True Detective

Drinsic · Feb 18, 2014

supertouch_sl said:
I have a feeling Hart is the killer

That would be retarded.

xKALECx · Feb 18, 2014

Royal_sl said:
If you watch the whole pull out shot, there are actually 4 black stars on the windows, in the same configuration at those drawn in margin of the right hand page from Lang's journal.

And we also see Cohle "framed".

Meko · Feb 18, 2014

While doing some imdb digging, I found this dude is in the show:

Johnny McPhail - IMDb

Foreshadowing?

Vandyn · Feb 18, 2014

supertouch_sl said:
I have a feeling Hart is the killer

I still say there is something not right with that character. It feels too convienent that he shoots the guy in the head after seeing the kids. Almost like he knows that Ledeuw being alive would show the real killer is still out there.

Lithose · Feb 18, 2014

meko_sl said:
I tend to think Hart was 'seeing it' as it was but it wasn't that way at all. Besides, why would a little girl have so many guy dolls? (I think it's important to also note that you could argue some of the dolls look like Hart and Cohle)

The director or writer seems to be really emphasizing the unreliable narrator, and how everyone's perceptions are formed off narration. I think this would be a pretty elegant way to exploit that. So it's not some 'fight club" twist, but rather simply a slight alteration of events due to some obfuscation by both of them, and what we're seeing with the dolls and symbols on the wall? Is the blurring of things when someone has to juggle lies. Especially big, life altering ones, like working undercover. Which could be "the twist", that Rust and Hart left the police department to work undercover for a larger agency, so they could root out the corruption that goes so high up and all the little symbolism we are seeing are meant as a kind of subtext saying "all this isn't right" . The paranoia that comes with having to fabricate your life during an interview--remember what Rust said? Everyone is guilty and they want absolution? So as Hard is recalling things to the detectives, his memory has jumbles of things he is lying about, breaks in his facade, kind of like a subconcious hoping to be caught so he can find some relief.

That might be why a lot of people liken it to Mad Men, it's got a lot of the same themes about people, and masks and how we look at the world based on what people let us know about them. Given the snipet earlier about the "audience" being 4d beings, and how the show is a meta commentary on how stories are so important for society and people? I'm thinking the larger theme might just be that--how it fucks with your head to have to show people two different narratives, or fill your "stories" with lies. Hence the usage of the unreliable narrator mechanic (Which was push hard this episode.)

Or maybe it's something more real. Who knows, not even close to enough information to do anything but speculate. But with how much emphasis they are putting on "confession" and interviews as the episodes go one and how they crack people? I'm thinking this could be a decent explanation.

Lithose · Feb 18, 2014

Vandyn_sl said:
I still say there is something not right with that character. It feels too convienent that he shoots the guy in the head after seeing the kids. Almost like he knows that Ledeuw being alive would show the real killer is still out there.

That scene was interesting. I'm sure it won't come up, but notice in the story he said it was Rust who shot the guy? Wouldn't ballistics be able to tell it was Hart's gun? There were some deliberate cracks in the story, I'm not sure if they were just meant to be overlooked or if they will be exploited later. Meh. But there is evidence there is something "hidden" due to an unreliable narrator; as in, we aren't getting the whole story because some of it is being concealed from the interviewers.

I think it would be really disappointing to find out Hart was part of the cult, or whatever. But I think there is a lot that's not being said.

Foggy · Feb 18, 2014

Lithose_sl said:
The director or writer seems to be really emphasizing the unreliable narrator, and how everyone's perceptions are formed off narration. I think this would be a pretty elegant way to exploit that. So it's not some 'fight club" twist, but rather simply a slight alteration of events due to some obfuscation by both of them, and what we're seeing with the dolls and symbols on the wall? Is the blurring of things when someone has to juggle lies. Especially big, life altering ones, like working undercover. Which could be "the twist", that Rust and Hart left the police department to work undercover for a larger agency, so they could root out the corruption that goes so high up and all the little symbolism we are seeing are meant as a kind of subtext saying "all this isn't right" . The paranoia that comes with having to fabricate your life during an interview--remember what Rust said? Everyone is guilty and they want absolution? So as Hard is recalling things to the detectives, his memory has jumbles of things he is lying about, breaks in his facade, kind of like a subconcious hoping to be caught so he can find some relief.

