True Detective Season 3 (SPOILERS)

[The Unborn]

I guess my opinion will echo everyone else. Very strong performance by everybody, but the story was just not all that engaging. The interviewer bit this season felt completely unnecessary.

 

I laughed my ass off though when Roland asked Wayne if he felt closure because he didn't. I think he was talking about the audience as well !

[Leofric]

Soon as the Mike said his daughter's name was Lucy I knew she was  Julie's daughter, but I thought Julie had still died until they suggested later that the nuns had lied about it.   When imaginary Amelia was telling Hayes to tell the story of Julie's happy ending, I was thinking, no just leave her in peace.  So was kinda of happy he forgot why he drove out there.

 

 

[Kalbear]

What a shitshow of an ending. 

We get a massive infodump of finding out everything that, for the most part, we couldn't possibly have pieced together as far as details go. And it makes sense, sort of, though we don't find out anything about what happened to Isabel later, or who sent Harris out to kill the wife, or who killed the cousin, or any of that. None of them get punished - hell, no one saves Harris gets punished, and that's not even publicly done. No justice for Steve either - I'm not sure anyone actually figured out Harris killed him, or why. 

The Hoyt/Hays scene was great, full of menace and implication, but ultimately didn't do shit. And Hays dropped everything for 25 years not because of a threat, but because of Amelia? Come on. We don't  find out why he's estranged with his daughter or even if that was accurate. 

Just very unsatisfying, long, and dull. 

[Ran]

33 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

We get a massive infodump of finding out everything that, for the most part, we couldn't possibly have pieced together as far as details go.

I thought the contrary -- pretty much everything Junius said was stuff that had been figured out by some viewers. It certainly fell in to pretty much what I thought once we saw Tom finding the room in Hoyt's secret basement. The only real twist was the reveal regarding Julie.

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And it makes sense, sort of, though we don't find out anything about what happened to Isabel later

She killed herself after Julie/Mary July ran away, Junius said. Put on her wedding dress and took all of her pills.

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, or who sent Harris out to kill the wife, or who killed the cousin, or any of that.

I mean, all of these are Harris. What I'm not sure about is the idea that Harris was doing at entirely at the behest of Isabel and Junius. Seems to me that despite Hoyt's denials, he must have known what his daughter got into, and decided to task Harris with basically "taking care" of any hiccups like Tom finding the Pink Rooms, Dan trying to sell info the police, etc. I suspect Harris basically understood that he could do whatever he felt was necessary to protect Isabel and her secret, and Hoyt preferred to be kept ignorant to try and assuage his conscience.

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None of them get punished - hell, no one saves Harris gets punished, and that's not even publicly done. No justice for Steve either - I'm not sure anyone actually figured out Harris killed him, or why. 

I took it that it was understood by them, but sure, they didn't say it explicitly. It feels like a slight loose-end that Roland didn't bring it up when they sat down with Junius, given that he and Tom were friends (and possibly lovers at some point?).
ETA: Re: Hays and his daughter, apparently it was a scene that was edited out. They aren't really estranged, per Pizzolatto on Twitter, it's just that they fell out of touch in part because Amelia was the one who was always the one keeping the connection going. 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I thought the contrary -- pretty much everything Junius said was stuff that had been figured out by some viewers. It certainly fell in to pretty much what I thought once we saw Tom finding the room in Hoyt's secret basement. The only real twist was the reveal regarding Julie. 

I don't think we knew anything about why Isabel was wanting Julie, or what she was doing with the kids, or who had been supplying the toys. We knew that Julie had been in the basement, but we didn't know why she escaped, or why she was being pursued, or anything. 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

She killed herself after Julie/Mary July ran away, Junius said. Put on her wedding dress and took all of her pills. 

Fair enough. I missed that. Why a crazy woman who is part of the Hoyt empire isn't part of every rumor mill in town is a bit beyond me, but so it goes. Isabel being batshit crazy is another one of those things that came out of left field. 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I mean, all of these are Harris. What I'm not sure about is the idea that Harris was doing at entirely at the behest of Isabel and Junius. Seems to me that despite Hoyt's denials, he must have known what his daughter got into, and decided to task Harris with basically "taking care" of any hiccups like Tom finding the Pink Rooms, Dan trying to sell info the police, etc. I suspect Harris basically understood that he could do whatever he felt was necessary to protect Isabel and her secret, and Hoyt preferred to be kept ignorant to try and assuage his conscience. 

