True Detective - Bad Men

"The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door."

Recently I've written about "The Beast Within" from the SyFy show, "Helix" and before that, "Inner Demons" from the previous episode of True Detective.  The dark side of humanity is the underlying theme to all these shows and it's an age old concept that's been explored on stage, in the pages of books and on the silver screen.

That of the mindless primitive, the beast, the denizen of the "Locked Room."

True Detective continues its decent into the maelstrom of the human mind and with it the dance that goes along the razor's edge between criminality and humanity.

 

 Naturally, the opiate of this internal struggle, religion, leads off this most recent entry.  

Also, naturally, Detective Rust Cohle holds an opinion on religion and the people who practice it.  He dryly observes an old time religion tent meeting by noting the people that habituate it, "won't be splitting the atom" any time soon and goes on to say about religion's role in our existence, "What does it say about life that (religion) violates every law of reality just to get (us) through the day."

Woody Harrelson's Detective, Martin Hart, eventually counters that man needs boundaries.  These boundaries form a natural firewall that keep the beast within locked up.  These boundaries that Hart speaks of are tenuous at best and when broken down, such as seeing your lover dancing with another man, the beast is unleashed and acts out it's worst impulses.  Luckily for Hart those impulses didn't go quite over the edge.

It was funny to watch Rust Cohle at the same dance.  He obviously knew what he was doing on the dance floor and it was much to the delight of the young woman that partnered with him.  Yet despite his artistry he seemed oddly distant and eerily robotic.  He would stare off into the distance and pace himself through the motions instead of engaging in the practice of dance that is often a precursor to the act of love or lovemaking.

Cohle's boundaries and his disdain for the "biological puppets" of humanity have left him on the outside looking in.  So we have to ask ourselves, which boundary is worst to violate?  The one that Hart crosses in his jealous rage or the one that leaves you incapable of human interaction that Cohle resides outside of?

So why all this discussion about boundaries and beasts?

The question has been asked once and believe it was by Cohle, if the murders were solved and their man caught.  Who committed the most recent murder and basically was it Cohle or Hart?

This particular episode offers more insight into the inner workings of each man and while we thrill at the chase of the now named suspect, Reggie LeDoux, we can also marvel at the complexity of Cohle and Hart and whether the locked room of the human mind was opened in one of them and how this will eventually dovetail with solving the crime by the end of the series.

For Cohle's profile, we know his a bit of a sociopath, he's deeply cynical and distrustful.  He tells Hart at one point in this episode, "People incapable of guilt usually have a good time."  Translated, if you can't keep your inner beast locked up inside your morally governed locked room, then trouble awaits.

Cohle also suffers from insomnia and Hart has accused him of being myopic.  This is good if you are in pursuit of a serial killer but it gets bad if you are constantly staring into the eyes of the dead.

 

If are to believe Cohle is capable of the same crimes he is investigating  then it is revealing that he perceives a look of relief in the eyes of the victims just before they die and captured in their photographs.  Would he commit such a crime if he thought it brought relief to the victim?

 

In going through the reams of information of previous murders Cohle discovers something "archetypal" which for a detective is excellent work but for a killer it sets the base line from which you execute your subsequent crimes.  Cohle shares this with Hart and it represents a big break in the case.  But does this familiarity with criminal archetypes represent good police work or the foundation for crimes to be committed by Cohle in the future?

As for Hart we've seen the pious man reach his breaking point fuel by booze and the sight of his lover with another man.  He forces his way into Lisa's apartment and nearly throttles her date to death.  Fortunately for the date he only had to answer a simple question in order to earn his release.

Lisa is Hart's kept woman.  And to some degree, so is his wife, Maggie.  He demands much of both but gives little in return.  He uses Lisa for his sexual release and when Maggie confronts him once again with whatever secret he is keeping, he breaks down and confesses he is "fucked up.'

This leads to a love making session which is exactly what Maggie shouldn't have done for him.  Hart gets what he wants, to distract Maggie from her suspicions and to use her as a sexual tool.  If you think women are getting short shrift in this series you are wrong.  At least to some degree.  Men are the much weaker and debased gender here.

If you think back to the previous episode.  The madam at the bunny ranch saw right through Hart's sympathies.  She immediately saw him as false and dismissed his efforts to release Beth (Lili Simmons of Banshee) from her so called servitude at the brothel.  Harts good intentions were rejected as projection and pretension. 

Does Hart's low opinion of women translate into a future as a sexual predator?  Maybe, maybe not.  The seed of doubt have been planted.

In my previous post of True Detective I cited the failure of Martin Hart to shield his daughters from the evil that men do.  Somehow the more heinous acts he has to deal with have crept into his family life and were recreated in a creepy doll scene.  

In this episode the eldest of the two girls have been caught drawing crude and  "ugly" pictures of men and women having sex.  Inappropriate for her age and troubling for her parents.  As Maggie tried to relate the earnestness of this situation to Martin he had trouble pulling his eyes from the TV screen as he cradled the girl.  When he combed through the pictures later he seemed as confused as he did when he saw the doll scene.

Did he introduce this debauchery into his family?  Why does he let it fester?  Will this have any implication on the murder ten years hence when the girls are in their teens?  (That's one theory I won't get into quite yet.)

 

It would be a shame to see either Cohle or Hart commit the copy cat crime that happened in 2012.  Both are sympathetic figures that were obviously damaged by the the very dedication they show to their careers.

While Cohle is distant and odd he's obviously lonely and trapped in the depths of grief.  For his part, Hart knows all the rules and set up the proper life any man would strive for.  He just can't remain faithful to his own rules. 

By the end of this series we can only hope there isn't a monster at the end of their dreams.