True Detective - The Secret Fate of All Life

Gilbough and Papania finally reveal their hand: they consider Cohle the actual killer of Dora Lange and Rianne Olivier, considering how he led Hart by the hand throughout the whole investigations. Of course, Cohle, when they lay it out for him, wanting to look in a storage shed he has while showing him pictures that surfaced again in 2010 after time “off the grid”, challenges them to arrest him or follow him. His theories on life and death, while fooling around with drunken beer cans, fashioning them into stick figures, are seemingly concocted out his outré mind which contemplates matters of an existential kind that few of us dig too deeply into. Gilbough and Papania (as many of us would) just continue to look perplexed and bewildered at him as his verbal detours into the unexpected, taking them away from the history they wish to focus on. But they let him go and does McConaughey command your attention when his Rust Cohle embellishes! Hart keeps things simple, not taking too many routes away from the cases.

Cohle and Hart do not stray from their story regarding encountering a gunfight with Reggie and his cousin, DeWall Ledoux, in “present day” 2012, laying out quite a guns-blazing scenario although in the 1995 timeline it was anything but.

Hart locates two children in a barn, one boy dead about a day while the girl was mute and “catatonic”, unable to contain his rage when drawing upon  Reggie—talking similar gibberish as Dora’s notebook which does give Cohle pause—blowing top of his head off with a gunshot. Of course DeWall, who Cohle met with accompanying roughed-up Ginger (who “stays in character”) in a diner and warned him not to encounter him every again due to the “look of his face” (his eyes, presence, left him “bothered”), runs into the fields surrounding the Ledoux meth-cooking compound wired with explosives which results in his body going KABOOM!

Hailed as heroes, Hart and Cohle are satisfied with how they handled the investigation by their police afterward, avoiding any suspicion. Cohle handled it all while Hart tried to collect himself, furious that he couldn’t keep his shit together. Later Cohle interrogates a PCP freak who killed folks at a pharmacy he was trying to rob, convincing him to “ask for forgiveness” in a double homicide, getting him to confess to the murders, through a “insanity defense opportunity”.

Although Cohle believes he has done his job, the junkie/murder wants to bargain with the police, claiming he knows who the real killer of the Lange and Olivier (and many others not known about) victims are…even mentioned THE YELLOW KING. When Cohle and Hart return to the jail, they find this junkie dead in his cell through suicide (using the metal bed in the jail to slash his wrists), checking security monitor and phone logs to determine how this happened…a phone call from a distant location, totally off the beaten path, seems to be the culprit that led to the suicide.

When the 1995 investigations are closed, Maggie relents from her stance against seeing her husband, giving in but expecting him to prove to her he can be faithful. Of course, how to deal with rebellious teenage Audrey is another matter. Her “goth” attire and sexually adventurous nature (found in a car with two boys being very naughty) leave Marty quite upset (calling her whore and such doesn’t exactly cold the flames set afire) while Maggie tries to just talk to her daughter. Audrey’s “acting out”, Marty considers perhaps a fault of his “inattention” as a father. Cohle tries to maintain a relationship with a doctor friend of Maggie’s…but Rust had mentioned its failure to his inadequacies as a partner/lover/boyfriend.

Following up on the PCP freak that killed himself in the jail cell, Cohle returns to the old Christian school left abandoned (he had talked to a guy lawnmowing its grounds, but their dialogue was cut short), taking a flashlight inside. This appears to be the creepy secret digs of the serial killer, finding similar paintings on the walls and those odd stick houses/cages which look similar to the burned-down church and tree where Dora was found with her antlers. This visit appears to be the catalyst in Cohle’s 2010-2012 reemergence, although that happened back in 2002. Taking a long look at one of the stick houses in the sunlight, the episode closes, leaving us to wonder what he was doing from 2002-2010. We still haven’t seen the flashback of the blowup fight between Cohle and Hart that split them as a team. So much to look forward to!

5/5