True Detective wrapped up last night, and if you have spent any time on the internet, you probably have noticed that it is the most talked-about series since Breaking Bad. It was a show that flew in under the radar - I didn’t see much advertising for it before it aired - and, on the surface, appeared to be a fairly straight-forward (but damned good) procedural. Of course, that all changed very quickly, and by last night’s season finale, the series was one of the darkest hours of television currently airing.
Luckily in this age of blu-ray, DVD, online streaming, digital downloads, and a myriad of other ways to get content, just because True Detective wrapped up its season last night doesn’t mean you can’t discover this modern classic for yourself. In an attempt to entice you into the series, here are some of the most horrifying things we saw.
(A note on spoilers. If you want to go into True Detective a blank slate - or if you haven’t seen the last few episodes - don’t read this article. I am not going to reveal who the killer is, but honestly, the “who” doesn’t matter, because it is not a typical procedural. You are not trying to guess whodunnit; the show is about the journey there, and the relationship between Rust and Marty.)
A little background.
Woody Harrelson plays Detective Marty Hart, and Matthew McConaughey plays Detective Rust Cohle, state police in Louisiana. Marty is a pretty stereotypical cop: born and raised in Louisiana, married with two daughters, and a mistress or two on the side. Rust is a recent transfer to the homicide department, previously working undercover in narcotics. Before that, he was in Texas with a wife and daughter. The daughter died and the marriage fell apart.It is an uncomfortable pairing, as Marty’s style is more brash, more direct. Rust is quiet, introspective, more than a little philosophical, and he is always taking notes and making sketches in a big black ledger.
The series jumps between two time periods: 1995 and 2012, with 2012 being the show’s “present.” (We also spend a brief amount of time in 2010.) Their first case together began in 1995, but now, in 2012, Rust and Marty are being questioned about said case. It is unspoken but clearly obvious that the new cops believe Rust was somehow involved in these allegedly-solved murders.
The case.
What brings Marty and Rust together is the case of one Dora Lange. She is discovered in the middle of nowhere, seeming to be the victim of a Satanic or Voodoo cult: ceremonially placed, with symbols drawn on her raped and mutilated body, deer antlers placed on her head, and strange stick sculptures arranged like idols around her body. Rumors of devil-worshipping child abusers are thrown about, but with no other victims to go off, the cops treat this like a one-off. Rust, with a knack for profiling, insists that the sophistication with this killing means the killer has struck before.
The Yellow King.
A huge part of True Detective is the Yellow King, the unofficial-official name given to the killer. The reference comes from The King in Yellow, a bizarre piece of meta-fiction from 1895. Having never Robert W. Chambers’ book, I have to go by what others are saying (you can read a great, early speculative piece on io9) but basically “The King in Yellow” is a play that is the subject of a collection of short stories that brings “despair, depravity, and insanity” to anyone who reads the play or sees it performed. References to The Yellow King are written in Dora Lange’s journal, and another girl reported seeing a tall man with a scarred face, green ears, and yellow spaghetti hair.
The cinematography.
You go to some dark, dark places (emotionally) in True Detective, yet it never feels depressing. Oppressive, yes. Creepy, yes. But not depressing. Frequent forays into dense jungles that look like the sets from Cannibal Holocaust, with vines and roots twisting like grotesque monsters give way to expansive, lush vistas of the bayou. Tightly coiled caverns open up to reveal spacious underground rooms. Suffocatingly small and dark homes are set on expansive tracts of otherwise empty land. It is darkly beautiful and intensely foreboding.
The horror.
You come across a lot of horrible things about the human condition in this show. You don’t get any actual, supernatural monsters - which makes it far more disturbing because people like this actually exist. There is a laundry list of horrible things that happen or are represented in this show - both as a focus of the story, and as off-hand horror. Among these: underage prostitution; a bizarre child-abusing cult; a baby in a microwave oven; Blair Witch-style twig sculptures; an abandoned burned-out church; strange and creepy graffiti; incest; slave trade; the aforementioned spaghetti-haired “Yellow King;” hoarding (including old, broken dolls); biker gangs; traumatized girls in eerie psych wards; and cult-like revivalist churches.
