'True Detective' Retro Recap: 'The Locked Room'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Sometimes you can pinpoint the moment a television show has finally sunk its claws into you and hooked you completely. You feel it in your gut and your brain, as the butterflies begin to gather within, and they leave you anxious to know what will happen next and they help keep your mind focused on the story at hand as every single second unfolds on the screen; and for me, that magical moment when True Detective truly grabbed hold of me arrived with episode three.

"The Locked Room" turned out to be an absolute tour de force of an episode. One that continued to push boundaries when it came to philosophical concepts and our characters for that matter. Since we truly got some incredible insight on what kind of man Hart truly is. But the most important part of this particular episode, is the fact that at long last the case finally saw a big break and the steady details that poured out of that were utterly fascinating. But before we get too deep into that, let's talk about the boundaries the show pushed this go round, because I never quite expected to see the story attack religion head on.  

It seemed logical that religion was going to play a part in this episode regardless since the discovery at the church led Hart and Cohle to the preacher that used to use the place to spread the word of God. But what came before they interviewed Pastor Theriot, where Hart and Cohle debated the finer points of religion left me a little surprised. It's simply an extremely rare thing to see a television show pick apart the concepts and meaning of religion as a whole, and I applaud the show for taking that risk because I'm fairly certain a few folks took issue with this, but hey...sometimes the mark of a good story is that it stirs up conversations and challenges us, so while this moment in time may not have had major bearing on the case as a whole, I applaud it for staying true to its characters and letting Cohle say his piece.

But if anything, seeing more of Cohle's nihilistic side was nothing more than a bookend to the Rust centric episode "Seeing Things" and it's clear these two episodes were designed to truly give us in depth insight into both men since we learned that Martin Hart is an incredibly angry man trying to live a calm life. The finest example of this came from the incident at the bar with his side gal where he felt the need to maintain power over her and it's obvious now that Martin is an old school stereotypical male. One that believes a man's place is to exert his will over a woman and that certain principles come before all things and that may get him into some serious trouble at some point.

The centerpiece of this episode however, was the giant break in the case that I mentioned and the fact that Rust uncovered another murder similar to Dora's buried amongst a mountain of files. It's a discovery that I'm certain would have never come about if not for Cohle and his obsessive nature and it gave them a name and a suspect to finally chase down; Reggie Ledoux. Yet while this was thrilling to say the least and finally a direction for the case to go in, I can't help but get the bad feeling that there's still more lurking here. If there was already one more murder with the mark of the spiral, how many more are out there, and why do I get the feeling that the school that they visited has more significance than it seemed to have in that brief moment? Time will tell I imagine, but in the meantime, the hunt for Reggie is on. Until next time.

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