Tim Earle's Episodes You Should Have Seen in Twenty Fourteen

Reviewing TV pilots is, in some ways, a lot like evaluating a baby. It doesn't matter if he'll grow up to be Neil deGrasse Tyson, for now he's a drooling idiot who keeps trying to eat his own vomit. Pilots are often the worst episode of a show. On the other hand, sometimes a pilot is all a show has to offer and after the first episode the show just circles the drain. So I want to talk about episodes that were really damn good in 2014 that weren't pilots. Here's my list, in no particular order. 


The Legend of Korra - "Ultimatum"

"As long as I'm breathing, it's not over."

Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the more important kids shows of the last decade. It handled adult themes in a way that was kid friendly and yet in no way watered down. The Legend of Korra is an excellent companion piece to Avatar, but for a slightly older generation. And yet it has been shat upon by Nickelodeon, its third season getting released with no marketing, then pulled from air halfway through its run, available only via streaming on the Nick website. And it's a shame because the third season of The Legend of Korra is the best by far. The fourth and final season, airing currently, is not bad but pales in comparison. "Ultimatum" is a perfect specimen of what Korra does best. It's mostly fun and fast paced, and yet complex, highly political events underline every moment, every choice. On top of that, this episode has the best fight scenes I've seen on television ever, in my whole life. They are beautifully animated, amazingly choreographed and staged. The represent everything that animation can bring to the table with martial arts and they do so without ever forgetting about the stakes that underpin the action. I'm happy to be able to suggest many high caliber kid's shows (Adventure Time, Over the Garden Wall, Bravest Warriors) that parents can watch as well. But The Legend of Korra is the only kid's show this year that is constructing a cohesive lesson on how to view world politics. Also, girl power. So much girl power.

The Good Wife - "Last Call"

"What does it mean if there is no god? How is that any better?"

"It's not better. It's just truer." 

Speaking of girl power and politics... The Good Wife! There's nothing quite as shocking as killing a main character in a TV show. Since it is such an easy way to drum up emotion and pathos, it is frequently misused as a cheap trick to cover up poor character growth or to mine some drama out of an actor's contract dispute. Despite being a personal top ten drama for the last four years, this year, The Good Wife decided to kill off a main character for all the wrong reasons. And yet, from the ashes of this bad decision, the writers for The Good Wife created an hour of unwavering emotional free fall, the likes of which I have not seen since Buffy The Vampire Slayer ("The Body"). What is most fascinating about "The Last Call" is that there is a very serious discussion of atheism plopped down in the middle of what is otherwise a very focused story about discovering the meaning of a dead man's last voicemail. I find that atheism is often misrepresented in TV if represented at all. Atheists in media are always either acerbic intellectuals or nihilists. Rarely do you see a woman with a family, and a job that has nothing to do with science, who simply does not believe. There is no reason, no psychological framework, for her atheism. She just has no faith. And after decades of shows dealing with matters of faith, it's nice to see the other side represented with the same emotional care.

The Americans - "New Car"

"It's nicer here, yes. It's easier. It's not better."

And speaking of struggles with atheism... The Americans! I've started pitching The Americans to people as "Mad Men with a plot." I don't mean to disparage Mad Men. Sometimes finely crafted wandering is enjoyable. But every now and then, it's nice to see a little story between all that symbolism and critique. And story is where The Americans is king. Each season is a mile-a-minute spy thriller, loaded with heaping doses of critique and satire. What stands out about "New Car" is just how many themes it juggles. American commercialism, patriotism, the futility of vengeance, all culminating with the tearful breakdown of a child who was caught sneaking into the neighbor's house to play video games. And it's moment's like this, where the stakes are relatively low and the setting is intimate that the show strikes its hardest. Because no battle, no global event will ever hit as close to home as... well... home. 

Game of Thrones - "The Mountain and the Viper"

"People die at their dinner tables. They die in their beds. They die squatting over their chamber pots. Everybody dies sooner or later."

And speaking of the futility of vengeance... Game of Thrones! Where everybody dies and nothing has any meaning. This episode is Game of Thrones at its finest. The fight has edge-of-your-seat tension, breathtaking choreography and nightmare-inducing special effects. The writing is crisp, the meanings layered. And while it ends with a woman shrieking in horror, it also features one of the show's most triumphant moments. Sansa Stark, after seasons of nonstop torture, emerges from the castle, clad in black feathers, powerful, magnificent. It won't last, because nothing ever does. But for a moment, Game of Thrones has given us the kind of triumph you can't manufacture with all the special effects in the world. It is the triumph you earn. The victory you claim by passing through the flames.

Rick and Morty - "Rixty Minutes"

"Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's going to die. Come watch TV."

And speaking of everybody dying and nothing having any meaning... Rick and Morty! This is the funniest half hour produced in 2014, without a doubt. No contest. It takes what is essentially a throwaway sitcom B plot and turns it into a mission statement. And it couldn't have come at a better time. 2014 was a decidedly unfunny year. Robin Williams passed away, Bill Cosby probably raped a lot of women. It was hard to find new things to laugh at without feeling bad about yourself. But not Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty laughed at all the bad stuff and said, "Not only is it OK to laugh, it is the only thing you can do." Not since Douglas Adams has a show mined this much humor out of destroying all life on earth. And I can't think of a time in the history of television when nihilism has kept a family together. Life sucks, I know. Wubalubadubdub! 

True Detective - "Who Goes There"

"Enough with the self-improvement-penance-hand-wringing shit. Let's go to work."

