True Detective (S1): We Live in a Society

Thanks to the power of the algorithm, I was recently inspired to do a rewatch of True Detective Season 1. Because I'm a psychopath, I decided to it all in one sitting. It's kind of a banal observation at this point to mention how different the experience is than watching it week to week when it premiered.

I truly do not think we were meant to consume serialized media the way we do now - with access to high quality screenshots and the ability to obsess over otherwise innocuous set details.

So let's talk about some of my other takeaways!

Dude's Rock

Dude's Rock

Part of why this show works to me is that it's got one of my favorite type of dual lead pairings: Guilty Man and Bad Man. 

There's something incredibly compelling to me about the combination of a lead weighed down by the guilt of their past with a stupid, brutal piece of shit.

The first three seasons of Power are elite television

If you wanted to be all post-modern about it you could argue that both Marty and Rust occupy both of these roles are different points in the narrative, but you can take your sensitive ass back the AV Club comment section if you want to talk that shit. 

A lot of shows like to wear character arcs on their sleeves, but TD kind of takes a pride in the fact that it's heroes are who they are. You sort of see that in the peace Michelle Monaghan's long suffering character is left with after using a sexual encounter with Rust to permanently end her relationship with Marty.

From the moment Rust opens up about his daughter at dinner, she understands that man. Monaghan plays it perfectly - the look of pity and empathy and confusion she displays in that sequence is top notch. This character knew that there would be nothing that would stop Rust from rejecting her sloppy advances the same way she knew Marty wouldn't be able to control himself when  it is revealed. 

The show basically has Rust admit this, being okay with "who he is" in what we understand to be the third arc of his story. And Marty seems to get it too. The fact that both of them couch their self actualization into isolation and voyeurism (Marty as a PI, Rust as a bartender) is crucial. These are men who have been damaged by the world (and damaged it) who want to run from it but can't. So they keep it at arms length. 

And it cannot be understated how much comedy glues this entire narrative together. I caught myself laughing so hard I thought something might've been wrong with me. There's the obvious crowd pleasers like "scented meat," but "There is no pageant to perform, okay, your disappointment is irrelevant" legitimately brought me to tears. I'm not sure there's a better straight man in Hollywood than Woody Harrelson. 

Chamberian Horror 

I'm not sure anything has confused me as much as the people who claim the show "avoided cosmic horror in the end." 

Ignoring the cursed artifact that drives me mad (the Tuttle tape), the secretive cult that covers up all the crimes even when Marty and Rust expose it to the media, and the big honking spiral gateway into another realm....it's something (bad guy) says in the final episode. I'm not sure I had caught it on previous watches but it really stuck out to me this time

"My ascension removes me from the disk and the loop. I'm near the final stage."

Errol Childress believes that his ritualistic crimes will allow him to escape the cycle of eternal return that all of the characters are trapped in. That is obviously deeply insane but it's not contradicted by anything else within the narrative, in fact, it's reinforced.

First we have Reggie Ledoux, a member of Errol's cult, who seems to recognize that Rust is "in Carcosa" during their encounter. We can take that allegorically but it seems like he meant it literally. He is aware of the journey Rust will take to Carcosa and his violent conflict with Errol. Because it's happened before and will happen again. 

I know it's possible to read Rust's confession here as  as a basic "I was moving towards the light and came back" trope, but I think there's something a little more sinister happening here. The pull of his father and daughter, it doesn't seem to me like Rusf was experiencing a glimmer of the afterlife, but was being pulled back into the cycle he is still trapped in. He's still a teenager in the Alaskan wilderness. He's still a proud new dad.

And he's still in Carcosa having his innards rearranged. 

So you can say it avoids cosmic horror in the Lovecraftian sense, and that's fine since Lovecraft fucking sucked. Dreadful writer, whose frothing racism should've stayed in the dustbin of American literature. 

I think the term Chamberian or even Biercian would probably be a more accurate way to describe True Detective season 1 than Lovecraftian. I'm not just saying this out of my personal distaste for Lovecraft - I think there's very much a relationship the characters in this story have with both the South as a setting and other human beings  that simply gives it a humanistic edge you'd never find in anything Shitcraft published.

The Epstein of it All

Its really hard to think about this show without thinking about Jeffrey Epstein. Gawker published his "little black book" in 2015 but no one really cared until credible links to both 2016 Presidential race frontrunners had to be addressed by our ruling class.

The ARG like fervor with which people scoured over every frame of TD season 1, from sartorial choices or knick-knack placement, feels like it was critical to controlling the eventual public reaction to the existence of a figure like Epstein. 

Information was slowly dripped out like a new episode of a TV series. Entire podcasts and media networks were born to analyze photographs and symbolism and connections. And like the fan discourse around true detective season 1, at some point people kind of forgot that this whole thing was about rich guys preying on vulnerable children. 

I'm not really sure you could inflict QAnon on the oxy ravaged minds of millions of Americans without True Detective priming the culture for it. 

Also I guess you could slot season 1 of Serial in there too. I completely forgot it premiered the fall after True Detective. There's probably not some super cogent thoughts in this section but nobody is paying me to be cogent. 

"Of course I'm dangerous, I'm police. I can do terrible things to people...with impunity." 

It's been interesting to watch our social understanding of how law enforcement shapes our social reality since this show aired.

Everyone understands Law & Order is copaganda but it's still as popular as ever.

The re-emergence of true crime as a pop phenomenon has allowed many current & former law enforcement officers to seize control of narratives that might've painted them as inefficient or inept and rehabilitated their own efforts.

Journalists insist they are fair and unbiased while  serving as press corps for their local police departments. And every time I read one of these slop jobs I just think about Rust cooking the scene at Reggie's swap shack, the knowing looks that Gilbough and Papania give each other as they listen to Rust and Marty's well-rehearsed fable of heroism.

Nothing has really changed except that it feels easier for the police to play in our faces. Falsehoods are no longer a blow to systemic credibility, they are simply content for the content mills.