
HBO
Earlier tonight, “True Detective” concluded its first season – and, with it, the stories of Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. I reviewed the finale here, and as a bookend to a conversation we had before the season started, I spoke with the show’s creator, Nic Pizzolatto, about the finale and the season as a whole (along with a vague but intriguing hint about season 2, which hasn’t been officially ordered yet, but only because I suspect HBO is waiting until they’ve signed the actors they want before announcing). That’s coming up just as soon as I strike you as more of a talker than a doer…
The structure of the series means you could have done anything with the ending, up to and including killing the two leads, because you get a clean slate with the next season. Why did you choose this particular way to end the story?
Nic Pizzolatto: This is a story that began with its ending in mind, that Cohle would be articulating, without sentimentality or illusion, an actual kind of optimism. That line, you ask me, the light’s winning, that was one of the key pieces of dialogue that existed at the very beginning of the series’ conception. For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand. And it would have been the easiest thing in the world to kill one or both of these guys. I even had an idea where something more mysterious happened to them, where they vanished into the unknown and Gilbough and Papania had to clean up the mess and nobody knows what happens to them. Or it could have gone full blown supernatural. But I think both of those things would have been easy, and they would have denied the sort of realist questions the show had been asking all along. To retreat to the supernatural, or to take the easy dramatic route of killing a character in order to achieve an emotional response from the audience, I thought would have been a disservice to the story. What was more interesting to me is that both these men are left in a place of deliverance, a place where even Cohle might be able to acknowledge the possibility of grace in the world. Because one way both men were alike in their failures was that neither man could admit the possibility of grace. I don’t mean that in a religious sense. Where we leave Cohle, this man hasn’t made a 180 change or anything like that. He’s moved maybe 5 degrees on the meter, but the optimistic metaphor he makes at the end, it’s not sentimental; it’s purely based on physics. Considering what these characters had been through, it seemed hard to me to work out a way where they both live and they both exit the show to live better lives beyond the boundaries of these eight episodes. Now they are going to go on and live forever beyond the margins of the show, and our sense, at least, is they haven’t changed in any black to white way, but there is a sense that they have been delivered from the heart of darkness. They did not avert their eyes, whatever their failings as men. And that when they exit, they are in a different place.
About the epiphany Cohle has at the end, this is a show that has dealt an awful lot with the abuses that can sometimes come from organized religion, and half of it’s been told from the point of view of a man who believes in no faith and is very eloquent and passionate in the way in which he describes the meaningless of our existence.
Nic Pizzolatto: And yet he protests too much. I think he does. I would refrain from some of the questions about some of Cohle’s psychology and beliefs. And this is a necessary part of the format, but it felt that chapters of a book are being reviewed before the whole book has been revealed. I don’t think Cohle is ever lying. I just think he wants that ultimate nullity to be true in the way that a born again Christian might want the transubstantiation of Christ to be true, right? It’s the kind of thing where if you know this, then you don’t have to go around saying it all the time, do you?
You gave Cohle a lot of opportunities, especially in the first five episodes, to express a lot of his belief system. Reading much of the commentary on the show, there were some people who were really impressed by what Cohle had to say and some who were thinking the entire time that he’s full of crap, and some people insisting the show thinks he’s brilliant and others feeling that the show is well aware that he’s full of crap. How did you want people to take all of the things Cohle was saying to us?
Nic Pizzolatto: I don’t want to restrict an audience by telling them that “this means this” and “this means this.” My intentions are the inalterable definition of things. For people who thought Cohle’s philosophy was simply hogwash, be aware that you’re calling Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche hogwash. Just be aware of that. That is not, in fact, a college freshman stoned eating a pizza talking about life; that’s Arthur Schopenhauer’s thoughts on life. But I thought that was part of the tension within Cohle. It might not all fall into relief until you’ve watched all eight episodes, but yes, these things are eloquently stated, and they do make sense, and they are no more or less true than the story Preacher Theriot is telling you during the tent revival service. Somebody asked me, “Well, what does this all mean?” Obviously, as an artist, I hate questions like that, but I could tell they were asking for a governing theme that could encompass everything else that happened. And so I had to think about it. And to me, if there’s one governing thing in “True Detective” that encompasses everything that is happening in “True Detective,” and that the show is telling you – constantly, the show keeps telling you – is that everything is a story. Cohle tells you that who you think you are, your identity, is a story you tell yourself. He tells us that religion and philosophy are stories we tell ourselves. Cohle describes them as cathartic narratives, but in confession he’s so good at getting confessions from suspects because he gives them room to create a cathartic narrative. Hart says an investigation is the act of trying to put together a story after the fact, and when he goes over his story in episode 5, you can tell that Hart used to tell himself one story and now he tells himself another story. The show was never concerned with the supernatural, but it was concerned with supernatural thought, and it was concerned with supernatural thinking to the degree that it was concerned with storytelling. So if there was one overarching theme to “True Detective,” I would say it was that as human beings, we are nothing but the stories we live and die by – so you’d better be careful what stories you tell yourself.
I keep thinking back to the interview we did before the season, and the moment when I was asking you about comparisons to other serial killer shows, and you said that you couldn’t care less about serial killers. How seriously were we ultimately meant to take the actual Dora Lange investigation, and how much of it was just a line to hang the character examination on?
Nic Pizzolatto: I don’t think it was an empty vehicle, is what I guess I would say there. I don’t think it could have been just anything that these guys were working on. I think it’s relevant that the person they’re chasing is both the victim of an historical evil and the perpetrator of an historical evil. The killer in that way is a physical articulation of cultural aspects that have sat behind the scenes, even informing that polluted landscape that provides so much of the background. If you go from the idea of something being in its natural state and then being perverted, and that this particular villain, for lack of a better word, is a killer of women and children, and his methodology is intimately tied to a mythology of belief – I do think if you want to go back and watch 7 and 8, there’s enough given in the fragments that everyone states, there’s enough that you can actually piece together historically, how Sam Tuttle in the early ’30s led to Errol Childress in the first decade of the new millennium. I would say it wasn’t an empty vehicle at all. I think the killer, his methodology and his actual crimes were endemic, not only to our characters, but to the world we were dealing with. It wouldn’t have worked to have a robbery that didn’t get solved properly in 1995. There’s almost a way that Cohle, Hart and Errol, these men are in some ways the creations of their fathers, if you pay attention to their backstories.
All of the things that, in the previous episode, Cohle was telling Marty that he had uncovered, and what we saw on the videotape, pointed to a larger group of men working on these things. But we get to the end, and it’s just Errol left, along with his father in the shed. How many other people were involved in the specific things that Cohle and Hart were investigating?
Nic Pizzolatto: There’s the men in the video, and there’s about 10 of them. Then you can begin to look at that as if that cult began to disintegrate shortly afterwards, and then there were always revenants existing on a local level. If you track the name Childress, you realize Sheriff Childress was the sheriff when Marie Fontenot disappeared, an Officer Childress was attending to Guy Francis in 2002 when he committed suicide. The conspiracies that I’ve researched and encountered, they seem to happen very ad hoc: they become conspiracies when it’s necessary to have a conspiracy. I think it would have rang false to have Hart and Cohle suddenly clean up 50 years of the culture history that led to Errol Childress, or to get all the men in that video. It’s important to me, I think, that Cohle says, “We didn’t get em all, Marty,” and Marty says, “We ain’t going to. This isn’t that kind of world.” This isn’t the kind of world where you mop up everything. We discharged our duty, but of course there are levels and wheels and historical contexts to what happened that we’ll never be able to touch.
Early in the episode, we see Errol come into the big house, “North by Northwest” is playing and he starts doing a James Mason voice. Then he slips into a number of other accents. What was behind that?
Nic Pizzolatto: That was part of his creation as a character. There was this idea that when he talks in his real voice, it’s very slurred because of the scarring. My background for him was that he learned how to enunciate properly through watching all these old VCR movies. And that brings us back to the idea of storytelling, right? At one minute he can affect this Andy Griffith good ol’ boy voice, the next he can sound like James Mason, and when he wants to use his real voice, he sounds like something wounded and damaged. And then when Cohle is in Carcosa, he sounds like something entirely different.
