True Detective

I never posited any theories about Hart. At one point, I briefly thought he was a killer, but there may be some weird metaphysical stuff that we're not privy to yet. Like I said, the writers could just be fucking with us, but Hart could also be important beyond solving a crime.

I dunno, seems likely to me that:

1) Tuttles, along with upity ups in that society, are satanists and kill, torture, rape, etc the little children. The school(s) and church(es) are fronts for their proclivities.
2) Hart's daughter was involved via the Tuttle school she attended. Possibly Hart knew about this and didn't do anything because of the "machine", which caused him to lose his family and is the cause of Rust/Hart blowout. But...
3) Hart and/or Rust kill Tuttle in 2010 after Rust returns to the area with new information or something. They're either hunting down the remainder of that group in the present or maybe Hart is now the leader and Rust is trying to bring him down, I don't know.

However, I really hope the show ends with some serious horror supernatural type stuff cause that would be awesome. The last scene could be Rust going truly insane as he learns the awful truth of what's really going on. Or something smart and clever. Either way, the show is still fantastic.

supertouch_sl said:

I never posited any theories about Hart. At one point, I briefly thought he was a killer, but there may be some weird metaphysical stuff that we're not privy to yet. Like I said, the writers could just be fucking with us, but Hart could also be important beyond solving a crime.

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That would be as bad as a terrible "it was all a dream" ending.

It's just fun to ponder. No one knows the show's direction or endgame. Even to date, it's had this weird disconnected quality, although it's raised some interesting philosophical questions.

just because nobody here knows how the season ends doesnt mean anything could happen. there has been a ver steady buildup of these two characters and by the actions of hart and rust, its more probable that neither is the yellow king. it actualy likely these guys are still good friends since they got very close by the time they killed ledoux. you dont cover up another man's murder and keep their secrets if you are just casual acquaintants

supertouch_sl said:

Are you just pretending to be dense? At some point, coincidences stop being coincidences and should be given serious consideration. This is like jurors ignoring a mountain of circumstantial evidence because the killer wasn't caught on cctv. The writers are either fucking with us or Hart is involved somehow. We'll find out in 3 episodes.

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The coincidences could from Hart not being involved directly, too. Like the dolls could even be just a subconscious thought of Hart's because it's "right under his nose". He says that a lot, so he could be alluding to the fact that his own children are involved and he missed it because he was looking everywhere else (I mean, that's a major theme for Hart, both family and missing things because you're too focused elsewhere.)

I mean, yes, the shows dropping a lot of hints about Hart being "part" of it (Whether he knows or not) on some missing level--the whole "crown"=antlers and Hart's name literally being a word for Stag? There is some not so subtle symbolism floating around, lol. But really, none of the clues thus far say Hart is knowingly involved, they all just kind of point to him being part of whatever broader thing is out there (Maybe an unknowing part).

Hell, during the first few episodes, I originally thought this body was supposed to be some kind of punishment for Hart. Like someone fucked up was showing him where his daughters would end up because he was a shit father and the world sucked. But obviously it became a bigger conspiracy later, heh. Then I thought Hart might be the King, but man,they would need to explain a lot, because there are somebigthings that don't fit, which is why I thought it might be an unreliable narrator essentially fucking up any "hart only" flash backs. And they "set up" how powerful an unreliable narrator is by showing how Hart/Rust used it on the new detectives and the post shoot out investigation where they became heros even though they seriously fucked the dog a dozen times...(So it shows us how easily people within the show can be fooled by it, then show us how people outside the show are subject to it as well: His whole little meta commentary on the show being about the detectives and about the audience? Seems like it's shit he would pull.)

However, nothing concrete points to anything but that something probably happened to Hart's kid. At this point though, I'm hoping the "solve" is more straight forward; I like shows where the clues are there and they are hidden in plain sight. A malevolent, intentional "unreliable" narrator would feel "less" bad than a split personality or whatever? But it wouldn't be as compelling or satisfying for me as a straight up "Detective/Thriller" story with some philosophical horror in it, like the show is right now. (Though I do really hope we'll see Hart and Rust have been in contact for the last 10 years, and they are working different ends of society in some kind of revenge pact or undercover unit).

But yeah, I think something with Hart is up. I just don't think there is a mountain of evidence for him being "in" on it. But there seems to be quite a bit that he's a "piece" of it in some way we haven't seen.

