The Trouble With True Detective

“Bezzerides isn’t a man shoehorned into a woman’s body, though, and what distinguishes her aren’t glimmers of softness buried beneath an abrasive exterior, but rather the other characters’ responses to her. She’s called a cunt for doing her job well, hit on by a suspect who seems to think they’re in a role-playing fantasy together, and asked by a superior to cozy up to a man for information.”

“True Detective is a show with plenty of issues, but misogyny isn’t one of them: it clearly understands the outrageousness of traditional gender roles, and why a woman like Bezzerides would be compelled to carry more knives than Crocodile Dundee.”

“Yet this is precisely what caused the backlash against the first season — the show’s alleged “macho nonsense,” as Emily Nussbaum put it in a review for the New Yorker.”

“True Detective is not immediately feminist in the way that Orphan Black or Orange is the New Black are. With their multiple, distinct female characters (and often laughably lame male ones), those shows are Bechdel Test valedictorians.”

“True Detective feels shaky on women because it’s still not sure on a larger scale what sort of show it wants to be. Its sophomore outing reveals a tonal incoherence that while present in the inaugural season, was overshadowed by great performances. Absent the chemistry of McConaughey and Harrelson, True Detective’s ass is showing.”

“Hart avoids self-reflection because it interferes with his fun; Cohle wields his supposed self-awareness and clear-eyed outlook on life as a weapon, defending a vulnerable core. Perhaps if these guys hadn’t been programmed to eschew stereotypically feminine receptivity, to avoid at all costs talking about their feelings, it wouldn’t have taken them eight episodes and a voyage through Hell to discover that they loved each other.”

“Velcoro’s father mumbles that this is “no country for white men.” But before we take out the tiny violins for Caucasian dudes, it’s worth considering that True Detective’s thesis is that this is no country for anyone, that a patriarchal culture places absurd, corrosive expectations on everyone.”

“Fans were let down by last season’s resolution because they’d been on board with the Gospel According to Rust Cohle, and weren’t prepared to retrofit their ideas once the finale took all the air out of his nihilism. The confusion isn’t their fault: the show itself was unsure how enamored it was with Cohle’s philosophy. Lines like “Human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution” felt like the truth, until they were abruptly revealed at the conclusion to be nothing more than armor.”

“Angsty Cop Drama might be a better title for the show, and viewers would probably be less disappointed with its sophomore outing if they interpreted it as a broad parody of fragile masculinity. True Detective isn’t anti-feminist. But the problem is that it doesn’t know what it is.”