Spoilers…
Well normally true, but it’s not like he didn’t have this massive life-changing near-death experience where he can feel fairly accomplished for having done something truly good–the light, winning. It’s fine. Pretty hard to have a character drama if you concede that the characters can never change.
The part where Rusty sees the wormhole or whatever is a great WTF moment.
— Alan
So you don’t think Cohle may have had some motivation there? You don’t suppose that the show already had shown us that at least some of Cohle’s affected personality was a put-on? Cohle seems like a guy who’s convinced himself through his own bullshit that he knows all the answers to the questions of the universe…and then the universe walks up to him and gives him a big ol’ bearhug and our boy confronts the idea that he doesn’t know shit.
Also, a key prop in the finale is a Chop House or Beef Baron, pointed tip, black bakelite handle.
Recognized it immediately.
What? I don’t get it.
— Alan
Agree 1000% loved every min of this show
I was bothered by it. I haven’t fully resolved my feelings, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it. It’s a positive message, I get that, and I get why that message (of being connected to something larger, that nihilism is a flawed worldview, that bad men keeping other bad men from the door means something in the struggle between light and dark) is something the show wanted to hammer home.
I also get why they wanted Cohl to get there – it means more coming from him – but I just don’t think it was earned. I think the near-death epiphany is a bullshit device (I guess Cohl’s first near-death experience, when he took three slugs while undercover, didn’t stick), and the Jesus imagery at the end really bothered me.
It just didn’t feel like an organic resolution, or an organic arc. I think it would have landed more solidly if 2012 Cohl showed more signs of change before the final epiphany. But we have him in that very episode talking about “sentient meat.” Ugh.
I was really hoping it was going to end with that shot of Cohl in the hospital bed staring out of the window at the sky, and his own reflection. But they have to sully that moment by having Cohl explicitly state what he was thinking. All that said MM’s performance there at the end was stunning. So at least we have that.
So I guess my main complaint is that I felt the final message, while a worthwhile conceit to hang the show’s hat on, didn’t feel entirely earned coming from Cohle. Not the end of the world by any means.
No, it could have been done and done well. Of course that’s not the show Pizzolatto was interested in making and I’m quite satisfied with what he made but there’s room for a show that starts as a procedural and veers into less well charted waters.
On that front this is an interesting line from an interview with Pizzolatto: “I realize I need to keep being strange. Don’t play the next one straight.”
After such a banquet of fine acting, writing and directing that kept me riveted until the very last frame, it seems churlish to mention that the traditional Hollywood dessert of forgiveness and redemption was predictable, and in one case unearned. But the Internet is where you go to be churlish, so what the hell.
I’m not here to complain about dangling plot threads, or even Rust’s near-death epiphany - conventional though it was, it was at least carefully prepared for. I’m here to complain about Marty. His story is, frankly, unpolished and unfinished. We spent literally hours on his messed-up relationships with women, culminating in the collapse of his marriage and his (dangling plot thread of a) dalliance with the former hooker. And then … there’s no follow through on that side of the show. Sure, he spends a decade alone, but it’s not at all clear he learned anything from that (the fact he stopped dogging around could be chalked up as much to him getting middle-aged and boring as to learning any life lessons.) Sure, his wife and daughters elect to visit him in the hospital, but that’s simple human decency and not some grand rapprochement. The take-away on Marty seems to be, “Sure he’s an asshole, but at least he’s not a devil worshiper who does unspeakable things to children.” Which is not much of a character arc.
I was expecting a noir, where the worst demons always turn out to be the ones within ourselves. Instead I got something older and simpler - pulp, where the message is the worst demons are neatly externalized cultists who can be shot at the end. Which I admit is a twist, but not exactly the kind of twist I was looking for.
I thought this show, especially the last 30 seconds, was about as perfect as perfect can be. So happy it didn’t go supernatural - that would have been horrible w/o setting that up earlier. Also happy it actually ended with Rust’s epiphany, which was a great twist. Happy not everything was wrapped up in a neat bow like an episode of “Almost Human” or some other network drek.
I have no idea how they’ll top this next season, but I too will be there on release.
I like that he lied to the investigators in the 2nd or 3rd episode that he didn’t have the hallucinations anymore but then told Marty that they never stopped. Alan, I also agree with your assessment about the life-changing near-death experience being enough of a justification to warrant a change of outlook on life.
It’s too bad that Cary Fukunaga won’t be back for the second season. Hopefully they will stick with the one director for the entire season format.
To me, a key message about Cohle is that his epiphany failed. He was enveloped by the warm light of loving grace and let go-- and then still woke up in this sordid life. So his last scene was not, for me, a man who had embraced darkness and then found God. It was about a man who had embraced darkness, then found God at the last moment–and had even that denied him. One of the key noir tenets is rejection of redemption at the end. It was very interesting to me that, instead, redemption ended up rejecting Cohle. So he has, in my mind, exited his own flat circle of grief and despair and finally come to peace with the death of his daughter. I doubt he’s going to enter a new career as a door-to-door Bible salesman. Thought I would watch the hell out of that show.
I’m glad they lived, and didn’t catch everybody.
Gives me hope for True Detective 4: The Return of Rust and Marty!
Now that’s something I can get behind, I love this reading of it.
Alan Sepinwall’s interview with Pizzolatto (conducted post-finale, so obviously filled with spoilers) that Scott quoted earlier is probably worth reading: http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/true-detective-creator-nic-pizzolatto-looks-back-on-season-1
Here’s Pizzolatto’s response when pressed for details about season 2. Not sure how serious he’s being…
"
“Okay. This is really early, but I’ll tell you (it’s about) hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system.”
See if you ask me, Cohle has found a reason to live. While he mentioned in an earlier episode that he doesn’t have the constitution for suicide he’s been looking for death. When he finds the opportunity to let go and accept, he’s denied that peace but he knows it’s there. And the point isn’t whether it was real or not, but rather that by opening up and feeling, Cohle has accepted his part in the greater whole of things, of humanity. He has been closed off so long, as Marty keeps pointing out he just pushes everyone away. Who knows where he things might go from that ending scene, but I think Cohle recognized that his isolation was killing him, or maybe just realized that he cares that it was killing him.
Yeah, this is pretty close to how I saw the “epiphany” scenes as well. Plus, there was a lot of attention called again to Rust’s hallucinations in this last episode, so I saw his experience with the warm light as having been born from his mental condition.
I thought it was a deeper darkness that was where he described feeling his daughter and father, not a warm light. Did I mishear that? I tried to watch the episode a second time last night, but HBO Go was pretty busted.
Yes, ‘god’ for lack of a better work, was darkness for Rust. It had nothing to do with his vision. And then, the very last line of his - was it looks to me like the light is winning or some such. I don’t think he further embraced his atheism by rejecting, personally. To top it all of, he said, repeatedly, that he shouldn’t be there (meaning he should have stayed in the darkness with his daughter and father.)