I am starting to be a little obsessed about True Detective, and Alyssa Rosenberg isn’t helping. Mainly, I am concerned that we’ll never discover the truth, and that that is basically the point. We haven’t seen anything this creepy out of Louisiana since Angel Heart.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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After taking 18 months to resolve a problem for me, Comcast finally solved it last week. When I suggested they give me a credit equal to one month’s bill, they gave me 3 months of HBO instead.
So, after hearing everyone rave about it, I am about to start watching True Detectives. (Everyone is defined as lots of folks on Balloon Juice and now BooMan.)
But my burning question is this: how creepy is it? I love mysteries and some suspense, but am not a big fan of serial killers and creepy. I have to fast forward through half of every criminal minds, at least when there are creepy people keeping women locked up and torturing people. And I could only watch an episode or two of The Following before I got too creeped out. The woman finding out her two best friends from next door were part of the serial killing really rattled me. I prefer less creepy and more figuring stuff out from clues.
Given the description above, is True Detectives a show I will likely be able to watch?
I’m not sure.
You will definitely be uncomfortable in spots, as this is a show about a serial killer(s)cult????
But it’s not a horror genre type of show. It’s grounded, too, for the most part. The supernatural is some combination of deranged belief and Nietzsche’s Eternal Return seen from a disinterested cosmic remove. But there are no miracles or ghosts or creatures.
It’s mostly a really good serial Law & Order with sex and intelligence.
Thanks for taking the time to share that! I will start watching later this week.
The best thing about that movie was Lisa Bonet.
She was great and she lost her job on Cosby over it.
Plus…Cohle’s monologues contain frequent references to William Burroughs and G. I. Gurdjieff ideas. I never thought that I would live to see the day when an ostensibly “popular” presentation would go this deep into the arcane. Wonderful!!!
AG
True, although I was starting to get worn out with last night when it was like amateur hour for philosophy major dropouts.
Hmm.. I thought that was the best part..
Cohle converses with leDoux as if he knew him, had been in that situation already, always? The flat circle.
Notice what is on the tree when Cohle revisits the crime scene? A circle of branches – the spherical perception of choices occurring over time, flattened and all at once – a refutation of the idea of choice.
Not to mention the narrative style that provides subjective narration to objective narrative? The 4th dimension looking at the third (as depicted in 2).
None of that would have been nearly as cool without the philosophy, if meaningful at all..
Yes. It’s the reverse of our usual disagreement.
I normally call for dumbed-down discourse because communication trumps showing off what your brain can do.
But, as a consumer, dumbing it down is kind of boring.
I win! I win!
Cohle talks way too much and is way too assertive about his uncommon beliefs covering the general area of values/religion/irreligion.
But then if he didn’t how would anybody know what he’s thinking?
And what’s he’s thinking is a great complement to the killing he is investigating.
And it makes him a fun character, too.
Combine Schopenhauer, Leopardi, Nietzsche, Darwin, and your favorite socio-biologist (Wilson?) with a strong dose of Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (for attitude), and you have Cohle.
Very amusing in the first couple of episodes.
I actually laughed out loud, a couple times.
I’ve laughed out loud a number of times myself.
I don’t know if he talks too much — given the character he is and what drives him (although I’m less sure of that, I must admit). Much of it seemed an elaborate construction of self-delusion after the death of his daughter — and one does wonder what his involvement in that was. It was painful hearing him describe his daughter’s “painless” death and how he was spared the pain of being father.
Now of course, who knows where it’s going. I sure don’t.
True Detectives has me hooked too.
I am similarly obsessed, but a couple of episodes behind. I just hope it ends well. Nothing worse than a well-produced show with excellent writing that goes nowhere.
You’re in for a treat if you are two episodes behind.
Christ, it’s well done.
The writing is great, the acting is great. T-Bone Burnett’s soundtrack is fantastic.
My girlfriend lasted two episodes, but I’m hooked. After Cohle’s visit to that abandoned school I’ve got some suspicions about who the Yellow King is.
Ahh, you’re thinking Tuttle?
Also, I can’t figure out why True Detective is available to me at all through On Demand when I don’t even subscribe to HBO.
I thought it was a come-on and they’d only allow access to the first 3 episodes, but they keep adding the new ones.
Very odd.
but this last episode reminds me of how much I liked Twin Peaks in the beginning, but lost interest in all of the endless plot twists.
And now Alyssa Rosenberg is headed to the Washington Post, which now sucks incrementally less.