Edit: And anyone think the original sheriff is in on it? The one they question about the missing little girl in the beginning? One Blonde girl went missing but they essentially brushed it aside has her father took her, then another girl gets chased and they brush that off due to the girl having an imagination (Picture looks like the lawn mower guy). Then they say he got moved up to a better private job a few years after ignoring the missing girl/chased girl--the guy he's replaced by has like 3 deer head in his office (But it's a hick office...soo, yeah.). Obviously nothing big, but maybe we'll see how people in these little towns get bumped up into better jobs for looking the other way.

Lithose_sl said:

And they "set up" how powerful an unreliable narrator is by showing how Hart/Rust used it on the new detectives and the post shoot out investigation where they became heros even though they seriously fucked the dog a dozen times...(So it shows us how easily people within the show can be fooled by it, then show us how people outside the show are subject to it as well: His whole little meta commentary on the show being about the detectives and about the audience? Seems like it's shit he would pull.)

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What they say to the detectives is unreliable, what we see is reliable. We are not watching an interpretation or memory of what happened, we are watching exactly what happened.

Foggy_sl said:

What they say to the detectives is unreliable, what we see is reliable. We are not watching an interpretation or memory of what happened, we are watching exactly what happened.

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Yes, hence the whole point about it needing to be an unreliable narrator for it to work...Because right now we take it as gospel, fuck it, I'll explain. (And note: I don't think this will happen, I'm just explaining the thought process I ran through when thinking about the possibility and why it might.)

Yes, right now, there areno indications it's unreliable to us; the scenes from the past seem completely 100% honest, even things that were "bad" were told to us, which proves it was honest using basic logic (IE if it was dishonest, why are they showing Hart cheating? ect).However, the major narrative,within the story, was showing how effective altering a story can be to people who RELY on it for their view, and whatever goal you have, can change HOW you alter the story. If you want to get into a biker gang, you alter your story to make you look like a bad guy, if you want to lie to the police and become heroes, you alter it to make what you did righteous: Either way, the main themes of Act 2 are story alterations, unreliable narrators, tricking other people in the show. But, yes, we, as the audience,feelas though we are above it, because WE always see the truth. (We feel smarter than everyone else.)

However, in the show, Rust's hints at a kind of self awareness of his own universe. We are the "4D creatures" that are watching as time is a round disk, collapsed on itself. A lot of the show points to this meta commentary on us, in a small way, the show is self aware. It's commenting on things like how we view escapism in our fiction (Which is why a major theme is how the characters deal with people who are trying to escape the realities of life, Rust through disdain, Cohle with easy understanding). There are a ton more little things the author does to show the correlation between the events in the show, and how we, the "4D" people use story telling and fiction as escapism, but this is going to be long already. (But one main thing is Rust being our "hero", a rational, smart person who believes he sees the world for what it is, while most people are delusional...Just like we believe we are seeing the world on the screen for what it is.)

So the show, like I said, is hinting at being self aware that there is an audience watching (Dressed up as society, or whatever: Rust even says, the reason why he does this is to appease the illusions of society, IE because the story needs it, if he had the constitution he stopped jumping through rings like puppet and kill himself.). Then the show busts out Carcosa, which exists in a play called "The Yellow King" that essentially says any human who reads even ONE word of the third act, will be driven insane by the revelations he will experience. So this play does not just affect the characters within it, it affects it's audience, draws them into it's narrative. Now, Carcossa is a place written about originally by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce's most famous work was anOccurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which is essentially the pulp version of Vanilla Sky--it's a story that's told in a fraction of a man's life, that's essentially a big delusion about what's happening. It's one of the most famous uses of unreliable narrator in early English pulp literature (In a free newspaper though, not a pulp magazine but it was serialized in them). This show, by the way, is based on a series from Pulp novels in 1930 (Back when the main theme of the crime noir was gritty, dark realism: Like today.).

