Nic Pizzolatto goes after big money in the second-to-last "True Detective," all but guaranteeing the conspiracy theories are real. [Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “True Detective” Season 3, Episode 6, “Hunters in the Dark.”] “True Detective” is a series of two minds: One clings to the personal journey of the eponymous detectives, while the other is obsessed with solving the case at hand. While Season 1 was hailed for its leads, tone, and conversations, it did face criticism for failing to pay off on the grand mystery concocted over its first seven episodes. Season 2 faced criticism on all fronts, including a convoluted ending. While no one is claiming Season 3 has reached the addictive highs of the original run, it does seem to be on the brink of rewarding both parts of its big ol’ brain: an enriching personal story, and a well-executed conspiracy-driven twist. So let’s start with the developments in the case, which saw considerable advancement during “Hunters in the Dark.” First and foremost — hoo boy, were we wrong last week. To pay you back for our mistakes — and general dismissal of theorizing about the case — here are some ideas about what it all means! Turns out Harris James (Scott Shepherd) is an important character, rather than a casually dropped red herring. Not only did he try to hit on Wayne in the creepiest way possible — “I don’t eat donuts,” Wayne says. “I can tell,” Harris replies. “You got a good body, detective.” — but Harris’ much-discussed salary indicates he’s getting paid for more than his duties at the Hoyt factory. He’s getting paid to, say, kill off anyone getting too suspicious about his boss’ extracurricular activities — like poor Tom Purcell. Also, those black cars spying on Wayne are almost certainly real, not another bit of misdirection fueled by Wayne’s deteriorating mind and increasing paranoia. Yes, Roland looks out the window and says he doesn’t see the cars, but the audience isn’t given visual confirmation he’s telling the truth. There’s no shot of the outside as Roland sees it, so either they’re not there at that moment, or Roland is in on the cover-up and lies to Wayne. (This seems like the most likely scenario, given his reluctance to get back into the case, his big house out in the woods, his promotions and ultimate position of authority within the obviously corrupt police force. That being said, please don’t let this be true.) Warrick Page / HBO Finally, the detectives didn’t kill Tom, so much as they feel responsible for his presumed death. Roland can’t mention his name in 2015 because it was their pursuit of him as a suspect that sent him into the Hoyt mansion, inside the “pink castle” — and into Harris James’ waiting arms. Is that their big regret? Or is another, more damning revelation coming? Either way, Season 3 is clicking into place, exposing a big cover-up only hinted at prior to Episode 6. Does embracing the conspiracy theories mean “True Detective” is headed down the wrong path? Not at all. Given how confusing and unrewarding Season 2 ended up after chasing its own big business secrets down an ever-darkening rabbit hole, there’s reason to be skeptical about Season 3 following a similar trajectory. But with so many facets of the case now somewhat clear — and yet one more episode delivering the goods — it seems like Nic Pizzolatto might actually pull this twist off. For one, it’s timely. Given how much vitriol there is right now for the rich and powerful — especially the rich and powerful who abuse women, simply because they can afford to do so — well, having all this pain and heartache come back to an unseen corporate overlord provides a great deal of satisfaction. How the show decides to physically introduce Mr. Hoyt and how much he’s made to pay for his actions — by Old Wayne, of all people — will be telling in just how much satisfaction bears out, but the audience is certainly ready to embrace the righteous anger of this particularly relevant David vs. Goliath fight. Warrick Page / HBO That being said, it’s tricky to deliver on a mystery where the ultimate answer is “a rich guy did something terrible and paid people to help him cover his tracks.” With all the twists and turns tracked thus far, any answer that’s too basic runs the risk of being underwhelming. Season 2 went in a somewhat opposite direction — the answers were too elaborate, the journey to get there too hard, and thus underwhelming overall — but here, the simplicity is affecting. The tragedy of each arc, each answer to the big questions, is inherent to each character: You feel for Wayne, you feel for Roland, you feel for Amelia, and you feel for Tom. You even feel for Lucy, a little bit, since Pizzolatto went out his way to make the character hate herself so much, the hate thrown her way by the audience is proportionally less. Rather than presume what will happen in the final two hours, it’s worth noting the welcome feeling of security heading into the end. Season 1 built up so much mystery for the final hour, it almost had to disappoint anyone obsessed with cracking the case. Season 2 was scattershot to the point of not caring what happened. Season 3 has threaded the needle well thus far, doling out enough puzzle pieces so they fit together snugly, while developing rich personal stories. Maybe, for some, the jigsaw fit a little too easily, but the search is still rewarding because you give a shit about the people searching. And with so much of the case coming together with two hours left to go, maybe Old Wayne will actually get his shot at retribution before it’s all said and done. That could be the best twist of all. Grade: B+ “True Detective” airs