http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...u-ve-gone.html

Sure, but you can't say the stuff with Audrey was just coincidence. The writers made a point to put it there and just completely left it out in the last episode.

Guess I would have preferred plot development over character development. I kept checking how much time was left waiting for them to give us one little cliff hanger.

I'm with you on wanting closure on the Audrey thing, but it wasn't completely left out. She was dressed pretty normal in the scene in the hospital, which is a form of resolution. My guess, and hopefully someone speaks on this, is that they just overdid that scene with the dolls and got us all looking for more than they ever intended there to be.

I wanted character development in the finale more than anything, but I felt like the Audrey thing could have been addressed in 30 seconds or less.

What part of physics says that there's a layer of existence beyond the darkness where your dead daughter and father linger on making you feel all warm and fuzzy? Give me a break. Rust did more than one 180 in this episode. The part where 'everybody has a choice' is completely inconsistent with the fatalism espoused in the earlier episodes. The philosophical consistency really took a nose dive after episode 5.

The physics quote was addressed toward the light/dark metaphor. What you're talking about isn't a metaphor, and thus not addressed by the quote. Obviously that part was not based on physics.

Also, I don't think Rust was ever a character that felt like people didn't have choices within their day-to-day lives - he just didn't think those choices amounted to much in the grand scheme of the universe. So he'd always have thought he had a choice to screw Maggie or not, or Marty had a choice to be a better husband - he just would have said in the end, what's the difference, we all end up in the same place.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/n...unnel-20140309

Pretty good write-up from RS on this. Their TV coverage seems pretty good.

Great show, hardly perfect, but perfectly engrossing, captivating and interesting from beginning to end.

Had to re-watch the last scene with subtitles to really get it...

The light is winning. Perfect closing dialogue.

Yeah, I'm saying, if you explain the light/dark thing as 'purely physics' how do you explain that other nonsense that completely breaks with the 'naturalism' he was trying to achieve through the entire series?

It's a tv thread so let's keep it breezy, but the Nietzsche eternal recurrence theme (time is a flat circle, those children will be in that same room again and again, all that stuff) is not consistent* with the 'everybody has a choice' Sartrian-sounding existentialism bit. When he said he doesn't kill himself because of his programming, he doesn't say I don't kill myself because I choose to.

* there is an approach that makes them consistent but it's academic and beyond anything hinted at in the show

let me PS - I think Episodes 1-5 are GOAT, 6 was a bit less than goat, 7 I thought was getting into the 'meh' territory, and yes count me as not liking this ending for various reasons (I agree with you about the audrey thing)

When Rust said, "We didn't get them all," I had the briefest fantasy of the show('s press releases) trolling us, meaning MM/WH were actually returning to continue the story for season 2.

Instead, we did get trolled...it was just by the show including the Audrey/painting stuff for no real reason at all. After a great start, I felt like this was just too formulaic and cheesy of a finale. The NCFOM comparison is a great one, as both endings sucked but will consistently get praised by people who want to seem smart.

I get you, I guess I'd just say that such a small percentage of humanity ever experiences a near-death state of coma, so I'll give him the literary license on that one. In True Detective terms, who knows what stories the brain tells itself in that state of mind?

I know who Neitzsche was and the very basic generalities of his philosophy, so I was just basing that on my observations of Rust throughout the show. Also, I think to some extent his character was saying all of that stuff but didn't 100% believe it. Pizzolatto mentioned that in an interview - if he had internalized it, why would he have the need to be constantly spouting it off.

Yeah I think Ep6 may have been my least favorite. I thought 7 served its purpose in setting up the finale and delivered, IMO, the best line of the series (Marty with the jumper cables line).

I'm glad some people who clearly weren't just looking for plot twists agree with me on that. Those who are grouping all of the Audrey storyline people into wanting some crazy plot twist with it were putting me on tilt in this thread.

It's funny because the ending totally could have set up a season 2, but also can stand alone. It was kind of like the ending of a show that didn't know if it was getting another season. I'm cool with it though, because there's a meaning behind it and a moral to the story and how it ended.

Despite being an ardent believer we should have had an Audrey resolution, I don't believe the painting stuff was without reason. For example, the black stars in the painting could just be a motif. It shows that the case is impacting Marty's home life even though he wants to keep them separate, and that the cult is having a pervasive influence on the community. "Some people like a sense of community," was Marty's line in the revival tent (or close to it).

That's also not something she had to be influenced by the cult directly to have picked up on. She could have seen someone with black star tattoos, or seen them tagged on a building in graffiti, or whatever. So to me that works, really well actually, as a motif.

That's why I go back to the 5-on-1 doll scene, and to a lesser extent the painting that matched the mental hospital one - but that can be explained away more easily in a variety of ways, and we are never explicitly told that Audrey painted it. Maybe they wanted us to think of Marty's bedroom as akin to a mental hospital, maybe it's just a random piece of art that was mass-sold, maybe Audrey painted it and won a contest and they re-created it in the hospital, maybe she was there getting treatment and saw it and re-painted it (we know she was on meds at one point).

I have yet to see an explanation of the doll scene being 5 on 1 that makes sense to me. Everything else with her character would have served a lot of purpose and worked well, and that scene could have been done differently and fit into the purpose of the rest of Audrey's character development.

