The More Deceived
How the Internet Got Us Thinking That There Was More To True Detective Than There Really Was.
More and more these days you have to have a prestige, a moment of shock and awe, to impress an audience. When Ned Stark is killed in the first season of Game of Thrones, when Frank Underwood assumed the office of President in House of Cards, or Walter White’s ingenious plot to get Fring in Breaking Bad are key examples of TV show “gets.” We are now not only accustomed to these moments, but expect them. So when True Detective did not deliver us its prestige, we feel like there was no magic at all.
I arrived late to the show, as a matter of fact, I didn’t start watching until after episode seven aired. It was reading zealous articles on the internet that sparked my interest: tales of a Yellow King and satan worshipping cults, theories involving this, that, and the other. The show sounded intriguing, so I gave it a try, and before two days were over I had finished all seven episodes.
My first impressions of the show were all positive. I was never a huge fan of Woody Harrelson (Marty) or Matthew McConaughey (Rust), but they certainly delivered in this show. After each episode, I sat and talked out what happened with my girlfriend, mostly to make sure that I had interpreted everything correctly. Having finished a week before the finale aired, I knew a week of tense anticipation awaited me.
Today, it is only natural, for some reason or another, to go online and read weekly updates, rumors, and theories about a show, sometimes during it’s airing. It creates a conversation, and has really propelled some shows into fanaticism. House of Cards certainly inspired some kind of hysteria as untold amounts of people binge-watched over Valentine’s Day weekend Frank Underwood connive his way into the Oval Office. There was a certain appeal to being the first person to finish the show, especially among television critics. Criticism suffered; too many critics seemed to be tired with the show after indulging their senses with it, like trying to write with Brain Freeze after eating Ice Cream too fast.
But unlike House of Cards, that uses a 1990s British show as a source, unlike Game of Thrones that uses a widely-read book, and unlike Breaking Bad, which, due to White’s cancer, knew it would probably end with his death; True Detective was as open as the case they were investigating. As a veteran television viewer, I believe that was the point.
The cult of criticism that surrounded this show was something like an investigation of its own. After each episode, evidence would build, and by episode seven—when I jumped in—there was no shortage of rumors and theories. Article after article looked at clues embedded in the show, the most popular of which sleuthed the real identity of the Yellow King that was said to be the object of worship and possible leader of a muderous, pedophiliac clan of backwoods incestuous weirdos. A subreddit was filled with interesting idea’s that maybe the Yellow King was Marty or Rust because of their yellow hair. Or that Audrey placed her dolls in the same manner as the victim, which was the same way that Rust placed his Beer Can Dolls, so she must be part of it. The investigation became so circular that Miles Raymer, writing for Esquire, supported the theory that we, the viewers, are the Yellow King because of the pleasure we get from watching the show.
It finally reached a peak when a group called BigMeeting on YouTube, posted a video on what they called “The Yellow King Theory:”
Getting 400k hits in about a week, this video takes a satirical look at the series, but moreover the show’s cult. If you didn’t watch, they’ve greenscreened a man who is the comic-vision of a Yellow King—dressed in yellow, wearing a crown—into many different scenes. In fact, according to this video, he’s everywhere; he even works at the police station. With this video, fever pitch was met and I think the audience and online commentators knew they had to take a collective breath before last night’s finale.
So, without spoiling the ending at all, I can say that everyone was laughably wrong. All the conjecture and positing was sadly misinformed. This was in spite of the fact that the show’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, made it clear that the ending was going to be as straightforward as you can expect a narrative to be. But as the first wave of blog posts go up, you can tell that the audience is slightly disappointed.
There are two ways of explaining this, through metaphors that I’ve been going over in my head. The first is that this generation of entertainment gourmands expect molecular gastronomy. Like Tom Haverford from Parks & Rec who expects to have an atmosphere for his drinks or foamed-vodka, we want surprising new ways to consume our television shows.
What we got instead—to continue the Parks & Rec analogy—was a shot of Ron Swanson’s Lagavullin 16; it’s a bit harder to swallow, but it’s tried and true.
The other was that we live in a world in which there are dead people. Meaning that we aren’t surprised when Bruce Willis is dead at the end of the movie. Any close watcher of Game of Thrones, House of Cards, or Breaking Bad could have seen major events coming clearly. The Red Wedding was inevitable, Underwood’s ascent to VP made his intentions clear, and Walt wasn’t even going to try to live. We are primed for these kinds of things, it’s all a matter of looking for the right clues.
True Detective was the anti-Sixth Sense, or like a straight shot of whisky. And it’s done something that not many shows have been able to do well: mystify the audience. When was the last time that everyone was wrong? That there wasn’t a privy party who didn’t have cameras set up to see the reactions of the unsuspecting? By not giving us the prestige, we’ve finally started to act like we’ve seen a magic trick: shock, awe, anger, disbelief. Our gut reactions are finally letting us interact with the narrative onscreen rather than the narrative online.
I can’t tell anybody that they’re watching the show wrong, or that they put the wrong meaning into it. Every person is going to take something else out of it. I could hardly make sense of Rust’s ramblings throughout the show, or why Marty seemed to be addicted to infidelity. But they were great characters, I can say that. I’ve begun to question whether serializing this show a la American Horror Story was a good choice or not. Harrelson and McConaughey disappeared into their roles, and it’s a shame we won’t see them again.
But, Pizzolatto did a great job writing the show. Cary Fukunaga’s excellent directing really brought the Bayou to life, and gave the scripts room to breathe. So I trust that the second season will be just as good and gripping as this first.
And with the frenzy and fervor the fans showed, the appreciation of this fine show is evident in the attention we’ve spent pouring over every detail. It’s a good thing we weren’t the true detectives, though, the murderers would still be on the loose.
