True Detective: Seeing Things   Rewatch 
September 22, 2014 4:50 PM - Season 1, Episode 2 - Subscribe

The interview continues, Rust and Marty illustrate just how boring and frustrating chasing gossamer leads can be, and we continue to examine their slow drive investigation of Dorie Lang's murder and interpersonal relationships. — Days of nothing. That's what it's like to work cases. Days of... lost dogs. — It goes on like that.... you know the job. Lookin' for narrative. Interrogate witnesses. Partial evidence. Establish a timeline. Build a story. Day after day.

Follow your nose at Darkness Becomes You.

HBO Synopsis for Seeing Things

Music (playlist)
John Lee Hooker - Unfriendly Woman
John Lee Hooker - One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
Vashti Bunyan - The Train Song
McIntosh County Shouters w/ T Bone Burnett - Sign of the Judgement
Reverend C.J. Johnson and Family - You Better Run To The City of Refuge
Steve Earle - Meet Me in the Alleyway
Cuff the Duke - If I Live or Die
The 13th Floor Elevators - Kingdom of Heaven
posted by carsonb (16 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
A Bad Tree Produces Bad Fruit

Flashing back to the Sheriff about the Fontineau girl, I am appalled at how he elided over from 'it's likely that her father took her' to 'isn't it better that her father took her.' Isn't it pretty to think so?

The opening lyrics mention 'poison tree.' Poisonwood is a flowering tree like the poison sumac, native to the Caribbean. One of the recurring idas in American jurisprudence is the "fruit of the poisonous tree," that is, evidence or information derived from bad acts cannot be included in trial.

Dora Lange's mother was poisoned by 20 years of drycleaning. Rust poisons himself with cigarettes and beer, and other things. Marty poisons himself and his family with rage, and other things. Families are poisoned by abuse that perpetuates itself from generation to generation, and the land itself is sick with oil, sick with history.

Marty mentions that his father was a Marine, and never talked about his war experiences. That's poison too, deep and scarred over.

I am personally deeply sceptical of attempts to impose narrative on the experienced world. But it is important to follow the narratives that people establish, because people run on narratives and will make decisions to fit those narratives.

Marty's daughter attempts to open his eyes, while Rust only stares at himself through a sliver of a mirror. His eyes are open, but his view too is severely constrained - I think by the death of his daughter and his embrace of an uncaring universe in which humanity is insignificant. Otherwise, her death would have to have meaning, and he can't deal with that.

Marty is more obviously full of self-serving bullshit, though. His main mode of operation is projection. Of the two, Rust is much more physically dangerous - this is obvious, from the sheer control he exercises, to his mode of attack.

These are the HIDTAs. 16% of land area, 60% of population.

Did the girl hear Dory's name, or just ... know? There's a lot of documentation of vulnerable people having, for lack of a better word, tells, that make them more likely for further victimization. Marty's 'down payment' is the classic inter-systemic solution: a little bit of cash to solve a structural problem.

I read something, an article, perhaps a comment here, that outlined how Lovecraft's true horror wasn't the sudden realization of infinite chaos or indescribable gibbering creatures from Beyond, but the inescapable loneliness that accompanies the realization. The flyer asks us if we are lonely.
I think Rust or his wife is responsible for Sophia's death. The death of wisdom.
Maggie's father is nostalgic for the good old days, but that's just a little bit up the branches of the posion tree. The bad acts he decries now are the results of prior terrible things, things his society encouraged and buried. Marty recognizes this, but uses it to needle his father-in-law instead of engage in introspection. More self-serving bullshit, which Maggie instantly recognizes.

Marty lets Pappania and Gilbough that he's onto them. Mistake.
The ruined church, the refinery, and the murmuration, all at once. The land itself is twisted and hallucinogenic.

"It's 'cause suddenly you don't own it, the way you thought you did."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:43 PM on September 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Rust takes a quick little jab to test the detectives interviewing him when he mentions the schools closing from Hurricane Andrew. He's pretty tuned into what they're looking into, hoping they've figured out what he has.

I love how Marty justifies his philandering by saying he's shaking of the job before he goes home to his family. It's for the good of the family he says. It's not til later in the show we find out that his marriage to Maggie was basically in shambles. Also ironic because he never goes home to his family after shaking the job off with the courthouse girl, it's right back to work and jawin' with his partner.

