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[Zabka]

This is if you believe the king in yellow is a book in the shows universe which pizza said it isn't.

You have a source for that? I'd like to read it.

I saw a good writeup on the Yellow King being a persona the person heading the rituals takes on. Didn't notice during the episode that the Altar was draped in yellow cloth.

Actually this article does a good job on laying things out: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...e-know-up-to-episode-7-after-you-ve-gone.html

 

[yuraya]

Great show 10/10. I just wish it was longer than 8 episodes. That final setting with the house and caves deserved a couple more episodes. Such a fucking disturbing place.

Can't wait for season 2. Hopefully they get some good actors on board for a new season. MM and Woody performed at about as high of a level as you'll ever see in a TV show. Season 2 is going to have big shoes to fill.

 

[Schattenjäger]

Greatest show ever!

Intense intense intense

Question - why didn't Marty trust brother mouzone?

Loved the cinematography

 

[Talon]

Spoiler

Woody's final breakdown when he realizes that he himself threw it away

was great. Really affecting stuff. A complete turn from - in show time at least - a few days or weeks where he was acting like he had all his shit in a row compared to Rust.

 

[potam]

Greatest show ever!

Intense intense intense

Question - why didn't Marty trust brother mouzone?

Loved the cinematography

He said he couldn't read him.

 

[Talon]

One beat from the finale that Pizzolatto elaborated on, and that seemed intriguing as it happened: when Errol comes back into the big house after visiting his father in the shed, he watches a few moments of "North By Northwest" and immediately slips into a James Mason accent, then tries on a few other voices. The short version: as part of the backstory Pizzolatto sketched out for the character, Errol has difficulty speaking in his natural voice due to the injuries that scarred his face, so he taught himself how to talk again by watching old movies.

A minor detail but a clever piece of storytelling that made him more unsettling.

 

[Soyongdori]

Nah, that was just an acid flashback. I did think that was one of the more heavy handed elements of the episode, having the hallucinations appear so infrequently in the first few episodes, disappear, then have Marty bring them back up right as they're in the car on the way over only to have one manifest at the least opportune moment. The visual itself and its placement in the structure of the story were awesome, but it was definitely a little jarring without a solid, established build up throughout the season.

It clearly wasn't acid flashback, or so I think. Ledoux even murmured black star/circle before his face got blown off, and Childress clearly knew something about black star circle since he drew it on first victim's back and there were whole bunch of clues that he knew about the black circle. So whatever Rust saw in Carcosa wasn't exclusive to him.

 

[Miss.Selfdestruct]

I still don't understand how the killler is Yellow King and a spaghetti monster with green ears.

What does black stars has to do with Carcosa?

Were you watching The Walking Dead again at the same time?...

 

[NotTheGuyYouKill]

So many goddamn feels.

Fucking beautiful.

Love this show. One of the best ever.

 

[firehawk12]

Perfect show, perfect ending. I feel like in lieu of David Simon ever finding success (which, he won't because of the shows he makes), Nic Pizzolatto is really the next best thing. I hope this spurs on a new direction for television. One that isn't reliant on gimmicks. One that doesn't drag on a story for 9 seasons and a bonus Netflix season. One where the emphasis is on telling interesting stories with interesting characters, relying on thematic depth.

 

[Helmholtz]

Can anyone remind me how Marty connected the green ears with the new paint job? Was it just a hunch that turned out to be correct? It seemed like a stretch to me when I saw the episode, but maybe I missed something.

 

[Talon]

Everyone should read Sepinwall's interview with Nic over at HitFix.

I keep thinking back to the interview we did before the season, and the moment when I was asking you about comparisons to other serial killer shows, and you said that you couldn't care less about serial killers. How seriously were we ultimately meant to take the actual Dora Lange investigation, and how much of it was just a line to hang the character examination on?

Nic Pizzolatto:

Spoiler

I don't think it was an empty vehicle, is what I guess I would say there. I don't think it could have been just anything that these guys were working on. I think it's relevant that the person they're chasing is both the victim of an historical evil and the perpetrator of an historical evil. The killer in that way is a physical articulation of cultural aspects that have sat behind the scenes, even informing that polluted landscape that provides so much of the background. If you go from the idea of something being in its natural state and then being perverted, and that this particular villain, for lack of a better word, is a killer of women and children, and his methodology is intimately tied to a mythology of belief — I do think if you want to go back and watch 7 and 8, there's enough given in the fragments that everyone states, there's enough that you can actually piece together historically, how Sam Tuttle in the early '30s led to Errol Childress in the first decade of the new millennium. I would say it wasn't an empty vehicle at all. I think the killer, his methodology and his actual crimes were endemic, not only to our characters, but to the world we were dealing with. It wouldn't have worked to have a robbery that didn't get solved properly in 1995. There's almost a way that Cohle, Hart and Errol, these men are in some ways the creations of their fathers, if you pay attention to their backstories.

