what's the go with the dolls. also june's story didn't feel like it explained the existence of this crazy secure pink rooms setup really.
also i guess the whole crooked spiral thing was a red herring?
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The dolls were literally just them playing with the kids in the forest.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Weren't they specifically connected with child abuse junk by the reporter? I think this was a pretty unsatisfying conclusion, and it's disappointing for it all to be expositional flashbacks from non-point-of-view characters.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The whole thing connecting this season to season 1 was a red herring.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
+6
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I did feel like having a big portion of the finale taken up by a character just plain info dumping the detectives was a bit of wasted potential but I also don’t know if or how I would have handled it better.
Maybe shift them grabbing the security guy to one episode earlier, which would also shift the car ride, and give the wrap-up a little more time to breathe.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I felt to the end like it was going to turn around and have that reveal be a fakeout, maybe Wayne's son and Roland conspiring to give Wayne some artificial closure for his own good, or something. I think that could have been better. You don't need explicit closure in a show about people never getting closure over many decades.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
You can only have so many fake outs before it starts becoming tedious, and the show runners already used that up with the “she died of AIDS” thing. Which Roland still believes. And Hays did too, until the visit from his dead wife. They had closure.
How’s this for a mindfuck though. There’s no evidence that the lady married to the groundskeeper is Julie at all. It’s all speculation on the part of a ghost and the memories rattling around in Hays’ decrepit brain. And we don’t get a conversation about it to confirm one way or the other, precisely because Hays forgets why he’s there at the crucial moment. So did he actually solve one last mystery, or did he just convince himself that there was one last mystery to solve when there wasn’t?
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Well, A: It doesn't matter and B: He has forgotten about the mystery by the end and has some kind of 'closure.'
I disagree vehemently with the creator commentary that it is actual closure or that it's a happy ending. Wayne is still a shell of a man and his memory is rotting away.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
That felt needlessly cruel to the viewer. I would have had Roland pick up Wayne, follow Wayne's logic for the solve, and Wayne never knows the truth due to his condition. Or shown Henry follow up on the address. This ending is almost as depressing as the unsent season 2 voicemail.
edit for the 2nd funniest line of the season
I was doin' real good without no head-shittin' birds in here.
Atlas in Chains on
+1
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I feel the entire premise of true detective is everyone watching the show reaching for something larger and grander, when there is a more simple and banal explanation to the mystery, while diving deep into the ruined lives of the people investigating.
In this sense, the season was a total success.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
In all seriousness, I totally called that Past Wayne would solve it and Future Wayne would Forget It. I was just off by a decade on which was Past Wayne.
The mystery was a wet fart, in my opinion, and also not at all really important. I think this season spent too long sprinkling in red herrings that didn't really go anywhere instead of focusing on the real dread, but when it did focus on that dread it worked really well.
If I made any changes to the season I would have had future Wayne solving more of the mysteries he had already previously solved. Again, I think this season was at its best when tapping into the horror of losing yourself, your progress, your memory, and the life you had lived.
I really like the concept of past person and current persons solving the same crime due to amnesia, alzheimers, or what not... I really feel like there is a slicker, more clever version of that story out there somewhere yet to be done. Almost Memento? But not quite reverse timey as much maybe? I don't know maybe I am pulling at straws...
Stephen Dorff is and always will be that vampire from Blade to me.
The biker dude calling him a midget was hilarious because when he sat down at bar, was one of first times about how short he is really crossed my mind (even though I generally knew it).
+1
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'm only going to forgive the Episode 8 infodump because the acting work between Dorff and Ali (and the writing of their friendship and partnership) made the entire season worth watching regardless of resolution.
IMO the episode should have ended 30 minutes earlier than it did. I feel like it should have cut off with Hays sitting on the porch with his family and the kids riding by on their bicycles. The section with him and Amelia making up back in 1980 and then him in the forest didn't fit. Maybe they could have put that part earlier in the episode.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
This was a good season, but once again the ending felt kind of limp
I feel like this show always has the shape of something with an interesting, upsetting message, something insightful or cutting, but then it ends up being kind of basic or bland. S1 and S3 both have
weird, jarring happy-ish endings, and little to actually say? So we don't get a very satisfying mystery, IMO, and the resolution is an exposition dump with little detective work behind it. So we don't get much deeper, and it ends up being yet another prestige character portrait, which is... not exciting
Performances and individual scenes were often excellent, though, and the character work was very good, especially the way it handled men's relationships with each other and the struggle to be healthy and responsible to others. If I did have to grope for a broader message it would be about the danger and damage done by using other people as means, instead of treating them as ends in themselves, and how it takes hard work to get from one to the other, which is fine
+4
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CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
One thing I couldn't tie together.
