I think there's a lot of daylight between "unravelling the entire mystery" and what happened in the finale. I completely expected there to be unanswered questions and welcomed that. I didn't expect no revelations whatsoever.

I think narrative problems occur when we get mismatched domains of explanation. What I mean by that is, nobody asks for a detailed explanation of how Gandalf performs his various acts of magic, because that **** is magic. The problem with the midichlorians was that it took the Force, which was supposed to exist in a mystical/magical domain, and suddenly altered it to a scientific domain in a way that was unwelcome. Lost had the opposite problem where it set up its mysteries in such a way that they were supposed to have concrete resolutions and when we got explanations in the end it amounted to "It's magic, a wizard did it". That's fine for the Force because that fits with how it has been presented earlier in the series, but it didn't fit for Lost which set itself up promising that things would have explanations.

For True Detective, I think the Tuttle/cult stuff was handled in such a way that it promised concrete resolution. What the investigation revolved around was the cult, how it worked, who was involved, what went on. I know some people are like "but it's the characters bro!" but can't it be both? It seems like a copout to me to say I don't have to resolve this story because that's not what I'm interested in.

Mostly grunching, enjoyed it a lot, Carcosa scene was pretty formulaic but well done, no complaints there. Thought the end convo was excellent.

the green house paint thing was, like, comically bad though, wtf.

ok but we did actually get a lot of that. the video and pictures that Rust stole confirmed that all that theorizing was real. that there was a rich person cult of old LA families who was behind all the kidnapping, murdering, and raping. And we found out that Errol had been the one to kill and 'bury' them all.

we didn't find out exactly who did what and what the specifics of the cult were, but to me we got enough. Rust was right. the conspiracy has been revealed to the press and the fight goes on.

We pretty much knew all this at the end of ep 7. Again, this is a pacing issue I guess. I expect that the final episode of a miniseries will contain some revelations and plot points of interest.

There's a lot of conflation ITT between "revelations" and "twists". I did not expect (and would have hated) any plot twist along the line of "OMG MAGGIE KNEW THE WHOLE TIME". A revelation is more like something unexpected about how the cult functions. Instead the show pointedly avoided the question of how Errol Childress and the rich members of the Tuttle family interrelate.

as for season 2. if we are looking at this show as like an 8 hour movie. doesn't it take more than just a few months to write something so good with such great dialogue and storyline? will Nic P. be able to come up with something in such a short time? i obviously don't expect the 2nd season to be nearly as great as the first but just wondering how he could write something so good quickly enough for them to film it and put it on HBO in a year's time.

Pizzalotto said we saw the Dora Lange killer in episode one, right? We didn't see the lawnmower guy until episode four, right?

just the dark figure carrying the body, and a sketch of the spaghetti monster

pfffffffff what a crock.

From the Sepinwall interview about season 2:

"Hard women" makes me think it'll feature female detectives.

Could just be NP trolling though.

I suppose. I agree that the pace was way different here, we spent most of the episode in a suspenseful/action filled chase, then the balance with the characters making their peace. I just think the chase was so well done that I'm ok with that. the tension was off the charts for me. I do have quibbles that the last 20 minutes dragged.

yes, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I just don't think the org chart or the inner politics of the cult matter too much. the fact that there was one is what mattered.

Thought about two things before falling asleep last night.

1) It's awesome that they never explained how that black woman knew about Carcosa. By all accounts she never struck me as a killer/cult member, which means there was a whole branch of the Carcosa religious group that extended beyond the rapes and such. That's pretty cool. I think it's also reasonable to assume that the "religion" if we'll call it that, was probably far more active in the 80's-90's, and then basically stopped. The reason we don't get to tie up more loose ends is probably because by the 2000's, it's most just Errol doing his thing.

2) Was the big vortex a big spiral? Or something else?


Anyway when I found out they built that burnt out church from scratch, and built all the Carcosa stuff, they vaulted to GOAT for me in the cop genre. Incredible achievement.

quoting for posterity

This was my assumption as well given that she was later shown tied up, Marty did this after she told him where the phone was.