This has been the story of these two guys, and we get to know them incredibly well. None of the other characters really exist as anything but mirrors to reflect some aspect of Rust or Marty. How challenging is it to populate a world in which the only two characters who really matter are these two guys?
Nic Pizzolatto: That was really challenging. That was one of the most challenging things. Had this been an ensemble, that would have made it much much easier. In an ensemble, you can always cut to someone else’s story. You have at least half a dozen characters going through individual problems. But this was very much about tracking two personalities and two points of view. The significant change in the final scene is that a point of view has shifted. After we’ve been told via Hart that there’s no such thing as absolute justice – that’s a story we tell ourselves, the real guilty don’t get punished. It was very hard. If someone were, I think, to read my prose, they would find it populated with rich female characters. My challenge was, if somebody only exists in relation to Cohle and Hart, so they’re only going to get one or two lines, they need to become vivid and imply a history and dimensionality in one or two lines.
I don’t know where you are in working on season 2, but has any of the reaction to this season informed what you’re doing with the next?
Nic Pizzolatto: It’s informed exactly one thing. It’s that I realize I need to keep being strange. Don’t play the next one straight.
Can you tell me anything at all about season 2?
Nic Pizzolatto: Okay. This is really early, but I’ll tell you (it’s about) hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system.
Finally, you wrote this entire thing in a vacuum, as someone relatively new to television, not knowing how it was received. And the show comes on, and people go nuts about it, they are penning raves, coming up with elaborate theories about the Yellow King and Lovecraft and everything else. How did it feel to see your creation being received in all of these ways?
Nic Pizzolatto: I felt like, look, it’s all good, and I really mean that. To me, that is what it means to connect and resonate with people. It means that they are going to project onto the work. There’s never been anything I didn’t love that I didn’t connect with on a personal level because to some degree, I projected upon it. That said, I think I’ve made clear that my only interest in the Chambers stuff (Robert W. Chambers wrote “The King in Yellow”) is as a story that has a place in American myth. And it’s a story about a story that drives people into madness. That was mainly it. Beyond that, I’m interested in the atmosphere of cosmic horror, but that’s about all I have to say about weird fiction. I did feel the perception was tilted more towards weird fiction than perhaps it should have been. For instance, if someone needs a book to read along with season 1 of “True Detective,” I would recommend the King James Old Testament. I wouldn’t tell anyone to go buy Robert Chambers. It’s not that great a book. Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner I think are in there far more than Chambers or Lovecraft. But again, I guess I hope that these 8 chapters, once the totality of it is evident, it might provoke a re-evaluation. But if it doesn’t, I’m very happy with the reaction we’ve had. It couldn’t have been better. I’m just surprised by it. I remember talking to you three months ago and having to convince you: “This just sounds like every other show,” “I know, I know.” And now my wife read a comment the other day that said I live out in the desert, and I run some kind of cult. (laughs) I don’t know what I can say about that. I think this show answers everything it told you to ask. The questions it didn’t tell you to ask are questions best left to one’s self.
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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Thought you might ask him about Audrey. I’m not typically a viewer who needs to have all the answers, but I thought that was a storyline that would be illuminated a little bit more in the finale. I suppose we’re just left to speculate about that one?
People keep saying they think she was a victim of the work of the Tuttle/Childress cults, however, I don’t think that timing quite works out. The Tuttle schools closed in 92, which is where they seemed to pulling their children from. Or at least, generally from families that wouldn’t notice they’d gone missing or draw attention to their work.
I think the biggest possible answer to this is that, like young Audrey said, some girls at school dared her to do it. Described to her/told her stories about what to draw and she drew it. It’s possible some of those girls had friends who’d been victim to that kind of thing or were victim to it themselves, but I don’t think Audrey was.
I thought Audrey simply represented that Cohle was unaware of problems under his nose. That’s all. I don’t think it was want to Signify anything about her being involved whatsoever.
I agree with BBQ_HAXOR. Marty simplified things by accusing her of being ‘a slut’ and then beat her two ‘boyfriends’ up. As if that would solve the problems.
Later in 2012 we saw that Marty had alienated his family and Audrey was on medication. It shows that she had other problems, than just being ‘a slut’ and Marty was unable deal with it.
I think the daughters have seen something. When you see the first drawings made by Audrey in episode 4, you can see a woman that looks like she has flowers on her body and and a drawing that looks like the yellow king. And in the intro you can also see a female body with flowers on her. And in the final episode, the first scene the mother/sister of the lawnmower man, ask if he can draw flowers on her again. So i think they has seen something, hopefully in season 2 we get some answers. ( sorry for the english )
Sorry, episode 3.
This was my only disappointment with the finale. I really thought that it would come out that Marty’s father-in-law would be somehow involved and that Audrey had been abused by the cult (or seen something she shouldn’t have). There was so much involved that pointed us at assuming this, it was disappointing not to have answers.
The deal with Audrey is that Marty lost his daughter in a similar fashion that Cohle lost his…in that they both were blind to what they should have been focusing on (blindness is a common element in the story…blindfolds on victims). It wasn’t until the 2012 Marty that he realized what he lost (his family), which is analogous to their unsolved murder case.
To put it another way, Audrey is a minor character on the show that was really there to reflect Marty’s character….which put him in the “bad guy” column for how he treated his family (cheating on his wife, blaming his daughter, when he was the one neglecting her) and we see at the end, he realizes the wrong he did and what it cost him.
Okay, this topic has now been addressed in subsequent interviews with Erin Moriarty and Cary Fukunaga. I’m satisfied with their answers.
Again, I’m glad Pizzolatto didn’t go for a “twist” and I didn’t need any more information about the conspiracy. Audrey’s problems never needed to be connected to the case. However, the show seemed very interested in this storyline throughout the episodes, and I was expecting it to be explored a little more in the finale.
I wasn’t overly concerned with Audrey’s problems basically boiling down to a outward manifestation of Marty’s lack of attention to his family and attitude towards women – but OTOH, there is no question whatsoever that the staging of the dolls in almost exactly the same positions as the people in the later-found rape/murder video was a deliberate red herring added to the script by Pizzolatto.
Maybe it was simply a reoccurence of a familiar scene (a police investigation) that also happens to look an awful lot like a gang rape, which also bears resemblance to a ritual sacrifice? If you watch the show the same visual elements (spirals, crosses, crowns) keeping coming up over and over. I’m sure there’s more I didn’t pick up on. You could also argue that these crimes have tainted everything and left their residue on the psyche of the area (just like the way Rust can “smell” the crime scene), so it’s not entirely surprising that these symbols and metaphors might reverberate through a very literary mini-series.
It was a great visual moment that could be read a couple different ways. If it was indeed an intentional red herring, then Pizzolatto outdid himself.
I think we should refer back to the lines of this very interview:
“I think this show answers everything it told you to ask. The questions it didn’t tell you to ask are questions best left to one’s self.”
LOL. Very Funny Question. @John G , go and watch “The Following” that’s the kind of show u r looking for.