 

I doubt very seriously Harris by himself offered Lisa massive money to shut up, and then went to go kill her at no one's behest at all. Harris isn't the kind of person that ties his shoes without asking permission. Also, it's a bit peculiar that Harris was able to kill Tom, kill Dan, stage Tom's suicide note at the original place AND dump Dan's body in a quarry somewhere all within the space of what, 8 hours? How does Harris do that? How does he get the money? 

And Hoyt, if he's to be believed, is suggesting that other parties might get interested. Maybe he's just talking about himself, but my implication was that there were others out there who would care in some way. And if he doesn't have Harris to do this shit, who does he have now? 

Hell, why were the DA and the others so hellbent on closing the case despite the bullshit evidence? 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I took it that it was understood by them, but sure, they didn't say it explicitly. It feels like a slight loose-end that Roland didn't bring it up when they sat down with Junius, given that he and Tom were friends (and possibly lovers at some point?).

I'm not convinced that they knew Tom was killed. Roland certainly doesn't seem to think that. And they never even bother wondering why Tom would be killed. (I don't know why I want to call him Steve, other than Steve Purcell the author). Tom dying should be as much of a mystery as anything else, maybe even the biggest one, and they don't ever solve it. He's just dead, and that's just done, and the best we get is Roland fighting a biker bar in his honor and adopting a dog. 

[Ran]

Just now, Kalbear said:

I don't think we knew anything about why Isabel was wanting Julie

We had been told somewhere in the first half of the season that Isabel lost her husband and daughter in a horrible accident. Something to do with that Hoyt-sponsored foundation for children, IIRC.

Just now, Kalbear said:

, or what she was doing with the kids, or who had been supplying the toys. We knew that Julie had been in the basement, but we didn't know why she escaped, or why she was being pursued, or anything. 

Do we need to know why a child abducted from her family and locked up in some rooms for years might try to escape? That was one part I never really wondered about. And the reason they would pursue her would, presumably, be because they didn't want her out there given that they abducted her in the first place...

Just now, Kalbear said:

I doubt very seriously Harris by himself offered Lisa massive money to shut up, and then went to go kill her at no one's behest at all. Harris isn't the kind of person that ties his shoes without asking permission. Also, it's a bit peculiar that Harris was able to kill Tom, kill Dan, stage Tom's suicide note at the original place AND dump Dan's body in a quarry somewhere all within the space of what, 8 hours? How does Harris do that? How does he get the money? 

It sounds like Isabel and June had access to Hoyt's money -- possibly Isabel had her own bank accounts and all, she was a grown woman after all, and though she had become unstable it's clear she was not committed -- but I do doubt Hoyt would not have noticed what was going on. There's no way they set up those rooms in the mansion and he didn't know what was happening. But as I said, I think what we're to take out of it is that Hoyt basically gave Harris carte blanche to take care of any issues arising from what Isabel did, and then guilt churned at him as he made his vain attempt at keeping ignorant. Hence, I guess, that heavy drinking we saw back in 1990.
 

Just now, Kalbear said:

Hell, why were the DA and the others so hellbent on closing the case despite the bullshit evidence? 

Wasn't it a matter of election years both in 1980  and 1990? They wanted results, fast, to look good or at least to not look bad. Yes, it was done in such a way to feed into the idea that there was a conspiracy going on, some high-level nexus of politicians and millionaries with a pedophile ring -- much as the documentary director thought -- but essentially that was Pizzolatto undermining what was expected.

I do understand a sense of dissatisfaction with how it wrapped up. It was not particularly elegant to have Junius basically say it all explicitly, and I'm not sure how I feel about Julie being alive and then Wayne forgetting about it. It feels like Pizzolatto stretched himself a bit too far. But the basic idea of the story, the way it's really about relationships -- good ones, bad ones, and the fact that sometimes they're the same thing -- felt like the right tack to take. I think, were I Pizzolatto, I would have left it decidedly more unfinished. Have them head out to find Junius, only for him to already be dead and buried, and basically never let them know what the truth was. Sometimes detectives simply never solve their cases, and they have to just live with the burden of it.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

We had been told somewhere in the first half of the season that Isabel lost her husband and daughter in a horrible accident. Something to do with that Hoyt-sponsored foundation for children, IIRC. 

We got a very quick blurb, but we still didn't have any inkling that she was crazy, much less crazy enough to abduct a kid and cover it up. 

