S03.E08: Now Am Found

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Wayne struggles to hold on to his memories, and his grip on reality, as the truth behind the Purcell case is finally revealed.

Season finale, airing on Sunday, February 24, 2019.

 

[Hoo]

What will episode 8 answer?  I'm not sure I understand what Wayne is seeking in 2015.  

I understand he wants to find the girl, but he knows she is alive.  The question is why seek and find her?   What is he after?

Is this about detective's sixth sense that there is more to the case than a custodianship battle between the Hoyts and the Purcells, like some mafia child trafficking?  OR is he after some revenge on Roland?  What will bring him the peace of mind?

I still do not understand what episode 8 and Wayne's quest in 2015 is about.

[LoveLeigh]

Interesting final episode..... Although I am not a fan of the "sit down" technique where a character unravels the mystery in  narrative. But it was OK.

I loved the last shot of Wayne in combat. So the secret of what happened to Julie is never shared with Roland and gets lost inside Wayne's head?

A question: How did Amelia die? 

[12catcrazy]

Ok.  What the hell does that ending mean?  That is mind is now totally gone or the whole thing was a version of An Incident At Owl Creek Bridge?  

[WaltersHair]

So, I was right about some and wrong about some. It feels anticlimactic, but any good story usually does. Did they ever say what happened to Amelia?

The ages of Julie and her daughter seem off by about 20 years. I am glad she's alive and doing well.

The scene when Wayne finally, finally has his answer and then it escapes him is poignant, but I think fair.

True Detective 4 please.

[Drogo]

That was some nefarious music playing when Henry had the realization of what/who most be on Allegra Lane. 

[ghoulina]

I liked the finale, for the most part. I feel like most questions I had were wrapped up, and not in a forced or rushed way. 

I really liked seeing that Julie was still alive and happy. I had a feeling the lawn care guy from the previous episode would come into play. But, I tell you, that scene with Hays at her house had me all kinds of tense. I was convinced that the husband was going to come home, think he was Mr June from a distance, and shoot him. 

In the end,I think the dementia will end up being a blessing. Maybe it well be the thing to finally free him from this case. It's terrible, of course, that other people were blamed for her disappearance and died in the process. But, in a way, she really just needed to be left alone. 

A lot of people have complained about the multitude of time jumps. But I think they fit perfectly with the dementia theme. They served to make the viewer feel just as disjointed and confused as Hays did. 

I loved the final shot of the Hays grandchildren, biking down the street. What a haunting tie-in. And, while I'm happy that Julie got a happy ending; I'm incredibly sad for poor Will. 

I guess the only thing I would have liked a better understanding of would be the rift, or whatever it was, between Hays and his daughter. 

But,overall, this was a good season. It didn't top season one, for me.But I really liked it. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by ghoulina

[AimingforYoko]

Roland picking a fight with the bikers so he could get punished for Tom and Harris was sad, but he didn't just stand there, did he? He kicked some ass.

I thought Wayne would simply think better of disturbing Julie, not have the choice made for him.

[Lamima]

Dumb finale. Whole thing. Absurd and dumb. Was so good and they just chose some dumb ending. Oh and no way would rhat fall have killed the brother. I was doing so many eyerolls that my eyes are sore now.

[Xantar]

I think Nic Pizzolatto stuck the landing. The actual case was a little anti-climactic, but the story was really about how it affected the people around it. And I got the logic of the time jumps by the end. They were tied by a theme more than story progression. The theme in this episode was Wayne (and Amelia) deciding to leave the case behind for the sake of their family. A couple details are left untied like how exactly Amelia died and what happened with Wayne’s daughter, but in the end they are irrelevant.

It reminds me of Season 1, actually: a much happier and more hopeful ending than I would have expected. 

[ganesh]

56 minutes ago, 12catcrazy said:

That is mind is now totally gone or the whole thing was a version of An Incident At Owl Creek Bridge?  

That's my favorite story. 

I think they got a little too full of themselves. I don't mind the nonlinear storytelling, but they seemed to allude to a lot going on in Wayne's life that made the series seem to have more weight than it did. 

