I Watched The New Season Of True Detective!

Season one of HBO’s anthology series True Detective might be the most “problematic” piece of entertainment I haven’t been able to say goodbye to. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has been accused of multiple cases of grooming and sexual harassment, exploiting his stature to mistreat actresses and coerce aspiring ones into exploitive relationships. I have zero problem believing the allegations, in part because the show introduces female lead Michelle Monaghan ass first, and gave audiences its most thorough eyeful of Alexandra Daddario to date. There was even ass-crack in the opening credits. Obviously, this is circumstantial and nowhere as relevant as the testimony of his victims, but the season was clearly shot by a master of mis-en-scene and an unrepentant horndog.

Meanwhile, creator and sole credited writer Nic Pizzolatto gave Fukunaga a story where every female character was hapless, crazy, manipulative or dead (I can’t swear which man is responsible for their state of dress, or lack thereof). High on acclaim upon the show’s release, Pizzolatto grumbled that fans should be more interested in reading William Faulkner after watching True Detective, rather than seeking occult lore about show macguffin The Yellow King. Despite this self-professed connection with southern literature, we soon learned Pizzolatto jacked the show’s closing dialogue from an Alan Moore comic. Granted, Pizzolatto has acknowledged Moore as an early inspiration of his. But it should be noted the comic was released in 2000, with the pilfered philosophical rumination about light vs dark coming from a giant Space Horse who accidentally teleported his body into a human's, slowly killing both. Moore is also from Northampton, England. None of the other writers Pizzolatto’s profundities resembled, from Thomas Ligotti to William S. Burroughs, were Southern Gothic writers either. Maybe that’s why he wanted us to focus on the classics.

Despite the dynamic duo of dickwads at the helm, I’ve watched the season at least five times and may well start it again this week. However derivative or worth ignoring the A-game of Nic Pizzolatto or Cary Joji Fukunaga may be, they both brought it to this gorgeously shot, deliciously pulpy story of two detectives encountering a level of human cruelty seemingly beyond their already cynical perspectives. And the actors playing those detectives achieved a level of cultural and personal iconicity rarely reached in prestige television. 

Though I knew Matthew McConaughey was a capable, charismatic actor before he became a vainglorious romcom mainstay in the ‘00s, I’d never have imagined him pulling off a role like homicide detective Rust Cohle, the highest-functioning depressive in television history. Where Bruce Wayne’s trauma drives him to fight crime and stand up for the innocent, this  superhero, who can turn into a wall-climbing ninja to pull off a masterful B&E, pull off a buddy sniper ex machina despite pissing off anyone who spends five minutes with him, deftly survive an unexpected, staggeringly brutal shootout-turned-riot in a housing project (filmed in an epic “one take” tracking shot) despite smoking god-knows-what shortly beforehand, only a gun and a clueless getaway driver in a Pink Floyd shirt to help him, and gives a philosophy lecture while pounding beers and making dioramas from the cans mid-interrogation as a person of interest, so his questioners don’t realize he’s sizing them up, carries on his bananas crusade for justice despite personal tragedy convincing him we’re all just God’s dingleberries floating in one stinky toilet of a universe. Which McConaughey fucking sells. Sometimes shirtless and chiseled. Sometimes while doing late-period Allman Brother cosplay. But always with a breathtaking degree of alertness, swagger and soul. In case you forgot, they gave him awards for some movie nobody’s seen since just to get him on stage after True Detective came out. If he played Rum Tum Tugger in Cats on Broadway that year, he’d have a Tony. It took an inescapable Lincoln ad campaign for America to wean itself off his monologues.

Meanwhile, Woody from Cheers played Sexy Southern Super-Sherlock’s Doc Watson, having collaborated with McConaughey earlier in EdTV and Surfer, Dude (I know I once bought the latter for two bucks and once watched it, before the show aired, but I only remember neither being earnestly nor ironically impressed). The White Man Who Jumped had already established himself as a reputable dramatic actor, but it was still a shock to see him play a complete fuck-up of a husband and father, in complete denial about his self-destructive ways, but who could still call bullshit on the agonized Adonis sitting beside him. For all Cohle’s insight into the human condition, and for all their mutual respect as capable lawmen, Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart knew that Rust Cohle was still alive, and therefore couldn’t be the know-it-all nihilist he sold himself as. Hart was the ego standing between Cohle’s absurd superego and the tragic, horrifying id of the world, willing to be a little stupid to feel like things made sense. 

There’s no denying Pizzolatto created Rust Cohle, and Fukunaga framed him arrestingly, but the show would be nowhere as effective if McConaughey wasn’t able to convincingly be this fantasy figure, allegedly having written a 450-page analysis of who Cohle was and what becomes of him on the show. And while Harrelson did no such fucking thing for Marty, McConaughey insisted on his hiring because he knew this was the rare actor who could older-brother him. If I try to imagine any other actor playing Cohle, they come off relatively overwrought or campy, sacrificing either sincerity or charm to make sense of the material, and revealing the now well-known vanity of its creator. If I imagine any other actor standing next to McConaughey, they’re burnt to ash by standing too close to the sun. 

Proof of how precarious a compound True Detective was came all too quickly on Season 2, which I could only watch for about five minutes each week before turning away in embarrassment. A clown car’s worth of respectable, if flop-prone actors looking for their own career revival signed up, and Fukunaga bailed, ready to set up scenes and mack on ladies without having to hear what Pizzolatto thinks about anything ever again. A sophomore slump could have been forgiven, but the lack of a consistent presence in the director’s chair and the relative deference of the cast meant the viewer got these scripts raw & uncut. Vince Vaughn in particular was in awe of the assignment, ready to say “purple monkey dishwasher” with the gravitas of King Lear if the showrunner asked him to. Such lols aside, I’m mostly glad Rachel McAdams and Colin Farrell survived the thing. I’ve heard season 3 was better, but so was watching anything other than True Detective season 2.

