True Detective - Who Goes There

The end of "Who Goes There" marks the halfway point of the anthology's first season and the midpoint of this storyline. It also gives Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Hart (Woody Harrelson) a legitimate lead on the crazed meth maker Reginald Ledoux (Charles Halford) who looks more and more like the killer the pair of detectives have been hunting for months. With no way to find Ledoux except through the biker gang who their suspect is now cooking meth for, Cohle goes undercover off-the-books renewing an old friendship that may lead him to a possible introduction. And, of course, that's when things start going seriously wrong.

After Hart's blow-up with Lisa (Alexandra Daddario), his mistress spills the beans to his wife (Michelle Monaghan) who promptly takes the kids and leaves. With his marriage dissolving in front of his eyes, Marty moves in with his partner as Cohle prepares his ingenious undercover plan which leaves him high on multiple hits of cocaine and in the middle of a armed robbery of a gang's stash house to earn the introduction he needs to keep the case moving forward. Hart's partner somehow finds a way to get both himself and his witness out of a gang shoot-out and a police barricade demonstrating just how far he is willing to go to close the case.

Although we get fewer of the present day scenes in "Who Goes There," what is clear is the detectives (Michael Potts, Tory Kittles) don't buy Cohle's excuse of personal time to visit his father. And despite their constant bickering, the partnership continues to work as Cohle's recklessness leads them one step closer to the collar of the detective's careers. It also leads us further down the path of what the new detectives want with Cohle as their leading questions about where Hart's partner led the investigation continue to make it obvious they believe that Cohle's hands are far dirtier than the records show. I'm not sure if they ultimately want to pin the murders on Cohle (one possibility I saw in the first episode given their attitude to Chole and Hart), but given their reaction to the partners' testimony I think it could be a definite possibility.