You have a source for that? I'd like to read it.

I saw a good writeup on the Yellow King being a persona the person heading the rituals takes on. Didn't notice during the episode that the Altar was draped in yellow cloth.

Actually this article does a good job on laying things out: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...e-know-up-to-episode-7-after-you-ve-gone.html

It's in the above HitFix interview.

Finally, you wrote this entire thing in a vacuum, as someone relatively new to television, not knowing how it was received. And the show comes on, and people go nuts about it, they are penning raves, coming up with elaborate theories about the Yellow King and Lovecraft and everything else. How did it feel to see your creation being received in all of these ways?

Nic Pizzolatto:

Spoiler

I felt like, look, it's all good, and I really mean that. To me, that is what it means to connect and resonate with people. It means that they are going to project onto the work. There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because to some degree, I projected upon it. That said, I think I've made clear that my only interest in the Chambers stuff (Robert W. Chambers wrote "The King in Yellow") is as a story that has a place in American myth. And it's a story about a story that drives people into madness. That was mainly it. Beyond that, I'm interested in the atmosphere of cosmic horror, but that's about all I have to say about weird fiction. I did feel the perception was tilted more towards weird fiction than perhaps it should have been. For instance, if someone needs a book to read along with season 1 of "True Detective," I would recommend the King James Old Testament. I wouldn't tell anyone to go buy Robert Chambers. It's not that great a book. Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner I think are in there far more than Chambers or Lovecraft. But again, I guess I hope that these 8 chapters, once the totality of it is evident, it might provoke a re-evaluation. But if it doesn't, I'm very happy with the reaction we've had. It couldn't have been better better. I'm just surprised by it. I remember talking to you three months ago and having to convince you: "This just sounds like every other show," "I know, I know." And now my wife read a comment the other day that said I live out in the desert, and I run some kind of cult. (laughs) I don't know what I can say about that. I think this show answers everything it told you to ask. The questions it didn't tell you to ask are questions best left to one's self.

 

[PBY]

Perfect show, perfect ending. I feel like in lieu of David Simon ever finding success (which, he won't because of the shows he makes), Nic Pizzolatto is really the next best thing. I hope this spurs on a new direction for television. One that isn't reliant on gimmicks. One that doesn't drag on a story for 9 seasons and a bonus Netflix season. One where the emphasis is on telling interesting stories with interesting characters, relying on thematic depth.

We've had that in TV for a while now. TD is good, but let's not get crazy. What it might do is popularize the anthology model.

 

[Extra Sauce]

Can someone tell me what Rust says at the very end? I couldn't make it out.

 

[B33]

Can someone tell me what Rust says at the very end? I couldn't make it out.

His parting words: "The light's winning."

 

[Red_Man]

Has it been explained at all why Childress uses an English accent in his early scenes? That's the only thing I didn't understand.

 

[The Artful Dodger]

Can someone tell me what Rust says at the very end? I couldn't make it out.

I believe Cornballer posted a link to his speech.

I would find it but I'm about to knock out. If nobody's posted it by the time i get back online i'll find it for you.

 

[Extra Sauce]

His parting words: "The light's winning."

Yeah, just found it. The full line:

Spoiler

“You know, you're looking at it wrong, that sky thing. Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning.”

 

[Talon]

Has it been explained at all why Childress uses an English accent in his early scenes? That's the only thing I didn't understand.

One beat from the finale that Pizzolatto elaborated on, and that seemed intriguing as it happened: when Errol comes back into the big house after visiting his father in the shed, he watches a few moments of "North By Northwest" and immediately slips into a James Mason accent, then tries on a few other voices. The short version: as part of the backstory Pizzolatto sketched out for the character, Errol has difficulty speaking in his natural voice due to the injuries that scarred his face, so he taught himself how to talk again by watching old movies.

A minor detail but a clever piece of storytelling that made him more unsettling.

