True Detective Review: “The Locked Room” (Season 1, Episode 3)

So what about the crime? Theriot knows a bit about Dora, who came to services regularly. However, he puts the detectives in contact with two observant girls. They tell Hart of a man with skin burned around his jaw. However, with not much more to go by, Cohle dives into his old case files. These sequences of his manic search to connect Dora’s death with another crime comes with a dim green lighting reminiscent of the olive hues of David Fincher’s detective stories. The shading of these scenes texture the moment into one of strain and exhaustion, effectively bringing the audience into Cohle’s dazed (if determined) view.

Given its relentlessly grim subject matter, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that True Detective continues to look haunted. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga shoots certain outdoor scenes with a low horizon line, getting the most from a bare, white sky. There are fewer exterior scenes in this episode, yet still a couple of terrific visual metaphors. When the detectives go across a bridge that looks so decrepit it is fated to collapse, it is a beautiful image of the river community, still in tatters after Hurricane Andrew.

The show’s dour atmosphere does get a bit of a break this week in a lovely scene when Maggie and Martin go on a double date with Rust (who doesn’t seem like dinner table material) and the Harts’ friend, Jennifer. In the moments when the couples are dancing, we witness the men searching for some sort of connection to normalcy, through the women they are with. This brings up the title of the episode. The locked room is part of a dream, Cohle narrates, where one could be the kind of person – normal, sane – that they want. Neither of the detectives exactly fit the representation of the man from a locked room though, with his dreams intact and his values strong. When Hart asks his partner whether a man can love two women at once, Cohle shoots back with, “I don’t think that man can love.”

At the hour’s end, we do get a first glimpse at Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford), the first major suspect in Dora’s murder. He skipped parole recently and is tied to producing drugs, which Cohle connects to the murder of a girl nearby that has similar markings on her body to Dora. In the last shot of the episode, heavily tattooed and in his underwear, Ledoux slowly walks into the frame with a gas mask and machete out, scoping out his surroundings. Like True Detective itself, he has made quite a first impression.