Watch True Detective’s Rust Cohle Break-Up With His GF in This Deleted Scene
No seriously, the antinatalist nihilist doesn’t want to start a family.
Jim Bridges/HBO
“If you’re going to live being so honest, without illusion, you said, then you can’t be serious. If you really think the reason you don’t want to have kids is philosophical, then you’re a blind man describing an elephant.”
This isn’t actually a line from Matthew McConaughey’s Failure to Launch, the 2006 romantic comedy about a 35-year-old man who just keeps livin’ at his parents’ house. It’s from ponderous, story of bro detectives that is True Detective.
In the deleted scene, Rust Cohle has an argument with his girlfriend Laurie (remember her?!) about having kids. Rust, doing exactly what McConaughey would advise against in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, tells her he doesn’t want to have children.
[The deleted scene has since been deleted.]
“Is it you don’t … with me? You don’t love me that way?”
“No Laurie, it’s not about you. I wouldn’t have children with anyone."
It’s a good thing that this scene was deleted. The scene demystifies Rust, and surely would have added fuel the claims that True Detective is misogynistic.
“I don’t know if you’re mostly good and just a coward,” she tells him before she leaves. “Or if you’re an asshole who’s a little smarter than most.”
The real question is why Rust does the dishes. You know, if time’s a flat circle and all that.
