‘True Detective’ Recap: ‘If You Have Ghosts’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

When it comes to mysteries, we expect certain things from the detectives that drive the investigation in question. We need them to be noble at heart and firmly believe that wearing a shield and carrying a badge is part of some higher calling, wherein they fight the fights we cannot, and we also expect them to solve the case and vanquish evil since all of that provides a reader, or a viewer with a grand sense of comfort. But in reality, detectives are like the rest of us. They’re flawed, they have moments of weakness, and sometimes their intentions aren’t noble and sometimes they’re tied to a case so closely that good and evil are blurred to them and this strange duality is on my mind today because both of those elements are present when it comes to this season of True Detective.
 
But last night’s episode of the series, ‘If You Have Ghosts’, decided to up the proverbial ante and dive into the darker side of Detective Hays, after weeks of showing us his more noble side. Because up until this tale, it was all about him controlling his flaws, and working through his fears and darker moments in life. But now, we know exactly what makes this case so important to Wayne in 2015, and why he was so hell bent to solve this case in 1980 and 1990 because the Purcell mess, is about as personal as it gets for Hays, something that is never supposed to happen to a detective, and to make matters worse, we came to learn in this story that Wayne went to some extreme lengths to get results in the case.
 
However, before we dig too deeply into that, we do need to take a moment and discuss the big developments in the case that this episode also revealed to us. For we finally learned that Mister Woodward’s violent outburst, one that cost a lot of people their lives, is what served as the catalyst for him to become the man responsible for Will’s death in the court’s eyes, since Julie’s sweater and Will’s bag were discovered in and around his home, and well…it took ten years for Wayne to realize that those items were planted somewhere along the way. And, to make matters far more interesting, Julie called in to the tip line in 1990 after her dad went on the air to ask for her to come forward and she offered up all kinds of lurid moments revolving around her dad pretending to be her father, her ignorance on what happened to Will and that she needed to be left alone and she also used the word ‘them’ quite often, and really, both of these elements helped to lend credence to the notion that there is some kind of behind the scenes conspiracy going on when it comes to this case…

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​But, while those moments were fascinating and important in their own right, I made mention of this episode exposing more unsavory elements when it comes to Wayne and boy, did we learn some truly fascinating stuff. For starters, the show spent a lot of time exploring the fact that Wayne is in essence, terrified of never being in control. Why exactly, wasn’t pertinent to the story, but the fact that he constantly goes after his wife for trying to do new things in life, and works to buck the system, shows us a man who hates being at the whim of the moment and while that may be related to a sense of inadequacy or a deeper fear of having no value to others, what matters more here is that this fear is what drove Wayne to make some dubious decisions when it comes to this case.
 
For in this tale, we came to learn that eventually Wayne took matters into his own hands in order to get some semblance of justice for the Purcell family since this episode more or less revealed in 2015 that Roland helped Wayne deal with and dispose of Dan O’Brien back in the day and really, Wayne’s quest to solve this case at last goes beyond some noble need to bring the right people to justice. This is about personal retribution, and setting a wrong, or several of them, right before Wayne’s mind slips away forever and well, I simply wasn’t expecting this particular twist in the slightest, but in the end, it makes sense in its own right since Will and Julie found a way to infect Wayne’s family life for decades…
 
If anything, it’s also a welcome twist to see in this particular saga, since the men and women that came before Wayne, had an incredibly strong moral core that centered them when necessary to do the right thing. But here, Wayne has in essence stumbled over himself by letting his anger and disgust with what he finds in 1990 take precedence over anything else in his life and I love the fact that this is now a race against time to not only put old ghosts that haunt Wayne to rest, but to give him absolution and penance for his own crimes and now I cannot wait to tune in to discover what Wayne did to put skeletons in his closet, and to find out as to whether or not he can in fact save his soul in the weeks to come. Until next time.  

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