And speaking of nihilism... True Detective! I think I loved True Detective a lot less than everyone else. It's on my top ten list, so obviously I loved it, just not as much as the guy sitting next to me. The main complaint I have with the season is that it isn't as profound as it pretends to be. But not being profound is not a bad thing. If you aren't telling us a story about life, but instead just telling us a story about two guys and a case, it frees you up in a lot of ways. So, why do I love this episode so much? Rust says it all when he says, "Let's go to work." This is the finest hour of True Detective. There is no pontificating, no discussions of emotional turmoil. Instead, Rust and Marty go off book and get into some serious shit. And boy is it thrilling. Everyone and their mother knows about the six-minute continuous take, but what is more interesting to me is the six minutes of no scripted dialogue in what is otherwise such a talky show. It is just action, tension, spectacle, and dread. And in the end, what makes "Who Goes There" such a good episode of television is that all that talk of "touching evil" is just talk. Finally, here, we see the lengths Rust is willing to go to for the truth, for his obsession. It is hypnotizing and deeply troubling. 

Hannibal - "Tome-wan"

"Whenever feasible, one should always try to eat the rude."

And speaking of hypnotizing and deeply troubling... Hannibal! I honestly cannot get over how beautiful this show is. It is unthinkably pretty. And it has the greatest score on television - all sloshing water and bending pipes with the occasional brush of piano strings, haunting and murky. Season one of Hannibal was a descent into madness, while season two is a game of cat and mouse between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. Of course, you're not ever sure who is the cat. Unfortunately, the season finale wraps up this battle of wills in a very stupid and clunky way, but right before the final episode came "Tome-wan," a moment of stillness and camaraderie between Will and Hannibal before it ends. Hannibal is very much like an epic poem of old, prone to hyperbole and meandering philosophical musings, filled with heroes, gods, and the Devil himself. But like all good epic poems, it makes a world of strange beauty that you cannot help but tumble into.

Fargo - "A Fox, A Cabbage, And a Cage"

"I'd call it animal except animals only kill for food."

And speaking of the Devil... Fargo! Fargo could have easily wound up the ugly stepchild of one of the greatest movies ever made, but instead it treated its pedigree as a challenge and rose to the occasion, becoming one of the greatest miniseries of all time and my favorite show of 2014. How it does this is honestly beyond me. The twists and turns, the humor and horror, all make a little clockwork universe too complex and tightly wound for me to ever really wrap my head around. At first I thought it was impressive that Noah Hawley wrote every episode, but after watching the whole season, I can say that no committee could have ever made that show. It is a singular creative vision, and it is a bold one. Though I can't ignore the fact that Noah Hawley had help from some of the year's most brilliant performances. Allison Tolman is a gem, Joey King is possibly the best child actor out there right now, and Martin Freeman deconstructs everything that has made him lovable in a long career of being lovable. Eventually, Martin becomes a villain so malevolent he dwarfs even Billy Bob, who is the actual Devil.

The reason I chose Fargo's penultimate episode is, like the show's very inception, it takes what seems like a bad idea on paper, and makes it brilliant in actualization. Shows rarely come back from inserting a "one year later" in the middle of a season. Hell, most shows rarely come back from inserting anything more than a summer break. But Fargo does exactly that. It skips ahead a year. Lots of things change, cases close, people move on, and more importantly, the Devil is now a dentist. Turning your biblically evil bad guy into a dentist may be the single greatest story decisions I've ever seen in television. And the Billy Bob really commits to his character reassignment, constructing a new look, a new demeanor, and a new catchphrase. Aces!

The Honourable Woman - "The Paring Knife"

"Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that in a room full of pussies, I'm the only one with a vagina."

Speaking of a miniseries with a single bold creative vision... The Honourable Woman! Hugo Blick's strange, dreamy, chronologically-impaired spy thriller. This show, despite having star power from Maggie Gyllenhaal, managed to slip right under the pop culture radar, which surprises me since it is very similar to True Detective. One mysterious (spy thriller instead of serial murder), two complicated leads (women instead of men), lots of philosophical musing (about politics instead of nihilism), and the same writer and director for every episode (except in this case Hugo Blick is both the writer and the director). Just take a moment to appreciate this accomplishment: a single man directed and wrote what is basically a six-hour film. The show is about an investigation into the very strange life of Nessa Stien (Gyllenhaal) as she tries, in her own way, to bring peace to Israel and Palestine. It's an unwavering parable, and over time Nessa becomes less and less a character and more and more the embodiment of naivety and goodness. So, predictably, she is quite thoroughly punished. The show manages to discuss politics without ever becoming condescending or preachy. It makes some rather bold assertions, not all of which I agree with, but all well thought out. The reason I chose "The Paring Knife" is because it is the final episode, so to see it, you must have watched every episode preceding it. Unlike Fargo or True Detective, the show does not have peaks and valleys, higher and lower quality episodes. The Honourable Woman is a straight shot, a rocket to the finish line. It's a new and fascinating way to make a show.


Last Week Tonight With John Oliver - "Episode 18"

"Currently, the biggest scholarship program exclusively for women in America requires you to be unmarried with a mint condition uterus and also rewards working knowledge of buttock adhesive technology."

Speaking of bold political assertions... Last Week Tonight! This show seemed, at first to be a knock-off Daily Show but missing the daily aspect. Of course, what seemed at first a disadvantage wound up being far from it. Giving John Oliver and his team a week to fully investigate every story meant that Last Week Tonight could do some honest investigative journalism into subjects not usually considered newsworthy - but very much lampoon-worthy. I respect what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are doing, but they are mostly just sitting on the sidelines making fun of bad journalists. Meanwhile, John Oliver is actually in the game, reporting on real issues that no one seems to care about but everyone should. Interestingly enough, the episode I picked criticizes the US embargo of Cuba which wound up being rather prescient as Obama is now discussing lifting that embargo.

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So there you have it people - my favorite episodes in a banner year for good episodes. Strangely, while writing this I discovered an interesting theme that connects all these shows. It seems 2014 was the year for finding solace in hopelessness. And now that I understand this, it's not so strange that Rustin Cohle took over the internet with his cool disaffected nihilism. This was the year in which the end was nigh and everyone just shrugged and made another beer can sculpture.

