I’m rewatching episode one, and I want to know why the hell Rust has a crucifix hanging over his mattress! He has that incredibly bare apartment with no adornments and it certainly doesn’t seem like anything would be left from a previous tenant. So what is up with that?
Also, for what it’s worth, the interview with Rust comes first - April 26, and Hart’s five days later. For some reason my first go round I pictured Hart’s interview coming first. I like the way they use the same room, but Hart’s backdrop is the bright modern office, and Cohle’s is 90 degrees rotated so his backdrop is dingy equipment the same vintage as the Lange case.
Yup. Well, it was more about contemplating offering yourself as a sacrifice.
It just goes to show why I need to watch each episode multiple times!
Anyway, I just watched the tent revival, and I noticed that everything Theriot says in the opening sequence is very compatible with gods of cosmic horror, and doesn’t specify Jesus or the Bible (he does mention Jesus after a bit of Rust and Marty’s back and forth). Most particularly, " . . . His body, which is the stars and the wind between the stars . . .This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own," sound rather eldritch. Marty calls it “Old Time Religion,” which reminded me of a short story that used the term ironically - actually referring to Lovecraftian cults of older vintage than the human race. Not that I think Theriot is necessarily involved - it’s probably just the writers being a little cute and also setting the general tone.
As for the newest episode, Reverend Tuttle looks to be a candidate for the Yellow King, or a member of his cult. The fact that the cult rumor keeps coming up and that Ledoux looked to be damn guilty, but the murders have continued certainly points to them heading in that direction. If so, it’ll be tricky not to make it cheesy. But maybe this crew can pull it off. Or maybe the cult thing is a red herring?
In the article that Algernon linked, the author pointed out that the preacher Theriot makes the sign of the cross backwards. I’m not a Christian and didn’t notice that in the tent revival scene.
Anyone else starting to think that Marty is part of the conspiracy and that he stayed with Rust so that he could kill LeDoux before he talked?
Last night sealed a pet theory for me: Martin Hart’s oldest daughter is involved. She saw something when she was young. Evidence: she displayed several clothed male dolls standing over a single unclothed Barbie. She got in trouble for keeping a journal about sexual terms. And finally, last night, her 2002 teenage self getting caught with two young men at once, coupled with her costume.
I think she witnessed something when she was little (or worse). Both Hart and his wife are in the clear, which realistically - based off what we’ve seen in the show - the only other people in her circle are her grandparents. The show seems to be following the thread that satanic ritual abuse is an actual thing composed of a powerful inner circle (unlike reality where it was just a modern witch hunt / mass hysteria). Hart already grates on grandad, and there’s no reason all these things have been on camera thus far unless the threads tie together. Then there’s that creepy Anti-Christian crime squad put together at a presumably powerful governor’s request.
The whole thing stinks. Rust is a red herring. I guarantee he’s been working the case off the books for a decade, Serpico-style, because he suspects how high the conspiracy goes. I’d further wager that he’s not even a drunk. He’s was Verbal Kint-ing those dicks.
Any thoughts on the “Made in error” comments on the computer Rust was looking at? Was someone fiddling with records of missing girls – taking them out of the system?
Also liked Woody wearing that cool old Pink Floyd “Division Bell” T-shirt. I guess he got it from Cohle because he’s living with him ATM? Anyway, neat.
It appears to be the Eastern Orthodox style. Evidently most Protestant sects don’t even use the sign of the cross.
Yeah, the Fontineau girl’s report was described as “made in error,” due to the mother not pursuing it and a general assumption she left the state with her father. I thought it was weird that even after finding the devil-catcher they didn’t appear to follow up on that at all, despite the family having some information about at least the mother’s whereabouts.
Hmm… When Rust was being interviewed, he was making various things out of his beer cans. At first it was just ashtrays and such, but then he started making little men. And he arranged them on the desk in a circle - just like the circle of dolls that Martin Hart’s daughter made with the unclothed doll in the middle.
I think drastic_quench is on to something there. Considering that it looks like the old missing girl files were tampered with, and the original investigation was immediately put under pressure to be turned over to the police clearly influenced by Tuttle’s church, the story is going to be that the police department was infiltrated by cultists, and Rust and Hart left the force to continue their investigation or were forced out after getting too close to the truth. Now the police are suspicious that they’re on to them, and brought them in for questioning.
Martin alluded to the fact that if they thought they were interviewing Rust, they were going to find out that it was Rust who was interviewing them - just like he was a master at pulling information out of prisoners.
We’ve already established that Rust has the capability to go deep undercover for years at a time, so this might all be an act to keep the cops from watching him as he continued trying to dig for the truth.
I also wonder if Martin’s grandparents are involved. The scene with the girls on the boat was interesting - I kept expecting them to fall in the lake or something - the scene seemed to be going in that direction - building a sense of menace or expectation for something bad to happen to them. I wonder if that was intentional, to make us feel uneasy about the otherwise bucolic grandparent home? And the grandfather’s first question to Martin was to ask how the case was going. When they got home, that’s when we got the scene where Martin saw the girls had arranged the dollars in a gang-rape scene.
I love this show. I hope the ending lives up to the build-up, whatever it turns out to be.
I think there may be two different kinds of crime going on here - one is the ritual gang-rape of little girls as some sort of cult initiation - when Rust and Hart interview the first victim’s mom, there’s a picture on the table of her daughter as a young girl standing in front of a line of strange people on horses, all wearing bizarre masked costumes.
That picture was interesting, because the mother kept it displayed. Who would do that, unless they’re involved in the same cult? And the mother suddenly got a terrible headache and couldn’t continue when the questions got pointed. Perhaps she was brainwashed or drugged.
Then there’s the billboard they keep seeing of the little girl and the caption “Who killed me?” And the scrubbed files of young missing girls. So, two different crimes, one involving adult women murdered and displayed in ritual fashion, and one involving young girls being abducted and raped. Perhaps some died trying to escape, or the missing girls are mostly still alive and inside the cult.
I wonder of LeDoux was the ‘pharmacist’ to the cult, providing them with the drugs they used to subdue girls or control others, and he started killing the girls as they grew up - kind of a rogue murderer inside a cult that used ritual rape. So he may have been the only killer of the adult girls, but looking for him has been leading them to a much larger, more organized and dangerous cult.
It would be kind of cool if we thought the whole time the cops were trying to figure out who the new murderer was, when in reality they know and are protecting the culprits from Rust’s off-book investigation.
The grandparents certainly seem to have a swanky home. If there’s some high-roller cult or pedophile ring, he could be plausibly involved.
Also, for what it’s worth, here is the closed captioning of the girls’ conversation just before Marty finds them playing with the barbies:
It was heartbreaking to watch the cloudbursts of emotions that ran across Audrey’s face that started with shame at being caught to shock to heartbreak to fury in just a few seconds when Marty called her the queen of sluts. Only a parent can cause that kind of damage. What a great performance by the actress.
Yeah, no doubt on my part that gramps touched her at night. He’s also most definitely one of the “big men” mentioned by the prisoner. Law of Economy of Characters and all that. Otherwise all the family scenes would be just filler.
Not to mention that Marty said his true failing was to not pay attention when all the clues were right under his nose. (However, that sentence leads me to suspect that it will be the other, younger daughter who meets a grisly fate. The last episode made a point to show how Marty and his wife pay little attention to her while dealing with the problem child)