Originally Posted by bowener:
The second half of this series was at best average story telling. It was a huge disappointment when coupled with Pizzolatto saying that his story would change crime dramas. The ending was a cop out. NP was too weak and couldn't kill off his characters. Rust should have died. If he had said all of his light/darkness shit (which is a straight rip off of Allen Moore's Top 10 comics - as in down to the line) while dying on Marty's lap, it would have been so much stronger of an ending. Instead we get the typical "happy ending" bullshit that goes against the entire tone and style of the show. Honestly, the more I think about it, I actually hate the ending. Especially when I consider how they caught the killer... "Does that house look like it was freshly painted?" WTF is that... Come on... Seriously? That is what the show comes down to?
I realize that it's generally a waste of time to try to convince someone on the internet to like something that they don't like, so this is probably an exercise in futility, but I just thought I'd put my two cents in here. I only read a few NP interviews, and I didn't see where he said that this show would change crime dramas. If he really said that, then he's an idiot because there's no way you can make that statement and come out on top.
But I don't think he needed to kill off those characters. Maybe in real life, two cops show up there and get their hearts cut out by the yellow king. But in real life, a cop would not have had the profound soliloquies that Rust had leading up to the finale. Nor would a cop with the I-cheated-on-my-wife-and-ruined-my-family storyline be so compelling absent the depth that Woody Harrelson added through his acting. So real life doesn't really matter here. It's a TV show, and what matters is the storytelling about these characters.
I'll grant that the "break" in the case was particularly flimsy, but in my mind, that's not what "the show really [came] down to." Instead, it came down to a character who tried as hard as he could to build psychological defenses to cope with life. He tried to reason away a world that could kill his daughter and ruin his love. He tried to use this approach to cope with a job that confronted him with drug dealers, wife beaters, child abusers, and murderers. But in the end, no matter how hard he tried, there was a tiny sliver of him that wanted to believe in something greater -- something positive and loving. So when he was near death, regardless of whether he actually experienced this or not, he believed that he "felt" the presence of his daughter and his father. I don't think we have to believe in higher powers to buy into this scene. All we have to believe is that Rust felt it. And if he felt it, what does it matter if it was "real" or not? The important part is that he still had a part of him that wanted to believe in something better, and that part of him ultimately won despite all of the pessimism and nihilism that he presented as a front.
And that pretty much sums up the human condition. We all that know we are going to die. Some of us turn to religion to cope with this, while others turn to nihilism, or maybe some other sort of compromise. None of that particularly matters because in the end, no matter what coping mechanism we choose, we'll all likely reserve a tiny sliver of ourselves to believe in something greater and hope that the light can win out. Some part of us will always want to confirm that we are a part of something bigger, so that way we can make sense of our lives. Rust is just like everyone else, only he made a bigger effort to deny it.
Even if you don't believe in this sappy stuff, it can at least provide a compelling premise for a TV show in this day and age. That's why I didn't particularly care that the show took convenient shortcuts to address the larger themes. Sure not every facet of the conspiracy was exposed, and the break in their case was ultra-convenient, but this wasn't a story about glorifying crime solving skills -- it was about people. [Reply]
Originally Posted by bowener:
The ending was a cop out. NP was too weak and couldn't kill off his characters. Rust should have died. If he had said all of his light/darkness shit (which is a straight rip off of Allen Moore's Top 10 comics - as in down to the line) while dying on Marty's lap, it would have been so much stronger of an ending. Instead we get the typical "happy ending" bullshit that goes against the entire tone and style of the show.
I'm not sure how Cohle immediately dying after his self-realization would have made the show/ending any better. It just sounds like you had an idea in your mind of what this show was and an expectation of how it should end and it didn't turn out to be anything like what you thought it would be. That isn't on the writer, he stayed true to his storytelling.
Originally Posted by 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.
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
That was the plan but I'm seeing "stuff" out on the intrawebs that may be changing. It's not going to be Woody and MM again but some of the characters may make appearances like Woody but new story line and female leads.
If it is female detectives it has to be at least a 90's era story line.
Personally, I think that's an awesome way to do a show. The writers can take the show in so many different directions. Plus they can attract top actors/actresses to play the characters because it's low commitment.
American Horror Story kind of does that, but uses mostly the same actors each season, just in different roles. If you don't like the season, you know it's going to be a different story line the next season. [Reply]
The wife was giving me shit the other day as we drove around. I was pretty proud of myself when I told her the car should be considered a place of silent reflection. [Reply]
