True Detective Is Riddled With Buddy Cop Cliches
By Josh Hill
If there is one person who is getting a ton of surprise acclaim for True Detective‘s success, it’s not Matthew McConaughey, rather it’s series creator Nic Pizzolatto who has rocketed to newfound fame thanks to penning the most popular and critically acclaimed series of this season.
But while his original story is compelling, it may not really be that original after all as despite the content being dark and brooding, that in of itself is one of the many buddy cop cliches that Pizzolatto ripped off for True Detective. We can’t blame him for doing so, as it’s very much a genre show and cliches are absolutely unavoidable, but the folks over at Deadspin put together a hilarious list of buddy cop cliches that are abundantly clear in True Detective.
Here are some highlights:
"1. Mismatched partners who never wanted to be partners to begin with2. And end up spending more time together than is probably realistic3. One’s a family man. The other? A LONER.4. Put-upon cop wife who just doesn’t get “the job”8. Loner rebel cop forced to literally turn in his badge and gun12. Long car rides13. Witnesses scared to talk14. Biker gangs22. “You two. My office.”23. Final showdown takes place in some kind of creepy abandoned facility25. Heroes both survive what would normally be EXTREMELY fatal injuries, i.e. hatchet wound to the aorta26. One cop about to get killed by the bad guy is rescued at the last possible second by the other cop, who you thought was TOTALLY incapacitated up until that moment27. Seemingly dying cop is cradled by other wounded cop (who, despite having a hatchet wound to the aorta, is apparently the less injured one)30. Rebel cop finds way out of the darkness31. Despite shooting lots of people and breaking numerous law-enforcement procedures, to say nothing of the law itself, two cops walk away from the crime scene totally absolved of everything"
You can read the entire list of buddy cop cliches that Deadspin spotted a while back in True Detective here, and be sure to leave a comment about whether or not these cliches bothered out or if they really didn’t take away from the story that much.