So now we are headed into the third act of our show, knowing all the above. It strikes me that thefuckedup thing in Act 3 (Because again, the Yellow King gets fucked up in Act 3) could easily be one of them turning out to be an unreliable narrator, and then we, the audience, experience the same kind of a trick many people in the show experienced:Our world view shifts because what we expected to be true from the narration, is actually a lie. As toWHYthe first two Acts would seem to be brutally honest if it were an unreliable the whole time? Because the main point of an unreliable narrator is totrick it's TARGET.Ifthe show isself awarethen the narrator's goal isn't to protect Hart or Rust's reputation, but rather tomake us interested in watching the rest. We're being lied to in order to lull us into the world, because that's the narrators main objective: Get us to believe the story is the same as every other piece of fiction. (And get us to be confident about our beliefs, like Cohle is. Because that's what draws him into the murder...So we are being drawn into the story through this same belief we "know" more than others, like Cohle wants to keep following the murder because he feels he knows more than any of the hicks around him.)

So the whole point of the unreliable would be to poke fun at us and Cohle for believing we viewed the world in any other way except how the narrator wanted us to view it. It would be a pretty "Nihilist" literary trick, showing you that your interpretation is fucking pointless, the story is fucking pointless, at any time the person in control of the story can change it to be whatever outcome he wants and your supposed enlightenment or intelligence means absolutely dick, your belief in what's "real" is as fleeting and false as the people in that church who think Jesus will save them. So as we would, on the screen, simultaneously watch our hero get snapped into reality by Hart's trick, we'd ALSO be snapped into reality by our own concrete belief, wrapped in our own intelligence, being shattered because we never stopped to even think our perception was wrong.

Of course, if that happened, it would be a dick move. It would drive us nuts. Half the people here have said how fucking retarded that would be. It would be crazy. But that's the kind of culmination that happens in Act 3 of the Yellow King: TheAUDIENCEitself is affected. The story's whole purpose wasn't to tell a story about what's on screen, it was to affectthe people reading it. So if he's making a commentary on that, he could very well just be looking to troll the fuck out of us, the audience, to continue his meta commentary on how we relate to fiction. (He directly says he's not doing this, though. So, take it for what you will).

Again, I'm not saying the above is going to happen.I actually do NOT think it is.But if it does, he's set it up so it's not completely out of left field; IF you're examining the show as something that's self aware and a kind of critique on it's own genre (IE dark, gritty pessimism); then you'd almost expect a new level of "fidelity" in the story telling during Act 3 (IE you'd almost expect a lot of shit in the first two acts to be proven false because the pretense of the "story" falls away and we'll see the "real" world finally.) Again, though, I wouldn't find that too satisfying but it's possible. It depends on how much the author wants to mirror the supposed effects of the Yellow King and use the actual audience as a component of his story telling.

If we take him for his word? He won't do that. But the themes of him poking at the audience, and the show being slightly self aware? Are there.

Drinsic_sl said:

Why did Hart not dump the case off on the rigged task force when Quesada gave them the chance, especially when he knows Cohle's a smart detective with hard-on for this particular case? To keep tabs on him or something? If that's what he's worried about, why not easily take the opportunity to kill Cohle at the Ledoux compound? Shit, why even kill Ledoux instead of Cohle if he's your rapey-murdery-culty partner in crime? Why even tail Dewall all the way to the compound? Why not just say "well shit Rust, I lost him." Why go through the trouble of tracking down Weems and sticking a gun in his face to find out about the Iron Crusaders? Why almost get yourself beat to shit at the biker bar? Why bother saving Cohle and Ginger from the projects?

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You're viewing it as if the point of his actions was to protect himself from Cohle? But remember Cohle's first assessment of the murder? It's theatrical. It's from a "meta psychotic": Which means his intent was to affect the mind of someone else. That's literally the definition of a "meta psychotic".

What if the ACTUAL point of the murder and the investigation was to fuck with Cohle,specifically? To pull him through the mud just so at the end Hart could drive him insane, to break him. The culmination being to look down and give him the finger and say "you're not that smart. Look at how I made you dance." It would be essentially giving us the finger, because Cohle IS us, Cohle is how we view ourselves. Super smart, enlightened people because we have things like the internet; we look down on "the faithful" we feel like we are above delusions like that because of how enlightened we are and Hart is nowpunishingus (Cohle) for that view, showing him (And us) we're not half as clever as we believe and we are all at the mercy of greater narratives told by people smarter and more influential than ourselves. It's a big fuck you to Cohle,and to us, for believing in heroes that have these qualities.

