True Detective 1.06

Haunted Houses

Marty beats up the two young men who were caught having sex with his daughter. He seems to gives them an option before he does it: take the beating or else get charged with statutory rape. They seem hesitant so he makes the decision for them.

Rust continues to investigate cold cases, in 2002, cases that he thinks might be linked to the murder of Dora Lange. He gets in trouble for doing that. He doesn't get Marty involved in or keep him apprised of what he is doing. Among the people he talks to are the girl who they found locked up in Ledoux's home and the revival tent minister from the third episode. Eventually he gets in trouble with Salter, their boss, for working these cases on the side.

Marty, also in 2002, runs into Beth, the underage girl (in 1995) from the Ranch, the low rent whorehouse near Spanish Lake. She's cleaned herself up but it isn't long before he gets sexually involved with Beth. Maggie finds pictures of her on Marty's phone.

The detectives interviewing Marty in 2012 start asking questions about how and why he and Rust stopped working together in 2002 and why Rust quit. Marty decides he's had enough and walks out. The detectives call in Maggie and she tells them some things but, as with Rust and Marty, she doesn't tell them everything and as with Rust and Marty she lies to them.

Maggie eventually decides, in 2002, she's had enough of Marty. She tries going out to a bar in the hopes of having an affair but she can't bring herself to do it with a stranger. She turns to Rust. He's just been suspended for talking to the Reverend Tuttle. Maggie doesn't tell Rust why but she shows up at his apartment with a bottle of whiskey. She comes on to him. They have sex. She tells him why after the fact. She goes home and breaks the news to Marty when he gets home, probably after screwing Beth. 

Rust stops by the police station the next day. Marty attacks him. The two men get in some punches on one another. Rust quits after that.

The episode ends in 2012. Marty hears someone honking at him as he drives down the road. It is Rust. Marty pulls over. Rust wants to buy him a beer and talk. Marty says okay.

Thoughts

There are no scenes that take place in 1995 in this episode.

There's something about the way that Marty met Beth that seems a bit off, like there is more to that moment than is explicitly clear. Just before he goes to the bar where he meets her he goes into a store and buys tampons. He walks into the bar carrying a bag full of boxes of tampons. I think that must have been a tell so that Beth would be sure that he was who she was supposed to meet, even though she made like she remembered him from 1995. Later in the episode Salter calls Marty the Human Tampon but I'm not sure why or if it was somehow related to his meeting with Beth.

I think that there's something to Rust's suspicions that the Reverend Tuttle's Wellspring program had something to do with the murder of Dora Lange. It might be an indirect connection but in some way it at least helped to foster an environment that created the killer or helped them to develop. That's my working theory. I don't think that Rust is the killer. That's a red herring in my book.

Maggie's hair is shorter in 2012. They way it is cut makes her look a lot like Mallory Keaton (Justine Bateman) in the later seasons of Family Ties. I don't think there's any significance to that resemblance but maybe there is.

I noticed that the left tail light on Rust's truck gets broken in 2002 during the fight when Marty crashes into it. Rust's left tail light is (still?) broken in 2012 when he and Marty stop their vehicles on the side of the road.

What is there that Rust wants to talk to Marty about. It seems like it must have something to do with his investigation into the murder of Dora Lange and other missing persons cases. Beyond that I'm not sure.

This is good. I'm ready to say that I really like this season but I'm a bit afraid that the last two episodes won't be as good as the fifth and sixth ones have been.