True Detective: 10 Reasons Season 1 Can’t Be Topped

6. A Showdown With The Abyss

It is first through questioning is it learnt that Cohle was a once-prominent undercover Narco who quickly found the abyss and let himself get swallowed up in it in the form of amphetamine addiction. Cohle remarks back to intense visions which he says are no longer occurring, only for Cohle to be shown vacantly staring into nothing on more than one occasion. During a moment that brings Cohle and Hart closer together, Cohle admits that the visions have never gone away and that "the visions...most of the time I was convinced that I'd lost it. But there were other times, I thought I was main-lining the secret truth of the universe." It is in that confession that it is understood what kind of closure Cohle is looking for. He is a character who is haunted and, by that very definition, is looking for a way out of the curse. The show€™s climax then gives Cohle an objective that goes above and beyond any spiritual relief a traditional showdown would provide. He is not only looking to bring the murderer to justice, but is proving to himself that he has the ability to not only face the abyss, but is able to overcome it. It is through that visual representation of Cohle€™s true antagonist where an ending that both accepts the generic conventions of a thriller is achieved whilst also managing to make it both artistically interesting and thematically relevant to the larger story at hand. But, like the use of the unreliable narrator, it is a trick that has a one-time only use. It is telling to a degree that season 2 needs its own existential flourish (either visually or auditorily) to help it transcend the vanilla procedural it could be without it.