2002 Marty opens the episode with a quick hypocritical beatdown of the two boys his daughter hooked up with that is so violent and despicable that it even makes him vomit. Then he goes shopping for tampons, which is so emasculating that it drives him off the wagon and into the bed of that child hooker he saved from the trailer park, who is now hawking cell phones (as well as a line of bullshit about how great a person Marty is, of course).

"Beth" has little Precious Moments dolls of angels and devils that watch them while he fucks her, and later Maggie finds pictures of her tits on his phone. While Marty is feeling guilt, or something like it, once the child hooker offers to take it up the ass he decides to go for it again. This is between bouts of being the worst father and the most unsubtle philanderer who ever lives. It's amazing she doesn't just club him over the head, but I guess in a way that's what she does.

Maggie -- reading Reviving Ophelia, which cracked me right up -- decides she's had enough with the oblivious Homer Simpsoning around and gross misogyny and hypocrisy, and decides to troll for some D. But after she realizes that revenge-boning a stranger is gross, she heads on over to Cohle's so that she can ruin everything at once. It's pretty awesome of her. But then afterwards she starts crying and then they both cry and yell about what a whore she is, and then she goes home so Marty can cry and yell about what a whore she is, and choke her. But no matter how infinitely many times she gets called a whore -- and, presumably, the Skyler White treatment -- she's still always going to be the raddest person on the show: In 2012 she tells the detectives that she has simply no idea why they stopped being friends.

The show treats it like she is the devil raping a baby, I guess because she's violating some kind of sacred man-bond, but whatever, it's gross as hell. As is Cohle's demand (not unlike the Southern Fried Pharmacy Killer's phone call?) that a Munchhausen-by-Proxy case kill herself. This leads to a big fight with Marty, who doesn't like the roles they've found themselves in where Cohle is the superstar interrogator while Sergeant Marty is the meek filer of paperwork ("Without me there is no you, man!"). Must be the Detective's Curse again.

Cohle has been secretly pulling cold cases trying to put together his case for the fact that there is a Tuttle-centered conspiracy of ritual murderers: He visits past possible victims, gets the catatonic girl from Ledoux's house to scream some freaky things about the scarred giant ("His face! His face!" is very Lovecraftian for sure), and then after he checks in on the Shea Whigham guy from the traveling revivals, who quit after trying to whistle-blow a molestation ring in the church, he decides he's got enough gas in the tank for the mother of all bad moves: He visits Reverend Tuttle himself and explains just enough about his investigation to warrant a huge crushing cockblock from the CID heads. Which unpaid suspension is why he's getting drunk and weird with his evidence when Maggie comes over to rock everybody's world.

Marty, sick of being the less-special one of the pair and now fully in beast mode, hands Cohle a beatdown back at HQ, putting the end to a rising tide of hatred between the two guys and causing Cohle to finally quit the force. Where did he go? Nobody knows, although the 2012 cops think he's been around the entire time and only resurfaced after he was able to arrange Tuttle's murder. At this point Marty tells the guys to fuck off and deserts his own interview, only to find Rust following him on the highway, looking for a beer with an old friend. Which he is willing to buy, but he's for sure packing heat.

Anyway. Not to say I told you so, but I told you so.

Next Week: Rust thinks they should solve the murder they forgot to solve. Spaghetti Face is the first suspect, but I'm guessing not the last one. Two episodes left.