(Reposted from review thread) Serial killers in real life usually do what they do for 3-4 different reasons but it all comes down to the same old thing; they are crazy. TV shows and movies about finding serial killers or strange mysteries are fighting an uphill battle against today’s audiences. We have seen it all. Twists and turns, red herrings and drawn out narratives to fill X number of episodes. plot AND characters are equally important but plot is becoming less and less important to critics it seems. Its almost as if today’s audiences expect all the answers to the universe from a show like “Lost”, so of course they end up disappointed when the answer is the same old “light vs dark” narrative. What sets these shows apart is their execution. In my opinion the final season of The Sopranos has more mystery than “Lost” ever did. There are only so many ways a cop show like True Detective can end but to set it self apart from every other show like “Dexter” then the real meat and potatoes of this show has to be the characters and execution of the story. Thats what was great about True Detective. That single take in episode 4 is an example of execution. 5 years from now Everyone will remember that scene but they won’t remember how it fit in within the serial killer case. Everyone remembers the cut to black in “the sopranos” finale, who will remember the final shot of Breaking Bad 5 years from now?(Breaking Bad is an example of style over substance and I predict its perceived “greatness” will diminish with time and people will see it for the good but not great show it was. How BB was ever considered one of the greatest along with The Wire & Sopranos is something I will never understand). What I’m trying to say is people who were expecting all the answers and loose ends to be wrapped up in a nice bow are watching for the wrong reasons. this show was never going to 100% solve a mystery so massive and sprawling in under 8 hours. Everyone who expects a twist will always be let down. Its when you don’t see the twist coming, like say a cut to black in the middle of a diner during the finale of a mafia show, THAT’S a twist and we remember it. M. Night Shamalayan ruined his career chasing the twist of the sixth sense. True Detective was great for its writing, characters and execution. It was NEVER going to find a new way to end a cop show chasing serial killers. There are only so many things plot can accomplish. Showrunners like David Simon, David Chase and now Nic Pizzolato use established genres to trick the people who want action, gunfights, death and mysteries into tuning in each week for one thing when they are going to give the audience something else. Something to think about. Something that stays with you. That’s the real twist. (Please excuse mistakes etc. wrote this quickly on a cellphone)
Nobody really expected a twist, I didn’t want a twist, twists suck. But we were led down a path that had a lot of philosophical interpretational meaning only to be given the serial killer shoot out scene where the two heroes bond and find god together. Oh please.
@ Marta you were led down a path from articles you read online. That is hardly the intent of the creator. “Only to be given..” Is an interesting and dismissive phrase that tells me you did indeed want a twist. What did you want? For Errol to shed his earthly form and become “the yellow king”? It was either going to end with his arrest or death. The variables in any mystery cop show are two: whodunit and how are they caught/killed. Rewatch the show and perhaps you’ll find more than “two heroes who find god together”
@Marta Who said anything about God? They find some semblance of meaning and love for one another. I don’t understand how someone can begrudge Cohle a catharsis after all he’s been through. Seems selfish as a viewer to prefer simple answers for the ancillary loose ends that we created for ourselves over an emotional breakthrough for our heroes.
The finale was almost 40 minutes of stock police procedural and then onto the serial killer fight scene that we have seen oh so many times before.
So you’re telling me you’re okay with that after all the philosophical meanderings and intellectual questioning of life and its meaning, with the decades long Carcosa/yellow King info that had a church that people went to, that affected them to the point that they believed that death is not the end, that Carcosa/ yellow king was a belief system for this congregation of retired old rich men maids, prostitutes, and lunatic meth dealers. Only to have a standard police procedural serial killer ending for 40 minutes of 1 hour screen time. No, I was not affected by reading the conspiracy theories online. I was led down a path that led to mediocrity. No twist was needed or wanted.
As a goof heres an example of an ending that would have been true to the show: The green painted house leads them not just to the serial killers house but upon a community totally entrenched in the decades long sermons of the church of the Yellow King/ Carcosa where the scarred man resides. ( We have met a bunch of people who believe in Carcosa/Yelow king: good and bad people remember). A town with families of what we from the outside we would see as regular people hidden away but with all of them brought up with the yellow king/carcosa teachings.
Chole and Hart enter this small town and slowly discover what these towns people are all about. Chole and Hart see this as the darkness growing/ becoming accepted and spreading. Madness may be taking over. They decide this is to big to deal with themselves. They try to leave but are stopped. Chole is cornered and as he’s about to be killed he looks up to the sky and sees the universe expose itself to him, the mob descends. Hart trying to save himself collapses exhausted as the mob comes closer. He tries his cell but no signal and instead opens his wallet to look at pics of his family when the mob descends.
Each ones death stays true to each ones belief system that has been constant throughout the series.
So instead of a stock police procedural ending, you wanted a stock cosmic horror/zombie movie ending?
marta, you have made me believe in God (so I could thank him that you did not write True Detective)
“Serial killers in real life usually do what they do for 3-4 different reasons but it all comes down to the same old thing; they are crazy.”
Bad news: we’re all crazy. The show does a great job of showing, as Alan points out here, that we’re all defined by the stories we tell ourselves. If your story is off the mainstream, then you’re “crazy”.
We need to account for the things killers do as being rational, but according a narrative that’s simply not shared by many of us. (Or shared, but simply not acted upon, by others.)
I share Pizzolatto’s view that killers are uninteresting and shouldn’t be rewarded with attention. But I like the idea that everyone, even those killers, is simply following a narrative that we inhabit, sometimes one that we select and sometimes selected for us, which defines our own lives.
You can still make paragraphs on a cell phone.
Marta-That’s a terrible ending. There is absolutely nothing profound or riveting with that ending you wrote. You basically went down the path of every stereotypical horror movie we’ve seen. Horror movies are tedious and boring, because they are not an actualization of what happens in the real world.
Sunday’s finale was awesome because it closed the loop on what was the story all along…two characters struggle through tragedy and the idea of a sliver hope when times are the darkest.
That fanfic ending sounds like something better suited to a lesser show. TWD, for example.
curs10-exactly, that sounds like a Walking Dead ending. A show where you don’t need to think about anything….its just blood and carnage.
Serial killers aren’t necessarily crazy. Do you have to be insane to kill multiple people? I would argue no. lol at the Breaking Bad stuff. Breaking Bad is arguably the greatest TV show of all time (and will forever be considered such) because it equally, and fantastically, values style AND substance.
I agree and disagree. Simply giving a few more answers and having more people involved rather than spaghetti monster wouldn’t be a twist but what most fans had expected. If anything this ending was a twist because you realized after 8 episodes you were watching a buddy cop movie rather than a deep mystery movie. Which is fine, but when we expected a giant mystery it was disappointing is all. I don’t need Bruce Willis was dead as my twist, but just give us a little more!
And as far as Breaking Bad I have to greatly disagree. Fantastic acting, exciting, and very unique. The ending wasn’t a huge twist but wrapped it up perfectly which I do not think true detective did. And in my opinion, ending aside, Sopranos is massively overrated. Great acting, good story telling but I binge watched it and was glad it was over, very meh. And Wire was great too, but can find faults there. Every show has faults, everyone has different opinions. Just next season, warn us not to read into the show and just watch it for basic entertainment.
I have to say the whole “Pizzolatto isn’t interested in serial killers” is a bit disingenuous, given that he invented all these details that didn’t come across AT ALL, like VHS tapes sh*t, and that rather than letting the guy be defined by his crimes, keeping us on the side of Cohle and Hart, we were given many scenes WITH the serial killer. The serial killer is given more meaningful and characterizing scenes than any other secondary character including Hart’s wife!
@Marta
a quote from the movie ‘Seven’ pretty much sums up my feelings:
“If we catch John Doe and he turns out to be the devil, I mean if he’s Satan himself, that might live up to our expectations, but he’s not the devil. He’s just a man.”
Also, your zombie-movie ending sounds ridiculous.
@Marta , lol . What do u do for leaving?
Post a comment…
Was he serious about what season 2 would be about? Or was he kidding with you? Hard to tell
I call BS on what Pizzolatto says regarding Choles conversion. Pizzolatto may truly believe that Choles belief in gra e is in a non religious way but thats where he failed. It does come off as finding religion. Such a shame because that is not what Chole would have truly believed. Major FAIL Nick.
I don’t think there was anything religious to what Rust was saying, but it certainly sounded spiritual. Not everyone who believes in things beyond the material world are necessarily religious, though our culture often paints it that way. That being said, I do agree that Rust’s monologue didn’t really feel true to his character.
Spirituality is very distinct from religion. You don’t need religion to find spirituality.