Btw, didn't the average sane person think that Audrey + rape dolls was just because the story was all over the news and everyone was talking about it at school? That was literally the first thing that popped into my head. It's the small town south! People talk about all kinds of stuff, and kids absorb it. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. And like I said, her emo/slut phase is a pretty normal phase in the life of a girl whose dad is never there, is a drunk, and whose parents fight. lol cult raping her.

Two things

1) I don't think there is a Yellow King. I think that's some deity these people thought up and worship, but there isn't a human being who actually acts as Yellow King.

2) When you're trying to wrap up a series, there has to be a final clue. With that in mind, I wonder what kind of final clue people would have been more happy with than the green house. I mean, they beat the viewer over the head with "green ears" references so I tend to think that people would just be freaking out over that unexplained plot point if it hadn't tied in somehow.

I mean, I guess some Cohle could've overheard a nurse talking about this rare disease that causes ear discoloration, and then he went and read through a decade's worth of medical journals, and then broke into the LSU Medical Center to get patient records for the 4 people who ever had it. Certainly that would've gone over much better.

My biggest regret is that they never showed Audrey painting, with a bit of green paint somewhere near her ear. That would have sent lawnmowers into an orbit of the 5th moon of the planet Rustle.

Not sure if Errol thought he was the Yellow King or if the YK was the thing he made in the throne room. Either way that display in the throne room was pretty damn great.

I liked the last episode. I'm going to make a breaking bad comparison here, BB spoilers below



I thought the green ears thing would come back into play, but i don't like how they did it. I watched episodes 1-3 the previous couple days, and there were a lot of things said about the man with the scars. it was also evident that the man with scars was the spaghetti monster. So if the spaghetti monster was a real person, and the spaghetti aspect could be explained, it made since that solving what the green ears was referring to would be key to solving the case. What i did have an issue with as I thought the green paint solution was pretty weak. I think it would have been better if they somehow had a picture of the lawnmower man with green over ear headphones or something.
i don't have any issue with the audrey stuff left unresolved. There was still a decent amount left unresolved i thought. They took down errol, but all the people protecting him etc got away.
great series, great finale.

Yeah, I could see Errol thinking that he would "become" the Yellow King by taking over as head of the cult.

Based on what we know he was a part of the team of 3 round-up boys early getting victims early on and I would assume that his older family members were the leaders initially. He could've seen them as the Yellow King and wanted to supplant himself in that role.

But yeah, the display was awesome.

production design of the houses/labyrinth was incredible

Have you seen the scores they give to TWD episodes? It's a farce.

I thought it was overall a great show. Last episode was one of the weakest. The final afterlife speech was certainly more than a 5 degree shift on the meter like NP suggests.

I thought the green paint clue was dumb, but even more dumb was how they presented it. There is basically no build up to it, and Marty makes this insane leap in the matter of like 30 seconds of staring at the wall.

I agreed with a lot of your post, but the quoted bit kind of threw me off.

I felt like the weaker points of the show were some of Rust's nihilistic monologues. Even though they were exceptionally well done for what they were, I was under the impression that Pizzolatto was spoon-feeding the audience way too much with how Rust was explicitly verbalizing every last intricacy of his belief systems. IMO it was the definition of being un-subtle and heavy-handed. I thought the "light is winning" thing was consistent on every level.

And RE: no closure on Audrey/Maggie's father/etc.

I think those elements like the scene with the dolls or the crown on the tree were just motifs or vehicles to establish Rust and Marty's existence/environment as being inundated with a darkness and corruption that was pervasive in every facet of life.

They (evidently) weren't meant to be hard plot lines that went unresolved. They were there to enrich the setting thematically.

Everybody was looking for THE TWIST. People were under the impression that EVERYTHING MUST MEAN SOMETHING. Rather, this show was about people. It was about MM and WH. The plot was simply a catalyst for their interaction, putting them in different situations and letting them hash it out.