Put me in the "meh" camp. I do feel like the show pulled a similar bait-and-switch to Lost. The stuff about the stars, Carcosa, the spirals, the Yellow King, etc etc... that wasn't Reddit fan hyper-speculation, it was integral to the show. The show was about a secret, well-connected cult with a deep mythology and what we got in the end was a takedown of some fat idiot living in a hovel in the woods. Put it this way, if someone watched the last episode without any previous knowledge of the show, would there have been anything they didn't understand in it? The whole thing just came to nothing.

I don't care that Audrey wasn't resolved, or that the identity of the Yellow King wasn't revealed, or anything specific. I didn't want "twists". I just would have liked a bit more narrative interest, a little more of the story of the cult revealed, rather than just "oh yeah they were doing some voodoo stuff".

I get that the characters completed their arcs and for some people that's enough, but there's a lot of false dichotomy fallacies ITT. There's no reason the show couldn't have done both.

Couple other things that irked me that have already been touched on:

- The green paint thing. Felt a bit contrived. Doesn't really matter, just a minor thing.

- The "the light is winning" thing at the end. I disagree with people saying this was inconsistent with Rust's character, but I do think it was kind of overbearing in its exposition of the themes of the show. For a show that has been so subtle and left so much unsaid, it seemed pretty heavy-handed.

Overall a top-shelf show still. I don't want to give the impression I hated the ending or it ruined the show or anything. I'd give the episode a solid B, but I don't think it stuck the landing as well as it could have. The show is probably an A+ still despite that.

Pretty much.

LOL at ppl hating on this finale and NCFOMs at the same time. Keep on keepin' on, OOTV.

My only complaint as well, but I loved MMs '**** you, man.' Thought that was Nic winking at the audience a bit.

similarly, i can't believe that anyone would unreservedly defend this last episode as 'awesome'.

i thought it was for the most part fine. definitely tense, but 'derivative' is the word in this thread that sums it up best. last two episodes clearly the weakest of the season. still a wonderful show.

Re the reddit/lost nittery, i wonder how lol it would get if david lynch came back to TV. Could you imagine people trying to "figure out" twin peaks? Analyze those clues and characters?

I remain baffled at how people are disappointed the show didn't tie up loose ends that they discovered by analyzing out-of-focus background props. Do you guys realize how ****ty of a storytelling method that is? I know it'd make you feel special, but for the actual regular people in the audience it'd be like "what the ****?"

Again. Again. Again. There was at no point in this show the implication that it was setting up a mystery for THE AUDIENCE to solve. That's a fairly rare technique in storytelling(The Wire, The Sopranos, etc. certainly never used it). The vast majority of fiction does not use it. You aren't supposed to know Darth Vader was Luke's father all along, and it's not a letdown that in Return of the Jedi they didn't top that twist by revealing that Chewbacca was two Yodas standing on each other's shoulders the entire time.

fly,

just FYI, you're coming across a lot more bat**** crazy in this thread than people who enjoyed discussing a few harmless theories.

Pizzolatto on the weird accents that Errol slipped into:

Seems like a weird thing to throw in there without explanation, but OK.

just to be clear, when you say this are you including the audrey stuff? as far as i can see, the lack of audrey resolution was the biggest gripe people have with the final episode.

the single largest piece of evidence that she would feature again in the plot was a full-screen 5 second long shot of a doll scene that seemed too much of a coincidence not to be related. trying to group that in with something the crazy reddit detectives came up with using freeze-frame is pretty disingenuous.

At no point was this LOST are you all high? I've been saying all season there's no who done it, there's no points to fill in, the show from episode 2 on was ABSOLUTELY NOT ABOUT THE CASE. It's just what happened, their work. What do you think the locked box speech was about? Why during that speech does it overlay images of the characters dancing? There's all kinds of moments like that. It's ABOUT the whole shebang, all of existence. That's what its been about from the start. It told this story via a detective genre.

once Childress had knifed MM n axed WH I thought it was gonna be an epic ending with them both dying there n Childress walking out whistling the same tune he was while painting n perving on the school kids.

also LOL @ ppl that didn't like the end of NCFOM

"bbbbbut the good guy didn't even die on screen n didn't have a final confrontation with the bad guy blah blah blah genre conventions"

The only piece of evidence that she would feature again in the plot, you mean.

In a scene where it's unclear that she arranged the dolls that way(she was playing with her sister), that had another explanation, and fundamentally it was unnecessary to the story being told to shoehorn in a last minute revelation about it.

Tying in Audrey might have brought closure to people on the internet, but seriously, that would've been a waste of everyone else's time. That's ****ty, pointless writing. Marty did not need more motivation to go after the killer, and Audrey was a minor enough character it's not like her arc needed to be addressed any more than that chick who Rust dated did.

People ITT wanted their egos stroked for "figuring it out!!!!"(all by themselves! Because they are so smart!) before the show brought the sheeple up to speed, and have a sad now that they were denied that ****ing weird ass source of self-affirmation. That's not what television is for. Maybe try Sudoku or something?

