"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."