True Detective: "After You've Gone"

“Time has its way with us all.” is the Marty Hart line that opens “After You’ve Gone”, True Detective’s penultimate episode. And what a line it is. It says so much about the ride this season has taken us on so far. I can’t really fathom experiencing so much from only seven episodes of this series. The show’s ability to jump back and forth in time is put to shame only by its total control of whether or not it wants those time jumps to confuse the audience. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It’s really pure magic as screenwriting and even though I know I’ve been sucking up to Mr. Pizzolatto for the last seven weeks I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

The scene that opens this episode has Marty and Rust quickly explaining where they’ve been for the last decade or so since they’ve seen each other. It’s the first time True Detective goes out of its way to explain events that happen off camera in any kind of detail. Generally we just get a cryptic hint. And what we learn from all of this is that Rust travelled to the farthest reaches to escape this case and is brought back because of what he calls a “debt”. We actually get to see a great role reversal in this episode. All season long I’ve found myself 100% on Rust’s side. No matter what ridiculous shit he was spouting I still knew deep down that when it came to police work he was doing what he was doing because he was right. But for the first time all season I really can’t be sure that his “sprawl”, his web of connected clues isn’t just what Marty calls “conjecture”.

The timeline of this episode occurs after all the interviews we’ve grown so familiar with. So it’s very strange to hear Marty and Maggie (who’s seems to have married someone with money) referencing the interviews like they just happened. But what does Pizzolatto do now that his framing vehicle is gone? He creates another one. The bulk of the episode revolves around Marty and Rust sitting in a storage unit that Rust has filled with objects pertaining to his “sprawl”. The episode jumps to and from this scene to fill in other details but the main story lives in this storage unit.

I touched on it in my review of “Who Goes There” but this episode really lays out how these two men operate. They are both defined by their work. They glaze over the last decade because they weren’t working. Their personal lives meant little to them because there wasn’t a work life to offset it. I’m happy to see this side of these two men return since there really isn’t much time left to define these fellas. “After You’ve Gone” breaks the HBO standard of a raucous penultimate episode that leads into a finale where they deal with the fallout. Instead we get a slow but steady episode where we have to play catch up with a large amount of new information tied to this now almost twenty-year-old case. And knowing for sure that next season this story will not continue presents a very new aspect to watching television that really raises the stakes on next week’s finale.

Some of the stuff that let the air out of my balloon last week finally decided to show up with just a few minutes left in the episode. My roving obsession with Carcosa, masks, and the King in Yellow was finally given some payoff this week. First, when Rust and Marty question a suspect’s former employee the former decides to show her some sketches of the stick sculptures that have haunted their investigation all along. Upon seeing them she begins to spout babble about Carcosa and my obsession was immediately reignited. I imagine this sort of break brings on similar feelings in real detectives. At a few points throughout the episode we learn about the Tuttle family’s affinity for mask-wearing ceremonies and once again we return to Robert W. Chambers' writing.

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

—The King in Yellow: Act I, Scene 2

This scene is performed almost exactly when Rust and Marty question a hospitalized witness and having it echo now in the series final hours sends chills up my spine. And in the last shot of “After You’ve Gone”, after the two cops who were interrogating Rust and Marty throughout the season leave a man with a very specific skin condition (the 'green eared spaghetti monster') we see that he’s been mowing a large patch of grass in a circle. A flat circle.

And just like that, almost effortlessly, True Detective has trapped me again in my own obsession with finding an answer to all of this. So finally, with only fifty eight some odd minutes left in this story we’re given two men who no longer have any official ties to the law acting as law enforcers. They owe the dead a debt that they firmly believe and no matter what they’re going to see to see it through. They simply are incapable of anything else.

True Detective “Form and Void”

The finale of True Detective, reviewed by Tucker 'Fox' Johnson

Rust: “You’re lookin’ at it wrong. The sky and everything.”
Marty: “How’s that?”
Rust: “Once there was only dark. If you ask me the light’s winnin’.”

And so concludes the first season of True Detective. To a passerby this dialogue exchange wouldn’t seem like anything special but when those words come both at the end of one of the most nihilistic series on record and out of the mouth of a man who spent the series’ eight episodes despising every collective breath that humanity took, well, it’s a big deal. 

There are plenty of weighty themes to talk about in “Form and Void” but I want to start with Nic Pizzolatto’s approach to the season’s final moments. Unlike most of the cop shows I’ve seen (and it’s pretty hard to even consider this in the same league as most of them) a huge twist wasn’t thrust into the finale. In fact Pizzolatto threw the killer right in our face at the end of last week’s episode “After You’ve Gone” and in so doing quelled the riot that was internet theorization. Everyone and their mother had their ideas about every aspect of True Detective, the Yellow King most of all. I imagine this always happens with good mystery television (I guess it really doesn’t even have to be good) but what I really appreciate here is even though he had no real control over the audience’s self appointed Easter egg hunt between episodes he did have control over what we did and didn’t know for sure. Most of the season he chose to sprinkle the facts on us but it was almost as if he foresaw what we’d all be doing and reigned us all back in and his actions speak louder than the narrative. He tells us flat out who to be afraid of before we even get to the finale because the identity of the killer isn’t the point that Pizzolatto is trying to make. Errol William Childress could really be anyone. That said, he’s an absolutely terrifying screen presence and Glenn Fleshler deserves all the credit in the universe for showing up this late in the game and still casting such a heavy shadow with his performance. But this man who’s been yearning to be the King in Yellow for so long, who’s taken calculated steps to not being discovered, who’s mastered the art of hiding in plain sight is finally brought down because he painted a house once in 1994. And just when you thought you couldn’t throw your hands up any higher at the situation we learn he painted the house green, not yellow.

