'After You’ve Gone' sets everything up for True Detective finale [TV recap: season 1, episode 7]

You missed it this time. “After” is maybe the most compelling single episode I have ever seen on TV. The way they made the mythology become hard undeniable fact - requiring life changing action- was just brilliant. No more looking away for either character. Most “set up” installments are useless. Not this one. Also, the music was incredible. Especially Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed”. Stellar.

Per IMDB. This scar faced groundskeeper’s name is “Errol”. Do we recall that name coming up at all in the earlier episodes?

I guess Scarface is a true adherent of whatever cult they had going in the Tuttle hometown. Judging by the old maid’s reaction to “Carcosa”, it must’ve been some truly weird and brutal group, maybe including actual sacrifices. Tuttle and his friends in high places probably just used their rituals as a cover for their child abuse - if any of the kids got away, like the boy in this episode, not even they themselves would believe that what they’d gone through was real. Scarface and Ledoux acted as their henchmen, abducting, controlling and ultimately killing the victims. For whatever reason, he did so twice in the ritualistic manner which brought the cops on his trail - first the Lane murder in 95, then the recent one in Lake Charles - while otherwise making sure they’d disappear without a trace.
I can’t for the life of me imagine that Marty has anything to do with it, though. He’s been genuinely interested in cracking the case, and he just doesn’t have it in him. It’s true that he’s been an asshole to the women in his life, trying to control their lives and calling them sluts and whores while he’s sleeping around himself, and he got what he deserved by ending up alone. But sexually abusing his own daughter, never.

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0412731/?ref_=tt_cl_t19

IMDB has him appearing in three episodes, including the upcoming final one.

I noticed that too, but it’s not in the same form as the spiral, and in fairness, anyone mowing a rectangular space on a riding mower is going to end up doing so in a spiral.

Great write up! This show is amazing, and I’m glad to see so much great criticism of it. It’s a shame you didn’t get to see what was on the tape, as it was a scene mirrored two other times in the show: Audrey’s Barbie Doll rape scene and Rust’s Beer Can Men. This pretty much cements that somehow Audrey was exposed to the cult, which I think, when Marty finds this out, will send him into the same regions of the outer darkness that Cohle has lived in all these years.
Audrey and the Hart families ties to the Cult are one of the Chekhovian guns still lying around the series. I think Cohles hallucinations are the other, which gives the showrunners the opportunity to have something truly surreal at the end while allowing for a huge degree of ambiguity.
My friend and I have grown obsessed with this show, and started a blog. A Guy, A Girl and Cthulhu: http://crazytruedetectivetheories.wordpress.com/.
She is hypervigilant, and has caught some pretty cool easter eggs.

This guy makes a pretty compelling case. I know it sounds far-fetched, but it might just be the kind of out-of-the-box thinking you need to separate the clues from the red herrings.

Yeah weak episode - everything was too straightforward. And scarface spookily talking to himself at the end was utter cheesiness. Because bad guys always say spooky things out loud right after the good guys leave, right? I expect better out of this show!

I like to play the Kevin McFarland drinking game. I do a shot every time he gets a plot point wrong or uses the word “narrative”. I’m having a lot of trouble focusing all the way through these thinzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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I read somewhere in my wanderings that the old woman named him as Errol and implied that his father may have done the scarring damage.

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