True Detective viewing diary

Unlike most of my viewing diaries, in which I catch up with shows after they've ended, I followed much of True Detective while it aired. I reviewed the first season in early 2015 - a year after it launched a media sensation. For subsequent seasons, I discussed episodes within days or even hours of their premieres. The first two seasons' viewing diaries were introduced here and here (and the fourth here).

True Detective: Conclusions (w/ final images)

This post will include spoilers for the entire series - as will the 25 images collected below.

For a round-up of the entire viewing diary, visit the True Detective directory.

"Then it finally dawned on me, as it probably should have long ago, that True Detective is not going to be a series of unrelated miniseries under the same authorship. The characters will change, but the underlying storyline and backdrop will continue to expand. I suspect we haven't heard the last of the Tuttles (although I assume we will be relocating along with re-casting for season two) and I'm positive we haven't heard the last of the Yellow King. At least, I hope..."

Those words were published by me a week ago, but they were written back in March - immediately after I finished watching the final episode of True Detective. As I recorded that viewing diary I stayed away from coverage of the series, trying to avoid not only spoilers but a sense of wider context. Only after I was done did I read articles and reviews and interviews, watching the special features on the disc and discovering how other people reacted to the material. One of the first things I discovered was that, by almost every single account, True Detective IS going to be a series of unrelated miniseries under the same authorship. And yeah, I definitely consider this a disappointment - one which has caused me to look back on the series with at least a touch more bitterness and frustration than I expressed in my final review.

True Detective episode 8: "Form and Void"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

"You're looking at it wrong," the dazed, emaciated Rust Cohle tells his sturdy-looking friend Marty Hart. They are crouching outside the beautifully-lit hospital under a starry Louisiana sky. At least Hart is crouching; Cohle is collapsed in a wheelchair, barely out of his coma as he recovers from severe stab wounds. Hart was wounded too, but less severely, whereas Cohle has just finished describing his near-death experience with all the fervor of an atheist in a foxhole. And now Cohle is applying the same optimism to the firmament overhead, in which Hart has noted that the dark has much more territory than the light. Cohle continues, softly, "Once it was all dark. I say the light's winning."

Well, I was looking at it wrong too. Knowing that these characters were only on the show for this run and assuming (correctly, as it turns out) that the case they are investigating would be solved in these episodes, I also took it for granted that we would be getting answers on everything, that the big picture would be revealed. With the end of the last episode I was worried that True Detective would not be able to resolve all of its threads satisfactorily in less than an hour. What I didn't expect is that it wouldn't even try.

True Detective episode 7: "After You've Gone"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

Cohle and Hart began this story as opposites, the classic odd-couple cop partnership. In 1995, Hart was a backslapping, well-liked family man, a cop's cop but no great detective. Cohle, meanwhile, was an antisocial, fucked-up loner, brilliant and alienating. Their rapport was almost comical. In 2012 they still cut very different figures, maybe even more so than back then. Cohle has gone to seed, unshaven, long-haired, bug-eyed in his paranoia. He fell of the wagon long ago, and ran as far as he could in the other direction as it rolled away. Hart, retired from the force and operating as a PI, is clean-shaven and properly attired. He maintains chummy contact with his old pals in law enforcement.

But Cohle's and Hart's similarities speak louder than the differences. Both look sad, bitter, lost. Both are alone, utterly. Hart apparently does not even speak to his daughters and when he visits his ex-wife, it's only to make sure she didn't say anything bad about Cohle to the investigators. Then again, maybe they aren't quite alone...because once again they are partners. And they need one another more than ever, both personally and professionally.

True Detective episode 6: "Haunted Houses"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

This is certainly the darkest episode of True Detective and also very likely the best. There are no brutal murders, mutilated corpses, bloody crime scenes. The darkness is inside and when it manifests itself in violence it only goes so far as a fistfight. But when Hart and Cohle pummel each other in a parking lot, their punches land with more force than all the gunfire of five episodes.

We begin with two scenes that could easily be played for righteous catharsis, but are delivered as something else entirely. First, Hart confronts the two young men who were caught having sex with his daughter. He offers them a choice: allow him to beat the shit out of them or go to prison on statutory rape charges. Of course it isn't really a choice at all - he doesn't want his daughter's sex life made public and he would very much like to punish these two himself. It's many fathers' vengeful dream come true, yet this interaction is scored and shot without any sense of deliverance. The following scene contains the biggest surprise: before he can drive off in triumph, Hart vomits all over the parking lot (the same lot in which he and Cohle will fight a far more evenly-matched bout).

True Detective episode 5: "The Secret Fate of All Life"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

Oh boy, now we're really getting somewhere!

I didn't want to be tough on the previous episode but in light of this one it feels even more like filler. I was worried the show would waste Ginger and sure enough, he's hog-tied with duct tape within the first five minutes of "The Secret Fate of All Life," but that's ok because we have way bigger fish to fry. Where to start? Well, how about at the beginning...in which the '95/Reggie Ledoux/Dora Lange case is resolved, or "resolved," way sooner than I expected.

