I certainly haven't gotten angry ITT. Something like "subverting tropes tho" was meant to poke fun as what I view as pretentiousness.

Ironically fly's post was one of the whiniest and most personal of any posts ITT.

No, whining about how you think everyone is calling you a moron is whining. And I don't think you're 'defending your opinion' with all this sarcastic "bad at watching tv" nonsense, you're just whining that your feelings got hurt because people disagreed with you.

This **** started as people trying to offer different perspectives and ****, maybe let the people who didn't like it understand where the people who did like it were coming from.

And it is kinda important to bring up that you're simply objectively incorrect. Here is the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about police procedurals:
That does not sound like TD! We know from the start that TD is doing something different because of the flashbacks, that our heroes are no longer cops, that there's a new murder, AND that we're going to be spending a fair amount of time on unrelated-to-the-case family problems.

And no, me saying that I thought the ending was bad storytelling does not mean that I think people are mistaken in liking the show. That's just my opinion.

Contrast that with people saying that my opinions about the show and my expectations about what I wanted from the show are objectively (!) wrong.

When in the world did my feelings get hurt exactly? I said that people calling other people bad at watching tv is absurd, because it is.

If they're defining it as serialized with a new crime every week then ok. But to me it was a police detective mystery story.

I love my mom dearly, but she's pretty terrible at watching TV.

But finding rust's philosophical ramblings uninteresting and being more interested in the plot doesn't make someone "bad at watching tv". It's just a matter of taste.

So if I go to a mexican buffet and expect and want chicken alfredo, would it be unbelievable that people would tell me I'm silly for doing so?

You watched a show thinking it was something it wasn't and were disappointed that you didn't get chicken alfredo.

Expectiations, by definition, can't be wrong. They can certainly be misguided or misinformed.

Well the show starts with a murder, detectives investigating a murder, riding around finding clues and following leads. Thinking that the central mystery was, well, central to the show seems different from not understanding that I'm in a Mexican restaurant.

So the outside of this mexican restaurant incorrectly gave me the impression that they also had italian food. You're still in a mexican restaurant. There's still sombreros on the wall and mariachi music playing.

Well I'd say you guys have pretty much covered your positions... this must be the eternal circle Rust was talking about

I wish Nic would clear up what happened with the Audrey thing. I assume this was a mistake by the director. He's good with a camera but he really let the ball drop on that one.

I thought True Detective was going to be a comedy because it had Woody Harrelson and bars were prominently shown throughout, just like Cheers. I held on firmly to that belief each week because, bars and Woody in every episode! Then after the finale, it turns out I didn't laugh as much as I think I should have. What bad writing!

You don't mow another guys lawn

I'm gonna play writer and add one single scene to the show. Do you think it would have made the show better or worse to view exactly what happened with this one added scene?

The added scene would now be the first scene in the series. The added scene would be showing the end of Childress staging the Dora Lange murder scene (meaning you see him). That's it.

Put that scene at the front, and have the show play identically from that point forward. Imagine viewing what we saw in the series with only that one added scene.

I like that question. I don't think it would have had a significant impact on making the show itself better or worse, but I think it would have made a HUGE difference on the way people watched the show. For starters, we wouldn't have had several pages of speculation in this thread that Hart or Cole were the yellow king.

It seems like a good way to show right of the bat that the show isn't about solving a mystery.

I don't know how the director/writer thing works once filming begins, but it seems like a huge gap in the process if the director can effectively overwrite a key part of the story.

The Audrey element plays a huge role in defining the characters of Marty and possibly Maggie, so even from a pure "character development" POV, it's important.

Nic is the showrunner on True Detective, meaning he has final authority on all decisions. I suspect there wasn't a single thing that ended up on film (or on the cutting room floor) that he didn't approve of.

I was trying to be nice since Nics brother is reading this thread but yeah, Nic really screwed up there.

The Audrey arc served it's purpose. People simply tried to read too much into it.

As stated above, NP was showrunner, so he saw it. Still, he's not a director (as far as I know) and he might not have realized it was a problem during shooting (or he never thought it would be a big deal or interpreted the way it was). Once it was shot, the milk was spilled and there's nothing to do but try to save it (if he even perceived it to be an issue, which I don't really think he did). I've said multiple times that I think the doll scene was meant to show that Hart is a "see something, do nothing" guy, and that it wasn't necessarily meant to depict something about Audrey (although many people see signs like this in sexual abuse cases and say nothing). It was a two tiered scene for most of the observant audience members. First, it was a character revelation about Hart, and second it was a red flag that something was up with Audrey. If Audrey had something happen to her, it was the inattention of Hart that allowed it to happen, and obviously continue happening. We'll never know, because the dips*** cop never asked.

It might have been ham handed direction, only NP can answer that question, and it's one I'd ask him if I ever had the chance to interview him. There were three ways to lessen the significance of the scene in general. The first is no insert shot (I think it went to close up, but it's been too long since I've seen it). I don't think that would work, because it was a scene trying to tell Hart to ask his daughter about it, but he ignored it. The second was to cut out the scene with the sex drawings. The third was to cut out the threesome story.

Even so, it's still possible to tell a story about Hart's character through those three scenes.

1. Hart sees something clearly disturbing, but doesn't ask his daughter about it.

2. Hart sees that his daughter is drawing sex drawings, but is really uncomfortable bringing up what's going on, and doesn't try to get to the real reason why she's doing it.

3. Hart's daughter is arrested for drinking (I think), while having underage sex with two over age guys. As opposed to asking her why she would ever do something like that, he insults her in a horrifying and demeaning way, and takes out vengeance on the two guys.

If he were your boss, you'd call him an avoidance Manager. It's easy to see how those things could have been meant to be character touches, but it's probably slightly sloppy writing to not see how we can easily interpret that Audrey either witnessed abuse, or was abused.

They should have left out the scene showing the drawings or replaced it with something else. It only caused confusion -- for no good reason -- given that the drawings were so specific to the case.

I still think it could've been done better if it was still about everything that it was actually about while simultaneously richly engaging the viewer in solving a murder mystery. Instead it pretended to be about solving a murder mystery when it wasn't at all and when I realized that aspect of the story is two dimensional it irked me over the last 3-4 episodes and detracted from the overall enjoyment.

What confusion did they cause? Did anyone honestly think the daughter was kidnapped by a cult, raped, and then dropped back off at home? Or that she chatted with another girl who was?

Her father was obsessed with a case that involved harming young girls. Think about how that might play into how he sees her drawings/dolls/etc. He was seeing the case everywhere he looked, and at the same time ignoring his family. That's my interpretation anyway but could have just been intended by the writer/director as a creepy parallel. At any rate no reason to think Audrey was actually related to the case at all

But, what happens when there is a picture of chicken alfredo at the buffet entrance?