Early on in the season, the account from the teenagers at Devil's Den was that the brother was seen wandering around with his bike, looking for his sister. Yet in the infodump at the end, it looked like he was with her right up until the grisly end.
Did I miss something?
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Early on in the season, the account from the teenagers at Devil's Den was that the brother was seen wandering around with his bike, looking for his sister. Yet in the infodump at the end, it looked like he was with her right up until the grisly end.
This was a good season, but once again the ending felt kind of limp
I feel like this show always has the shape of something with an interesting, upsetting message, something insightful or cutting, but then it ends up being kind of basic or bland. S1 and S3 both have
weird, jarring happy-ish endings, and little to actually say? So we don't get a very satisfying mystery, IMO, and the resolution is an exposition dump with little detective work behind it. So we don't get much deeper, and it ends up being yet another prestige character portrait, which is... not exciting
Performances and individual scenes were often excellent, though, and the character work was very good, especially the way it handled men's relationships with each other and the struggle to be healthy and responsible to others. If I did have to grope for a broader message it would be about the danger and damage done by using other people as means, instead of treating them as ends in themselves, and how it takes hard work to get from one to the other, which is fine
Re S1 parallel
While I found the mystery itself about as satisfying as an episode of Scooby-Doo, I'll give it partial marks for being a bizzaro version of the first season, where the missing girl wound up actually being ok, and the whole thing being revealed as a series of vaguely well-intentioned, if unfortunate, events carried out largely under the nose of a powerful man rather than at the direction of a shadowy cabal.
Edit: If you want a broader message, unlike previous seasons, the detectives' fast and loose methods caused far more problems than they solved.
S1 and 3 turn on a similar moment, where in S1 Rust follows a hunch and takes a run at an off-book run at crooked cop which gives them a line on the big bad.
In S3 it wound up burying the truth for 20 years, somewhat literally.
ArbitraryDescriptor on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I said to a friend that it seemed unlikely they would directly repeat the plot of S1, complete with high level conspiracies etc. and that most of the trouble with the case was being upper management using it for their own careers, so I feel like I was reading the show pretty well in that respect. Rust and Marty getting shown did make me question that for an episode though.
So presumably, loose ends-wise:
Tom did end up killing his brother-in-law, and dumped the body in the quarry? Hoyt probably didn't know until after his security guy got murked, which was pretty well deserved since he murdered and staged Tom's suicide. The phone call was likely honest, because of how much lithium July was on, leading her to not believe her father was her own father. No real resolution on if Roland and Tom were a thing, and whatever was going on with Hayes and his daughter was either in his imagination, or she had put behind her for the sake of seeing her father again.
I did wonder for a while if Roland was on the up and up, he did tend to make career-oriented decisions which did make me wonder if he was trying to bury the case as well, but in the end he turned out alright, which is nice.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
+1
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I much enjoyed that season.
Some random bits of the last ep that really got me
The scene when his daughter is there to help the son pick him up. When she hugs him she has that look on her face that just says "I didn't know just how bad it had gotten" and you could see how much it hurt her to see. Which already had my eyes welling up and sending me towards levels of fear and terror over aging and also being filled with sadness.
And then when he asks if he lost her the tears welled up. There was no more holding it back at that point.
I was talking with a recent finale watcher and we came to the conclusion
Why leave the pink room intact after the crazy mother died? Or after the girl ran away, can't remember which happened first. Um, unless you didn't think it was weird for a house to have a secret hallway with a bank vault door as an entrance and locks on the outside of the bedroom door?
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I was talking with a recent finale watcher and we came to the conclusion
Why leave the pink room intact after the crazy mother died? Or after the girl ran away, can't remember which happened first. Um, unless you didn't think it was weird for a house to have a secret hallway with a bank vault door as an entrance and locks on the outside of the bedroom door?
I mean, easier to just leave it intact and pretend it never happened, right?
Decomming the pink room, bringing in contractors to do that... thats effort.
At the very least maybe they should have bricked over the end of the hallway, or the door, or something. Leaving it as something you could just walk up to was more of a mistake.
But also, super rich, big fish in little pond folks probably never even think about the consequences of police investigating their home.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
IMO the episode should have ended 30 minutes earlier than it did. I feel like it should have cut off with Hays sitting on the porch with his family and the kids riding by on their bicycles. The section with him and Amelia making up back in 1980 and then him in the forest didn't fit. Maybe they could have put that part earlier in the episode.
My take on the ending:
I assume he’s dead by the end of that scene, on the porch.
He didn’t get closure, consciously. But subconsciously, he connected everything, and I think there was a subconscious closure and then he just...his quest ended. I think that’s what the last scene is meant to convey. He finished his recon. He found Julie, even if, in the end, he didn’t know. The forest is somewhat symbolic of the fact that his initial search for the kids were in a forest and also that was literally his job in the war, too. He finished his last quest. And then he was gone.