After all: Think about what we, as a society, like in fiction. Dark, gritty, pessimistic "heroes" who tackle a bad world. We like the "Dark Knight" hero in this day and age, someone who beats the bad guys by being "badder" themselves. Rust IS that hero, he is this generations "every man" hero: A bad guy, who breaks the world down rationally and takes it apart by outsmarting his enemies. And he embraces the fact that he is a "bad man" who hunts other bad men.

Maybe the point is someone even smarter jamming his finger into Rust's face for nothing more than what apretentioustwat he is? Showing how easily some ultra rational nerd, with some fucking philosophy 101 Nihilist view of the world, can be manipulated and deluded by beliefs through another person's will. How even this intelligent rationalist is essentially the same as the religious nut jobs listening to that preacher at the start, the only difference is the narrative/story being used (Heck in the cut scene, the preacher is using Nihilism blanketed in Christian myth.) . Hence the Yellow King's other subjects all quoting philosophy as if were scripture, acting like indoctrinated religious disciples of nihilism; all enthralled by the Yellow King's intellect like a Judeo-Christian might be enthralled by God's power. (So it stands to reason the Yellow King often displays this intellect somehow. Maybe Rust is his greatest achievement? The smartest person he could find to bring down and fuck with.)

After all, no one wanted Cohle after his undercover work, he wasOFFEREDLouisiana after he was done going undercover around a biker gang one of "The Priests" of the yellow king cooked for. How hard is it to believe someone high up in the conspiracy chain could read Rust's file and then report it to the "yellow king" that Rust outed one of "The Priests" (Lodeux). So then the Yellow King brought him down to Louisiana to undergo some ritual where the old Priest (Lodeux) was killed in order to indoctrinate Rust as the new one.

What if the point is to break Rust in two by fucking with his mind and showing him all this? What if Hart left just enough clues to do that but simultaneously did just enough to keep it under Rust's nose without suspecting it? Like the giant antlers on his victims heads: pointing toward himself (Hart=Stag), just so at the end Rust could see all the things he missed and drive himself mad as he's put in jail, framed by Hart. What if the murders wereFORRust, not found accidentally by him. He was lured to Louisiana to go through this mental grinder, fucking with his world view...Until eventually Rust is the one kneeling with a dirty towel and parroting stupid Nihilist shit in some prison shower somewhere, worshiping his own delusion (God) in the yellow king's philosophy.

Part of me really wants to see the story go here:

I really think Hart's comments about being "attentive" are important to his role in this. I don't think that means he is the yellow king or even that his daughter was necessarily involved, I just think he is referring to something he missed that cost a lot, and he isn't talking about his marriage. It doesn't have to be Lost shit for there to be more than is apparent in these detective interrogation scenes.

Lithose_sl said:

You're viewing it as if the point of his actions was to protect himself from Cohle? But remember Cohle's first assessment of the murder? It's theatrical. It's from a "meta psychotic": Which means his intent was to affect the mind of someone else. That's literally the definition of a "meta psychotic".

What if the ACTUAL point of the murder and the investigation was to fuck with Cohle,specifically? To pull him through the mud just so at the end Hart could drive him insane, to break him. The culmination being to look down and give him the finger and say "you're not that smart. Look at how I made you dance." It would be essentially giving us the finger, because Cohle IS us, Cohle is how we view ourselves. Super smart, enlightened people because we have things like the internet; we look down on "the faithful" we feel like we are above delusions like that because of how enlightened we are and Hart is nowpunishingus (Cohle) for that view, showing him (And us) we're not half as clever as we believe and we are all at the mercy of greater narratives told by people smarter and more influential than ourselves. It's a big fuck you to Cohle,and to us, for believing in heroes that have these qualities.

After all: Think about what we, as a society, like in fiction. Dark, gritty, pessimistic "heroes" who tackle a bad world. We like the "Dark Knight" hero in this day and age, someone who beats the bad guys by being "badder" themselves. Rust IS that hero, he is this generations "every man" hero: A bad guy, who breaks the world down rationally and takes it apart by outsmarting his enemies. And he embraces the fact that he is a "bad man" who hunts other bad men.

