I thought Carcosa delivered strong; when it zoomed out looked like some ancient ruins. Rust chasing the killer inside reminded me a lot of a certain event in Game of Thrones Season 2. Creepy vibe.

It didn't say anything about the Audrey thing, which was my only real issue - so I'm not sure what you wanted me to get out of it in particular?

Probably a stupid question that I could ask on reddit, but would probably have to endure greater derision so I'll ask it here, did we find out who/what The Yellow King is? It's not lawnmower guy, right?

Agree.

I suppose not explicitly. I would say most likely lawnmower guy (Errol) is not the Yellow King, given that we heard stories that he was not one of the guys in masks. My take would be it's the combination of the skeletons with the yellow draping around them in Carcosa and the guy in the video tape with the yellowish crown, possibly impersonating the skeleton false deity they have set up in Carcosa.

No, law mower guy is not the yellow king.

Sigh.

pretty dissapointed tbh, not sure what i was expecting, just something slightly more.

Although MM acting in the wheelchair was so god dam good

I thought the ending was pretty good. Not GOAT of all time, But I am overall satisfied. The acting was top notch, the maze was a-maze-ing and very suspenseful at the end.

Here is the thing, there were two types of people watching this show. There were those that were in it for the murder mystery and the who dun it and wondering about the murders, and there were those primarily interested in the relationship between our two protagonists. For the latter group, the murder and the mystery is merely a pretext for the two's relationship and character study. That's personally what I loved most about this show, and I think those that are on the "finale was good side" probably find themselves in the latter category as well.

Too many people built this up into something it never was, nor did it pretend to be. I remember even the showrunner maybe either last week or 2 weeks ago saying 85% of what one needs to know is known in the very first episode. People overthought this and overanalyzed it and thus set themselves up for an expectation that couldn't be matched nor was the show attempting to go to those places.

This show was primarily about rust and marty's relationship. And to that point it did a stellar job, even in the end.

Hey everyone, remember the people who totally thought Marty's father in law had to be in on the killings/missing girls? Or even Marty himself?

LOL

So, Sheriff Childress was the guy strapped down (dead/dying) in the outbuilding; he's the guy who burned Errol Childress when the latter was a child, but covered up all his wrongdoings as an adult?

I enjoyed the show/ending greatly, but I think you're drawing a bit of a false dichotomy. I, for one, was both heavily invested in what happened writ large as I was in what happened on a micro level between Rust and Marty. While I do think the show was largely about Rust/Marty's relationship with each other and the external world (family/job), there was also a helluva heavily plotted case which stoked everything. Whatever NP wants to say about what the show was about, any time you have governors and senators purportedly covering up massive child rape and dozens of ritualistic murders, what happens is going to matter.

lol at anyone hating the last episode. Have to be trolls.

Great show. Awesome ending. Amazing suspense. I'll run out of adjectives if I try to keep going.

Rust's near death experience clearly changed him, as it does many people. The theories everyone created on the Internet weren't resolved... because they were theories created by people on the Internet.

For those asking, Lawnmower Man is speaking in a British posh accent because he's watching a Cary Grant movie on TV, and he's mimicking it.

Great show.

The only regret I have is that my girlfriend is creeping me out by requesting I "put some flowers on her".

I got this as the 4th best season ever

The first three are all Game of Thrones obviously

how sick would it be if season 2 was an investigation into the yellow king cult from an entirely different time period? like you got to see the carcosa catacombs/aqueducts in their original state before becoming abandoned, dilapidated, and overgrown.

in the opening scene of the first episode of season 2 every complaint about the finale not living up to the scope of the story could be completely invalidated.

Thanks for that great contribution to the discussion. Read my post, and I give a well thought out opinion of the show and what I thought of the finale, which was mostly positive. I wasn't looking for a big twist and don't appreciate being talked down to like some moron who doesn't "get it."

They did a 5-on-1 doll scene, they zoomed in on it and held it, and she had no way of knowing the signifcance of that. It was never explained and I'd like Pizzolatto's take on it. I'm not looking for a grandfather rape here, any explanation is fine. I've maintained all along that's the one scene that in my mind made it an issue if they didn't address it.

Clearly, based on my posts ITT, that didn't make me miss the whole point of the show, miss the important themes surrounding the main characters, etc, so your condescending sigh is pretty stupid.

I thought it was fantastic. Didn't care about the Audrey payoff ultimately. I think it was probably poorly executed by the director to put as much emphasis on the doll scene as there was. I think that was meant to be a character reflection of Hart's inaction more than anything else. I don't think they needed the group sex scene either, and should have just had it be drugs or alcohol or something. Something happened to her, and Hart being a cop did nothing to stop what she became (just more character stuff on him).

I don't think anyone's said it, but I'm pretty sure it was mentioned that the lawnmower man did not exist on paper. Any time he did something (and I think the blood writing on the wall was probably names of victims, though it was hard to see much, and I didn't freeze frame anything), the power people just buried it, and since he didn't exist it went away. The biggest problem is that most of the victims were likely society discards (though the little boy at the end definitely would not have been). I also think the implication of the "flowers" scene was that the lawnmower man and his sister would have sex after he killed someone, because she liked the smell of death or something. So, I think the kid is dead.

I also thought the ending was completely in Cohle's character. In my opinion, he was always desperately looking to believe in something. He found it when it he didn't die. It doesn't mean he's going to lose his pessimistic outlook overnight, but he sees some light, where he previously saw nothing but darkness.