That’s where True Detective sets itself apart from other cop drama. The final clues aren’t found and put together because the dutiful detective finally looks at them from the right angle. Not at all. Instead the discovery is made because of a completely random connection brought on by a just as circumstantial frame of mind. And it’s perfect. This is the kind of idea that this series has been building toward since its beginning. Human beings are imperfect creatures that have found themselves in a universe where they constantly face a near perfect enemy: Darkness. So when we finally make the right connection, when we finally discover the killer’s identity, when we finally take them down we see it as a victory against the very cosmos. We spurn the skies because that is where our creator lives and we have to remind him that no matter what his intentions he’s allowed true evil to seep through onto our plane and humanity, not God, fought it off. True Detective strikes me as a series that wants to show how people are constantly trying to prove to their makers that they’re worth the gift of existence. It’s really the most human emotion there is. We want to be worth something. Like Marty we want to be desired by those we care about and though we make mistakes we’ll still fight tooth and nail to retain that desire. Like Errol Childress we want to fight for our place in the shuffle. We push our father’s aside (or lock them up) to make sure that we’re given our time to prove ourselves worthy of power and existence. Every character on the show can be applied to this template except for one: Rust Cohle. Rust doesn’t care what he’s worth. His sole mission in life is to prove the creator wrong. He wants to rub God’s face in the fact that nature and humanity have allowed for atrocities to occur and who in their right mind would allow such horror to exist? He’s not even out to stop the madness. He just wants to make sure that everyone knows it’s there, lurking in the shadows, a horrific inevitability. But then that is why “Form and Void’s” final lines are so beautiful. Rust finally stopped the evil he’d been fighting against for two decades. He finally won his battle with the cosmos and only after doing so does he realize that maybe it isn’t a losing battle after all. In the climactic moments of Rust’s chase through Childress’ Carcosa he looks up into the sky and has a vision of a cluster of stars in the shape of a spiral. “This will all happen again” it says. But in that same defeatist statement hides another, “Now is the chance to do something about it”.

True Detective has spent plenty of its air time focusing on dualities so of course it ends with them too. Time is a flat circle, easily repeated. So of course we’re taken back through all of the outdoor set pieces of this season though now from the vantage point of a helicopter shot gliding cleanly over all. Carcosa is an enormous spider web in the darkness yet when defeat for its king finally comes it does so in a wide-open room with a view of the sun and sky. The cosmos takes on the shape of a spiral yet in the season’s final shot we look upon a starry night sky that seems so much clearer. The stars are positioned randomly in the sky with no real pattern to buy into or obsess over. And as if to strengthen Rust’s closing words the shot is given a long exposure and the full brightness of the stars becomes more and more apparent. Yet Rust’s final line isn’t that we’ve won, it’s that we’re winning. The battle of light and dark is never ending and so of course the winner will change hands. It’s just up to those on the side of light to keep battling the dark no matter the odds or frankly, the outcome.

It’s been lovely watching this season and writing about it. Only because I listened to it while writing this final article do I want to close with the refrain from the song “Black River Killer” by Blitzen Trapper. It just seemed too fitting to pass up:

So you make no mistake
I know just what it takes
To pull a mans soul back from heavens gates
I’ve been wandering in the dark about as long as sin
But they say it’s never too late to start again
Oh when, oh when
Will the spirit come a-callin' for my soul to send
Oh when, oh when
Will the keys to the kingdom be mine again?

True Detective: “Haunted Houses”

Fox covers episode 6 of True Detective

This weeks episode of True Detective tackles obsession in a whole new way. Rather than watch Rust obsess over scattershot clues in what is now a 7-year-old murder case we take charge of the new mystery that this series has presented us with. After the serious one-two punch that was the last two episodes we’re finally given a chance to slow down and try and figure all this shit out. Now I don’t know how other viewers are handling this show but I took the liberty of polishing off Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow between “The Secret Fate of all Life” and “Haunted Houses”. I found myself poring over every minute detail in the stories trying to connect them to True Detective in a million different ways. And what did I have when I was finished? An empty hand. 

And that just made me angrier. Did I miss something? I must have. I must just not be working hard enough to crack the code. The King in Yellow connection with this series has turned me into Rust Cohle. I’ve become completely obsessed with the smallest details of both works. And even in an episode like “Haunted Houses” which is probably this season’s slowest (or it just feels that way because it’s following two very serious acts) I still found myself staring a hole in my TV screen absolutely positive that there was something to be seen. Problem is in good mystery writing whether it’s film, television or good ole’ fashioned printed word the clues don’t mean anything until the author decides they do. And therein lies Nic Pizzolatto’s genius. Whether he meant for his viewers to take a walk to their library or dig through the basement of their closest used bookstore to find a copy (or download the free Kindle version) of The King in Yellow is irrelevant. Most viewers won’t but I did and I imagine all of us are experiencing something similar. The play-within-the-book is said to induce madness in anyone who even begins to read the second act because of the secrets of life that it divulges. Last week brought us into the second act of this season and I think with all the clues and questions that arose from it Pizzolatto is simulating the madness quite well. This week however tosses a brick wall right in front of all us obsessive’s speeding train of questions. Instead of answers (or even more clues to look into) we get some really plainly laid out melodrama. Marty is cheating again. Rust and Marty’s wife Maggie do some cheating of their own. It almost feels like a different show completely. Luckily for us, True Detective does melodrama better than most shows that do it as a day job. 

