True Detective Episode 5 Discussion

True Detectives

Have a Theory? Share It Now!

Dear Shat,

First off, I have to apologize, but this is one of those episodes that was an overload to my senses, and just so many good things to talk about. I’m going to end up writing a good amount i’m sure, but it got to me (*in a good way*). We are critical of the show and of everything we watch, despite the various gripes we have had with True Detective season 3, this is a wonderful piece of art, very layered. The time changes aren’t always seamless, but they very rarely take you out of the show. Every episode isn’t an A, but the reality is we can’t have that always. Brings me to my favorite moment of the season thus far, the old men on the porch. If this season wasn’t good, they wouldn’t have been able to pull a scene like this off. Except, they’ve built up to this scene, they built up the tension, the characters, and the plot, and obviously it worked. Give credit to Nick P, he crushed this episode, and largely, the characters as a whole. Everything fits, and when we get that scene at the and of the episode it feels like 2 long lost brothers getting together again, realizing that the time we have is short, and they long for the time they’ve missed each other. It was a home run scene….

Anyways, this is something I want to rehash
I think the whole wayne and amelia relationship that initially I was critical of, i’m coming around on.

First, the background, i’ll try to get to the point quickly though.

My dad was a Vietnam war vet, was in a platoon with several guys (his actual brother as well), and he of course saw actual time over there, suffered from obvious PTSD, very emotionally confusing (looking from my point of view as a teen), he would act a lot like wayne does in the show. Where all the sudden he’s yelling/angry about something that was just very small or not really important. Mood swings, that seemed like he was always on the edge. Like for example, and I don’t really say all this to make him sound bad, but I would go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and even if I was as quiet as possible it would set him off. So there was just things that really caught me thinking of my dad, how Wayne is pretty damn close to being him, (my dad was caucasian though). The sad part is, my dad passed away 3 years ago, and i’m not a teen anymore, i’m obviously an adult, and I have a young child of my own. So perspective being what it is, I now understand what my dad must have been going through all those years, and i wish i understood before, but that’s not the point of this message.

The point is, wayne and amelia is fairly comparable to my mom and dad, and it’s so weird i didn’t identify it before, but the relationship makes so much more sense to me now. I was born roughly 8 years after my mom and dad had married, so much like wayne and amelia, and the struggling relationship we see in timeline 2. **We only get small snippets, of timeline 1 and that version of the relationship.**

My mom and dad would argue, all the time, but they stuck together until the very end. Truth is, only my mom prolly truly understood my dad and how to get him through that anger, like she didn’t provoke or make it worse in any way, but she kind of just let him yell and stuff and he’d be fine later on. My dad didn’t drink or do drugs, he was just involved in a really crazy situation early in his life. He never spoke about it to me, (unfortunately I regret never asking him because I was scared to) but in a lot of ways I was not a full adult (*by that i mean not entirely emotionally mature) ,when he passed and didn’t really get to be an adult with him.

I noticed the similarities between my Dad and Wayne, either after episode 2, or 3. I think it’s pretty breathtaking that Marshala Ali and Pizolatto have really been able to translate that emotion and distress to the screen. (Think back even 10 to 15 years ago, most doctors working in the VA’s and hospitals weren’t even able to treat PTSD because most fail to understand how things in the brain work.) So kudos to this show for getting that right.

**I feel like I have to say this now too** but if anyone reading this from the watch is themselves military, or had parents that served, (thanks to those brave men and women who did, thanks big d as well), or even if you didn’t serve and you’re dad or mom had suffered some real trauma that they act like how wayne’s portrayed, I know it’s difficult to understand why they are being like that to you. Because they likely don’t mean to do those things, and there is help for people like that, or go find a therapist who will help you understand more and how you can be better on youre own end.

So there’s my admission to being wrong about this on screen relationship, I will say though, that the wayne and amelia moment, where amelia is reading the jungle book to the family in bed, was such a refreshing thing to see. It’s hard because I want to be attached to amelia and all we see are the shitty arguments she has, so I hope we see some more good things like that. .
.

(*My shat tin foil for the day is possibly that Rayland is Gay, and was in the closet, 80s 90s, and the whole season up until this point, was made to make it look as if Rayland is the one who doesn’t understand how it is for Wayne. It would be really ironic if all this time, roland understands the political game of everything in life, and how to keep his personal feelings about stuff aside, and wayne is the one being stubborn and intolerable. Perhaps, him and Purcell had more of a relationship and it was just a little odd, and wayne brings all that stuff to light in the department, and that’s why roland is mad at wayne… just a thought. I would go into it more except i’ve already written too much*)

Loyal Listener and Shatter, Kenny P.

Subscribe Now

Help Support the Podcast

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.