That might be why a lot of people liken it to Mad Men, it's got a lot of the same themes about people, and masks and how we look at the world based on what people let us know about them. Given the snipet earlier about the "audience" being 4d beings, and how the show is a meta commentary on how stories are so important for society and people? I'm thinking the larger theme might just be that--how it fucks with your head to have to show people two different narratives, or fill your "stories" with lies. Hence the usage of the unreliable narrator mechanic (Which was push hard this episode.)

Or maybe it's something more real. Who knows, not even close to enough information to do anything but speculate. But with how much emphasis they are putting on "confession" and interviews as the episodes go one and how they crack people? I'm thinking this could be a decent explanation.

The problem with this theory is that episode 5 strongly suggests weareseeing the truth even when Hart and Rust are lying/misremembering.

moonarchia · Feb 18, 2014

They deliberately lied to make Hart's murder into something that wouldn't get him fired and put in jail. Executing docile prisoners is generally not acceptable police behavior.

Intrinsic · Feb 18, 2014

Lithose_sl said:
The director or writer seems to be really emphasizing the unreliable narrator, and how everyone's perceptions are formed off narration. I think this would be a pretty elegant way to exploit that. So it's not some 'fight club" twist, but rather simply a slight alteration of events due to some obfuscation by both of them, and what we're seeing with the dolls and symbols on the wall? Is the blurring of things when someone has to juggle lies. Especially big, life altering ones, like working undercover. Which could be "the twist", that Rust and Hart left the police department to work undercover for a larger agency, so they could root out the corruption that goes so high up and all the little symbolism we are seeing are meant as a kind of subtext saying "all this isn't right" . The paranoia that comes with having to fabricate your life during an interview--remember what Rust said? Everyone is guilty and they want absolution? So as Hard is recalling things to the detectives, his memory has jumbles of things he is lying about, breaks in his facade, kind of like a subconcious hoping to be caught so he can find some relief.

I really like that a lot and it is a way better way to put words in to my own feelings. I've never felt that the background symbolism was meant to be interpreted literally or as evidence to the audience about the actual murderer(s). My theory, or belief, has been that they are there to make us uncomfortable and to create this bleeding of the lines of actual memory and the story being told. It is either fortunate or unfortunate that we've been conditioned since Lost (I think someone brought this up earlier) to analyze every little thing and try to fit it within the box and plot. Now, that all may be horseshit and next episode we'll find out something different, but for now that's my story.

The thing I am struggling with now is if they go down the path ofbig peoplebeing involved, where is the bridge between the two groups? Tuttle is probably that link, an on the ground in the dirt evangelizing preacher with the ear of the common folk and meth heads, but also politically positioned and likely connected to a large religious lobby. It just seems strange that if the "conspiracy" goes all the way to the top, why drug addicts, ex cons, and whoever else know so much and are actually performing these religious killings. It my mind it is supposed to be like some Illuminati, Mason, Skull and Bones, Harvard secret society type stuff. Not Boudreaux and Thibodeaux off in the woods running their own game.

Maybe the 4 Kings got pissed that Tuttle couldn't control his meth freaks and they offed him, and like you've said Cohle and Hart are positioned to blow this thing up. It would also be strange to introduce 4 new "Kings" in only three episodes.

Now that the story has moved forward to the present my guess is Cohle and Hart don't make it out of this alive and there is further symbolism with the Carcosa stuff, just not sure where they fit in with the imagery because interpreting poems and whatnot is way beyond me.

Fedor · Feb 18, 2014

Lithose_sl said:
The director or writer seems to be really emphasizing the unreliable narrator, and how everyone's perceptions are formed off narration. I think this would be a pretty elegant way to exploit that. So it's not some 'fight club" twist, but rather simply a slight alteration of events due to some obfuscation by both of them, and what we're seeing with the dolls and symbols on the wall? Is the blurring of things when someone has to juggle lies.

Lithose_sl said:
That scene was interesting. I'm sure it won't come up, but notice in the story he said it was Rust who shot the guy? Wouldn't ballistics be able to tell it was Hart's gun? There were some deliberate cracks in the story, I'm not sure if they were just meant to be overlooked or if they will be exploited later. Meh. But there is evidence there is something "hidden" due to an unreliable narrator; as in, we aren't getting the whole story because some of it is being concealed from the interviewers.

