If you have the means and the wherewithal, you are surely watching True Detective because holy shit it's amazing. (That final one-take scene at the end of last week's episode? OMG! How many times did you re-watch it? I did four times!) One of the recurring themes as people have heaped praise upon the show is McConaughey's badass performance as Detective Rust Cohle. It's almost two performances—one as the younger version who's experiencing the events, and another as the older version who's co-narrating the events while playing with empty beer cans and chain smoking.

That smoking... there's something about it. "... drags off cigarettes that are so long and luxurious that they make all the ex-smokers in the audience start twitching involuntarily and reaching for Nicorette," says Danger Guerrero at UPROXX. Sam Adams at Indiewire says, "He makes more out of smoking a cigarette against his interrogators' objections than some actors do of an entire performance." And the comments on this livejournal post dedicated to McConaughey's portrayal of Cohle: "I'm obsessed with the way he smokes cigarettes on the show for some reason." "I'm always disturbed by the way he smokes cigarettes on the show. It seems as though he's holding the smoke in for longer than he should and it unsettles me..." "My dad was like: 'He can really smoke a cigarette. One pull and half of it was gone!'"

I finally realized it watching last night's episode: It may be a remarkable way to smoke a cigarette, but you know what it's not? A remarkable way to smoke a joint. It's actually exactly how you smoke a joint. Think about it next time you watch it.