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| Photo: Warrick Page/HBO |
As the season finale draws nearer, True Detective steps up the suspense by tying a few more knots into an already twisted plot in "Hunters In The Dark."
The 1990 investigation has kicked into high gear after a young woman, most likely Julie Purcell, has called state police demanding her father Tom stop looking for her. Sensing an opportunity for a new scapegoat--a particularly convenient one, since Tom didn't have an alibi for the time Julie and Will went missing--prosecutor Gerald Kindt asks Wayne and Roland to work him over, and the two men do until he breaks down into a primal, anguished scream. Although their interrogation doesn't lead to a confession, Kent orders Tom be kept for 24 hours while Wayne and Roland dig deeper into his private life.
Tom's old boss drops a few bread crumbs when he reveals Tom was harassed by coworkers after being spotted at a gay bar. A search of his home turns up a brochure promising to cure homosexuality, a revelation that places his alcoholism and disastrous marriage into a different emotional context. Wayne believes Tom could've hurt the kids after they discovered him at Devil's Den, a common cruising spot, but Roland's not convinced. Meanwhile Tom goes on a downward spiral, relapsing then tracking down Lucy's cousin Dan O'Brien and roughing him up. With the barrel of a gun pointing in his face, Dan says he was going to give the detectives the names of the men who were bankrolling Lucy's Vegas lifestyle and her drug use--men who would've had no problem making a murder look like an overdose if she pushed for more beyond the agreed upon arrangement. Tom then breaks into the Hoyt family compound, stumbling into what up until now seemed like a fictional pink princess room Julie told other runaways about. Though Tom may not get to ponder the mystery of what the fuck he just discovered as the fuzzy, threatening figure of Harris James comes close behind him.
James, as we know by way of Elisa's research, went missing during the '90 investigation, but in "Hunters In The Dark" he's alive and well, an ex-cop now working as Chief Security Officer at Hoyt Foods, and judging from the last shot, serving as security detail for the Hoyt family. The show has been hinting Harris James planted evidence at the Woodard scene for a few episodes now; but insinuating he have played a role in keeping Julie locked away for a decade places him squarely in the suspect category. Tom's status as grieving father has been muddied up as well. Is he the one who buried Dan's body in a quarry? The person behind Harris James' disappearance? By 2015, Tom, like Lucy, Harris, and dozens of others are all dead. And what of the room itself? A pink "princess" room on the bottom floor of a wealthy family's compound is practically a neon sign for weird, disturbing shit insanely rich people do because they have the coin and the power to get away with it. Could the pedophile ring Elisa mentioned earlier in the season be in fact true?
"Have you thought about the sheer number of fatalities surround this case?" Elisa asks elderly Wayne, whose shoulders practically collapse under the weight of her question. Wayne's been living and breathing this case for decades; the only difference is he can no longer live his life "in the now," as he explained to Amelia in 1980. In 1990 they still aren't seeing eye to eye, with Wayne none too happy she's writing a sequel to her book and Amelia quipping he likes being back out in the field, running free. She proves to be right when Wayne hops out of the patrol car when Roland attempts to drive him home, heading on foot toward the now abandoned Purcell home. What Wayne fails to see is Amelia's drive to solve the case matches his own. During her visit to a home for runaways, a young girl unknowingly corroborating details a transient told him and Roland about Julie. Perhaps the outcome of the case would've been different had Wayne allowed himself to be to open to her perspective.
Maybe it's what he was getting at when he asks Henry if he taught him to withhold his feelings. He confesses becoming a father made him a coward, caring for his children but holding back from expressing it. Its likely why daughter Becca doesn't come around and why he's spending his remaining days pouring over a case about a girl who never came home.
With these new developments the show is setting up some big expectations going into the final two episodes. Hopefully all the brooding will be worth it.
Other Thoughts:
- During her book reading in 1990, an older black man with a dead eye confronts Amelia about writing about the case and "making money from their pain." The man isn't Sam Whitehead, but could he have some other connection to the case? Personally I think he's a red herring, but you never know.
- Back in 1980, under (self-inflicted, as Wayne rightly points out) media scrutiny and bolstered by planted evidence, prosecutor Kent pushed to pin everything on Woodard, and assassinated his character while charging him posthumously with a double murder. In the '90 investigation, with a fresh round of self-generated media attention and motivation to find the easiest fall guy, Tom Purcell, another potentially innocent man, finds himself in the cross hairs. New decade, same old shit.
- Wayne discovering the hole in the wall in Will's closet wasn't for peeping by Dan was a huge relief. By how sad was the realization the hole was there so the kids could provide some comfort for each other in what was a terribly dysfunctional household?
- I can't decide if the look Wayne gives Harris James when he says he has a nice body is one of general disgust about being complimented by a man on his physique, his detective senses going off about a possible personal connection between Harris and Tom, or both.
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