TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - matthew mcconaughey, woody harrelson, michelle monaghan, fukunaga, pizzolatto

Jesus

did not realise that ilx had briefly become self aware again on 11th march, sorry I missed it.

xp fair enough. I wonder if I am misremembering and it was another writer I'm thinking of. Will have to keep an eye out on rewatching.

price is a genre master and a great great writer. i'd read anything by him. he's already been extolled on ilx but, yeah, seek him out! there's a reason scorsese and spike worked with him.

Pelecanos is good too.

i love price

how much do his books cost haha

?

...

Haha, took me a couple of times looking at this thread to get that.

I watched it two eps a night over four days

Just did the same. (Been waiting for everything to die down a bit and just take it at a relatively quick clip.) Enjoyed it, imperfect, maybe more thoughts later, likely not. But I won't lie, when a certain moment suddenly hit at the end of the seventh episode, chills down my spine like nobody's business. Sometimes that's all you need.

Though I'll add this -- I likely wouldn't've watched the series if I hadn't heard about the King in Yellow/Carcosa connection, being a fan of the original stories. And I appreciate that they never explained the direct connection, and just let the hints and allusions fall as they may.

haven't read this thread - but I'm about half of the way through this and I'm getting a sinking feeling this is pretty much heading toward the same basic plot line as Top of The Lake - (SPOILER for TOTL, possibly True Detective: the shadowy cabal of weirdos + pedos + cops + powerful people is starting to feel like a pretty tired bogeyman for these things)

feel like TOTL and TD are an obvious and interesting comparison but i think that's only because, despite a lot of formal similarities, they use the genre for very different effects.

should say I think both shows are amazing - and I think the point is probably supposed to be something about how the powerful are complicit in, if not revelling in, the exploitation and abuse of the weak - but as a trope the sex abuse conspiracy also recalls the worst paranoia of the daycare sex abuse scandals and Satanic Panic of the 80's and 90's that led to a lot of innocent people's lives being destroyed. Feels like both shows are better than that.

i thought they were both great and v similar

though I do get the sense that TD makes a conscious effort to address part of that - making the "anti-Christian crimes" task force is part of the cover-up effort. Should probably watch until the end before spouting off.

sort of a masculine/feminine dynamic going on obvs p intersting

The BBC series The Fall is also a really interesting counterpoint to these now that I think about it

idk thought the fall was kinda basic

TD did have the wisdom (or folly depending on your pov) of making the holly hunter character the main character.

Definitely not as visually interesting or layered a story as TD or TOTL - but I think The Fall is doing something more interesting with their villain and what he means. But yeah, got way more drawn in by TD and TOTL on the whole.

I don't think it's fair to Top of the Lake to talk about the dangers of fake allegations, since the show does delve into that issue with Tui's father, whom everyone immediately assumes abused his own daughter.

why can't we get a talisman miniseries is what I wanna know

I got the impression the father was essentially pimping her out, which is almost as bad. When she comes back from the police he asks her if she told them anything. But ultimately what I'm saying is the "everyone's in on it, even the cops and politicians" just feels a bit over-used, and there was a recent period when that narrative played out in the real world with terrible effects

I think TD rather elegantly addresses that as well. (see all my posts above about the ending)

not sure the father was implicated tbh, nor that the ring overlapped with his enterprises except that the town was small

it wasn't very clear tbh

xposts
will have to finish watching before I read that, and like I said I shouldn't really be offering up opinions without having finished it - but for shows so savvy and interesting about culture and social dynamics - and so interested in doing interesting things with plot and story-telling - that plot device seemed like a weak link

Ok, I think it's a bit weird complaint to make. First of all, these cases happened 20-30 years ago. Secondly, the cases aren't at all like the shows, where it's quite explicitly the powerful who are preying on the weak. A much more likely comparison would be something like the catholic sex-scandals. And thirdly, if this is a problem, well, then I'd say you should never ever have a black or immigrant criminal on a tv-show. Because fears and anxietes of black and immigrant crime has way more real world impact than fear of sexual abuse conspiracies.

