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 season 3 episode 8 - "Now Am Found"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

This season of True Detective ends not so much with a bang or a whimper as with a sigh, and an ambiguous one at that: a sigh of resignation, satisfaction, trepidation, or bemused awe? This is a finale determined to resolve the central mystery with due diligence, so diligent that it needs an extra fifteen minutes to allow itself the necessary breathing room for more heartfelt matters (including some that still incorporate the big mystery). But the episode unravels its secrets in a measured, muted manner, a stylistic decision both deflating and appropriate; if the first season's somewhat simplified conclusion felt like a betrayal of the grand conspiracizing that had come before, this one has more of an "of course" logic at work. That isn't to say it's entirely successful even within its own parameters; while the third season was careful not to let our expectations get out of hand, this eighth episode is by far the least dramatic and most perfunctory of any installment. The finale's strongest moments arrive when it allows itself to prioritize what has always been Pizzolatto's primary concern: the relationships between the characters.

True Detective season 3 episode 7 - "The Final Country"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

The third season of True Detective started strong, with a bold conceptual frame, a hypnotic style, and a comfortably familiar milieu and mystery plot - reassuring us that the series was returning to the strengths of season one and not venturing into over-ambitious season two territory. From there we might have expected a solid eight episodes, putting us on firm ground again with a series and creator we'd grown worried about. And indeed, this story has avoided some of the more grandiose tendencies of the last one, and even ducked some of the first season's flamboyance even as it offers winks and nudges toward a grand unifying theory: an idea which becomes explicit - and appears to be abruptly dismissed - in episode 7 (I've not yet read this article, but am already nodding along with the headline). Eliza displays Rust's and Marty's pictures on her laptop and eagerly puts forward the idea that the Purcell children were kidnapped by a massive pedophile ring related directly to the Tuttle/Yellow King operation busted up by our original protagonists; Wayne of course is having none of it (he even seems a little disappointed/disgusted with how off-track the interviewer is) but less because it's too big and more because it doesn't seem rooted enough in the reality he knows. Surprisingly, the third season is both much more grounded than any previous iteration of the series, and potentially more accomplished as well. There's a strong argument to be made that this is developing into the best-written season of the show - it's certainly the most mature.

True Detective season 3 episode 6 - "Hunters in the Dark"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

"You walked away," the aged Roland reminds (or informs?) his long-estranged buddy near the end of the previous episode. Was he being literal? In "Hunters in the Dark," we see Wayne and Roland bicker on a 1990 ride home and the angry Wayne grabs the wheel, storms out of the car, and marches down the road in a cloud of dust as his partner drives away. The incident seems like an explosive but nonetheless temporary rupture in their professional relationship (triggered by Roland's insistence that they stop working for the day, although obviously facilitated by other factors), but what if the two would not speak again for twenty-five years? Considering what happens at the end of episode 6, it's not hard to imagine that the investigation comes to an abrupt end and while we don't see the detectives kill anyone (as some cryptic dialogue suggested they might have) maybe what they were really referring to was their treatment of Tom, driving him over the edge. Then again, there's the question of state cop-turned-Hoyt security man Harris James (Scott Shepherd). Why did he disappear in 1990 if not because a suspicious Wayne and Roland cracked down in private? We'll probably find out soon.

True Detective season 3 episode 5 - "If You Have Ghosts"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

As with previous episode fives, "If You Have Ghosts" places us in an "after" position on the central case. We now know what happened to the original investigation - crime scene evidence (planted, as it's later revealed) linked Brett Woodard to the missing kids and so, conveniently, he was posthumously convicted of their murder. The drama of the middle period is in full swing too, having established the basic scenario against which the partners will be torn apart and a family may be separated. In the almost-present, we're shifting from a reflective look back toward a full-on investigation; Wayne reunites with his partner and makes a crucial realization, that Lucy herself wrote the ransom note (he connects the dots after finally reading his wife's book). So far, so familiar as True Detective story structures go. There are some neat quirks to the storytelling: this season's 1990 scenes combine aspects of both the middle and late periods from season one, and, closer to season two, the older characters re-unite to pursue a non-professional investigation at the end of this episode, rather than waiting for the sixth. And of course, we now have a significantly expanded time span to work with (three and a half decades vs. half that time in the original season). Despite these and other small variations, Nic Pizzolatto prefers a certain loose formula and it works quite well here, lending the episode a good deal of its dramatic satisfaction. However, the episode's more profound impact stems from something new.

