If a case is solved 35 years after going cold, but the detective who cracks it doesn't remember solving it, is the case ever truly solved? Does time distill the truth or just distort it even further? These are some of the headier questions posed by the third season of HBO's acclaimed series, "True Detective" — a zigzagging waltz of bromance, melodrama, and cerebral horrors, easily the cable channel's most riveting offering to date. Headed by two-time Oscar Winner Mahershala Ali as a plainspoken, all too certain (and yet never quite certain) Det. Wayne Hays, a.k.a. "Purple," the additional coatings of terse, often bitter race-relation politicking somehow elevates the show from its prior two seasons, adding some not-so-subtle conflicts between an ethnically diverse cast who, until recently, hadn't historically shared the small screen together. Stephen Dorff's outstanding portrayal of surly Det. Roland West is the manic, unhinged yin to Wayne's taut yang, and yet even at their most diametrically-opposed, the men still offer laughs, tears, and spasms of warmth meant only for each other. A combative time-capsule of friendship forged from the ashes of a Jim Crow-era segregated south, misogyny, and a mutual distrust of local and state law enforcement officials.
Yet despite whatever series creator Nic Pizzolatto manages to extract or dispel about race relations during the ‘80s in Northwest Arkansas, what is prodded most effectively in "True Detective" is the notion of time as both healer and arbiter of pain — beyond the families who suffered great tragedies themselves, are the policemen and women’s families who suffer those tragedies right alongside them — tearing apart at the hopes, dreams and nightmares of everyone involved. Pizzolatto recognizes our need to compartmentalize traumatic memories into digestible chapters, whether they be miserable or cheery, to help identify the so-called breaking points in our lives; “What could I have done (or said) differently to prevent such a tragedy?” Lives permeated by regret haunt many of us out of bed in the middle of the night, as occurs with a senior, gray-haired Hays as he's unable to shake the terrifying visions of Julie Purcell, and keep us from reaching out to those we love out of fear of stirring up too many raw emotions; as septuagenarian West recedes into the cloaking comfort of booze and the forest to inundate his own failed feelings about the past. The last thing this aging odd-couple needs is to re-embark on their wayward case, and by the same token, if they refuse, they'd be turning their backs on their youngest, brightest selves. Selves that, unbeknownst to them, need them more in this moment than they could ever hope to know.
"True Detective" reaches its pinnacle achievements when it works backwards — bouncing back from, and unpacking years into the future which shred the rules of its own anecdotal triptych. Putting this puzzle back together after a 35-year-hiatus can only be as satisfying as the quarterbacks leading the investigation, and both Ali and Dorff are more than game to serve up a combination of pathos and frailty, putting them in the same disheveled leagues as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Much like Hays, West wants badly to solve their case, but would be just as happy letting it go — not because he isn’t interested in the closure it would bring, but because he may never get to close that gap entirely — which in his mind, could be worse. When an individual is unable to let go of their tattered past, time moves freely in some rather unknowable and unwanted directions. It might cause them to turn to alcoholism or excessive drug use. Yet the healing properties of time also exist as a vessel to lead us where we all know we're headed — the great beyond, our date with the final chapter in our lives. Some call it “death.” Some even call it a “return to the heavens.” And some call it what it really is… Closure.
"TRUE DETECTIVE" a.k.a. “Old, Abused and Contused” on HBO. Rated TV-MA.
