True Detective

Eight episodes in and I’m glad I stayed with this series. It’s followed a predictable pattern in a most unpredictable way, and now that the timelines have met and we’re all in the present day, I’m enjoying the rapport between the main characters of Marty Hart and Rustin Cohle. Reunited after a bitter blowout in 2002, they’re finding their way as a team while catching up on each other’s lives. Hart (played to macho-jerk-tight-jawed perfection by Woody Harrelson) isn’t nearly as interesting as Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), but the chemistry between them works better now than when they first met to solve a murder in 1995.

The best moments are the ones when I can’t decide which is better: the line or the delivery. An offhand comment about art leads Hart to ask if Cohle has started painting, and Cohle’s reply, dryly delivered in a smoky Texas drawl, is priceless: “Nah—it’s too late to start something new, I reckon. Life’s too short to get good at any one thing …” and if there was more, I was laughing so hard I missed it.

Well-written and equally well-performed dialogue can redeem a so-so plot in my view, so even though I’ve so far stayed a step ahead of the story, the gold star performances of the leads—McConaughey in partikilar—is keeping me engaged.

I won’t mourn when the season ends, though. It’s sitting in GoT’s time slot on Sunday night, so when TD is done on March 28, my world will be restored come April 6!