True Detective (We're Back to TV Talk)

HBO's True Detective was basically made for me. It combines several of my favorite things, including - Matthew McConaughey, HBO dramas, pulpy cop stuff, and the state of Louisiana.

The first half of the season wrapped up last Sunday, and I'm in the rare position of being able to write about a show while it's actively airing, so I've got to take advantage. 

I'll start by saying that it's not what I expected. When the show was first announced a while back, I thought it would stray more toward the kind of high-concept stuff that HBO has been producing recently, your Trues Blood or your Games of Thrones. I didn't anticipate that it would be a hyper-masculine, but neutered, drama that mostly involves two dudes driving around and annoying each other. My subverted expectations turned out to be a good thing, because the show is actually pretty great. 

I don't think it's the best show in the world, but I think it's a show that works and is very deliberate about the themes that it's trying to explore and the atmosphere that it's trying to cultivate, and, for the most part, the internet agrees with me.

(As one of the web's preeminent iconoclasts, I'm naturally wary when my opinion lines up too neatly with the zeitgeist, but one is only as valuable as one's truth, so I won't be contrarian just for the sake of it.) 

One prominent member the internet, Grantland's Andy Greenwald, does not agree with me. Greenwald has been wary of the show since its beginning and the simmering unrest of the commentariat came to a head this week after he posted his recap of the most recent episode. 

I'm not one to begrudge a man his opinion, Greenwald is a talented TV writer who seems to know his stuff, but this opinion did actually bother me, because I think he's fundamentally misreading the show. 

But with Hart in free fall, it’s clear that writer Nic Pizzolatto doesn’t think Cohle is loopy — he thinks he’s awesome. I’d prefer a show that offered more than halfhearted resistance to Rust Cohle’s whiskey-courageous speechifying. But more and more it’s clear that wherever this show is heading, he’s the one in the driver’s seat.

This is a criticism that I don't understand. If the show were presented as a straight mystery-thriller, one could maybe see Pizzolatto as glorifying McConaughey's Rust Cohle. He gets to deliver lots of weird, nihilistic speeches and is repeatedly praised as some sort of super-detective. A lesser show might lean into these traits to turn Cohle into your classic badass antihero type dude - House with a gun.

However, this is impossible due to the framing device employed by the show. Not only are we seeing Cohle and Harrelson's Martin Hart attempt to puzzle out a murder in 1995, but we also see them talking to a new crop of investigators in 2012. (Investigators 2: The New Batch).

The Cohle presented in 2012 is in no way awesome. He's a washed up drunk waiting for death. However he may be presented in the past timeline, we're not supposed to see Cohle as an aspirational figure.

True Detective has also been criticized in a broader sense for two reasons, both, I believe, unjust.

Some say that it's just another show about a white, male, antihero trying to figure out his place in this world. In this sense, the show is simply being punished by chronology. We've had many successful dramas in this mold over the past decade plus, so it stands to reason that viewers may get burned out. (Is it fair to judge TD on the shows that came before it? Probably not, but it's inevitable.)

The other criticism is that the show leans on the spooky occult serial killer angle that has been done to death on both cable and network TV. Again, the show is being punished for arriving in 2014 instead of 2007.

As far as the serial killer thing goes. Pizzolatto himself said that that angle is a secondary concern to him. The real story he's telling is the construction and destruction of Cohle and Hart's relationship.

I think it's here that Pizzolatto most succeeds as both a storyteller, and as someone trying to separate his characters from the aforementioned pack of similar heroes.

Cohle is a fundamentally broken man. His entire life has been a series of traumas, starting with his childhood, to the death of his daughter and the dissolution of his family, to his time as an undercover drug-runner, all the way up until where he find him, as a detective in Louisiana.

These traumas have turned Cohle, in his own words, into a big-P Pessimist. He's constantly spouting off about the pointlessness of life and human existence. His entire ontological underpinning is one of nihilism and materialism. Cohle is where he is because of some unfortunate causality that he has no power to alter one way or another, but still troubles him deeply.

If this was all there was to Cohle. If he was just some sort of misery-cliche spewing automaton, then, yeah, he'd be a kind of trite character. But the show doesn't present him that way. In my mind, it's never clear how seriously Pizzolatto (and, by extension, the audience) takes Cohle's ramblings. Furthermore, it's not always clear how seriously Cohle takes them himself.

For all of his philosophizing, Cohle is still capable of moments of humanity. He takes clear pleasure in being around Hart's family, and he's injured when Hart's wife, Maggie, tells him that he must have been a bad husband. He even hints at having a sense of purpose, when he tells Hart that although he's a bad man, his job is to stop other bad men.

Hart is similarly complicated. He's presented at first as the antithesis to Cohle. He's a God-fearing family man who just wants to do his job and live his life without thinking too much about it.

Just as Cohle is afforded brief glimpses of humanity, Hart is slowly revealed to be more sinister than he would ever think himself to be. He's disengaged from his family, he's a philanderer and a hard drinker, and, when crossed, he flies into violent, self-destructive rages. Cohle, and the audience, can clearly see this, but Hart is blind to it.

As these two characters with serious personal blind spots get to know each other, the audience, through the flashback device, is afforded a glimpse into the reality of both men. We know how the story ends. Cohle is a sad drunk; Hart is a successful, but no longer married. Neither get a happy ending.

By already showing us what's going to happen to the characters, Pizzolatto has freed himself from the trap of the antihero. There's no temptation to glamorize these men as their adventures unfold. Each time they do something badass, the camera cuts back to 2012 and reminds the viewer that, no matter how cool they may be now, it's going to ultimately be empty. All that's left is to just watch and enjoy the atmosphere.

In short, Andy Greenwald is wrong and I am right. Andy's assertion is doubly meritless because he loved Breaking Bad which subverted the fundamental conceit of the show by fetishizing Walt.

Hire me, Grantland.

Love,

Kyle