True Southern Gothic

There's a lot of plot material to work through in the last two episodes of season one of True Detective, and to be honest the plot itself is pretty ridiculous and so far beyond the probable as to be almost ludicrous at times; reminded me in a way of Girl w/ Dragon Tattoo - all these disappearances and dismemberments and nobody makes the connection until Rust becomes obsessed a decade later - and then things fall into place with amazing ease (just happen to find a woman in a nursing home who just happens to remember who painted her house 20 years ago and what he looked like ... and so forth). That said, particularly in the last episode, we get plenty of the material that draws us to this odd series: the long bizarre introspective philosophical rants from Rust, set off by the blunt incredulity of Marty; their tense but deep bond of affection and grudging respect; the excellent cinematography; and the extreme Southern gothic, with grotesque characters, weed-choked ruined buildings, remote and insular communities. That's been enough to keep me watching, even though I don't believe it for a minute, and I'll probably return for season 2.

What makes True Detective worth watching

Picking up again after a while on the HBO True Detective, watching episodes 5 & 6, and again reminded of the many strengths of the series: you have to like the ever-evolving relationship between Harrelson and McConaughey) - end of ep 6 their contemporary-time interrogations have ended, they've both walked out, Mcc/Rust pursues Harrelson/Marty and they agree to have a beer (or 2?) together, catching up. We're at last beginning to understand what the police are investigating, why they've called these two guys in for questioning about event that occurred 10 years previous. Well, probably not worth wading too deeply into the plot itself, which altogether is too sensational and improbable - ritual killings, a violent and predatory fringe church cult covered up by a seemingly upstanding charitable organization, multiple murders and disappearances, all infused with deep Southern gothic settings and grotesque, gargoyle-like characters); the series isn't so much about plat as about character and about mood: it gets at what many other HBO series have tried to do and failed, creating a place that seems both familiar and frighteningly alien at the same time. The many long shots of the bayou, the refineries, the waterfront - and the interiors of the roadhouses, the gun clubs, the hunting and fishing lodges and cabins - all contrast beautifully and starkly with the very mundane and familiar suburban dwellings (Marty), underfurnished bachelor pad (Rust), and the police station with the old-timer pro cop steadily berating the unconventional Rust for his unorthodox theories and practices. Highlights of the generally excellent writing continue to be the Rust-Marty dialogues, with Rust's bewildering ontological speculations and Marty's blunt and practical disbelief as well as Rust's expertise at eliciting confessions from the most recalcitrant subjects, not by coercion or threat but by getting into their minds and under their skin - and then generally is cool and curt dismissal of them once they've, to their own surprise and dismay, spilled it all.

True and not so true detectives

While enjoying temporary access to HBO I'm also, sort of, enjoying True Detective - not a great series on the order of The Sopranos or The Wire but pretty entertaining and tantalizing. More than anything, it's about the relationship of the two detectives on the case, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, temperamental opposites yoked together - MM (Rust Cohle) a damaged loner existentialist introvert and Harrelson (Marty Hart) a tough, philandering family man Louisiana cop. The highlights are the long dialogs the two engage in during their long drives across the delta in pursuit of a case, subjects for easy parody of course and also peculiar and elusive - is MM brilliant of sophomoric, or both? The structure of the series is really smart - as the two men are each being interrogated by fellow Louisiana state troopers about a long-ago case - and we move back and forth between this present-day interrogation and the enactment of the case under review, from circa 1995. The two men look quite different in the present (it seems they make Harrelson much younger for the '95 scenes and MM older and far more ruined in the present day); we don't know what's happened to the characters in the interval, nor why the case is under review, and of course over time the strands will weave together. Other highlights are great music from T Bone Burnett and extraordinary cinematography of a region - the delta - seldom seen in such detail. Great shots of oil rigs across the flats, run down communities in the bayous, etc. The weakness, unfortunately, is the relatively uninteresting case at the heart of it all: an investigation of a ritualistic killing with religious iconographic overtones: big nod here to Stieg Larsson, but at least in TD the police aren't the stupidest people on the planet. Despite all of MM's ruminations on being and nothingness, the skills the two men bring to solving this case are pretty rudimentary: poring through old files looking for other  possible ritual killings, a long series of interview each of which yields a valuable clue that they dutifully follow up w/ another interview (gosh, well, she used to work at this brother; gosh, yes, she used to go to a church; gosh, it's strange, someone burned down our church, and so on - that is, the detectives never have to use their intelligence or wits to unearth the facts). The joke is, I guess, that these guys are not really "true detectives," and certainly not in the vein of the True Detective magazine - they're true eccentrics, that is to say, they're characters - in an HBO series.