S03.E08: Now Am Found

[Ottis]

59 minutes ago, Bannon said:

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. 

Well, OK. There's that. :-)

What I was saying was, I wish more time was spent on making it a better plot, and less time on the relationships and timelines.

19 minutes ago, MyPeopleAreNordic said:

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 agree, and I think this season could have done something with this, dropping the red herrings and the multiple "live" timelines and made us see the story through the unreliable narrator of 2015 Wayne with dementia. Heck, dementia could have been the surprise ending, giving us a reason for some of the inconsistencies we have seen. 

2 hours ago, Razzberry said:

Overall it was decent but too derivative of the first.

That's the first thing I posted, in the first episode's thread this season. As noted above, season three could have really taken a new direction if it had used 2015 Wayne's Alzheimer's differently, and dropped the red herrings. It could have been great.

[clack]

On twitter, Nic replied that some scenes had been cut for time. 

Those cut scenes revealed that Amelia died peacefully in 2013, and that there had not been some huge estrangement between Becca and Wayne. Rather, Amelia had always been the one to phone Becca and keep in weekly touch, and with Amelia dead and with Wayne and Becca both being emotionally reserved and shy about reaching out, they were no longer as much in contact as either would have wished.

[meep.meep]

11 hours ago, SHD said:

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?

There was a lot of that throughout the entire episode, going both young to old and old to young.

I was foolishly pleased by Steven Dorff holding his flashlight like a normal person does.

The thread title is wrong - it's "Now am Found"  not "Now I am Found"

[kicksave]

10 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

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.

Was that John Batiste singing St. Jame Infirmary?

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

3 hours ago, shapeshifter 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.

This is my new head cannon.  When it was revealed she was alive & happy, I really wished Hayes (& Roland) would have found that out & but left it at that. I really didn't want Hayes (or anyone) going to bother her and make her remember all the loss and abuse she went through.  I was kind of sad it looked like that was going to happen.  But I did want Hayes (and Roland) to see she was okay and happy.  Maybe Hayes came back to the present/knowing where he was and why when the daughter gave him the water or sometime in that scene? Then he just played it off to Henry and everyone even though he had remembered why he was there.  (And in my head cannon, he tells Roland after the family dinner when Roland is at his home for the night. That's what I'm going with.) 

Has Pizzolatto possibly alluded or suggested that is what happened (that Hayes did remember again while talking to Julie & Little Lucy)? 

[meira.hand]

14 hours ago, DakotaLavender said:

So the secret of what happened to Julie is never shared with Roland and gets lost inside Wayne's head?

They left an open door for the secret to be shared, by showing us that Wayne's son decided not to throw the address and kept it in his pocket. Its very likely that he will later show it to Roland, even if Wayne does not have another moment of clarity. Maybe this is why they did not age Julie enough so its clear that its still possible to recognize her from the convent photographs.

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

3 hours ago, Drogo said:

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.)

Crap. Well, there goes that theory. I hadn't even thought about that. Ugh! BOOO!

Hopefully Henry isn't even talking to his side piece documentarian anymore, so he'll drive there himself, see Julie, figure it out, and just like his old man, he'll see she's safe and happy and decide to let her be in peace.  (And if not, I hope if Julie becomes a media sensation, she at least makes a lot of money off of it, claims anything left from the Hoyt family fortune for herself and her family, and little Lucy can go to the best college money can buy and travel the world.)

Damn it! I really wish Hayes would have handed that scrap of paper with the address to Roland that evening when he came over and not Henry. That would have been perfect! I want an alternate ending, HBO!

Edited February 25, 2019 by MyPeopleAreNordic

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

16 minutes ago, meira.hand said:

They left an open door for the secret to be shared, by showing us that Wayne's son decided not to throw the address and kept it in his pocket. Its very likely that he will later show it to Roland, even if Wayne does not have another moment of clarity. Maybe this is why they did not age Julie enough so its clear that its still possible to recognize her from the convent photographs.

I hope Henry gave it to Roland and let him take it from there. I hope.  (Revising my head cannon to this.)

Edited February 25, 2019 by MyPeopleAreNordic

[SHD]

49 minutes ago, meep.meep said:

There was a lot of that throughout the entire episode, going both young to old and old to young.

Yes, but I thought (maybe incorrectly) that mostly happened places they had both been through the different eras. They had never been in the basement by the pink room at any other time period, so that one stood out to me.

