True Detective - HBO - McConaughey / Harrelson [SPOILERS]

Cafe Society
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Oh, absolutely. I was trying to convey that with my weasel-language up there. But now that my brain is fully awake, it’s more that she went there with a deliberate plan to use Rust as a prop in her marriage breakup. She was ready to get him drunk if necessary, but was happy to use his self-imposed intoxication to take advantage of him. Notice she brought a wine bottle, and was probably genuinely upset, but also putting on the distress to manipulate Rust. He was straining back from her at first, but she pressed on. Then pretty much as soon as he came, she became kind of calm and cold, removed his hand from her hip, pulled up her panties like, “OK, mission accomplished.” Then she started crying as she apologized for using him. It wasn’t illegal, but it was immoral and really gross.

I also agree that there was definitely some sexual heat between them in earlier episodes, and that combined with her comfort with him is what made her turn to him. Kudos to both actors for transforming some pretty heady URST into complete distaste.

And now I shall defend my sexual ownership thesis, not because I want to argue with you, Acsenray, but because I’m enjoying the hell out of the excellent writing on this show and it’s inspiring my inner English Major.

The episode opens with Marty brutalizing the two men who had sex with his daughter. He even uses transactional language about the price they have to pay for violating his control over his daughter’s sexuality.

Then he meets the girl who he had “put a down payment on,” as **jrepka ** points out. And he quickly turns Rust’s mean joke into a fulfilled prophecy. Note also that when he gave her money in 1995, the madam explicitly said that he was offended at a girl exchanging her favors for money, not because it’s wrong and he’s concerned for her, but because it represents women owning their own sexuality, rather than it belonging to various men.

When Maggie goes to the bar, the conversation is: “You, uh, waiting for someone?” “No.” Again - there’s an ownership check before the guy moves forward with her.

When she wads up Rust like a used paper towel, and explains, “He’ll have to go, you see. Because this, he won’t live with.”

To me that definitely all adds up to a meditation on men owning women’s sexuality.

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Oh! and the other thing I liked about this ep was how once again Rust behaves in exact opposition to his stated nihilism. The Marshland Medea certainly spared all those babies a lifetime of suffering, in a relatively painless way. But beyond getting her confession, Rust is so incensed that he puts a flippin’ Hannibal Lecter whammy on her, trying to get her to kill herself.

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An excellent series and an excellent episode. Although I’ve begun referring to it as “True Defectives”. :smiley:

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I don’t disagree necessarily, but switch the genders here and imagine what people would be saying about that scene with those roles reversed.

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I didn’t see him as incensed so much as actually giving her pragmatic advice given her situation.

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I totally agree. And even though the act itself was consensual, Maggie obviously took advantage of his vulnerability. He didn’t seem to realize her motives until after he was finished, and it was pretty gross to watch.

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I went back and watched the first 2 episodes before last night’s. It’s really amazing just how the many throwaway lines from the early episodes, which I originally perceived as either time fillers or general messages, make so much more sense as the series progresses. Now I plan on just watching the final two episodes and then going back to watch the whole series again. It will be a completely different, but equally fulfilling experience.

After the scene with the daughter after discussing the lewd pictures she drew in school, Maggie’s line about girls “knowing about that stuff first because they need to Marty” makes so much more sense. I suspect that Maggie has experiences that we will still learn about.

While the “yellow king” is the mysterious leader who is apparently responsible for the killings, I think Marty’s interest in capturing him (unlike Rust’s) is that he views himself as king. The killing of Ledoux was a type of regicide to allow himself to re-establish himself on the throne.

The concept of monsters guarding the door from other monsters is very apparent. Marty is a monster. Every time his “ownership” of a female is compromised by another man, he responds with brutal violence against the invader, whether it’s someone moving in on his wife, girlfriend or daughter. As the brothel house madam suggested, it’s because “you don’t own it like you thought you did.” Marty needs to own the women in his life.

Rust is striving to be king as well, but a different type of king… Nietzsche’s superman or Zarathustra. He’s supposed to be in complete control of himself and be above the basic impulses of the common man. In his mind, he’s symbolically looking down on the people around him from his perch on the mountain. That’s why he’s so pissed after having sex with Maggie. He’s supposed to be above getting manipulated that way. While kicking Maggie out, it shows that he’s more upset with himself than her. In fact, I think that he lets Marty hit him a few times as self-punishment. Based on other confrontations, I don’t think Marty would stand a chance in a true fight versus Rust.