As irritating as religious people are, people who are this averse to the general concept of spiritual redemption are equally intolerable. Whatever he experienced that gave him existential relief, dude had been in a perpetual state of despair for twenty years. For him to end the show in that same state would be 1) a bummer and 2) antithetical to the notion that your characters must change.
I understand the difference between spirituality and religion, my only point is that I don’t think this felt in character for Rust. I don’t understand why Rust, as previously written, wouldn’t view what he saw as nothing more than a chemical reaction in his brain that eased his suffering and reminded him of something pleasant, in this case the love of his daughter. And in even in that sense, theres no reason why that couldn’t still have been meaningful to him.
@Marta – While I didn’t find much, if anything, that I agreed with in any of your posts, that’s fine, that’s great- that’s part of what watching s something like this is all about. If everyone posting here was all hosanas, it would be boring as hell. Differing opinions are part of the fun. HOWEVER, that being said, this post here is just wrong. It’s not about opinions. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in that scene, NOTHING, that points to him finding “religion” (or even “God”, which even that would be different from religion, though, without trying to be insulting, I think that might be too nuanced a distinction for you to make). Literally, if that’s your reading of what Chole was taking about, that’s on you. That’s your own silly misreading. I think how this story ended may have been a little too character driven and nuanced for you. Had “TD” ended with your empty, awful, zombie village/ “Wicker Man” -esque ending, my God, that’d be so disappointing and (sorry) juvenile. What we got was so quiet, human, and surprising. Opinions are opinions and no one should ever tell someone their opinions are “wrong,” but….. in this case… your opinions are, well… “wrong.” ;-)
@Jack – Like Nick says, the ultimate theme of the show is the stories we tell ourselves. The point of the ending is that its not in character for him. His perspective had shifted (a little). The rust of episodes 1-7 is a product of the story he created for himself. If you look at everything he went through, I think there’s motivation for him to want to change the story. Doesnt matter what story is ultimately true, a guy who is ready to ‘tie it off’ after a decade of drinking and loneliness, well, I dont think anything he would believe could be considered out of character.
Don’t really understand the refusal to accept Rust can change. His views on life changed and he became a pessimist because of the death of his daughter so why can’t he become (slightly) more of an optimist when he encounters her living spirit?
I think unless you know what it’s like to lose a child and then to go through something like what Rust describes, it’s pretty difficult to criticize or judge his reaction to it, even within the context of character consistency. I don’t believe there is ANY belief or feeling as strong as the love and protection you feel for your child. You can read all the Nietzsche and Schopenhauer you want, but when faced with whatever he felt from his long dead daughter while he was in that coma… that love becomes all that matters. Everything else is bullshit. There IS no reasoning away that it’s chemicals, even from someone like Rust. It simply IS. And the reason for that is that its tied to the strongest part of our programming, spiritual or evolutionary – survival as a species.
For chrissakes, it’s COHLE. Chole looks like Chloe misspelled.
Cohle’s conversion was absolute b.s. It was ad-libbed by McConaughey, Fukunaga had thrown out the script (it probably was crap) — read this [www.vulture.com]
I think its pretty much a given that season two will revolve around female leads.
Hopefully it is because that makes the best story and television and not as a result of allegations of sexism and external pressure. Would a show featuring two strong female leads be met with allegations of sexism against men? It was a show about two great and interesting characters. Let’s hope going forward, regardless of the demographics of the characters, we get this type of quality.
The sexism attack was not surprising. However, I don’t think HBO would force him to change a hit series just because of a couple bloggers. HBO doesn’t seem to push their showrunners in any specific direction due to audience reaction.
No, it wouldn’t be met with sexism against men because sexism against men doesn’t exist. And no one, to my knowledge, was upset that this show was about two straight white men, necessarily, as much as no one else mattered or even approached a 3D person as much as two straight white men. I think regardless of one’s taste or own “demographics” that should come off as a little disturbing. And given that when women did show up, they were wives, daughters, victims or prostitutes – so I’m not sure how that’s a “sexism attack” as opposed to just “sexism.” Anyway, if Pizzolatto can write women well, as he claims to, it could be great, but I think the problem was more his lack of writing a round world.
Sounds like season 2 will be Chinatown meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit(it sounds silly but the highway/street car plot of Roger Rabbit was actually going to be used in a Chinatown sequel and both are based on actual conspiracies)
“My intentions are the inalterable definition of things.”
Did you mean to write: “my intentions AREN’T the inalterable definition of things”? That sounds like what he’s saying, maybe a transcription error?
Wow, he just shits all over Lovecraft and Chambers then compares himself to Faulkner and Conrad. Give me a break. The finale left a bad taste in my mouth, this interview just confirmed everything I felt. True Detective is a bunch of signifiers signifying nothing, and nihilism deployed for dramatic arc (“The light’s winning.”). Yeeesh. What a collapse.
Wow that is some ad hominem BS you pulled together there. Compares himself or tries to help an audience understand where he is coming from? Context is everything. Use it next time
“The finale left a bad taste in my mouth”
Aluminum? Ash? Can you smell the psychosphere?
Comprehension fail level: Maximum.
I didn’t read his comment as a comparison to Faulkner and Conrad, but as an acknowledgment that their work was a strong influence on his.
The non-linear narrative and the overwhelming presence of past generations both remind me of “The Sound and the Fury.”
“Comprehension fail level: Maximum.” +1
lol….someone went way too far down the wrong rabbit hole.
When it was all said and done I overwhelmingly felt the influence of Faulkner and Conrad more than the weird fiction of Chambers or Lovecraft. Those feelings owed as much to the direction, production design and cinematography as they did to the writing. The YK and Carcosa stuff was there to add layers and deepen the feeling of unease and accentuate the madness of the humans perpetuating evil – and subsequently blown up to mythical proportions on the internet. That said, I will have to agree that the final “the light is winning” part was a bit of a clunker.
I am a bit upset with the ending. And with the responses by Nic. If you didn’t want people focusing on Carcosa and the Yellow King, then why was everyone associated with the cult, hell even the house keeper, spewing rhetoric about Carcosa and the Yellow King? It’s Lost all over again. “Don’t worry about any of this mythology that we’ve spent the whole season building upon. Focus on this as a character driven series.” Bullshit. Audrey enacts a gang rape that mimics the exact situation that is laid out on the videotape that drives the whole series towards it’s conclusion. Yet we are supposed to believe that it was purely coincidental or that it was just a device to let us see how evil can permeate everywhere on many different levels.
The same thing with Errol’s accent. Nic has to explain that his real voice is slurred because of the apparent abuse that caused the scars on his face and that he re-learned how to talk by watching these videos. I mean was this part left on the cutting room floor because of time restraints? Because usually the creator of the series doesn’t have to reveal elements of the series in post series interviews.
OK. Rant over. On the positive side, I did like the epilogue a bit. As far as twists go, I was floored that Cohle lived AND that from his near death experience he was able to feel a bit of hope about life. People made too much out of this. I’ve seen people say it’s a cop out that he found spiritualism or religion. He did no such thing. He simply was able to feel SOMETHING. And that something actually took away from his desired ending. He talked to the detectives early in their interview about how his daughter died when she slipped away in a coma… and how that was the perfect way to go. Cohle was there, he was slipping into the abyss, he felt the presence of some sort of afterlife, and what happens when he lets go? He wakes up in the hospital. To me, Cohle’s “ending” is far from positive…. BUT it did allow him feel a slight bit of hope once again.
Marty basically realized that he threw his whole life away. He had a great family. He made the choice to throw it away. He may be able to salvage some of the relationship with his daughters but he missed out on the most important years. I saw someone reviewing the finale and they described that Rust and Marty’s “reward” was that they were forced to live and go on. I think that is a very accurate description to the ending.
Oh well, my two cents. That’s all.
Why do people feel like they have to have everything wrapped up in a neat, tidy bow? Is it too much to ask that some things are just left up to you to interpret? Yeah Marty’s daughter wasn’t really explained, but perhaps it’s more effective that way. Also, if you’re going to let little red herrings destroy your opinion of a show then I feel for you because you are probably a fan of shows that require zero afterthought, are full of genre cliches, and everything is spelled out in big bold letters (not saying any names)
I could not agree more, RoderickJaynes. Pizzolatto is full of it.
