The True Detective (Meta) Drinking Game
Let me be the first admit, we here at BTSB are a bunch of True Detective geeks. I, for one, got into it while it was running in the US, waiting impatiently for every new episode. Our editor-in-chief binged the whole series in the span of a single evening. Ms. Kurki and Mr. Mäntykivi nodded in unison for a month, wary of spoilers, hankering for the next fix, after Mr. Simola had talked about the show's greatness incessantly. We're all impatiently wating for season two, apparently featuring a cast of three protagonists, and set in somewhere else than Louisiana. While True Detective, like many other suspenseful tales of crime and thrill, might be ideally enjoyed alone in a dark room at night, we encourage our readers to hit it up from HBO Nordic (or your, erm, service of choice) over the summer and bring along your friends of refined taste. For this very purpose, we present the light-on-spoilers True Detective (Meta) Drinking Game - (Meta) in the sense that the series caused quite a ripple on the internetz for its references and allusions, even boosting sales of semi-obscure fiction from the 19th century. We believe that this sophistication is expertly reflected by the exquisite ruleset of the game. Play responsibly.
You'll need: 18 pack of Lone Star beer (substitute with Budweiser or something hyper-American should the pride of Texas be unavailable)
1 bottle of bourbon (the fouler the better)
1 Season 1 of HBO's True Detective
Preparations: Make sure you include someone watching the show for, at least, the second time in your group. Don't tell her about the rules labelled b. and c. below
Rules:
1a. Drink once whenever the theme song plays.
1b. Drink again if someone sings along to the theme song.
1c. Chug your drink if someone goes on to explain how the theme song is "Far From Any Road" by the alternative country group the Handsome Family and the music in True Detective rocks big time.
2a. Drink once whenever you see the Big Hug Mug.
2b. Swig on the bourbon if someone mentions that you can "Actually get one of those mugs online!"
2c. Empty a beer if someone mentions owning said mug. If they've brought it along, pause the episode and get another case of beer, it's going to be a long night.
3. Drink once for any hallucinations.
4. Drink once for HBO nudity.
5a. Drink once whenever Matthew McConaghey appears without a shirt.
5b. Drink again if anyone confesses to having a total crush on Matthew McConaughey or his character.
5c. Swig on the bourbon if someone goes on a longwinded tangent about Matthew McConaughey's career and how he now only takes on serious roles and doesn't do any of that romcom shit anymore.
6. Drink once for any reference to antlers.
7. Drink once for references to crucifixion.
8. Drink once for metaphysical rants or other philosophical observations.
9a. Drink once for sweeping aerial shots of Louisiana.
9b. Drink again, and again, if anyone starts to go on and on about how Louisiana and/or the South is totally like a character in the series; how peculiarly Southern the whole thing is.
10. Pour one for the dead homies when you hear Wu-Tang Clan.
11. Drink once for police brutality.
12. Swig on the bourbon if you see the owl.
13a. Take a swig of bourbon whenever the "Yellow King" or "Carcosa" is mentioned.
13b. Take another swig if someone says that the "Yellow King" is actually taken from the Cthulhu author H.P. Lovecraft.
13c. Pour a shot of bourbon and drink it as a bourbon bomb with your Lone Star, if another person corrects the one in 12b. by saying that, actually, the "King in Yellow" was invented by Robert W. Chambers in the late 19th century and that his books got a huge boost to their sales after the show launched.
