The Long Bright Dark

Not a bad pilot episode for this season. It had its flaws, but this was still a great episode. My favorite characters in this episode were Rust and Martin. My favorite things about this episode were the music, the storyline, and the acting. When I watch the next seven episodes, that is the time I will stop watching the show for some reasons. First of all, that is the end of the storyline, cause each season has different characters with different storylines. Second, the next two have very low ratings compared to this first season. My mom thought that this first season was a 10/10 season, and was a sort of must-watch.

A real pessimist with a magnifying cyclops-eye for inhuman precision and his compromising assigned partner break the jungle-fevered silence of the Louisiana swamps.

The performances and the writing. Without a doubt Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson go great together. There is something between them that is not acting, as a viewer you can just feel that there is a general antipathy between them, which is something very hard to achieve and it shows how well these two work together, they are both absolutely superb actors doing the best they can. They're as different as they can be, but the passion and love they put into their job is the same and connects them. McConaughey's character might stand out, because of his mysterious and dark, depressive, pessimistic nature, his monologues and his view on life are astounding. Woody Harrelson's character is family friendly, he suffers, because of the job, yet wants to solve the case more than anything.

I first saw this few years back. Revisited it recently. This review of mine is for the entire first season.

The first season takes place in Louisiana and follows a pair of homicide detectives (Harrelson and McConaughey) n their pursuit of a serial killer. The acting n direction is top notch. The setting n the plot has a foreboding n mysterious feeling. The killings r offscreen but the images r chilling. There is a topless scene of the beauty Alexandra Daddario n the title track along with the story very mesmerizing. A perfect example of a riveting drama aided with amazing performances by McConaughey n Harrelson.

It's amazing the amount of material they fit into this episode. Rust's character (McConaughey) is more fully previewed here compared to Marty (Harralson), but Rust was always the main character. Harralson has more work to do since Marty is a cop character that seems more familiar. He crushes it. I'd say his performance is the best in the show.

That said, the character of Rust is so good and McConaughey brings him to life in a way that makes Rust one of the all time best screen detectives.

There's so many combined clues or red herrings, suggestions, questions and mysteries in this episode. It's dizzying.

For fans of murder mysteries and southern gothic with the suggestion of the cultic/supernatural.