So what was the Yellow King?
The yellow king was the bed they used to rape/murder. It is shown in the final room right before Rust has his hallucination. It had all the skulls and bones and was draped in yellow cloth
What a turkey of a finale.
Alan why not ask him plot related questions? You’re throwing him easy Rust/Marty softballs and not holding the show to a better standard. The biggest speculation of the show from what I saw whether or not Audrey was involved in the cult or had witnessed something to drive her behavior. You can’t ask a single question about that?
Why did Audrey arrange her dolls like Rust’s beer can men? Like the ritual sacrifice/rape of Marie Fontenot? Just a red herring?
Why did Audrey’s masked man drawing look like the photo of Tuttle’s masked man?
Why did her drawing have a stabbed pregnant girl? Stabbed like Dora Lange and Marie Fontenot? Was Marie pregnant?
Why did her drawings show an armless angel like the drawing on the school’s wall?
Were these all red herrings like Lost and The Killing were filled with useless scenes and meandering plots to fool the viewer and waste time…?
Given the location of his abode, it seemed to me that Maggie’s father could easily have been a part of the cult at one point in time. Likely before it disintegrated. Now, I’m not implying that he abused his grandchildren. I find that very unlikely. I do think it’s possible that, in their childhood exploration of granddad’s house, Audrey could have come across some hidden photos that remained imbedded within her psyche. It’s very clear that the cult was booming at one point in time, by died off at some point before the ’95 killing. Or died off because of it.
Granted this is all just personal speculation and musing, but it’s easy to see how she could have come across such things without being abused or wrapped up in some convoluted conspiracy.
I think there is some reason similar to the above for her behavior. After all, he said that within this show, the visuals will NEVER lie. The stories being told by the characters may not always be true, be it intentionally or not, but the images will never lie. So in that regard, her behavior was not a red herring at all. There’s some extremely minor connection there.
It would’ve been nice if this were addressed more directly, but you can view this in two ways. All the stuff with Audrey was just a red herring OR the Yellow King did reach Audrey, which both exemplifies the inattentiveness of Marty as a father and that the evil of the cult was so pervasive that even Marty’s own daughter was exposed to it either directly or indirectly. The former would be lame, but the latter is very plausible. Just because no one came out and flat out confirmed it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Of course, I understand this might seem unsatisfying plotwise, but like in real life truths are often left unobserved.
I think the daughters have seen something. When you see the first drawings made by Audrey in episode 3, you can see a woman that looks like she has flowers on her body and and a drawing that looks like the yellow king. And in the intro you can also see a female body with flowers on her. And in the final episode, the first scene the mother/sister of the lawnmower man, ask if he can draw flowers on her again. So i think they has seen something, hopefully in season 2 we get some answers. ( sorry for the english )
I think like the detectives investigating Cohle, you are connecting dots that were never really there.
Richard harrow I think you have been the most observant, I think grandpa was involved and they chose not to include that in the finale as of the men involved.i think the cop who looks like jerry Sandusky could be one of the participants since he was anxious to transfer the case to the task force,the daughter did arrange the figures in the same circle as rust beer cans and lets not forget about her leaving for school one morning and we see the crown in the tree and for the ultimate observation which has no connection to the story line but placed in the episode just to show secret societies was the initial meet between Tuttle and rust, Tuttle gives rust a Masonic handshake,watch over and see the 2 fingers extended on the wrist of rust. Lots of other stuff but too much to put in here.
God forbid a show not answer every little piece of speculation its viewers might have and wrap up everything in a neat, tidy little bow for you, with no room for personal interpretation.
[www.reddit.com]
I feel like a lot of the people disappointed that the philosophical “meanderings” and Audrey “red herrings” didn’t pan out to anything were on some level, fundamentally expecting this to be an extended CSI episode. Lots of people, especially the internet theorists, got too paranoid and started seeing black stars and yellow crowns everywhere when Pizzolatto explicitly said from the beginning that there would be no real twists and that what you saw would be what you get. It’s also funny lots of people complain about Cohle’s “out-of-character” spiritual awakening when its been repeatedly suggested and implied since the very beginning that Cohle at his core genuinely does believe in goodness and the importance of faith: it’s Cohle’s central hypocritical trait in the same way Hart’s “family is important” lectures were.
I liked the finale, but you can’t dismiss people who wanted closure on the plot as well as the characters. If you tell people that Itchy & Scratchy are on their way to the fireworks factory, then you should probably have them arrive at the fireworks factory, not just develop their characters and then ridicule people for expecting to see the fireworks.
How did the end not give closure? They solved the case, got the spaghetti monste, Reggie’s other partner and put a stop to him. The cops and media got involved. The Tuttles used their influence to somehow avoid blame. What more needed to be resolved? I ask sincerely. They did get to the fireworks factory though did they not? Rust was vindicated, right?
If the story of Itchy and Scratchy going to the fireworks factory is actually more interesting than them getting there, and it’s the point to tell the story of them going rather than arriving, then it’s a perfectly fine story. If people don’t like the story, that’s fine. They have every right not to like it.
I do think Rust was full of crap, and I found pizzolatto’s response to that a tad smug…although reading his answers, it’s very clear to me that Rust is a reflection of himself. Good finale, but could have been a bit tighter…I’m not sure I quite bought Rust’s optimistic end view
Lighten up, folks. Like the man said, “it’s a story”.
Would I have ended the show differently? Probably. But then it would have been MY story. Project onto it all you want, but remember that this is Nic Pizzolato’s creation, so out of an infinite number of possible endings, ultimately the decision will have to be made by him. So I guess our job as viewers is to simply watch and enjoy, and find whatever personal meaning we can from the experience.
I actually do get the Rust catharsis and the sudden new-found child-like wonder at the discovery by a dedicated cynic of the possibility of a little hope and meaning in a seemingly hopeless and meaningless existence, not because I was taught to believe in those kinds of things, but because that was MY actual experience. Only when you’re a devout disciple of God according to the Gospel of Nihilistic Despair, (like I used to be) do you feel compelled to ritually deny yourself the possibility that all those things that you think are so hokey and contrived about the nature of spiritual concepts like “love” could actually be the simple guideposts that lead to a larger existential truth.
So stories like True Detective don’t really create “truth”, as much as they serve to reaffirm truth for people who may have had some kind of “spiritual experience” but who still struggle with the realities of living in the material world.
So anyway, I was pleasantly surprised. Honestly, when I saw the trailer for the show, my firest thought was, Woody Harrelson AND Matthew McConaughey? Together? For eight episodes? Man, this could be really painful. But after a couple of shows, I found myself re-watching with the closed captioning on to be sure I got the dialogue right.
Now I’m kind of disappointed that they apparently won’t be back to reprise their roles. But then I’m one of those die-hards that is still hoping for a Sopranos: The Next Generation.
Oh, well. Life goes on even when television doesn’t do like you want it to.
Like Jagger and Richards said, “you don’t always …” well, you know.
If you’re so loose about it, why do you have to come to a TV blog, that’s about criticism, to lord over those critiquing? If you love consuming media without acknowledging or discussing that every little bit might not be as challenging, fruitful, responsible, whatever as it could be, great – but some people like highlighting that a guy who worked on The Killing seemed to have the same kinds of issues in his own show, or just generally pointing out that it offered spooky mysticism, weird cults, domestic dramas, gang drama, trippy hallucinations, political commentary, philosophy or whatever when it suited filling out a scene or just plain ol’ killing time. The show had great things about it, but it’s hard at least for me to deny that it was a grab bag.
Missed the part where he repeatedly thanked a captivating McConaughey performance (along with a buzz vacuum provided by other programming) for elevating what was otherwise be a pretty mediocre piece of work. Okay show, hope it gets better, but there really was only one reason to get invested in this one.
You missed a lot.
