In a typical year I probably consume hundreds of hours of narrative fiction. Since I fancy myself to have high standards, I limit consumption to a small fraction of what's readily available to the 21st century American.
Several times in a year I experience a story I genuinely like; it's unusual but to my gratitude, it still occurs regularly but not frequently. These works end up on my best-of lists, the sort of things that I'll, if asked, recommend to friends with a mild 'I liked that.'
Less common is the work that get under my skin. Like a restaurant whose food you crave the next day, I think about the story long after I've seen/read/heard it. I may even formulate a personal response to it, working out its effect on me. This tier of appreciation results in me directly recommending things even if I'm not specifically asked.
Rarest, though, are stories that really get their hook into me. The under-my-skin phase extends into months. If the story exists in physical media I will go out of my way to own it. In a good year, one of these may come around. Often, full years pass without anything quite reaching the tier of enthusiasm so excellent my younger self would contemplate writing fan-fiction.*
Here in February of 2014, I have an unexpected object of mania: True Detective. Rather than try, badly, to synthesize and expand on an increasingly True Detective-analytical internet, I am simply going to examine the traits of the series that prompt this response from me. I want to get this written now, before the series ends. Maybe it will stick the landing; maybe it will burn out like Twin Peaks. It's exciting to wait and watch, and read the endless analysis and response from others who have been stricken.
It's not entirely a surprise that HBO has hit the mania sweet spot. Deadwood and The Wire both got me early. It is a surprise that an ostensible collection of series elements from HBO series that never prompted my allegiance would cohere into something far more interesting than their sum. Nor am I generally interested in police procedurals between mismatched partners.
That it stars Matthew Mcconaughey, an actor I've never liked, makes the series -- or the writing of Cohle -- much more impressive. And to give him his due, he's just killing in the part. There're nuances within nuances of playing Cohle at various time periods; the indigent hair and burnout mien of latter-day Cohle is never the performance crutch it would have been in less capable hands.
The first element to draw me in was the direction and cinematography. With every installment directed by the same man, the week-to-week consistency is beautiful and frequently astonishing. Early in the second episode, long before I could care much for the main characters and their occasionally-quippy conversations, there was a medium aerial shot of their car driving on an overpass. The distance, the light pavement, the sepia palette of the shot -- all of it hit me full strength. I cannot think of a series that more resembles a feature film since Twin Peaks.
Next would be the structure. Multiple timelines shift in and out, commenting on and steering each other -- and further adding on a full layer of unreliable narrator -- but not at all confusing. It demands a level of engagement that discourages multi-tasked viewing. And it all dovetails neatly from one week the next, something rarely seen and almost never executed this well since Twin Peaks' first season, a season that felt like an eight-hour movie. True Detective might make that cut.
Intelligence. I'm not speaking of Cohle's often-pretentious philosophical and metaphysical speeches, but instead that the series plays honestly but smartly with the viewer and expects you to either keep up with it, or catch a detail on a subsequent viewing. Episode five, for instance, changed a lot of expectations about where the show was headed, but when you go back and check the work throughout the episodes to date, it's all there. Often masterfully so; a line or more that sounded one way the first time now seems to indicate the opposite, at no detriment to the story.
The easter eggs. The strawberry jam to top it off. I do not expect the series to veer wholly into Lovecraft territory, but the references and imagery associated with the Yellow King and Carcosa resonate on their own frequency. Even if it's just another cult of rich-guy satanists (or whatever; Mardi Gras culture has its own Kingly tradition) out for sport, the series has carved out a terrific, dreadful niche for itself.
If the three remaining episodes live up to the first five, this series is an instant classic.
Season two will become all the more difficult to pull off.
* My last art object of mania was Pacific Rim, and that sucker is ripe for fanfic...
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