One of the things that strikes you about True Detective is the methodical nature of Pizzolatto’s writing. Normally in these types of crime shows, the writing leans on stylised urgency, but this is probably the closest we get to seeing how actual police work goes in real life. Adding to its sort of laid back appeal is that we probably see Rust and Martin spend more time shooting the breeze than tracking down clues and interviewing witnesses. There’s still a lot of that, but as I said, the series seems as interested, if not more so, in how the investigators work as it does in seeing them work the investigation.
This first episode also lays out some intriguing bread crumbs for it to follow-up on. For instance, we know that someone was arrested for Dora’s murder, but who, and what is the connection to the disappearance of the Fontenot child? Rust and Martin had a falling out in 2002, but over what? It wasn’t this case because it was solved in ’95. They survived together as partners for seven years, so what caused them to not talk for a decade? And more intriguingly, what happened to Rust? In the 2012 interview he looks strung out and wasted, a far cry from the buttoned up “Tax Man” who irked almost everyone in his squad. In his 2012 interview, Rust smokes and demands that one of the detectives make a beer run for him because it’s his day off and on his days off, “I start drinking at noon. You don’t get to interrupt that.” Still, Rust mind seems quite sharp. He realizes right off that he’s been brought in for no mere recital of a past case, because the files were lost in Hurricane Rita.
Obviously, True Detective isn’t your ordinary crime-based procedural, even though it sounded like Rust was auditioning to be one of the profilers from Criminal Minds at times. How you react to it will probably depend on a scene that happens early on as Rust and Martin are driving away from the crime scene, and Rust launches into diatribe that can at best be described as pessimistic, and at worst nihilistic. “People out here,” Rust says watching the countryside roll by, “it’s like they don’t know the outside world exists, they might as well be living on the fucking moon […] It’s all just one ghetto, man, a giant gutter in outer space.” “My luck I picked today to get to know you,” replies Martin, “Let’s make the car a place of silent reflection from now on.”
One might take Rust’s droningly negative monologue on the human condition as somewhat strained, he also has a backstory that includes divorce after the death of his daughter, but on these shows, I usually find cops so wound up about being cops that it’s kind of refreshing to have one so resoundingly negative about humanity in general. How does this thinking affect Rust in the 17 years between the two cases? And on a strictly personal level, these philosophic diversions of Rust’s offered great character moments for Harrelson’s Martin. Whenever Rust would say something not affiliated with the case, I would start to chuckle in anticipation for Martin’s reaction. “I believe people shouldn’t talk about this shit at work,” he says eventually in frustration.
Like the first chapter of any good mystery, True Detective lays out several tantalizing ideas, both in terms of the partnership of Rust and Martin and the crime they’re trying to solve, the murder of Dora Lange. The show may end up being a kind of southern Twin Peaks, but without the quirk and the mysticism, and in an already crowded TV serial killer landscape, True Detective still manages to stand out thanks in no small part to the double act of McConaughey and Harrelson. As I think back now, I’m less intrigued about the mystery than I am about the relationship between Rust and Martin, and how the series handles that will determine if I stick it out all season. For once, a procedural leaves you with as many questions about the cops as it does about the crazies.
Tell us, what did you think of the first episode of True Detective? Let us know in the comment section below.