I'm disappointed that I wanted the documentary lady to be part of it (like Julie's daughter). I can get that there's no need for Julie to know that Wayne's whole life revolved around her because she doesn't need be guilted in to his issues. It's too bad Roland didn't know. I would have liked if they both went to see her, and Wayne forgot, and Roland just took him home. 

I feel bad for the wife because she wasn't much of a character. The show even said so. They really could have had anyone write the book. 

They aren't really that good detectives either. The one eyed guy popped up at the book reading in 1990. They couldn't get a description and track him down then? 

Edited February 25, 2019 by ganesh

[clack]

I don't know. The mystery's resolution was so anti-climatic.

What information or theory did Eliza, the documentarian, have? So much was made of her and what she knew, but I guess in the end she was just a conspiracy nut?

All those hints about Amelia's past, her role-playing : just red herrings?

And didn't the final puzzle pieces fall into place with suspicious ease? Amelia's book falls, Wayne opens it up to a random page where he reads an important clue, then he hallucinates Amelia spelling out key explanations? Did he solve the case by finding Julie, or only imagine it?

[Drogo]

My favorite moment of the series and finale was seeing how Roland West became A Dog Person. 

[SHD]

Did anyone else notice that when current day West and Hays were walking past the mirror on the way to the pink room, the reflections were of young West and Hays?

[Hoo]

In the end it was a love story, from a weird perspective.  Problem is we did not know that.   They won't get me to watch the next one.  It was an incomplete love story, and it was a mess.

Some people will say it was ingenious,, the acting was great, the love story is really subtle.   I don't care, it's fraudulent.  That's the problem and it did not deliver as a detective story or the love story.  Waste of time.   

In the end it was a love story, from a weird perspective.  Problem is we did not know that.   They won't get me to watch the next one.  It was an incomplete love story, and it was a mess.

Some people will say it was ingenious,, the acting was great, the love story is really subtle.   I don't care, it's fraudulent.  That's the problem and it did not deliver as a detective story or the love story.  Waste of time.   

[sjankis630]

clack,

I am not sure what the information was that Amelia had but I believe conveniently Hayes knocks over her book and the page with some information allows him to confirm something. I didn't even watch the whole of episode 7 because I saw no way that this was going to be wrapped up in a way I would find acceptable. I am ok with them doing whatever they want, but in the end, there seemed to be an awful lot of red herrings.

Did Hayes remember the girl when they gave him the bottle of water? I  am thinking that he basically came very close to seeing her but truly forgot what the heck he was out there for. I liked that in the movie Momento (my nick is an homage) but here it just annoyed me. Oh well.....

[LoveLeigh]

3 hours ago, 12catcrazy said:

Ok.  What the hell does that ending mean?  That is mind is now totally gone or the whole thing was a version of An Incident At Owl Creek Bridge?  

You think Wayne imagined his life in the entire storyline? I was also confused by that final scene of him in combat.....

Edited February 25, 2019 by DakotaLavender

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, WaltersHair said:

The ages of Julie and her daughter seem off by about 20 years. I am glad she's alive and doing well.

The mother and daughter in 2015 could both be named Lucy.

3 hours ago, ghoulina said:

In the end,I think the dementia will end up being a blessing. Maybe it well be the thing to finally free him from this case. It's terrible, of course, that other people were blamed for her disappearance and died in the process. But, in a way, she really just needed to be left alone

Tom dying was terrible, but Harris dying might have prevented him from finding Julie and dragging her back the pink room and the lithium.

Maybe some day Wayne will be able to tell Roland what happened. Or maybe he won't. But it won't really matter.

[shapeshifter]

20 MINUTES AGO, ELECTRICBOOGALOO SAID:

Inside the episode: https://youtu.be/ieKqWoWjy2M

LOL, I loved that line from Wayne to Amelia: "I don't need no head shittin' birds in here."

I immediately recognized the episode title as being from the song "Amazing Grace," and assumed most would—but maybe not

And St.James Infirmary Blues is one of my old favorites.

