True Detective 3.5: Tour de Force Scene in the Present

A decisive episode of True Detective tonight - 3.5 - in which current, 70-year-old Hays, not in full possession of his faculties, nonetheless has enough to convince his erstwhile, burned-out partner West to join him in the hope of finally putting their 1980 kidnap and murder case to rest.

This twilight alliance is all the more remarkable, given that West reveals to Hays that the two of them did something very wrong or bad when the case was reopened in 1990.  Hays doesn't remember this. But some part of his brain, now unavailable to his consciousness, no doubt knows this.

It was a rough and bruising hour, otherwise.  Though Hays and Amelia finally get totally together in 1980, he's pushing her further away in 1990.  It takes their two kids to get them - temporarily, no doubt - to put down their arms.   Hays at this point is clearly getting angrier at Amelia and her book and her author's interest in the case, as it becomes clear that Hays missed something big back in 1980.

Back to the present, it's important to note that Hays, notwithstanding his mental decline, still has a lot on the ball.  He realizes that the kidnapped kids' mother wrote the note that indicated the daughter was still alive, because that note used the same language that Amelia picked up in an interview with the mother and used in her book.  (I'm not even considering that Amelia wrote the note, and that's why the language is the same, because that would be too crazy even for True Detective.  Right?  I hope so.)  And all of this comes out against the backdrop of seeing how the mother died, a druggie in some room.

But the best scene, in addition to being a powerful move in the plot, was Hays and West together talking in West's home in the present.  A tour-de-force of acting for both Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, and indeed this whole season of True Detective is an increasing tour-de-force.

See also True Detective 3.1-2: Humanistic Disturbances of the Soul ...True Detective 3.3: Unquestioned Witnesses ... True Detective 3.4: All Hat, No Answers

And see also Season Two: True Detective: All New ... True Detective 2.2: Pulling a Game of Thrones ... True Detective 2.3: Buckshot and Twitty ...True Detective 2.4: Shoot-out ... True Detective 2.7: Death and the Anti-Hero ... True Detective Season 2 Finale: Good Smoke but No Cigar

And see also Season One: True Detective: Socrates in Louisiana ... True Detective Season One Finale: Light above Darkness

 
 philosophic crime fiction:  The Plot to Save Socrates