…(although his actions often belie his dark philosophy; for instance, Maggie, Marty’s wife, can communicate with him in ways she can’t with her own husband, and his doggedness about the case is the opposite of what you would find in a true nihilist, who would give no f*cks and be content to let the world go to its inevitable ruin).

I initially thought these two guys were our way in to observe what unfolded during their investigation of a particularly complex multiple-murder case. I expected the discovery would be, at the end, that “Aha!”-cum-“Quelle horreur!” moment when some wretched, diabolical blood-curdling serial killer is unmasked. You know, the way we expect to get narratives of this sort. The clues. The hunt. The takedown. But, well, if you watch the show, you know that narrative approach has not only been jettisoned, it’s been mocked. I’m beginning to understand that multiple-murder case was our way in to observe these guys, each troubled in his own way, one of whom is particularly bleak and unfathomable.

It’s still there, of course. This whole multiple-murders thing about “The Yellow King” – the big, horrific, bloody-killings carrot that the show holds out to lead us along. I still expect “Quelle horreurs!” to be had, but I can’t even guess about how we’re going to get there and what might happen with our narrators Marty and Cohle along the way. We’ve already seen, in last week and this week’s episodes, that we can’t exactly rely on them to be truthful in telling this story.

HBO.com: True Detective