Edited February 25, 2019 by shapeshifter

[scrb]

3 hours ago, Xantar said:

I think Nic Pizzolatto stuck the landing. The actual case was a little anti-climactic, but the story was really about how it affected the people around it. And I got the logic of the time jumps by the end. They were tied by a theme more than story progression. The theme in this episode was Wayne (and Amelia) deciding to leave the case behind for the sake of their family. A couple details are left untied like how exactly Amelia died and what happened with Wayne’s daughter, but in the end they are irrelevant.

It reminds me of Season 1, actually: a much happier and more hopeful ending than I would have expected. 

I agree, it's not a "OMG, that's what happened!" reveal but it does allow the two old detectives some peace, after decades of being unable to get it right, after the case hurt their careers or their relationships, it gives them a measure of being able to rest thinking they know what happened.

However, Roland senses it's not the whole story so he says he doesn't feel a sense of closure.

Both guys express regret that they couldn't solve the case decades earlier, to do right by Julie and family, yet they think they have the whole picture more or less.

Wayne wakes up and figures it out, goes to see Julie and her daughter, then forgets what he discovered.  So Julie may have peace and privacy, though maybe she shouldn't do her daughter's hair exactly like how she had it at her age.

Wayne and now Roland will keep each other company and they are surrounded by Wayne's children and grandchildren, who like Will and Julie ride their bicycles together.  So even if they don't (re)discover the truth of what ultimately happened to Julie, they can live the rest of their lives in relative peace.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

As soon as that blonde girl ran into Wayne, I knew she was connected to Julie but since the nun had already told them that Julie died in 1995, I knew she was definitely too young for her to have been born before then. But then her dad said that her name was Lucy and that was way too much of a coincidence. I started wondering if Julie and one of the other girls at the shelter had switched names and then she ran off with Mike.

I knew something was going to happen when Wayne decided to drive to Julie's house without Roland. I'm glad it wasn't anything dangerous, but still. For a good chunk of this season, I've been wondering why Wayne doesn't have a notebook where he writes down important stuff (see: Memento). Last week when he told Roland to write something down for him before he forgot, I thought dude, you should be writing it down right now while you still remember!

Wayne's son kept the scrap of paper with Julie's address on it so I was hoping we wouldn't see him hand it over to the reporter.

3 hours ago, WaltersHair said:

The ages of Julie and her daughter seem off by about 20 years. I am glad she's alive and doing well.

Julie was 10 when she disappeared in 1980, which means she was born in 1970. She was 45 in 2015 when Wayne saw her at her house. Her daughter Lucy looked about 10 which means she probably had her when she was around 35.

The story that the nuns told everyone was that Julie died in December 1995 so she would have been about 25 then, but we don't know for certain when she actually left there, married Mike, etc. The nuns also said that Julie was there for three and a half years which means she arrived when she was about 21.

Did Amelia ever tell Wayne about meeting Mary July's roommate/friend at the shelter/convent?

Edited February 25, 2019 by ElectricBoogaloo

[violet and green]

7 minutes ago, scrb said:

Wayne and now Roland will keep each other company and they are surrounded by Wayne's children and grandchildren, who like Will and Julie ride their bicycles together.  So even if they don't (re)discover the truth of what ultimately happened to Julie, they can live the rest of their lives in relative peace.

That is a really nice way of putting it. That, and seeing how Roland found the love and companionship of dogs, was worth watching the ep. I was mighty dismayed by that ending, to me abruptly, with so much unanswered. Eh, life...

[ElectricBoogaloo]

The continuing shot they did in the car where Roland and Wayne kept changing decades was so seamless and well done!

[Bannon]

Eh, all the quality of the dialogue that was so compelling through 7 episodes really vanished. Mostly because the plotting had become such a mess that the dialogue in the last episode had to rush the story to a conclusion, which meant the characters couldn't be people any longer, but rather plot resolution tools. The scene with Wayne and Evil Hoyt Chicken Magnate was truly awful, and that awful scene was needed because the writer made the lazy decision to have Wayne and Roland become temporary idiots, kidnapping and pulverizing, then killing, Hoyt Chicken's Security Chief, so Wayne could be forced to drop the case again. Ugh. The entire story from 1990 onward hinges around Wayne and Roland being towering idiots about Harris James.

