Michael Potts). Each episode toggles between the interviews, and back and forth in time, from Cohle and Hart holding court in a conference room, to the events of January 1995, in which Cohle and Hart investigated the alleged occult-ritual murder of a young woman named Dora Lange, a prostitute. The
Prodded by Papania and Gilbough, Cohle and Hart produce a chronicle of the Dora Lang investigation, and more, a portrait of the men they used to be. Hart in 95: A decent detective of good reputation, but falling apart in every other area of his life; a closed-off husband to his longtime sweetheart,
of notesin an oversized, ledger-like journal. The devil is in the details, of course. As Cohle reminds us, you never know which one down the line makes you go Ah! and breaks the case. But apparently the Dora Lang casework is goneruined by Hurricane Rita, were told. Hmmm.
The Dora Lange murder mystery is itself a stir of cultural echoes, recent and ancient. Her naked, blindfolded, stabbed bodybranded with a downward spiral tattoois found in a section of sugarcane burn-off in the Louisiana sticks. She is posed in a kneeling position, as if praying, amid the exposed
It would then appear, judging from her diary, a refuge of fantasy to help her get through the day, that the fictitious Dora Lange was under the influence of a very real, very infectious fantasy world a kind of viral ministry, you might say. Moreover, by co-opting The King In Yellow, True Dete
Similarly, Cohle and Hart themselves occasionallyand suspiciouslytry to skip the Dora Lange recap ahead to that heroic gunfight with the villain in the deep wilderness, only to be pulled back by Papania and Gilbough. Take it slow. Tell us EVERYTHING. Early episodes give us a couple fleeting flashe
Telegraphing the finish makes the Dora Lange investigation less a tick-tock of procedural door knocking and clue crunching and more of a surreal roadtrip with tangents in space and time, in and out of the psycho-sphere (to borrow a Cohle-ism) of its characters and culture, all leading toward an in
