True Detective season 3 episode 5 & the Super Bowl debate

We’re not going to be spending most of this True Detective season 3 episode 5 piece actually discussing the show’s story. Instead, the focus here is instead on trying to piece together one of the HBO show’s biggest mysteries away from the story of Wayne Hays — why in the world there is a new episode airing on Super Bowl Sunday.

We could have a discussion here about the ratings, especially since it’s pretty darn clear that the numbers for True Detective are going to fall airing against the big game — the biggest draw on American TV over the course of the entire year. Yet, HBO doesn’t really care all that much about the live ratings — they have no real reason to. They are far more reliant on total viewers over the course of an entire week and subscriptions — if there are people purchasing HBO subscriptions out there, this matters significantly more than anything else that they could do.

Of course, our counter-argument to this idea is simply this: You don’t want people forgetting about the show and over the course of the next days, it’s certainly possible that a lot of True Detective viewers are simply going to be forgetting all about the fact that there is a new episode next week. That means that there could be people who wait around for two weeks and then realize last-minute that they missed an episode. Then, they gotta backtrack and try to make sure that they remain up to speed. It’s a risky proposition that may throw some people off.

In the end, HBO must clearly expect that there are a lot of people who will catch the show on DVR after the fact — beyond that, it’s certainly possible that they will decide to release the episodes the day before leading up to the game. This is something that they’ve done in the past and we certainly think that they’re more than capable of doing that again. It’s just a smart play to make sure viewers don’t fall behind — plus, if you don’t really care about live ratings for the week, why not generate a little bit of attention elsewhere?

Alas, there really aren’t many details on episode 5 out there at the time of publication other than the title: “If You Have Ghosts.” That does feel appropriate given the often-creepy vibe of this series as a whole.

Related News – Be sure to get some more news when it comes to True Detective, including some more in the way of ratings specifics

What do you want to see when it comes to True Detective season 3 episode 5? Be sure to share some of your thoughts below, and stay tuned to get some more updates! (Photo: HBO.)