I missed the part where the interviewer asked him about MM. And mediocre? I can’t think of one aspect of film/show making (cinematography, directing, dialogue, acting, screenwriting, etc…) that you could possibly categorize as mediocre.
There’s a reason that every network was battling to get the rights for this show, and that was long before MM agreed to sign on as Cohle.
Yes, because we see writing that was on TD on every show. /s
I enjoyed the majority of the last episode and as they hunted the killer in Carcosa – that was very creepy and well played. I thought the fact that both heroes were almost killed was certainly expected. The fact that they both survived was a relief an unexpected.
Regarding Rust’s revelation’s at the end of the episode – Marty called him out on his nihilistic B.S. in a previous episode in the church tent scene when Cohle was dissing the people and their faith. Marty says that for someone with no belief in a faith – he sounded pretty desperate. Pizzalotto is right that those who have to talk a lot about what they believe in are not secure in those beliefs.
Cohle’s spiritual turn at the end fit within the way the story was being told. His belief system had been understandably altered after experiencing a near death. No one knows how they will experience something like this and what affect it will have on them. My only problem was the overly emotional way he relays his revelations to Marty. That gave things more of a sentimental and possibly a religious over tone and that didn’t feel right to me. The content of what he described was spiritual and not religious – but it just felt that way some how possibly through the delivery.
Having said that – this is one of the finest bits of story telling we have seen on television in the recent past. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to Pizzolatto’s next effort. My only worry is that it will be very tough to measure up to what we saw this season. If he does manage to pull that off in Season 2 – Alan, you may have to update your book sooner than you think.
These 2 short vids sum up the finale! Forest Gump and Lieutenant Dan [www.youtube.com] [www.youtube.com]
As True Detective began inspiring the elaborate theories and speculation that seem to be the hallmark of a show’s popularity transcending to true cultural phenomenon, it struck me that much of it was beside the point. Some people ran wild with Carcosa and the Yellow King, far afield of where the show had gone with them, and now they’re complaining that the show didn’t follow them there. I’m reminded of Morgan Freeman’s warning to Brad Pitt in Seven, a piece of meta dialogue about how the killer they sought could never live up to their expectations unless he were the devil himself. The Yellow King was the same. To me that’s okay. All of that hinted at mythology was spice to add flavor to a great show, but the meat of that show was always Cohle and Hart. I think the reaction to True Detective illustrates that the concepts of story and plot are hopelessly muddled for a lot of viewers at the expense of being able to appreciate what narratives are actually trying to accomplish. The plot of True Detective is like Rust’s pickup. It’s a solid vehicle that gets us where we need to go, but what’s truly signifigant about it isn’t the engine that makes it run but the men driving it. The plot ends with that climactic confrontation with Errol Childress, but the story ends with Marty having the first genuine, honest moment with his ex-wife and daughters (and any other woman for that matter) of the entire series, with Cohle rediscovering the hope that he long ago lost, and the two of them finally, absolutely accepting each other for who they are. We may not have plumbed the depths of the conspiracy, but we got to spend eight episodes watching Rust and Marty get their piece of it. They’re imperfect soldiers in the murky war between light and dark, and even if the war rages on we can still be satisfied that we saw their battle to its conclusion.
Speaking as someone who coincidentally studied both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche at uni, I have to say that if Cohle is Pizzolato’s view of what those two were saying (and bear in mind that other than his very early work Nietzsche thought he was absolutely disagreeing with everything Schopenhauer said!), he’s got a pretty facile understanding of their work. It sounds like someone who picked up a book once, didn’t understand it, but peppered in a few paraphrases to sound smart.
Fundamentally, the pessimism is anti-Nietzsche (who used ‘pessimist’ as one of his go-to terms of abuse and called for everyone to ‘say yes’ to their lives and be happy), and the materialism is anti-Schopenhauer (who thought that the material world was only a representation of the one true unitary spiritual Will – Cohle only started to sound Schopenhauerian in that finale scene).
To take just one example, it’s implied before they close the case that Cohle is planning to kill himself. This is a common misunderstanding of Schopenhauer’s pessimism: in fact, Schopenhauer viewed suicide as just further trapping people – suffering comes from the will, and suicide is the ultimate act of will (the fact that suicide brings your timeline to an end doesn’t help, because reality is without distinctions of space or time). Nietzsche despised suicide as the epitome of pessimism, nihilism, cowardice and so far – the ultimate failure to affirm the goodness of your own existence. In particular, suicide is rendered pointless by Nietzsche’s/Cohle’s notion of the eternal return (i.e. time being a flat circle), since as soon as you kill yourself you end up right back at the beginning again anyway.
(If anything, Cohle seems to get a lot of his babble from Nietzsche, but his attitude from Schopenhauer – hence they don’t really make sense together).
More generally, it would have been nice in a character study like this to have seen some consequences – i.e. the ethics. Cohle’s ethical motivations never really seem adequately explored, and they certainly don’t suggest either the ‘strength’ and ‘health’ of Nietzsche or the ‘compassion’ and ‘love’ of Schopenhauer.
Anyway, I’m not criticising the show per se on these grounds – TV shows don’t have to be intellectually sound on all occasions. But it does annoy me when Pizzolato comes out and says ‘hey if you disagree with me/my character you’re disagreeing with Schopenhauer!’ – if you’re going to claim the authority of somebody else, you should probably make sure you’re really solid on what that someone else said.
Or as Schopenhauer put it: “Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment, says Seneca; and it is therefore an easy matter if you have an authority on your side which your opponent respects. The more limited his capacity and knowledge, the greater is the number of the authorities who weigh with him…But there are very many authorities who find respect with the mob, and if you have none that is quite suitable, you can take one that appears to be so; you may quote what some said in another sense or in other circumstances. Authorities which your opponent fails to understand are those of which he generally thinks the most.”
Incidentally, I think next year will be really critical for Pizzolatto and his show.
IMO, what appealed most about the show was the cinematography, creating a beautiful and disturbing world – which was then filled by two terrific actors giving their all. The actual script was a mixed bag, I think – the large-scale plotting was poor and cliché, a lot of the lines would have felt clunky and awkward if anyone else had been saying them, and to the extent that the show was able to convey a sense of the characters of the two men I think it was primarily due to the acting, not the writing.
Don’t get me wrong, it was better written than a lot of stuff on TV. There were some really good lines, and in particular I think people haven’t given the black humour the credit it deserves. But I don’t think it was really exceptional either – take out the two actors and the cinematographer, and I don’t think it would have gained a fraction of the acclaim that it has. [And put those two actors in front of that camera, you could make a critically acclaimed show out of anything that wasn’t actually illiterate]
So I think there’s a lot of potential downside next year, if he’s not able to get the same level of replacements. Of course, he could also prove me wrong!
I haven’t studied Nietzsche formally but a lot of what Rust was saying felt in keeping with the tone of his writings I have read. Definitely the eternal recurrence you mentioned and a few other specific theories but also more broadly, in his views on society and his willingness to be unpopular rather than accept empty herd morality. Rust was never written as a professional philosopher, just an extremely engaged thinking man in a lot of pain, so his ideas didn’t need to be coherent and if they are an unresolved hodgepodge of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, as you suggest, that feels more realistic to me than if they were a perfect distillation of one historical philosopher’s writings. Didn’t Nietzsche say that man would rather have the void as his purpose than to be void of purpose? Sounds like something Rust would say.
“he’s got a pretty facile understanding of their work.”
Well, seeing how you missed the point of Cohle by a f***ing MILE, I’d say you are the one with the facile understanding, you snarky prick.
I sure hope the next season has two male leads again. If either or both of them were women, it would be a disaster. Making a show about women is universally bad, as their stories are never interesting, and always suck. If it happened, that would probably be the end of True Detective. Who wants to see True Detective turn into one long chick flick? Answer: NO ONE! Stick with what you’re doing, Nic – stick with the guys!
Marty? Is that you?