“Haunted Houses” is given the shit job of taking these characters and this story to a huge turning point. It ends Hart and Cohle’s partnership. It ends Marty’s marriage. It pushes everyone living in True Detective’s little universe off the edge of a cliff we’ve seen coming for six hours now. This episode is the breath before what I can only imagine is a deep plunge. So of course it features some of the toughest scenes to watch in the series’ run so far. Nic Pizzolatto is testing us. “Haunted Houses” is a gauntlet wherein this show’s sole writer is forcing us to come to terms with the fact that we love to watch murder and mayhem but never really know how to handle people who love each other behaving atrociously toward one another. It’s really been the only zone that’s been off limits so far this season and after this episode we’ve literally seen it all. And then just when I thought the episode would fade out with Rust and Marty staring at each other broken and bloodied in the Police Station parking lot after their little tussle we take a great leap forward into the real present that the series has been operating in. Rust tracks Marty down on a back road and implores him to buy him a beer so that a much needed discussion can take place. We’ve finally reached the timeline where the answers lay. And I can only hope they come soon. I don’t think I can keep searching so intently for clues. If blindness from sitting too close to the screen doesn’t get me, then anti-climactic disappointment surely will.

True Detective: “The Secret Fate of All Life”

Fox Johnson on Episode 5 of True Detective

I had incorrectly assumed that after last week’s action packed ending sequence we’d tone things down for a while. Instead this week’s episode picks up only a few hours after the last episode. This is sort of reassuring in a series that jumps around so much and plays with time so loosely. And much like the quick pick up from last week we return to a series that has decided it’s time to utilize violence to tell its story. “Who Goes There” was absolutely a turning point for True Detective and “The Secret Fate of All Life” plays more like a sequel to that episode rather than just the next one in sequence. 

True Detective is rapidly becoming a show that has made its business blowing minds. But rather than ending episodes with cliffhangers it instead throws wrenches into every possible gear to throw off its viewers. It has self-appointed itself a series that attempts to emulate the experience of following a twisting turning murder case. Sixteen minutes into this episode we find ourselves in familiar territory. We’ve found Reggie LeDoux and have reached the point where a promised gun battle will commence. And then, just like that, it doesn’t. Hart and Cohle’s present day narration describes an intense and disorienting gunfight. Meanwhile, we watch as the ’95 Hart and Cohle sneak swiftly into LeDoux’s compound and capture him without so much as a punch thrown. But why would these men lie? And not just lying off the cuff. They’ve got a practiced corroborating story of the events that unfolded. So while you watch two men capture the man they’ve been chasing since the series began, we can’t imagine what could cause them to lie about it. Then Hart blows off half of LeDoux’s face. Two children, a dead boy and a live girl, are recovered from LeDoux’s compound and very suddenly the central case of True Detective is over.

Well, not really. The series jumps into the early 2000’s. Hart and Cohle are promoted and decorated and have moved on to other things. Though just as soon as we’re caught up on current events an interrogation of Cohle’s goes south and he begins to think they never caught the real killer. So without really being given a chance to breathe, we’re thrust once again into a now even more terrifying murder case. The Killing tried this same method in all three of its seasons. They’ve answered questions with more questions. Luckily Nic Pizzolatto does a much better job of holding it all together by having almost every event that unfolds call back to lines and twists earlier episodes. And I’m always game anytime anyone wants to nod toward Twin Peaks.

And once more we’re forced to think about True Detective’s characters, though forced isn't the right word. It’s a genuine pleasure to have a break in the action to think about these two men even further. Especially now that we know each one’s own version of justice and that they’re willing to flat out lie to preserve it. The beauty here is that this series has been playing this game all along. True Detective’s tension doesn’t come from nail biting, white knuckled scenes but instead from the knowledge that no matter what we know about someone there is always a distinct and very real possibility that lurking behind the felled monster is an even darker threat.

And that is exactly what this series has been trying to say this entire time. The killer is dispatched yet he never goes away. We hear a couple of characters liken existence to a flat circle. The idea that no matter what happens, no matter how many children’s lives are spared from rape and murder, it will absolutely happen again. This idea is the secret fate of the title and it fills Rust and Marty, not to mention the audience, with a cringe-inducing sense of doubt. Even as this comes on as some kind of stunning revelation it's disturbingly familiar. Of course LeDoux wasn’t the guy. Why should he be? The show isn’t over so of course no one is out of the woods yet. Instead it sounds like we’ve traded up. Now we’ve got a killer with the handle “The Yellow King” to contend with. And even though the episode doesn’t end with another killer long take action sequence it still moves toward its credits with a lot of momentum because now they’ve got us hooked. LeDoux was our focus for four episodes (and sixteen minutes) and now that he’s out of the way, the real chase can begin.

In Twin Peaks David Lynch and Mark Frost revealed their killer in the middle of their series (though not quite the middle of an episode like True). But where these two series differ, apart from the obvious, is that Rust Cohle is not Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper. He’s an easy target because of his nature and this is exactly where police take this outstanding case after over a decade of investigations. Rust becomes the prime suspect. And after what we’ve seen tonight, why not? He restaged a crime scene with thought and precision. And he did it quickly.  With all of True Detective’s references to the circular nature of everything it isn’t out of the question to think that perhaps we’re being given details about these men at different points in their lives because ultimately time isn’t a factor. If they do it once, they’ll do it again. And who knows? Maybe the “first” time we see them do something isn’t truly the first.

Rather than try to jam it into my article I’ll let Michael M. Hughes do more talking about The Yellow King. He wrote a fantastic article on this and it's driven me absolutely mad with questions. Sometimes obsession is a good thing.

True Detective: Who Goes There

The latest on HBO's True Detective from Tucker 'Fox' Johnson

Typically when I write these articles I’m actually writing while watching. This week however, I went into “Who Goes There” with my laptop firmly closed on my coffee table. I have my coworkers to blame or maybe thank for the focus I put into watching episode four of True Detective. Watching any show these days results in having to run the spoiler gauntlet the day after. Luckily for me only two people who I actually see on a daily basis pay attention to this series and both of them had nothing but dropped jaws as takeaways from the episode they’d seen the night before. This is always a good sign. Especially when entering an episode that has to pick up with the freeze frame ending that concluded “The Locked Room” and has thoroughly haunted my nightmares for the last two weeks.

