So I just finished watching True Detective....

And while I loved every second of that last episode, I found one tiny bit of it unbearably distracting-

The whole last exchange was, while not word-for-word, exactly the same as an issue of Alan Moore's Top Ten. I'm not sure why this is. With the Carcosa references in Alan Moore's Lovercraft stuff, I'll just go ahead and assume that both he and the creator of True Detective are both fans of the same 'Yellow King' novel that I'd never heard of before this show... so maybe that observation about the night sky is from that book?

Although, and I know that this is an extreme reach, but both this and Watchmen have a creepy child-murderer who owns a German Shepherd, and the German Shepherd winds up with its head split open down the middle in both stories.

Still - great show, everyone should watch it!

UPDATE:

So I checked around on the Internet, and it seems that yes, the guy's just an Alan Moore nerd, so it's a lift, but probably more like a gentle nod than outright theft, like in Being Human.

The Hundred Seventy-Ninth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Yes, I'm apparently a child this week. But it's still wonderful.

The Hundred Seventy-Eighth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

If you were completely incapable of drawing a hand clasping a tommygun, why did you put one at the front of the frame? Weren't things busy enough already?

Wow, I'm criticizing a subsistence-artist making war propaganda seventy-odd years ago. Weird that it's come to this.

The Hundred Seventy-Seventh Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I know I've been taken aback by some of the hard-core violence in these golden-age stories, but wow, that's nasty.

The Hundred Seventy-Sixth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Am I still an internet pedant if the apostrophe mistake I'm criticizing is from a comic published seventy years ago? Of course, the answer is yes.

The Hundred Seventy-Fifth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

And that's why you don't trust the Pied Piper.

Wow, would that next panel prove to have some unfortunate connotations a few years later...

The Hundred Seventy-Fourth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

It's a wonder America had to bother fighting a war at all, what with the rate the Japanese were apparently offing themselves at.

Red John Countdown Time!

We're down to the wire now on the end of the Red John mystery, so I thought I'd take this moment to re-asses my theory in light of new evidence.

In episode five, we learned from a detective presumably hired by Red John the man has a tattoo of three dots on his left shoulder.

This seems like an easy way to narrow the suspect down to one, but unfortunately for Patrick, it turns out that three of the remaining suspects each have the tattoo.

What's the significance? Well, obviously since we saw all of them plotting together-

We can extrapolate that they're all members of the same fraternal order of corrupt police officers and public officials that we've been learning about this year. Which isn't a huge surprise, since Bertram already expressed a love for William Blake, and the organization is clearly a William Blake-themed club, what with all the Tyger, Tyger nonsense. Also, the next episode is called 'The Great Red Dragon'. So there's that.

How the trick is done!

So, as promised, here's an explanation of how Red John pulled the trick with his list, apparently proving that he had information that Jane didn't even have access to when the video was made. The show briefly raised the spectre of Red John being psychic, but we can dismiss that out of hand, since his plan to get information from Jane's psychiatrist proves he's working with realistic sources of information. So - how did he make his own version of the list six weeks before it existed? There's a clue in the lead-up to the reading of the list.

The Hundred Seventy-Second Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Isn't it about time that someone showed that Pied Piper a thing or two?

The Hundred Seventy-First Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Nazi? Check.
Amazing mustache? Check.
Crazy mad scientist name? Check.
Plan to blow up New York? Check.

You might be my favorite new villain, Doctor Agony!

The Hundred Seventieth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

You know, I've seen fictional depictions of villains attempting to drop huge bags of sand on people hundreds of time throughout my life, but this may be the first time someone's actually been killed by one.

The Hundred Sixty-Ninth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

For a while there I was really enjoying the fact that Quicksilver was basically the only superhero who didn't have a racist sidekick. That was a nice few months.

The Hundred Sixty-Eighth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Of all the crimes in the world, does robbing during a blackout deserve to be singled-out as particularly egregious?

The Hundred Sixty-Seventh Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

This panel is being presented as a public service - if you ever need to see an ideal representation of the concept of the 'wealthy dowager' in her natural state of being offended by the lower classes, there you have it.