“Something’s trying to tell me it’s all paper mâché. Something’s trying to tell me to wake up. Like I’m not real. Like I’m only dreaming.” ~ Vince Vaughn as “Frank Semyon”
Whether you care or not, a story named True Detective: Season Two came and went on television this summer of 2015. Episode One, “The Western Book of the Dead,” was an auspicious title that set in motion the arc of three main characters’ lives. As in life, so in death.
Character one is Ray, a washed up detective in the corrupt city of Vinci. He does the bidding of both the crooked mayor and a crime boss named Frank. Ray is utterly buffeted by forces around him—a man with almost no will of his own. His now-ex-wife was raped many years ago, and their son is the presumed child of the rapist. Frank supplied the name of the rapist, who Ray in turn killed. This act of revenge haunts and angers him to this day, and leaves him in servitude to Frank. All that holds Ray to this world is his tenuous relationship with the sensitive, overweight boy that is his son. At best, Ray is awkward and at worst violent—witnessed in his beating of the father of a bully foolish enough to pick on Ray’s son. Unless Ray reclaims some self-determination he is destined for suicide.
Character two is Frank, the crime boss intertwined with Ray. Frank has a scheme to invest millions in a railroad corridor which will leverage him into a legitimate career. When that happens, he and his wife will bring a child into their new life. Frank has every bit of will that Ray lacks. Frank is driven, focused, and won’t stop still he reaches his goal. But what drives him? We get a hint that it is fear. Fear of being poor. Fear of being an outcast. Though his tenderness towards his wife earns our sympathies, we also see that Frank is capable of great violence. His plan threatened, he removes the fine suit coat, which is a thin veneer over the savagery within, and gives a bare-knuckled beating to a rebellious flunky. Enraged and vengeful, he takes a pair of pliers and pulls out his victim’s front teeth.
Our last character is chiseled and handsome California Highway Patrol officer Paul Woodrugh. We see Woodrugh barreling down a darkened highway at one hundred miles an hour on his motorcycle. The reality of Woodrugh’s physical prowess is clear, but equally clear is his flight from thoughts he cannot face. Woodrugh is doubly tortured: he’s in denial of his homosexuality, and haunted by unspoken terrible deeds done overseas with a Blackwater-style private security firm. “He’s better than any of us,” Ray acknowledges, and brands him a “God Warrior” after Woodrugh guns down several Hispanic bad guys in an epic firefight. Yet Woodrugh’s bravery is more a reaction to his inability to comprehend what drives him. The world of danger and action seems the only world he understands. His interior world is dark, hidden, unexamined.
Woodrugh is the first to die. Though hailed as a God Warrior, Woodrugh is the least comprehending of his life. “I was just trying to be a good man,” he tells his fiancée, to which she replies “Well, you don’t try right.” He is essentially unchanged from our first introduction—still haunted, still unaccepting of his homosexuality. The desire to keep this truth hidden is what ultimately leads to his demise. Woodrugh knowingly walks into a trap to try and retrieve compromising photographs of him with another man. Woodrugh seems most comfortable, focused and at home in a firefight, and that is his final scene. He takes down five special-ops killers, only to be shot through the spine as he exits a tunnel. Woodrugh fights till the end, futilely crawling for his gun and dragging his useless legs. “Fuck you,” he growls and repeats, “No, no,” as he crawls. It’s not fear, but total resistance to what is about to happen. It is as if denial is the core of Woodrugh’s life. His killer calmly shoot him in the back of the head, and Woodrugh’s struggle ends.
Frank is next, though his death is more nuanced as was his life. Captured by a Hispanic gang and driven to a barren salt flat, Frank hands over a million dollars in cash, and appears to have bargained for his life. Frank is willing to give away this huge sum of money because he has an even larger sum in the pocket of his suit. His plan is still intact. Just when we think he will live, one of the gang demands his suit. To give it up means Frank will have nothing… but his life. Frank punches the gangster and they tangle on the ground. Frank is stabbed in the gut, and grimaces in pain as he collapses on the salt flat. “Made a nice bed for you. Lie down, Frank,” the gang leader says as they drive off. Through the actions of his life, Frank truly has made a bed for himself. Frank rises and starts to walk. “It’s okay,” he tells himself, but one look at the blood soaked ground and we know it’s not. Eyes fixed on the horizon, limping, Frank is visited by ghosts from his past as his life drains away. His father, telling him what a piece of shit he is, then a gang of hoods hassling him and telling him to lie down. “Never lie down,” Frank says to himself. Franks covers a few more yards before seeing his wife. As observers of this drama, we know Frank came to realize he truly loved his wife. Yet that love was not stronger than the demons which drove him to never be poor again. They could have run away together with a hundred grand, but Frank was willing to risk his life for the big score that would avoid what he saw as failure.
“You made it,” she says, “you can rest now.”
Frank replies “No rest; never stop moving.”
“You stopped moving way back there,” is her sad reply.
Frank slowly turns and sees his body lying in the dirt. The bardo through which he walked comes to an end and he falls to the ground.
Last to die is Ray. At first, Ray seems the most hopeless and befuddled of all these characters. He has neither the physical courage of Woodrugh nor the will of Frank. In the course of time, however, he finds a measure of redemption: In realizing his love for a new woman in his life. In finding the strength to leave his son to protect him. When Ray flees we know he is only trying to protect those he loves. We follow Ray to a grove of ancient redwoods, and hope that by some miracle he can escape the five SWAT team members who pursue him. Though he kills two, he’s finally pinned down behind a massive tree. There, a glance upwards catches his eye and his awareness is drawn towards the sky. He is transfixed by the sunlight filtering through the heaven-leaning branches of the redwoods. In the final minute of his life, Ray relaxes, finds peace. His attention returns to this world and he realizes it is time to die. For no reason other than there being no other reason, he stands and steps from behind the tree. His bullet-ridden body falls to the ground and the camera cuts to the trees swaying overhead.
Woodrugh dies trying to keep his secret, Frank dies trying to keep his dream alive, and Ray dies trying to protect those he loves. Woodrugh’s death is dark and quick. Frank’s death is a bardo-like walk through his demons. Ray’s death is a moment of beauty.
In the end, we think back to the first episode and its “Book of the Dead” title. In that episode, Frank’s wife said that in death “You don’t take anything with you.”
“Just your self, whatever that was,” was Frank’s reply.