Early in the episode, we see Errol come into the big house, "North by Northwest" is playing and he starts doing a James Mason voice. Then he slips into a number of other accents. What was behind that?

Nic Pizzolatto: That was part of his creation as a character. There was this idea that when he talks in his real voice, it's very slurred because of the scarring. My background for him was that he learned how to enunciate properly through watching all these old VCR movies. And that brings us back to the idea of storytelling, right? At one minute he can affect this Andy Griffith good ol' boy voice, the next he can sound like James Mason, and when he wants to use his real voice, he sounds like something wounded and damaged. And then when Cohle is in Carcosa, he sounds like something entirely different.

.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

That was great television, it could of passed as a film. Emmy's in the cards for sure.

 

[kirblar]

That was great television, it could of passed as a film. Emmy's in the cards for sure.

It essentially was an eight-hour film. Getting to do a what, 15-20 minute? chase sequence is something a film could never dream of.

 

[BuggyDClown]

I have many mixed feelings on the end of it. Overall I liked it very much though, but I think maybe my hype was too high haha. Great season 1.

 

[Red_Man]

.

Ah, very cool. Thanks. Love all the details in these characters.

 

[ReturnOfTheRAT]

Can someone tell me what Rust says at the very end? I couldn't make it out.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...nal_speech_about_how_the_light_s_winning.html

 

[firehawk12]

We've had that in TV for a while now. TD is good, but let's not get crazy. What it might do is popularize the anthology model.

I suppose there's American Horror Story, but I hate Ryan Murphy enough that I never want to watch it.
Otherwise, even the British model is becoming more and more American, with multiple writers and multiple directors and more seasons. It's a bit depressing in that regard.

 

[Talon]

Seems like a lot of folks online are missing the critical character growth of Marty and Rust because they expected to see some sort of Lost shit with a smoke monster.

People!

 

[Forceatowulf]

Amazing finale. I had to check my pulse Rust style a few times during some of these scenes. Damn.

The cinematography and artistic design of the killers "playground" were top notch. Some of the creepiest imagery I have ever seen in my life.

And McConaughy fucking killed it in that ending monologue. Oh my goodness. I could almost feel what he was feeling.

I hope they preserve this show in a museum. No hyperbole. This shit must survive the tests of time. Just an amazing show. A round of applause for everyone involved.

 

[duckroll]

I really appreciate how steeped in reality the show is. Everything from the sets to the crimes and even the dysfunctional nature of various characters including the leads. There's so much about the tone of the series which was weird and disturbing, but yet it feeling so real gives it an addition sense of unease which I think would not be achievable if it wasn't as grounded as it was.

The lair at the end was crazy stuff, but being able to tell that it's an actual physical location makes a lot of the cinematography feel much more powerful.

 

[Miss.Selfdestruct]

Based on Nic's comments, we knew this show would be straightforward, and I'm fucking glad it wasn't some misdirection.

The last thing we need is another show with a completely unearned plot twist at the end for the sake of "HOLY SHIT" reactions.

Agreed. Felt like a good solid episode. Any other type of reveal, I think would have been cheap.

One scene did spook me though... aside from Fort Carcosa. The scene where Errol declines a free lunch by a school teacher and is then approached by a boy. Errol being crazy and all, I guess it wouldn't be farfetched to think that maybe he showed things to kids throughout the years.

 

[ezekial45]

Quoting again in case people ask.

The song at the end of the episode was an original composition by T-Bone Burnett, the series composer.

Here it is:
"The Angry River" by The Hat ft. Father John Misty & S.I. Istwa

 

[B33]

Yeah, just found it. The full line:

Spoiler

“You know, you're looking at it wrong, that sky thing. Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning.”

Beautiful quote. It encapsulated the collective change of Cohle brewing for the entire journey, and was delivered perfectly by McConaughey. Masterful work.

 

[Zabka]

Nevermind...found what I was looking for.

 

[JCreasy]

We're all Carcosoans now . . .

See ya'll next season

 

[Enk]

There was some definite Texas Chainsaw Massacre influence in the whole set direction and sound design in this finale. Fantastic stuff.

 

[duckroll]

RE: The King in Yellow.

I don't think Nic is saying that it doesn't exist in the universe so much as that it will never make a material presence. That would draw attention to inspiration for the show itself, and feel too meta.

 

[Dennis]

Well, that ruined the series. There were no aliens or super natural shit!