“Who Goes There” is uncompromising. Not one thing happens in this hour of television that could be considered positive. But what occurs between the lines in this outing is a completely different story. Rust and Marty begin to find common ground with one another but at the same time the lines between them and the men they’re chasing begin to blur. The episode opens with the two interrogating a prisoner in a holding cell. The scene unfolds in the expected ways though by the end Marty is sitting next to the prisoner staring across the room at Rust while they discuss how having someone around constantly spouting crazy gibberish is enough to drive any man to bad behavior. It's a joke but the blocking pushes it into the realm of the serious and with some simple positioning we begin an episode that really starts to peel back the layers on Rust and Marty’s relationship, in a way that is rarely seen on TV. When Marty’s wife leaves him he’s distraught. So much so that he confronts her at the hospital where she works and has no problem making a scene in an attempt to win her back. Rust intervenes and takes Marty to a bar to cool off. And this is where the curve ball comes. Instead of learning something new about Rust as he opens up to Marty about a similar experience he once had we get Rust shutting Marty down. Marty wants nothing more than the wallow in his lost love and Rust will hear none of it. Instead he pushes focus to the task at hand: catching the star of last week's freeze frame Reggie Ledoux. 

Film and television are great arenas for obsession. Both mediums allow for it to mount within a character’s mind and consume their lives in a matter of a few hours or even minutes. True Detective doesn’t slouch when it faces obsession. Its depiction is the clearest I think I’ve ever seen. Rust is obsessed. But not with catching Ledoux or even being a cop. He’s obsessed with confirming all the pessimism about humanity he’s been rattling off since the outset. He goes off the reservation about as quickly as anyone could with the idea of resuming his undercover behavior that’s really only been hinted at so far. He’s excited when he sits there injecting cayenne pepper and ink into his arm to simulate tract marks. Playing a part and escaping himself, even if into the role of a violent junkie persona, is enticing to Rust. It becomes a fix for him. And it became a fix for me too. Throughout film school I was constantly told by professors to show, not tell. Film is a visual medium so take advantage of it. Well we get that here. Rust’s little box of toys is a goosebump-inspiring way of learning about his past. Automatic weapons and liquor aren’t anything out of the ordinary on television but here they echo loudly and proudly from this character’s past and I want to know every tiny detail. But writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto doesn’t falter. He stays true to his plan for telling the story of these two men and never gives you any more about them than he deems necessary.

Aside from the Rust’s obsession we see another kind of mania and that comes in the form of these two men’s passions for their jobs. By the forty-minute mark Rust and Marty are completely over each other. But they put their personal problems aside for the good of their partnership. This kind of relationship rings so true to me and it's unique to the medium. Like so much else in this series, it's refreshing.

And speaking of, “Who Goes There” provides something completely new to the series: Action. But it's not at all what we’ve been conditioned to expect. After both Marty and Rust chastise their interviewers for never having been in a real gun fight I went into this episode thinking I was about to see a protracted fire fight between two cops and their suspect. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead of a quickly cut, shaky cam shootout we got something much more interesting. A six-minute unbroken tracking shot following Rust as he enters a stash house, winds up on the wrong side of an already bad situation and has to make his way out of a neighborhood, the entire population of which is closing in around him. The sequence sustains a tension rarely seen on procedural television and it does so even while surrounding Rust with the chaos he keeps talking about. Series cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, who also shot the fabulous Top of the Lake, works magic augmenting Cary Fukunaga’s direction. Together they managed to block an incredibly complex sequence that keeps Rust as close to the lens as possible. Because of this, we’re actually a step behind the detective. He’s seeing threats even before we are and when the camera finally allows us to see what he’s already dealing with our brains furiously try to catch up. It’s a great way to make a sequence that much more tense for an audience who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. 

The majority of water cooler chit chat about “Who Goes There” will revolve around the tracking shot in the concluding minutes of the episode. And with good reason. But it should do nothing to lessen how powerful the new information we learn about Rust is. He’s rapidly become the most interesting man on television. I just pray the ends justifies the means.

True Detective: The Locked Room

Fox on Episode 3 of True Detective.

“If the common good’s gotta make up fairy tales then it’s not good for anybody”. This line from Rust opens this newest episode of True Detective and it makes too much sense coming out of his mouth. It sums up not only his character but this series’ worldview. Very early on this show set itself as a series that would portray a world where mankind is the ruination of ….well…..mankind. And hearing Rust’s take on a congregation of hysterical worshippers seems inevitable. He refers to religion as a “language virus” that attacks pathways in the brain and dulls critical thinking. Again it’s not a new viewpoint on television and it's not a surprising to find it here. What is a surprise is on a series that seems to have set Rust up as the smarter of the two titular detectives, we watch his partner Marty shut him up with a great retort. “For a guy who sees no point in existence you sure fret about it a lot.” This line is gold. It's a critique and neat summary of every cop show ever made. And it’s the perfect way to start an episode. 

The third episode of True Detective settles into a more familiar HBO format. The story continues to unfold but as the first couple of episodes have pointed out, this series is a slow burner. The network has made a career out of this type of series but where True Detective has the advantage is in the mystery stringing this season along. That mystery keeps viewers going. Or at least it’s supposed to. AMC’s The Killing had three separate seasons to try and convince cable viewers that a good mystery was enough to keep people watching. And after achieving the near impossible feat of being canceled twice it became clear that a good mystery alone may not be enough for a cop drama. True Detective knows this and whether or not they used The Killing’s failure as a set of anti-guidelines, they have made sure to strengthen their defenses in the area where The Killing faltered in almost every episode: characterization. 

