# True Detective - HBO - McConaughey / Harrelson \[SPOILERS\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 11, 2013, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697 "2013-06-11T03:43:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/421 "2014-03-10T20:17:34Z")
I didn’t read much analysis as things went along so I wasn’t steeped in teh various theories and deconstructions. Other than feeling a bit like “oops, out of episodes, time to wrap this up” I’m quite satisfied and thought it improved through the season. I almost didn’t watch Episode 2. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/422 "2014-03-10T20:41:02Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > From the interview I linked to above, I found these two bits interesting: > > And regarding season 2: They’re making an adaptation of \*[The Crying of Lot 49\*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49)? Awesome! (Well Postal System is close enough to transportation system isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/423 "2014-03-10T20:41:27Z")
I had the feeling there were a lot of deleted scenes from last night. And what exactly was that place? An abandoned fort the family had somehow come into possession of? And who else was in the videos- this was an organized and “group participation” thing, and you only got the leader/craziest member. Still, the scene with Childress and his crazed sister “making flowers” were pretty damned sexy, not to mention old-fashioned romantic. ---
**Author:** ![Duke\_of\_Rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/424 "2014-03-10T21:12:42Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > I liked this part very much, especially given all the conversation around masks. Essentially this was a guy with a mask for every occasion (remember his simple accent when Cohle first approached him?)…that is, for every occasion except when a young boy walks up and stares at him, when he started to fall apart. About that scene. He was painting a wall yellow, and he didn’t have any yellow paint on his ears. I watched it again to make sure. The leap from green eared spaghetti monster to old green house to green eared Errol was kind of out there. Maybe a deleted scene where he had flies buzzing his ears back when he was painting the old woman’s house green, we’ll never know. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/425 "2014-03-10T21:22:03Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Still, the scene with Childress and his crazed sister “making flowers” were pretty damned sexy, not to mention old-fashioned romantic. It reminded me of the X-Files episode where a family kept a woman – the mother? – in a box and took her out occasionally for sex. If I remember right, she didn’t have any legs. Pizzolatto says in the Sepinwall interview that Childress practiced different voices after his mouth was damaged, to help him learn to speak clearly. He was watching Cary Grant but the voice was James Mason, according to Pizzolatto. I keep wanting to type Pizzalotto. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/426 "2014-03-10T21:33:58Z")
> [@Duke\_of\_Rat](#): > > About that scene. He was painting a wall yellow, and he didn’t have any yellow paint on his ears. I watched it again to make sure. The leap from green eared spaghetti monster to old green house to green eared Errol was kind of out there. Maybe a deleted scene where he had flies buzzing his ears back when he was painting the old woman’s house green, we’ll never know. He’d had more than a decade to practice! Yeah, I agree that I would have been happier with headphones/ear covers. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/427 "2014-03-10T21:46:11Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I had the feeling there were a lot of deleted scenes from last night. And what exactly was that place? An abandoned fort the family had somehow come into possession of? And who else was in the videos- this was an organized and “group participation” thing, and you only got the leader/craziest member. Pizzolatto covers your last question a bit in his interview with Sepinwall (bolding mine): > [@](#): > > **Sepinwall:** All of the things that, in the previous episode, Cohle was telling Marty that he had uncovered, and what we saw on the videotape, pointed to a larger group of men working on these things. But we get to the end, and it’s just Errol left, along with his father in the shed. How many other people were involved in the specific things that Cohle and Hart were investigating? > > **Nic Pizzolatto:** There’s the men in the video, and there’s about 10 of them. Then you can begin to look at that as if that cult began to disintegrate shortly afterwards, and then there were always revenants existing on a local level. If you track the name Childress, you realize Sheriff Childress was the sheriff when Marie Fontenot disappeared, an Officer Childress was attending to Guy Francis in 2002 when he committed suicide. The conspiracies that I’ve researched and encountered, they seem to happen very ad hoc: they become conspiracies when it’s necessary to have a conspiracy.\*\* I think it would have rang false to have Hart and Cohle suddenly clean up 50 years of the culture history that led to Errol Childress, or to get all the men in that video. \*\*It’s important to me, I think, that Cohle says, “We didn’t get em all, Marty,” and Marty says, “We ain’t going to. This isn’t that kind of world.” **This isn’t the kind of world where you mop up everything. We discharged our duty, but of course there are levels and wheels and historical contexts to what happened that we’ll never be able to touch.** ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/428 "2014-03-10T23:55:51Z")