True Detective season 3 episode 4 - "The Hour and the Day"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes. Incidentally, I'm going to switch to a first-name basis for the detectives to match other characters; it just flows better.

Mahershala Ali continues to flourish as the undoubted protagonist of True Detective. For whatever reason, his makeup/performance as the elderly Wayne feels slightly less convincing this round but he is still a strong presence in the younger sequences, an iteration of the Pizzolatto detective persona that feels fully lived-in rather than superimposed on the actor. And after an unassuming debut, Stephen Dorff is emerging as a fascinating character in his own right, sturdy in both eras in very different ways. After the last episode hinted at the outcome of his friendship with Tom in the 1990 timeline, the roots are excavated in "The Hour and the Days"' 1980 scenes; Roland discovers the grieving alcoholic father at his absolute lowest and something in him pities the man. Both actors are excellent, and both characters are quite compelling. However, I think my favorite so far, for both acting and writing (and the way the two element complement one another), is Carmen Ejogo as Amelia. In the wrong hands, the part could miss the mark but Ejogo crafts a convincing portrait of curiosity, confidence, and confusion - do I get an A for alliteration, Ms. Reardon?

True Detective season 3 episode 3 - "The Big Never"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

From the chaotic details established in the premiere, a story is beginning to coalesce in the detectives' minds. While the big picture remains foggy, at least one thing now seems clear: the Purcell children had a "secret friend," likely an adult, with whom they were meeting and communicating. They didn't just lie to their father about meeting a classmate on this particular day - the children hadn't hung out together for months before the disappearance. This dawning realization, stretching from a conversation between Hays and West early in the episode to the discovery of a photo album (with a first communion snapshot echoing Will's death pose), lends the 1980 sequence one of its primary throughlines. Another important element reveals itself when Hays stumbles across the probable crime scene in the woods (a stash of toys and a bloody rock suggest a meeting and a murder - or accident?), and then he proceeds to a dirt road where a not-entirely-trustworthy farmer (Mike Hickman) lives. The man claims he's already been visited by police and mentions an interracial couple who used to show up nearby in a brown car, but not on the same days he'd spot the children wandering by.

True Detective season 3 episodes 1 & 2 - "The Great War and Modern Memory" & "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye"

This True Detective viewing diary is being written while the new series airs. As such, future readers need not worry: there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes.

If "The Great War and Modern Memory" - the first half of True Detective's return to HBO after a three and half year hiatus - is at pains to establish one virtue above all others, that virtue is maturity. Having made a splash as the intense wunderkind behind the first True Detective in the winter of 2014, series writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto flamed out spectacularly with a rushed second season the following summer. Abandoning most of the qualities that made the first season so popular, Pizzolatto's ambitious sophomore slump received a widespread backlash targeting not just the messiness of the storytelling but the hubris of Pizzolatto himself, whose offscreen interviews and on-set domineering rubbed many critics the wrong way. Just shy of forty when the show ended, his rising star looked more like a shooting one, which had burned out much more quickly than expected. HBO dragged its feet commissioning a third season and Pizzolatto disappeared from the public eye. There were hints that perhaps HBO would seek another project from him and then, little by little, word got out that True Detective was slowly and surely assembling a third season after all. Now, in a surprisingly different cultural moment, that third season arrives with a confident but relatively muted rollout, as if to announce that the newly middle-aged showrunner has been humbled without losing his identity. That's the background. But what do we see onscreen?