[Enigma X]

Part of me hopes that someone wanted to clear Woodward's name. I mean according to the official report, he kidnapped Julie and killed her brother, right? 

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

1 hour ago, scrb said:

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.

Fans who want some 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.

Absolutely this. I think the people behind the show have said since the first season that the show isn't about the case, it's about the (lead) characters. 

7 minutes ago, Enigma X said:

Part of me hopes that someone wanted to clear Woodward's name. I mean according to the official report, he kidnapped Julie and killed her brother, right? 

I think he was officially cleared after Tom's suicide and then Tom was basically thought to be responsible. I think I recall hearing that in the 7th episode (maybe). 

So...that sucks for Tom's legacy/memory, but perhaps Tom would have been happier knowing Julie was living happily without having to relive everything and would rather that continue, even if it meant not having his name cleared publicly.  

Edited February 25, 2019 by MyPeopleAreNordic

[Drogo]

3 minutes ago, MyPeopleAreNordic said:

Absolutely this. I think the people behind the show have said since the first season that the show isn't about the case, it's about the (lead) characters. 

Agree.  This series isn't meant to be centered about the whodunit like Law & Order and CSI, etc.- that part's the side dish. 

In the Purcell case Amelia may have been the "truest" detective, not reined in by D.A.'s, police chiefs, and the like.  I'll never forgive Wayne for not reading her book while she was alive.

[12catcrazy]

Sigh.  I really like some of the alternative endings that have been come up with here.   I really wish they would have left it with Wayne and Amelia walking out and nixed Wayne being in the jungle.   We knew he was a Vietnam vet - we didn't have to see him in the jungle.   And I would've rather seen his memories go on with Amelia, not go back to Vietnam.  

All in all, I found it to be riveting TV, faults and all.   Now I need to find another show to obsess over! 

[bourbon]

I enjoyed the whole thing and thought the only truly clunky thing was the 11th hour introduction of Mike Ardoin and his daughter. As soon as the little girl, who looked uncannily like young Julie, bumped into Roland and Hays, I knew that Julie was still alive, married to that guy, and the girl was theirs. Maybe if they had introduced him more organically...had him be the one to take them to the grave or something. It was just such a giveaway they could have had sirens and flashing red lights. 

I didn't buy the relationship between Amelia and Hays. He was such a humorless, brooding asshole I can't see how they got to the second date let along married, procreated, and lived a lifetime together. Their married life seemed joyless, and the whole thing just made me sad. She was too good for that.

The makeup was phenomenal.

[ganesh]

Honestly why have them married at all? She was only there to investigate the case. 

[Drogo]

15 minutes ago, bourbon said:

I didn't buy the relationship between Amelia and Hays. He was such a humorless, brooding asshole I can't see how they got to the second date let along married, procreated, and lived a lifetime together.

She may have been a head-shitting "pretty bird" and he may have been a mean drunk who expected her to keep a house he "could brood in", but they had a deep affection and need for each other only they could understand (and both had trouble verbalizing.)  I've seen stranger couples go the distance.

Despite their best efforts to move on from each other they couldn't.  Like they say on Brokeback,

[ghoulina]

I liked their relationship. It felt real. Love isn't easy and they had to keep CHOOSING each other. I liked how sometimes they communicated so openly and honestly. And other times it was all secrets and hurtful jabs. There was a real passion underneath it all, but they often had a hard time being kind to each other. We often hurt the ones we love the most. I know it's cliche; but it's true. They're our safe space. So we take all the shit from the world out on them. I felt it was a very raw, non-glamorous look at a couple with much dysfunction, but a whole lot of love. 

[Pike Ludwell]

I am puzzled by Roland's starting the fight with the bikers in the bar. Some are saying he did it to punish himself for his guilt in killing Harris James.  If that were the case, he should have let them beat him up a bit and be done with it. He started the fight, fought back like a madman, kept it going when he could have ended it, and caused severe injury, if not permanent damage, to several people. He was the bad guy there and I don't see how it could have alleviated his guilt. It added to his "crimes".

[12catcrazy]

1 hour ago, Pat Hoolihan said:

I am puzzled by Roland's starting the fight with the bikers in the bar. Some are saying he did it to punish himself for his guilt in killing Harris James.  If that were the case, he should have let them beat him up a bit and be done with it. He started the fight, fought back like a madman, kept it going when he could have ended it, and caused severe injury, if not permanent damage, to several people. He was the bad guy there and I don't see how it could have alleviated his guilt. It added to his "crimes".