I was disappointed in Childress’s scars. I’ve seen worse acne marks than that; I was expecting something far worse. [QUOTE=AuntiePam] It reminded me of the X-Files episode where a family kept a woman – the mother? – in a box and took her out occasionally for sex. If I remember right, she didn’t have any legs. [/quote] Oh crap, yes. [HOME.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_(The_X-Files))One of the most disturbing episodes of television ever, made even more disturbing by the inclusion of Johnny Mathis music. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/429 "2014-03-11T00:45:51Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I was disappointed in Childress’s scars. I’ve seen worse acne marks than that; I was expecting something far worse. > > Oh crap, yes. [HOME.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_(The_X-Files))One of the most disturbing episodes of television ever, made even more disturbing by the inclusion of Johnny Mathis music. The scars were only really noticeable in HD for me. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/430 "2014-03-11T01:12:07Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Oh crap, yes. [HOME.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_(The_X-Files))One of the most disturbing episodes of television ever, made even more disturbing by the inclusion of Johnny Mathis music. Don’t you hate when they do that? _In Dreams_ was one of my favorite songs until Lynch used it in a creepy scene in _Blue Velvet_. Now it nauseates me. Erroll’s scars were hard to see even in HD. I noticed a bit of scarring at one corner of his mouth but that was all. Why did he wait so many years to take vengeance on his dad? Wait until the guy is old and weak, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/431 "2014-03-11T02:08:02Z")
I thought he was a crazy person keeping his dad’s dead body around and talking to it. Was the dad meant to be alive? ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/432 "2014-03-11T02:41:24Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I thought he was a crazy person keeping his dad’s dead body around and talking to it. Was the dad meant to be alive? Upon rewatching, I realized that the dad appeared dead, and Marty didn’t stop to render aid (which of course isn’t definitive), and the reference to bringing more water didn’t mean a drink, but water filled bags meant to repel flies. I’m voting for dead. But he couldn’t have been dead long. Perhaps his death coincides with the murder Gillbuagh and Papania were investigating? Like Errol was able to indulge himself again, after a long time of being kept to heel? ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/433 "2014-03-11T03:00:03Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I thought he was a crazy person keeping his dad’s dead body around and talking to it. Was the dad meant to be alive? I thought at first he was meant to be alive in a “Se7en” style thing, but re-watching it now I see that he was definitely dead. His eyes and torso don’t move at all, and his mouth is sewn shut so the water wouldn’t be for him to drink. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/434 "2014-03-11T03:35:30Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > I thought at first he was meant to be alive in a “Se7en” style thing, but re-watching it now I see that he was definitely dead. His eyes and torso don’t move at all, and his mouth is sewn shut so the water wouldn’t be for him to drink. Speaking of Se7en, what were all the pine tree air fresheners there for? I could understand if they were around the maybe dead/maybe not body (as in Se7en), but they were just in the bedroom. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/435 "2014-03-11T04:00:00Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Don’t you hate when they do that? _In Dreams_ was one of my favorite songs until Lynch used it in a creepy scene in _Blue Velvet_. Now it nauseates me. > \*\* > Erroll’s scars were hard to see even in HD. I noticed a bit of scarring at one corner of his mouth but that was all.\*\* > > Why did he wait so many years to take vengeance on his dad? Wait until the guy is old and weak, I guess. [![](https://i.imgur.com/YrCt3Hx.png) ](https://i.imgur.com/YrCt3Hx.png) That’s about as good of shot as we got. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/436 "2014-03-11T04:29:34Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](http://i.imgur.com/YrCt3Hx.png) > > That’s about as good of shot as we got. Ooh, that’s much more clear than what showed up on my TV. One small thing I liked about this episode was that Geraci’s prints will be on the videotape. Marty and Rust wore gloves when they handled it. Thinking ahead. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/437 "2014-03-11T05:05:36Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Ooh, that’s much more clear than what showed up on my TV. > > One small thing I liked about this episode was that Geraci’s prints will be on the videotape. Marty and Rust wore gloves when they handled it. Thinking ahead. Presumably, the late Rev. Tuttle’s would be on the original copy too. It’s unclear whether Steve handled the original, but most likely, considering they’d already ran off at least seven copies, Steve’s wasn’t the actual tape from Tuttle’s safe. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/438 "2014-03-11T10:09:36Z")
Well, I was really curious to see the midpoint reup of the ‘quest’, and it didn’t disappoint. The layers and entwinning of arcs: So crafted and smart. Great, great duo. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/439 "2014-03-11T15:58:29Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I had the feeling there were a lot of deleted scenes from last night. And what exactly was that place? An abandoned fort the family had somehow come into possession of? And who else was in the videos- this was an organized and “group participation” thing, and you only got the leader/craziest member. Being a civil war nut, I was wondering about the “fort” too. That was a helluva gutting that Rust survived. Especially with all of the head butting that he initiated and the way the knife must have moved around. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697/440 "2014-03-11T17:07:55Z")
> [@What\_the](#): > > Being a civil war nut, I was wondering about the “fort” too. > > That was a helluva gutting that Rust survived. Especially with all of the head butting that he initiated and the way the knife must have moved around. I read that it was an old family plantation home or something, from back when they had money. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-detective-hbo-mcconaughey-harrelson-spoilers/660697.md?page=23)