Matt Smith reviews the fourth episode of True Detective….
After the creepy shot of a suspected murderer in last week’s episode, the question preying on the back of my mind the entire week was whether Cohle and Hart were going to catch their guy. Part of me knew it wouldn’t happen, as True Detective is, delightfully, a slow burner of a series, and this week bought us the next steps taken by the protagonists.
True Detective works because of its atmosphere. It’s a testament to the direction of the series, which this week should come into more obvious praise for the final scene, but it takes real skill to try what this series has done and it actually work. These dark characters wouldn’t work as well without the brooding, disgruntled nature of their surroundings. The standout moments are an equal mix of the great acting people are talking about (and which deserves to be recognised) and the slower moments where the story is told through something that is more than just style. The depths these characters have fallen into and become trapped by just comes through the screen.
The locale fits the feelings perfectly. The talk of devil worshipping and church folk pushing their wares while the deep dark pervades both fits the religious overtone of the location all these events take place in.
Something else that fits the location is the thick accent every character sports. For all the great scenes, with everything working together to create something of such high quality, it’s a shame that some scenes have to be made imperfect just because of the mumbled dialogue (sometimes leading me to having to ask someone else in the room what was just said). Mumbled dialogue may fit the mood, but too low and incomprehensible takes an audience out of a scene.
And it’s strange thinking that what is said on screen might not even be what happened in the reality of the series. Cut to the ‘present’ and each character gives away that what came before could be completely different. With such unreliable narration, is anyone telling the truth? Everyone would fill in blanks, change details, just to make themselves look a bit better when it comes to writing the history of things.
Though how real all the negative aspects of each character are is another question. The things shown to us the audience (and, presumably, the interviewing detectives) show our two main characters on different chemical dependencies. The mixture of anger and sorrow, made so palpable by Woody Harrelson even when he has nothing to say, fits his history as a drunk. It’s a cruelly ironic need of his to openly ask his wife for ‘just another shot’, a sign that this show is smarter than your average cop chasing a gruesome murderer show.
These characters aren’t all headstrong, but a lot of them do have their own opinions and philosophies that crash into one another. Another reason that True Detective is so good apart from the dark nature of everyone and everything is the way everyone collides. What makes it interesting is watching what happened when two characters who’re after the same thing, but who have such different methods, came to work together. It’s been said many times already, along with the praise for the five-minute action scene used to end this week’s episode, but at the halfway point of this series, it’s still possibly the best thing on television.
Matt Smith – follow me on Twitter.
Originally published March 17, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