I think it would be really disappointing to find out Hart was part of the cult, or whatever. But I think there is a lot that's not being said.

...there's no unreliable narrator shit at play unless you're literally talking about Rust's narration of the story to the detectives inside the show and in that case he obviously has to lie about certain things. What you see in the flashbacks actually happened and the showrunner has also confirmed that; he was even confused as to why so many people think the show is trying to trick them.

Also Rust told them that Hart snuck up behind Ledoux and shot him in the head just as he was turning around.

Soygen · Feb 18, 2014

Yup, they didn't lie about who killed Ledoux.

Drinsic · Feb 18, 2014

What Fedor said. There is nothing at all that hints at unreliable narration, other than the "story" Rust and Cohle have been telling for nearly two decades.

bixxby · Feb 18, 2014

How in the world would they be able to clean up all the brains and blood from where Ledoux died compared to where all the shell casings from the AK would be

Meko · Feb 18, 2014

This is a pretty good review of the series so far:http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...-all-life.html

Slaythe · Feb 18, 2014

Lithose_sl said:
That scene was interesting. I'm sure it won't come up, but notice in the story he said it was Rust who shot the guy? Wouldn't ballistics be able to tell it was Hart's gun? There were some deliberate cracks in the story, I'm not sure if they were just meant to be overlooked or if they will be exploited later. Meh. But there is evidence there is something "hidden" due to an unreliable narrator; as in, we aren't getting the whole story because some of it is being concealed from the interviewers.

I think it would be really disappointing to find out Hart was part of the cult, or whatever. But I think there is a lot that's not being said.

I might be remembering this differently but in the interview, or interrogation if we want to call it that by now, with Rust, doesn't he explain Hart flanking Ledoux and killing him? I don't recall this slip where they say Rust did that. Again, I could just be remembering incorrectly.

Soygen · Feb 18, 2014

meko_sl said:
This is a pretty good review of the series so far:http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...-all-life.html

Good article. I think this is the closest to what we'll see:

Or:

Cohle meets Guy Leonard Francis in 2002, and knows by his use of the words "the yellow king" that this is no false offering. Ledoux is dead, but Ledoux was not at the top of the hierarchy. The man who turned him into a vessel is still alive and unaccounted for, and he is still killing. Cohle quits his job (or gets fired?), and either begins the hunt for the Yellow King, or attempts to flee.

But if escape is his first plan, it fails. He returns to Louisiana in 2010 having tracked the truth like he tracked Ledoux, beginning in the abandoned schoolhouse. He kills Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle, the man we see momentarily in episode two, who is cousin to the governor of Louisiana and who lobbies for the creation of a special task force to prosecute "anti-Christian crimes," but is intricately involved in the murders. It is the latest act of vengeance for Cohle, who has made it his life's mission to root out the infiltration of the Yellow King and eliminate the network, one by one. And he's working as a vigilante, which is his purest version of self. Everything he tells the detectives interrogating him, from his alcoholism to his dark philosophies to his whereabouts in the past ten years, is sewn with deception to throw them off his trail. He knows they can't be counted on to help; as he leaves, he hits them with the worst insult possible: "Company men." He only came in to see their new information, but the thin file they hand him pales in comparison to his years of lonely hunting.

Meko · Feb 18, 2014

Even though it seems like the majority doesn't want this outcome, I kind of liked it the best based on the review:

Martin Hart is the Yellow King. There are signs we'd be fools to ignore. His daughter, from the time she's young, has dark sexual inclinations and an anger toward her father that hint at some form of abuse, and which Pizzolatto wouldn't show us if it didn't have a point. Hart was also the one, in episode two, who stopped Cohle from entering the abandoned school at the last possible moment when information came back on Reggie Ledoux's past. Crucially, we never heard that information except from Hart's mouth; he was giving up details on Ledoux to keep Cohle away from the school, which was part of Tuttle's ministries and which was strewn with devil nets and other evidence of the killer.

