True Detective - Eps 1 & 2

After four long, excruciating years, True Detective has returned. Creator Nic Pizzolatto is back with another season ruminating on the futility of existence and the cycles of suffering that don't just pervade society, they define it. In case you weren't depressed enough by the day-to-day news cycle! Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali and the talented Stephen Dorff are in the saddle this season, playing Arkansas detectives Wayne Hays and Roland West, respectively. 
 
For season three, the show has gone back to its roots - children are missing in the rural south and it's up to these incredibly damaged men to crack the case, in the process unveiling a larger conspiracy that haunts them for the rest of their lives. None of the real estate bureaucratic nonsense that weighed down season two. Just a pair of detectives in a car plunging the depths of human depravity. 
 
This time around, we're in the fictional town of West Finger, on the outskirts of Fayetteville. The two children of Tom Purcell, played agonizingly well by Scoot McNairy, have gone missing. Like the first season, the story is intercut at multiple points in time, giving us a look at how the case still impacts our detectives' lives years after the fact. In addition to the 'main' 1980 storyline, we have segments in 1990 that show how far the two detectives' lives have diverged, as well as portions set in 2015 with an old Hays trying desperately to hang on as he struggles with dementia. Carmen Ejogo plays Amelia Reardon, who goes from local schoolteacher in 1980 to Hays' loving wife and mother to their children in 1990, and then to an accomplished author who has unfortunately passed away by 2015.
 
Following the two episode premiere, the detectives in the 1980 timeline are still struggling to piece together what exactly happened to the Purcell children. With the early focus on the group of local teenagers, there are some obvious real-life parallells to the wrongly-convicted West Memphis Three - right down to the name and location of the town. In the 2015 timeline, the woman interviewing Hays explicitly mentions the Franklin scandal, a wild string of allegations regarding child prostitution and satanic ritual in Omaha, Nebraska that attracted massive public interest in the late 1980's but was ultimately revealed to be a carefully crafted hoax. Time will tell if Pizzolatto is dropping bread crumbs or red herrings.

One interesting wrinkle as compared to previous seasons is that our two detectives, like many of the men they question, are veterans of the Vietnam War. Still just a few short years removed from the war in the 1980 timeline, it's clear that that experience weighs heavily on the town itself, even as most would still rather have much of what happened in those jungles left unsaid. 
 
Of course, there will never be another Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson imbued those characters and that dialogue with an energy that hasn't been seen anywhere on TV since. The first season also proved to be a starring showcase for Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed each episode and has since departed for larger pastures, which includes the next Bond film. We'll never quite see a sensation like season one again, and that's okay. Through two episodes, this installment still represents a captivating return to form. Time may be a flat circle after all. 

Stay tuned to WhoReps as we continue to review episodes all season long!