Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Why You Should be Watching True Detective

"Man is the Cruelest Animal"

I don't think I would ever find myself recommending a television series about cops. I think the amount of series featuring police or other crime worker are over saturated to the point that I think it is disproportional to the amount of people who actually work as police officers. Think about it. How can another person sit at a conference table full of TV producers and have the balls to pitch a show featuring cops that is somehow different than the former 86 shows about characters that work within the police force.


(Source: HBO Twitter)

That said, they have somehow done it with True Detective on HBO, Sunday nights. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play two detective partners working murders in deep Louisiana. From the time they find the first victim, it is obvious that what they've found is different and disturbing. Throughout the episodes, it flashes forward to both characters now older and retired . They both sit alone at a table and are questioned by other police officers who are investigating their work from the past. McConaughey plays Rust Cohle with a certain detached gravitas that is a profound performance. Single Cohle is an hallucinating addict in a unique sense, like not owning any furniture in his apartment save for a chair to study case files in because all he does is work and get messed up. He rocks his haggardness and it works well in his favor just like his booty in those tight dockers. The man also knows how to work a cigarette as a prop. Woody Harrelson is the clean cut, hard ass, by the book Martin Hart. We soon discover he is just as troubled as Cohle but in different yet equally disturbing ways. I'm not saying the series is easy to watch. It is actually quite difficult to make it through the random personal tangents not associated with the case, the ugly backwoods nothingness of the cinematography, and the struggles that both of our main characters face at work and home. It is gritty, harsh and sometimes rough but somehow poignantly real and significant. Sometimes I am not always sure what is really happening and I consider myself an intelligent person but by the final scene of the third episode I can confidently say I am hooked and am ready to watch the next. If you've watched it you know exactly what I am talking about and if you haven't now is the time. The series has only aired three episodes and continues this Sunday at ten.

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