Rust Cohle
 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
| Rustin Cohle | |
|---|---|
| True Detective character | |
| First appearance | "The Long Bright Dark" |
| Last appearance | "Form and Void" |
| Created by | Nic Pizzolatto |
| Portrayed by | Matthew McConaughey |
| In-universe information | |
| Nickname | Crash (by Iron Crusaders) The Taxman |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Detective Bartender |
| Family | Sophia Cohle (daughter; deceased) Claire Cohle (ex-wife) |
| Religion | Agnosticism/Nihilism[1] |
Rustin Spencer "Rust" Cohle is a fictional character in the American television drama series True Detective on HBO. He was created by series creator Nic Pizzolatto and is portrayed by Matthew McConaughey. Cohle works as a detective for the Louisiana State Homicide Unit, alongside his partner Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson). The series follows Cohle and Hart's hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana, across seventeen years.
Both the Rustin Cohle character and Matthew McConaughey's performance have received critical acclaim. McConaughey won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series, and has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
Personality
Rustin Cohle is a talented, albeit troubled and haunted, detective. Cohle is very dedicated to his work as a detective, because he can't find comfort in anything else, and is especially renowned at racking up "assists" for other detectives, and getting confessions from criminals through (what he thinks is) basic psychology. He is also known to carry with him an unusually large ledger for case notes, which he thinks helps him find the small cracks that will finally break the case, which earned him the nickname, "The Tax Man", from his fellow colleagues.
After his daughter's unfortunate death, Rustin Cohle couldn't find comfort through religion, and began seeing the world through pure physics. Denying the importance of religion in a gray world filled with death and pain, he resents people's cathartic search for a better life through religion and God.
At one point, Cohle's partner Martin Hart said that he "wasn't big on talking, except when you wanted him to shut up." Cohle also seems to prefer to live by himself, and it appears that he has never been able to sustain a relationship for longer than a few years, because of his daughter's death and his wife leaving him, and not wanting to have any more children. Cohle is not prone to any material desires, and his apartment is bare; with only a simple bed, a cross on the wall and books on various sex and violent crimes. He also suffers from deep insomnia and hallucinations, which may partially be a consequence of his undercover assignments for the narcotics department in Texas. Through the course of the show we see him slowly become a heavy drinker, trying to drown the memories of his past and his mistakes.
Background
Rustin Cohle's father came back home from the war in Vietnam to South Texas. He then impregnated Rustin Cohle's mother, and she left her family, ultimately leaving her child in the care of his father. Father and son soon left Texas and moved to Alaska. According to Cohle; he and his father never got along. His father "had some strange ideas" and became a form of survivalist. Rustin soon left his father in Alaska, one supposed reason being that he hated the cold, and returned to South Texas. He always remembered it being warm. Rustin's father never forgave him for leaving.
Rustin was once a police officer for the South Texas Police Department, and also a married man with a daughter. In the late 1980s his two-year-old daughter, Sophia Cohle, rode her tricycle down the road, which had a bend in it, and was killed. According to the Doctor's; she slipped directly into a coma and then eventually died. Rustin's only comfort was that she died as a happy child, painlessly. Later in life he believes that his daughter ultimately spared him the sin of being a father after her death. Rustin's marriage to his wife couldn't survive the pain, they blamed themselves for Sophia's death, they resented each other for being alive, and his wife, Claire Cohle, left her husband soon afterwards.
The files and records of his service for the police department, and operations, in Texas are still classified or redacted, and much of what we know about Rustin Cohle's past is a subject to question, because his narration may not always be reliable.
Rustin became traumatized after his daughter's death, and soon left the Robbery Department to join the H.I.D.T.A. (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area), which caused his neural breakdown and giving him hallucinations. He spent more and more time with drug addicts, and soon became one himself. After killing a "junkie" who murdered his infant daughter, explaining that he was trying to "purify her", Rustin Cohle was given the opportunity to became an undercover official for the Narcotics Department.
In February 1993, after serving 4 years as a deep undercover official; Rustin claims to have killed 3 cartel men in a gunfight at the Port of Houston, suffering three gunshot wounds in the process, finally ending his days in the Narcotics Department. He was then forced to spend 4 months in a Northshore Psychiatric Hospital in Lubbock, Texas.
Rustin Cohle was then given the option to retire, due to his neural breakdown, and take a pension, which he refused. While being owed "quite a few favors", he instead asked to be transferred to a Homicide Department, and Louisiana is what they had.
Awards
- Won – TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama (2014)
- Won – Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series (2014)
- Nominated – Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (2014)
References
External links