Point of fact, True Detective spends the majority of its running time on building its characters rather than on the central mystery. The writers do give us clues but rather than all of them focusing on the mystery at hand, they instead grant us sporadic glimpses into Hart and Cohle’s doomed partnership and they are all great. They make the show even more fun to watch. We already know their partnership is circling the drain and so you’d think the small details wouldn’t matter. But writer Nic Pizzolatto manages to make these tiny moments great both in quality and scope. He’s walking a really fine line that even a brilliant series like Breaking Bad bobbled in its weaker moments. But so far he’s only impressed me with his vignettes about two people who’ve been forced to work together and simply don’t gel. 

“The Locked Room” is an episode that really turns up the tension on Rust and Marty. Or rather from Marty toward Rust. Marty still carries himself like Walter White in the sense that everything he does (even the bad stuff) is 'for his family'. When he and Rust have disagreements, and almost all the serious ones happen when they aren’t working, the result is a growing resentment Marty feels toward Rust. It’s a touch comical to watch Marty grow increasingly furious at Rust’s personal life choices while Rust is so out of the social loop that he doesn’t even seem to notice. And the resentment is quietly compounded when Rust starts helping out Marty’s wife around the house. His wife (played by the always wonderful Michelle Monaghan) is only appreciative and immediately turns on Marty for never being around. You can’t help but relate Marty to the castrated suspect the two detective interview and clear early on in the episode. The nice thing is that Marty isn’t clearly the bad guy of the relationship. It's incredibly easy as a viewer to see his predicament. He’s built a so-called perfect life for himself and while his frustrations compile over it, he’s forced to watch Rust walk boldly through a life in shambles (by Marty’s standards) firmly believing none of it is even worth it. And all the while we get to watch beer cans pile up around present day Rust as his words get darker and darker. The road these two characters take to get them to present is still even more interesting than the murder that’s brought them together in the first place. 

What “The Locked Room” does this week is assures us that we really can’t rely on either of our leads. We already know full well that Rust is rapidly heading down the rabbit hole, but what we learn in this chapter is that Marty is truly and utterly full of shit. He preaches love and affection for his family and spends almost this entire episode working to destroy it. What’s even better is our present day version of him promises the interviewing detectives that while all that was going on he was totally stable and his love never wavered. Rarely do we get such a great presentation of an unreliable narrator. There’s quite a bit of focus on religion in this episode starting from the title and burning faintly through the backgrounds and set pieces of most scenes. And why not? Humanity’s take on religion lines up perfectly with Marty and Rust as people. Their own religious views mirror their personalities as well and the whole thing has a nice wrapped with a bow quality about it. Marty does his job to fight for order and against chaos while Rust revels in the idea that without that chaos they lose humanity’s one and final tie to the natural world. The episode closes with an incredible monologue by Rust where he brings the title fully into play. I won't bore you with the details. Rest assured I had goose bumps for the duration. And just when I thought it was over, the episode ends with one of the greatest freeze frames I’ve ever seen. Get me the next episode. Now.

True Detective: Seeing Things

Fox on True Detective's second episode.

I paid much more attention to the opening credits on this episode. They’re fairly typical of an HBO credit sequence. Beautifully shot and edited. A tad abstract. But what’s terrific about these credits is exactly what they depict. The sequence uses double exposure to project cityscapes, highways, church interiors and other locales onto the faces, foreheads, and abdomens of the series’ various characters. It shows these men and women as completely made up of their surroundings. They’re products of their environment. While this isn’t completely original thinking by any means it is a great entry into the headspace this series wants it’s audience to occupy. People are indeed a product of their environment and when opening moments of "Seeing Things" returns us to the back and forth narrative structure of past and present, we’re forced to think of how this gothic, murderous depiction of Louisiana is going to mold young Rust and Marty into their present day forms. And that’s just the first two minutes.

As if to call back to my comments last week about this not really being an according to Hoyle original cop drama, Marty has a great line of inner monologue where he likens police work to screenwriting. “You’re looking for narrative. Interrogate witnesses. Parsing evidence. Establish a timeline. Build a story. Day after day.” It’s a great insight to how his character approaches police work that completely backs up what we already know about him. But it’s also a nod to the audience. Cop stories have been done to death on TV. This show’s creators know that. And they’re really hoping you’ll stick with them to discover what they think is going to make this one different. Luckily I think we already have an idea. Star power is a great marketing tool but in the age of HBO finding stellar nobodies to fill roles it’s not everything. So when a series like True Detective tracks down two very killer performers I like to think it’s because the show’s creators know they’re going to need a deep bench. They're going to take these two lead characters into difficult territory and they need to be sure that whoever did land the parts would be able to bring them home.

True Detective’s second episode takes it’s leads to task right away. We learn from present Rust’s video confessional that even before the ’95 case he worked four long years as a deep cover narc. He cites a double cartel murder he committed with little more than a wave of his hand. We also see a hint of a smirk sneak into his thousand-yard stare as he asks the interviewing detectives, “you boys didn’t know that?” This revelation sort of scares me. Whatever happened to Rust between the ’95 case and now must really be something to have affected him so much. Especially when we know that his deep cover work was filled with drug addiction and violence and that resulted in a great, if stone faced and occasionally PTSD-and-hallucination stricken cop. The creators know that we want more insight into that period before the series ends. It does seem to inform why Rust dropped off the grid for so long after the ’95 case concluded. But what happened during those years to get him to his present state? The mystery box remains wide open.

