Because last week’s date showed me The Sopranos, and the one before him opted for Breaking Bad, Jacob, 27, has no choice but to spin the half-blacked-out wheel of grossly underrated male television shows in the hopes that it lands on something equal parts violent and homoerotic.

“C’mon, c’mon,” we chant in unison as the wheel spins, its bright red arrow grazing over niche titles like Ozark and Peaky Blinders. The air in his studio apartment is fraught with nervous anticipation and leftover pesto pasta. Picture the words AND/OR. Picture the tree diagram from your high school statistics class. Jacob is praying for adultery, while I could use a little murder mystery myself.

Picture an iridescent marble rolling down, then bouncing off different coloured chutes before finally coming to a neutral stop in 1995 Louisiana. We both let out a sigh. Season one of True Detective it is, then.

And to be fair, it is not a hard watch. I am talking about Matthew McConaughey’s face, of course. In the show, he plays Rust, a detective-slash-nihilist whose partner Marty is portrayed by none other than Woody Harrelson. (Whenever the latter smiles on screen, I am not sure if he is getting ready to laugh or punch someone.)

At the beginning of the season, which, as Jacob informs me in one of his intermittent soliloquies, is the only season starring these two actors since the show adopts an anthology format, Marty is the perfect foil to Rust.

Rust is new in town, a bachelor, brunette. Marty has been in Louisiana for most, if not all, of his life. He is married with two daughters, and you know they are his because they both have his blonde hair despite his wife’s dark, dominant allele locks (she is played by the beautiful Michelle Monaghan).

Marty lives in a humble but cozy house filled with luxuries such as an actual dining table and bedframes, while Rust lives in an apartment that, at one glance, will give any woman who was sexually active in her early twenties a war flashback. 

His mattress on the floor (boasting a single pillow, of course) is the only real fixture in the place. Other furnishings include graphic crime scene photographs taped up onto the wall as well as stacks of books with titles that naturally serve to explain Rust’s almost-Sherlockian perceptiveness (Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, Practical Homicide Investigation, and the aptly named Sex Crimes, to list a few).

In other words, whatever Rust is, Marty is not… yet?

The show opens with the discovery of a body, naked and bound in a sugar cane field. To make matters more disturbing, she has been crowned with a pair of deer antlers, and seemingly satanic symbols and iconography are scattered from her back to the branches overhead. “You know,” Jacob interrupts, “This was loosely based on a true story.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, the writer said—”

But I don’t have time to hear about what the writer said, because Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are talking in the car. The most entertaining parts of the show take place in the car. Here, we get a glimpse of Harrelson’s trademark dry humour and McConaughey’s immaculate side profile.

At this point, Marty and Rust have already been working together for three months, but this is the first time they are actually speaking to one another. I guess seeing a gruesome murder will do that to you.

Marty opens up the conversation by commenting on the cross that he spied in Rust’s apartment earlier. He can’t be that bad if he’s a man of God, right? 

Wrong. Rust tells him that he sees the cross as  “a form of meditation,” and when pressed further, shares that he believes “human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution” and that we should all collectively stop reproducing and embrace our extinction. 

Marty responds to this by appointing the car as a zone of silence. “I want them to kiss,” I say. Jacob laughs, but I am dead serious.

From then on, I lean forward in my seat whenever Rust and Marty are alone. Rust continues to say things that make the little poet inhabiting my heart do jumping jacks, things like “Days like lost dogs” and “This place is like somebody’s memory of a town, and the memory is fading.”

But Marty is not a fan of poetry.

“They are in love, but they just don’t know it yet,” I say, sitting cross-legged on the carpet now. “I want them to kiss. Will they kiss?”

Jacob laughs again, but this time it is shorter and comes out as slightly forced. I wonder if he is having second thoughts about me. But I push this thought out of my mind because Marty is cheating on his wife with a younger version of his wife, played by the equally beautiful Alexandra Daddario.

Watching a sex scene with a stranger from a dating app is not ideal. I try to lessen the awkwardness by commenting on Daddario’s perfect breasts. You know, to acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room. I don’t know what response I was expecting, but when Jacob says, “Oh, is that her name?” it feels like the wrong answer.

Marty rolls in to work the next morning looking like he got up from the wrong side of his mistress’ bed. Rust tells him that he smells like pussy. This makes Marty slam Rust into the lockers, their faces inches—no, centimetres—apart.

“Kiss already!” I scream, pounding my fists against the screen, feeling it crack and splinter into tiny, bite-sized pieces.

Author’s note: Apologies if this piece leans heavily on the first few episodes. It is because Jacob kicked me out after breaking his television, and I don’t have an HBO Max (or is it just Max?) subscription. Can anyone tell me if Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey live happily ever after?