Lol. What a sad outlook. Any woman’s story would be more interesting than, say, yours :)
Wow. You asked the perfect questions. Great interview. A lot of what Pizzolatto says here, and has said elsewhere, reminds me of the writings of Don Miguel Ruiz who says that we’re all just telling ourselves stories; don’t believe anyone, don’t even believe him (Ruiz). That always blew my mind that a spiritual teacher would tell you not to take his word for it but ultimately it’s more empowering. In the same way there is something strangely empowering about the loose threads that weren’t tied up in the finale. It reminds you that we’re not being handed an authoritative answer from on high and leaves a lot to the imagination.
“To retreat to the supernatural, or to take the easy dramatic route of killing a character in order to achieve an emotional response from the audience, I thought would have been a disservice to the story.” – words never uttered by Stephen King.
There are many Stephen King stories and novels that don’t involve the supernatural or the death of the protagonists. Nic Pizzolatto’s sensibilities as a storyteller don’t set a standard for anyone but himself. King has dug just as deeply into his characters as True Detective did, even in his most unabashedly supernatural tales.
He worships at the altar of Faulkner, not King, yellow or otherwise.
You’ve done a disservice to King by implying that those elements are what makes King’s stories resonate among his readers.
Stephen King’s novels have always been more about the characters and their journey, and less about the plot developments (supernatural, killing off characters, etc…)
Stephen King ?@StephenKing 8m
“Glad I watched the TRUE DETECTIVE finale on “regular” TV. Spoiler: It was awesome.”
Pwned
Great interview until “How challenging is it to populate a world in which the only two characters who really matter are these two guys?” Wow, holy crap is that ignorant. I am surprised Nic didn’t take you more to task on that one.. Is it the pathetically misguided band-wagon-idiocy-theory that the women of the show were not adequately fleshed out that is woefully inspiring this ill informed opinion? If you honestly believe this, we were NOT watching the same show.. Jeez…BLECH!
You radically misunderstood the intent of the question, since Sepinwall has stated his opinion on the issue elsewhere. Way to go.
Uh.. I didn’t misunderstand shit, and have no opinion on the intention. The question itself was pointless enough to warrant my reply, regardless of intent. If Sepinwall has to stoop to such idiotic questions, I feel sorry for him. But I have been devouring anything about this show, and I do not agree that he has validated this line of questioning at ALL. Also, you are a snarky douchebag, you know that? Good luck with that, your friends and family must love you.
There’s no need to hurl insults. This blog has a rule against that anyway. The question is about the fact that an 8 hour anthology devotes all of its narrative resources on two characters. That may be typical of literature and 2 hour films, but it’s not typical of long-form storytelling on TV. It’s a valid question, and it has nothing to do with the “misguided band-wagon-idiocy-theory” you’re so angry about. He isn’t criticizing the writing at all, because he’s explained in previous reviews and his podcast that he doesn’t see any problem with it. But it does create challenges, and Pizzolato is a mature professional who can manage intelligent questions about his craft without reacting like a child.
Oh, the blog has a rule? Why don’t you tell on me. The fact is, I shared my opinion, you insulted me first. And all that you mentioned (this may be typical of a film, blah blah blah) only serves to bolster my opinion. People who have a problem with the characterization are misguided. Bottom line. This show is brilliant and yes Pizzolato has had to eat some shit to come across as graceful with criticism. Obviously reading about something has more to do with your opinion than the work of art itself, which is ALSO misguided. Who cares if it’s typical of long form storytelling (god you are douchey), there is nothing typical about this show. Anyone who would latch on to this issue of characters is perhaps threatened by the show, jumping on a bandwagon, doesn’t get the show at all, or is just a dick who likes to criticize shit, just because. Which are you, asshole?
I’m not the dick-douche bag-asshole in this conversation.
I am sorry you think you are very smart Joel, and I am sorry that I am not so concerned with proving that about myself that I will deign to explain it to you. Suffice to say, you are a pompous fucking blowhard who should really CONSIDER, for the sake of all around you.. that maybe… just MAYBE…. you aren’t as bright as you think. Chances are… you aren’t. :( Wah Wah! See ya, I’m done with your sorry ass.
If you’re going to just hurl insults, you could at least try. My 9-year-old niece is more creative than this.
…and the award for the two most defensive people in these comments goes to…
Except Pizzolatto lapped that up? And was like yeah, it was so difficult to do that? So he obviously agreed?
Ok this was a let down ending as much as LOST was but atleast here they had the decency not to pull our nose for multiple seasons to have a simple crap ending like this one.
Being a non English speaker and limited in my knowlage of Philosphy I enjoyed Season for what it is. Pour moi, so it’s funny to read the discussion … people who tell their story: how clever they are and how the makers failed …
They definitely skipped a lot of loose plot lines. Quite disappointing. Especially since episode 7 was filler ie. nothing happened. Is seems a lot of time were spent writing the first few episodes and the last few were very rushed. It also seemed like direction was given to move away from occult and supernatural to more of a ‘silence of the lambs’ ending. It definitely made more sense that Marty’s family were involved, even to the point of corrupting their partnership. There was so much backstory wasted. For example, who was killing these women and posing them ? certainly not Errol alone.
If Tom Cruise ends up in Season 2, I’m out!
I think the daughters have seen something. When you see the first drawings made by Audrey in episode 3, you can see a woman that looks like she has flowers on her body and and a drawing that looks like the yellow king. And in the intro you can also see a female body with flowers on her. And in the final episode, the first scene the mother/sister of the lawnmower man, ask if he can draw flowers on her again. So i think they has seen something, hopefully in season 2 we get some answers. ( sorry for the english )
Wow! I’m surprised to see so many post berating anyone who had cosmic / dimension / lovecraft theories and in doing so were disappointed … Guess what ? … thats what drove this show in the first place. the other was viewers looking to connect all these families. And yes I wanted something far more complex . Mr. Nick himself would make it a point to show his characters talking about all these far out things , like “he who eats time ” and ” carcosa” Errol saying he ” ascending out time circle ” .. and don’t forget the tweet the director put out early on the full sermon from the Elvis preacher ..It was all about other dimension shit …. Now , after hearing this smug ass director telling us don’t over analyze , Im like “excuse me ” … the only reason i was in so deep on this was to break down hidden messages and hope we would have a groundbreaking show … You commenters can kiss my ass , you don’t get to tell me what my mind can imagine and want to see … And those of you who just liked it for its connect the evil families, whodunnit aspect … he left your ass out to dry also …. I enjoyed the ride , the end of it was like going through a school zone … (middle finger to you uppity posters )
I read somewhere that the writer has the rights to the Rust and Cohle characters. I smell a book sequel.
Pretty disrespectful attitude toward Chambers and Lovecraft. You used a GREAT DEAL of their mythology and then discount it? And let’s not pretend you didn’t straight up *plagiarize* sections of Ligotti…
So the creators of this show have the right to make the show they want and everyone has the right to want the show they want. I think nick was pretty clear all along that the mystery/killer aspect was never the focus. There are some in these comments that were not wanting/needing a big story twist but still felt let down that all of the ideas (rusts philosophic musings) never went anywhere and that rusts sudden change at the end was unmotivated and out of character. I found the ending to be perfect and heres why:
TD, to me, is not about mystery, crime, or philosophy. The creator himself says that its about the stories we tell ourselves. The two leads are living the story they tell themselves. Watch the scene at the tent revival again. Listen to what rust says about those people and then apply it to everything rust and marty do and say. Rusts pessimism/nihilism is not a statement of truth (from himself or the show), it is a cathartic narrative rust lives in order to not have to feel the pain and reality of the loss of his daughter and wife. It would be very out of character for this ‘rational’ man to do a 180 on his philosophy just because he spent a few days in a coma. Many people have interpreted his coma experience as a him finding god (or as just some kind of spiritual awakening)which causes him to turn his dial away from his nihilistic perspective to something closer to optimism. I think this misses the point. Rust does something he never does in the show during this scene. He breaks down and cries. And his tears are caused by the fact that during his coma he not only felt his daughter and her love, but could not continue to be with her. This is called loss. This is the loss that rust spent the entire series avoiding. The show doesnt show rust crying on his daughters birthday, it shows him getting drunk so he doesnt have to. The last scene is one in which rust finally faces and accepts the loss of his child and through doing so allows himself to finally really feel the pain of it. The philosophical ideas in the show do go somewhere if you understand that they are simply part of the human process of resolving grief. Marty has his own moment of resolution when he sees his family in the hospital. He alternates between I’m fine, I’m going to be fine which is essentially what he has done the whole series. But then he finaly shuts his mouth and starts to sob. This is the moment when he finally accepts the massive loss of his family. His own cathartic narratives (his adultery being good for his marriage, the idea that he could get his family back because he had ‘learned’ from his mistakes) all break down and in this moment he does what you never see him do- really feel the loss/pain.