I also really hated the scene with elderly Wayne and Roland, flashlights in hand, doing a  Scooby Doo bit in Spooky Abandoned Hoyt Manor. Good grief. Then, it got worse, with Expository Dialogue Specialist, First Class, One Eyed Mr. Junius, providing about as clumsy a way of filling the blanks in as is imaginable. The script should have really gone the full measure and had our cyclopian plot resolver explain things to Wayne and Roland via power point presentation, using a projector.

The final scene, back at the son's house, was just a tease about how the story missed the mark.This was a great story about a man's relationship with the woman he marries, and his relationship with his closest friend, and how the man's emotional trauma affects those relationships. That great story was kind of fumbled away by plotting that became much too contrived,  in an effort to Have A Big, Complicated, Mystery. Fundamentally, I think the writer didn't trust the audience enough to be enthralled primarily by Wayne's inner story. The shame is that when the writer focused on that, the story was terrific.

[thuganomics85]

First things first: congrats to Academy Award Winner Mahershala Ali for now becoming Two Time Academy Award Winner Mahershala Ali!  Hopefully they'll be an Emmy for him in the future!

It was an alright finale, I guess, but it basically felt like they really resorted to just simply having characters narrate and explain everything to Wayne and Roland, and it kind of cheapened everything in my eyes.  It's hard to explain why exactly, but that's just how I felt.

Not surprised that Julie's disappearance ended up having nothing to do with with the pedophile ring, and it was all about Hoyt's sick daughter taking a liking to her, and kidnapping her (while the brother's death was an accident when she pushed him away.)  And she's still alive and married to the boy who had a crush on her, and they now have a daughter.  And in a bittersweet twist of fate, Wayne figures all of this out, but forgets all about it due to his dementia.  He'll never know that he finally solved his case.

Of all the reveals and answers, seeing how Roland ends up taking care of dogs/strays was easily the most satisfying one.

Michael Rooker didn't have much to do here, but it was fun while it lasted.

I was cracking up during all of Wayne's "head shitting bird" remarks, because it was so silly, but in a good way, if that makes any sense.  It just sounded like something I could see happening in a real fight, because a lot times stupid shit like that is said, because the person is too inebriated or mad to even think of better insults.

Overall, not as good as season one, but I enjoyed it more than season two.  If nothing else, Mahershala, Carmen Ejogo, Scott McNairy, and especially Stephen Dorff made it must watch television for me.  In particular, I really hope Dorff starts getting bigger roles, because he really stood out and killed it here.

[Gobi]

I don't think Hays forgot why he was at Julie's house. I think he realized that telling her who he was and bringing up the past would do no good. At the same time, he wanted to see her, to be sure that was her. So, he used his dementia as an excuse to talk to her without raising suspicions. He knew how much she had suffered, and seeing her happy, gardening with her daughter, caused him to let it be. All the guilty parties were dead, and he had solved the mystery; that was enough.

[Drogo]

“What if it was all one long story that kept going and going until it healed itself?”

Fantastic, Amelia.  (Carmen Ejogo is magical in anything.)

7 hours ago, DakotaLavender said:

You think Wayne imagined his life in the entire storyline? I was also confused by that final scene of him in combat.....

The shot of Wayne's eye watching his healed family, realizing who he'd found in Greenland-> cut to his breaking through his deep emotional cover and semi-proposing to Amelia-> cut to both walking into a bright light-> cut to tracking his enemies and disappearing into thick jungle

IMO, it's symbolizing the end of Wayne's long story.  It's finally healed itself, and now it's over.  ("I once was lost, but Now Am Found.")

For future True Detective seasons,

Spoiler

we should probably just always talk to whoever's doing the landscaping.  They have all the answers.

[Ottis]

4 hours ago, Bannon said:

This was a great story about a man's relationship with the woman he marries, and his relationship with his closest friend, and how the man's emotional trauma affects those relationships. That great story was kind of fumbled away by plotting that became much too contrived,  in an effort to Have A Big, Complicated, Mystery. Fundamentally, I think the writer didn't trust the audience enough to be enthralled primarily by Wayne's inner story. The shame is that when the writer focused on that, the story was terrific.

