GTFO

I didn't say I agreed with that theory, but I read it in several articles discussing the finale.

There did seem to be an unusually large number of red herrings that led absolutely nowhere. If nothing else I do think Nic realized that it's a show people obsessively theorize about online, so he could have been having some fun with that.

gotta balance your genre ranges to be unexploitable obv

much like season 1, I thought the s3 finale was awesome and ethereal

They are because the show is intentionally written and directed to overtly suggest there was/is something going on way more entertainingly unexpected and creepy than what we got. Like Lost all the creepy semi-metaphysical atmospheric filming, mysterious plot points etc. are just there as a big substance-free tease to hook viewers.

What if I told you that true art was about what the artist wants to say? TV and the movies go bad when suits and stats assume what everyone wants to see. That's how you wind up with every Marvel movie basically being the same movie. Also the average person is a mouth breathing idiot. Who cares what that person wants?

Yeah honestly if most TV was on par with this past episode, it would be hard to get anything done. You really feel it when you watch mediocre corny TV. The accuracy that TD has when it comes to human emotion is bananas. Only a few other shows capture it as well for me.

Give me a Hoyt spinoff any day btw. When he started to cry when the dog came up to him I almost couldn't believe that was acting.

that take is scorching

having one character with five total minutes of screen time spell out exactly what happened is lazy storytelling. rendering every other plot point irrelevant is unsatisfying.

it has nothing to do with plebes not understanding "true art" and the suits or whatever else your talking fedora says

I feel like this happens a lot, where some portion of viewers of a show will say that the rest are "missing the point" by focusing on plot. I heard this a lot with Sharp Objects, which had to have the most laughably ludicrous plot I've ever seen in a TV show. The argument was that it's a character study, it's all about mood and atmosphere, don't focus so much on the plot... well yeah, but stories have a plot. Mood and atmosphere can't rescue bad storytelling.

No one is arguing that True Detective wasn't artfully filmed or well acted. But the unsatisfying resolution to the central plot of the series was a major flaw in the show, that kept it from reaching elite status.

Season 2 was more entertaining than this one even tho it was cliche and stupid. This series has crashed and burned for me, I'm gonna have to see an entire season review before I give up my limited time to this nonsense again.

I read a tweet that said season 3 started like season 1, but ended like Murder She Wrote.

I think that about summed it up for me.

I also feel like the directing fell flat this year. Inert. Season 1 was a masterwork of directing, and the lensing was perfect. Season 2, as bad as I thought the writing was, still had similar elements of great camera work if am remembering it correctly.

Season 3 had none of that. The only memorable setpiece was the shootout, and even that was just standard stuff you can see anywhere.

LOL

"Punish me. You have to punish me. Punish me."

this season failed on pacing imo. Story wouldnt have felt as banal/vanilla or whatever if they changed the pacing. We shouldve had the talk with the one-eyed man 2 episodes ago or something. Then a episode chasing Julie Purcell and the "dream sequence" with him finding her in the last episode. Now everything got crammed up in the last episode and everything fell into place so convenient and effortless like they do in movies. The whole point with shows is to make it feel more like real life with long dialogues in between and stumbles and falls after each clue etc... Now we had dialogue for 9 episodes and everything fell into place in 45 minutes. These actors are worth a better show. It couldve been so good.

Agree with that assessment

There are too many story-lines that never got resolved.
-The intro of his daughter was bizarre without having anything else relate to it.
-The documentary crew story line didn't really go anywhere.
-Hayes son just put Julie's address in his pocket and that was that.
-Amelia and Hayes relationship never was completed.
-Hoyt and Hayes showdown was extremely anti climatic.

It almost feels like the season was supposed to be longer but abruptly had to wrap up.


Was there a "single shot" camera sequence this season?

another point that i never fully got, but perhaps i missed it, was West and the Dad involved romantically / sexually with each other in some way? the West gay thing was alluded to but never really fleshed out

LOL, I'm remembering an entire other show if that's the case. If that dude's gay then it went over my head. I'm just gonna assume it's sloppy writing by the writing team after seeing those 2 posts back to back.

