WiC Watches: True Detective season 3

Episode 4: “The Hour and the Day”

Ah, we’re in it now. This was an engrossing, moody episode of True Detective. It’s hard to know how much closer we are to solving the mystery of who kidnapped Julie Purcell, and why, but I do know I’m enjoying myself.

Still, as long as we’re talking about the wheels of the plot, they did make a few more turns. In 1980, the police find a set of fingerprints on Will Purcell’s bike: Freddy Hays’, the skinny long-haired teenager interrogated in the premiere. Hays and Roland grill him properly this time, and he immediately bursts into tears when Hays threatens him with prison rape. (Roland: “The prison rape’s a real go-to for you lately. Something you wanna tell me?”) I don’t think Freddy had anything substantive to do with Will’s death — all he did was steal Will’s bike like a dick the night of the murder — but he does reveal that Will was looking for Julie that night, which may prove important later.

We’re also a little closer to tracking down at least one of the adults with whom Julie and Will played in the woods. The info comes courtesy of Patty Faber, a “dear, good woman” who makes the “chaff dolls” found near Will’s body. She’s a member of the Purcells’ church. (I’m with Roland, by the way: I get a creepy vibe off that priest, although if he is involved, the show isn’t tipping its hand.) She tells our detectives that she sold 10 of these dolls at the last fall fair to a black man with a cloudy eye. Hays: “Handsome? Ugly?” Patty: “Like I say, he was black.”

Up to this point, the show has obliquely addressing the difficulties a black detective would face investigating the disappearance of white children in a poor rural town in 1980. It gets more focus here. Hays feels the brunt of casual, unthinking prejudice from the likes of Patty and, in 1990, District Attoney Gerald Kindt, who condescends to Hays about not coloring outside the lines of the Purcell case now that it’s been reopened. Things get much more real when, in 1980, Hays and Purcell visit Sam Whitehead, a man matching the description of the guy who bought the dolls. No one in this majority-black community trusts the police, and although I doubt Sam is involved with the Purcell case, the scene gets very tense very quickly when that community rallies to defend what they see as the powers that be trying to pin the blame for this awful murder on someone poor and black. Roland does the pair no favors by brandishing his gun and raising his voice, and although our heroes get out of the situation with only a busted windshield, it’s a gripping scene that deepens our understanding of this community and how the murder has affected it.

For me, the most moving scene was between Roland and a spiraling Tom Purcell, who would rather get into bar fights than remain in his house with his wounded wife and the memories of his children. Tom calls Hays a racial slur and then apologizes for it over and over, and actor Scoot McNairy really sells his desperate self-loathing. Neither of these men are without racial bias, but we sense that they’re trying to be better, and it’s making them more compelling characters.

Lucy Purcell also gets a self-loathing moment when Amelia comes by the house to drop off some of Will’s projects from school, but I don’t think this one landed as well. It was more writerly (Lucy: “I have the soul of a whore.”), and while Mamie Gummer emotes as well as anyone in the business, we don’t know Lucy as well as Tom, and her tears felt more hollow. I’m more interested in whether she knows anything about the murder she’s not saying; she got offended when Amelia suggested she talk to Hays about it, but I see why Amelia would take that angle.

Sidenote: did you know that Mamie Gummer is Meryl Streep’s daughter? It’s true!

Speaking of Amelia, she and Hays go out on a date, and their interactions are as charming as ever. Up to now, they’ve been circling each other cautiously, but they’re much more flirty on their date, batting pick-up lines back and forth like old pros. (Amelia: “When was the last time you had a girlfriend?” Hays: “I don’t know. Memories of other women are gettin’ hazy now.”) Creator Nic Pizzolatto, directing an episode of his show for the first time, lets the scene breathe; it’s easy to believe these two fall in love and get married. They’re well-matched.

That said, they’re still having problems 10 years later in 1990, although I was less convinced by that interaction — who uses the word “vicissitudes” in everyday conversation, Amelia, really?

Finally, at episode’s end, that angry group of local fathers from last week form up to beat on Brett “the Trashman” Woodard after they see him talking to a couple of local kids. “The Hour and the Day” ends with one of them kicking down Woodard’s door and a mine going off in his face; Woodard still has his skills from his Vietnam days and the arsenal to match. This is the first cliffhanger of season 3, and even though the main mystery plot is still only inching along, Pizzolatto and company have done such a terrific job filling out their characters, and such careful work showing us the machinery of the story, that I’m excited to see what happens next. We could be building to something splendid.

Oh, and I can’t sign off without talking about the moment in 2015 when Hays, trying to remember details of the case, is visited in his room by the ghosts of soldiers from the Vietnam war, American and Vietnamese alike. We visit Hays at three different points in his life, but as I’ve said before, there’s a fourth that only gets mentioned: his time in Vietnam. At his age, all these layers are collapsing, and they produced the creepiest moment of the show yet. What will Hays see when he can’t tell the difference between the present and the past? About the case and about himself?

Detective’s Notes

• Also of note, in 2015, Hays learns from the TV producer that Dan O’Brien, Lucy’s brother who may or may not have been peeping at young Julie during his stay at the Purcell home, was found dead in a drained quarry. We’re not sure when, but that certainly sounds like someone killed him. Could be important.
• I love the balance the show is striking between heavy drama and black humor. Even during Sam Whitehead’s interrogation, a very intense scene, Pizzolatto finds room for a little joke. (Sam: “How you gonna wear that badge?” Hays: “It’s got a little clip on it.”)