He was drunk, a mental mess, and was looking to self-destruct.  And he was lucky that biker gang didn't kill him.  And I think his salvation was the stray dog coming over and licking his face.    We were shown mostly Wayne Hay's story - something tells me that Roland West had an interesting story as well.  

[Bannon]

8 hours ago, scrb said:

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.

It is a mistake to write a stupid mystery, even if the story is about the detective characters, because a stupid mystery detracts from character development. For instance, having Wayne and Roland act like morons in 1990, in their beating and murder of Hoyt Chicken's Chief of Security, during episode 7, really harms subsequent scenes in terms of character exploration, because characters who behave inexplicably stupidly are intrinsically less interesting. It robs the scenes of Wayne, in his boxer shorts in the backyard with Amelia, and Roland going to a bar to get in a fight, of a lot of their character driven drama, because the only reason Wayne and Roland are in those situations is because they are imbeciles. The scene with Wayne and Hoyt is robbed of tension for the same reason. 

That's before we get to two of the laughably bad scenes in the last 30 minutes of the story, with elderly Wayne and Roland exploring Spooky Abandoned Hoyt Manor, and Mr. Junious, Master of Exposition, filling in the blanks. If you want to write a story about characters, then don't spend time with crap like that. Write a better story.

 

3 hours ago, 12catcrazy said:

He was drunk, a mental mess, and was looking to self-destruct.  And he was lucky that biker gang didn't kill him.  And I think his salvation was the stray dog coming over and licking his face.    We were shown mostly Wayne Hay's story - something tells me that Roland West had an interesting story as well.  

There was so much more that could have been done with Roland and Mrs. Purcell (especially given the quality of the actors) with the time spent on the possibility of Evil Chicken Magnates, their insane daughters, dead granddaughters, one-eyed caretakers.  Cut all that crap out, focus on the tragically dysfunctional Mrs. Purcell, due to a life-long history of abuse prior to marrying, maybe having a secret abusive past with Harris James. Tell a story where every character is a real human being, don't have cartoon cutouts who show up for a scene or two, as plot advancement devices

I still liked this season best, mostly because the dialogue through 6 episodes was so far superior to previous seasons (and I'm more convinced than  ever that this was due to David Milch's involvement), but I see this season as a real missed opportunity.

3 hours ago, Bannon said:

 

Edited February 25, 2019 by Bannon

[12catcrazy]

On the other hand, there are smart people in real life who act stupidly because they let their emotions get the better of them.  That's basically what happened with Hays and West when they had their little, uh, chat, with  James Harris.   And by killing him they probably prevented him from re-capturing Julia or possibly even killing her.  Yes, they acted stupidly but it drove the story.  Hays wound up quitting the job (or it's implied) and it looks like West's life went off the rails or something.  He didn't marry, didn't have a family, and wound up a crazy dog man.  

Bottom line, this is TV entertainment and not a  Nobel Prize winning work of ART.  Even with it's flaws, it was better viewing than 90% of what else is on TV.

Edited February 25, 2019 by 12catcrazy
typo

[Ottis]

5 hours ago, scrb said:

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.

Except if all three seasons have been about this, why do people feel season one was really good, season two was not and season three was sort of good but didn't stick the landing? 

5 hours ago, scrb said:

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.

If this was the goal, the many timelines killed suspense. If we know early on that in 2015 Amelia is gone, and their marriage seemed to have ended, then why do we care about going back to 1980 to see their courtship, or 1990 to see how they started to fall apart? If we know, in 1990 and 2015, that the boy died and the girl is alive, how much do details of the original crime, or of the ongoing investigation, matter? I guess some people might like knowing how a train wreck happened. Most people, once they know there was a train wreck, just want to know what happens after that.

5 hours ago, scrb said:

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.

TD doesn't need to be anything near conventional. Whacking kids in season one, and three, wasn't conventional. It just has to make some sense.  For example, if they had dropped the timeline jumping, and told the story more linearly, with inconsistencies, they could have ended by showing us the narrator (hays) had dementia, and that would have been a hellova surprise closing that answered a bunch of things.

[Penman61]

5 hours ago, clack said:

On twitter, Nic replied that some scenes had been cut for time. 