YMMV, but I wish the opposite: That we didn't have so much drama around Hays and his relationships (so much of the timeline jumping was about that), and that we would have had *more* about a mystery and some sort of meaningful impact. In the first episode or two they revealed, through the timelines, that whatever happened to the kids had already happened by 2015, and from that point, I felt no momentum through the rest of the story.

3 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

It was an alright finale, I guess, but it basically felt like they really resorted to just simply having characters narrate and explain everything to Wayne and Roland, and it kind of cheapened everything in my eyes. 

That's all they *could* do, once they revealed early on that whatever had happened, had happened. The only time it felt like anything new was occurring was from the convent on.

BTW, for a show that seemed to revel in parsing out bits of story and false leads, they hit us over the head with the girl, Lucy, at the convent. I mean, she looked more like Julie than the image on the Walmart camera. And then her name was Lucy. I couldn't believe that the two detectives didn't see it right away, and then it looked like the show was going to try to be too clever and make it a reveal, but they chose the better path and had Wayne realize it. While I was saying, "Duh," but still. 

I liked the mood and setting(s) of the season, especially the world building by decade, and the relationship between Wayne and Roland. Everything else was blah.

[ghoulina]

6 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Did Amelia ever tell Wayne about meeting Mary July's roommate/friend at the shelter/convent?

I've entertained the idea that Amelia DID tell Wayne. That maybe she and/or Wayne had actually tracked Julie down years before. Or came really close. And decided to leave it alone. But the onset of dementia made Wayne forget all that. And he became obsessed with the case again. Maybe because the reporter brought it back around. Or maybe as a way to feel connected to his dead wife? 

[shapeshifter]

Depending upon the viewer's perspective, the final shot of young Wayne in the Southeast Asian jungle could mean that everything else we saw of Wayne's life--his career, his relationships, his mental states--were what would have happened if he had not died in the jungle during the Vietnam War: "What if there's another story . . . that just kept going and going until it healed itself?" (Amelia). 

18 minutes ago, Drogo said:

“What if it was all one long story that kept going and going until it healed itself?”
. . . Amelia

. . . cut to tracking his enemies and disappearing into thick jungle

. . . symbolizing the end of Wayne's long story.  It's finally healed itself, and now it's over.  ("I once was lost, but Now Am Found.")

[shapeshifter]

5 hours ago, Gobi said:

I don't think Hays forgot why he was at Julie's house. I think he realized that telling her who he was and bringing up the past would do no good. At the same time, he wanted to see her, to be sure that was her. So, he used his dementia as an excuse to talk to her without raising suspicions. He knew how much she had suffered, and seeing her happy, gardening with her daughter, caused him to let it be. All the guilty parties were dead, and he had solved the mystery; that was enough.

Yes, right before Hays sets out in his car for the Ardoin residence in Arkansas Hoyt place, Hays and Roland drive to the convent and have this exchange:
[Wayne Hays]: Suppose somebody catches us?
[Roland]: We're old and confused. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by shapeshifter

[Drogo]

6 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Yes, right before Hays sets out in his car for the Ardoin residence in Arkansas, Hays and Roland drive to the convent and have this exchange:
[Wayne Hays]: Suppose somebody catches us?
[Roland]: We're old and confused. 

This was outside the gates of the Hoyt property. 

Personally I think if Wayne had realized whose home he was at and wanted to keep Julie's new life safe, he wouldn't have given the address to His Son The Detective Sleeping With a Documentary Filmmaker Obsessed With Solving This Case And Finding Julie for potential follow up.  

At the time he handed Henry that piece of paper, Purple had no idea what it was.  (I'd say that's also why we got that ominous music when Henry did a double take at the address.. The poor Ardoins are about to get a lot more visitors than they bargained for.)

[SHD]

3 hours ago, Gobi said:

I don't think Hays forgot why he was at Julie's house. I think he realized that telling her who he was and bringing up the past would do no good. At the same time, he wanted to see her, to be sure that was her. So, he used his dementia as an excuse to talk to her without raising suspicions. He knew how much she had suffered, and seeing her happy, gardening with her daughter, caused him to let it be. All the guilty parties were dead, and he had solved the mystery; that was enough.

