3) Some great, heart-stopping moments
While much of the story so far has consisted of setup—introducing some of the defining characteristics of our two protagonists, slowly rolling out details of why they’re being interviewed by two detectives 17 years after the main action of story, teasing out the suspect of Reggie Ledoux and hints of some “showdown in the woods” still to come—it has also provided its share of terrific moments, most at the conclusion of each episode thus far. There’s been the beautifully delivered closing line by Cohle (“Start asking the right fucking questions”), the eerie painting discovered in the church ruins, and the terrifying image of Ledoux parading around in underwear and a gas mask.
But of course, the most incredible moment to this point of the season, the midway point, was the conclusion of this past week’s episode, which, because of the continuous take, felt like a moment stretched out over the course of 6 long minutes (you can watch it in the video below). Despite some absurd contrarian backlash to the sequence, I think most people viewed it as an appropriate stylistic representation of the most tense and intense encounter of the show so far, an edge-of-your-seat, can’t-blink-or-you-might-miss-something sequence that so much of the story had been building towards for some time. It’s also a sequence in which the narrative itself stresses the importance of how much time is spent in the house (Cohle keeps saying “in and out, 90 seconds, in and out”), and so the decision to not cut away is a brilliant, crucial choice, as opposed to being primarily about showing off some sort of technical prowess by the director.
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