Those cut scenes revealed that Amelia died peacefully in 2013, and that there had not been some huge estrangement between Becca and Wayne. Rather, Amelia had always been the one to phone Becca and keep in weekly touch, and with Amelia dead and with Wayne and Becca both being emotionally reserved and shy about reaching out, they were no longer as much in contact as either would have wished.

Thank you for posting this. 

Such key story info "cut for time"!?

Ugh, this rankles:  It's HBO.  You're Nic Effing Pizzolato.  You're helming a premium network's premiere prestige adult drama limited series.  Ergo, THEY WILL GIVE YOU ANOTHER 30-40 G*DDAMN MINUTES.  

So, yeah, I think Nic is full of shit and backfilling like mad.  Also, even if it's true (it's not), what possible reason would you say this less 24 hours after the finale airs?  

[Bannon]

16 minutes ago, 12catcrazy said:

On the other hand, there are smart people in real life who act stupidly because they let their emotions get the better of them.  That's basically what happened with Hays and West when they had their little, uh, chat, with  James Harris.   And by killing him they probably prevented him from re-capturing Julia or possibly even killing her.  Yes, they acted stupidly but it drove the story.  Hays wound up quitting the job (or it's implied) and it looks like West's life went off the rails or something.  He didn't marry, didn't have a family, and wound up a crazy dog man.  

Bottom line, this is TV entertainment and not a  Nobel Prize winning work of ART.  Even with it's flaws, it was better viewing than 90% of what else is on TV.

But the beating of Harris was not a heat of the moment impulse. It was planned and deliberate, and one of the planners was a LRRP in Vietnam, thus being quite familiar with methods of torture that don't leave obvious physical injuries, and both planners were cops for years prior, thus making them quite aware of what the implications were of beating the crap out of a high status member of the community. This is like telling a story about veteran carpenters who can't drive a nail straight. As a story, it makes no sense, and there are ways to write the story that results in Wayne in his boxers, Roland drunk in the parking lot, that are not nonsensical.

Look, I don't mean to imply that writing television drama is easy. It's damned hard work, and mistakes come easy. On the other hand, I think the goal for a show like this is to not fall prey to the shortcomings of 8 episodes of NCIS or Bluebloods. I think it ia reasonable to demand something quite a bit better.

[Drogo]

2 hours ago, Pat Hoolihan said:

I am puzzled by Roland's starting the fight with the bikers in the bar. Some are saying he did it to punish himself for his guilt in killing Harris James.  If that were the case, he should have let them beat him up a bit and be done with it. He started the fight, fought back like a madman, kept it going when he could have ended it, and caused severe injury, if not permanent damage, to several people. He was the bad guy there and I don't see how it could have alleviated his guilt. It added to his "crimes".

Roland didn't go picking a fight with the intention of getting his ass kicked- he was sad and alone but mostly he was angry.  He might've egged him into it, but Ugly Biker threw the first punch and became a mutual combatant.  Basically, Roland went to that bar wanting to hit someone and he found a willing volunteer.  Surely a few of us have "been there."

20 minutes ago, Ottis said:

If we know early on that in 2015 Amelia is gone, and their marriage seemed to have ended, then why do we care about going back to 1980 to see their courtship, or 1990 to see how they started to fall apart?

We knew she was dead in 2015 because Henry mentioned Mom's funeral, and we know they left off in the 90s positively with plans to move on from the Purcell case (and we saw Amelia teaching happily at the school and Wayne the Chief of Campus Security, bringing her an apple/for the teacher.)  I don't think there was any reason to feel their marriage had ended or been anything but happy since that conversation in the 90s.  

[Bannon]

24 minutes ago, Penman61 said:

Thank you for posting this. 

Such key story info "cut for time"!?

Ugh, this rankles:  It's HBO.  You're Nic Effing Pizzolato.  You're helming a premium network's premiere prestige adult drama limited series.  Ergo, THEY WILL GIVE YOU ANOTHER 30-40 G*DDAMN MINUTES.  

So, yeah, I think Nic is full of shit and backfilling like mad.  Also, even if it's true (it's not), what possible reason would you say this less 24 hours after the finale airs?  

Especially since this is not an expensive production. No flying dragons, and the most elaborate set piece had, what, 12 people, lasting about 3 or 4 minutes? No expensive set designs. The actors are well known, but they don't command huge A-list salaries. There was no reason to not tell this story right.

[stormy weather]

19 hours ago, Xantar said:

 The theme in this episode was Wayne (and Amelia) deciding to leave the case behind for the sake of their family.

