True Detective is back, and while it’s not better than ever, it’s a definitive return-to-form for the HBO anthology.
Centered squarely on a child abduction case, our latest ‘True Detective’ is Wayne Hays (Mahershala Ali), and his partner, Roland West (Stephen Dorff). The show re-embraces the non-linear structure that made season one so memorable, jumping between three key moments in Hays’ life. And while the latest season of True Detective hits all the familiar beats that made you fall in love with season one, it does so with the willing generosity of a patient-controlled morphine drip.
Looking beyond the similarities to the show’s dynamic first season, which was thrust to the center of pop culture for eight glorious weeks in 2014, this latest installment also leans generously into creator Nic Pizzolatto’s Southern gothic/noir aesthetic, not to mention his most well-worn tropes. With that in mind, here are the five truest detective moments from the season three premiere of True Detective.
Roland West’s muscle car
4 musings about the day Steve McQueen died
(out of a possible 10)
Honestly, this only ranks so low because I simply cannot believe that Pizzolatto hasn’t worked in a muscle car to True Detective until now. It could be a matter of restraint, but it’s more likely that we haven’t had a season dating back to 1980.
Regardless, the muffler-rattling hotrod goes as well with West’s own Velcoro-chic wardrobe of cowboy boots and Western-cut blazers as it does with all the back-and-forth banter between two cops gazing out the windshield with a perpetual thousand-yard stair.
Constant reminders of Wayne Hays’ tracking abilities
5 musings about the day Steve McQueen died
(out of a possible 10)
“I was a tracker, you see,” we hear Hays explain, via narration early on in the season premiere. It’s also explained later, this time by West to another officer as Hays wanders off the beaten path like the first reciting of a chorus that’s bound to be repeated again and again in the coming weeks: He was a long-range reconnaissance in Vietnam. You can drop him in the jungle alone and he’ll come back weeks later with scalps. He tracks wild boards for fun.
As his skillset is detailed for the second time in a 60-minute episode, it’s intercut with close-ups of Hays crouching down and spotting tire tracks in the mud, leading him down a trail of clues and (eventually) the body of Will Purcell. After the rest of cops descend on the scene, Hays takes one last drag of his cigarette before announcing that he’s going back out to search for Will’s sister. When West tells him “It’s too dark, man,” he simply replies “I don’t care.” Subtle.
Scoffing at vintage pornography
7 musings about the day Steve McQueen died
(out of a possible 10)
One of the noticeable departures of this season’s True Detective is how it’s choosing to show the real-time impact that a crime happens to those close to the victims — unless you count the life savings of crime boss Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) in season two, which I don’t. Now, we watch as the the Purcell parents, who have to deal with the reality of their two young children disappearing while they’re already past the end of their marriage.
As Hays and West search the children’s rooms for clues, Hays finds a few issues of Playboy stuffed under a mattress. When West brings them to the father, Tom (Scoot McNairy), he denies having seen them before, but it’s that kind of reactionary denial most people have when presented out-of-context pornography. When West tries to ease the stigma by saying that he reads Playboy himself, Tom fires back with “So do I, but these are old, and I never seen ’em.”
Sure, his relationship with his wife is becoming further undone just hours after realizing his kids have gone missing, but goddamnit the guy will still outright admit his preference for Playboy’s contemporary issues despite it all.
Waxing philosophical about the number of times rats have ended civilization
8 musings about the day Steve McQueen died
(out of a possible 10)
When we first see Hays and West together, they’re sitting on lawn chairs outside a trash pile shooting at rats. Or as Hays tells it at the deposition, “working cases.” This is already the quintessential Pizzolatto-an introduction to his two protagonists.
However, the conversation that follows is the moment that really shines, which happens as the two are riding in West’s car, (please mark your True Detective bingo cards accordingly). Anyway, as West asks Hays why he stopped him from shooting a nearby fox amidst their rat target practice, Hays turns around and asks him if he knew how many times rats almost ended civilization.
West, of course, doesn’t know. And what seemed like a perfect setup for a nihilistic monologue about the plague (either bubonic or human) and its backlash to our biological instinct of survival, Hays responds simply “I don’t know. At least two.” In addition to the affinity for tracking wild animals, this further casts Hays as a kind of neo-Rust Cohle, just without the backlog of existential philosophies swirling around in his brain.
Musing about the day Steve McQueen died
12 musings about the day Steve McQueen died
(out of a possible 10)
This moment is pure, unadulterated Pizzolatto. As Hays sits in a deposition about an old case, sitting in a room with two other cops, (another bingo card moment), his first recollection of the case was it happened the day Steve McQueen died. The definitive moment when the symbolism of rugged, devil-may-care machismo departed this world, leaving an army of gruff-talking, hard-drinking, chain-smoking would-be rebels without anyone to look up to.
Hays’ reaction to the news, which is to pour out a splash of his Miller High Life on the concrete where he sits as he stares off into the distance, was honestly just gravy.
