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Gallery: HBO's 'True Detective' season 1 Print Email Ann Maloney, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Ann Maloney, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Follow on Twitter on March 10, 2014 at 9:44 AM, updated March 10, 2014 at 9:45 AM read more about hbo's 'true detective'
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Editor’s note: This post contains a bit of spoilery, so if you haven’t watched the finale, Episode 8, of “True Detective,” stop reading.
From the first moments of HBO’s “True Detective” it was obvious that this was not going to be your typical odd-couple buddy cop show. The back-and-forth dialogue between Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) was priceless.
The eight-episode first season wrapped up Sunday (March 9) with a suitably satisfying finale. The mystery turned out to be pretty straightforward. No big twists or hidden revelations. (NOLA.com | Times-Picayune TV writer, Dave Walker, had an on-set interview with New Orleans-born novelist Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote all eight episodes of Season 1. In that interview the writer said, "I like a good third act." He delivered one Sunday night.)
“True Detective” turned out to be about one man’s redemption and the friendship between two very different characters. Cohle’s dramatic transformation from nihilist into a man who sees light as winning out over darkness was moving.
And, that resolution could not be demonstrated through car chases and plot twists. It was revealed through Cohle’s soliloquies and his exchanges with his seemingly brutish partner, Hart. Hart turns out to be the shoulder that Cohle literally comes to lean on as he struggles out of his own darkness.
Here’s a countdown of my 10 favorite bits of dialogue. Did any of these resonate with you?
10.
"People out here, it's like they don't even know the outside world exists, might as well be living on the (expletive) moon," Cohle says.
"There's all kind of ghettos in the world," Hart says.
"It's all one ghetto, man, a giant gutter in outer space," Cohle answers.
-- Episode 1, Cohle on rural Louisiana
9.
"I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction one last midnight. Brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal."
When Hart asks: "So what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning?"
Cohle replies, "I lack the constitution to commit suicide."
-- Episode 1, Cohle on life in general
8.
“Trouble with dying later is you’ve already grown up, the damage is done -- too late.”
“I think about the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this … Force a life into this thresher … As for my daughter, she spared me the sin of being a father.”
-- Episode 2, Cohle talking to detectives
7.
“Girls always know before boys,” Maggie says.
“Why is that?” Hart says.
“Because they have to,” Maggie says.
-- Episode 3, Maggie and Hart talking about their kids
6.
Maggie says: “In a former life, I used to exhaust myself navigating crude men who thought they were clever, so ask your questions or I’m leaving.”
“That’s a cop’s wife all right,” the young detective says.
“Not anymore,” Maggie replies.
-- Episode 6, Maggie to prying detectives
5.
“Everybody judges, all the time. Now, you got a problem with that, you’re living wrong.”
-- Episode 8, Cohle to Hart on judgment
4.
“What always happens between men and women, reality.”
Episode 5, Hart on the failure of his marriage
3.
“I sure hope that old lady’s wrong,”
“About what?’”
“About death not being the end of it.”