I respectfully disagree. I think what happened was that Amelia (and I know I'm in the minority here, but I didn't like her character very much) decided to write a book about a case her boyfriend/fiancé/husband was working on, regardless of how wrong that was, and he gave up his career to save hers, basically. This whole book thing was so messed up. I know they threw those couple of lines about it being a "conflict of interest" a couple episodes ago, but I still don't understand why Amelia wrote it other than for money, because if she really wanted to shed some light on the case, she would've shared more information with Wayne about what she had found. Instead it felt very one-sided, as in he was feeding her all sorts of information and whenever she found something he hadn't (talked to the girl at the convent, knew that Mike was particularly distraught when Julie disappeared etc.) she kept it for herself. It also didn't make any sense, like someone already pointed out, how Wayne never read Amelia's book. Why? Was it just out of spite?

14 hours ago, Bannon said:

The entire story from 1990 onward hinges around Wayne and Roland being towering idiots about Harris James.

This really bothered me. It was so exceptionally stupid of them to not only fall for the age-old trick Harris used to get rid of the handcuffs, but also to then kill him (why?!) and bury him in the woods on top of that! Why didn't they come clean immediately? After all, he was a suspect and he attacked them. If they had, maybe then they could've searched the Hoyt house and found the pink room when it would have made sense for them to find it, not 25 years later.

9 hours 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.

I agree 1000%. The time they spent describing and analysing Wayne and Amelia's relationship was waaaay too much for me. Sometimes it felt like I was watching a rom-com instead of a crime show. And even at the end of this super long couple therapy session, I still feel like I know next to nothing about them personally and their everyday life, and especially their relationship with their children, which were largely ignored throughout the entire season.

45 minutes ago, Ottis said:

If this was the goal, the many timelines killed suspense. If we know early on that in 2015 Amelia is gone, and their marriage seemed to have ended, then why do we care about going back to 1980 to see their courtship, or 1990 to see how they started to fall apart? If we know, in 1990 and 2015, that the boy died and the girl is alive, how much do details of the original crime, or of the ongoing investigation, matter? I guess some people might like knowing how a train wreck happened. Most people, once they know there was a train wreck, just want to know what happens after that.

This is what I've been telling people who asked me how the new season of True Detective was since episode 3. By choosing the three timelines narrative, the authors really wrote themselves into a corner. There can't be much advancement in the 1980s storyline because we already know that by 1990 Julie hadn't yet been found and we still didn't know what happened to Will, and there couldn't be much advancement in the 1990 storyline because we already know that by 2015 the "mystery" still hadn't been solved and Julie was known to be alive but was still M.I.A., the whole of which became kind of boring after a while.

Two final thoughts: 1. I honestly cannot believe that's how Will died and 2. why did Julie name her daughter Lucy? Did she have any memory of her mom left? I thought she had lost all memories of Tom and Lucy after having been drugged for years.

Edited February 25, 2019 by stormy weather

[izabella]

10 minutes ago, stormy weather said:

I know they threw those couple of lines about it being a "conflict of interest" a couple episodes ago, but I still don't understand why Amelia wrote it other than for money, because if she really wanted to shed some light on the case, she would've shared more information with Wayne about what she had found. Instead it felt very one-sided, as in he was feeding her all sorts of information and whenever she found something he hadn't (talked to the girl at the convent, knew that Mike was particularly distraught when Julie disappeared etc.) she kept it for herself. It also didn't make any sense, like someone already pointed out, how Wayne never read Amelia's book. Why? Was it just out of spite?

I wonder if Amelia wrote in her book about talking with the girl at the convent and what she said.  She wrote about Julie's friend Mike with the tears in his eyes.  Maybe Wayne would have know everything Amelia knew if he had read the book.

10 minutes ago, stormy weather said:

why did Julie name her daughter Lucy? Did she have any memory of her mom left? I thought she had lost all memories of Tom and Lucy after having been drugged for years.

Her then-friend/now-husband Mike could have filled in a lot of information, along with whatever she did remember.  She remembered she had a brother back when she made that phone call when her dad was on tv, so she may have remembered other things over time.

Edited February 25, 2019 by izabella

[Bannon]

9 minutes ago, stormy weather said:

This really bothered me. It was so exceptionally stupid of them to not only fall for the age-old trick Harris used to get rid of the handcuffs, but also to then kill him (why?!) and bury him in the woods on top of that! Why didn't they come clean immediately? After all, he was a suspect and he attacked them. If they had, maybe then they could've searched the Hoyt house and found the pink room when it would have made sense for them to find it, not 25 years later.

