"True Detective" Is The Best Television Since "Deadwood"

HBO knocked another one out of the park with True Detective.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW - just my thoughts and theories on S1 to date.

Just watched S1E3 and I'm all a jumble. This work speaks to me on so many levels. I know that's cheezy to say, but it's true.

Having lived in the Southeast US for quite a spell, I've never been really interested in romanticizing it. Not a lot to get nostalgic about, I thought. But then I started seeing interpretations of the South and Southern culture in media. I visited different places, developed an appreciation for the for the feel of each place. Even with my limited experience, I could pick up on some themes, some similarities.

(It probably all started with a trip to Savannah, but that's another story. It might even be another lifetime).

True Detective is capturing something true about the South. There's lots of facets, lots of modes to the region. This is the one about desert without sand, scrublands, rigs in the distance and squalor all around. Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. How the empty highway at night haunts you, even during the day.

But it's not arid. It's a humid, fecund environment. So when it's not breeding green, what is it growing?

Casting Harrelson and McConaughey in these parts is genius. Dead bang on. They sell every moment, every line. They are not just inhabiting these characters, they are the dreams these characters have about themselves.  They are simulteneously inside the character and standing outside the character, offering subtle critiques, hints, and clues.

The dialogue is superb. It's melodic and lyrical without being oratory or intonated. There's speechifying, but the kind you do when you want to hear yourself talk, maybe trying to convince yourself of something. Maybe it's the soundtrack of the constant conversation in your mind that you never reveal to others. It does not strike one false note.

Presented with Cohle and Hart, two seemingly disparate men, I can't help but feel they are the same man. This whole series could be one man's existential crisis in reconciling his two natures. In their personal philosophies, neither man is wrong. Neither one is entirely right. But I adore that they haven't made Hart a thoughtless rube to Cohle's moody nihilism. Pessimism, while rational, does not equal higher intellectual capability. Outlook is a choice you make based on the information you ingest.

And back to the dialogue again. It's technical in all the right places, but there's plenty of context that allows for interpretation and understanding. Took me most of the episode to realize that "DBs" stood for "dead bodies." But when they rattled off putting out an APB and looking for "KAs", I instantly knew that meant "known associates." It takes really good writing to go into lingo without losing your audience. 

And tonight's episode. The tent revival preacher who sounds almost Buddhist in his sermon. The fact that you knew, you just knew, that Cohle had braced the suspect and caused him to shit his pants. Before he even said those almost exact words, the line had already popped in your mind.

McM was fantastic in the date/dance scene. Look at his hands as he's leading, he even holds his fingers rigid in an attempt to avoid contact, intimacy. His whole body is screaming that he wants to be far, far away. He can't even hold eye contact with anyone.

Except Mrs. Hart, played by the fearless and awesome Michelle Monaghan. I called it first ep---Cohle and Mrs. H are gonna have an interesting relationship, if not a straight up affair. It won't end well. But nothing in Cohle's universe ever does.

And they got the wrong guy for the murders. I'm pretty sure they put down a pretty bad man, but he wasn't the one. And Cohle knows it. I suspect Hart does too, but has lied to himself for so long that he might have forgotten.

I could ramble on for quite some time. If you are not watching it, you should be.

In Hart and Cohle's exchanges I find myself cleaved perfectly in two, feeling that each character is speaking for me. How often does that happen?

"We know what we want. And we don't mind being alone."