new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. Warrick Page / HBO Case Notes, Episode 6:<doc-sep>Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Hunters in the Dark’ There’s a confusing and contradictory tension developing in this season of “True Detective” between the personal and the broadly conspiratorial. On one hand, we’re getting a better and better sense of what life was like for Will and Julie before their abduction. They were held captive by their parents’ dysfunction, which frightened and alienated them so much that the peephole in Will’s closet, the one we assumed was carved by a leering pedophile, was actually a place where the two children could pass notes to each other. On the other, the case has opened up to the larger, more powerful forces represented by Hoyt Foods, where Lucy Purcell once worked. Whatever role Hoyt Foods and its executive class played in the case has the effect of minimizing the domestic conflict among the Purcells. Now everyone is the victim, not only Will and Julie but also Tom, Lucy, Dan O’Brien, Freddy Burns and Brett Woodard. The whole gallery of suspects. It seems to be Nic Pizzolatto’s instinct to make “True Detective” a big show, about simple crimes that open up into expansive indictments of the shadowy networks that make them possible. The whodunit aspects tend to grow less important over time, to the point where a cabal of industrial and municipal power brokers was the true villain of the second season, and the inciting murder was resolved with a shrug. That’s a compelling choice on Pizzolatto’s part, supported by plenty of neo-noir classics like “Chinatown” and “The Long Goodbye.” But there are dramatic consequences, too. It not only produces enough red herrings to stock a deli counter, it also threatens to minimize the characters. When a situation is larger than they are, that’s another way of saying that they’re shrinking.<doc-sep>Spoiler alert: this blog details events in the sixth episode of the third season of True Detective, which airs on Sunday nights on HBO in the US, and Mondays in the UK on Sky Atlantic at 2am and 9pm. ‘No way we could be that wrong’ Hays and Amelia are in bed in 1980, partaking in some post-coitus pillow talk. He tells her the shots that killed Woodard were the first he has fired as a police officer. She wants him to tell her about his time in the jungle during the Vietnam war, but he’d rather not. “One thing I learned in the war is that life happens now … I really don’t spend time remembering stuff.” In 1990, the task force is chewing over the Julie Purcell voicemail and the idea that Tom was in on his son’s death and daughter’s disappearance. The bigwigs want someone to “go at him hard”, and West says he is up to the job. “I don’t know what that call was but no way we could be that wrong,” says West before the pair talk to Tom. Hays suggests giving the interrogation to another member of the team, but West is adamant. “Them mothers will eat him alive,” he says. Lucy and Tom Purcell, parents of the missing children. Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO The interrogation sees West and Hays adopt a bad-cop-bad-cop routine with Purcell, who seems genuinely horrified by the suggestion that he is involved. “We don’t have anyone who saw you after 6:30,” says Hays. Purcell turns to West for help but gets nothing but a grimace back. He tells them he went back inside after working on his car and then listened to a St Louis Cardinals game. Hays tells him about the peephole they found in Will’s room. The bosses now believe it was Tom who planted the evidence at Woodard’s home. The phone call that Julie made came from a truck stop in Russellville. The duo head out there and Hays explains why he didn’t mention that he thought the backpack and other evidence was planted at Woodard’s house. He didn’t want to give the bosses that info yet, he says, because he thought the timing was off, but also possibly because he knows that they can use information like that carelessly. He has another argument with Amelia, who reveals she is writing a sequel to her first non-fiction book. They spar about Hays’s new position and his lack of ability to knot a tie. Amelia heads to a nunnery to talk to girls who might have ran with Julie. One tells her that four or five months ago they were together and Julie went by “Mary”, “Mary Julie” or “Mary July”. There’s more talk of the “Pink Castle”, too. ‘We tell it all the way this time’ Hays and West visit Tom Purcell’s factory. Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO The pair move on to Tom’s old factory. His boss – the guy who sent him home in 1980 – tells Hays and West that Tom was on the way out before the disappearance of Julie and the death of Will. He was drinking on the job, he claims, and there were rumours he was gay, or at least frequented “queer clubs”. During a search of Tom’s home, they find poker chips, pictures of Julie and a church leaflet for “curing homosexuality”. That’s enough for Hays to suggest Tom could be in on it. “We don’t stop,” he says. “We tell it all the way this time.” Back in 1980, Hays is at the station dealing with the aftermath of the shooting. The bosses want to pin it on Woodard, but Hays is unsure. Their motivation is purely political; the situation and subsequent moral panic is making the region into a “hee-haw county”. The bad press needs to stop and Woodard is the perfect fall guy. At the Hoyt factory, the duo interview Harris James – the man who found the backpack. He’s dismissive, cocky and combative when Hays tries to make fun of his position. “I do miss my days cruising around, eating donuts,” he says, in what must be a few weeks before his disappearance. In 2015, Elisa is questioning Hays about James and suggesting that, like Dan O’Brien, his body might be found in a drained quarry one day. Hays bites back. Was this “the thing” that West and Hays did in 1990? Did they kill James? Amelia (Carmen Ejogo) promoting her book. Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO Dan O’Brien shows up in a diner. He’s strung out and wants $7,000 in order to give them information on the Purcell case. Hays isn’t into that and snatches the fork right out of his gob. He tells them that Lucy’s death might not have been an OD, and suggests there is a wider conspiracy afoot. Tom had nothing to do with it, he says. This is way bigger. It’s a race against time, according to the self-confessed “strung-out junkie”. Tom catches up with Dan and ends up pistol-whipping him as he tries to beat the information out of him. Lucy was being paid by someone – Hoyt – to stay quiet about what really happened in 1980. Hays goes back to the Purcell house, which is covered in graffiti, and he figures out that the “peephole” was actually a way for Will and Julie to pass notes between themselves. In 1990, Amelia conducts a reading for her then new book. A black man with a dead eye asks her whether or not Julie is alive and where she is. Meanwhile, Tom is drink driving and finds himself outside the Hoyt residence, a big, gated abode. He jumps over a wall and is watched by a security guard who lets him continue until he finds some tunnels. Once inside, he finds the “Pink Castle” that Julie mentioned and Harris James appears behind him. Notes and observations Hays does some digging. Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO<doc-sep>True Detective Season 3 Episode 6 Breakdown "Hunters in the Dark" Tom Purcell goes on his own hunt for the truth; Wayne and Roland revisit discrepancies from the 1980 Purcell Case. Ryan and Greg break down Episode 6, "Hunters in the Dark."<doc-sep>
This week on True Detective, a massive piece of the puzzle is finally solved. Here are the five takeaways from the latest episode! The last episode of True Detective ended on a massive cliffhanger that raised a ton of questions about Tom Purcell. A phone call was recorded on the hotline and it turned out to be Tom’s daughter, Julie. In the call, she hints that Tom was lying to the police and that he might have had something to do with the death of his son, Will. This week, the series picks up where it left off with the investigators now being extremely suspicious of Tom. This results in more of his secrets being unearthed as well as a surprise visit from an old family member. Most of all, we finally get an extremely unsettling finale that answers just as many questions as it raises. “Hunters in the Dark” is one of the best episodes to date. Let’s get right into this week’s recap. Here are the five takeaways from the latest episode of True Detective Season 3! #1 A second glance at Tom Purcell The episode kicked off with a soft opening between Hays and his wife but quickly bounces right back to where we left off last week with Tom being interrogated about Julie’s phone call. The acting DA sees the phone call as an indictment on Tom which forces Roland and Hays to question Tom hard. As they press him, Tom Purcell has a mental breakdown because he is convinced of his innocence and he lets out a roaring fit of anger about the line of questioning. Honestly, it’s one of the best moments of the entire series involving Scoot Mcnairy so far. After this, the detectives go back through and check Tom’s background once again. Unfortunately, not much checks out except one small secret Tom was hiding the entire time. Tom Purcell is actually gay. Does this make him a killer though? Absolutely not but it leads Hays and Roland to believe he might have more secrets. #2 The curious case of Harris James Last episode, one of the details that was revealed was that an officer named Harris James disappeared during the 90s investigation. The officer was the same person who identified Will’s backpack at Woodard’s house. Early in the episode, we see Hays and Roland question Harris in a setting that takes place before his disappearance. The officer is now a security person for Hoyt Foods. During the questioning, many red flags are set off to the detectives and us as viewers: 1) Why does Hoyt food need a security person like him on the payroll? 2 How come he was never acquainted with Lucy Purcell during her employment with the company? That said, the conversation does not offer any leads or evidence to make any case that he either had something to do with the Purcell children or planting of the evidence at Woodard’s house. Hays does not seem convinced though by the look on his face as he leaves. #3 The return of Dan O’Brien One of the more intriguing parts of this week’s show involved Dan O’Brien, who is Lucy Purcell’s cousin. He reemerged at a diner to tell the detectives what they have been dying to know but the problem is he demands assurances in the form of seven grand in return. He also appears to be extremely strung out and paranoid since we last saw him at Will Purcell’s funeral. During the interaction at the diner, he’s cryptic but he manages to offer a few hints about the information he wishes to share. He first insists that Tom Purcell is not the culprit of the kids disappearing. He also suggests Lucy Purcell’s overdose in Las Vegas was actually a murder and not an accident. He implies that whoever did it is still trying to find Julie and that’s bad news for both detectives because they have a head start. Hays tries to intimidate him into saying more but Dan does not budge. He then leaves the diner but Hays takes down his license plates while doing so.