True Detective Season One, Episodes Seven and Eight

The last two episodes of True Detective bring us the setup in the penultimate episode, in which Woody and Mac become one again, and the finale, in which all hell breaks loose, a journey straight into the creepiest hell on earth.

Stan Earnest: The plane takes off like a rocket, wobbles a bit…(will it crash?)…NO, sticks the fucking landing!

Craig Scholes: The last 10 minutes sucked

SE: I know you have never smoked weed, but are you fucking high?

Where the fuck were you last week?

CS: Meh, the ending existentialism was pointless for me.

SE: Spoken like a true existentialist.

CS: Burn.

SE: First, should we touch on last week just a bit? I completely fucked the dog last week. My apologies. Crazy family drama.

CS: By crazy family drama, I’m assuming you went sundress shopping. Did you get yourself a pretty yellow one?

SE: It was a little closer to Woody getting booted out of his house. I may have caused that with a little too much boozing and gambling. I tried to explain that I was just searching for the Yellow King. Didn't work.

CS: So, last week. I have a bunch of incoherent notes. Basically "Gayer John Waters... a.ka. Johnny Joanie Waters, and McConaughey parkour'd his way into the Osteen mansion.

SE: We are totally doing a disservice to our fan base by rehashing this shit before we get to the goods, but I'm not sure we have a fun base, so fuck it. All I have is that great line by Woody, "High praise from a bartender."

CS: I have the line "I should buy one of my kids paintings if I can afford it," which is ironic as he is driving a new Cadillac.

SE: Before you go all splattering green paint on the last ten minutes, let's dabble into the basis of this season. So the season was based on a couple of old time literary works: a short story called "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce (1891) and The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (1895). Let me propose a theory: Cohle is the unspeakable man, the man that wants to convince the world he doesn't exist, the enabler, Lucifer. He has been turned, flipped into the role.

CS: Okay.

SE: In The King in Yellow, those that read the story are so affected by it that they slip into madness. Seeing the aftermath, Woody can't bear to think about what he has seen. Cohle, on the other hand, can't be killed. He is the one with yellow hair. There were no other mentions of the yellow king in this episode, just the green ears. I mean, I don't want to go off the rails and say it is literal, but Cohle saying the light is winning at the end of the season would be his version of slipping into insanity.

CS: How would he be becoming insane, when it justified everything he had done up to that point?

SE: He slipped and let go to see his family in the dark underworld, and it was only a ploy. What he has seen has turned him. I think the dark hole he saw before getting gutted was supposed to be his reality, not a hallucination. I just explain it the way I explain things I see on the internet: "Well shit, I can't unsee that."

I hope my dreams don't have shitty bands in them.

CS: I saw it as, he was going insane, and him nearly dying brought him back to reality.

SE: That statement itself is sweet irony, dying to live, like Inception on LSD. Cohle is rounding the black circle only to have his face shown like he was meant to play this game over and over again.

CS: Inception on LCD... it was all a dream?

SE: Inception on LCD Soundsystem: it was all just a ploy for the new record release. Fucking HBO, nothing but cash grabbers!

CS: Lord Jesus, we are spiraling. Flux capacitor must be broken.

SE: Besides, the last ten minutes were worth it just to see Woody sipping his drink, looking like Woody (because no one else has that look), as Cohle wakes up.

CS: So the sketchy dude they shot at on the boat, he was a cop or a sheriff right? HOW IN THE FUCK DOES HE OWN A MASERATI!?

SE: Joe fucking Walsh himself was giggling somewhere, if he even knows where he is at.

George Remus sans yellow.

CS: Two things about the Yellow King: 1) He didn't look Asian at all, and 2) Even Buffalo Bill thinks those guys are gross assholes.

SE: George Remus likes yellow. George Remus doesn't like to clean. Remus likes little girls though.

CS: The Backwater hillbilly bayou Forrest Gump.

SE: I don't think I'm ever traveling to Louisiana ever after that. I think Carcosa is the place in hell where Rob Zombie is going to jam for all eternity.

CS: I once ate at a Denny's in Shreveport that was out of ketchup. True story.

SE: When they were pulling up to the place, I was having flashbacks from Seven. "What's in the box! What's in the box!" I thought for sure that it was going to be Woody's daughter in that shed, but it was way creepier.

CS: I honestly thought I had called it with Woody's daughter. I knew that wasn't the case though when Woody met with his ex wife.

SE: This may be a rapid reaction, but as far as seasons of television shows, where does this season rank for you?

CS: I don't think it makes my top five, top ten probably.

SE: I’m throwing it in my top three alongside seasons three and four of Breaking Bad. No other show has stuck the dialogue, the acting, and story so completely. They trimmed the fat, chunked it into eight episodes of art layered on top of art. It was like a 90s Weezer album.

CS: With less references to KISS and Dungeons & Dragons.

SE: With that said, I can't decide if it should get point deductions or additions for the short season. Boardwalk Empire, as good as it is, would be even better if they cut it down to eight eps.

CS: Always leaving them wanting more. Having said that though, I don't know where else this story could go. It didn't leave any loose ends.

SE: What are you talking about? The Woody & Mac PI show is going to kill. Maybe they can hire Saul Goodman for good measure.

CS: I just meant this story line is complete, anything else would be a new story.

SE: Before we go, throw around some #TrueDetectiveSeason2 predictions.

CS: Jean Ralphio and Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec start a PI service and go on adventures and become best friends.

SE: I'm thinking Bill Murray and Robin Williams. Carrot Top will be the killer.

CS: I'd rather Carrot Top as the victim.

SE: If I were to guess an actual prediction as to what HBO will actually do, let's see, who is the latest washed up actor trying to blaze a comeback trail? Let's go Ben Affleck and…Jim Carrey. Sounds just looney enough.


CS: Batman?

SE: Oh, fuck me.

CS: I would imagine there is a female in season two, so I'll go with Frances McDormand and Sean Penn.

SE: All I can say is that this show stuck the landing, and no one should be disappointed in the ending.