True Detective

I enjoyed the joke Lost pulled. I thought it was the best thing the show ever did. People thought they were in purgatory from the start despite the writer's objections - and some are so stupid that they still believe this - so for the final season they added a new alternate timeline which turned out to be purgatory. Fucking brilliant trolling, imo. As a bonus they got to bring back all of the dead characters and then.. HA HA, they're still dead, Fuck You. And no, retards, they didn't die in the plane crash.

In that light I'd say the ending was pretty great. Unfortunately, the Island turned out to be pretty lame. A prison for an evil thing, that every now and then has to be let out so it can be put back in again. Not so bad, but.. a little rock on top of a hole in the ground, really? A LITERAL fucking cork?

The Lost comparison isn't too fair when the show hasn't ended yet, though. Now, if after the finale people are still saying shit like Hart is the Yellow King when we've been shown otherwise, then yeah. "They died in the crash" all over again.

EDIT: Another important difference - Lost was written ep to ep and season to season by a legion of writers/directors. The meaning of shit was frequently changed and even contradicted itself. TD was written by one guy, then shot by one guy. It's only 8 episodes long.

The show is loaded with symbolism and red herrings, of course people are going to theorize. It only becomes stupid if they stick to a theory after the show plainly spells something out. Like the trolls/idiots that stick with the idea of "oh, they died in the crash, went to purgatory, then died in purgatory, and then went to ANOTHER purgatory!"

I won't name names lest I summon them.

you sure they're not already in this thread?

I'm trolling for them to show themselves. In the fisherman sense.

Fedor_sl said:

I don't think Nic expected how many retards would watch his show.

Click to expand...

If he felt the need to be so deliberate in dispelling wild theories, then I would say the opposite. He scattered enough easter eggs and interwoven symbolism throughout the series that he knew full well that a sizable segment of the audience was going to plunge full bore down the rabbit hole chasing them.

i think its fair to say that Nic was trolling the audience a little bit earlier on, but after last sunday's ep there should be nobody still going with the "hart/rust is the YK!" theory. the ending literally beat you over the head telling you, the lawnmower man is the baddie, not rust or hart. now we still need to find out where Harts daughter fit in all this and if the father in law was involved in some way.

Kreugen_sl said:

The show is loaded with symbolism and red herrings, of course people are going to theorize. It only becomes stupid if they stick to a theory after the show plainly spells something out. Like the trolls/idiots that stick with the idea of "oh, they died in the crash, went to purgatory, then died in purgatory, and then went to ANOTHER purgatory!"

I won't name names lest I summon them.

Click to expand...

But they aren't really red herrings. Like the dolls. We have already heard what that is abut, from Hart's own mouth in the interview. Some guy broke it down frame by frame and showed that most likely that was just in Hart's head. But either way, it isn't intended to be some clue for us. It is a manifestation of what Hart said to the black detectives: detective's curse, all right in front of you, forest for the trees, etc. Same with all of that shit. The symbolism is certainly there but people are taking it entirely the wrong way. Every time we turn around there is another clue that Hart or even Cohle are not seeing because they are caught up in other shit or too focused on other details of the case, these drawings and shit like that are just visualizations of that dynamic.

chaos_sl said:

But they aren't really red herrings. Like the dolls. We have already heard what that is abut, from Hart's own mouth in the interview. Some guy broke it down frame by frame and showed that most likely that was just in Hart's head. But either way, it isn't intended to be some clue for us. It is a manifestation of what Hart said to the black detectives: detective's curse, all right in front of you, forest for the trees, etc. Same with all of that shit. The symbolism is certainly there but people are taking it entirely the wrong way. Every time we turn around there is another clue that Hart or even Cohle are not seeing because they are caught up in other shit or too focused on other details of the case, these drawings and shit like that are just visualizations of that dynamic.

Click to expand...

That's a lot of hindsight, though. Your summary takes into account Rust and Hart's expositions on the meaning--some of which didn't come until Episode 5 and 6 (Some of Hart's came earlier, though). Any rational person would have suspected that a kid who is drawing the mask of the killer, sexual images of the killer, drawing the paintings that were found on the hospital wall of the survivor, the swirl drawing and the "angel" image from the church (All these drawings are in Hart's house--so aside from the dolls, there was a shit ton of stuff)--would have intimated something more tangible than just some representation of a "flat circle" or Hart's subconscious.

The guy trolled out some pretty potent red herrings, that even the most grounded person would have looked twice at and asked "the fuck? Something is up with that kid.."...It's only be episode 6 or 7 that we're going "welp, looks like it was just Hart's subconcious-flat-circle-thinking that produced those". In fact, I don't think a single person in this thread dismissed that stuff outright--the only contention was whether Hart was in on it (Which was the more wild theory), or whether the little girl was just a victim and Hart being a shitty dad didn't see it (Which was what most people thought). I don't think anyone guessed it was just supposed to be circular symbolism until the 5th or 6th episode when Rust made his speech, and really, there were no clues, except for the dolls, that it was in Hart's head (His wife saw the other drawings).

Honestly, the whole "it's just symbolic of the circular/under your nose clues" feels pretty flimsy. I don't think the show needed such obtuse red herrings, it was interesting without them, and all they did was distract in an empty way from an excellent narrative--And I say this because the show has tons of other ways it displayed this that didn't rely on unreliable narration/hallucination, like how they show the passage of time in scenery/decay, or how the Lawnmower guy looked like the Spaghetti monster ect.)

I'm curious as to where it was confirmed that the scenes from Hart's memories contained non-factual details? Or is that just another theory mistaking conjecture for proof?

Raes_sl said:

I'm curious as to where it was confirmed that the scenes from Hart's memories contained non-factual details? Or is that just another theory mistaking conjecture for proof?

Click to expand...

There is an imjur looking at the dolls--which proves the dolls couldn't have been set up by the kids. It's either non-factual or they made a mistake shooting it. Considering his attention to detail, most people attributed it to Hart's head. (I'll dig it up.)

It was probably a continuity error. I had thought that the dolls were suggesting the daughter's involvement but after realizing that they weren't going to address that at all, I just assumed she heard something at school.

You can't blame people for theorizing when he includes imagery for shits and giggles.

True Detective - Daughters Figures (Rust thinks about his daughter) scene [HD] - YouTube

Didn't notice before. The kneeling doll with the white shirt/black pants was actually being held by his daughter when he walked in, and it appears that she turned around and set in on a chair before leaving the room. Just seems like a too-subtle implication that it's a false addition, when you add in all the other stuff. Drawings and symbols, etc.

Soygen_sl said:

Still images can be very misleading. One or two frames in a still image could be completely unnoticeable while watching the show. Them cutting away for a split second and the dolls are 'gone' could simply be a mistake during shooting. Link the actual video of the scene to see how it plays out normally.

I never bothered re-watching the scene, as I don't think that Marty was imagining things. The writer has said several times that he's being pretty straight forward and it's pretty obvious from several other scenes that something has happened with the daughter. I don't think that scene was any different.

Click to expand...

Notice the girl is holding the doll and puts it away--then at the end of the scene that is the doll kneeling above the girl. You're right, stills can be misleading, but this looks like it was a mistake--or it's just in his head (I'd bet on in his head).

supertouch_sl said:

You can't blame people for theorizing when he includes imagery for shits and giggles.

Click to expand...

Look at how quickly the Lost retards are latching onto "WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!". Hell, just in this thread alone. I don't blame him a bit for trolling this particular brand of morons. I hope that he leaves all of the daughter stuff completely ambiguous, just to drive them insane.

I'm putting my money on a continuity error. That shit being in his head is another theory to file under retarded.