True Detective’s third season is grim-faced bummer TV.
As grieving father Tom Purcell, Scoot McNairy looks like an exploded electrical socket of pure trauma.
His cry turns into a roar, and for a moment McNairy’s eyes look like two black holes.
Credit: Warrick Page/HBO
Tom’s jailed for 24 hours while Roland and Wayne (Mahershala Ali) continue their investigation.
Released, Tom runs up to Roland’s office.
Lieutenant West’s not around.
POLICEMAN #1:“That was the Lieutenant!
They just had lunch with our dirtbag.
The uncle or whatever?
Met him at some diner.
Says he had the whole story, wants a payout.”
Say now, this is some very important secret information Tom can use!
Dan O’Brien (Michael Graziadei) was Tom’s mysterious brother-in-law, after all.
Good thing these detectives are both speaking through megaphones while they describe recent events in precise detail.
POLICEMAN #1:“They wants us to get phone records.
Diamond Cactus Motel in Paradise, Nevada.
Lucy’s phone records.”
(Perhaps there will be a final shootout at Purgatory Falls, New Hampshire?)
And we can set aside the fact that some of these lines sound like painfully stapled-on ADR.
But on every level, this is raggedy storytelling.
Also raggedy: This episode’s non sequitur revelation of Tom’s big secret.
“Repressed Homosexuality” is a potentially fruitful plot point, especially given the period setting.
Investigating the Queer Underground would definitely improve this season’s music!
But this is a weird return to a narrative well that already ran dry for creator Nic Pizzolatto.
And at least Woodrugh’s melodramatic internal struggle was dramatized on screen!
He finds O’Reilly, beats him up, then follows a clue-direction to a Hoyt-looking mansion.
There, poor Tom discovers an ACMETM Brand Murder Cellar, complete with pink walls.
I gather that most of the theorizing aroundTrue Detectivethis season has focused on all things Hoyt-adjacent.
Amelia (Carmen Ejogo) is reading some overripe prose from her non-fiction classic.
And then she’s interrupted by a nameless man asking loud questions about the case.
Or maybe he’s a super aggressive book critic.
“You’re just making your money, and milking their pain,” he accuses Amelia.
“Shame you on, woman!”
Now, this scene could only be alittlesilly.
But then you get to the final moment.
A close-up on Amelia, her eyesrememberingsomething, and then her climactic stage whisper: “Dolls!”
Goodness, couldthisbe the mythic cyclops who purchased those scary dolls all those years ago?
Is the Pink Room pink?
I remain hopeful that this season will justify all the monolithic frowning with a fascinating and complicated final act.
But this episode bent over backwards to juice this season’s slow-paced plot towards a reckoning.
She can’t believe this crap, and neither can I.
