True Detective......more (or less) HBO awesomeness

Well, the **** hits the fan in the Penultimate episode tonight. Maybe it will be a good finale.

Ep5 was pretty damn good.

I actually wasn't giving full attention to it and read a detailed recap of the episode and I missed a bunch of stuff. I need to rewatch it before the finale. lol

Wholly hell that was good. The tone, direction and scope was all on point. The beginning four episodes were mostly bad, but this episode was worth wading through the others. Parison called it, that is the way to do a penultimate episode to get people itching to see the final episode.

There were a lot of subtle changes. The main characters finally out of uniform, letting hair down, etc. There were also a lot of reveals. Good stuff all around.

I like how Danvers just gave up highly critical information to the boss of the company she thinks had a part in the murders. I would rather see sharks with laser beams be the murderers right now.

I know that critics are quite often terrible and the AVClub had been even worse than that for the last few years…. But every episode before this latest one got either an A or an A-, which none deserved. Tonight’s got…. A C+…..

I wish this had been 8 episodes with a deeper dive into the lab, the incident with Navarro/Danvers, Prior and his dad and the natives in general.

great movie, but what's even better is the original Swedish movie of the same name, starring Stellan Skarsgaard.

what's the call back to season 1? I must've missed it. I do like the weirdness of the case, but like most others, I'm not enjoying the soap opera family/relationship crap.

The Tuttle company.

not to mention rust's dad

I haven't seen season 1 since it first aired, and don't remember Tuttle...who is Rust's Dad? (That's the Mathew Mc character, right?)

Tuttle was the preacher, Rust is McC and his having spent time in Alaska is mentioned in S1 and then again in S4, by way of his dad.

Weak.

Are all reviewers bought and paid for these days?

Whoa…. I saw the tweet earlier but didn’t know it was Sepinwall…. I’m so sad now…..

Lol it's amazing how some men just don't like stories about women.

It wasn't excellent, but it was damn good. Foster is an all-time great.

It was a better ending then season 1. As great as that season was, it really didn't have a satisfying ending.

No, it just wasn't good. I do feel like the "what really happened" was what was written first and they went back and tried to make a story next.

After my first and second watch, I would have agreed about the ending. But I don't anymore. It similar to the ending of The Sopranos and though I was infuriated the night that it aired, eventually I came to consider it as one of the most brilliant scenes in TV history. As for True Detective season 1's ending, I think one's opinion depends on what show they thought they were watching. I got just as caught up as many did in all the Yellow King stuff and whatnot, but the show was about Rust and Marty. In that, I think the ending nailed it. It's impossible to think of what I would have thought about it had I not participated or contributed to any of the convos and discourse at the time. But that was also part of the fun of it.

I also think season 3's ending was better than S4.

lol go read some of erik kain's episode reviews on forbes.com boy does he HAAAAAATE every single one.

My feeling exactly. I always thought the s1 finale was a cop out.

S1 was a 10 with a 5 ending, S4 was a 5 with a 5 ending, that’s why the ending works.

SPOILERS in case you haven't seen the finale. Kind of forgotten what the spoiler policy was in TV threads here.

I need to rewatch S1-S3 to really place S4. It's probably wedged around S2 but I liked S2 more than the general public (and based on initial above posts I'd say I enjoyed S4 more than the rest, too).

Final two episodes were the strongest of the six, which helps it stick the landing more.

While the show opens with the Tsalal murders, the season was much more about solving Anne's murder so in that sense I think it gave a stronger conclusion to the story.

The finale closed out loose ends to this season way better than I was expecting, but there were a couple that I missed the answers to, maybe:
- The former Tsalal member who was at the nomad camp, Oliver Tabaq, disappeared and they kind of just ignored it?
- When they finally revealed that Navarro was the one who shot Wheeler, a baby cried in the other room. Who would the baby be?
- How did Anne's tongue get into the Tsalal station? Did Hank put it there, and why would he? It was literally the piece of evidence that linked the two cases for them.
- The whole show opener of elk running off the end of a cliff just helping push the narrative that crazy things happen in the days of night, so we can handwave a lot of these things to supernatural forces/Anne's presence?
- Navarro's connection to spirits is not really wrapped up either. Did she walk out into the sea at the end and was it just a spirit on the cabin deck with Danvers at the end, or was she still alive?