When the pair finally caught up to Ledoux, Hart made sure to kill him before he could find his verbal way beyond apocalyptic poetry to reveal the identity of the Yellow King. He disguises the act as righteous rage, but it's nothing more than an execution and a silencing. And in 2012, he slowly allows the new detectives to win him over with their case against Cohle. He's nearing some ultimate coup, and the murders were an attempt to curb his existential fatigue; to refute the truth that the good days are a myth and the future has always been behind him. Hart-another name for "deer," incidentally-is the yellow-haired malevolence that has worked its sinuous way through the refineries and bayous and cane fields of his own hellish Carcosa.

Lithose · Feb 18, 2014

Moonarchia_sl said:
They deliberately lied to make Hart's murder into something that wouldn't get him fired and put in jail. Executing docile prisoners is generally not acceptable police behavior.

I thought it had a flaw in it, but yeah, as others have said, it was Rust who was talking about flanking, I thought it was Hart. But I understood the reason for the lie.

Fedor_sl said:
...there's no unreliable narrator shit at play unless you're literally talking about Rust's narration of the story to the detectives inside the show and in that case he obviously has to lie about certain things. What you see in the flashbacks actually happened and the showrunner has also confirmed that; he was even confused as to why so many people think the show is trying to trick them.

Also Rust told them that Hart snuck up behind Ledoux and shot him in the head just as he was turning around.

Yes, I'm literally talking about the story they are telling vs real events and how reality is constructed through narration, plus the small delusions in the scenes (Birds, dolls). So if there is a twist, it's going probably be through an unreliable narrator--and the odd things we saw in the flash back? Will be clues to that, that might come together when it's revealed. Again,if there is a twist. Part of what makes an "unreliable narrator" done well is that you shouldn'tknowit's happening until it's revealed. Since the show is predicated on them lying about events, and crazy people who see the world completely differently, it makes me think that the reason he's put this story telling element front and center is that it will be used to explain the oddities. Seems like a decent explanation. But again, only if they are planning a twist, which is why I said this....

Or maybe it's something more real. Who knows, not even close to enough information to do anything but speculate. But with how much emphasis they are putting on "confession" and interviews as the episodes go one and how they crack people? I'm thinking this could be a decent explanation.

So the theme of the show thus far seems to be how narrators can lie to make stories mold people's perception. The undercover work, the cover up of the shooting, the jumping state lines--all different from how it happened. If there is a twist, I'm thinking that's how it will be presented...Not in a "I have a split personality" but rather in "I've straight up been lying and the flash backs you saw were only a sliver of what really happened".

Lithose · Feb 18, 2014

Drinsic_sl said:
What Fedor said. There is nothing at all that hints at unreliable narration, other than the "story" Rust and Cohle have been telling for nearly two decades.

Well, the delusions too (Like the dolls)--but yes, essentially the entire story so far has a gap between reality and what others perceive. It's a big element in the story, a lot of it's structure is based on false perceptions. I mean Rust literally came from a life that was built on deceiving through story telling (Undercover work). And Hart's having an affair while purporting that being in a family keeps a man "grounded" and extolling the virtues of being in a solid relationship. There are a lot of clues that there is a fissure between what the detectives say, and whatactuallyhappened (Yes, thus far there hasn't been any in terms of flash backs--but again, if this is an unreliable narrator then they wouldn't be there until it's revealed.).

I'm saying the whole "meta" thing he's describing is how story telling shapes our views of things. We rely on other people's interpretation of events to form our opinions. So if there is going to some twist, I don't think it will be from just "oh, he's got a split personality"...I rather think it's going to be "Oh, X also happened during Y scene and was left out because the narrator was in control of what even we saw"--the fact that the story displayed unreliable narration for the culmination of events, and with how it displays lying and confession? Just makes me think some of the stuff you see from the past might be excluding events, and the clues being strewn about are going to be there to connect dots when one of them finally reveals the full story to the "4d" gods (Us) who are really at the mercy of the narrator.

Lithose · Feb 18, 2014

Slaythe_sl said:
I might be remembering this differently but in the interview, or interrogation if we want to call it that by now, with Rust, doesn't he explain Hart flanking Ledoux and killing him? I don't recall this slip where they say Rust did that. Again, I could just be remembering incorrectly.

Yeah, I remembered it wrong. I could have sworn it was Hart saying Rust flanked, but it wasn't.

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