I agree with that - I never found reading others specualtion added any value to any show for me, so I just skip all speculation. I find it more engaging to just go with the flow as it evolves.

Officer Chilly

That matches the way they both said it went down.

I don't know much about how they test for gun shot residue, but what's stopping Rust from just putting the gun in the corpse's hands and firing off a bunch of rounds? It doesn't explain the crazy amount of GSR he'd have on his own hands though.

Would it be great TV to show rust picking up the bullet rounds and doing all the other extra stuff to make the scene right? No, they showed him shooting a gun because that looked ****ing awesome

The cops probably aren't going to go too hard in trying to poke holes in mm and woody's story. Like mm said, they just have to make it look right

Shootout was a mess but works fine going along with the idea that people in power are creating the narrative of what happened. It looked close enough to hero detectives triumphing over child murderers and drug cooks that they could make it work. Sounds like they went through multiple hearings and it's not like people weren't skeptical, but the initial investigation into the shooting was either mishandled greatly or suppressed that they came out golden and everyone got what they wanted from Rust and Hart to the public to the higherups.

^

Yeah they could bust their story easily if they would go all CSI on them. But with the kids and all the Meth-Cooking, even if there were doubts who would want to push this?

The fact that there is a mythos connection between game of thrones and true detective is both amazing and beyond cool.

Yea don't they both say that Hart was able to flank him and get the shot off real close?

Either way, there's no way they are going to have any doubt about their stories, so there's no need to have an in depth investigation.

I consider myself a pretty big nit and I had no problem whatsoever with the Ledoux scene.

Fwiw, GSR testing is highly unreliable and mostly used on perps as a bluff to get them to confess. They would never use it on cops who already admit to firing shots.

The gun likely has both Ledoux and Cohle's prints on it, which is fine. It's perfectly normal for cops to handle a gun that was fired at them at the scene of a shooting. In fact they are supposed to in order to secure it and "make it safe", e.g., removing the magazine and clearing the chamber.

Then you've got the fact that 2 hero detectives who just "solved" a major homicide while exposing a drug/child sex/murder ring are both giving you a consistent and plausible version of events, events that they are the only living people aware of.

I 100% believe this gets ruled a good shoot if it goes down exactly as shown in real life, particularly in Louisiana circa 1995.

One thing I'm wondering about is why we haven't really seen Cohle have his hallucinations since episode 2...

also, can someone remind what happened with the school in a previous episode - something about Marty stopping Cohle from going in it? And why is that scool that Cohle finds the twig sculptures important? How did he know to go to that school?

Marty got the info on Ledeux before Cohle could go in and started beeping the horn to relay the news to him.

"Walks that f***in' slow."

I don't know if this show will end up being the GOAT, but as far as i'm concerned its the first time i know for sure after only 3-4 eps that a show will make my all time top 5. That says a lot imo

Or this season anyway, since s02 will be a brand new story with a different cast etc

But why were they at the school in the first place? What led them there?

...or have we?

It's where the girl they found dead from "drowning" went to school.

GSR is unreliable for some things and reliable for others. The absence of GSR on Ledoux is fairly reliable at showing he didn't do any shooting. There are no reasonable circumstances that would account for GSR removal. By the time they might have got around to testing Cohle, transference onto the kid's clothing might have made the testing unreliable regarding how much shooting he did.

Ledoux's prints may or may not be on it. The location of Cohle's prints will be consistent with firing, not merely making safe. If Ledoux's prints are on it, it may help Cohle, because I'm not sure LSP had advanced techniques for dealing with superimposed prints in '95.

A competent OIS investigation doesn't get swayed by such circumstances.

Sure, I think it would too, but that's not even inconsistent with a competent investigation showing the story is BS. Even a competent investigation wouldn't be able to get conclusive evidence to convict Hart of homicide and Cohle of accessory after the fact. So even if there is a competent investigation, they'll be officially cleared.

Was thinking this last ep how tough season 2 is gonna be for them, I mean it's a hard enough task for someone to create a "run of the mill" awesome character driven detective drama. But with this season they've set the bar with flashbacks working perfectly with the current day to create tension, deep cover operations, cults working on some sort of grand scale with government officials and you have two huge stars headlining the thing. The whole package is just nuts.

Was basically thinking how insane it would be to have to come up with a storyline and format that is as fresh and awe inspiring as this one without feeling too derivative of what they've already done.

Fortunately this will give them the momentum and HBO is great so even if they have an "off" second season (kinda thinking they might run into some kinda season 2 of The Wire type fan blowback, depending) hopefully it would still have time to grow.

i don't think it right/fair to compare this to a show like sopranos or GoT etc as its such a diff animal when you do a full run vs a mini series.

real question in my mind is which i'll watch more times this or band of brothers, which IMHO is the GOAT piece of TV ever made (which i know just invalidates everything i previously said!)

I made the mistake of going into The Pacific holding it to BoB standards, for sure

We could have A LOT of fun brainstorming up a list of possibilities for future seasons.

I don't want to go overboard, so I'll list just one name I've wanted to see more of fr awhile, and who can handle this kind of depravity....

Denis O'Hare (Russell Edgington on True Blood.....and with that in mind I'd like to see James Frain get something bigger and darker too- enough with the period ****).

Michael Shannon is a great shout. I certainly won't argue with talent on the level of Woody and MM. (I'll give a year's salary if DDL signs on). But I also hope they find some time to give opportunities to some of the lesser known guys we've seen do great work in TV.

Future seasons will also feature different locations. They've done a wonderful job making the desolate Louisiana landscape a third lead character. Beautiful work that captures the aura of the place. Interested t see where they tap for future seasons. A rust belt city would be a good start- lots of captivating shots of old industry when you wind down the rivers of Pittsburgh for example...