Lol who's Audrey?

Edit: daughter? Oh ... yeah... guess she's just a little nuts

You know locals would be all about exploring carcosa. Even the smallest of rumors of it would draw folks there.

Who called the cops? Woody before he left house?

fly,

i agree shoehorning it in wouldn't have been great, and i don't particularly care that it wasn't revealed. i do think that something happened with his daughter, and after reading interviews with nath's brother, he obviously doesn't seem like the type to throw in red herrings.

it sounds like you think it was definitely possible too. so i don't see why you particularly care if people were discussing that.

luckily i think most people stopped listening to your opinion on tv after your breaking bad s1 post.

I assume she finally told him where the phone was. We've seen that woman before right? I can't place her.

The problem isn't that the finale didn't tie everything up neatly, it's that it contained virtually no plot at all. It was just "and then they found the bad guy via some random clue and then they caught him, the end". This from The Atlantic's recap sums up my reservations pretty well:

This show wasn't just a character study, it was driven by narrative as well. It's nuts to think that the whole show is ruined because the finale was light on plot, but it's nearly as nuts to deny that plot matters at all. There's such a thing as good storytelling in addition to character development and I think the show dropped the ball a little in that department. At the very least, it's weird-ass pacing to cram tons of story into the first 7 eps and then have nothing new at all in the last ep.

lol exactly fly FREAKS THE **** OUT every time someone says hmmm I wonder if X has something to do with Y?

ZOMG it is ART just watch it and enjoy the ART!!!! YOU DON'T FIGURE OUT ART@!! ART!!!!

Ummmm....OK? Settle down buddy. Settle down. It's a ****ing mystery, people are going to speculate about stuff.

And Pizzalotto actually said that he had to make it ambiguous and conceivable for Rust or Marty to be the killer for the first few episodes to make the 2012 interviews more interesting. But then Fly freaks out when someone wonders if they're maybe the killers in the first few episodes? lol?

JUST ENJOY THE MASTERFUL PACING AND CINEMATOGRAPHY!!!

I don't care that people were discussing it. Feel free to believe one or both of Marty's daughters were molested.

It's ultimately irrelevant to the narrative as presented, and it's frankly weird how invested so many people got in that theory given how irrelevant it was. Note when I got involved the TeamItsAllConnected crew were busy telling everyone else how OBVIOUS it was, how having paintings that look like other paints CAN'T BE A COINCIDENCE. That level of arrogance is annoying to the rest of us.

They didn't want Audrey to be part of the story for the story's sake(again, because it totally doesn't matter, and they know that because they are whining about how a single like 10 second shot of dolls "mislead" them, not that Marty's character needed it or w/e), they wanted Audrey to be part of the story to redeem THEMSELVES for the screencapzzzzz.


I had no idea that I even had "a" BB S1 post, much less a significant one. Cool.

yeah my only gripe is that the ear/paint thing was a bit random. I don't mind a random clue leading to breaking the case but that was a pretty stupid random clue.

perhaps, but the majority of the episode (until the hospital scene) was completely thrilling. it didn't really advance the plot a ton, but this was the final 12% of the story, where resolution is in order. we did find out Errol wasn't exactly a gimp character living with the rich folks. we had already learned 90% of what mattered anyways - there was no mystery to reveal, we had been told who the killer was and given the fact that there really was evidence that there was real rape/murder conspiracy stuff with the Tuttle and Childress clan. there is specificity there we didn't get, but that's ok. I don't think the goal was to unravel the entire mystery, and ultimately the story lives on better if some mystery lives on for the audience. it's the Midichlorian problem - would anyone have complained if we never found out exactly what the force was?

I thought that was the point of the Notice King secret decoder ring shot

SIAP

I like that NP quote about being tricked.

I only read one piece during the series on Grantland (maybe?) and the author was saying how everyone in the audience was wondering if Rust and/or Marty were involved. I am glad I picked it up when Ep 5 was already out because I think I might have read a lot more theorizing.

I may watch television a bit too passively, but I never suspected either a whiff. I thought the characterization (among so many other things) let us take Marty and Rust as they were portrayed, at their word so to speak. After all what we see is not complimentary whatsoever.

Instead of reveals, twists, or cheap thrills, a lot of the 'reveals' in the show was the progression, regression, and reparation of their relationship, what they revealed to one another, which culminated in the final scene, where we see Rust acting like a human being.

That an entire grandmaster unravelling of the pedophilic network did not occur, I mean this isn't Conspiracy with Mel Gibson, more than one of the perps had died in the interim, and it seems pretty likely that those who participated in ritual had pegged Mr Spaghetti Monster as a goto fall guy should they have to. After all he lived on the land where the rituals were held, he probably did most, if not almost all, of the abducting for their purposes.

In short I think its pretty plausible that most key members of the circle had either died or insulated themselves through their connections with higher office. We are not made to feel as if the trail had run cold in terms of further indictments based on the physical evidence found on the scene, when Marty is being debriefed at least. They aren't going to get everyone. But they got their guy. They found Carcosa.