True Detective - Recap: Be Careful What You Get Good At

Recap video and review of True Detective - Episode 7 - After You've Gone:

Letting go is impossible without closure. It's why so many people in life have such a hard time ever completely doing it. If you can't settle up with the past, overcoming it becomes a Herculean task. Of course, that inability to let go is central to the narrative True Detective has set up, since so much of that story is tied to the notion that a job left unfinished cannot abide. "After You've Gone" reunites Marty (Woody Harrelson) and Rust (Matthew McConaughey) over their shared sense of obligation to right the wrongs of 1995. There's a killer still out there because they killed the wrong man 17 years earlier. Sure, he was still a bad man who would have continued in his ways otherwise, but because they made the wrong choice, and with it, the assumption that all was said and done, other killings came to light. In essence, this is on their heads, and it's up to Marty and Rust to settle up their debt to society. No matter how much Marty hates Rust, and no matter how much Rust would rather he had any other option but to crawl to Marty for help, they can't let go of the past because necessity won't let them. Their work needs to be finished, and the true bad guys brought to justice. It's a powerful narrative, and although "After You've Gone" is probably the season's weakest effort, it's still an effective -- and necessary -- episode, in that it moves all the pieces into place for next week's season finale.

Credit: HBO

So we learn that Rust has spent the better part of the past decade tending bar and working on fishing boats in Alaska, before returning to Louisiana out of a sense of obligation towards the Reggie Ledoux case. Having been a party to Ledoux's death has left Rust feeling a certain guilt that he and Marty were responsible for eliminating their own potential lead into what might be a far-reaching criminal conspiracy that could include the affluent Tuttle family, a theory he hatches after meeting with a transsexual hooker in a dive bar. Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle has died under mysterious circumstances in the intervening ten years since Rust first visited his ministry, but Rust was still able to obtain information of great use to the case. In one of two Tuttle residences Rust breaks into, he discovers various pictures of children being prepared for human sacrifices, in addition to a videotape depicting the murder of Marie Fontenot (among other unspeakable things). Though he won't be able to use any of this in a court of law, due to the illegal means by which he obtained it, the video proves to Rust (and to Marty) that Rust's theorizing isn't some made up delusion in his head.

Credit: HBO

Have I mentioned how much I adore the production design of this series? Beyond the Southern Gothic stylings of the setting, an amazing amount of character is conveyed merely through how these characters arrange their living quarters and other private spaces. The storage shed from which Rust operates his investigation into The Yellow King illustrates the erratic, obsessive nature of his personality. It pretty much looks like a casebook exploded all over the room, with files littering the desks and labeled images and fliers pinned to the walls. His desperation lines the walls, as it's obvious just how badly he feels he needs to close this case, once and for all. Rust has his own home, yes, but we don't get the sense he's ever there. It's a diminutive shack behind the tiny little bar he tends, but we never get a look inside, because we're meant to sense that his real home is this storage shed, a space that represents his mission, which is pretty much all he's got. This is contrasted with Marty's place, which is spartan and unadorned with much of anything. Over the past ten years, he's quit the force and opened up his own private investigation agency in a strip mall, with offices every bit as sparse and uninhabited as his home. It illustrates the solitude to which Marty has committed himself. Hell, he hasn't even seen Maggie (Michelle Monaghan) in two years. So when Rust appears and wants Marty's help in utilizing connections to access old case files, it's a given that Marty will be brought out of his solitude and back into the thick of things. Sure, he puts up stubborn resistance to the idea of working with Rust again, but he's a soldier of obligation every bit as much as Rust is. The "debt" is all he really has anymore. And so he commits to helping Rust out of a desire to bring the men in the video to justice.

Credit: HBO

Of course, it's exceedingly difficult for Rust and Marty to make their case, even after Marty is able to bribe his old boss with a bottle of single malt scotch for access to old case files. The killings, geographically, are spread out along the bayou, and are frequently within a 10-mile radius of a school run by the Tuttles, over a dozen of which were in existence. Yet it's hard to prove a connection. Could Senator Eddie Tuttle, Reverend Billy Tuttle's cousin, be involved? He certainly would have the power to make certain unpleasantness disappear. But what's the motive? Really, the only common denominator in any of these cases is an elusive man with scars around the bottom of his face. Marty and Rust seek this man, visiting Reggie Ledoux's cousin Jimmy, and learning that, apparently, the man with the scars is someone is as mysterious as he is elusive: it seems like anyone who's ever met him as only ever met him once, and can recall little else about him but how unsettling he was.