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It’s interesting, too, that Maggie used the same kind of techniques on Rust that Rust uses on perps. He had said earlier that we all know there’s something wrong with us and that we want to confess it. She even murmured to him to “be honest with me now” in the same way that Rust murmurs to perps in order to establish a false trust and intimacy and to create a false atmosphere of safety to manipulate them into doing what they really want to do, which is to confess.

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I was thinking back to the gnarly scene with the daughters playing with the barbie dolls…the comment the older made “you have no parents, they died in a car crash” (something like that)
Do we have any clues if either of them were adopted? (from some heinious early life?

ps. the flashes of next weeks episodes drive me nuts, little bits and pieces to ponder.

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Oooo, plus I forgot that, just like Rust, Maggie just drives the nails in the coffin by letting Rust know explicitly that the intimacy was false, that she manipulated him, doesn’t care about him and that she trapped him via his own weakness. Just like Rust does with his perps.

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Man, how about Rust telling that mother that she should probably kill herself when she gets the chance? That scene was like a punch in the gut.

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Great scene and of course in a perfect world, that would be justice. But here’s what bothers me about Rust’s interrogations to date. There is NEVER an attorney present in the room. Does every criminal simply wave his/her right to an attorney? Great for the story but hardly realistic.

Also, something odd that I didn’t notice by my wife pointed out: Marty goes to the store and buys a phone and a bag full of sanitary pads. Then goes to the bar and puts them on the bar stool next to him as if for display. Why? As a device to make him seem innocent to any woman that would have happened to come along? He doesn’t seem that clever.

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Yeah, you’re so right on this take. She’s offering physical intimacy in the exact way he offers emotional intimacy in an interrogation.

I really feel like the anthology format gave Nic Pizzolatto the room to write with so much depth and playfulness (I know that seems like the wrong word, but I hope you get what I’m saying). He’s made it really intriguing, with lots of layers to pick through, and in a way that, as long as the murderer doesn’t turn out to be aliens or “it was all a dream,” I’ll be satisfied with the journey, regardless of whether it all strictly feeds into a destination that’s tied up in a bow.

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Yeah, I don’t understand that, either. I don’t know any man who would go to a bar with a bag full of tampons.

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FWIW, I read an article a few years ago in the Washington Post about DC detectives who specialize in getting confessions and they all said that their goal was to keep the suspect talking and keep them from asking for a lawyer. They all said that once they ask for a lawyer, it was the end of any chance of getting an easy confession. Basically, their technique was to read the suspect their Miranda rights and then quickly change the subject to sports or the weather, anything to get them to forget about calling a lawyer.

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The impression I got while studying criminal law is that a lot (LOT) of people just don’t get how the criminal justice system actually works. They think they need to endear themselves to the police who have them in custody, and they have a better chance trying to talk their way out of things than they do if they alienate the cops by calling a lawyer. These are probably people who also think that police aren’t allowed to lie to suspects, or that an undercover cop has to tell you the truth if you directly ask her if she’s a cop. They’re pretty naive about criminal procedure.

Then of course the police do employ sophisticated psychological techniques to keep the person talking and get them to betray themselves. There are cases on record where innocent (later exonerated) suspects actually confessed because they bought the underlying message that if they just say they did it, they can go.

Also, unless you ask for a lawyer, you can say you want to remain silent, and the police can wait a certain amount of time and come back and ask questions again. Which, if you’re not savvy, must feel like the whole Miranda thing is BS, and they’ll just keep wearing you down till you say what they want.

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Plus, he’s not exactly interrogating criminal masterminds. It would be unbelievable if a high ranking organized crime boss neglected to ask for a lawyer. It’s certainly plausible that many street thugs with poor educations could be convinced to confess, without a lawyer ever being requested. It’s happened in real life many times.

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I don’t think he placed the bag there as a lure. He bought the phone so he could sext with Beth on a phone that Maggie won’t know he has, and he bought the tampons because Maggie asked him to pick some up. Good husband-bad husband. Like Maggie said, he doesn’t know himself.

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I think that he was just buying his first cellphone, since it was 2002. And he bought the phone from Beth herself, so I don’t think that he was thinking about sexting, or at least not with her. And being new to the cellphone world, he wasn’t savvy enough to lock his phone or delete his messages, so he got caught.

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I’m thinking much the same, except I don’t think he was for sure going to cheat or sext. First scene - he stares hard at the cell phone store, seemingly psyching himself up before walking in. I’m assuming he had checked and knew Beth worked there. But the second scene he is staring hard at the store psyching himself up again, then glances at the tampons and deflates. Decides not to break bad and goes to drown his unrequited libido in beer. Then Beth comes in and makes a pass and he fails to hold up under pressure.