Ooh, here's another one - who sent the note? The wife? Isabel? 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Do we need to know why a child abducted from her family and locked up in some rooms for years might try to escape? That was one part I never really wondered about. And the reason they would pursue her would, presumably, be because they didn't want her out there given that they abducted her in the first place...

Except that's not what Hoyt said. He didn't care about her as long as everyone thought she was dead. He was absolutely fine with her being gone. 

As to her wanting to escape and then not tell any single person about it at all? Yeah, that deserved some better explanation than the last minute infodump we got. Her escaping makes perfect sense. Her not going to the cops or to her family or to anyone came out of left field entirely. 

I feel like a lot of these things should have been answered earlier in some way. For example, have the detectives find out that Julie 'died', get the interview with the nuns, find out about her disassociative personality and that she had almost no memory of her brother or her real parents and had evidence of massive psychoactive drug abuse as a kid - and find that out in, say, ep 6, as a nun got interviewed by the documentary folks to find out what really happened with Julie. Then it places in our heads that something Really Wrong happened to Julie beyond just getting kidnapped, but we don't know why - yet. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

It sounds like Isabel and June had access to Hoyt's money -- possibly Isabel had her own bank accounts and all, she was a grown woman after all, and though she had become unstable it's clear she was not committed -- but I do doubt Hoyt would not have noticed what was going on. There's no way they set up those rooms in the mansion and he didn't know what was happening. But as I said, I think what we're to take out of it is that Hoyt basically gave Harris carte blanche to take care of any issues arising from what Isabel did, and then guilt churned at him as he made his vain attempt at keeping ignorant. Hence, I guess, that heavy drinking we saw back in 1990. 

But when did Isabel die? I thought it was before Julie's reappearance. If it's after, then why wasn't Isabel hunting for her? Neither makes sense to me - I don't see how Isabel wouldn't be going apeshit to get Juile back, and I don't see how her death doesn't make massive news to everyone before this. The heiress to a giant company killing herself should have shown up at some point, and even the documentarian didn't bring it up. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Wasn't it a matter of election years both in 1980  and 1990? They wanted results, fast, to look good or at least to not look bad. Yes, it was done in such a way to feed into the idea that there was a conspiracy going on, some high-level nexus of politicians and millionaries with a pedophile ring -- much as the documentary director thought -- but essentially that was Pizzolatto undermining what was expected. 

I guess. It felt a lot less like that and a lot more like they were pushing on this to go away - twice - with some incredibly flimsy evidence, and not because they wanted to get elected.

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I do understand a sense of dissatisfaction with how it wrapped up. It was not particularly elegant to have Junius basically say it all explicitly, and I'm not sure how I feel about Julie being alive and then Wayne forgetting about it. It feels like Pizzolatto stretched himself a bit too far. But the basic idea of the story, the way it's really about relationships -- good ones, bad ones, and the fact that sometimes they're the same thing -- felt like the right tack to take. I think, were I Pizzolatto, I would have left it decidedly more unfinished. Have them head out to find Junius, only for him to already be dead and buried, and basically never let them know what the truth was. Sometimes detectives simply never solve their cases, and they have to just live with the burden of it.

At the end of detective stories you find out what happened. You might not get a perfect resolution and the guilty might get away, but it's still finding out what happened which matters. 
 

Mostly, I think the framing mechanism never pays off. Hays doing dick all about the case for 25 years and then picking it up because of the interviews? Why then, if it was eating at him? Why spend so long with the 1980 part that ended up being such a big waste of time? Why never get any kind of justice for Tom, or even consider that he was wrongfully framed for the murder of his son? Seriously, the whole world thinks Tom killed his son, made his daughter run away and then killed himself - and Roland is cool with that? 

And ending the story with the 1980 fight with Hays and Amelia and then them getting back together doesn't make much sense either dramatically; we know that they are going to be okay in 1990, and they were still together until her death - so what does 1980 matter? 

[dooog]

Agree with Kalbear, a dull, unremarkable and unsatisfactory finale.  It boiled down to a basic story with very little going for it and the who mystery part in the "whodoneit" is a character that never even appears in the show until the rather unbelievable infodump confession.

Also, Lisa.  She gets paid a boatload of cash from the Hoyt family and neither the police or the residents of this small town ever question how the mother in the highly publicized case got so flush.

[Ran]

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Ooh, here's another one - who sent the note? The wife?

 

Yes, as Hays realized when he read Amelia's account of her conversation with Lucy.

