WiC Watches: True Detective season 3

Episode 3: “The Big Never”

Hey, this episode has a happy ending, with 1980 Roland inviting 1980 Wayne to join him in investigating the Purcell case, which has been reopened following the revelation that Julie is still alive. And it looks like the two are still on friendly terms, even if Wayne is a little resentful of Roland’s professional success when he’s clearly been sidelined for reasons I’m sure we’ll learn. Considering how dark this show is, I expected them to have had a falling out in between 1980 and 1990, so I was pleasantly surprised that the show zigged when I expected it to zag.

Anyway, I don’t see many happy endings in the show’s future, so let’s savor this one while we can. On the whole, the rest of the episode is bleak. In 1980, we see Wayne and Amelia continue their courtship, with a bashful Wayne asking if they should get dinner sometime…while the pair search for the still-missing Julie along with the rest of the neighborhood. It’s a very True Detective kind of meet cute. But in 1990, the couple is having problems. Amelia, for whom the Purcell case has not exacted the emotional toll it has on her husband, wants to get back involved, and does some Nancy Drew-style sleuthing in the name of getting more info on Julie’s possible whereabouts. She’s successful, but Wayne thinks she’s treating the whole thing too frivolously, and it results in a quick but ugly fight. Is this a normal marital speed bump, or will it grow into a bigger problem? Does this have something to do with why Wayne’s daughter is estranged from him in 2015?

Amelia’s sleuthing reminds me a little of Twin Peaks, which also mixed violent true crime subject matter with a pulpy, occasionally even innocent approach to detective work. We can also see that when Roland, going back through the Purcell kids’ things in 1980, finds a map one of them drew detailing a part of the forest where they would play after school. It’s in this stretch of forest where Will died; later, Wayne finds his blood on a rock. There’s something unnerving about juxtaposing that image with the crude, hand-drawn map. The world of childhood imagination collides with something far more sinister.

Going through the kids’ things anew leads to the big plot developments of the episode: Will and Julie lied to their parents about where they went to play. They played in the forest, and they might not have been alone. Wayne and Roland interview a farmer who lives near the cave where Will’s body was found. He says he occasionally saw the kids on his property. He also sometimes saw a car, a nice brown sedan, driven by a black man and a white woman. Did these adults play with the kids? Are they involved in their murder and disappearance? In 2015, the television interviewer tells Wayne that several townsfolk reported seeing people who matched that description, but that the angle wasn’t pursued. Why not? And how is Hoyt Foods, a prosperous local company where Lucy Purcell once worked, involved in this? The brown sedan was a nice car of a kind not usually seen in this poor community. Are the wealthy industrialists of the area involved in child kidnapping? Am I getting ahead of myself? How far ahead? Someone please stop me.

These mysteries aren’t solved in this episode, and that’s okay. Any show called True Detective can and should pose more questions than answers, and I’m excited to see how things come together. Still, the idea of a wealthy cabal of people involved in child abuse lines up with the Satanic Panic angle the show seems to be taking, as do the many-sided dice Wayne finds in the woods near Will’s blood. Those kind of dice are used in games like Dungeons & Dragons, which alongside many other things came under fire in the ’80s for allegedly driving kids to the occult. Thinking about his wife’s book in 2015, Wayne more or less confirms that’s where we’re headed. “She wrote a bit about how the games we found got people worried that kids were getting killed playin’ this stuff.”

“The Big Never” underlines the town’s rising paranoia when a group of local fathers accost the Trashman, who’s quirky but not involved in Julie’s abduction, while he’s going about his business. True Detective get attention for its filmic and thematic elements, but it’s also a period piece. Let’s see if it gets the history right.

Detective’s Notes

• “The Big Never” was directed by Daniel Sackheim. His direction is solid, but more workmanlike than Jeremy Saulnier’s work on the previous two episodes. This time around, the transitions between time periods weren’t as clever. Nic Pizzolatto himself directs the next two episodes, and I’m curious to see what he’ll bring to the table.
• We see 1980 Tom Purcell for the first time. He’s held up pretty well, all things considered, another instance of the show not going as dark as I expected.
• Amelia’s “bookish but sexy” look kind of reads as casual Disney princess wear.
• It weirds me out whenever parents in a movie or TV show swear in front of their young kids. Is that unrealistic behavior or were my parents just huge squares who never cursed?
• Towards the end of the episode, Wayne looks through one of the Purcells’ photo albums and finds a picture of Will posed with hands folded in prayer, much like how they were when Wayne found his body in a cave. On top of being creepy, the rosary Will is holding in the picture confirms that the Purcells are Catholic.