True Detective 3.3 Review: The Big Never

\
After being informed that the Purcell's have received a note stating that Julie is still alive Hays and West re-examine their investigation to see if they can uncover something they have missed. Mainly, why did Will and Jamie tell their father that they were going to meet the Frankie Boyle when, after interviewing him, he informs them that he had never made concrete plans or met up with the Purcell's outside of school. What were the Purcell children doing and who were they meeting? They return to the Purcell's to look through the children's possessions again they find a map, along with some handwritten notes with messages: 'It's alright', 'I'm always here', 'Don't listen', 'I'll always keep you safe'. The messages were in a sketchbook found in a Hoyt Foods bag, where Lucy Purcell previously worked two years ago on the chicken line. Coincidentally, Hoyt Foods also runs the Ozark Children's Outreach Centre, which has put a reward out for Julie's safe return to her family, causing a lot of false tips for the case (although, it turns out, the companies board cleared it with the count prosecutors office).

Later during another search party West finds dice to a game they believe Will was playing, and a bag of toys, as well as the site of Will's murder before his body was moved. The site is near a farmhouse the original search missed as the farm road wasn't on any maps. The owner tells them that he already spoke with the police, and that in addition to seeing Will and Julie multiple times, he also mentions a black man and a female driving around in a brown sedan. Be refuses to let them search the property without a warrant. West and Hays take the toys back to the Purcell's to identify, but neither recognise them despite having their children's prints on them, in addition to a set which they couldn't get a match for. West spots a family photo album that he hadn't seen before, as Tom had only taken it out since the children had been missing. Inside is a photo of Will's first communion, him posed with his hands in prayer the exact same way his deceased body was posed.

In 1990 the deposition continues, but now it is West recounting the events above in 1980. Hays and Amelia visit the Walgreen in which Julie's fingerprints were found. Hays expresses how tired he is with the case being in their lives, but Amelia suggests that she uses her book as an excuse to find out more information about Julie from the police. Hays goes to Walmart to shop with the kids while she does this, and Rebecca goes missing, causing him to panic. Amelia returns home giddy with success but Hays is angry as he doesn't want it in their lives any longer.

West visits Tom Purcell to ask how him how he feels about the case being re-opended and the discovery of Julie's prints, and we learn that Lucy has passed, perhaps a suicide, and that Tom is five years sober. Tom then asks West to pray with him. He alter leaves a message with Hays and work, whom he hasn't seen in nine years, telling him he wants to meet. They meet at a bar and he asks Hays to become a detective again under him, as he is in charge of re-opning the Purcell case.

In 2015 Hays and his son Henry visit the Doctor about his memory loss and it is all but confirmed that he has Alzheimer's, but he tells Henry he will kill himself if he is put into a home. He continues his interviews with Elisa and she throws him off guard with testimonies of witnesses who claim they were never questioned by police during the initial investigation. Some of these witnesses also claim to have seen the brown sedan the farmer mentioned driving around Devil's Den they day the Purcell's went missing, as well as the black man. Later in his study as he is trying to record things to remember Hays has visions of Amelia who implies he is worried about them finding something he left in the woods, and she tells him to finish it.

Rating: 3.3/5

True Detective Season 3.2 Review: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

Having found Will's body and fearing the worst about Julie, Hayes and West start following every lead possible. They talk to everyone who works with Tom Purcell at Wilson's Bodyworks where they make parts for schoolhouses, they talk with the Purcell's extended family, where they find out that Tom's mother thinks Julie might not be his child. Most notably they talk to Dan O'Brien, Lucy's brother who presumably drilled that peep hole in Will's closet. But all of these leads turn up nothing.

It's only when Hayes invests the help of his future-wife Amelia after an emergency town meeting that they get a lead. Armed with a picture of the mademade dolls that were left near the site of Will's body, a young friend of Julie's reveals to Amelia and later Hayes and West that he believes Julie was given one of the dolls on Halloween.

After a convincing Star Wars lightsaber impersonation from Hayes, he and West take it to their superiors, specifically Greg Larson, who Hayes believes foolishly squanders their only lead by reporting it on the news, which interrupts his unofficial date with Amelia.

Following a lead from a Vice Cop, Hayes and West track down a man with a prior conviction in regards to who is going by an alias, but while he's violating his parole, he has a credible alibi.\

The pair get called back to the Purcell home where a note has been delivered:

Much like the detectives throughout its second episode, True Detective leaves its audience frustrated and almost bored as Hayes and West trudge through a series of unfulfilling leads in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.

Rating: 2.5/5

True Detective 3.1 Review: The Great War And Modern Memory

True Detective's third season premiere sees Vietnam war veterans-turned detectives Wayne Hayes (Ali Mahershala) and Roland West (Stephen Dorff) investigating the disappearance of two children, Will and Julie Purcell, in West Finger, Arkansas, 1980.

Ten years later, in 1990, Hayes is being interviewed during a deposition by his superiors about the case - but he is unaware why, then in 2015 he is being interviewed in his own home by a reporter, with his son Henry (Ray Fisher) by his side, again in relation to the Purcell case.

It's a lot to take in in the first couple of minutes of the premiere and it's obvious True Detective once again isn't too concerned about unneccassrially confusing audiences by jumping back and forth through this timelines. Mahershala, however, navigates Hayes through his years skilfully.

Thankfully, this episode spends most of it's time at the very beginning of the Purcell case with Hayes and West (and the audience my extension) methodically trying to figure out what could have happened to the Purcell children and who the suspects are. Naturally, their almost-separetd parents Tom (Scoot McNairy) and Lucy (Mamie Gummer) come under suspicion, and their bereavement and blaming of one another almost comes under risk of being cliche (plus the unfortunate Hayes re-telling of the situation in future timelines confirms that Tom is not involved). Lucy's brother Dan, however, is revealed as having stayed with them recently, and also seems the likely culprit of owning the Playgirl magazines hidden under Will's bed and having drilled a peep hole in his closest into Julie's room.

Other suspects include a group of older students from West Finger High School, Freddy Burns (Rhys Wakefield, who will always have a great appearance for a villainous character), Brett Woodard (Michael Greyeyes), and Alan Jones (Jon Tenney) who are seen menacingly staring down Tom and Julie as they ride their bikes past Freddy's purple Volkswagen beetle, and again later riding their bikes at the town's local hangout, Devil's Den (and once again Hayes' retelling narrative makes the scenes without him being featured very annoying, as he could not have possibly know what was happening making him an unreliable narrator).

Hayes and West visit the school to ask about Will and Julie and question the boys, and meet Amelia Reardon (Carmen Ejogo) a schoolteacher who we learn is married to Hayes and writing a non-fiction book, Life and Death and The Harvest Moon, about the case by 1990, and who has passed by 2015.

As the first day of the investigation comes to a close in 1980 Hayes discovers one of the children's bikes near Devil's Den and follows a trial that leads him to a handmade bride doll of straw and hay on a tree stump, he finds another on higher rockier ground and there in a crevice he finds Will's deceased body, hands posed in prayer, presumably killed by head trauma.

Hayes is shook and is desperate to continue looking for Julie, but in 1990 he learns that the reason he is being questioned by his superiors is that Julie's fingerprints have been linked to a robbery meaning that she is alive.

Despite a disorientating first couple of minutes, and the continuing difficulty the multiple timelines often forces True Detective to have, The Great War And Modern Memory was an entertaining start to the season.