I agree 1000%. The time they spent describing and analysing Wayne and Amelia's relationship was waaaay too much for me. Sometimes it felt like I was watching a rom-com instead of a crime show. And even at the end of this super long couple therapy session, I still feel like I know next to nothing about them personally and their everyday life, and especially their relationship with their children, which were largely ignored throughout the entire season.

Two final thoughts: 1. I honestly cannot believe that's how Will died and 2. why did Julie name her daughter Lucy? Did she have any memory of her mom left? I thought she had lost all memories of Tom and Lucy after having been drugged for years.

The entire idea of two veteran detectives kidnapping and beating the crap out of the Chief of Security for a town's largest employer is just too stupid for words, I don't care how angry they are. Just the laziest writing imaginable.

I'm not surprised to hear that a good chunk of Amelia's and Wayne's story was left out of the final cut. I really liked their dialogue through 6 episodes, but I was left waiting for a more full description of the nature of their relationship. I understand people differ on this.

Will's death was pretty poorly told, no doubt.

[ganesh]

29 minutes ago, stormy weather said:

It also didn't make any sense, like someone already pointed out, how Wayne never read Amelia's book. Why? Was it just out of spite?

I remarked before about why they needed to be married at all. If the show was implying that after 1990 that their marriage was great, then this strikes me as rather odd that he never read it at all. 

I actually don't mind Will's death was just collateral damage. Setting him up in the praying position and all that, I was hoping the show wouldn't make it about ritual killings or whatever.  

[Bannon]

13 minutes ago, ganesh said:

I remarked before about why they needed to be married at all. If the show was implying that after 1990 that their marriage was great, then this strikes me as rather odd that he never read it at all. 

I actually don't mind Will's death was just collateral damage. Setting him up in the praying position and all that, I was hoping the show wouldn't make it about ritual killings or whatever.  

Collateral damage is fine. The manner in which the collateral damage was told was pretty pedestrian. I just really, really, hated that entire expository scene.

[MrWhyt]

1 hour ago, Ottis said:

If this was the goal, the many timelines killed suspense. If we know early on that in 2015 Amelia is gone, and their marriage seemed to have ended, then why do we care about going back to 1980 to see their courtship, or 1990 to see how they started to fall apart? If we know, in 1990 and 2015, that the boy died and the girl is alive, how much do details of the original crime, or of the ongoing investigation, matter? I guess some people might like knowing how a train wreck happened. Most people, once they know there was a train wreck, just want to know what happens after that.

do you skip to the last chapter when you read books?

[Drogo]

1 hour ago, stormy weather said:

It was so exceptionally stupid of them to not only fall for the age-old trick Harris used to get rid of the handcuffs, but also to then kill him (why?!) and bury him in the woods on top of that! Why didn't they come clean immediately? After all, he was a suspect and he attacked them.

They were supposed to stop investigating the case and blame scapegoat Tom Purcell. Wayne pressured Roland into participating against his better judgment by guilt-tripping him over Tom's death.

Harris James was never a suspect as far as the bosses were concerned, especially since it would incur the wrath of Hoyt Foods. Wayne and Roland went rogue hoping they could get a confession out of him that would save Julie.  

Burying him in the woods was their best option to not lose their jobs and/or be brought up on manslaughter charges and/or end up part of a Hoyt-brand chicken nugget. 

[ganesh]

45 minutes ago, Bannon said:

The manner in which the collateral damage was told was pretty pedestrian. I just really, really, hated that entire expository scene

No the scene was poor. He just told them everything. 

[bubble sparkly]

I was annoyed that Julie named her daughter Lucy because it turned out Lucy was an awful person who sold her daughter for drug money. I guess poor Julie never realised this so she thought she was doing a nice thing for her dead Mom, but ughh. I would have much preferred the daughter to be named after poor Will (Willow or Willa etc.), since we saw how much the siblings cared about each other.

[tennisgurl]

I will need to think on this one a bit more, but for one minute, I thought that the flashback to Vietnam was actually some kind of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge thing where Wayne died in Vietnam, and this was just what he saw as a possible future before he died. Then, I figured that it was the memory of what happened to Julie disappearing into the recesses of Wayne's mind, which made a lot more sense. 