True Detective episode 4: "Who Goes There"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

Hart is now a hot mess. About halfway through this episode, his family has left him, he's threatened to "skull-fuck" his mistress, security has nearly ejected him from his wife's workplace, and he spends the rest of his time wandering around in an alcoholic daze and dirty wife-beater, threatening suspects at a rave while off-duty. Hart even moves in with his partner and oddly it's Cohle who is the more anchored of the two (this in an episode where Cohle lies to his superiors, steals police evidence, gets high, and participates in a deadly raid with a biker gang).

True Detective episode 3: "The Locked Room"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

We don't hear much about the Yellow King this time. For that matter, we don't hear much about Dora Lange. The mystery is getting bigger and the case goes from checking up on local dives and flophouses to investigating organizations (beginning with the traveling ministry inhabiting that burnt-out church). Meanwhile the detectives pull all-nighters to sift through endless files, hoping to stumble across a corpse whose dead eyes will tell them what they need to know.

Cohle spends much of the episode ranting: nothing adds up, there's no "closure" or "fulfillment" and dreams of religious salvation are a hoax. Yet it is Cohle who most obsessively attempts to see the bigger picture at play in the Dora Lange murder, who refuses to let the case go, who seems intensely invested in determining not only what the answers are but establishing that there are answers, period. His general pessimism is belied by his faith in the hunt and its destination.

True Detective episode 2: "Seeing Things"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

The first episode of True Detective left me uncertain whether the show would go for mood and texture or character and plot, but "Seeing Things" definitely emphasizes the latter qualities. It is very investigation-oriented. We learn about the "ranch" where Dora Lange turned tricks before her murder. We also meet her drugged-up, mentally ill mother (Tess Harper) and in an episode full of creepy touches, the picture of Dora as a little girl surrounded by men in Klan regalia is one of the creepiest. (Turns out it's not Klan regalia - ed.) And through Dora's eerie sketchbook/diary we glimpse more details about the "Yellow King" who may have lured her into a pseudo-Christian cult, whose burnt-out church we discover near the end of the episode. This is one of the show's most memorable locales thus far, especially after Cohle's intuition leads to the discovery of a mural on its wall - featuring a naked woman crowned with antlers and crouched in a position similar to Dora's in that field.

True Detective episode 1: "The Long Bright Dark"

The following is a viewing diary I wrote as I watched the show for the first time, pausing after each episode to collect my thoughts. As such, it is spoiler-free for upcoming episodes (although the comments section may not be).

As it happens, just yesterday I started reading an anthology of mystery stories. In the introduction, author Tony Hillerman writes about the change in mystery-writing over the course of a century, from when the primary purpose was solving an intellectual puzzle to when the story's purpose became, in Dorothy Sayers' phrase, "literature of expression." By way of example, Hillerman cites one of the last stories in the anthology:

"Now, skip ahead to 1998 and 'Poachers.' In Tom Franklin's story the puzzle matters hardly at all. Here you meet real people - three orphaned and brutish brothers who live as predators in the wet woods of the Gulf Coast south, the old widower who loves them, and the sheriff who pitied them all. Who killed two of these brutal boys and blinded the third? You never really know. If you care, you can take your pick. In any case, the muddy river, the endless rain, the half-wild hunting dogs, are more important than the plot."

True Detective: the viewing diary (first season)

This is a directory for the first season only; for all seasons, visit the main directory.

As the viewing diary unfolds, this directory will be updated

Episode 1 - "The Long Bright Dark"

Episode 2 - "Seeing Things"

Episode 3 - "The Locked Room"

Episode 4 - "Who Goes There"

Episode 5 - "The Secret Fate of All Life"

Episode 6 - "Haunted Houses"

Episode 7 - "After You've Gone"

Episode 8 - "Form and Void"

Conclusions & final images

Original introduction

Next week I begin my first TV viewing diary for Lost in the Movies, an episode-by-episode reaction to True Detective, the hit HBO series from last spring, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as state cops in Louisiana recalling a grisly murder investigation from 1995. I have already composed partial episodes guides for Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion (which will pick up again the week after my True Detective series concludes). The difference here is that these are my reactions immediately after watching each episode for the first time. As such I will not be offering in-depth analysis or tying together all the loose ends, but rather responding to my shifting impressions of this world and its characters. As I am not a psychic, the posts will not contain spoilers for upcoming episodes and new viewers are invited to read along as they watch too.

However, the comments section - should readers choose to use it - may be trickier to navigate. I would love to hear from any new viewers as they watch along (either now or on a later occasion) but I also expect that veterans will be discussing plot and character in-depth - a discussion I will probably join myself. So if anyone wants to share their impressions without risking spoilers, email me at movieman0283 at gmail and I will publish your comment with your name, for others to read. Then when you have watched the whole series you can come back and read the larger conversation. But, just to repeat and emphasize, the posts themselves will be completely safe for you to read.

As for the spoiler discussion, let's get started now! Let me know below what you thought about True Detective. I will be somewhat sparing in my responses (after all, I don't want to completely "spoil" my own upcoming posts!) although I've already shared general impressions on Twitter and elsewhere. But I'm really curious to hear what you think.

Other than that, the first episode will go up on Wednesday, April 22, with further episode coverage arriving each Wednesday through June 17, six days before season two begins. See you there.

Carcosa

A visual tribute to the climax of True Detective (2014)