I like this idea a lot, but his "lost" look hit him before he even saw anyone at the house, didn't it? And it seems like it would be an odd extreme to make his son come get him at what seemed as if it was far away if he was just pretending. He could've easily just told Julie he was lost and needed directions, then driven off on his own.

Speaking of his son, I wonder why he kept the paper with the address. Maybe he was going to give it to the documentary woman, figuring it had something to do with the case? I can't think of another reason he would keep it.

[shapeshifter]

11 minutes ago, Drogo said:

At the time he handed Henry that piece of paper, Purple had no idea what it was.  (I'd say that's also why we got that ominous music when Henry did a double take at the address.. The poor Ardoins are about to get a lot more visitors than they bargained for.)

7 minutes ago, SHD said:

Speaking of his son, I wonder why he kept the paper with the address. Maybe he was going to give it to the documentary woman, figuring it had something to do with the case? I can't think of another reason he would keep it.

Oh dear. Since 2 posters have independently come up with is scenario (Henry giving his documentarian lover the Ardoin address) I guess that will happen. Plus, without it, Henry's documentarian lover is just a cardboard plot device. Which she was. 

[ghoulina]

12 minutes ago, SHD said:

Speaking of his son, I wonder why he kept the paper with the address. Maybe he was going to give it to the documentary woman, figuring it had something to do with the case? I can't think of another reason he would keep it.

That scene had me wondering as well. He opened a drawer, in the kitchen. I kept waiting for them to pan down, and show a bunch of pieces of paper - as if Wayne had been down that route before. And he was keeping all the slips for him. But they didn't show the drawer, so that's pure speculation. But opening the drawer does seem to suggest he was going to save it. Pocketing suggest what? He's going to pass it on? He's going to throw it away later? He'll check it out himself? 

[Razzberry]

Wayne on the front porch watching his grandkids peddle down the street - they zoom into his eye - I thought that would've made a better ending.   The last scenes felt unnecessary.

I'm a sucker for grumpy old men looking after each other.  Overall it was decent but too derivative of the first.

[Enigma X]

I liked it. The resolution could have been better, but I felt that way about the first season too. I did not watch the second season. I also enjoy stories driven by character introspection though. So, that might be why I enjoyed it.

[ghoulina]

11 minutes ago, Razzberry said:

Wayne on the front porch watching his grandkids peddle down the street - they zoom into his eye - I thought that would've made a better ending.   The last scenes felt unnecessary.

I do agree with this. I felt the callback to Julie and Will riding bikes was quite lovely, even if in a sad way. 

[freeser]

Although they are both wonderful actors, this last episode had too much 'Wayne and Amelia' for me.  I felt all the talk and talk and talk about the state of their relationship and marriage was overdone for a detective/mystery show.  "What do you want?" - "I don't know".  "What do YOU want?" - "I don't know".  "Where are we going in the relationship", etc, etc, etc.  At least, they could have thrown in something about when Amelia died and what happened to her.  I would have been interested in hearing about that a lot more than all the back and forth during their relationship.  

I wanted a lot more 'Wayne and Roland'.  For the finale, I hoped to see the detective pair on the screen for the majority of the time.  Young, middle aged or elderly, Wayne and Roland together were by far the best part of this show.  Wayne and Roland both had good background stories by themselves, but together the pair, their working relationship and ultimate friendship was the most fascinating part of the story. 

It was disappointing that there was not something interesting for the story to say about the lady film maker who was interviewing Wayne.  I kept waiting for something there.  What happened between Roland and his daughter?  The hinted that something went awry, but it was not mentioned again.  

Overall, the finale was not the best episode of the series.  It was OK and did confirm things we already suspected.  The discovery of present day Julie was a surprise.  