I think “true detective” here refers (at least in part) to Hayes connecting all the dots even through his disease. His brain was able to do it and it kept trying to communicate the truth to him through his vision of Amelia.
I dunno, for me the ending worked. The expositionary resolution as to who did what with Junius was annoying as fuck but it otherwise worked for me.
I realize I’m coming down off a serious high having watched 7 and 8 back to back, but my real concern about this episode is that, by the time I’m done sorting out all the threads of narrative, meta-narrative, character development, and social commentary that coalesce into a single, ringing note when Hayes looks back at us while he’s out on Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, I will have become that guy nobody wants to engage with at dinner parties for fear of being invited over to see my True Detective Murder Wall™.
Christ, what a ride.
Posts
also i guess the whole crooked spiral thing was a red herring?
Maybe shift them grabbing the security guy to one episode earlier, which would also shift the car ride, and give the wrap-up a little more time to breathe.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
How’s this for a mindfuck though. There’s no evidence that the lady married to the groundskeeper is Julie at all. It’s all speculation on the part of a ghost and the memories rattling around in Hays’ decrepit brain. And we don’t get a conversation about it to confirm one way or the other, precisely because Hays forgets why he’s there at the crucial moment. So did he actually solve one last mystery, or did he just convince himself that there was one last mystery to solve when there wasn’t?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I disagree vehemently with the creator commentary that it is actual closure or that it's a happy ending. Wayne is still a shell of a man and his memory is rotting away.
edit for the 2nd funniest line of the season
In this sense, the season was a total success.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I really like the concept of past person and current persons solving the same crime due to amnesia, alzheimers, or what not... I really feel like there is a slicker, more clever version of that story out there somewhere yet to be done. Almost Memento? But not quite reverse timey as much maybe? I don't know maybe I am pulling at straws...
The Yithian who took over for twenty years and caused his memory loss.
Yes
The biker dude calling him a midget was hilarious because when he sat down at bar, was one of first times about how short he is really crossed my mind (even though I generally knew it).
Also, what a great barfight!
I feel like this show always has the shape of something with an interesting, upsetting message, something insightful or cutting, but then it ends up being kind of basic or bland. S1 and S3 both have
Performances and individual scenes were often excellent, though, and the character work was very good, especially the way it handled men's relationships with each other and the struggle to be healthy and responsible to others. If I did have to grope for a broader message it would be about the danger and damage done by using other people as means, instead of treating them as ends in themselves, and how it takes hard work to get from one to the other, which is fine
Early on in the season, the account from the teenagers at Devil's Den was that the brother was seen wandering around with his bike, looking for his sister. Yet in the infodump at the end, it looked like he was with her right up until the grisly end.
Did I miss something?
Re S1 parallel
Edit: If you want a broader message, unlike previous seasons, the detectives' fast and loose methods caused far more problems than they solved.
S1 and 3 turn on a similar moment, where in S1 Rust follows a hunch and takes a run at an off-book run at crooked cop which gives them a line on the big bad.
So presumably, loose ends-wise:
Tom did end up killing his brother-in-law, and dumped the body in the quarry? Hoyt probably didn't know until after his security guy got murked, which was pretty well deserved since he murdered and staged Tom's suicide. The phone call was likely honest, because of how much lithium July was on, leading her to not believe her father was her own father. No real resolution on if Roland and Tom were a thing, and whatever was going on with Hayes and his daughter was either in his imagination, or she had put behind her for the sake of seeing her father again.
I did wonder for a while if Roland was on the up and up, he did tend to make career-oriented decisions which did make me wonder if he was trying to bury the case as well, but in the end he turned out alright, which is nice.
Some random bits of the last ep that really got me
And then when he asks if he lost her the tears welled up. There was no more holding it back at that point.
That was brutal.
Decomming the pink room, bringing in contractors to do that... thats effort.
At the very least maybe they should have bricked over the end of the hallway, or the door, or something. Leaving it as something you could just walk up to was more of a mistake.
But also, super rich, big fish in little pond folks probably never even think about the consequences of police investigating their home.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
My take on the ending:
He didn’t get closure, consciously. But subconsciously, he connected everything, and I think there was a subconscious closure and then he just...his quest ended. I think that’s what the last scene is meant to convey. He finished his recon. He found Julie, even if, in the end, he didn’t know. The forest is somewhat symbolic of the fact that his initial search for the kids were in a forest and also that was literally his job in the war, too. He finished his last quest. And then he was gone.
I think “true detective” here refers (at least in part) to Hayes connecting all the dots even through his disease. His brain was able to do it and it kept trying to communicate the truth to him through his vision of Amelia.
I dunno, for me the ending worked. The expositionary resolution as to who did what with Junius was annoying as fuck but it otherwise worked for me.
Christ, what a ride.
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