I've tried watching True Detective ep1 about 3 times now....
either I have ADD and don't get what the **** they are talking about*, or this show is extremely boring with their monotone talk throughout the episode that causes me to constantly let my mind wander while I stare at the screen.
I keep hearing how awesome this show is, but I can't get into it.
and I even tried to watch episode 2, but the monotone was so monotone, that I eventually forgot I was watching it when I got up to do something real quick and didn't come back for 15 minutes... forgot to pause.
Can someone please just give me the Episode 1 summary of what's going on in this show (who they are, what/who they are investigating) so that I know I haven't missed something. If you must spoil part of ep2 to do that effectively, then do so. Nothing to lose at this point if I never get into the show.
*I kinda understand what's going on, but it's all guess work. I feel lost and therefore losing interest in continuing. help. It doesn't help that I've only tried to watch it later in the night, not exactly late night, but for some reason the monotone nature of the show makes my mind wander... or attention to focus on something else.
ps. Why does Woody look younger in the present interview than he does in the flashback investigation?
Were you still interested in knowing about this or seeing it? Also, do you watch Mad Men or like it because I would compare this series closer to that type of show and drama?
The point of True Detective isn't really about the case. It is more a study of these men and their journey through life which in the show revolves around this case. If you like classic film noir, (and who doesn't? That black and white bleak stuff is awesome!), then that is the vibe of True Detective. Like Film Noir, the focus isn't to much about the case. Often times, the case is so convoluted and twisting it is hard to keep track off. The most famous example is The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall and a question about a character called Taylor who was killed.
"One day Bogie came on the set and said to Howard, 'Who pushed Taylor off the pier?' Everything stopped." As A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax write in "Bogart," "Hawks sent Chandler, (the author of the book), a telegram asking whether the Sternwood's chauffeur, Owen Taylor, was murdered or a suicide. 'Dammit I didn't know either,' " Chandler recalled.
Film noir is about an attitude and mood. The main characters do a lot of brooding and commenting about the cruel world they live in and the hardboiled people they encounter in it. True Detective is that style. If you aren't invested in the two leads and their life journey's than I don't think you'll ever find the show appealing to you. If you're looking for a complex twisting mystery with surprises, this isn't what the show is focusing on and it lays out the mystery and steps along the way to solving it pretty plainly.
I realized that pretty soon while watching the first episode. I've watched them all over the past few days. Then I read a bunch of reviews on them. It's interesting to note there were all kinds of theories going around and people were expecting some kind of twist or surprise to the mystery and were disappointed there wasn't one. So, if you do get into or decide to watch it, be prepared on that front. Or you can just read the quick episode summaries on Wikipedia, look up best of Rust Cohle quotes and call it a day.
@azeke: Lots of things kind of left unanswered: why'd he leave Dora Lang's body for people to find it? Why all the references to The Yellow King with no payoff? Why did the Tuttle connection just kind of get dropped? Who killed Reverend Tuttle? What about the "new" case that Cohle & Hart were being interviewed about? That never went ANYWHERE. And the connection to Errol Childress was so poorly conceived: maybe his ears had paint on them? Really? That's the best you can do? What painter gets paint on their ears? And nobody figured that out in 1995?
Just to address some things to your questions.
Dora Lange's body wasn't the first to be left out in the open. Rust was able to start figuring out there was a serial killer by looking at other dead bodies found to start seeing a pattern. But Dora Lange's body was found by a sugarcane field that was being burned down and I always thought was that the intention was for the fire in the field to have spread and consumed the body but it didn't happen and that's why it was found like that. Plus, there is the fact that there was a great cover-up going on with people in the police force involved with the cult so there could have been other instances of bodies found that were covered up. There was the Christian Task Force which was implied to be set-up to take such cases and handle them presumably so that they could be further covered up.
