I also think that by the time of the Dora Lang murder, the original cult had disbanded and it was just Errol, Reggie and Dewall carrying on with their own brand of crazy. Clearly they had all been abused/marked by the cult. This would put Audrey out of the timeframe to be victimized. I really think it was just Marty not being around, and being a father the way he should have. Everything was about him, note how even when he is trying to comfort Audrey after they discuss the drawings, he is still trying to watch the game. That said, her plot seemed an obvious red herring, or they just didn’t think it through, with the placement of the dolls, the drawings, etc.
As for the ending, all I really wanted was for Rust to get some redemption and peace. That fact Marty did too was a bonus, even if most of his problems were self-made. To have them die would have been so typical of the genre, it was almost expected. But to see these guys go thru hell and come out the other side, gives it much more of an emotional impact. Harrelson’s acting when he says “I’ll be fine” hit me right in the gut, then followed by Mcconaughey’s dialog at the end…acting does not get much better than that.
I think the Yellow King was probably at one time Sam Tuttle, but later became the effigy in Carcosa. Dora Lang mentioned she “met a King” but if you are high on meth and LSD, and errol introduces you to it as such, you’d probably believe it.
As for the lose ends, eh. It makes sense that finding the real identities would be difficult, if it had been long disbanded. But hopefully they stopped the present day evil.
There are very few pieces of popular entertainment that have the guts to kill off main characters. I don’t think it would have been in any way predictable.
I realize this is getting into Princess Bride battle of wits territory, but eventually doing something subversive becomes predictable, so then you have to subvert those expectations, etc. Like, TV characters don’t typically die, so along comes Joss Whedon, who’s not afraid to kill someone to keep audiences on their toes. And now that’s sort of a predictable Whedon thing, where you suspect he’s probably gonna kill someone, just to remind you that no one’s safe.
So here we have a TV show going against a bunch of traditional norms out of the gate: big name stars, dark themes, serialized, effectively a mini-series, with a single director and writer, etc. I wouldn’t say I expected Marty or Rust to die, but I’d have put their odds at 50/50, which is considerably worse than most TV characters.
I guess what I’m taking too long to say is this is not a show where killing off the main characters would take “guts” any more than every other aspect of the show already required.
Especially when it was very clear that Rust desired death. The subversion of his own desire is a nice echo of the subversion of the audience expectation.
I don’t think there’s much risk in killing of a main character of a show that has repeatedly informed us none of them will return for a second season anyway.
I fully expected one of them to die because Rust made it very clear that he was settling accounts before dying. I thought there was a good chance that Hart would bite it instead making Rust the survivor and placing him in the uncomfortable position of being the one to continue on.
Having both of them live successfully subverted my expectations.
As for main characters dying, noir and potboiler detective thrillers have a long history of killing off the main protagonist.
I respected the fact that both guys survived, but only because Pizzolatto had a reason other than “people are probably expecting one or both to die.” And it is interesting to see a purported nihilist receive grace. But the anthology format put every option on the table for Pizzolatto: he wasn’t constrained by economics or serialization. I was hoping he’d go for something really dark and grand. But in fact he was constrained; he actually liked his characters. To have followed those guys for 8 episodes and to see them lumped in with the great and glowing things in the universe was… disconcerting. All the show’s interesting themes had to do with how evil lingers and perpetuates itself. And these doofuses get to close the loop, even a little?
Why not? The point is that while evil may linger, they were doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. And they managed to win the battle in the end, though by their choosing may be out of the war. If it’s a struggle, there has to be two sides.
The show obviously has no problem leaving certain threads hanging, and closed the loop on what it chose to. Marty makes no bones about the fact that while the “conspiracy”, whoever that may have involved, was not brought to justice, they did get their guy. And it’s totally clear something was going on with Marty’s older daughter, but the more I think about it I believe it was just there as an example of his detective’s blindness. He could not see what was happening in his own home.
Yeah, I mean… meh. It was a fine plan. Maybe it was the execution that threw me. Being macabre in an over the top way goes down more easily than some over the top optimism.
Well said. Rust carried way too much weight on his shoulders. He deserved some hope. And I don’t think he was as nihilistic as he let on. It was obvious he cared too much, if anything, and that front was armor, and over time, maybe he believed it. My opinion, anyway. Like Marty said at the tent revival, “For a guy who sees no point in existence, you sure fret about it an awful lot.”
I think there are three genres involved in the show: drama (the two detectives and relationships), detective fiction (the investigation and a larger conspiracy), and weird fiction (lots of symbols and allusions). The three are intertwined and so prevalent throughout the series that it becomes difficult to argue that one is more important than the other two.
Given that, I don’t think all three would have been developed fully in only eight episodes.
I just spent the weekend watching this series more or less back to back, which was a great way to watch it. I don’t usually watch a lot of TV and didn’t have any expectations beforehand. I was blown away by it. Superb acting and a great story. I have to admit, though, that I am with the “didn’t like that last minutes” team. I think that it’s a shame to undermine the core of what Rust is/was like that, just to provide some sort of feel-good ending.
The dialogues in the car - all of them - were fantastic. So many classic quotes.
Tom Chick @Qt3 7m
The podcast for The Lego Movie will be posted Monday night instead of tonight due to me binging on some stupid TV show. #TrueDetective
He certainly wasn’t a nihilist. He cared too much about the case, about Maggie, and even about Hart. For the most part he buried all of his feelings except what we saw in his pursuit of the case deep. He cared about things, though.