The "heres what happened" wrap up was kind of a dull way to lay out things, but there were still a few surprises, like what actually happened to Julie, and I like how the story itself ended. No massive conspiracy or child trafficking ring, just a mentally ill woman who became obsessed with a child she saw who reminded her of her dead daughter, and her rich family who let her have WAY too much power over this child, and would do awful things to keep their business private. I felt terrible for Julie, and especially for Will, who was just collateral damage in this woman's obsession. But I like how the case ended, with us seeing that Julie had a happy ending, and getting most of our questions answered in ways that made sense to me. 

While in the end Roland and Wayne working the case again didnt mean much to the case itself, it did mean that Wayne and Roland got to reconnect, and Roland can have some people in his life again, and Wayne can at least pass on knowing that he did everything he could, and he is leaving his family in a good place. Personally, I think that he decided to leave Julie alone and just pretended he didnt know who she was. He knew that him bringing this up again could let lead to pain for her, or bring sketchy people back into her life, and she has been through enough already. I do think he has forgotten what happened by the end though, which is both a blessing and a curse. I am fine with the whole thing disappearing again, but I do wish Roland could have found out what happened, and they could have posthumously cleared poor Toms name, even if the whole story never came out. But, I think Tom would be alright with keeping it a secret if Julie could have a quiet, happy life with her family. 

The uses of time were really interesting, especially as you saw time flashing and changing as Wayne lost time and kept getting his timelines mixed up, just the way the audience was. The editing was really great, especially the shots of the Wayne and Roland of the many timelines flashing back and fourth in the car, and in the pink room. And Amelia's speech at the end when it all came together for Wayne what must have happened was a season highlight, by far. 

"What if it was all one long story that kept going and going until it healed itself." 

[LilaFowler]

1 hour ago, bubble sparkly said:

I was annoyed that Julie named her daughter Lucy because it turned out Lucy was an awful person who sold her daughter for drug money. I guess poor Julie never realised this so she thought she was doing a nice thing for her dead Mom, but ughh. I would have much preferred the daughter to be named after poor Will (Willow or Willa etc.), since we saw how much the siblings cared about each other.

This. I get that re-using the name Lucy was a wink to the audience but whatever.

It's an odd, illogical story. According to Mr. June, Julie basically lived in that room until she was a teenager. He was supposed to help her after she fled but instead she took off. Eventually she ends up at a convent/shelter for runaways and randomly a boy from her childhood recognizes her. It's a small world in TD. Why wouldn't the nuns call the police, FBI, etc if they knew that "bad people" were after Julie, rather than stage her death? A traumatized runaway lands on your door and you don't investigate, you just pretend that she's dead? So weird. By the time she showed up at the shelter, Isabelle was already dead anyway. If the cops needed to pin Julie's abduction on someone, I'm thinking Hoyt would easily give the police Mr. Junius. It's all seems really farfetched to me right now. Perhaps I'm forgetting details but in my defense this is convoluted storytelling for the sake of being convoluted. 

I'm sure Mike Ardoin means well and loves his childhood crush but by continuing to hide Julie's true identity from the world, she's basically still in seclusion and totally dependent on him. She probably doesn't even have a driver's license or social security card. The audience may have some semblance of closure in knowing that Julie is alive and well but no justice was ever served. It's still unresolved. Hays's son is a detective, too, I believe. I'm sure he realized that his father wouldn't drive all the way out there to search for this address without a good reason. The son probably followed up with that over the next week or so and figured it all out. I think that's what we're to infer after he kept the paper.

I found the Hays and Amelia scenes to be tedious toward the end, probably because we already knew that they ended up together.

The strength of this series has always been the relationship between the detectives. That was true for me in S1 and it was true again here (I've blocked S2). Ali was great as always but Dorff really impressed me.

Edited February 26, 2019 by LilaFowler

[Medicine Crow]

Sorry to be a bother but my VCR quit recording when he asked her to marry & said he'd have to sober up.  Was that the end??  Thanks in advance.

[LilaFowler]

Re: the flashback to jungle at the end -- I figured it was a throwback to the methlord's utterance from S1 about time being a flat circle and we will all experience every moment of our lives again.

[Tighthead]

I didn’t have a problem with Hayes not reading the book. 

It’s a slight stretch, but that book basically cost him his career.  His wife worked him for information, compromising his ethics, and it was all laid out in black and white.  It was her greatest achievement and his cross to bear.  I’m not sure she was appreciative of the sacrifice.

