The wife and I watched the finale for True Detective last night. Great show, I really liked it. It was dark, brutal, and nihilistic, but I'm a sucker for long story arcs, intricate plots, complex characters, and lots of little mysteries that reveal themselves over time. True Detective had tons of all that for sure. But I have to say that the story was so complicated and there were so many characters that I didn't really feel like I understood everything. So I spent a half hour during my lunch break today reading through online episode synopses and drawing a mind map of all the characters and things that were relevant to the main murder mystery. The exercise helped; I think I have a very good grasp on it all now.
Looking at this you might ask (I certainly did), "What the heck is the appeal of a show that requires so much effort to understand it?" I guess the answer is I don't mind entertainment that's high effort as long as it's also high reward. The challenge with this sort of show is that so much of the reward rests on the finale! It can ruin the entire experience if the writers screw up the finale (The X-Files comes to mind). Or worse, if they don't make it to the finale (see American Gothic, Flash Forward, or the reboot of V). Anyway, I like the ending of True Detective. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good. I'd give it an A-.
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