User blog comment:Mattalamode/A Second Opinion: The Detective/@comment-30307603-20170615223319/@comment-31194372-20170616065747

Hey, man, I mean, people like what they like, right? Not much I can do to appease that at the moment, but it's coooooool. I'm not dying over here, and the fact that even a few people read this stuff is honestly enough to satisfy me for the time being.

In looking at "The Detective," I really wanted to look beyond what it did on a narrative level. Yes, all that's distinctive, but it's one facet of what makes the episode as perfect as it is, so I wanted to dissect it on a visual and cinematic level - there's not many other episodes I can really do the same for, anyway. The cinematography of it all, especially, is something I feel is sorely underappreciated, and it's something that I'm becoming a lot more attentive to in watching other shows. With a few altercations to the dialogue and stage directions, the whole thing could literally be a cop drama. No joke.

The weird thing about Anais is that the show is constantly trying to juggle her being used as either the most relatable character from a socially-awkward standpoint, or a condescending character with a holier-than-thou mindset. I like both sides of her (I mean, I sort of identify with the source material myself, right?), but they never both work in tandem in her appearances, usually choosing one side over the other. (It makes sense why they operate in isolation, though, since they're near-opposites.) "The Detective" didn't embrace either side, instead using Anais simply as the mechanism for story-telling, a role that would otherwise be dull if she didn't embody it so darn well.