“there used to only be darkness, if you ask me, the lights winning” You can interpret this as a statement about the world and reality. There is evil in the world, but we choose to keep fighting. I take it to mean that inside these two men there was once only darkness (not moral evil, but unresolved pain/guilt/loss) but by facing and accepting that darkness they could finally move forward. And as someone who can very much relate to this, I find True Detective to be an exceptionally cathartic narrative.
*repost* So the creators of this show have the right to make the show they want and everyone has the right to want the show they want. I think nick was pretty clear all along that the mystery/killer aspect was never the focus. There are some in these comments that were not wanting/needing a big story twist but still felt let down that all of the ideas (rusts philosophic musings) never went anywhere and that rusts sudden change at the end was unmotivated and out of character. I found the ending to be perfect and heres why:
TD, to me, is not about mystery, crime, or philosophy. The creator himself says that its about the stories we tell ourselves. The two leads are living the story they tell themselves. Watch the scene at the tent revival again. Listen to what rust says about those people and then apply it to everything rust and marty do and say. Rusts pessimism/nihilism is not a statement of truth (from himself or the show), it is a cathartic narrative rust lives in order to not have to feel the pain and reality of the loss of his daughter and wife. It would be very out of character for this ‘rational’ man to do a 180 on his philosophy just because he spent a few days in a coma. Many people have interpreted his coma experience as a him finding god (or as just some kind of spiritual awakening)which causes him to turn his dial away from his nihilistic perspective to something closer to optimism. I think this misses the point. Rust does something he never does in the show during this scene. He breaks down and cries. And his tears are caused by the fact that during his coma he not only felt his daughter and her love, but could not continue to be with her. This is called loss. This is the loss that rust spent the entire series avoiding. The show doesnt show rust crying on his daughters birthday, it shows him getting drunk so he doesnt have to. The last scene is one in which rust finally faces and accepts the loss of his child and through doing so allows himself to finally really feel the pain of it. The philosophical ideas in the show do go somewhere if you understand that they are simply part of the human process of resolving grief. Marty has his own moment of resolution when he sees his family in the hospital. He alternates between I’m fine, I’m going to be fine which is essentially what he has done the whole series. But then he finaly shuts his mouth and starts to sob. This is the moment when he finally accepts the massive loss of his family. His own cathartic narratives (his adultery being good for his marriage, the idea that he could get his family back because he had ‘learned’ from his mistakes) all break down and in this moment he does what you never see him do- really feel the loss/pain.
“there used to only be darkness, if you ask me, the lights winning” You can interpret this as a statement about the world and reality. There is evil in the world, but we choose to keep fighting. I take it to mean that inside these two men there was once only darkness (not moral evil, but unresolved pain/guilt/loss) but by facing and accepting that darkness they could finally move forward. And as someone who can very much relate to this, I find True Detective to be an exceptionally cathartic narrative.
one of the best interviews i’ve ever read
Should’ve asked the symbolism of the green ears.
I think this is why some people didnt like the conclusion of the show. They looked for symbolism where there was none.
They should have left of from season 1 with eipisode 6. Making season 2 have another 6 episodes were things could have ended i the manner it begun. There were to many things left untold, too quick. Then start a thrd season witn different charachters and a new plot.
Ugh, nice try to frame the series as “oh, I wanted the story to be restricted to just these guys, but hey, in my prose, that no one reads, really, I do write a lot of female characters.” Please. I’ve written fiction no one has read myself – it is totally possible to acknowledge and embody characters with a life and personality, even if they aren’t central to the story, even if they are transient to the story. So, yeah, not looking forward to the “hard women” of season two, whatever that means, but I’m going to guess stereotypical! empty! functionary!
I dont think he was saying it was restricted to the two characters. It was restricted to their POV. and as such, I think the women in the story were presented to the audience in very much the way those men saw them. Also, who didnt have a life and personality? It seams more like a life and personality you just didnt find interesting. There is a difference.
Alan says: “None of the other characters really exist as anything but mirrors to reflect some aspect of Rust or Marty. How challenging is it to populate a world in which the only two characters who really matter are these two guys?” which pretty much implies that no other characters are embodied but Cohle and Hart, and he flat out says no one matters but Cohle and Hart. That has nothing to do with POV. We see the serial killer in scenes in the final episode that have nothing to do with how the detectives “might see him” – they’re essentially omniscient. When PIzzolatto responds and uses the term “points of view,” he means Cohle’s philosophy, his way of dealing and looking at the world, and Hart’s, as being what he was primarily interested in. I loved McConaughey’s performance as Cohle (for the most part) – I have no issue with these guys being the focus, how they think being the focus (although many other commenters have taken issue with how flat/easy/nonsensical the police work was in the finale) – but that meant, for this show, that no other characters exist? I mean, I was thinking about this last night, how Umber, the murder victim in the second episode of this season of Hannibal is given more humanity than any other character in TD. He’s there in the story to die, he doesn’t utter any dialogue even, but was acknowledged as a person in its world. The fact that Pizzolatto thinks “focus” on two characters means everyone else is flat bothers me. Even your implication that the men would see other people is flat, and that that’s okay, is sort of disturbing, also given that I’m not sure how much that even accurately reflects Cohle. Your criticism is duly noted – I might have found aspects of Monahan’s character cliche had she been well written – but aspects of Cohle and Marty are cliche. So yeah, I’m pretty sure I’d have enjoyed her more had she been, not necessarily a complex person, but to be treated like she “mattered” in the story. I think Pizzolatto is aware of this failing when he half-attempts to defend himself by mentioning the “rich female characters” in his prose or whatever, but it’s not about having crafted a female lead – in fact I’m not sure the guy can write women well and am not really looking forward to that in S2 – – it’s about writing a world that’s complete, not full of cliches and red herrings and unresolved plot devices.
I urge everyone to ignore everything Nic Pizzolatto says about his writing. It’s all self-promotional hot air. Don’t be fooled by the academic verbosity.
This interview with director Cary Fukunaga reveals he threw Pizzolatto’s script out (it must have been terrible) and pieced the finale together with various footage. Thus the incredibly stupid “green ears” and lack of resolution. The last conversation was ad-libbed by Harrelson and McConaughey, which explains why it was feeble and didn’t fit the tone of the series [www.vulture.com]
Extraordinary writing. Exceptional acting. Harrellson outstanding; McConeaughey riveting! Best television I’ve experienced in decades! Bring on more!
Could people using the phrase “red herring” correctly, unless your meaning is different from the usual meaning. This is reference to Audrey and her posed dolls. & drawings.
A red herring ( as I understand it) is used in a mystery to divert your attention from , say, who the real killer is or mystery of the story – whatever that is.
Maybe it’s a “red herring” for some in the event that they are looking for a tidy storyline, this is not that.
As this story is told – despite not know how a young child could stage her dolls this way, it is IMHO foreshadowing and we don’t really need to know why she knows or does this. Just my thoughts.
lol, Nic pretends he knows how Christians think (or don’t), that’s cute. “But you know what I’m getting at” – yeah, but it really really really helps with the wanting-to-keep-paying-attention if your references aren’t sloppy.