On a friend's suggestion, recently I watched the series from HBO, True detective. The story had many dimensions but I do not want to dig deep into the story. It didn't interest me. I was more intrigued by the two principal characters in this series, Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. The way these characters, their life and their thoughts about life has been defined, you can't help but see yourself as a bit in both of them. I cannot talk on behalf of the writer; I haven't read any of his interviews. But I feel this series focused on exploring the psyche of humans, the "programming" as Rust would call it, rather than the story itself.

I watched this series only once and I have only analyzed these characters as much as my programming allowed me to. But there were couple of gems that I noticed, which I wanted to talk about. Now, even the writer might not have thought about these interpretations and I might be over analyzing it. But I guess that's what good writing seeks to do. Anyway, I hope it doesn't end up like this.

The first thing to do, would be to refresh your memory about the "programming" that I was talking about. Watch this scene. In this scene, the characters and their line of thinking gets well-defined to the viewers here. Rust Cohle appears cold, brooding and unemotional. He is a rationalist; he seeks questions about life but more on the pointlessness of it. He seeks nothing, so he has excluded faith, religion or hope from his life. As for Marty Hart, he comes across as a regular bloke. A regular bloke that each one of us, think that others are. The "programming" that Rust mentions, has a meaning that is little open ended. It could be hinting at the human's quest for finding a purpose, I don't know. But one thing is clear, Rust wants to deny this programming, whereas Marty has embraced it. Marty veers off from this programming once in a while, his infidelity is a case in point. But lets look further at their conversations. After all these intense dialogues by Rust, at the fag end of the scene:

Marty: “Don’t say that! When you come over to the house, don’t say any of that shit!” 
Rust:  “Of course, man, I’m not some kind of maniac.” 

For a casual observer, Rust's dialog is a natural comeback, perhaps even funny. But I was thinking, that in the earlier exchanges between them, the writer took the pain of asserting that Rust is intense and dont-give-a-damn-what-others-think kind of guy. But here, the writer gives Rust a leeway, he is more amiable. This is interesting. I guess the ability of a rationalist to be self aware of his desire to deny his programming, is what differentiates him from a psychopath. Talking from Rust's perspective, it also seems that he transitioned himself from being a regular dude to a realist. It seems that before his kid's death, he followed his programming to the T.  And when this was disturbed, he switched to "reality". There are so many other psychological interpretations of these characters and their interactions that I am not able to consciously grasp at them to write them out on paper. If a Rust Cohle was reading this, most of it would be bull shit, but he would still nod his head in approval.