The interviewer was a narrative device that ran its course. The viewer can fill in the blanks with his daughter and Amelia. The daughter scene was to show he was a good father and the viewer can infer that aside from the conflict caused by the case that Amelia and him had a happy marriage til she died of causes not relevant to the story.

The Hoyt showdown was a bit anticlimactic but it turned out he wasn’t that big of a part of the story and I thought it was compelling and well-done.

No, it was just another "conspiracy" viewers forced on the show.

I mean, did you see season 1? I was kind of expecting it this time.

I liked the season and I liked the ending. Strong themes of memory and identity. The ending back in Vietnam was a really nice touch. I thought Wayne Hays was a well-drawn, subtle character. Definitely too many loose ends, but not a big deal. Pacing was a bit slow, probably could have done with one less episode, but the characterization was good and the acting was excellent. I thought in contrast to S1, which set itself up as a mystery and had a disappointing ending as a result, this season was clearer all along that it was a character drama, with the mystery as backdrop. It was more interested in how the mystery affected the characters than in the mystery itself. If you look back, a big chunk of the scenes are more about developing characters and their relationships, rather than being immediately interested in the mystery. This mystery more or less stayed a whodunit the whole way through, like OK there were dolls and toys, but there wasn't a whole mythology like S1, Carcosa and the Yellow King and so on.

Did we ever find out who killed Lucy's brother?

This was deliberately left as a suggestion, I think. Not knowing what happened to Amelia was a bit annoying, like a major character just vanishes in one timeline, but subtle allusions like West possibly being gay, I'm fine with that being unresolved.

the vietnam scene in the ending made no sense at all. is it supposed to be full circle that during his dementia hes back there, and aint getting out or that he left a huge part of himself in nam? We know he did, but he didnt suffer from it like 90% of veterans did, he was exceptionally good at let the past be the past (in terms of things we cant change, contrary to the case) which was a big thing with his whole character. He wasnt fullblown PTSD until he got dementia, then the ghosts of the past turned up, vietcongs along others. never before.

If it were to show us how much of a badass he truly was, it shouldve come earlier rather than just west bromancing him up with tales of all the bodies he dropped.


Yes this was a character driven plot, but man did the actors carry the show or what, any other pair and this show couldve easily been total and utter ****. They carried this so ****ing hard on their backs that ridicolous. The actual plot have to be better than this if you give this script to any other pair. this 3/5 show would go 1/5 so fast if its not grammy deserving actors. Like i said in my earlier post, pacing and execution of the script on the second half was so so off.

Don't agree with that at all. Another way of putting this is that he just repressed everything. Whenever Amelia would try to get him to open up to her, he'd get super defensive and nasty, and he point-blank refused to let her in to the dark places of his life. "I'd be a son of a ***** if I did that to you" I think was one of the lines. As far as we saw, he never talked about his time in Vietnam, he just buried all that too.

The last scene doesn't have any narrative or character point as far as I'm aware, it's just an echo of the central theme of the season, which is how hard it is to run away from the past and how it tends to haunt people. Figurative haunting in the case of Roland, Julie, Lucy, Tom and others, and both literal and figurative haunting in the case of Wayne. It's like the tonic cadence at the end of a piece of music that wraps things up and gives a sense of finality. That's how I took it, anyway.

There's an article here where Pizzolatto answers a bunch of questions about the season. There was an Amelia death scene shot for the finale, but it got edited out and Pizzolatto said "I hated to have to do it. Not my call", so apparently that was someone else's decision.

While season 1 had higher highs and a great dark atmosphere. Season 3 was more consistent. Anyone have thoughts about that?

They were both about trying to come to terms with previous trauma and PSTD.

The story of Season one was all about dealing with past sexual abuse as an adult. How you hide from it. What happens when you begin to revisit it. How it affects your family and how you interact with the world. The chaotic scenes were all metaphors.

Season 3 was all about how you can go down the wrong path searching for solutions and that path can be more destructive and damaging than anything.

The moral in each case isyou can’t fix it.