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Except that's not what Hoyt said. He didn't care about her as long as everyone thought she was dead. He was absolutely fine with her being gone. 

Except in 1990, she's not dead. Everyone's looking for her. 

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

As to her wanting to escape and then not tell any single person about it at all?

She did tell people. She was just fucked up from her time there and didn't really have a way of explaining it that made sense to anyone. Remember, she was the princess of the pink rooms...

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

At the end of detective stories you find out what happened. You might not get a perfect resolution and the guilty might get away, but it's still finding out what happened which matters. 
 

Mostly, I think the framing mechanism never pays off. Hays doing dick all about the case for 25 years and then picking it up because of the interviews?

Picking it up because his wife recently died, more likely. He was already starting to look at it all again when his son brought the documentarian to him.

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why then, if it was eating at him? Why spend so long with the 1980 part that ended up being such a big waste of time?

Because without 1980 you get very little about the characters involved in the initial disappearance. 

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why never get any kind of justice for Tom, or even consider that he was wrongfully framed for the murder of his son? Seriously, the whole world thinks Tom killed his son, made his daughter run away and then killed himself - and Roland is cool with that? 

It's Chinatown, Jake.

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And ending the story with the 1980 fight with Hays and Amelia and then them getting back together doesn't make much sense either dramatically; we know that they are going to be okay in 1990, and they were still together until her death - so what does 1980 matter? 

Because 1980 was when most of the clues about what happened were laid out. Why would you jump into a story about a child murder/disappearance from a point 10 years after most of the significant events that shaped how it played out happened?

[Kalbear]

Sorry, I was unclear. Why end the actual show with 1980 and hays and Amelia breaking up and getting together? What purpose does that serve in the narrative arc?

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Yes, as Hays realized when he read Amelia's account of her conversation with Lucy. 

It's not confirmed though. It was just his thought. 

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Except in 1990, she's not dead. Everyone's looking for her. 

Until her fingerprints show up, no one cares about her. Hoyt doesn't. That's what he says, at least. He was happy to just let it go. So was Harris. But Dan wants more money, Tom is nosing around, the police are reopening the case. 

2 hours ago, Ran said:

She did tell people. She was just fucked up from her time there and didn't really have a way of explaining it that made sense to anyone. Remember, she was the princess of the pink rooms...

Right - and we had no idea why she would be doing this. That's sort of an issue. Why should she be acting insane? Why would she forget her family? The show wanted to at least insinuate that it might have been Tom and make us guess, but I think that was a mistake. 

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Picking it up because his wife recently died, more likely. He was already starting to look at it all again when his son brought the documentarian to him. 

I don't think Amelia recently had died. Wasn't it like 5 years ago? 

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Because without 1980 you get very little about the characters involved in the initial disappearance. 

Because 1980 was when most of the clues about what happened were laid out. Why would you jump into a story about a child murder/disappearance from a point 10 years after most of the significant events that shaped how it played out happened?

I'm fine doing stuff with 1980; what was stupid was having the three jumps. TD1 only had two jumps - the 'present' and the flashbacks, which ended entirely after episode, what, 5 or 6? The whole thing doesn't work particularly well by comparison here. We know in 1980 that the wrong man got pinned, we know that after 1990 Julie isn't found. We know that from the first episode, so there's very little dramatic oomph in going back there. It's like Chronicles of a Death Foretold if it sucked. 

Another way to say it is this: what if you did the show in chronological order entirely. Start in 1980, show us all of it, and then move to 1990. What do we lose by that? What value is there in jumping around?

[Martini Sigil]

Man I hated the ending... for the life of me, I don;t understand why they didn;t introduce Isabel earlier, to make the ending a swerve instead of whatever the fuck this was... 

"Hey, now that you've been watching for 7 weeks, we think we'll just wrap it up with the killer/kidnapper being a character you've never seen or heard of before.... surprise!!!!." FFS

[dbunting]

I didn't like the ending or hate it. I also don't understand the confusion on Isabel being the one Julie was kidnapped for, I thought it was clear a few episodes ago when they talked about the wreck and when Tom found the rooms. Then they explained why Julie wasn't trying to escape and also why she was so confused in the phone message, she had been getting fed lithium the whole time she was there. She specifically said she was a princess of the pink room/castle. She also only slightly remembered a brother and knew something happened to him.

As to the mom getting money and no one questioning it, she left town and went to Vegas where no one would have a reason to question it.