[Pike Ludwell]

Seems like they wanted to leave some things uncertain and for there to be room for people to draw a variety of conclusions. Was the jungle scene at the very end an allusion to an Owl Creek sort of thing? i.e., that the whole thing was stuff going on in Hays' head as he was dying. It was a weak idea because we didn't see Hays shot or anything. But still it's possible for people to go in that direction, and the writer might have thrown that in just for that reason.  Did Hays realize he had found the girl at that moment on the porch with his family? What was Hays' son going to do with the note with the address? Like song or poetry writers, I think this writer  likes to open up ideas for people to think about rather than drive a precise point.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Pat Hoolihan

[Bannon]

1 hour ago, Ottis said:

YMMV, but I wish the opposite: That we didn't have so much drama around Hays and his relationships (so much of the timeline jumping was about that), and that we would have had *more* about a mystery and some sort of meaningful impact. In the first episode or two they revealed, through the timelines, that whatever happened to the kids had already happened by 2015, and from that point, I felt no momentum through the rest of the story.

That's all they *could* do, once they revealed early on that whatever had happened, had happened. The only time it felt like anything new was occurring was from the convent on.

I might agree more with this, if not for the fact that the mystery, in the end, just sucked. When it gets to the point that two codgers are breaking into The Palatial Spooky, For Some Reason Abandoned For Years, Estate (With COBWEBS, NO LESS)Once Lived In By Evil Chicken Magnate And Insane Daughter, Who Kidnap Girl And Drug Her For Years With Lithium, While She Lives In A Pink Room, you really are just telling a geriatric Scooby Doo episode, minus the comedy for 8 year olds. At least they could have had the one eyed guy be actually wearing a mask,  and when Roland tears it off, the villain under the mask could shout "AND IT WOULD HAVE WORKED, IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU MEDDLING OLD FARTS!!!!". Maybe they could have had our two detectives driving around in a van, with one of Roland's larger and more precocious canines. 

Egads, what an utter catastrophe of plotting, which ultimately completely destroyed the characters and dialogue. I mostly hated the scenes  between Amelia and Wayne in the finale, which is such a contrast to the previous episodes, especially the first 6.

The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get with how great actors and a lot of scenes with great dialogue were wasted by what turned out to be drivel for a plot. What a shame.

[Drogo]

Just now, Bannon said:

When it gets to the point that two codgers are breaking into The Palatial Spooky, For Some Reason Abandoned For Years, Estate (With COBWEBS, NO LESS)Once Lived In By Evil Chicken Magnate And Insane Daughter, Who Kidnap Girl And Drug Her For Years With Lithium, While She Lives In A Pink Room, you really are just telling a geriatric Scooby Doo episode, minus the comedy for 8 year olds.

And isn't it Bad Guy 101 to incinerate (or at least lock the vault door on) your Secret Kidnapper Dungeon when you abandon your palatial estate?

[Tighthead]

I’m not sure that Julie dying as the nuns said wasn’t a more fitting ending. 

[clack]

The plot made no sense. Was Julie kept secluded in the pink dungeon full-time for years until adolescence? Didn't go to school? Did Hoyt know? What did he think would happen to Julie when she reached adulthood?

[Bannon]

6 minutes ago, Drogo said:

And isn't it Bad Guy 101 to incinerate (or at least lock the vault door on) your Secret Kidnapper Dungeon when you abandon your palatial estate?

I really wish writers would take to heart the fact that evil is  with overwhelming frequency quite banal, and the more baroque a writer tries to make that quality, the greater the chance the writer misses what might be interesting. Even the great stories which have magnificent villains usually don't have hugely intricate plotting, and if you are going to have a magnificent villain, ya' can't wait to the end of the story to get the villain introduced. For instance, my favorite villain of all time is Orson Welles in "The Third Man", which really doesn't have hugely complex plot machinations, and the villain is just a cynical little money-grubber. It's a great story, wonderfully told, however.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I was a little surprised that little Lucy didn’t blurt out that she had seen Wayne the day before at the convent. 

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

11 hours ago, DakotaLavender said:

You think Wayne imagined his life in the entire storyline? I was also confused by that final scene of him in combat.....

If any of ya'll watched Boardwalk Empire,

Spoiler

that scene with Wayne entering the Vietnam jungle at the very end reminded me of what Jimmy (who was a WWI vet) said before he died.  He knew he was about to be killed, and he basically said he had already died in the trenches in WWI years before.  