Amazing idea. Have an ancestor of Tuttle/Sheriff Childress cutting a ribbon/sinking a shovel somewhere in the 40s or 50s (earlier?) to begin construction.

Hey man, I liked your long post, good stuff. I have no problem with the doll scene not being answered for.

For me it comes down to 1) The show wanted to make people view the difference between taboo sex / natural sexual urges and the warped stuff that went on in the YK cult. Marty eats a$$ of a much younger woman while he has a wife and daughters at home, that's socially fine @ least in a legal sense, because it's not YK Cult type stuff. It's a byproduct of the human brain, and we just leave it alone.

Everyone has an Id that wants to have to sex, even "dirty" sex like when that T Mobile girl asks Marty to do anal -- it shows we're all just filthy animals who are curious, some can just process it better (others start up cults). Even young kids when alone in their bedroom will act out things to make sense of the world. You reconstruct a scene like that because even at a young age you know things like that happen in the world, you get a sense...and your brain is trying to make sense WHY -- especially when YOUR FATHER INVESITGATES IT ON A DAILY BASIS. Kids aren't stupid, she knows what her dad does. Simulating it with dolls is a way to adjust to reality.

You don't really know about evolution, genes, the selfishness of surviving on a biological level yet at that young age, but you get a feel it's linked somehow to sex and power.

If you're caught up on the number 5 well it was to just enhance the point. I mean Audrey willingly let 2 guys bang her at once in a car later on in life -- that's just human nature, nothing evil about. What's not okay is mutilating people afterwards.

Sorry to go on, only sex and what socially is okay is huge part of the show.

And 2) I knew Audrey wouldn't be involved in the cult because it was a cult of State and Legal power -- they wouldn't target the child of a police detective -- that's playing with fire. They are evil, but not stupid. No way even with all their power do they start doing stuff like kidnapping and molesting children of state hired law enforcement.

I believe the judge on the boat was being honest, he had no idea these people above him were having orgies in the woods with 10 year old girls. They were smart enough to keep the cult hidden from even people close by. That judge probably just thought it was a way to make the case numbers look better or something. Or they were just selfishly indifferent to what happened to the girl and couldn't be bothered.

Yes to the first two, sort of to the last one. He was covering up the cult's wrongdoings as a whole with the missing children "report in error," coverups. Protecting Errol was more about protecting the whole thing, which Errol was carrying on after the rest of them seem to have basically stopped or slowed down. If he got caught in '95, they'd dig up a bunch of those bodies and figure out the rest or at least come close.

Also, the reason (presumably) he burned him is that he was a bastard child and he knew that he wasn't the real father. At least I think that's pretty well implied by the whole Tuttle/Childress family tree.

Thanks, cuse.

Also, going to put in spoilers, Vix can read without worry....

i honestly couldn't really have asked for more. awesome.

Thanks...

Agree on this 100% - not sure if I posted about it but I discussed it with friends. There are many Marty/ass examples... I don't know if a$$ gets censored on here. If it does, then that is what is censored out below.

- the ass cancer line
- eating his first girlfriend's ass
- In the strip club/bar, before he talks to the bartender, the camera pans down a row of dancers asses then comes to him
- Beth wanting anal
- Maggie saying, "nice ass, Marty" to the cell phone picture and then "I was always a little thin for you, huh?"

Especially in the 90's in Louisiana, and probably even today in that area, that was a significant perversion and made a great sort of literary foil to the cult, highlighting a perversion dealt with in a very different way.

I'm only caught on the number 5, to be clear. If it was 3 on 1 with the dolls, I'd be talking about what a brilliant job they did of using Audrey to highlight the case seeping into Marty's home life that he was so proud of keeping separate (remember the scene with Rust eating lunch outside at the Vietnamese place), as well as highlighting the cult's influence on everyone in the community - black stars just popping up here and there. It'd be a great motif, and no explanation would be needed.

To me, the 5 on 1 circular formation was a theme that tied right into the cult - the Dora Lange picture, Rust's beer men, the video tape. That's what makes me hang up on it. If Pizzolatto came out and either said they overdid that scene and shouldn't have focused on it or made it 5 on 1, or that the viewer is left to interpret how Audrey was exposed to it but that it's implied, I'd feel better about that thread of the show. That one shot gave more meaning to the other Audrey stuff than there needed to be.

I agree with this - I didn't think she had to be a rape victim of the cult to be exposed to it, though. Even earlier in the week I was saying that she could have easily heard a story at school from someone who went to Light of the Way or something, and that would tie it in just fine IMO.

Sherriff, to be a nit, but yeah I agree with you on this too. He knew it was a little shady but didn't think it was actually to the detriment of the kids or anyone else - he probably just thought they were cooking the books on cases they couldn't solve or that the story about the Fontenot girl was true. I actually thought the way he threw the tantrum after they got off the boat was weird. If I'm him, and I'm shown that tape, my first thought is something like, "Holy ****, I can't believe that my actions helped these people, I'm telling you everything I know and I'm ready to ride shotgun with you two and take these MFers down. I wish you didn't hold me at gunpoint on a boat, but I get why you did. We're cool." I didn't really get the point of his hissy fit, unless he was afraid that it'd come back on him and make him look like a pedophile and that was his first reaction.

Anyway, yeah, to sum it all up, my only issue was that the doll scene was 5 on 1, as I explained above.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/true-de...nd-void-201999

avclub gives A-

so sayeth the true score of the internets