The Long Bright Dark - True Detective

True Detective - Episode 1-01 "The Long Bright Dark"

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 Love the Nineties

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.

Tower of David - HL

Homeland Episode 3-03 "Tower of David"

Written by Henry Bromell and William Bromell.  Henry passed away in March.  He won a posthumous Emmy for last season's "Q&A" (where Brody confesses).  He also worked on Homicide in the 90s (along with Homeland producer James Yoshimura).  This is the only credit listed for William.

Directed by Clark Johnson, who played Lewis on Homicide, Gus on The Wire, and directed episodes of both include the first and last Wire.

• Brody's having a particularly bad day.  My lousy day often involves missing my bus.  Brody's includes being shot and bleeding in the bed of a pickup truck.
• All these guys are speaking in Spanish and there are no subtitles for us, which I assume means they want us to understand the disorientation Brody feels, being in a place where he can't communicate
• The bullet wound is not explained, but it's reasonable to assume someone wanted to collect on the reward and he caught one during his escape.
• The doctor appears to be American
• This actor, Erik Dellums, played medium-term villain Luther Mahoney on the fifth season of Homicide.  Even in episodes he did not appear, the character loomed large, as well as after his time on the show was finished with the effects of the investigation stretching out all the way to the end of Season Six.
• Luther Mahoney was essentially the forerunner to Avon Barksdale
• Speaking of The Wire, Dellums also played a coroner on the show
• Besides most recently getting himself shot, Brody has all kinds of scars and marks on himself making it look like it's been a rough go the whole time
• It appears the United States has extradition treaties with both Columbia and Venezuela but how they are enforced is very much a matter that's in the air
• This is brought to you by cursory research
• It's unclear if these guys are connections via Carrie's people movers, or if they are some sort of Abu Nazir understudy group keeping him alive
• Thirty one minutes into what appears to be an all-Brody show Carrie appears and is willing to play ball to get out of the insane asylum
• Nothing like telling a crazy person to calm down and stop acting crazy to get them to calm down and stop acting crazy
• Someone's there to see her.  She think's it's Saul.  So it's not Saul.  I think it's Quinn, but I'm wrong, which puts me in the company of Carrie which is just great.  It turns out it's a lawyer looking to help her out.  Carrie thinks it's a ruse by a foreign government or terror organization.  Which means they'll probably lead us to believe that this is wrong until Carrie is ultimately vindicated.
• At one point Carrie goes into the bathroom and stares at herself in the mirror.  Then she does exactly what we think she's going to do and smashes her head against the mirror.  Because when television characters stare at themselves in the bathroom mirror they're likely to do one of several things 
• inflict pain on themselves
• Cry and watch their tears flow down their face
• Barf  
• Brody's not getting the message RE: Next Steps.  He believes there are more action items in the strategic plan for escape and movement of suspected 12/12 bombers
• He decides to go off book.  His plan is not peer reviewed so some of the flaws are not identified.  His indicators of success seem to be "escape" or "not escape" but beyond that it's not thought out very well.  Which lands him in solitary. 
• He is offered heroin and offered it thrice, he finally ties one on.  But not until after he's placed in a jail cell not unlike what he saw during his time as a POW.  I bet this technically keeps whatever agreement these people have with Carrie and her four times removed escape people where they are in fact keeping him out of sight and safe from arrest

Matthew Weiner's End Game - Part 2

Read Part 1 of Matthew Weiner's End Game

Part 2 - Don's and Tony's Similar Trajectory and Similar Women

When Don Draper is introduced we see him living the city life with his artist girlfriend, struggling for ideas to pitch to a tobacco client.  It's not until the end of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" * that we discover Don has a wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs.  Don spends the next few seasons cycling through a load of (dark haired, independent, professional) women.  While surprising to see at the end of the first episode, we sort of accept this as the status quo and a sign of the times.

While his blonde wife somewhat complicity allows this behavior, Don's goes through a roster of dark haired mistresses including:

• Midge - owns her own artistry business
• Rachel Menken - department store owner
• Bobbie Barret - her husband's agent/manager
• Suzanne - teacher at Sally's school

Sound familiar?  Ton Soprano, another villain protagonist, philanders around in what viewers accept as "old ways" (but don't find acceptable).   Blonde, blind-eye turning Carmela Soprano also sat at home while her husband spent time with darker haired professional women**:

• Gloria Trillo - luxury car saleswoman
• Valentina - art curator
• Julianna Skiff - realtor **
• Sonya - high end Vegas stripper ***
• Dr. Melfi ** 
• And so on...****

While Tony and Carm separate at the end of season four (partially due to the unconsumated attraction between Carm and Furio) Don and Betty divorce at the end of season five (partially due to the unconsumated attraction between Betty and Henry).

After a season on their own where they live in their own versions of squalor and behave poorly, they both find themselves back in a home with a wife at the start of the season that follows (Don and Megan marry and Tony and Carm reconcile).  They then both spend a season keeping their vows, though tempted (Don's fever dreams, xxxx; Tony and Julianna Skiff).

Don seems to lose interest in Megan when she 1) leaves advertising which is is obviously good at and 2) helps her get a job.  Megan doing away with what Don views as a professional and independent life puts him back to his old ways.

Tony loses patience with behaving when he sees Christopher with Julianna in "Kaisha" immeiately regretting his decision.  He also catches hell from Carm following Christopher's movie premiere when she takes scenes in the movie for Christopher's mistaken impression that Tony and Adrianna slept together***.  Both serve to increase the riff between Tony and Christopher as well as create resentment within Tony.  As he sees it, even when he behaves, he is punished.  Shortly thereafter, Tony returns to his ways with a girl while he and Paulie are on the lamb in "Remember When."

The point is Don has followed a similar path as Tony and is about at the point where Tony was at the middle of Season Six: Part Two of The Sopranos. How he gets from the current point to the end point remains to be seen.  The biggest difference will be the role the 1960s plays in this shows.  The setting almost acts as character, like the Island on Lost.  A central tenet of the show has been to convey different characters reactions to both life events and current events.  The events provide the setting and conflict and the characters behavior so far will inform their reaction.  Which means we need to take all of Don's behavior thus far into account and predict how he will react to the upcoming era in the show's timeline, which is likely to be the setting at the conclusion of the series, the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

* Fun Fact - the episode title is also the episode title of an early Homicide: Life on the Street episode.  In the episode, from the early 90s, cops are still allowed to smoke in a government building, though they are considering a no-smoking section.  When I first watched this around 2005 it was jarring to see even then.  The episode also features cops fooling a suspect into thinking a copy machine is a lie detector, used again in the fifth season of The Wire, "More with Less."
 
** Tony makes this observation aloud in "Kaisha"

** He literally just "spent time" with her in this case, following Tony's new lease on life, and Melfi's rebuffs.

*** Possibly a real 'pro' in old profession

**** Two others meet the requirement halfway, Irina's dark haired but dependent on Tony and Svetlana is blonde but owns her own home care business...Tony's attraction to her starts when he sees her building a website herself