by Brendan Foley
“You’re back.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
Three hours in, and this season of True Detective seems to have settled into its voice. That voice is a screeching bat wail of insanity, and I quite like it. There’s a snap and a crackle to this week’s episode that was missing from the first two, an actual pulse and throbbing menace that buoyed the procedural elements and introspective concerns. The first two episodes felt like they were weighed down by serving too many aims and agendas, while this third episode goes about its business with dark and furious purpose.
Opening with a dream sequence so ripped off from David Lynch that the only way it could be even more on the nose would be if David Lynch was sitting in one of the bar booths muttering “fucking rip off” under his breath, the episode quickly reestablishes the show’s major thematic underpinnings of legacy and guilt. Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) dreams that he is sitting across from his father (Fred Ward), his father dudded up in his police blues. The awesomeness of having Fred Ward as your dad is undercut a bit by the phantom informing Ray that he has “his father’s hands.” When Ray pulls his knuckles from underneath the table, they are split and bloodied. Later, the ghost of Ray’s dad (who is not, in fact, dead) recounts his dream (do dreams have dreams? The fuck is happening right now) of a young Ray being savaged and killed while trying to escape a deep and dark forest.
(Fun fact: the opening credits climax with shots of a deep and dark forest, which has yet to actually appear on the show. Hmmmmm…)
Anywho, Ray wakes up from his visit to alcoholics’ Twilight Zone to realize that his murder at the end of the last episode was not actually fatal. Nah, he took some riot pellets off the chest and, while being much the worse for wear, he’s not actually dead.
The Ray of the first two episodes was very much a man at the end of his rope, and death might have been an easy solution to his myriad problems and conflicts. But, like an actor on Lost that’s still under contract, he can find no such release. Throughout the episode, Ray and multiple other characters strive to remove him from the case, but circumstances and the demands of overarching masters see fit that Ray is still bound to the Caspere murder investigation. Ray’s fate is apparently tied to this case, and he’ll have to go through a good deal more trial and suffering before anything like release is afforded to him.
But that seems to be par for the course for our heroes and protagonists on True Detective. The more they dig into the private life of Caspere, the more their own private lives spread like parasites. The Caspere glimpsed in photographs in numerous offices and homes is a well-to-do, composed middle-aged man, with nothing of his exterior betraying an obsessive fetishist who trolled clubs for paid sex from either gender, who had a second house exclusively for prostitutes and sex-swings and, uh, animal masks, sure, and who attended private *ahem* ‘parties’ with Beverly Hills elite.
That’s part and parcel with our cast, all of whom have interior lives that match nothing to their exterior worlds. Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) wants desperately to be a legitimate businessman with a secured legacy of children and legal wealth, but the Caspere investigation has left him both flaccid in his wife’s mouth and ragingly violent in his business dealings. Tonight, he exerted at least some of that frustration by using pliers to rip a grill out of a man’s face, admonishing his victim for having rude words imprinted on his face.
Perhaps no one has a bigger disparity between the mask they wear and the truth of their heart than Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch), whose sexual identity is confirmed tonight as an old buddy from his army days seeks him out and all-but admits that he’d prefer returning to fucking combat if it meant he could be with Woodrugh like that again. Woodrugh responds violently (though not nearly as violently as I had been fearing) and then breaks down as he hurries away from what might be the best chance at happiness he’ll ever have. Kitsch will probably continue to be hassled for being a pretty face by people who only know him from Battleship or whatever, but he’s got real substance when the material is right. Previous episodes this season have not used him right, but with his silent breakdown in that scene or the way he carries himself as a clenched fist when dealing with the gay prostitutes, unable to even look them in the eye as he asks his questions, the guy can convey so much meaning and character with so little words.
And with so many people wearing secret faces and carrying secret agenda, it seems more and more likely that is Ani (Rachel McAdams) who will be our hero this year, by virtue of the fact that she alone seems to have no walls between her inner world and her exterior one. Sure, McAdams carries herself like a badass motherfucker, and she carries it off convincingly, but she carries her scars on her sleeves, an open book of pain and empathy that anyone can read.
Just look at how Pizzolatto stages each of the various confrontations with the main characters and their significant others: Frank shuts his wife out completely, dealing with her either closed off from the rest of the world or viewing her from a distance; Woodrugh keeps his feelings caged away where no one can even glimpse them; and when Velcoro’s wife comes by while Ani is around, he talks to her outside and shuts the door, closing Ani away from anything going on.
But when it comes time for Ani to deal with her (soon to be ex) boyfriend, he stamps into her office and attracts the attention of her boss and co-workers. The private invades the professional so that neither has any distance from the other.
A show making a study in the landscape of the interior of the mind is nothing new in this day and age, but True Detective makes a meal of it between the bouts of surreal craziness, the poetical dialogue, and a penchant for elaborate and upsetting violence.
The opening episodes may have been shaky with how they built off and compared to the past, but True Detective seems to have hit its groove for the season, and I’m looking forward to seeing how far down the rabbit hole Pizzolatto and his cast will tumble for the remaining five episodes.