Episode Title: “The Secret Fate of All Life”
Writer: Nic Pizzolatto
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Previously on “True Detective”:
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been played.
Two episodes back, “True Detective” showed us a monster and all of us collectively fell for it. To hear Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) tell it, Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford) was practically the devil himself. An inhuman aberration who was capable of brutally murdering Dora Lange and possibly several other young women.
“True Detective” promised us an epic shootout in 1995 between Ledoux and our heroes. Both Cohle and Hart have alluded to that event in previous episodes, but we finally see it here in “The Secret Fate of All Life.” And it’s a lie. Hart and Cohle are liars.
Now we know why their story has been largely in sync for seventeen years. Hart and Cohle weren’t just trying to cover up the shady and illegal actions that they took to track down Ledoux. The “shootout” was their greatest crime, even if their actions were morally justifiable.
“The Secret Fate of All Life” marks a turning point for “True Detective,” as the 2012 storyline is starting to come into focus. It’s now all too clear why Cohle is a suspect. The Cohle of 2012 may not be the man we thought he was. But as Hart says in the episode, Cohle was probably getting a better read on the present day detectives then they were getting from him.
From this point on, there are full spoilers ahead for “The Secret Fate of All Life.” So if you missed tonight’s episode of “True Detective,” then you should probably skip this review or you’ll have to talk to Cohle about the Yellow King.
Picking up shortly after last week’s episode, Cohle forces Ginger to introduce him to Ledoux’s partner, Dewall for a proposed drug deal. Dewall seems to accurately perceive the darkness in Cohle before rejecting the deal out of hand and threatening to kill Cohle if he ever sees him again.
This is why Cohle had Hart stay back. With the meeting out of the way, Hart follows Dewall to the hidden area where he and Ledoux have been cooking meth. Soon enough, the story that Hart and Cohle have been telling Detectives Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) and Maynard Gilbough (Michael Potts) in 2012 is exposed as a falsehood. There was no shootout. Cohle and Hart caught Ledoux and Dewall by surprise before Hart murdered Ledoux.
Part of Hart’s mindset is that he feels ownership of all women that happen to be in his orbit. This is why he cheats on his wife, Maggie (Michelle Monaghan). It’s why he terrorized his ex-mistress, Lisa Tragnetti (Alexandra Daddario) and it’s why he gave a teenage prostitute all of the money in his wallet in a misguided attempt to help her. Hart is definitely a flawed individual with outdated views about women, but he does care about them. So when Hart finds two children (a dead boy and a deeply traumatized girl) who had been horribly mistreated by Ledoux, he immediately killed Ledoux in response.
Dewall is then killed by one of his own landmine traps while trying to escape. Cohle takes charge and manipulates the crime scene to resemble the heroic shootout that the duo have been spinning for years. Think about that for a second. This is Hart and Cohle’s greatest victory as detectives… and it’s a sham. It’s a lie that both men have clung to for seventeen years because they have no choice. The truth would destroy them.
In the aftermath, Cohle and Hart are hailed as heroes and time presses on. As predicted by Cohle, Hart manages to reunite with Maggie and he temporarily heals his fractured family. Even Cohle gets a taste of happiness when Maggie’s friend, Laurie Perkins (Elizabeth Reaser) turns out to be a great romantic match for him. Laurie sees through Cohle’s bulls*** and she knows how to deal with him.
But in the same episode, we see Cohle and Laurie at a later stage in their relationship. And it seems clear that Laurie has checked out. She stares at the TV screen with such vacant intensity that Cohle seems to be taken aback by it. In that scene, Laurie barely acknowledges Cohle’s presence even as he keeps an arm around her.
Back in 2012, Hart admits that he and his family had some good years; which he didn’t appreciate at the time. When his daughters become teenagers, Hart’s oldest daughter, Audrey proves to be openly rebellious and promiscuous. This is the same girl who posed her dolls in some very sexual positions seven years earlier, so it’s not like there weren’t warning signs.
Of course, Hart can’t take this kind of rebellion. Not from his own daughter, or from any woman, really. It’s that sense of ownership again. Hart strikes his daughter in anger; which only manages to alienate both Audrey and Maggie. Remember, Hart isn’t wearing his wedding ring in 2012. This could be the incident that helped end his marriage.
Cohle’s happiness is also shaken when he interrogates Guy Leonard Francis (Christopher Berry) and tricks the man into confessing his role in a double homicide. In his desperation to make a deal, Francis claims that Cohle never caught Dora Lange’s real killer and he offers to tell Cohle about “the Yellow King” if he can get a deal.
Francis’ words only serve to enrage Cohle and he attacks Francis before getting pulled off of him. Cohle appears to be profoundly disturbed by the idea that the killer is still out there and he becomes very suspicious when Francis commits suicide after receiving a pay phone call from someone claiming to be his lawyer.
In 2012, we learn some very important facts about the narrative of this show. First, we’re told that Cohle was interviewed by Gilbough and Papania before Hart came down to the station. Then we learn that Gilbough and Papania have very little to go on in the new murders… but they do have photographs of Cohle hanging out by the edge of the crime scene. They have also poked several holes in the story that he’s been telling for the last five episodes.
To put it another way, Cohle is now their prime suspect for the 2012 and 1995 murders. Gilbough and Papania don’t have a lot to go on beyond their suspicions, but the way they frame their case seems to give Hart pause. Hart doesn’t buy the idea that Cohle could change that much in ten years. But the detectives are arguing that Cohle was always the murderer and he used Ledoux to cover his tracks and steer the investigation away from him.
I don’t buy that for a second. From an audience standpoint, it seems obvious that Cohle is conducting an unofficial investigation into the 2012 killings. And the reason that Cohle won’t let the police in his storage unit is that it’s probably filled with evidence that he’s collected while trying to solve the case. None of that is going to make Cohle look innocent in the eyes of Gilbough and Papania. But it just might be the spark that reunites Hart and Cohle in 2012.
We haven’t yet seen the end of Cohle and Hart’s partnership in 2002, but Cohle’s abrupt departure from the interview in 2012 has to change the narrative of the show going forward. Without Cohle offering his perspective to the two detectives, he could become an enigma to the audience. There may even be some viewers who buy into the idea that Cohle is the real killer.
“The Secret Fate of All Life” was one of the strongest episodes to date, with captivating turns in the story and great performances all around. Gilbough and Papania have a long way to go before they can be as compelling as Cohle and Hart. But if the time for talking is almost over, then Gilbough and Papania may both end up playing larger roles as “True Detective” heads into the second half of the season.