Speakin of Marty meetin' women, Rust pegs him completely at the bunny ranch with the down payment line. He may be shitting on a moment of decency, but he's right.

Is this the first mention of The Yellow King? There was a great MetaFilter post about it when this ep originally aired.

Jesus sweet the way Rust tells about his daughter dying. 8-balls and murder flow from his lips with easy slang, but he can't talk about his daughter.

Marty's father-in-law asks about the case, and seems like the kind of guy who'd be far enough into the power structure of Louisiana to know that it's twined in with the Tuttles somehow. Does he know how? Probably not. But maybe once long ago he was one of those guys in the long hoods on horses surrounding Dorie Lang in that old picture in her mom's house. No matter how much he knew, that man asking about the case that way is indicative just how pervasive and powerful the network protecting the Yellow King is. The murdering crazy dude in the swamp is just one outcropping, one especially evil iteration of a structured governmental (and more) system that is rotted through with mistreatment of women. Marty's FIL is within that system, probably a few iterations removed from the Yellow King, but they're connected.
posted by carsonb at 10:14 PM on September 23, 2014


Marty's FIL is within that system, probably a few iterations removed from the Yellow King, but they're connected.

That scene with the dolls. You think it's coincidence?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:30 PM on September 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Flashing back to the Sheriff about the Fontineau girl, I am appalled at how he elided over from 'it's likely that her father took her' to 'isn't it better that her father took her.' Isn't it pretty to think so?

Stuff like this stands out more on rewatch. I think Pizzolatto frames the real central sin of the series as this: characters like the Sheriff and later others who "averted their eyes," from the crimes taking place around them, rather than the awful crimes themselves. After all, the show doesn't dwell so much on the the horror of the acts themselves, which is self-evident, so much as the horror of witnessing those acts, or knowing about those acts, and failing to do anything about them.

I know the series got some criticism for using murdered women and children as props to the character growth of men, which I think is a totally valid criticism, but I think if you shift the focus and see True Detective as being more about that crime of failing to act, it holds together better as both a mystery and a series.

I think Rust or his wife is responsible for Sophia's death.

You know, I wondered about this, but I don't think Rust was responsible in any real way other than letting his daughter play outside. I know when I first watched, I suspected that he had accidentally run her over in the driveway or something. But given that Rust's emotional catharsis later on doesn't really focus at all on forgiveness, I don't think he was directly responsible in any way for her death.
posted by yasaman at 9:47 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


After all, the show doesn't dwell so much on the the horror of the acts themselves, which is self-evident, so much as the horror of witnessing those acts, or knowing about those acts, and failing to do anything about them.

Later on, Rust will mention torturing the retired Sherriff with a car battery and a pair of jumper cables.

He gets tortured, all right, but not in the way that phrase conjures up.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:18 AM on September 24, 2014


Thinking more now, about Marty talking about his father. He says, emphatically that his father "never talked about it." But how does Marty know? His father had his own network of friendships, adult relationships, was probably an Elk or something similar, had war buddies just like Marty has cop buddies. Marty complaines that it isn't like it used to be, when people didn't spill their bullshit all over. But that's part of growing up: as a kid, you're not aware of the adult concerns.
And kids who are exposed to that adult world early, are scarred.

Marty recognizes this, of course, telling his father-in-law that old men like him have been complaining about the state of the world for millenia. But he can't apply it to himself.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:29 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


That scene with the dolls. You think it's coincidence?

Nope! I think that young women, children especially, have heard their friends talking about green-eared spaghetti monsters, and heard rumors about being in the woods with scary men on horses wearing animal masks surrounding them at various points. I think that these crimes are known by everyone except maybe the detectives, to various degrees. For kids like Marty's girls, it's just rumors and stories that they hear tell at school. They're protected by their grandfather from being too directly involved.

I think yasaman's on to a good assessment of the criticisms True Detective levies; it's not the murder and the ritual killing that's being vilified and condemned, because that shit's easily condemned by everyone up to and including Tuttle. It's the extent of the systemic indifference that's shown, the fact that even behind the protection of their grandfather and Marty-as-cop his little girls know of the evils that more directly effect other girls. That stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum or even in a single place—it's integrated into the schools, into the policing (fly-in task force, anyone?), into the politics and into every single other power structure that shows up in the course of the season.

