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<em>True Detective</em> Episode 6 Recap: Down Payments On Haunted Houses
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 24, 2014
Modified Feb 24, 2014
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 24, 2014
Modified Feb 24, 2014
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As thrilling and disturbing as the previous five installments of True Detective have been, I found episode six, "Haunted Houses," to be the most upsetting. I'm a grown-ass man who had to turn on every light in the house and watch an hour of Sarah Silverman before I could sleep after the creepy conclusion of "The Secret Fate of All Life"—but what unfolds in the latest chapter is a real kick in the gut. If you haven't watched it, you should stop reading now, lest any information divulged below SPOIL your viewing pleasure.
After the chilling final frame of episode five left Rust Cohle alone in a darkened school filled with devil traps, crude paintings of child angels, and a broken window frame embellished with Robert W. Chambers's "black stars," I assumed "Haunted Houses" would maintain the spine-tingling mood and live up to its spooky title in a more literal way. But despite True Detective's numerous literary references, writer Nic Pizzolatto isn't so literal-minded. The "Houses" in the title aren't haunted by the dark forces at play in Dora Lange's murder, but by Marty Hart's abject failure to redeem himself.
It's a darkly humorous payoff to see Rust's cynical aside to Marty in episode 2—about a "down payment" to the underage prostitute—prove prescient. Yep, there she is in the cell phone store, and then again at the depressing sports bar Fox and Hound: Beth, the abused child to whom Marty gave a wad of cash in the brothel in hopes that she'd turn her life around. She has, but Marty sure hasn't, and as soon as she comes into focus with her dirty martini you know Marty's going to betray his wife and his daughters all over again. True Detective's log line, "Man is the cruelest animal," should make room for "stupidest," too.
It's agonizing to watch Marty wreck his family all over again, and since much of "Haunted Houses" is spent chronicling his monstrosity, one might wonder what narrative purpose all this serves. In episode six, Pizzolatto has firmly eliminated any possibility of viewing Martin Hart as a sympathetic protagonist. He is a lawless scoundrel: murdering a handcuffed suspect, beating defenseless prisoners to a pulp, undermining his partner's investigation into what appears to be a horrifying kidnap-rape-murder conspiracy, and finally carrying on another depraved extramarital affair... with the former teen prostitute he so self-righteously advised to "do something else" with her life. It's as if shitting on any moment of decency is part of his job description. Or as if time is a flat circle in which we keep repeating ourselves.
We, the obsessed audience of this engrossing eight-chapter mystery, now revile Marty. At this point, he's proven himself capable of just about anything. And looking back over these previous episodes, it's hard to stop noticing how goddamn yellow he looks. Maggie even calls him yellow a "coward" during their wrenching final confrontation. His oldest daughter Audrey—who makes her first alarming appearance in "Haunted Houses" pale as a corpse—won't speak to him. What the hell happened to her, anyway? Did she witness something as a child that led her to create scenes of graphic sexual abuse? Where did that goddamn spiral come from?
Not since Twin Peaks asked America "Who Killed Laura Palmer?" has a TV show driven viewers into such a frenzy of manic speculation, making amateur detectives of us all. Having spent a silly amount of time working this case over in my mind, I can't shake the creeping suspicion that Hart is a participant in these crimes, on some level. From a narrative perspective, there would be something astonishing about this final twist, now that we all agree the guy's a "human tampon," as Major Salter so hilariously put it. I'm not convinced the Yellow King is a person—perhaps it's a drug—but if we're considering anyone for the part, you've got to admit Hart would be a gasp-inducing wild card. Maggie tells the "Company Men" that Marty "found religion for a while." Was it the kind of faith that required a steady supply of ten point bucks?
Of course, the late Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle is surely involved in all this shit, and there's a strong case to be made that the lawnmower man is our "Green Eared Spaghetti Monster." On the other hand, Marty sure did gobble up that plate of spaghetti Maggie contemptuously served him—minutes after rediscovering the depths of her husband's monstrosity. (Was I the only one who suspected it was poisoned?) And let's not forget that Cohle was interviewing that landscaper outside one of Tuttle's schools—the same one he returns to in 2002—when Hart interrupted him with all that honking and a new lead.
Does Cohle suspect Hart? Sheeeeit. There's nothing to indicate that, but Cohle in 2012 is playing his cards pretty close to the vest. We know that in 2002 he's all over Tuttle, working his way up to a confrontation with the governor's cousin after tracking down the former revival tent preacher Joel Theriot (the stellar Shea Whigham). Theroit, who's in a place in his life where he uses a bedpan for an ashtray, cops to his discovery of child pornography snuff photos in a book of letters from a 12th century Franciscan mystic, Telios Del Lorca, who is either fictional or too obscure for Google to turn up his name.
Theroit found the materials while cleaning a library used by senior ministers in Tuttle's seminary, and says he handed the photos over to a higher-up named Ferrar, who did nothing. During his hair-raising meeting with Tuttle, Cohle asks the reverend about Austin Ferrar, and is told that he was cast out of the flock for embezzlement, and that he subsequently died some booze-related death. Cohle clearly doesn't think it was an accident, and his line of questioning sends Tuttle into barely-suppressed panic mode. "You'll be in my thoughts," Tuttle ominously tells Cohle as he shows him the door. Not his prayers.
And then there's the catatonic Kelly, who delivers the episode's most terrifying moment when she snaps out of her trance to describe the scarred giant who forced her to watch as another child was tortured. So the Tall Man with the scars surfaces once again, but unfortunately for Cohle all of these clues don't add up to anything substantial, and having pissed way up the wrong tree, the big machine finally gears up and pounds his ass. Salter confiscates his gun and badge, and then there's nothing left for Cohle but to ponder the scraps of evidence alone in his apartment with all the lights off, drinking hard and shining a flashlight at photos of the victims. You know, just your average Tuesday night.
Until there's a knock at the door and we're forced to see for ourselves why Cohle and Hart haven't talked for a decade. The most pitiful, ugly sex scene since Louis C.K. made his dog lick cottage cheese off his balls is directed exquisitely by Cary Fukunaga, first from the point of view from the kitchen looking out into the dark fumblings, then a reverse of Cohle with his face pressed against Maggie's back, looking more joyless and dead inside than ever. Their encounter felt inevitable but nonetheless unbearable, and both parties couldn't be more miserable. Mowing another man's lawn has never looked so depressing.
Knowing how it all went down, it's still anyone's guess what happens next between Cohle and Hart. It's obvious Cohle has been up to a lot more than drinking in his shack on his days off, but what has Hart been doing in the past decade? We know he's a private detective, by why leave CID in the first place? Rewatching the preceding episodes, it's possible to interpret his role in the Lange investigation as obstructionist—unwilling to consider Cohle's theories, suggesting the murder was "a retard job," and then blowing Ledoux's head off before he can talk. The Company Men assure Maggie "we're not looking at [Hart] and nobody wants to." What's that old saying about the detective's curse? "Solution was right under my nose, but I was paying attention to the wrong clues."
This is all idle speculation, and it seems more plausible that the killers responsible for the recent Lake Charles murder will be traced back through Tuttle and that landscaper down to the "place down south where rich men go to devil worship, sacrifice women and children," as Charlie Lange put it. Can't wait. With two episodes left, there's still an enormous amount of ground to cover, and I've got zero evidence to suggest that Hart is familiar with any of it. There is, after all, a world of difference between a human tampon and a multiple homicide co-conspirator. For now it's probably safe to assume he's loading that handgun in the final scene simply for his own protection.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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