[clack]

Isabella was crazy, I get that. But what was Hoyt's long-term plan for Julie? 

Was she to spend the rest of her life in the pink room? Age 30, age 40, still zonked on lithium, being tended to by sworn-to-secrecy caretakers? Was she to be eventually killed?

So, so stupid.

[LilaFowler]

Oh, I forgot to say: the whole bird-shitting-on-heads thing? In some cultures that's considered a sign of good luck, having a bird poop on your head.

[Jextella]

There was so much good in all 3 seasons, but also so much bad.  The detective work in this season was beyond horrible, but the relationship between Roland and Hays was wonderful.

For that, and a schmaltzy happy ending, I was glad.

[PepSinger]

What are the effects of taking Lithium if you don't need it?

[tennisgurl]

I mean, I dont know if any of the three seasons 100% stuck the landing, but I think this one did pretty well.

I was just happy to get the most pressing mystery solved: How Roland became a dog lover. 

Edited February 26, 2019 by tennisgurl

[shapeshifter]

13 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I was just happy to get the most pressing mystery solved: How Roland became a dog lover. 

Heh. Yeah. Even if it was probably a retcon.
 

1 hour ago, clack said:

Isabella was crazy, I get that. But what was Hoyt's long-term plan for Julie? 

Was she to spend the rest of her life in the pink room? Age 30, age 40, still zonked on lithium, being tended to by sworn-to-secrecy caretakers? Was she to be eventually killed?

So, so stupid.

Shhh. It's supposed to be a happy ending. Please don't wake us from that fantasy.

[Lemons]

The scenes on the marriage were boring and excessive.  Did they connect the story to season 1 at all?  They showed the newspaper with the Season 1 story but I’m not sure why.  

[MrsWitter]

10 hours ago, stormy weather said:

I respectfully disagree. I think what happened was that Amelia (and I know I'm in the minority here, but I didn't like her character very much) decided to write a book about a case her boyfriend/fiancé/husband was working on, regardless of how wrong that was, and he gave up his career to save hers, basically. This whole book thing was so messed up. I know they threw those couple of lines about it being a "conflict of interest" a couple episodes ago, but I still don't understand why Amelia wrote it other than for money

I understand why it might seem like Wayne gave up his career for Amelia’s dreams, but I don’t completely see it that way. While Amelia publicly casting doubt on the official narrative certainly put Wayne in hot water, I also think he refused to sign the letter refuting her not because he was protecting her, but because he fundamentally disagreed with the way the police and the DA were framing things. He knew that wasn’t the true story and he wasn’t comfortable signing off on a narrative he believed to be fabricated. That was his pride and his integrity on the line- not just Amelia’s reputation.

I didn’t see it as a money grab by Amelia. She was a writer and she wanted to tell a story that fascinated her. Teachers and writers aren’t usually getting into that work for the money. 

I also think the story Amelia wanted to tell was important- yes, she was discussing the crime, but just as important to her book was how that crime affected the community. And I think Nic Pizzolatto was trying to tell that story as well. Yes, the show focused on the crime, and the detectives and their relationships, but, as he openly said about Season 1, he is fascinated with landscape and, in particular, the destruction of landscapes and communities (sacrificial landscapes). Despite her investigation of the minutia of the crime, Amelia’s story is very different than the one Wayne or Roland or any of the police could or would tell. And I think she is rounding out the story that Nic P. wants told through his work.

7 hours ago, Medicine Crow said:

Sorry to be a bother but my VCR quit recording when he asked her to marry & said he'd have to sober up.  Was that the end??  Thanks in advance.

Do you seriously still have a functioning  VCR? If so, that’s both amazing and crazy. I have a DVR, but I still refer to it as “taping” shows constantly when it’s obviously not “taping” anything. I wasn’t sure if you just slipped into some older vernacular like I do.

Vulture does recaps of True Detective. If you can’t stream it or watch it online, I would read their recap or one of the other recaps online. It will give you a more complete picture.

[cmfran]

As I was half asleep in bed this morning, I thought "OH My GOD, what if Julie Purcell is the documentarian???" I obviously hadn't watched the episode yet, And yes, that would have been insane, but possibly more interesting than the actual finale.

[Ottis]

13 hours ago, MrWhyt said:

do you skip to the last chapter when you read books?

If the book starts with the last chapter, I don't need to read the rest.

Edited February 26, 2019 by Ottis