A True Return to Form: True Detective Season 3 Evaluation

Due to several unforeseen events, most notably the Academy Award, I didn’t get to finish the third installation of True Detective until a few days ago. And unlike the previous installments, I actually gave a damn about how they wrapped it up this time.

When True Detective premiered in 2014, I got the feeling that Matthew McCounaghey received the Academy Award in part of because of his searing work at the center of Season 1. The fact that he didn’t go on to win an Emmy that year was mainly due to the misguided notion of the producers to nominate the series as a Drama as opposed to a mini-series. (Then again, he might very well have lost to Billy Bob Thornton or Benedict Cumberbatch; it was a strong field that year.) I suspected that there might have been a similar carry over effect for Mahershala Ali who was at the center of this year’s installment, and ended up winning for Green Book (ironically, on the same day that he triumphed the current installation wrapped up). I think there is an excellent chance that this year, Ali’s work will almost certainly be recognized as Best Actor in a Limited Series, even though the competition will probably be just as strong.

One can’t deny, however, that Ali’s work in Season 3 almost certainly held the story together. One can also admit that Wayne ‘Purple’ Hays was a far more compelling character than we’ve had on TV in awhile. In part, this is because the series tried something that actually was more ambitious then last time – trying to hold together a single narrative over three distinct periods: the original crime in 1980, the new task force in 1990, and Hays revisiting the case a final time in 2015.  Unlike previous installments, it actually acknowledged the faulty narrative by having an unreliable narrator – as Hays tried to figure out the solution, his memory was starting to fall apart through some kind of dementia. Ali’s performance was honestly one of the best that he’s giving in any medium, and reminded us why he has, in the space of just six years, become one of the greatest and most versatile actors working today.

But in all candor, I think that there’s an argument that the third season was the finest work that True Detective has done so far. Unlike the first season, which featured two extraordinary lead performances, the central mystery was so tangled that its eventual solution came as a distinct anticlimax. And the second season was so bogged down that its not worth repeating its numerous flaws. In contrast, the third season center around a single mystery – what happened to a missing girl in 1980, and how the investigation went horribly wrong, and got destroyed by a corrupt system. And while there was a cover-up, it was not at the heart of the real story. There was one man who was responsible for the cycle of events that happened, but unlike the previous installments, we actually got an explanation for the crime at the center of the story, what happened to Julie Purcell in the second investigation, and what might have happened to her in the third.

What made this work better than usual is that, for the first time in True Detective’s brief but messy history, we also got a happy ending. Wayne Hays managed to figure what probably happened to Julie after the horrors of her kidnapping, imprisonment and escape, and somehow that she managed to find a happy ending. That Wayne managed to learn the truth, but that his memory betrayed him at the end was a pang that real stung in a series that has so often favored style over substance.

Unlike the first season, where the parts seemed greater than the whole, almost everything involving the third season seemed to resonate and work in a way that the others didn’t. It had the first truly strong female character – Carmen Ajojo’s work as Amelia, the schoolteacher of the Purcell’s who eventually becomes Wayne’s wife, and builds her career around the story of the investigation, and it was a truly human relationship, compared to all the ones we’ve had so far. And though Ali was extraordinary, attention should be paid to Stephen Dorff for his work as Roland West, the detective who agrees to bend after Wayne is demoted, who tries to help him years later only to destroy himself after a horrible mistake, and who manages to rebuild his life a quarter-century later. This may have been the first equal friendship we’ve seen in the series, and I hope attention is paid to Dorff at award seasons this year.

And what’s next for True Detective? I’m honestly not sure. Our expectations were so high after Season 1, and were very quickly cruelly and horrendously dashed. It took Nic Polazzo nearly three years just to come up with an installment that managed to erase the memories of Season 2, and almost bring it pack to par with the original. For all Polazzo’s gifts – and as was demonstrated thoroughly throughout this season, they are considerable – he’s still having trouble coming up with a consistent and arresting narrative. And he really needs to work on making his female characters stronger – Amelia is the first really dimensional one he’s managed to come up with in three seasons, which isn’t encouraging. Maybe the lesson is, he needs to take time between seasons. Let the juices marinate. Concentrate less on philosophy and more on coherency.

Will it ever be a true measure of greatness for HBO? I still can’t say with certainty. What I do know is that in a season that has already featured some great limited series (Sharp Objects, Escape at Dannemora) and will likely have some more before its through (Fosse/Verdon, Good Omens), True Detective has finally managed to elevate itself back into Emmy conversation again. That’s probably enough for now. We’ll save the rest for another ‘flat circle’.

My score: 4.75 stars.