True Detective Conclusion (spoilers). Review and commentary.

I completed watching True Detective this weekend.  I decided I just couldn't wait for my wife to catch up and had to finish it on my own.  I'm not sure if that speaks to my impatience or is a testament to my patience that I waited so long before giving in.


In any event...


I had proposed, in an earlier post, certain ideas relating to the nature of Rustin Cohle's investigation and where I thought it was going.


http://readwhilewalking.blogspot.com/2015/02/true-detective.html


I continued to pat myself on the back throughout episode five and six, and up until the last five minutes of episode 7  (though I became a bit concerned at Russ' intentional cruelty towards criminals).


Have I left enough space for those worried about spoilers to move on?  Probably.


I didn't like the ending.  I was kind of annoyed.  I'm capable of pretending to be mature enough to recognize that it's partly sour grapes, because I think my theory was better.  But I still didn't like it.


Instead of a conspiracy involving the governor and his family, the master plot connected to the revival churches and the schools started by the governor's family, the secret abductions and cultish significance of it all was an inbred maintenance man who happened to work at the schools where the abductions occurred.  My first response was "rrrrrright."  (Times like these I wish I had sarcastic font).  So the resolution is the maintenance man, happens to be related to a sheriff (now deceased) who covered up one of his abductions and he just managed to avoid any state police intervention or awareness of all the others.


What about all the plot holes that leaves unaddressed?  Both subjective and objective evidence seems to be ignored with this answer, and I have a number of areas where I felt as though the show was looking to wind-up quickly with a cheap apparent answer that is ultimately unsatisfying.  (Perhaps that's unfair... I'll post another entry where I consider the actual intention of the show's creators).


Firstly, the facial scarring of the perpetrator.  Described as having a spaghetti beard, and sufficiently recognizable to be a face of horror, to cause screaming fits of "the scars, the scars" on the girl he abducted and to be an easy point of reference to identify him after 17 years or more.  I thought it looked like a beard.  I didn't really recognize it as scarring at first, despite viewing in hi-def.  This is the basis of my "cheap" shot above.  Have they seen the Hound on Game of Thrones?  I think this would have been more plausible with significant and noticeable scarring.  The only reason not to is that they wanted to have Russ kicking himself for speaking to the guy and not recognizing him when he was identified.


Where was Russ for the past eight years?  He says Alaska, but doesn't really say why, nor why he comes back.  What prompted his return at this time?  He comes back just in time for the Lake Charles murder.  An unusual coincidence if he did, and he's not involved.  Why was the Lake Charles murder the first one publicly staged in 17 years?  What prompted the change in pattern by the maintenance man (from burying bodies or preserving them at Carcosa) with Dora Lang in 1995 and what prompted it now?  Recall that a fire was set where Dora Lang was staged to be sure attention would be drawn to the body, and it looked like the Lake Charles one drew attention as well, for the lead detectives to have captured a picture of Russ in a crowd (though despite that, media on this murder was almost completely suppressed).


How about the green ears?  Has anyone ever accidentally spraypainted both their ears?  I'm not even sure I saw this as a plot point that needed to be connected.  It could easily have "fit" as an example of local sheriffs not taking abduction reports seriously, and didn't have to be the same perpetrator.  i.e. spaghetti beard monster with green ears could have been overlooked and forgotten.  In my view, that would be a lot more plausible than spraypainting green ears leading to a business record search that took them to the guy's home.


What about the "dream" that Marie Fontenault's friend had, of men in masks taking pictures and assaulting him in the children's residences in the night?  I described the alleged perpetrator as a maintenance man, but should perhaps have clarified that's outdoor maintenance.  No indication he would have had keys to student residences or an ability to appear on premises outside of working hours.  And why would the school authorities not take that seriously, or try to suppress it?  No answer.


How did maintenance man (a Mr. Childress, but didn't catch his first name) make contact with Reggie Ledoux?  What was the connection?  How did Reggie Ledoux become fixated on the same cult aspect of staging the crimes?  Because it was clearly Ledoux that was tied to Dora Lange.  So they did it together?  Then why didn't they wear their animal masks when abusing the kids Reggie had abducted?  (The survivor didn't indicate they wore masks, and nothing indicated they found animal masks at the scene).  If Reggie wasn't into the cult aspects of the crime, then who killed Dora and staged the scene with the antlers? 


What about the video evidence of  the six or seven men abusing Marie Fontenault while wearing masks?  Why did Billy Tuttle have that video? Russ seems sure the video was filmed at maintenance man's house... was Tuttle there?  Is that house the home of the Yellow King?  Is that the place "down south" where the missing and murdered women and children go? I don't even recall if they said there was evidence he was responsible for the Lake Charles murder as well (don't even recall if that victim had a name).  It also doesn't explain the lack of media on the Lake Charles murder.


What was with the tied up dead body in the shed, maintenance man's dad?  Did he just die moments before Martin found him?  Because he didn't look like Mama Bates (petrified and preserved).  I don't recall any statement by the two lead detectives about an investigation into him.  Was he the mastermind behind the abductions?   Did he have the connections with the governor?  If so, what was his job and his connection to the schools?  When did maintenance man take over?  What prompted him to be tied up now?  Or is he supposed to have been tied up for 17 years?  Or since Lake Charles? Was he keeping a rein on maintenance man, and those two occasions he slipped the leash?  Then why so many abductions at other times, and how did maintenance man build Carcosa with all the bodies etc. under his nose?  And why would the governor/police authorities suppress evidence and investigations into child abductions and suppress media awareness of a serial killer?  As I understand it, maintenance man is an illegitimate son of an illegitimate son of the governor's grandfather or uncle.  I don't see that connection being important enough to cover up for a bunch of crimes.  Unless the resolution put forward by the show is that there is no cover-up, just lazy police work and people who don't care about missing kids. 


I guess that's supposed to be the answer.  Even though Martin is a "people person" and makes investigative leaps equivalent to those made by Russ, it's Russ that can make the connection with these families of victims because he can't let the victims go either, and his quest for resolution includes vengeance and retribution to the criminals (as evidenced by covering up Martin's murder of Ledoux and his various statements to criminals confessing their crimes, like suggesting suicide for the Munchausen syndrome woman).  So Russ is a "true detective" because he doesn't let a case go until it's solved, but that for those who do not have the true calling, they just let victims go forgotten and uninvestigated.


And the answer to all those other avenues of investigation which were left unpursued is given by the two lead detectives, that sometimes in reality things just don't get wrapped up.  Bah.  I still don't like it.