True Detective Conference Room (SPOILERS- GO AWAY)

To Jeb's point, there are wild areas that man dare not tread. My cousin (last name Waginspack, no less) lives in bayou country on a swamp and we literally went fishing for Copperheads the only time I was out there. Shit was unreal. If you're not kin you might as well be from Mars. In Kentucky there's people in the hills, generations of miners living in old company homes tomthismday, and they have the same mentality. I went out once with my buddy Mickey and I got looks that could kill. I don't scare easy at all, but I'll admit that I was very fucking uncomfortable in a "paddle faster" kind of way. It was worth it...those motherfuckers are born farmers.

I went into the sewer tunnels beneath San Dimas/Alta Loma in 1993--that was some freaky ass shit. BIG satanic graffiti and other weird gang stuff down there. And DARK, damn. That was the vibe I was getting from Carcosa. I did find all that really well done.

Here's a good interview with Nic Pizzolatto, the show's creator. This is his take on the show as a whole, and its ending. We still don't find out about the green ears, though.

www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/true-...oks-back-on-season-1

The green ears thing is kind of being overread in a lot of places by a lot of people. The way I see it, Errol might have had some paint in his hair or a splotch on his face or something. A kid running through the woods isn't going to stop to analyze "wait...are his ears actually green or is that just a spot of paint?" It's not that he painted his ears or anything like that.

As for it being the break...it was definitely a leap but a lot of times things are figured out just from some bullshit out-of-nowhere revelation like that. These guys probably had looked at those pictures an awful lot, Marty probably just drew the connection there. I don't think it's implausible at all.

I've been in some pretty weird areas myself, I've been somewhere once that was an AWFUL lot like "Carcosa" but there weren't any bones, children's shoes or wicker occult shit hanging everywhere. But it was a place that was widely rumored in my hometown where some diabolical goings-on happened. I knew some folks that played a live action Vampire: The Masquerade game there once. Not me. I didn't feel like that was a great place to be hanging out.

Then there's "the Witch's Grave"...THAT shit was eerie. You had to pull off the side of the road and go under this covered bridge (suppoedly haunted, of course) and then go down this creek into this weird, rural pocket between more civilized areas. Way, way out in the woods there was this little wrought iron fence and in the middle of this 8'x 8' enclosure there was a single, unmarked grave. We went out there one night and when we started getting close to it we saw through the woods that there were these people gathered around with candles, looked like they were praying or meditating. Talk about scared. Try walking through the woods at 2am, half drunk, and seeing fucking devil worshippers (?) in the woods. We were terrified. Ran all the way back to the car and I burned out my clutch getting out of there.

There was another weird place in a very dangerous area (ghetto, not supernatural)...it was this giant hill behind a construction vehicle storage yard. Up on top of the hill there was a heavily vandalized graveyard with headstones dating back to the mid 1800s. Almost all of them were broken or had satanic grafitti on them. The weirdest thing was that right outside of the graveyard, which had a stone wall around it, there were concrete WATER SLIDES carved into the side of the hill, the old "Wet Willie" kind of things. So if you were going on the slides, you'd look behind you and see this graveyard. Fucked up. Anyway, all kinds of satanic stuff all over there too. Probably kids. Some pretty weird stuff went on there though, lots of creepy stories and at least one instance where a friend of mine...brought something home...from there.

But yeah, scary hillbilly areas are actually probably MUCH scarier than devil worshippers...those really rural motherfuckers DO NOT care. There are some areas in Appalachia that could almost be regarded as "uncontacted".

Hmmm. As it turns out, while we don't have a single Comcast Cable box, we do have a promotion where we have HBO and Internet. So, technically, I don't have cable, but I have HBO. So I got to watch the thing via HBO Go.

I'm reminded more of the first season of Twin Peaks than anything. TD feels far more realistic. If you've ever read an actual occult text, it makes almost no sense. There are fragmented bits and jumbled ideas and a vague sense of unifying themes, but nothing that really coalesces into a tight narrative. TD gets that, and almost certainly gets it from Ligotti and Chambers.

As to details:

There is clearly a cult. From the names Carcosa and King in Yellow we can guess that at least the current round of rituals is at least 20th Century and based on the weird old sewer treatment plant by the lake. Carcosa itself is probably just a "city" by the edge of a lake, as in Chambers' stories.

It still isn't entirely clear whether the King in Yellow is Childress, the construction at the altar, or something else they are/were trying to summon. Or all of the above.

It is also probable that not all of the Tuttles were involved, but at least some were. And thus, the closing of Wellspring and the cover-up. As best as I can tell, TD never answers whether the surviving cultists continued the rituals after the raid on the farm.

As to the ears, Errol is either a sloppy painter or likes marking himself with paint. His scars are covered with yellow while he is painting at the school in one scene.

The wicker constructions, animal masks, and horns are interesting. There are hints of some older fertility rites there, as well as perhaps some kind of dreamcatcher. These could have been just old bits read from somewhere and assembled (possibly by Errol). So it could be just a group of 5 men who made up something crazy. Or it could still be some kind of older, longstanding corruption.

Hints, supposition, bits and pieces.

Coles' vision right before being attacked was totally Azathoth, btw. That did feel just a bit silly. Definitely kept with the Lovecraftian theme, however.

The last vision was just shy of going too far...I liked how underplayed his visions were in general, yet they were noted as being an ongoing thing.

Definitely some Twin Peaks, but definitely without the Lynchian whimsy (?!)...but Twin Peaks also goes WAY into the supernatural angle, what with the Black Lodge and all. TD is also actually much more specific.

You know, another thing I keep comparing it to is a scene from a movie few people saw and I think almost no one liked...that last Exorcist film that had two entirely different versions. There were parts of it that were actually really good...but the one scene that really sticks out and reminds me of TD is this bit where there are these two dogs viciously fighting...it reflects the spirit of discord, chaos and violence that is descending on this village. There is no monster, just a presence causing this disturbance. TD sort of seems like that, and I LOVE that.

The funny thing about all the cult stuff is that it is so very ripped from the headlines of...1982. It is, as Jeb said, "what if the Satanic Panic were real". It's also totally in line with the whole Alex Jones/David Icke/conspiracy theory lot that contends that the global elite are all inbred, child molesting devil worshippers...which may offer a linkage to future seasons that may get more into this apparent Hastur cult. It's actually probably the most mainstream representation of that corner of conspiracy theory to date. I'm sure there are websites and forums abuzz about how it reflects those beliefs and if it means that Woody Harrelson will now be offed by the Illuminati or something.

I got a sense that the rituals or whatever were intended to be almost a family tradition and possibly a local one..."my family's been here a long time"...so I think it is assumed that this is an old thing going back to who knows how long. It's interesting that there were apparently other "followers" involved aside from the assumed five...like the lady they interviewed "you know Carcosa?" And Dora Lange.

That's a good point, comparing it to actual occult text...a lot of actual occult texts are written like that on purpose, to obfuscate certain aspects and to encode things that are intended for specific (presumably initiated) readers. Even in Crowley, which is mostly coherent, you always get a sense of fracture and omission...that you've got three out of four ingredients so to speak, and those three ingredients are scattered in different places.

So yeah, definitely, the show works on that level. The guy that wrote it clearly has a duke of an idea about occultism, along with the obvious Weird Talesy sense of horror.

Shoot, now that you mention it, maybe Errol and his lady-thing would sit around and read moldy old issues of Weird Tales and they just came up with all of it...

Okay, here's my take, copied from my blog.

Like everyone else, I heard a lot about True Detective. Almost too much. It sounded interesting, and I was ready to watch when it got to Netflix or whatever, but it looked like time was against me. It seemed like only a matter of time before someone was going to spill whatever beans there were to spill. I didn't even want to see parodies because I was afraid of spoilers. So I acquired the series through perfectly legal channels and Becky and I shotgunned it as quickly as possible. That was actually pretty easy to do, because by the end of the first episode, we were hooked.

There's a lot about TD that I'm tired of. I'm tired of serial killers, white men who have to break the rules to get the job done, dead women as entertainment, anti-heroes who only have to stay just a little bit above the actual villains, an one or two other things that I can't say here in the non-spoiler part. However, the direction, the acting, the writing, the music, and the mood all helped me look past those things, for good or ill.

It's a stunning series and a great, if incredibly disturbing, ride, even if it kind of misses the landing. It's worth checking out sooner rather than later, though I don't think the "spoilers" are as ruinous as I feared they would be.

Here's a video I made which is 100% spoiler-free, but if you don't want to hear any more, don't read what comes after it.



Based on the reactions I've heard, I was expecting the ending to be some real 2001: A Space Odyssey stuff instead of the pretty straightforward wrap-up we got. I agree with the criticisms that the show's writing got weaker once we left Dora Lange and headed into the present, but I liked that at the end of the day there wasn't anything supernatural, no lurker from beyond, nothing but the stories we tell ourselves to make us feel better about the monsters among us. And let's be honest, the show not for once suggested otherwise. The "Lovecraftian" elements were never really there, any more than telling the story of the Son of Sam would require a CGI talking dog. This isn't a show about Cthulhu and never claimed to be, other than the general existential dread and nihilism at the center of the Lovecraft mythos. The scary part of those stories isn't the tentacled horrors but the idea that we are adrift in an uncaring universe in which we don't matter. And that the show did address.

I've seen criticism of the end as well, in the fact that they never uncover the conspiracy and just grab one guy. Again, this is something that works towards my favor, because I've never been a fan of huge overarching powerful conspiracies that can be stopped if you just take out the one guy. In the first episode -- in the first ten minutes -- Rust states "this is going to happen again" -- and he's absolutely right. When they catch Reggie Ledoux and close the '94 case they know there's evidence pointing further, but don't pursue it, and sure enough, it happens again. Not just the murder, but its resolution. Once more they catch someone, only this time they know it doesn't end it. They know there's more behind this guy, but just getting him has cost them greatly. They have to step back and realize there's only so much they can do in the face of an old, pervasive evil. It's also highly likely that the outcome suits the "conspiracy" just fine. One of their own went rogue, called too much attention, so he's sacrificed, given over to be the "bad apple" responsible so that the investigation can end and "justice" can be done and business can continue as usual. We've certainly never seen that in real life before.

There's also the charges of misogyny in the story, which there are a lot of grounds for, but I think they're not giving it much credit. This is a story of two men, men who get a glimpse into a world where all life, especially female life, is disposable and valueless (except in purely symbolic ways). They recoil from that world even as they unblinkingly walk in their world, which is only slightly better in its attitudes. Every woman around Marty is suffering in some way -- much of which he's the agent of -- but he can't see it or dismisses it as a cause of his work, instead of seeing his work being caused by this attitude. The fact that there's an entire narrative going on with Audrey that barely gets addressed despite a million warning signs underlines this obliviousness. Still, the show isn't helped by the usual strip-club and bunny ranch background action, nor the women who just can't wait to jump on pale and paunchy Woody Harrelson.

In the end, what I liked about True Detective was that it worked against the current model of TV watching, which is presented as some kind of a battle between the creator and the viewer, each trying to outwit the other. This was a story, not a puzzle to solve. That there was no secret Yellow King or Carcosa island or whatever to puzzle out was refreshing. No dumb twist, no shocking revelation, not even a really unreliable narrator, as even when Cohle is lying to Gilbough and Papania you the viewer know exactly what the truth really is. The show plays one hundred percent fair, and I think this bugged some people. For me, though, I really liked having a show that put its energy into telling the story right instead of juicing it up with TVTropes or Tumblr nonsense.

I've no idea if the second season can continue the great job done in the first, but I'll give it a try. And I'm down for the DVD when it's available.

I totally think the writers were intentionally leading the viewers into playing the whole post-Twin Peaks/X-Files/Lost game with the show...all of this looking for easter eggs, secret clues, connections to be revealed later...but at the end the trick was that like you said, the show played fair and didn't really have any kind of crowdsource puzzle solutions worked out on internet forums. Even when the show went cryptic, it was all still very face value.

I've been thinking about that hanging Audrey thread, and I think it goes back to what I wrote about those dogs in the Exorcist prequel...all of that was really just symptomatic of this moral, spiritual malaise over the lives of these people. It's the atmosphere of hidden or obscured wrongness that we never really get to see that matters. Not the "how" or "why" that turns into metatextual speculation and audiences imprinting meaning onto what is essentially (and intentionally) meaningless.

Legomancer wrote:

Still, the show isn't helped by the usual strip-club and bunny ranch background action, nor the women who just can't wait to jump on pale and paunchy Woody Harrelson.

The 'B' in HBO stands for 'Boobs'.

Legomancer also wrote:

When they catch Reggie Ledoux and close the '94 case they know there's evidence pointing further, but don't pursue it, and sure enough, it happens again.

I'm wandering into overthinking territory, but I don't think they have that evidence in '95'. Cohle doesn't want to drag the Task Force into this because he's convinced that they are dumbasses that will blow the case, or at the very least take the case over from him and Hart. When they track Ledoux down, all the wacky stuff like the devil traps, etc, are at the Ledoux place. Afterward, Ledoux and his weird brother are dead. Good enough, case closed. Cohle doesn't find out that there's more, until the drugstore killer lets him know that there are still killers out there.

[quote="RobertB" post=173777I'm wandering into overthinking territory, but I don't think they have that evidence in '95'. Cohle doesn't want to drag the Task Force into this because he's convinced that they are dumbasses that will blow the case, or at the very least take the case over from him and Hart. When they track Ledoux down, all the wacky stuff like the devil traps, etc, are at the Ledoux place. Afterward, Ledoux and his weird brother are dead. Good enough, case closed. Cohle doesn't find out that there's more, until the drugstore killer lets him know that there are still killers out there.[/quote]

You're right. I need to watch again because I was hazy on when they knew what.