This episode also gives us more insight into Marty’s character. He really wasn’t given much screen time in the pilot so he earned himself some more in this outing. It rapidly becomes clear why: Marty cheats on his wife with a woman named Lisa who works at the courthouse played by Alexandra Daddario. This is nothing new for a modern television audience. Don Draper and Tony Soprano had plenty of trysts in their respective series and we round out the antihero trinity with Marty echoing Walter White saying his cheating was “for the good of the family”. This facet of Marty’s character doesn’t do much for me but I really don’t think it’s supposed to. What’s important here is that we aren’t supposed to side with Marty. Unlike the leads on Mad Men or The Sopranos Marty isn’t our audience’s only direct line into the series’ established universe so we don’t have to try and justify what he’s up to just to like him more. If this show were about Marty Hart exclusively, it wouldn’t be all that good. Quality aside, we’d have seen it all before. But because we’re given Rust as his foil we’re allowed to see into a world we really haven’t been able to before. Neither Mad Men nor The Sopranos provided its leads with a distorted mirror image and this aspect is what’s going to keep me watching True Detective. 

Last week, I wrote that humanity is the singular cause for evil in the world, in True Detective’s world. And whether it's the cause or effect of that evil, humanity managed to escape nature during its rise to autonomy. So it’s only natural then that those who live on the outskirts of society return to nature. Marty and Rust spend some time this episode investigating a group of prostitutes who live quite literally in the middle of nowhere. They’ve dragged some trailers out into the swamp and treat it as their own private sanctuary.  And even while Marty berates them for their life styles they really appear as the only truly loving group of people in the series so far. And that’s part of why this show continues to have me hooked. It presents itself as one very familiar type of series. Cops and killers. Hookers and junkies. But just as quickly as it sets up its camps, True Detective quickly tears down our pre-existing ideas of who these people are and gets to the complex, dark, and surprisingly vulnerable creatures within.

True Detective: The Long Bright Dark

[Editor's note: The following piece on HBO's True Detective, written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Fukunaga, was written by Fox the day after the pilot premiered. My apologies for the late delivery!   -Scout}

I once watched a TED Talk with JJ Abrams where he explained the importance of something called “The Mystery Box”. This concept stems from the idea that an audience is more prone to stick with a story if they know there’s something in it for them. He cites Star Wars, a sci fi mythology hybrid that really never presents a mystery. At least not a in the traditional sense. But Abrams goes on to explain that because we keep meeting new characters, going new places, and seeing new things without any of them being over explained to us from the get-go, we appreciate that there is a mystery to these people. Princess Leia’s recording in R2-D2’s memory bank alone pulls the story along and can’t help but pull the audience with it. True Detective begins it’s pilot with one hell of a mystery box. We’re immediately presented with two versions of both Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. I say versions because even though it’s immediately clear that the show is essentially a flashback told in the present by Harrelson & McConaughey, the real angle of the re-telling of their first case together is to set up just why these two men have changed so much both in appearance and more importantly temperament. Harrelson presents himself as a veteran cop with a closely shaved head of hair and a bit of a beer gut. McConaughey on the other hand looks like a maniac. He's being filmed in an interview room but he stares off into space and ignores the fact that he’s indoors as he attempts to light up a cigarette. With hiss wild head of hair and equally crazy moustache he looks not unlike Charlie Manson.  Within the first five minutes we’re presented with a hook. How on earth did these two men get from point A to point B in their careers and more importantly in their lives?

Rust Cohle (McConaughey) is described by Marty Hart (Harrelson) as insanely smart. This is another wonderful set up because even though it’s very clear that Cohle is heading down a road that will lead to the wild present tense version of himself, we’re able to see that here is a man who is really good at what he does. And it raises a question. Is he still good at what he does? Is his desert island appearance just a part of a larger whole that we don’t understand yet? Do you want to keep watching yet? I sure do. By the end of the episode we learn that the two are being interviewed because another murder has occurred in the present and it's nearly identical, to the detail, to a murder they at least thought they had solved over a decade prior. Now we’re talkin’.

And the mystery doesn’t always revolve around police work. We get an early glimpse into Cohle’s apartment; it's stocked with a mattress on the floor, some books on psychoanalysis and criminal minds and that’s about it. Hart looks around the empty apartment in mild awe that a man could live this way. His present self mentions that a middle-aged man without a family can be dangerous. He clearly doesn’t understand Cohle but wants to. And Cohle quickly makes it clear that he wants to learn about his new partner as well...in his own way. 

All of these pieces make for a great pilot. They allow for a logical progression of details being delivered to both the characters within the story and the audience without anything seeming out of place or odd that it hadn’t been revealed earlier. True Detective does manage to find good storytelling in clichés as well. Hart is a by the book detective who hunts for real evidence to make a case. Cohle on the other hand is far more cerebral, basically doing unauthorized undercover work to gather information about the people he’s suddenly surrounded by. He even garners the nickname “Taxman” because of the ledger he keeps with him at all times to keep track of all the wheels that are turning. We’ve seen this partnership before but it doesn’t feel stale here. Instead we sort of revel in watching these familiar roles being played by two of the finest actors working today. The series itself was ordered for an 8-episode season and every one of them is written & directed by the same two guys. This is insanely rare for both television, even HBO, but from what I’ve seen so far I’m happy to see what the duo can do.

The pilot’s paradoxical title actually does a lot to explain what we’re in for as an audience. Early on in the episode Cohle goes off on a bit of rant about how humanity doesn’t make sense as a species. He surmises that we sort of broke the rules by being here with everything we have. We’ve superseded any control and exist completely independent of nature itself. Hart calls bullshit on him but the idea gets planted in both his mind and the audience’s. If humanity has somehow broken the rules of nature then what we’ve done or what we do must be in some way, evil. Cohle’s ramblings also suggest that the natural world is a place of beauty even if it is uncompromising. It’s humanity that pushes wrongdoing and hurt into the world. So in being technologically advanced, civilized beings we can’t help but shed light on our own horrifying faults. The time that humanity has spent on this earth can only be seen as the planet’s darkest period. And it’s nobody’s fault but ours.