True Detective: The Secret Fate of All Life Rewatch

October 14, 2014 11:31 AM - Season 1, Episode 5

Time is a flat circle. The story and its telling deviate explicitly, as Rust and Marty wrap up their respective interviews with Gilbough and Papania by relating the culminating, heroic events of their 1995 investigation and summarizing the subsequent several years.

Meet the Yellow King at Darkness Becomes You.

Music (playlist)

The Handsome Family - Far From Any Road (Opening credits)

Kris Kristofferson - Casey's Last Ride

The Kinks - Tired of Waiting for You

Bosnian Rainbows - Eli

posted by carsonb (3 comments total)

This episode is paced weirdly. That the 'shootout' at the shack is over and accounted for less than a third of the way through the episode is enough to tell me in as direct a way as this show gets that Reggie Ledoux is not the Yellow King. At the same time the characters out themselves explicitly as liars, as unreliable narrators. No wonder G&P suspect Rust, they figure he's lying about all sorts of things. But because the lie is on Marty's behalf it backfires on them and the stories match exactly. Marty never exactly catches on that Rust is there to cover for him in his infidelity, but I think he really comes around after Ledoux goes down and Rust makes it look right. That finally cements their partnership, and firmly closes the case.

That little "time passes" montage that ends with Audrey throwing Maisey's crown into a tree is also weird. It foreshadows their characters' growth in the subsequent years a lot, but it also signals that the Yellow King is out of reach. Escaped the present investigation and in so doing proving that he's well connected up the family tree.

Without the investigation to funnel their angst into, Marty and Rust sort of stagnate and rot into their lives. Marty's family is suffering his admitted inattention. Rust hates himself for being able to elicit confessions with such alacrity, for being known for it.

Ack, feel like I have more to say, but have to walk away from this computer.
posted by carsonb at 7:58 PM on October 15, 2014

For a long time I thought the guard's name being Childress was a red herring, but now it occurs to me that someone would have had to report the confession/altercation up the chain of command and notify the Yellow King that someone was trading secrets.
posted by carsonb at 6:11 AM on October 16, 2014

Marty takes the 'hunting' question as an opportunity to show off his skills (read: manhood), and calls Rust a prick when Rust reveals he was actually interested in no-shit hunting skills, not stories.

The worst thing you can do to Marty is threaten his manliness. That's why he tussles with his father-in-law, that's why he gets to pissed at Lisa and blames her for 'blowing up his life.' It's why he joined up with The Promise Keepers, which is another fringe Christian movement.

Rust rolls back like a snake.
The pile of trailers and shipping containers is a maze, and there's a monster inside.

"You'll do this again. Time is a flat circle."

I didn't catch the line, so I hit pause, rewind, and played it again. You can buy a DVD, pop it out, put in on the shelf, watch it tomorrow or a year from now. And Marty and Rust and all the characters in this little story will be right there, to play it out again and again. To repeat their most horrible moments, for our entertainment. And there's nothing they can do about it.

It's appropriate that this is a Rewatch.

"Everything we've ever done or will do we're gonna do over and over again."

Also, Marty takes his daughters skating on a flat-track. Really, it's more of an oval.
Rust sounds like a Cardassian. Everyone is guilty of something, it's just a matter of finding out what. And present-day Marty is ... actually insightful? Weird.

We get to actually see the abuse filter through a family! Marty hits Audrey and Audrey hits Maisie.

Rust pulls the reversal on another fidgety scared suspect, and it backfires on him. All of the threads come together in this episode.

The last shot is Rust raising up one of the stick bundles in a shaft of light as strains of organ music start up. The song reveals itself to be something else, but organs are traditionally used for religious services, or horror movies.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:06 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]