TD takes place 20 years ago - and I'm saying I like the shows - just feels like it was obvious, especially since you could see it coming a mile away in both shows which were otherwise surprising in lots of ways

and on top of that - something really interesting and dark and scary DID happen wihen people believed the sex crime conspiracy narrative (something very explicitly about the powerful preying on the weak too - look at the West Memphis 3 or Jordan Minnesota) in the real world... so using that narrative as a bogeyman of dark and scary feels off to me

The conspiracy story is def a very common story, and you could easily claim it's clichéd. You'd probably be right. That's not what I'm commenting on.

The West Memphis Three were ostracized teenagers. They were the opposite of what happens in TD. And there's also a pretty big difference between a regular daycare, and a religous school basically run by a senator and his family. It's not the same.

It's not that I doubt that false allegations are pretty common and incredibly dangerous - look at the allegations of Roma-families kidnapping children earlier this year, or the guy being killed by his neighbours after he photographed children to prove they were destroying his garden - but the dynamic is very, very different than it is in these shows. It's witchhunts, and witchhunts mainly happen to the weirdoes, and the people on the outskirts of society. Not state senators or police chiefs. Or priests.

i've thought a lot more deeply about TD than TOTL, so i can't speak to how the latter handles this, but TD starts from a strongly pessimistic or gnostic metaphysical position that sees the world itself as a conspiracy of evil, depravity, illusion, etc. The show is in some sense an investigation into this mindset! what drives it, its potential validity, its emotional resonance...that Rust maps this mindset onto a *particular* conspiracy is something of a red-herring, since in "reality" it has neither beginning nor ending. the "ethics" of the show, as i tried to argue above (to much dissent), is about when to draw the line between that metaphysical standpoint and actually living your life. it's the difference between infinite ethical obligations (the flipside to Rust's supposed nihilism is that he feels a strong duty to justice) and finite ones.

in real life, the "powerful preying on the weak" took the form of cops and politicians railroading people like the WM3 and daycare workers for expediency and political gain

in the fictions, the "powerful preying on the weak" takes the form of cops and politicians directly taking part in the murder and exploitation of children

TD portrays the powerful as actual members of an occult sex abuse ring which feels unsettling to me - because in real life, the weak were victimized for being perceived as members of occult sex rings

it just feels like it creates a dissonance that gets in the way of the larger goals of the narrative

I'm not saying it's irresponsible or dangerous, just an artistic choice that comes with a lot of baggage that the shows don't completely escape

no it doesn't/yes it does/you're projecting a lot. IMO.

enjoy the rest of the show! the plots not all that important tbrr

Ha, yeah sorry just banging on about a half baked theory that clearly does not resonate with any one else... And there's definitely tons more going on in both these shows - and I do really think both are great tv

serious question: what murder mystery solution *wouldn't* be cliche at this point?

seems like yr standard options are: 1) loony serial killer, 2) "this conspiracy goes ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP", 3) family member you least suspect, 4) something totally mundane (drug-related, organized crime etc.)

5) horrifying extradimensional being of unimaginable power

I guess

i guess one in which the conspiracy turned out to be totally fabricated? maybe that's been done too.

6) One of the good guys

one of the things I love about Twin Peaks is that it uses all of those simultaneously

7. eh just trails off

The show was definitely trying to make you think it was Rust for a while. I don't know if that would actually have been novel or not, but something about it would definitely feel cheap.

I don't think it was. it was trying to make you think the detectives thought it was. but prob they didn't rly.

that was one of the cooler parts of the show for me, in that 2/3 was ostensibly about whether Rust was the murderer--to the extent that the camera POV was quite often that of the interrogating detectives--which is a neat device for allowing a character to expound upon a (possibly self-incriminating) worldview at length. but there's some kind of shift in POV that i can't put my finger on which occurs after rust breaks off the interrogation.

the funny part was that their theories about rust were at least as speculative as rust's "sprawl" theories were!

and i think that's the kind of balance that makes Marty so important--he's like the self-interested doubting thomas of it all.

ppl still trying on the "what WOULDNT be bad" ending?? aim higher yo

in real life, the "powerful preying on the weak" took the form of cops and politicians railroading people like the WM3 and daycare workers for expediency and political gain the Catholic Church

This show was very, very good. Although reading this thread has made me stop wanting to read commentary re: shows as they are happening.

otm