suitor"]
Oh! I almost forgot. At some point Bezzerides has a flashback to when she was molested as a child. By this guy, who is actually not Bob from Twin Peaks:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.creepy.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.creepy"]
It's also probably worth mentioning that the Russian guy, who Frank thinks might have been behind the Ben Caspere murder, was on the scene doing a business deal in a back room. Velcoro and the guy Taylor Kitsch is playing have now closed in on the house, and spot the Russian having a ... aw forget it. Back to the sex party.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.russian.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.russian"]
Bezzerides shakes her suitor by saying she needs a moment in the bathroom, where she presses the "puke" button on the top of her tongue.
That's how it works, right? You just press your tongue a little? Anyway, she hurls in a bathtub, and is immediately sober!
Phew, thank goodness she remembers all these health and drug-use tips she heard on the school bus -- because they worked!
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.puke_.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.puke"]
Bezzerides gets up from puking to see the missing woman she's been tracking, which keeps in line with True Detective's tradition of incredible coincidences. It's the passed-out one in the corner, who's all dolled up and lolly-eyed, and looks NOTHING LIKE THE ONE PHOTO BEZZERIDES HAS SEEN OF HER.
Anyway. She grabs the young woman and runs:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.spotted1.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.spotted"]
But wait! Mr. Suitor is expecting the sex he earned from saying hello! Bezzerides pulls the knife she stole from a cheese cart and gives him the business:
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.suitor.attak_.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.suitor.attak"]
A burly sex-party guard tries to stop her next, but True Detective has spent a lot of energy establishing that Bezzerides is good with knives: "Any man lays his hands on me, he's gonna bleed out in under a minute," she said in Episode 2.
And by golly here comes that payoff: She slices and dices the giant man as he lifts her off the ground by the throat, and he bleeds out in ... about 10 seconds.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.knife_.2.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.knife.2"]
She grabs the no-longer-missing woman, they burst out an obscure downstairs side-door of the sprawling estate and -- well looky there, the guy Taylor Kitsch is playing is standing right outside!
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TD.runaway.png" caption="A screenshot from the "True Detective" Episode 6 sex party." credit="HBO" alt="TD.runaway"]
And then it was over. Anybody got a cigarette?