As to West and Tom being lovers or either of them being gay we have zero evidence of it. Probably more of a viewer looking for things than actual story issue.

What did we end up with, 5 different time lines? 80's, 90's, Hays dropping daughter at college, Hays being school security and watching wife in class, and 2015?  Why show us Hays drop her off at college and also being a college or school security person at all? When I first saw Hays as security I thought, ok they are going to explain that he worked at her college to watch over her, and maybe that drove his daughter away, but no...it was just another blip that appears to mean nothing.

[kairparavel]

I'd have been fine with the fade out being on the grandkids riding their bikes. 

Overall underwhelming, though there was something about Hays figuring out where Julie was then having a bout of memory fog while spending time with her that almost seemed appropriate. 

[dooog]

2 hours ago, dbunting said:

I didn't like the ending or hate it. I also don't understand the confusion on Isabel being the one Julie was kidnapped for, I thought it was clear a few episodes ago when they talked about the wreck and when Tom found the rooms. Then they explained why Julie wasn't trying to escape and also why she was so confused in the phone message, she had been getting fed lithium the whole time she was there. She specifically said she was a princess of the pink room/castle. She also only slightly remembered a brother and knew something happened to him.

As to the mom getting money and no one questioning it, she left town and went to Vegas where no one would have a reason to question it.

As to West and Tom being lovers or either of them being gay we have zero evidence of it. Probably more of a viewer looking for things than actual story issue.

What did we end up with, 5 different time lines? 80's, 90's, Hays dropping daughter at college, Hays being school security and watching wife in class, and 2015?  Why show us Hays drop her off at college and also being a college or school security person at all? When I first saw Hays as security I thought, ok they are going to explain that he worked at her college to watch over her, and maybe that drove his daughter away, but no...it was just another blip that appears to mean nothing.

 

When did she leave for Vegas did they ever say? I remember them saying she dies there in 87' or so. Surely she was still there while the case was ongoing at least.  She was also being paid before the whole incident ever happened which would either show up in bank statements or people in a small community would notice the chicken factory employee has cash to burn all of a sudden. 

[dbunting]

55 minutes ago, dooog said:

 

When did she leave for Vegas did they ever say? I remember them saying she dies there in 87' or so. Surely she was still there while the case was ongoing at least.  She was also being paid before the whole incident ever happened which would either show up in bank statements or people in a small community would notice the chicken factory employee has cash to burn all of a sudden. 

They never said she was getting a lot of money for the "play dates".  Hell it may have only been like $25-50 each date so why would anyone notice?

She was a person who just drank and slept around that doesn't cost much money. Hell she may have been getting the drinks for free most nights.

[red snow]

Very average ending and I'm left with the feeling neither of them were "true detectives" as it took them 25 years to not solve a case.

Pizzolato has a knack for generating more story and speculation than real substance and a lot if it is largely due to lazy storytelling techniques

Great performances though - need more Dorf in future and the score was mind-blowing. It's rare that the music slone can induce horror but that happened several times in this show

[Martell Spy]

11 hours ago, Martini Sigil said:

Man I hated the ending... for the life of me, I don;t understand why they didn;t introduce Isabel earlier, to make the ending a swerve instead of whatever the fuck this was... 

"Hey, now that you've been watching for 7 weeks, we think we'll just wrap it up with the killer/kidnapper being a character you've never seen or heard of before.... surprise!!!!." FFS

Yeah, I agree. I actually liked the season quite a bit. The problem is the ending feels like an info dump. It was all worth it though for the performances, just this episode did not do it for me.

So, there wasn't really a season 1 tie-in? That was just a stupid red herring showing the season 1 detectives on a newspaper?

[3CityApache]

I didn't particularly like it, but didn't hate it either. Giving us the resolution of the whole mystery in the talk of three old men just didn't work for me.

Some kind of closure for Tom would also be nice.

Also, why would Henry keep the piece of paper with Julie's address? What would he supposed to do if he got there?

[Ferrum Aeternum]

28 minutes ago, 3CityApache said:

Also, why would Henry keep the piece of paper with Julie's address? What would he supposed to do if he got there?

Henry is a police detective too. I took this as a nod to him possibly looking into the reasons why his senile dad had written down an address out in the middle of nowhere, miles away from his home, and then driven out there only to end up "lost" in memory fog. That part was a bit of a parallel to that one episode ending where old Wayne wound up at the ruins of the Purcell house, wandering around confused in the street.