“Who Goes There” marks a shift in both the relationship of the two protagonists and their progress with solving the case. Cohle is beginning to show how protective he is to his partner, coming to Hart’s aid during the scuffle in the hospital and trying to mend the wounds of his fallout with Maggie. He gives Hart a place to stay as they prepare for their off-the-books operation with the motorcycle gang. Both men bond under a stupor of drink and depression, their sin and damaged pasts starting to make them grow closer. Finally, they are becoming partners who need each other and can talk to one another. Fast-forward 17 years to the interrogation, there is still a sense of rivalry and resentment between the two, and one wonders if Maggie is the key to their falling out (she does seem to be getting along well with Det. Cohle).
Under Fukunaga’s direction, True Detective looks and feels like no other cop show on television. In past hours, the Sin Nombre director has used the strewn Louisiana landscape as a visual metaphor for the detectives’ tattered states. In “Who Goes There,” he uses dim lighting and a thundering musical score to externalize the aggression simmering underneath both characters. When Hart storms through an industrial centre that has turned into a thumping dance floor, the music vibrates and he walks in shadow, glaring at the promiscuous teens grinding around him. He looks less and less like himself and more like a monster seething and waiting to pounce on his prey. The way he shifts through the crowd, you are reminded of Ledoux’s haunting first impression from last week. Above Hart and Cohle’s heads as they wander, cautiously but determined to find suspects in seedy bars, lightbulbs flicker above them – another visual cue to the dimmed demeanor of both men.
“Who Goes There” concludes with a virtuoso sequence, the thrilling midpoint for the eight-episode series. Filmed in a few audacious tracking shots, as Cohle hunts through a neighbourhood in pursuit of a key connection and surrounding gangs turn the night into a suburban warzone, the camera stays with the unhinged detective as he presses forward to capture his guy. It is a sequence both dazzling in its formal ingenuity and exciting in its expanding scope and pace, as more gunfire and gang members take part in the tumultuous violence as Cohle’s chases his man through the streets. Tracking shots are rare in film, but even rarer on television, and Fukunaga saved it for a prime sequence that sends True Detective rocketing off into its second half.