Maybe the point is someone even smarter jamming his finger into Rust's face for nothing more than what apretentioustwat he is? Showing how easily some ultra rational nerd, with some fucking philosophy 101 Nihilist view of the world, can be manipulated and made to be someone's bitch. How ANYONE, even the supposedly smart "heroes" among us, can still be just as ignorant and controlled as the religous nut jobs listening to that preacher at the start, the only difference is the narrative/story being used (Heck in the cut scene, the preacher is using Nihillism blanketed in Christian myth.) . Hence his other subjects all quoting philosophy as if were scripture, acting like indoctrinated religious disciples of nihilism; all enthralled by the Yellow King's intellect like a Judeo-Christian might be enthralled by God's power. (So it stands to reason the Yellow King often displays this intellect somehow. Maybe Rust is his greatest achievement? The smartest person he could find to bring down and fuck with.)

After all, no one wanted Cohle after his undercover work, he wasREQUESTEDto go to Louisiana after he was done going undercover around a biker gang one of "The Priests" of the yellow king cooked for. How hard is it to believe someone high up in the conspiracy chain could read Rust's file and then report it to the "yellow king" that Rust outed one of "The Priests". So then the Yellow King brought him down to Louisiana to undergo some ritual where the old Priest was killed in order to indoctrinate Rust as the new one.

What if the point is to break Rust in two by fucking with his mind and showing him all this? What if Hart left just enough clues to do that but simultaneously did just enough to keep it under Rust's nose without suspecting it? Like the giant fucking antlers on his victims heads: pointing toward himself (Hart=Stag), just so at the end Rust could see all the things he missed and drive himself mad as he's put in jail, framed by Hart. What if the murders wereFORRust, not found accidentally by him. He was lured to Louisiana to go through this mental grinder, fucking with his world view...Until eventually Rust is the one kneeling with a dirty towel and parroting stupid Nihillist shit in some prison shower somewhere.

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What if its just a show about a couple cops?

Gunnar_sl said:

What if its just a show about a couple cops?

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Then it's just about a couple cops.


Don't put it in your pocket, that's your lucky quarter. Don't put it in your pocket or it will get mixed in with the others and become just a coin.............Which it is.

That's the point of the post above the one you quoted. His whole meta commentary is how we attach meaning to things through our interpretation of events. But those of us who are "very sure" of things? Are the delusional ones. Because meaning can change as easily as perspective. We are at the mercy of narration. In the above video, Chigur shows you can view the coin as some thing of destiny that traveled by chance for 20 years to save the gas attendant...or view it as just a coin. All depends on the narrative.

So yeah, the little clues and coincidences could be there to poke at people who over-analyze as well, like myself. They could just be misdirections and red herrings meant to show how quickly we attach greater narratives based off of what we know.

Tin Man_sl said:

Part of me really wants to see the story go here:

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We already have the showrunner/creator admitting that the show will only have a thematic relationship with the supernatural. So I doubt we'll see anything supernatural actually happening in the show. That said, we're talking about a guy whorecites whole stanzas of The King in Yellow FROM MEMORY in several interviews and even on an official HBO video (starting at 1:58), so the mythology is evidently important to his project. In addition to the all-pervading yellow filter in every frame of the show, even the colors on the fonts in the show's trailers and even HBO's branding are tinted that sickly yellow.

The more interesting question is whether the Yellow King weird-fiction mythos extends across the True Detective franchise. Will we get the same pervading existential dread in future seasons expressed as a common theme kinda like how the "King in Yellow" was the unifying element of terror in each of the separate and otherwise unrelated stories in that anthology.

If Hart were the Yellow King in a metaphorical sense, what would that entail?

I don't expect the show to go cthulu; it'd be crazy. Still, it'd be awesome to see if not just for the fan reactions. More likely, I expect Rust to get pinned with the murders and get killed in the process; he'll leave enough clues for Marty to pick up the pieces and realize how dedicated Rust was to solving the original crime (a "true detective"). I wouldn't mind seeing continuing references to the king in yellow in future seasons, since it's really added to the show's creepy factor. Either way, this is my #1 show right now, sad there's only 3 more episodes

Chaos thats not Lost shit for a character to say he had been inattentive and meaning he missed an obvious bombshell of a clue, that shit happens all the time. im talking about these fucking DVR detectives thinking they solved the case because they screencapped a scene with something strange in it.

I wanted to wait until the first season was over to start watching it, but caved last night and watched the first episode.

Then proceeded to finish all 5 and start watching developer videos on youtube.

So good. Compared to other shows this is.... I don't even... Gaming equivalent would be Last of Us vs tablet games.

HBO for the win.