All episodes written by Nic Pizzolatto
All episodes directed by Cary Fukunaga
Eight episodes, two hippy dippy movie stars.
HBO wouldn't make The Killing, right? They make good shows. So it's encouraging to think this show will have, you know, characters. And stories. And resolution.
"The Lone Bright Dark" introduces Marty and Rust, state police officers, specifically criminal investigations (murder police). Partners, not friends*. One is a man of the family and company and one is a weird loner interloper. But it's one of those things where you have a feeling we're going to learn there's a lot more to it.
* Some reporter once asked Geno Malkin about his friend Alex Ovechkin. Geno replied in his broken English "Teammates. Not friends."
There's a homicide involving antlers and satanic symbolism and hookers, so it's a media sensation. The story is told via taped interviews with Marty (now working as a PI and security consultant) and Rust (a disheveled alcoholic). It's unclear if this is a deposition or a documentary or something else at first.
Unlike the other murder shows* that follow a single case, this one does indeed have characters in it. Focusing on Marty and Rust and their relationship, rather singly focusing on the case, will give the show the dept the other murder shows failed to grasp. It'd be tough to believe we've met the killer yet so it may just be.....some guy **, which would make the resolution underwhelming. But if there's enough story to go with it, the journey rather than the destination, it can immune itself against that possibility. The first episode also does a good job of explicitly or implicitly positing a good number of other questions to be unfolded in the next seven hours. As opposed to the approach of providing a red herring, running it down for 1-2 episodes until it is debunked and the next red herring is introduced.
* Community did an episode very appropriate to this theme this past Thursday.
** Like the guy who moved Brody's car bomb into place at the CIA turning out to be just some guy on Homeland
At the episode's conclusion, two questions are answered. Rust and Marty did catch the guy (so we have that resolution to look forward to). The interviewers are cops who caught a similar case. So this all raises new questions of course.
Question
- Will the show stick with this format, telling the story entirely through interviews with Marty and Rust?
- It seemed like we should take what they are saying at face value. How reliable are the narrators?
- Will Marty and Rust have differing accounts?
- Who is the mean looking old man uniform cop? He stormed into the major's office (through Marty who muttered "...dick...") and slammed the door, stood prevalently at the press conference and ushered the reverend around.
- Did Marty and Rust arrest the right guy?
- What drove Rust from Texas?
- What caused the split between Marty and Rust after a seven year partnership?
- How did Rust's daughter die?
- I'm thinking this may be a similar thing to Jesse's rehab group leader in Breaking Bad
- What happened with Rust to put him where he is now?
- Rust is set up to have a lot of demons, obviously, but what are we going to learn about Marty?
- When will they reveal to us the 1992 murderer?
- It could be next week, it could be the finale, the way this is set up
- Oh, also, who is doing the murdering? Both in 1992 and 2012?
I'm noticing more movies set in what I thought was the recent past...but it turns out the early nineties was twenty years ago. When did that happen? Any who...there seem to be more, or maybe I'm simply noticing more, shows/movies set in the early 1990s (e.g. Wolf of Wall Street, Confessions of a Wallflower, The Place Beyond the Pines). Apparently even as recently as then these workforces were solidly male dominated. I supposed enough time has passed to tell those stories. But it is strange to see what is essentially a period piece set in a time I can actually remember. So far, the show has a lot of looks that mirror early episodes of Homicide.
The suits in that roughly 1989-93 period are underrated. They actually fit the adults between the American Pyscho suits in the 1980s and the even worse Swingers type versions in the mid/late 1990s. I'm also all about the baseball jackets from that time.
I digress...
Setting a piece in a certain period has to have a purpose. Here, it may simply be that they needed to set it twenty years ago so Marty and Rust could tell their stories upon reflection. And 1992 happens to be twenty years ago. The Revolution was Televised discusses all the period piece pitches that came in after Mad Men. Some seemed period for the sake of being period. Some have purpose. Interestingly, the starting timeframe for Mad Men (March 1960) was largely pegged due to the availability of birth control. Or, The Americans. You can set a spy story at any time, but you need to pick a time between the Truman and Bush presidencies for it to be about the Cold War. Thus, the 1980s and the Reagan era makes sense. Frankly, I think anything that pre-dates cell/smart phones helps a story. Not that it can't be adapted. The Wire is largely inspired by David Simon's time at the Sun in the 1980s, and writing Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, set in 1988.
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