Special Television Show Post: True Detective (Season One)

2014 crime show

Rating: no rating

Plot: Troubled men try to solve a crime committed by people who might be even more troubled.

People who know me know I don't watch enough television. There were years I didn't even have access to television, and for significant chunks of my life, I haven't had cable. I've never had HBO. You hear enough about television shows though, and you want to fit in with the rest of the people, and this was one I figured I needed to check out. This is television that I think people will not only be watching years from now but probably even still talking about it.

I don't really like cop and crime shows, and in a way, this is just a bloated 8-hour episode of one of those. The extra space makes these characters and their sins--because we all, as this show constantly and bleakly reminds us, have our sins--authentic. Even at its wildest or most preposterous, this feels real. It's like an exaggerated version of the darkest and most degraded bits of human existence, but there's still something real about it, and that's because the characters are allowed to breathe. The mystery's allowed to breathe, too. Things unfold delicately, and even though there are definitely some cliffhanger moments strewn throughout the duration of this season, it's really the quieter mysterious bits that keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Those characters. Man, those characters. I'm not sure this works without Matthew McConaughey (have to look it up every single fucking time) and Woody Harrelson. There's not any insane deviation from what either of these guys normally do. McConaughey's playing the same guy he plays in the car commercials, quietly faux-philosophizing and always seeming a little alien. Harrelson's that same earthy male, the type of guy you worry might emerge from your television screen and thrust his belt buckle in your face. Both characters--Rust and Marty--spend considerable amounts of time brooding, and the hate-love relationship they build throughout this story is just terrific. You just know that one of these two guys will kill the other unless, more tragically, they end up killing each other. One thing you see over and over again is a shot of the two detectives in a car with McConaughey (I had to look at the beginning of the paragraph for the spelling this time) saying something wackily profound or profoundly wacky and Harrelson looking disgusted. As many times as that happened during this season, I never got sick of it. These are two characters who don't really like each other and can't really understand each other yet absolutely need each other, probably in ways that don't even make sense to them. And the performances from these dual-leads make the characters memorable and a lot of fun, even when they're at their most monotone. McConaughey gets great lines, most written like the type of thing that would come from an inebriated Raymond Chandler after a really bad series of days.

Reggie Ledoux. I have a theory that the makers of this show came up with that name first and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if Matthew McConaughey said that name?" and then wrote an entire show just to make it happen. I haven't been able to stop saying Reggie Ledoux using my best Matthew McConaughey impersonating skills--an impression that could only be described as horrific--since I first heard him say the name in episode three.

The auxiliary characters add so much color. Old black preachers, Southern white tent revival preachers, police guys with layers of movie grit, prostitutes, mentally-challenged individuals, And beautiful women. Alexandra Daddario is the type of actress who can cause you to start a midlife crisis, and part of me only wants to watch movies with her in them for the rest of my life. Michelle Monaghan makes you wonder what's going on in Marty's head. Beautiful actresses. I would argue that there's a little too much sex in this. I realize that makes me sound old though.

The best character isn't a character at all. It's the setting. This has a moody, Southern gothic feel, almost a Twin Peaks vibe without the backward-talking little people. Post-Katrina Louisiana feels a lot like a purgatory with it's wind-torn trees, flooded lands, dilapidated houses, places that are "like somebody's memory of a town." There are certain locations--a tree, an old fort, an abandoned church--where it seems like they found the location first and then figured out a scene that could be shot there with these characters. They started with Reggie Ledoux and moved on to the settings.

The music really works, too. I got sick of the theme song by The Handsome Family although I'm listening to it right now and like it out of that opening music context. T. Bone Burnett brought attention to some great American folk music with what he collected for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he might do the same here with gospel and new-folk weirdness. Burnett has a gift for finding music that is perfect for the setting and probably, if I'd pay a little more attention, the themes. Here, you get a lot of gospel, some blues, some country, the Kinks, little Dylan, Vashti Bunyan, Townes Van Zandt, Father John Misty, and so on. It's an eclectic mix that somehow all manages to sound like this exact place and time.

People keep telling me that television productions have become just as good as movies, and I almost believed them with Breaking Bad. This is tense, impactful storytelling with a philosophical edge, and I'm glad writer Nic Pizzolatto wasn't constricted by the confines of a 2 hour movie. Cary Fukunaga has a great last name and must have had a nice budget to work with. This has many great individual scenes, but there are two that I want to bring up as the best example of how television drama has caught up with movie productions.

First, is a scene where McConaughey's character is working undercover. Things go great, pretty much like you expect them to, and there's an extended sequence shot that was as good as anything you'll see in a movie. The camera movements are sophisticated, and there are so many characters and so much action that you watch the whole thing stunned, not because of what was going on with any of the characters but because of the technical aspects. At least I was.

The second is a scene where they catch they get their man. You know the characters are going to survive because you see them talking in the future and know it's all a flashback, but there's still some great tension. And there's great juxtaposition between the story they are telling the interviewers and the reality that we see on the scene. It's masterfully done.

True Detective is as dark as anything you're likely to see on television, and it's not just dark because of what is happening on the screen but in the way it kind of gets under your skin. You might see a little of yourself in these exaggerated characters, might identify with their situations, and as they progress through this murky story, it makes you feel a little dirty. If you don't see yourself, you'll definitely see that this storyline with its disturbed characters doing disturbing deeds is definitely holding a filthy mirror to society, that the issues raised here and the philosophies and illnesses driving this are burbling beneath the surface of the real world. And that's what really makes things so dark, cynical, pessimistic. You recognize it. At the end, there are characters using a cheesy star-and-sky and light-vs.-dark metaphor. The characters, like they do throughout this entire season, don't agree. I was definitely on the Woody Harrelson's side on this one though, and that's not just because he had a belt buckle and a giant chin.

Seriously, Woody Harrelson's chin is huge now.

I easily liked the first 5 episodes more than the last 3 episodes in this season, but the whole thing kept my interest during the two days I watched this. I probably won't watch it again even though I'd love to look for more ways to connect--thematically--the issues with Marty and his family and the criminal acts at the center of this. I will, however, look forward to subsequent seasons to see how they explore these themes further. I'm not sure how they can dig deeper into the darkness, but it'll be fun to watch them try.

By the way, I want to point out that as horrible as I am at figuring out mysteries and seeing twists way ahead of big revelations, I had a hunch about this one that turned out to be correct. Maybe it was supposed to be more obvious than I thought it was.

I should get a belt buckle.