To be honest, that's the type of thing that blows my mind that it doesn't end up on the proverbial cutting room floor. Someone as brilliant as Pizzolatto clearly is as a writer doesn't watch the whole thing back before it airs and go, wait a second, we need to nix that 3-second shot, it doesn't work?

well said

I don't mind that he had a near death experience, it's just like dude, recognize that you don't believe in heaven and that you have a perfectly acceptable naturalistic explanation for what you experienced.

This is a fair point, there are many self professed nihilists who doth protest too much. But dang, Rust was pretty articulate about it, he was giving all the right reasons to be one. If it was just about him being unable to handle what happened with his family, maybe give us more of a hint.

.

Him showing up to Marty's house wasted, it being his dead daughter's birthday, and him drinking because of the grief and anxiety of being around a family and kids wasn't a big enough hint for you? How about him having a hard time speaking about his daughter's death to the Papinia and Gilbough, yet managing to explain that it was directly responsible for ending his marriage? Still need more hints than that?

It seems that you don't know how to read a group of sentences together, it's okay I'll help. It, in the bolded sentence, refers to his nihilist beliefs from previous sentences. The suggestion is that if his nihilist beliefs came only from not being able to handle what happened with his family, then maybe they could have given us a bigger hint that he does not believe in those nihilistic things he says 100%. I bought him as a genuine nihilist from day 1 and I don't see how anything that happened to him should have lead him away from being a nihilist at the end, except that he gets stabbed and apparently goes to heaven for a bit and comes back spiritually restored.

If you didn't connect his nihilistic beliefs with his daughters death you're an idiot.

It seems as if you don't know how to write a sentence. Because your last sentence (in the post before this quoted one) makes no sense if you watched the show. Or maybe you just didn't notice what was going on in the show. Because the "hints", or whatever you want to call them, are there. Either way, you should have at least been able to consider the strong possibility that his nihilism was a coping mechanism. The final scene confirmed that.

Let's not jump the gun. Cutting away on WH crying was kind of ambiguous and could have been him realizing his daughter was raped by the cult. We'll also have to wait for reddit to analyze any images in the background of the finale.

His daughter's death could have caused him to look into those beliefs, but he seemed to have been affirming the as if he believed them completely.

That's part of denial. That denial - and the certainty with which he adopted his beliefs - was a result of anger, guilt, regret, etc., which are all part of the grieving process.

Stop.

[QUOTE=cuserounder;42455388]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.

Crazy, I mentioned that to my friends as well, the deliberate anal references tied to Marty -- they argued against it being a foil to the cult's perverted acts and it was just showing Marty being horny...nope.

Not to get too philosophical, but it ties into Rust's ramblings on human consciousness -- our brains have become so abstract we can rationalize getting pleasure out of sticking our reproductive organs in a hole that **** comes out of (or in a woman's case, getting pleasure having one stuck in there) -- I think Rust would consider that "a tragic misstep in evolution", LOL -- do any other species have anal sex purposefully just for pleasure?

Using that logic, is it not absurd our brains also seek out pleasure in desecrating young children? Do other species have ultra young members get ganged raped on the reg? I believe the only documented evidence of pre meditated rape in non humans is dolphins, who have the next highest amount of self-awareness --it's hard to say Rust's view that self-awareness is tragic isn't correct.

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.

Just for logistics, I could be wrong (like with the judge thing lol) but I believe there are more than 5 masked men in the video. As for Rust's beer men, well a 6 pack is a 6 pack. He progressively is shown carving them up, so it's not like 6 beer men is the only shot of beer men. Though the way one is on the ground is pretty good evidence.

The horse photo was 5 men before one small girl, however. I guess I just don't see your point of discontent, which is fine -- in literature this happens a lot as well just for the effect -- like they could have placed 5 male dolls on purpose to coincide with the horsemen photo and beer men scene (or video tape), but it means nothing directly, just a nod at the theme


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.

Haha same here, but we're not 60 year old sheriffs in the Deep South living a luxurious life as a reward for covering up an underage sex cult, even if we didn't know the full details.

If he helps them out, everything is taken away. He either gets killed (these people took out the Rev Tuttle no problem even with his brother being the governor) or starts from scratch at age 60. Both options suck, and the past already happened, much to his chagrin, so why should he suffer now? I guess it's "Old Man Pride". People don't change at 60. To admit your whole life was a pawn in child rape...looking the other way is the realistic option, especially in the middle of humid Louisiana voodoo swamp land, a place whose existence is more absurd than a city of Camus'

Rust goes from "its all nothing" to "its all the same story" and what's being invoked here is literally the Big Bang. That was his moment of catharsis. That's why he's talking about light at the end. That's what I was saying before, think this is clearer. So while you're hung up on these details of the case you're kind of missing not only the scope the finale but every other episode. I didn't think it was going to go this far with the themes it was building earlier but oh man it sure did. This is swinging for the fences. You don't see this on TV. It's only in like the pantheon on cinema. This seems like a big deal to me.

I thought this was a great detail too.

My only problem with this whole show was the green paint/ears find.

I think it was very brave of the writers to leave so many loose ends. M and W didnt/couldnt find all the answers but they solved the case. Now its up to others to finish it off. Who knows what the 5 on 1 rape scene was about. Could have been some one from school who was involved or knew someone who was involved in a rape. Lots of stuff gets passed along by kids at school. Anyway it makes you think, and this is what I loved about this show, it made me think. All too often we have story lines all wrapped up with a nice little bow but how this story unfolded is totally realistic.