True Detective - HBO (2014)

The daughter storyline and the timing of the “right under my nose” thing from Hart were unfortunate. It lead to all sorts of wild speculation about the daughter being tied into the cult somehow, when he literally meant what he said. His family should’ve been the most important thing to him, but he neglected his role as a father and husband.

“How the ‘True Detective’ Finale Demonstrated That It’s Great Small-Screen Cinema, But Lousy Literary TV”

Anton Chekhov was a major proponent of the economy of storytelling, which is to say: An author should not introduce elements into a story that are not necessary to it.

That reads more like the rant of a failed screenwriter than a critical review. It didn’t do what he thought it should so it must be the show’s fault. He complains that they introduced Maggie’s father but then did nothing with him? They also introduced the bartender at a roller skating rink…but they failed to make him into the head of the cult. That’s just shoddy writing.

Errol Childress (possibly). His house and the ruins or whatever around it. A hallucination that may have some thematic meaning, but was definitely still just a hallucination.

To the first question, I say possibly because it doesn’t seem like Errol would’ve been the leader originally, but he seemed to be running things at this point, by virtue of other members of the group dying off or distancing themselves later in life. So various references to the Yellow King could’ve been to different people at different times, I suppose, but I’d say definitely Errol for Dora Lange and all more recent activities at least.

I enjoyed TD from the very first to the very last minute. As expected and hinted at, the last episode didn’t have any major plot twist that would have turnd everything upside-down. We already knew who the villain was and nothing about changed. It did surprise me in that I was sure that Rust (salvation), Marty (redemption) or both bite the dust at the end of the show. Them surviving and Rust somehow finding new meaning didn’t break the previous narrative or how the characters were set up.

Rust having the vortex hallucination - worked well for me! I liked the visuals of it, and I could see why it happened. He was completely fired up, Erroll shouts only added to it. He knew it was going to end there one way or another, and when he entered this mysterious, breathtaking room, the synapses in his mind went crazy.

The show had always looked always great,but man, the set design of Carcosa was outstanding. Great stuff.

Something about this show short-circuited my actor-recognition. I think we already mentioned Brother Mouzone from The Wire, but I also didn’t recognize George Remus from Boardwalk Empire as Errol.

I found that whole scene with Remus/Errol at the beginning of the episode in which he talks about his “constitutional” and talks with that British accent really odd.

Pizzolatto said the back story he imagined for that was that when Errol’s father messed up his face, Errol re-learned how to talk by watching the movies. So his actual voice was all screwed up, but he learned to mimic other voices, or something. Again, it’s in that interview. Interesting hear about now, but a little bit goofy, and probably better that it wasn’t actually explained in the show.

Wow, I need to read those interviews. While I agree that it was probably best not to spend a lot of time on his back story, it does add some new depth to the show.

My interpretation of the wormhole is that Rust was actually seeing a giant spiral on the wall and his brain decided it was a great moment to embellish. No other real reason why there is earlier dialogue in the car asking if Rust was still seeing things or not.

— Alan

I was so amazed by this show initially, but there was a moment on the fourth episode where the magic started to fade away (When Ginger and Rust talked at the table, and Ginger, who is supposed to be a drug dealer and a leader of a motorcycle gang, talks like a mystic philosopher. It was 100% out of place.). After that, it stopped being the best show on earth, but still pretty good.

But then comes along, in the last minute, this … Rust’s light versus dark platitude, and I groaned when he said the light was winning.

Yes, I guess you can rationalize that into a more personal message about the change of Rust’s psyche, but there’s no way around the fact that the delivery and framing was heavy-handed and lacked the nuance that the show started off with. It just didn’t click with the rest of the show, and came off as silly.

Are you thinking of DeWall in episode 5 (with Ginger present) telling Rust he can see his soul around the edges of his eyes? I don’t remember Ginger actually talking that mystically in episode 4 or 5.

That’s exactly the scene. Sorry, I remembered the person and the episode wrong. But the point still stands.

I do get that being weird. I loved it just because I liked the language, but it does seem odd if you think about it to have this meth monster dude’s reservations sounding like something Rust would say.

The show’s not perfect. But it’s definitely really really good, and the ways in which it’s good also push the right buttons for me to make it one of my favorites. Those buttons might also frustrate someone (like not actually being supernatural when for a while it seemed like the kind of show that could be), so I get the awesomeness fading for some people by the end.

One of the mid season episodes finishes with a dude walking in the woods with a Fallout style mask. Who is this character behind the mask? Is it Errol? The Yellow King?

That’s LaRue.

— Alan

Reggie Ledoux - the meth cook Marty shot after he found out that he (Ledoux) had kidnapped, abused and killed children.

I’m totally writing this post skipping all the previous pages and posts, just in case. I started the series today, I watched the first two eps, and damn it’s good! It hooked me fast. Tomorrow I’ll watch two more.

I watched the show yesterday and today, four episodes per session. I feel compelled to chime in on the older daughter sexual abuse plotline. First of all, I think it’s absolutely incontrovertible that she was abused. The posing of the dolls and the drawings were strong evidence that she was trying to process situations her mind wasn’t ready to handle. The connection between motifs in her art (the spiral and the mural from the mental hospital) and the case were evidence that her abuse was connected to the cult. I think the juxtaposition of warning signs with Marty’s “under my nose” musings weren’t a red herring. The show proceeded to demonstrate that not only was it under his nose and he couldn’t see it, he never managed to see it. It was intentionally left out of the resolution of the story because it demonstrates how many loose ends their investigation failed to tie up.

The director has cleared up the Audrey situation - it was just acting out due to inattentiveness from her father. And the spiral in the kitchen was a total mistake by the art department, they grabbed a bunch of drawings done by kids and didn’t realize that was in there.

Nobody has said anything about the mental hospital drawing though.