During all of this, Marty and Rust are gradually becoming closer acquainted as partners. You could almost say they're better partners/friends now than they were in 1995, considering how much time they spend just talking about their lives. In one devastating scene, Marty recounts that he left the force four years after Rust, due to an incident in which a tweaker put his baby in the microwave while high on meth. He decided such sights were things he never wanted to see again, which is all the more poignant now, considering he's right back in the driver's seat with Rust after seeing another monstrous, unspeakable horror depicted on the video Rust found in Tuttle's home (and which could have gotten him killed by his fellow co-conspirators, since Rev. Tuttle would have taken the fall for compromising their entire operation by allowing the video to be stolen in the first place. Tellingly, of the two home invasions, Tuttle only reported one. He didn't file a report the second because then he'd have to declare what was lost, and that would be nearly as bad for Rev. Tuttle as what actually ended up happening to him).

Credit: HBO

Impossibly, Marty and Rust's investigation actually gets creepier as the episode rolls on. They interview a former employee of Sam Tuttle, the late Reverend Tuttle's father, and she explains that while Sam had many children with many different women, he apparently lost interest in them after a single roll in the hay. When asked about the man with the scars, she claims the child was a Childress, a family of similarly long standing in the community. The scars had apparently been the result of something the boy's father had done to him as a child, an injury that simply never fully healed. This is enough to raise Rust's suspicions, and so he shows the elderly woman images of the dreamcatcher-like twig structures that he's been finding all over the place, and it's at this point that the woman freaks out, repeating "Carcosa! Death is not the end! Rejoice!" over and over. We know that Carcosa is a fictional domain of the equally fictional Yellow King from the Robert W. Chambers story, The King In Yellow. But in the world of True Detective, this Yellow King is becoming less and less fictional with each week, to where it's becoming very likely that the man they're after is either the man with the scars, or someone very closely associated with him. And that's if we're even assuming it's just one man they're after, and not a conglomerate of twisted individuals.

The "Childress" name, however, is enough to get the wheels turning in the detectives' minds. Marty decides to work an angle with Sheriff Steve Geraci (Michael Harvey), an old colleague who fielded the initial police report about Marie Fontenot, and who may have made the case disappear. In a wonderful sequence, Marty lures Steve onto his boat under the pretense of a quiet afternoon of beer and fishing among old buddies, but this is a ploy to take Geraci out of his jurisdiction in order to get the truth about the Fontenot girl. It's a scene that builds tension as the proverbial noose tightens around Geraci, with Rust appearing from out of the shadows to threaten the Sheriff at gunpoint. It looks like we're in store for some answers, and sooner rather than later. Case in point, the return of the mysterious lawnmower man from episode 3, whom we see here giving Papania (Tory Kittles) and Gilbough (Michael Potts) directions to the old Son of Life Church. He's dripping with sinister intent as he talks about how well he knows the coast. He begins to tell the cops something, but they cut him off, thank him for his help, and go along on their way. It isn't until after they've gone that we see what appear to be scars around his mouth, partially obstructed by a stubbly white patch of facial hair. "My family's been here a long, long time," he says, completing his thought to no one in particular, before mounting his lawnmower again and driving it around the overgrown cemetery lawn...in telltale circles.

Credit: HBO

"After You've Gone" is an episode that intends to unsettle, and largely succeeds. It's oozing with creepiness, yet it's a palpable sense of dread that never lets go. And it's this same dread that seizes hold of the characters. Hell, Marty is tracking down Maggie to say his goodbyes, assuming that the case is going to be the death of him. Maggie, for her part, tries to get answers from Rust, but it's no good. This is not her debt. This is no one else's but Rust and Marty's, and no one else will be pay it but them. Letting go can be a pain in the ass, but the only way it's possible is to find closure, to settle up. Next week's season finale looks to do just that. Let's hope Nic Pizzolatto and co. stick the landing.