I thought the Yellow King was the serial killer but in the end, I wasn't really following that part of the investigation that closely. I guess the Yellow King is the leader of the cult whoever that is which to me is implied to be the governor Tuttle or whoever the head of the Tuttle clan is. The Yellow King is who the cult follows as evidenced by Dora Lange's diary and is powerful enough that he can keep anyone from squealing on the group and keep it undercover. The Yellow King is mainly used as a way for the detectives to follow the trail leading to Childress. They don't mention it to others so when it is brought up, then they know they are on the right trail. Like Cohle said in the end, The Yellow King wasn't their man. They got their man which was Childress. Therefore, despite the Yellow King probably being behind some awful things, he wasn't the killer of Dora Lange. I also think the Yellow King part is left open as sort of a way of keeping fear open to the viewer. Sort of like how Hannibal Lector escapes and disappears at the end of The Silence of the Lambs. That chilling killer is on the loose still. Evil still roams.
The Tuttle connection didn't get dropped. It got covered up. The old maid woman who starts talking about Carcosa when Rust shows her the stick figures was a servant in the Tuttle house and I thought she brought up that Childress was a child of Sam Tuttle but with another woman than his wife. At the end, when the media is covering the story, you hear a reporter say that the allegations that Childress is a Tuttle relative are being denied (or were proven false) I can't remember the exact wording. Still, the point is, the powerful Tuttle family is already covering up their involvement and link to Childress and Marty and Rust know this but can't prove anything further and aren't going to prove it further. It's not their case anymore. It will be left to the other detectives really to move forward on it if they can since they now know the details from their interviews with Rust and Cohle and they are the ones handling the rest of the investigation from that point on.
Rust speculated that the cult killed the Reverend Tuttle for losing the pictures and videotape Rust found in his safe. Billy Tuttle obviously told someone in the cult about the theft and they killed him to cut that link in case he was blackmailed or was exposed. That's what Rust theorized and told Marty in the storage shed.
As for the other case, the two other detectives found another victim like Dora Lange and they had evidence of Rust being around the area. Thus, he was their prime suspect and they interviewed him and then Marty to find out more of how the earlier investigations were handled because they suspected Rust was behind the whole thing and covering his tracks and blaming other people to get away with it. They basically tell Marty their suspicions and evidence as to why they are interested in Cohle concerning this new victim but Marty rejects their hypothesis. From that point, they keep their eyes on Marty and Rust as shown when Marty meets the one younger detective before heading out to see Childress. He questions what Rust and Marty are doing at his private security firm all the time and wants to know what sort of leads they are pursuing about the case. They just don't have enough evidence to go after Rust yet or get a search warrant. We see them later trying to follow up on some of the details that Rust and Marty gave about their '95 investigation when they run into Childress to verify the facts. That's what their investigation was about.
I'll agree. The green paint connection was a weird way to crack the case. They were going a better route with the sheriff Childress who covered up the Marie Fontenot's case. Surely a connection could have been made that way. We even see the killer painting a school and yet he isn't sloppy enough there to have paint over his ears, (at least that I noticed) nor was it like he was wearing a mask that left his ears exposed while he was painting. But then, he didn't exactly look like he had spaghetti for a face either. I just thought that was supposed to be a mask like the other members of the cult wore. In the end, I just accepted it because the show wasn't about looking for clues. We were only going to learn about things as the detectives learned about them. This wasn't a show where you are given suspects and evidence have a chance to figure out the ending like say a Mentalist Episode. Rather, you are just coming along for the journey.
What bothered me even more was the cliché of the cellphone having no signal when getting into the killers house and then both detectives individually going into killer's maze system. I get you don't want the guy to get away after all this time but you are clearly entering into a place which you have no idea what the layout is, what's in it or have any back-up if he gets the drop on you. Not to mention, he is taunting and leading Rust on the whole time. Clearly, he isn't worried and has a plan to kill you. I would wait until a whole search force arrived and then go in after him. I'm just saying dumb, dumb, dumb in my head the whole time. Yet, I was also tense and nervous about it all so it accomplished what it was supposed to do.
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