Instead I just got a more mature Lethal Weapon!

Didn't you see the cosmic portal that almost opened enough to let Cthulhu step into our world?

 

[zewone]

Still think this is the best scene I have watched in tv for a while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmhS_IYnjcA

Just realized this was all one shot. Amazing.

 

[Dresden]

Appreciated Rust's speech at the end. It's all about his willingness to give human society a try again - that the light vs dark dichotomy indicates his acceptance of his place in this world, as opposed to the position he held himself to last time. Just liked all the things in the episode that looped back to earlier scenes in the series, but with different outcomes befitting the kind of changes these two men have undergone.

And, you know, just the pure, genuine bromance. Bros 4 lyfe. Gonna go smoke some Camel Lights now.

 

[firehawk12]

Appreciated Rust's speech at the end. It's all about his willingness to give human society a try again - that the light vs dark dichotomy indicates his acceptance of his place in this world, as opposed to the position he held himself to last time. Just liked all the things in the episode that looped back to earlier scenes in the series, but with different outcomes befitting the kind of changes these two men have undergone.

And, you know, just the pure, genuine bromance. Bros 4 lyfe.

It's actually worse than Mass Effect 3's ending, since there were only two colours instead of three!

 

[duckroll]

Didn't you see the cosmic portal that almost opened enough to let Cthulhu step into our world?

What Nic isn't letting anyone know is that there's a master plan for the series. Every season will have stand alone weird stories completely grounded in reality. But at some point in each season a portal somewhere will open and it'll be written off as a hallucination or visual metaphor or a trick of lighting.

Then after 5 seasons. When the Old Ones have all returned into our realm..... the final season will be about all the leads from season 1-5 getting together to solve the ultimate cosmic mystery - how to send them back through the void!!!!

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

^_^

 

[Dennis]

I mean, I am not the only one who saw the star-swirling cosmic portal, right?

Don't give me any Rust hallucination crap, open your eyes.

 

[Dresden]

It's actually worse than Mass Effect 3's ending, since there were only two colours instead of three!

Feeling ripped off already. Fuck HBO.

 

[EverythingShiny]

Seems like a lot of folks online are missing the critical character growth of Marty and Rust because they expected to see some sort of Lost shit with a smoke monster.

People!

Wait, seriously?! Have they been watching the same show? God damn, this finale was one of the best I've ever seen. I guess some people won't be happy now unless there's some completely far-fetched twist.

I had tears in my eyes the last 5 minutes of the episode. So, so fucking good.

 

[Dennis]

This final episode and episodes 4 and 5 are definitely among the best episodes ever shown on TV.

Overall, probably the finest short format self-contained series ever as far as I am concerned.

 

[Extra Sauce]

What Nic isn't letting anyone know is that there's a master plan for the series. Every season will have stand alone weird stories completely grounded in reality. But at some point in each season a portal somewhere will open and it'll be written off as a hallucination or visual metaphor or a trick of lighting.

Then after 5 seasons. When the Old Ones have all returned into our realm..... the final season will be about all the leads from season 1-5 getting together to solve the ultimate cosmic mystery - how to send them back through the void!!!!

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

^_^

I would simultaneously hate and love if they did that, and my brain would shut down completely to protect itself.

 

[ReturnOfTheRAT]

Wait, seriously?! Have they been watching the same show? God damn, this finale was one of the best I've ever seen. I guess some people won't be happy now unless there's some completely far-fetched twist.

I had tears in my eyes the last 5 minutes of the episode. So, so fucking good.

I've seen one example, in that the ending was "familiar."

 

[MidnightCowboy]

Brilliant finale, loved the series throughout. I really enjoyed the scene of Marty and his family in the hospital room. I'll be damned if that's not the best acting Woody has ever done.

 

[Dennis]

Definitely an axe. I don't think any hammers have sharp edges on them that cut into people.

And I was slightly annoyed that Rust took out the knife. I figure he would have known not to remove foreign objects.

He wanted to die.

 

[Socreges]

Struggling to find anything to say that hasn't been said a lot already....

Maybe this: The camerawork during the Errol/Rust/Marty fight scene was excellent.

Everything, though.... wow

 

[Forceatowulf]

Wait a minute... people were actually expecting some type of "OH SHIT" plot twist ending hijinks? Have we been watching the same show? Ya know, the show that's been totally grounded in reality and mostly straight forward in it's storytelling for the past 9 weeks?

the fuck