I didn’t plan on seeing the Pizzolatto-free True Detective: Night Country, despite Barry Jenkins producing and Jodie Foster starring. Coming five years after the previous season, it was obvious HBO only wanted to capitalize on the brand, even if it meant handing out umpteen Executive Producer credits (and plenty of cash) to the original braintrust as well as the new one. After the half-folly of Fargo, I’d had my fill of prestige TV artlessly forced to reference popular precedent. 

But once Night Country came out, there was hype! Bonafide hype! People were praising Jodie Foster for her lead performance, rather than feeling sorry for her. I spotted none of the teeth-gnashing and hate-watching I associate with unkillable HBO brands from Game Of Thrones to Sex And The City, and some were even pleasantly reminded of The X-Files. Having recently enjoyed belated viewings of The Outsider and Castle Rock s2, I was in the mood for more prestige spookiness. If my royal food tasters (a.k.a., people who watch shows when they air) seemed fine with the season finale, I decided to go ahead and indulge.

Though my brave tasters were atypically, vehemently split on the dismount, I went ahead and gave Night Country a shot. And I’m glad I did! I don’t think I’ve seen Jodie Foster since she took Mel Gibson to the Golden Globes and came out as quite high strung, and hadn’t seen her in a movie since 2006’s Inside Man. Christopher Eccleston said he took a rather small, rather embarrassing role (the bravery of his oh-face, I swear) just to work with Foster, his childhood crush and an early acting inspiration. After watching them together, I get it. I don’t know if anybody else is capable of that mix of cocksureness and vulnerability she’s had since her youth, coming off extremely capable and aware while still human and fallible (that she aced this mode before she could drive might explain why she’d usually rather direct). 

Apparently, Nic Pizzolatto has been unapologetically apoplectic about this season despite that Executive Producer credit, but I think he’s got it backwards. Night Country doesn’t tarnish the accomplishment of True Detective season one. Season two did that. If anything, it’s Night Country that’s done dirty by association with True Detective, both by announcing a bar the show isn’t elegantly scripted or shot well enough to reach, and by inspiring some truly embarrassing easter eggs it would have never dared otherwise. A spoiler that can only improve a belated viewing through desensitization: someone actually screams “time is a flat circle” during a monologue that resembles Cohle’s only in the new actor’s hirstuteness. Pizzolatto is right to find that regrettable, but for the people making it. For himself, he should be embarrassed by “God forgive me for misreading what subtle clues you embed for me in your limp dick, which is as wishy-washy as your fucking mood.” That one’s on him.

Oddly, there’s also a lateral reference to the “quid pro quo” scene in Silence Of The Lambs, but in a scene that doesn’t involve Foster. Honestly, if the show was simply named Night Country, and they revealed Foster’s Chief Liz Danvers was once named Clarice Starling before she’d gone into witness protection with her husband, that would have been more inspired and less distracting than the efforts to make Night Country merit a titular connection to True Detective.  And it’s not like Night County needs pre-existing IP to dignify its own existence. A spooky mystery starring Jodie Foster and former world champion boxer Kali Reis, set in rural Alaska during the holidays? Written and directed by Issa Lopez, a rising Mexican horror filmmaker? That’s awesome! Green light! 

Not that I wouldn’t have notes with the product. I hate when details about a character’s past trauma are hinted at but kept ambiguous, despite no on-screen reason for coyness. Remember how Rust Cohle described the death of his daughter in the first episode of season 1? And how we saw what really happened at the meth lab before we saw the detectives come up with a cover story? Now imagine if the show never quite revealed what was up with Cohle’s daughter until that final battle with Bowser in the Koopa Castle, and if the true story of the meth lab came even later? Would it make the show better? Hell, no. It’s just a cheap device to string along the viewer. And thanks to this show’s title, I’m not a jerk for comparing it to an established classic in the genre. It’s an explicitly invited observation.

Similarly, the early interlude involving a nude ghost and an atypically goofball Fiona Shaw (maybe her hamminess was a reference to season 2?) would feel less shoe-horned if we weren’t told the ghost was Rust Cohle’s dad. That gratuitous bit of color - more Twin Peaks than anything else - could have established the spookiness of life in Ennis, Alaska rather than asserting the town’s place in the True Detective Extended Universe. The explicitly referential, and sadly short-lived Castle Rock at least had the benefit of playing with dozens of Stephen King novels of varying quality, rather than calling itself Pet Sematary or The Shining. Instead of bitching online, maybe Pizzolatto should be glad HBO didn’t call his show Se7en: Bodies On The Bayou. Imagine if they did reshoots on Goblin to dignify releasing it as Troll 2? It’s silly. Silly, I tell you!

With Little Nicky P using words like “brain-broken misandrist” in his Instagram comments (dude…), I’m sure there will be plenty of pieces going into what made Night Country a worthwhile, entertaining show. And I’m glad, as I‘m not doing that great a job. I could have spent less time waxing rhapsodic about a season everybody’s seen and more time discussing the refreshingly complex, underplayed dynamic between John Hawkes and Finn Bennett as father/son cops. Or Joel D. Montagrand’s sweet dream of a badass bar owner love interest for Reis’s character. Or Reis’ performance in general! The strength and sensitivity of her character’s interactions with her sister! When was the last time you saw a show where detectives were bad at relationships but still trying? And are also women more conflicted than heroic? I wish I could focus on all these aspects that Pizzolatto and Fukunaga would never think up, without thinking about all the mediocre shots (including some truly heinous, cheap CGI) and flat, expository dialogue they’d never allow. But thanks to HBO, instead of being excited for Night Country season 2, I’m left bracing myself for True Detective season 5.