True Detective wrapped up its sixth episode last night, and what I assume to be the shows second act. The interview framework of the show appears to be disposed with, as both Marty and Rust left the police station in states of anger. Good news though, as the two men reunited in 2012 at the end of the episode - hopefully leading to some resolution on the Yellow King case.
After all of the breathless Chambers, Lovecraft, Ligotti commentary that followed the previous few episodes, the show narrowed its focus for this most recent adventure, where we learned why exactly Rust and Marty had a falling out in 2002.
It's here that I confess that even I, the infallible television giant that I am, may have been misreading the show. When Rust met Martin's wife, Maggie, in an early episode, the two shared an immediate chemistry. Knowing that Rust and Marty would eventually split and having seen TV before, I automatically assumed that the dissolution would involve Rust sleeping with Maggie. However, as the series progressed, I started to wonder if that might be a red herring. Then I started to expect it to be a red herring.
Turns out it was no fish at all, and Rust and Maggie do end up having a dalliance, but not in the way that I expected.
Instead of Rust casting aside his carefully cultivated isolation to grasp at a human connection with Maggie, the coupling was instigated by Maggie, in a fit of well-earned pique after having been once again wounded by Marty's philandering.
The event itself was anticlimactic. Maggie comes to Rust's apartment, where she finds him in a state, drunk and reeling from the apparent willful apathy at the police department and in Louisiana in general. There's no doubt about what her intentions are, as she brings over a bottle of wine and almost immediately begins kissing Rust. He very briefly resists before giving in and the two share a love scene (to put it dishonestly delicately) that takes less time that it probably did for you to read this paragraph.
When Maggie reveals that she only did this to ensure that Marty would never bother her again, Rust is upset for reasons that aren't terribly clear (or audible, the sound mix was very weird in that scene).
I'm not one to get hung up on the way that True Detective handles women, but there is a vocal contingent that is. Most recently, Emily Nussbaum (whom I generally agree with) wrote about the "shallowness" that she perceives the show to be wallowing in. She lambasts the "macho nonsense" of the show and believes that Rust is presented to us as a sort of alpha-male fetish object.
As with Andy Greenwald early in the shows run, I feel like this is a fundamental misreading of what Pizzolatto is trying to say, there is an argument to be made, but it's not a strong one.
(Both reviewers are hung up on the "crazy pussy" line from early on, which I interpreted to be Rust passive-aggressively mocking Marty, not a disparaging comment toward the actual woman in question.)
(Also, Rust is not a fetish object. His philosophizing is clearly not meant to be taken entirely earnestly. Even if Nussbaum asserts that he's a fetish object by potentially being right about everything, it's not his philosophy that's guiding that quest for knowledge, but rather, a deep humanity at odds with everything he's saying. Rust is compelling because his actions stand in stark relief to his words. If anything it's an anti-fetishization - certainly less egregious than say Deadwood presents Al Swearengen.)
I think saying that the show is overtly misogynistic is an impossible claim. The entire crux of the narrative is based on the fallout from toxic masculinity. Yes, the women on the show are largely presented as either victims, prostitutes, conquests or tortured wives, but all of them are that way because of a pernicious patriarchal culture that allows these kinds of thing to happen.
(I also take issue with the way that some critics demean Maggie as nothing more than a "cop's wife" plot device. That seems both a shallow reading of the text and an instance of them prescribing their views of ideal womanhood on Maggie. For what it's worth, I've met a lot more women like Maggie than I have the "strong, confident woman" cliche.)
Rust actually addresses this theme directly in the episode when he claims that there has been a rash of killings targeting "...women and children - they get no press. The way things in the bayou get no press." The verisimilitude of that statement aside (I imagine that missing women and children get a fair amount more press in the real world than they do in Pizzolatto's Lousiana), you rarely see the conceit of a show laid out so explicitly.
(The line about things in the bayou getting no press is interesting to me as well. Most of the reviewers who are lukewarm on True Detective tend to be coastal liberal types and I'm wondering if there's some sort of classist response to the show. Is it easier to invest in the life of an urbane anti-hero like Don Draper or a genius chemist like Walter White than it is two backwoods detectives, one of whom routinely appears to punch above his assumed intellectual weight? This episode in particular addresses the way that systemic failures have contributed to the blight of South Louisiana, as Rev. Tuttle expounds on the promise of the charter system, while its stark results are clear to the viewer and Cohle.)
As I said, there's no way to label this show misogynistic, but some things did concern me this episode, chiefly the gratuitous T&A. I don't think the nude scenes from earlier in the season or tonight really did much to add to the story and both featured a conspicuous amount of "male gaze." This being HBO, it's not unexpected.
You can argue that it's inherently patriarchal that the two people charged with rescuing these vulnerable women and children are two white men, but somehow it doesn't seem like a crazy supposition that these two would be the ones working the case in the world that P has created.
Most interesting to me is the way that the show addresses women and sexuality. The most "liberated" female characters on the show achieve their liberation through sexuality. First the gals on the bunny ranch early in the season and then Maggie in this episode (and, I suppose, Marty's daughter, Audrey). Women asserting their agency through sex is pretty well-worn trope and, in the world of True Detective, appears to be the only reasonable means of female self-actualization.
For the men on the show, sex is shown mostly as a compulsion, as a snare that can't be avoided. Marty can't stop himself from being infidelious and Rust can't resist Maggie's come ons. The debilitating effects of male sexuality only grow more depraved as you consider the people that Rust and Marty hunt. This is an area where I feel like the show could say some more profound things if Maggie were more developed, alas, it appears that it isn't meant to be.
Beyond making me reconsider the gender politics of the show, this episode (and the Maggie/Rust pairing in particular) also made me reconsider my view of the overall narrative.
Perhaps because I've been conditioned to believe that good stories contain surprises and reveals, I was somewhat disappointed by the seemingly pre-ordained hook-up. I'm also a little bummed that it appears that Rust might be right, and there might actually be a vast conspiracy protecting the killers that he's investigating. It honestly feels a little rote, but Pizzolatto has said that he's "not trying to trick us," so that may just be it.
There's really no shame in telling a straightforward, predictable narrative, as long as its well told, (I point readers to Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez), and True Detective has proven that it's more than capable of telling a story well.
I'm hoping there's more going on, and there are some signs that Rust may be unraveling - his creepy Se7en-esque apartment mock up, him telling the infanticidal mother to kill herself - but if it turns out to just be a monolithic conspiracy and not a more interesting story about the banality of evil, I'm fine with that too. I'm in.
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