Rust returns to Louisiana after an eight year hiatus in Alaska working fishing boats and bars. He picks up the Lang investigation again with one of the boys suspected of being molested. Several things:
- Another reference to the spaghetti monster with scars on his face
- Marie Fontenault saw the animal faces
2012
Hart's skeptical and ornery, but his indebtedness to Rust for the '95 shooting pulls him into Rust's investigation. Rust goes to the board of exposition for Marty's and our benefit....just long enough for Rust to share what he found in Tuttle's safe, pictures of blindfolded women in the woods surrounded by men in animal masks. Not only that but he shows Marty the video tape of something so gut wrenching that Cohle gives Marty the flask to steel himself before Marty yells and shuts it off before getting to the end.
Marty says a de facto farewell to Maggie. It's clear he doesn't have any connection to his daughters.
The video is enough for Marty to go full bore into the investigation, calling old friends, using his PI resources. They get another reference from a distantly related Ledoux to the scarfaced man. An older woman, possible a Tuttle domestic servant, implies spaghetti monster may be an illegitimate child from one of the Tuttle (Sam's granschild), given the scars by his father. She provides the name Childress as a possibility for the bastard. It's unclear if Sam is the father of Billy Lee.
The reports related to the Fountaineau case are signed off by a deputy who is now the sheriff of another parish, who also mentions a Childress (a sheriff invovled to the Fontaineau case) name in conversation with Hart. He stonewalls Hart from there, but Cohle takes over for some enhanced interrogation.
Papania and Gillbough (henceforth known as Fuck & Suck, per Marty) are driving around the bayou and encounter a man cutting the grass in a cemetary who they ask for directions. You can't help but think Cohle would have talked to this guy a bit longer. I wonder if this is the same guy Cohle and Hart talked to outside the school way back in the season. That guy also l had contracts to do the cemeteries and schools. (!)
(!)
First viewing: got an unsettled feeling about this, an I knew for sure Rust would've spent some time with this guy.
Second viewing: I almost missed it. I think we just met the killer (possibly the Yellow King if the YK is a human, rather than something they all worship). I thought that was a light blonde stubble on his face, but practically by accident I noticed it was scars.
I am cheating here, but I had to look it up. Lawnmower Man was indeed the same guy cutting grass from earlier in the season. The difference? He had a beard then.
Old Questions
- Did Marty and Rust arrest the right guy?
- Didn't arrest anyone. Shot the dude.
- Looking more and more like a big 'no'. And by arrest, we mean murder
- Rust points out Marty caused a lot of this by not murdering Ledoux
- What happened with Rust to put him where he is now?
- See above. Also ingesting drugs, chemicals via his undercover and narco work.
- I'm sure eating all those drugs with the biker gang didn't help
- Ending his partnership with Marty, frustrated at the roadblocks to what he believes is a case that should be reopened
- Drank and spent eight years of boats in Alaska
- What's the revival minster's involvement with the task force?
- Working for the Tuttle school/task force is spurned by Tuttle. They ended their relationship shortly after due to the photos he finds, and the Penn State-ish investigation
- It's more about the task force's connection to Tuttle to the Tuttle family to these rituals
- Oh, also, who is doing the murdering? Both in 1992 and 2012?
- Reggie Ledoux?
- Maybe not?
- Lawnmower man
- When will they reveal to us the 1992 murderer?
- It could be next week, it could be the finale, the way this is set up
- Episode Five. Maybe
- Thought we had it. But the end of episode seven appears to have shown us for real
- Is Marty's daughter going to bite it? Or disappear/get murdered by Ledoux 2012?
- Probably not. Marty has little to no contact with them and they seem to be leading relatively successful lives so far as a (medicated, but not starving) artist and an AmeriCorps volunteer.
- What seems more important is what happened to her when she was younger, and it increasingly seems like her grandfather molested her, being one of the "rich men who go to devil worship" and causing the drawings, Barbie placement, and her need for medication later in life.
- Are the new investigators looking into the shootout in the woods, or are they primarily focused on Cohle?
- It seems like the lie has little to do with the story going forward, except that the result is Ledoux is dead.
- This is what leaves the case open enough for Cohle to revisit it, and the cover up is what pulls Marty in long enough to show him what he has.
- What are the paper stocks in Rev. Tuttle's safe?
- Who is the father of the spaghetti monster?
- Ultimately, what is Carcosa? Is it a location?
- I think it is just the name for the location where they do the deeds.
- The domestic's cry about death not being the end is probably tied into the ritual
- The ritual may believe these girls pass on to another plan
- Carcosa, in the original Brose piece, is the setting for a being who returns to his town (I guess) after dying
- What is the sheriff's connection to Fontaineau and the Tuttles?
