Form and Void

"It's all one ghetto, man. A giant gutter in outer space."

Rust Cohle has to be one of the best characters in a TV series. Matthew McConaughey puts on a show as the king of pessimism, Detective Rust Cohle. True Detective is carried by McConaughey and complimented by Woody Harrelson who does just as good as a family man that can’t address any of his own internal issues. I love how different these two are with Cohle calling it how it is and Harrelson’s Marty Hart who disguises all his internal problems with a happy family.

Throughout the series, the two detectives follow multiple gruesome murders in Louisiana and the show goes back in forth between the time of the murders and seventeen years later when they have to finish their investigation as there are some loose ends to what they thought was a solved murder. That is all I am going to give you because I am obsessed with non-linear storytelling. I love it when a series/film doesn’t give you all the information and you have to take pieces from the timeline to put it all together.

The standouts are Cohle and Hart, Hart preaches religion and being a good man while constantly cheating on his wife and not being present for his kids. He also disagrees with Cohle constantly and the yin and yang partnership reaches a boiling point towards the end of the season. I am shocked that McConaughey didn’t get an Emmy for this(just realized that this show was out during Breaking Bad). I think that Cohle and Hart give us a glimpse into troubled men who are struggling with religion and masculinity. Hart thinks he has to be the domestic protector yet struggles to give affection to his own wife while Cohle has no positive outlook on life whatsoever. True Detective season 1 is worth the watch for its captivating storytelling and compelling characters, I recommend it to anyone that is into thrillers/crime-type stories.