Episode Title: “Haunted Houses”
Writer: Nic Pizzolatto
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Previously on “True Detective”:
There are some things that should never be said to another person… at least if you want to remain close to them. It doesn’t matter if its true. In fact, the truth can hurt more than a lie. In “Haunted Houses,” words are exchanged that can’t be taken back.
“Without me, there is no you.” Once Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) says that, his professional relationship with Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) is never the same. And that’s before they come to blows in the police station parking lot. Whatever their respective faults, Hart and Cohle were good partners. They share a reunion of sorts late in the episode, but they may never be able to regain the level of trust that they once shared. That’s something that’s all too clear when Hart checks his weapon before following Cohle in 2012.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Haunted Houses,” so if you missed tonight’s episode of “True Detective” then you should probably skip this review or else you’ll have to move to Carcosa.
Right off the bat, “True Detective” shakes things up in 2012. Cohle walked out of the police interview last week, and Hart quickly does the same once he realizes that Detectives Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) and Maynard Gilbough (Michael Potts) are gunning for his former partner. But maybe… possibly, Hart has started to believe that Cohle may have something to do with the new set of murders. When Hart and Cohle come face-to-face in 2012, Hart doesn’t openly seem afraid of his former friend. However, Hart does make sure that he has his gun.
Without Hart and Cohle, Papania and Gilbough bring in Maggie Hart (Michelle Monaghan) to answer a few questions. And Maggie proves to be a liar as well, when the story she tells doesn’t match what we see in the flashbacks. Maggie claims not to know why Cohle and Hart ended their partnership. But Maggie not only knows, she instigated it.
All the way back in the first episode of “True Detective,” there was a noticeable spark between Cohle and Maggie. She was the first person on this series to demonstrate real empathy with Cohle and Hart probably noticed that. Remember how angry Hart was during that dinner scene when Cohle refused to leave? Or when Hart caught Cohle at his home two episodes later? Cohle has finally mowed the lawn. But Maggie was the one behind the wheel.
There’s no real love between Cohle and Maggie. There’s no romance here. Maggie just needed a way to hurt her husband, and having sex with Cohle was the most efficient way to do that. That’s why Maggie choose not to sleep with a stranger at the bar. She used Cohle to torpedo her marriage and to get back at Hart. Anything else was simply collateral damage.
This episode is called “Haunted House,” but the real ghost is Hart, who essentially haunts his own life as barely a shell of the family man that he pretended to be. Hart’s daughters, Audrey (Erin Moriarty) and Maisie (Brighton Sharbino) won’t even speak to him while Maggie simply keeps him at an emotional distance once she realizes that he’s cheating again. Because Hart lacks self-awareness, he doesn’t see the end of his marriage coming until it is far too late.
Of course, it’s all Hart’s fault. He has no one but himself to blame for this one. Back in 1995, Hart managed to do a good thing and get a young woman named Beth (Lili Simmons) to leave behind the life of prostitution that she had fallen into. In 2002, Beth reenters Hart’s life and she quickly falls into bed with him. So, Hart sleeps with a woman who is barely older than his daughters only a short time after beating up the teens who dared to have sex with his oldest daughter. I don’t think that anyone is surprised that Hart is a hypocrite. Except perhaps, Hart himself.
While Hart’s personal life spirals out of control, Cohle destroys his professional life by unofficially reopening the Dora Lange case to find “The Yellow King” that the late Guy Leonard Francis (Christopher Berry) alluded to before his untimely suicide last week. Not that we needed a reminder of Cohle’s skills, but former preacher Joel Theriot (Shea Whigham) withers under his glare and Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders) is disturbed enough by Cohle’s line of questioning that he causes problems for him with his new police chief.
But the most soul crushing experience that Cohle goes through is the interview of Kelly Reider, the young girl whom he and Hart rescued from Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford) a decade earlier. Kelly is pretty far from alright, even so many years later. But she does seem to confirm Cohle’s suspicion that another killer was involved.
Cohle’s personal and professional destruction dovetail at the police station shortly after his suspension. Hart attacks him in the parking lot in an ugly brawl that ends their friendship and their partnership. It was a particularly brutal fight, as staged by director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Judging by this episode and the five that preceded it, Fukunaga.appears to have a talent for taking these scenes that we’ve seen so many times before and making them seem fresh again.
“Haunted Houses” pushed the narrative beyond almost everything that we knew coming in. The end of Hart’s marriage and the breakup of Cohle and Hart has been foreshadowed for weeks. The only thing that remains unexplored is the ten year period between Cohle’s departure from the police and his reappearance in 2012. Even the interview structure seems to be irrevocably changed as both Hart and Cohle have walked out and Maggie isn’t likely to shed any new light on the case.
That leaves us with the long awaited reunion between Hart and Cohle in the near present. By keeping the 2012 incarnations of Hart and Cohle separated for so long, it feels like a major event when we finally see old Hart and old Cohle talking to each other. And I can’t shake the feeling that Cohle orchestrated this. Obviously, Cohle was following Hart on the road. In theory, Cohle could have come to Hart at any time. But Cohle waited until after Hart had been interviewed by the police before approaching him. That suggests that Cohle has a larger design in play.
There are actually some “True Detective” fans who still think that Cohle has something to do with the murders. But I ask you: would the real murderer have gone through so much trouble to chase down leads? Would he have given a decade of his life in the pursuit of answers? No, Cohle is not our killer and neither is Hart. They’re both battered and broken men, but this case isn’t going to be solved unless they renew their partnership.
We’ve reached that point in the story. Let the endgame begin.
