TV Review: True Detective “Form and Void”
By: Brandon Wolfe
***This article contains spoilers***
We open with a glimpse into the home life of the scarred man, and it isn’t pretty. Out in some desolate corner of nowhere, he lives in a dilapidated wreck of a house with a woman, childlike and deeply damaged, with whom he shares a relationship of some demented intimacy. The man constantly shifts in and out of different dialects, as if operated by a clicking remote control. There is a heavy ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ feel in the air, ominous, unnatural and squalid to the point that you can almost smell it.
Rust and Marty are still on the boat, pumping information out of Steve Geraci, their former colleague whom was in some way involved with covering up information on the Marie Fontenot case back in 1990, when he was still a deputy. Geraci, after being subjected to the horrific Tuttle video, reveals that he did not know anything about the sinister underpinnings of the case, and abetted the cover-up only on the orders of his immediate superior, one Sheriff Childress, the surname of whom we now know is very significant in this case. Convinced that Geraci is telling the truth, Rust allows him to leave the scene, but only after imparting that not only will Geraci’s name be smeared publicly for his involvement in the cover-up, but that a sniper has been contracted to kill him if anything happens to Rust or Marty. When Geraci cannot help but balk at this threat, his precious car is riddled with bullets by Rust’s employer at the dive bar, crouching off in the distance with a rifle.
Our detectives fall back into research mode when Marty works up a hunch about a house-painting job he notices in some canvas photos culled from the Dora Lange file from ’95, which sets them on the trail of the Childress and Sons landscaping business, which has operated in the area of all the missing persons cases going back many years. Locating an address via some tax documents, the detectives set up some final housekeeping before pursuing their lead. Rust hands his employer/sniper several packages containing all the evidence they have managed to amass thus far, as well as copies of the videotape, which he instructs to be mailed out to several news outlets and law enforcement agencies in the event that anything happens to him. Marty, meanwhile, touches base with Detective Papania, one of the cops who headed up the interrogations of Marty and Rust that gave the first half of the season its narrative structure. He gets the assurance that if they do get a break in the case, Papania will bring in the cavalry.
And then our heroes arrive at the home of the scarred man, where Marty contends with the woman while Rust pursues the scarred man into a deep labyrinth of tunnels, filled with all the paraphernalia (antlers, twig structures, drawings) that have been native to the case all along. This sequence is a masterful display of unbearably drawn-out tension, as Rust navigates his way through the tunnels, following the terrifying voice of his suspect as it taunts him. The sequence evokes the climactic Buffalo Bill scene in ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’ but what boosts it even further into the realm of anxiety-inducing suspense is our knowledge that this is our final hour with Rust and Marty. This isn’t the Season 4 finale of some cop show where we know the heroes will return in the fall regardless. This is the end. These men can die. And they probably will.
Except they don’t. Though taking on serious battle damage, Rust and Marty kill the scarred man, whom we learn was named Errol Childress, an illegitimate son who kept his father’s preserved corpse chained to a bed and talked to it as if it were still alive. It’s sort of retroactively hilarious that after all the Internet’s intense debate and speculation over the identity of the Yellow King, poring over every line and detail for clues, it becomes clear in the finale that the show really did not have that strong of an investment in that aspect of the story. Though some manner of conspiracy did exist surrounding the Tuttle Family and the cult they inspired, the scarred man we heard about all along was indeed the bogeyman behind the murders. It’s all very cut-and-dried. There was a bad man doing bad things and he was killed. Doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Because ‘True Detective’ was never really, at its core, about arcane serial-killer mythology. That was merely the window dressing for a character study of its two mismatched protagonists, and the true climax to the series is what happens after Childress’ head is blown apart, when we catch up with Rust and Marty recuperating in the hospital. Now publicly recognized as heroes, the two men are both given redemptive moments with the families they lost, moments that see each man breaking down in tears. Marty receives a visit from Maggie and the girls, who are deeply relieved that he is alright and prove that they do still care about him in spite of his many mistakes.
Rust’s reunion, however, is more metaphysical. While in a temporary coma, he reveals that he touched a plane of existence where he could feel his daughter’s love ready to embrace him for eternity. But it remained out of his grasp as he found himself returned to his body, awaking in bed to find Marty sucking on a straw with a dumb look his face. And he can’t understand why he wasn’t able to let go. But in a discussion with Marty, Rust comes to a realization about the darkness of the world. It may be everywhere, but the light is valiantly fighting back against it. “The light is winning” is Rust’s final musing of the series, as he’s carted off by his only friend in the world. And for a man as nihilistic as Rustin Cohle, it’s difficult to imagine a final note more hopeful than that.
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