That's why TD appeals to me so much—it's not just telling you that the problem is systemic and deeply-rooted. It shows you in large ways (women tortured and murdered with antlers, etc.) and small ways (Marty's family, Dorie's father) and in-between ways (bunny ranch, prostitution, Marty's girlfriends) all the different ways that misogyny and tyranny manifest when left unexamined and/or tolerated.
posted by carsonb at 10:56 AM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I mean, Dorie's been ritualistically murdered and her mother is still protecting the father. "What have you heard about him? Why shouldn't a father bathe his child?" she asks. Clearly Dorie accused her father of molestation at some point. Which is another manifestation of the systemic evil that's given a blind eye, even by the people closest to the situation.
posted by carsonb at 10:58 AM on September 24, 2014


As an aside to the analysis, I'm ignoring the 'making of' segments and Pizzolatto's statements about the series.

The author is dead, even more so in the intensely collaborative medium of television.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:38 PM on September 24, 2014


That's funny, I've been linking to them and never actually even considered watching the bonus materials, just ignoring completely. I do put on the playlist for each episode while making the posts and any comments though.
posted by carsonb at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2014


Thinking about the girls and the dolls reminds me of the Miami New Times story: Myths Over Miami, about the folklore of homeless children in Miami (which went viral).
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:42 PM on September 24, 2014


One of the lines I really liked in this episode is Marty's synopsis of being a detective,

'It goes on like that, you know the job. you're looking for narrative... uh... interrogate witnesses... parcel evidence... establish a timeline... build story... day after day. "

The building of narrative also seems to be one of the primary themes of the show. Especially with its many nested narratives (the present day and the past, the interrogation of the two current detectives, the story that Rust and Marty are building, the narrative that the viewer is building, the fake narrative of the LeDoux arrest, and the final capping narrative of them hunting down the real killer).

I feel that the doll scene, which is probably one of the most talked about scenes in the whole series, fits in with that. It's intentionally ambiguous, as is most of the stuff with Marty's eldest daughter. There's strong evidence that one could make that she was abused herself, likely at the hands of Marty's father-in-law. But there's also the fact that the argument Marty and Maggie are having right before that is clearly loud enough to be heard by the girls, and you have to wonder how much of Marty's job leaks over into their world where them staging a police interview (before Marty comes in their conversation is about one of the doll's parents having died in an auto accident) isn't anything other than childlike osmosis.

The author is dead, even more so in the intensely collaborative medium of television.

Oh man, if there's one phrase I hope to never hear again...

I think Pizzolatto's involvement in the series after the fact is pretty cool. It was TV that was made with enough complexity that one can walk away with multiple valid interpretations of the story, but people who were trying to solve it like a puzzle box was mainly what he was reacting against. In the current atmosphere of people watching TV and commenting about it in nearly real time the author is more alive than ever.

Really, this show doesn't have a single author. It has HBO's advisory board, it has a single director, a DP, production assistants, actors, etc. If we're talking about the unnecessary sexualization of women, then we actually can derive intent in the fact that it's something HBO asks shows to include to spice things up. If we're talking about the painting that appears in the Hart household and in the mental ward, we actually can derive intent because that's something the production assistants have said is unintentional.

TV is a product of commerce and circumstance much more so than novels, and even beyond film which is itself often more commercial than literature. It's impossible to separate TV text from its creation. Pizzolatto responding to fan theories is just a part of that.
posted by codacorolla at 8:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like Pizzolatto's writing a great deal. But the author is the casting director. It's impossible for me to imagine any other actors creating and inhabiting the roles of the two lead characters.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:30 PM on September 25, 2014


As a totally random aside, here's a cool feature on how the opening title sequence was made. ETA: It includes some NSFW-ish screen shots...
posted by lovableiago at 2:44 PM on September 26, 2014


After all, the show doesn't dwell so much on the the horror of the acts themselves, which is self-evident, so much as the horror of witnessing those acts, or knowing about those acts, and failing to do anything about them.

This fits so well with the ending of the story. We can't stop everything bad in the world, but we must at least try or we are complicit.
posted by harriet vane at 7:35 AM on October 1, 2014


I do like that theme of 'averting the eyes'; as a Louisiana resident it seems like the United States often looks away from what the country does to the Gulf Coast in shame.

but here s a whole TV series of a landscape chewed up for the nation s oil and gas.
posted by eustatic at 12:41 AM on May 4, 2016


« Older Fringe: Fracture...   |  Last Week Tonight with John Ol... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments