True Detective Conference Room (SPOILERS- GO AWAY)

Here's my sole contribution to the thread

www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2014/2/...oing-everyday-things

Gosh, SO ripe for parody...

Wice, my point wasn't that speculation was a mistake...as long as it's based solely on _what is explictly shown and said_ in the show. It's impossible not to speculate- it's part of the fun of any detective fiction or mystery story. The problem is that audiences today expect all of this hidden bullshit to mean to something and it makes people feel smart to "outfox" the screenwriters and pick up on all of this supposedly secret messaging. "Oh, there's a shot where you see Marty and the word "King" is next to him- he is the Yellow King"!

That's a very different kind of speculation than drawing a possible conclusion about a line of specific dialogue and the possibility that there is a detail that has not been revealed as of yet.

In the article that Trif linked to, the show's creator mentions something that really got me thinking...he says something to the effect that for the past 20 years, audiences have gotten used to be lied to and then getting the big twist that everything they just watched was all a lie or whatever. And that, of course, goes straight back to The Usual Suspects. And then The Sixth Sense. X-Files engaged in some of that. Lost definitely did and the end pretty much invalidated the entire show.

I don't get a sense that True Detective is lying to its audience or trying to hide its answers in coded messages, symbols, or whatever...like the thing with the lawnmower.

Jack has a great point about the character dynamic...one is an avowed moralist that completely blunders his morals, the other is an extreme pessimist with extreme morality.

Cohle is totally Rorschach. Everything about him is Rorschach. That whole B&E scene was totally something Rorschach would do to solve a crime.

After reading a bit of this, I am now, for the first time, irritated that I shut off the cable.

True Lovecraftian horror? And I'm missing out?

Fuck.That.Shit

Well...it kind of depends on what you expect from "true Lovecraftian horror".

Simple flowchart. If "True Lovecraftian horror" directs you to "trashbag/garden hose monster", then nope.

If instead it directs you to "existential dread with a possible deviant, esoteric cult involved but no actual supernatural element onscreen at any time", then maybe.

It's _almost_ like how the Chris Nolan films treat Batman...a very pulp element, but taken at face value and placed matter-of-factly in the real world. There's no camp or schlock involved.

That's what I mean. True Lovecraftian horror is that existential dread...bad shit happening for no reason and the film doesn't give you any VISUAL clues but many small tidbits of ~~~DAT LORE~~~ indicating some sinister shit is happening.

Pulp, not Camp.

After the first two episodes, I thought the cops might have to deal with some Great Old One out there in the swamps. But after ep. 4 and 5, I figured that we were dealing with your garden variety sick fucker cult thing, with all the 'King in Yellow' stuff as trimmings.

My theory du jour is that the finale is that Hart/Cohle wrap up enough detective work to get pointed at the Lawnmower Man, and to get enough evidence to get the other two detectives pointed in the right direction on the Lake Charles murder. Trying to get Lawnmower Man and the other minions might be a little more difficult.

Trying to catalog the crimes the cops have committed: assault, battery, kidnapping, torture, felony murder, accessory after the fact to felony murder, B&E, burglary, criminal trespass, making false statements, and a bunch more likely.

And all in the service of some higher justice they have internalized. That's the real madness here. These are bad men. The showrunner talks about what heroes they are, but that's some pretty weak heroism. They aren't even as sympathetic as McNulty on THE WIRE and he was a tremendous asshole.

If there was some old-timey police god they could worship with symbols and uniforms (HINT: IT'S SAINT MICHAEL); why wouldn't we be repulsed at this corrupt cult that stands apart from the rest of us, preying upon us for their higher calling?

@jeb - isn't that one of the (if not THE) points of the show? These are bad guys going after way worse guys. They're now planning to play 20 Questions with a cop hooked to a pair of jumper cables, but what they're going after is so heinous that, after seeing it once, Crazy Rust won't even look _towards_ a video of it again.

I guess I am missing the part where the other guys are way worse. Cohle and Hart are awful. I think Cohle needs to get them because he needs something to be worse than himself. I am guessing he is also a child killer--he probably ran over his daughter. He killed some perps back in TX and went WAY down the moral relativism rabbit hole while undercover. Clawed his way back after killing MORE perps and having that stay in the sanitarium, and managed to skate along until this case gave him what he needed--some deeper true evil to confront, so he could for once stop thinking about the evil in himself.

Meanwhile, Hart, happy to let all the corrupt cop bullshit sliiiiiiiide as long as he gets his pole and palm greased along with everyone else has to confront the horror of someone taking the contempt of women Hart obviously shares to its logical(?) extreme.

It's a good thing this is a SPOILER thread, because this guy seems to have put his finger on who the Yellow King is.