True Detective: Existential Detectives

In my last book, TV Outside the Box: Trailblazing in the Digital Television

Revolution, I highlighted the difference between the new existential detective story and older, more traditional whodunits in a section devoted to Season 1 of

True Detective:

“The new existential detective story is still primarily a closed mystery

with multiple suspects and red herrings, but tends to operate on a

parallel track to the mysteries embedded in the detectives themselves.

While not the first, shows such as True Detective are part of this legacy

that has paved the way for bold storytelling in the new detective

dramas on streaming networks. These are no longer merely

“whodunits,” they also pose the existential question: Who am I?

“A suspicious, nihilistic loner, Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) believes

that life is meaningless, and that hope is a zero sum game of self-

delusion. Unable to sleep until the murders are solved, Cohle squirrels

1 away evidence in a storage locker and painstakingly compiles

handwritten notes and drawings in his omnipresent ledger, earning him

the mocking moniker of The Taxman within the police precinct.

“As the first season of True Detective unspools, we bear witness to a

new iteration of homicide detective: one whose back-story is as

complex and mysterious as the suspects and perpetrators they

investigate. Unlike detectives on plot-driven procedural dramas, the

detectives become their own case for us to solve. There is no quick

resolution, and their troubles go much deeper than the usual detective

show tropes—marital infidelity, divorce, corruption and substance

abuse. Instead, in this new iteration, each long-arc investigation pulls

them down the rabbit hole into self-examination, self-loathing, and

compels them to take a personal inventory of past regrets and

scabbed-over emotional wounds.”

Season 1

CRIME: Who killed Dora Lange? (And is possibly responsible for several other missing women?)

2 INVESTIGATORS: Homicide Detectives Martin “Marty” Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin “Rust” Cohle (Matthew McConaughey).

SUSPECTS: Cohle, Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders) and “the Green

Eared Spaghetti Monster”; Hart may also be a suspect.

OPEN or CLOSED MYSTERY: Closed.

HOW THE TRUTH COMES TO LIGHT: After Cohle steals a videotape from

Reverend Tuttle’s home, Cohle and Hart discover a cult of men responsible for the disappearance of many children and women in Louisiana. They figure out that Rev. Tuttle had an illegitimate half-brother and that his half-brother’s son,

Errol Childress (Glenn Fleshler), is the Green Eared Spaghetti Monster.

WHODUNIT: Errol Childress (with assists from Rev. Tuttle, William Childress and others).

No other show in recent memory has hooked people into a mystery more so than Season 1 of True Detective. Between the parallel timelines and engaging characters, viewers were eating up every clue True Detective had to offer. And

3 even some the show didn’t, with plenty of fan sites taking liberties with what they considered “clues,” Easter eggs and red herrings. Although True

Detective’s approach to the “investigation” part of the crime drama is experimental, its last two episodes draw on classic television crime structure.

Creator Nic Pizzolatto and auteur director Cary Joji Fukunaga even give us a finale complete with this classic scene: The detectives find their man but he’s not going down without a fight. Episode 8, “Form and Void” finds Cohle and Hart pursuing Errol Childress on his haunting estate. The chase has elements of classic psychological crime thrillers such as Silence of the Lambs and the anthology-like structure creates a real sense that our heroes could die in this pursuit. It is a showdown mirrored in Cohle and Hart’s last conversation about the battle between light and dark.

Cohle ends up in the hospital after their hunt for Childress. Rather than a sense of victory, Cohle feels regret that he didn’t die in the gunfight, so that he could have reunited with his late daughter. He tried to give in to the “darkness” but he woke up. Cohle and Hart sit outside the hospital discussing this battle.

COHLE I tell you, Marty, I’ve been up in that room looking out those windows every night here and just thinking it’s just one story. The oldest.

4 HART What’s that?

COHLE Light versus dark.

HART Well, I know we ain’t in Alaska, but appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.

COHLE Yeah. You’re right about that. Hey, listen, hey.

HART Yeah, what?

COHLE Why don’t you point me in the direction of the car, man? I’ve spent enough of my fuckin’ life in hospitals.

The very injured Cohle tries to get up from his wheelchair. Hart regretfully assists him.

HART Jesus. Oh. You know what? I’d protest, but it occurs to me that you’re unkillable. You want to go back, get clothes or anything?

COHLE No, anything I left back there, I don’t need.

HART You know, you’re looking at it wrong, the sky thing.

COHLE How is that?

5 HART Well, once, there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning.

That fine balance of Hart and Cohle’s temperaments and outlooks lend humor and relatability to a dark story. Pizzolatto’s combination of the deeply psychological and introspective plus whodunit is what makes the first season of

True Detective so compelling.

Episode Cited

“Form and Void,” True Detective, written by Nic Pizzolatto; Anonymous Content/HBO.

6