I don't think Wayne expected to come back from Vietnam (and the line about knowing his mom would get $10k if he died earlier in the episode).  I don't think he literally died in Vietnam like the old Ambrose Bierce story, I think it was some kind of metaphor and an open ending for us viewers to think about.  

Also, my dad is a Vietnam vet.  He didn't talk about it for decades.  He's in his 70s now and I just started hearing him talk about it some in the past few years.  For decades, I think he tried to forget it to fight not letting it define his life.  As he's gotten older, I think he's started to realize (or come to terms with) how different his and who he is would have been without being in the war.  I see Wayne's vision at the end as part of that.  He was kind of reluctant to talk about his time in Vietnam with others, but it was always there - a part of him always in the jungle, alone, doing what he did best- tracking people (and like Rust Cohle said in season 1, life is barely long good enough to get good at one thing, so be careful what you get good at). It could also symbolize being lost or alone with his dementia, etc and trying to find his way out.  It could be he's literally about to die on the porch and that defining time in Vietnam when he was at his best is the last thing he sees flash.  I think it's open for the viewers to interpret.

I'll say as the daughter of a Vietnam vet and the daughter-in-law of a man who lived for five long years with Alzheimer's, I think Wayne in this season was well done and the story was mostly well-done.  It left me feeling uncomfortable & the feeling of things not all quite "said" and "done" even though this was the ending.  All of those feelings line up with how we all felt with my father-in-law's dementia & death.  It's uncomfortable and hard as hell to watch strong people you love like that (and one of his children, like Becca, could not be around him for those reasons...my husband called that as why Becca was away several episodes ago).  It just felt real, raw, sad, and uncomfortable as hell, just like having an elderly loved one with dementia. I don't think I'll ever re-watch this season because it was too uncomfortable and sad because of my FIL's dementia.  I think Nic got this one mostly right.  I know I'm not expressing this eloquently, so I hope it makes sense. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by MyPeopleAreNordic
Added spoiler tag for another show

[ganesh]

1 hour ago, Razzberry said:

Overall it was decent but too derivative of the first.

There's the dilemma. I thought S2 was fine. TPTBs said it was going to be a lot different than S1. Then people complained they didn't like it because it wasn't S1. So they make S3 more like S1, but it really wasn't a knockout because it could never be. They had to throw in stuff here so it's not a total copy. 

I liked the three timelines, and it must have been great for the actors to play all these versions of the characters. I don't need to be spoonfed, and I don't mind red herrings, but they left a lot on the table that didn't need to be. And the entire plot was predicated on them not being that good at their jobs. Just odd plotting. 

I don't feel I wasted my time, and I would watch a S4. I hope they do something completely different though. 

One thing I think is a fair criticism of S2 is that it was set in LA. I think a strength of this show is the setting being not a "typical tv  place", and they should stick to that. I wouldn't even mind a show taking place entirely in the past. 

[scrb]

7 hours ago, Bannon said:

The final scene, back at the son's house, was just a tease about how the story missed the mark.This was a great story about a man's relationship with the woman he marries, and his relationship with his closest friend, and how the man's emotional trauma affects those relationships. That great story was kind of fumbled away by plotting that became much too contrived,  in an effort to Have A Big, Complicated, Mystery. Fundamentally, I think the writer didn't trust the audience enough to be enthralled primarily by Wayne's inner story. The shame is that when the writer focused on that, the story was terrific.

See I think the show has really been about detectives, not their cases.  They have these mysteries to show things about the characters who are investigating those mysteries.

Of course most viewers just want to be enthralled by a case and if they could figure it out before the reveal, that's what keeps people coming.

But first, the detectives in all 3 seasons doggedly pursue the case, rather than a job that they just do.  For instance, twice the powers that be made up false arrests to solve the case, to get political pressure off their backs.  Wayne and Roland could have gone along, just let things lie, take their promotions.

But they knew they didn't get at the truth so they keep pursuing it, some 30 years later.  In all this time of course, they go through a lot in their own lives and that is the story.

Fans who wanted some kind of Sherlock Holmes mystery or tying up all the strings at the end probably won't be satisfied.  Maybe HBO will do a conventional mystery series but this isn't it.