"To state the obvious: while the male detectives of “True Detective” are avenging women and children, and bro-bonding over “crazy pussy,” every live woman they meet is paper-thin. Wives and sluts and daughters—none with any interior life. Instead of an ensemble, “True Detective” has just two characters, the family-man adulterer Marty, who seems like a real and flawed person (and a reasonably interesting asshole, in Harrelson’s strong performance), and Rust, who is a macho fantasy straight out of Carlos Castaneda. A sinewy weirdo with a tragic past, Rust delivers arias of philosophy, a mash-up of Nietzsche, Lovecraft, and the nihilist horror writer Thomas Ligotti. At first, this buddy pairing seems like a funky dialectic: when Rust rants, Marty rolls his eyes. But, six episodes in, I’ve come to suspect that the show is dead serious about this dude. Rust is a heretic with a heart of gold. He’s our fetish object—the cop who keeps digging when everyone ignores the truth, the action hero who rescues children in the midst of violent chaos, the outsider with painful secrets and harsh truths and nice arms."

"It was about the evil of men who treat women as lurid props, but the show treated women as lurid props."

"Like almost all the supporting characters on this show, the women were just sketches—occasionally naked ones—compared to our full-bodied detectives. The show’s major crimes involved endemic brutality against women and children, and victims is all that the women of this show remained, people against whom various wrongs were committed. No TV show has an obligation to be everything to everyone. True Detective is a series I admired and enjoyed, and its treatment of women is not even the thing that irked me most about the finale, which left a number of niggling questions unanswered and finished on a "let there be light" riff. But it’s worth lingering on True Detective’s woman problem in part because that problem is closely, if not intentionally, tied to the show’s massive success: When it comes to prestige TV, there has yet to be a downside to out-bro-ing yourself."

"Matthew McConaughey - Detective Rustin "Rust" Cohle"

"Woody Harrelson - Detective Martin "Marty" Hart"

"Michelle Monaghan - Maggie Hart"

"Michael Potts - Detective Maynard Gilbough"

"Tory Kittles - Detective Thomas Papania"

"Kevin Dunn - Major Ken Quesada"

"Alexandra Daddario - Lisa Tragnetti"

"Charles Halford - Reginald "Reggie" Ledoux"

"Jay O. Sanders - Billy Lee Tuttle"

"Glenn Fleshler - Errol William Childress"

"Elizabeth Reaser - Laurie Perkins"

"Lili Simmons - Beth"

"Colin Farrell - Detective Ray Velcoro"

"Vince Vaughn - Frank Semyon"

"Rachel McAdams - Detective Antigone "Ani" Bezzarides"

"Taylor Kitsch - Officer Paul Woodrugh"

"Kelly Reilly - Jordan Semyon"

"Ritchie Coster - Mayor Austin Chassani"

"Lolita Davidovich - Nancy Spencer"