- What caused the scars?
- Who is the guy cutting grass? Who is his family, the one that's been around these parts for a looooong time?
- What is Senator Eddie Tuttle's involvement at this point?
- Will Rust's hallucinations come back?
- Did the YK folk do something to the boy that rendered him immobile? Or was this sleep paralysis?
- What are the green ears?
A lot has been made about the female characters of True Detective, or lack thereof. I think the environments the show is about and that the characters look naturally tend to be male dominated, especially in the 1995 flashbacks, so it would stand to reason that most significant characters are male.
Rust keeps bringing up "dead/missing women and children". True Detective has so far been a story about invisible victims, people who nobody cares about. Rust has been trying to "speak for those dead" to quote Homicide. It's a population that doesn't get attention because of poverty or location or both. It's difficult for a television show to explain the absence of something or show a negative. It's the notes you don't play, as Miles Davis says. It's the same problem Season Five of The Wire ran into. So while it's difficult to explain absence and show a negative, it's even harder for the audience to pick up on it, even when done correctly.
Additionally, it's no secret the show is about Rust and Marty. I believe everything else in the show is in the service of telling us about Rust and Marty. So the explanation for why a particular character may not receive as much attention as Rust or Marty is probably because the show is about Rust and Marty, rather than that character.
In short, if you are the sort of person who viewed The Wolf of Wall Street (or Goodfellas for that matter) as a glorification of the life, rather than an indictment via realistic depiction, then this is not the show for you.
Mini Mysteries
The show has done a good job since the first episode of putting out enough plot lines, raising enough questions and developing the two main characters enough that the show does not wholly hang on Who Killed Dora Lang? much like Twin Peaks built up enough story around Who Killed Laura Palmer? and the opposite of what The Killing did with Who Killed Rosie Larsen?
Every few episodes has had a mystery unfold for us. With the overarching question of these murders obviously spanning the series, though broken into two part, pre and post Ledoux, we've had other questions raised and answered such as
Who do they like for the murders? Ledoux
What was the showdown in the woods? Hart murdering Ledoux then Cohle covering up for him
What ultimately separated Hart and Cohle? Maggie
Who broke in to Rev. Tuttle's place and killed him? Cohle for the former, and likely his weird pagan circle for the latter.
And finally, we come to episode eight with much filled in, but enough questions raised to pieque interest, prominently, what causes the Spaghetti Monster to do these things, and can Cohle and Hart stop it?
Odds and Ends
- Rust makes a few more references to life being a circle, except now he's looking to tie it off
- The sheriff golfs with a gun strapped to his back
- Marty says he doesn't drink much anymore but we see him surfing Match.com with Jameson, or watching tv with a beer.
- Cohle and Hart have always been very different but they are living very similar lives at this point in 2012, shuttling themselves between work and home, without anyone else in their lives.
- Hart is doing a lot of Rust-esque investigations. Last week we saw a lot of characters resurface giving the series symmetry. This is another type of symmetry, if not tessellation.
- Hart's daughter and Rust both express interest in painting
- Treme had a Mardi Gras episode where Annie went into a rural area and it was all a bit weirder and creepier. It seems like it has some kissing cousin relationship to the sort of Mardi Gras that spurned these rituals apparently practiced by the Tuttle extended clan
- Hart & Cohle take a page from Tony Soprano and the Stugots from "Funhouse"
- Hurricanes again lead to chaos, lead to opportunity for these acts
- Rust is going to the electric chair if anyone gets hold of his storage locker, due to the Tuttle photos and video
- The former domestic servant flips out at the mention of Carcosa, not unlike other characters we've seen, and not unlike Chambers' characters who go insane after reading The Yellow King
- Him that eats time, hims robes it's a wind of invisible voices
- Death is not the end, rejoice.
- Parliament of Owls is one of the production stickers are the end. I've been into Twin Peaks lately
- The preview has a voice over "take off your mask" a quote from The Yellow King. The response is "I wear no mask". The implication is the YK's face is so horrifying that surely it must be a mask. Mr Spaghetti Monster Grass Cutter has quite a few scars.
- Marty never wanted to see something like the baby in the microwave again. But the video does just that
- The show, while being super weird and creepy, does not get gratuitous with these shots. The important thing in the scene is Marty's reactions, not the grotesque scene he is seeing. For all the grief True Detective gets about being gratuitous, this is a good counterargument
- Cohle has talked about the end of human existence and tying off the circle. Marty said so long to his wife. Reason enough to believe one or both will not make it out alive next week.
- Rust has some sort of knife/leatherman type thing hanging from his belt where his badge would be.
- When they're questioning the mechanic, Rust and Marty are back to looking like cops, talking to this guy, and Rust has his ledger. Just like old times.
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