Location: Arkansas, Ouachita National Forest
Dates: March 8th to Match 10th
Route: Eagle Rock Loop
Distance: ~27 miles
Conditions: Rainy. All day light to medium rainfall forecasted for day 2 of the trip. Highs ranging from 60s to 70s and lows in the 40s.
Who: Me, a friend, and my 14 year old daughter.
Gear List: https://lighterpack.com/vpla1q
Trip vlog: https://youtu.be/V6-HvTWGuHU
Overview: This trail offers the longest loop trail in Arkansas. A combination of the Little Missouri, the Athens-Big Fork and part of the Viles Branch Horse Trail, this trail travels through the southwestern portion of the Ouachita National Forest. Trail difficulty ranges from easy to most difficult. The trail has numerous river, stream and creek crossings and travels over nine mountains
Our Route: Originally we intended to start at the Athens-Big Fork South Trailhead in the southwest corner of the loop. The idea was that we would tackle the 6 ridges on the west side of the loop on day one and deal with the multiple river crossings day 2 (generally considered the crux of the loop). However, with heavy rain some of the crossings can become impassable or require some serious bushwhacking to get around. Since there was lots of rain forecasted for day 2, we opted instead to start near the Albert Pike Recreation Area so that we could knock out some of the larger river crossings before the water levels got deeper.
Day 1: We left Houston around 8am and arrived at the trailhead around 3pm. There was nowhere left to park at Albert Pike so we had to drive down a dirt road to a nearby trailhead. In hindsight this is a better place to park anyways since the limited spots at Albert Pike seem to be used for day use. Albert Pike has limited parking and remains closed to campers. This was the sight of a flash flooding disaster 10 years ago that killed 20 people. We set off towards the loop and had our first small creek crossing right away. Shortly after we somehow missed the connection to the loop from the trailhead and ended up quite a bit off trail. Luckily we had Guthook and could see that trail was a few hundred feet above us on a ridge. We bushwhacked up a hill for quite some time. We were beginning to get a little discouraged as the brush got thicker but finally after summiting the ridge we found the trail. Off to a great start! The rest of the day went smooth. The deepest crossing was still below my knees but the water was moving pretty fast. Feet were definitely soaked the rest of the day. The Southern part of the loop is probably my favorite. Lots of cool rock formations and a lot of variation in the trail. The river looks amazing here and it really encapsulates the beauty of the area.
We made past the junction for the Athens-Big Fork South trailhead and headed up the first ridge of the six we would climb the next day. I felt like this ridge was the toughest. Maybe it was just because it was the first day but it seemed really steep compared to some of the others. In Arkansas they apparently do not believe in switchbacks. As we reached the top we found a beautiful campsite with some awesome views. However it was a little windy and we feared that there could be some lightning as the storm was rolling in. We descended down the ridge and found a campsite tucked away near a small stream. We took advantage of an existing fire pit and attempted to dry our socks and shoes while we ate dinner. I shared my duplex with my daughter and it was the first time I had used it for two people. I was pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. Didn't feel cramped and we had a good nights rest.
Day 2: I could easily sum this day up with one word. RAIN. It started raining as we were packing up in the morning and it literally never stopped until about midnight. Gear note: I am done with my 3F UL rain skirt. It was no match for the combination of wind and rain. The wind would blow the skirt open and I'm pretty sure I would have been equally as wet with no rain bottoms at all. As soon as I got home I ordered a pair of rain pants from Enlightened Equipment.
We made our way through the remaining 5 ridges. I had worried about my daughter keeping up with us as it was her first multi-day hike but I soon realized how foolish that thought was. She ran circles around the two grown men. She would race up to the top of the ridge and wait for us. The temprature was probably in the 60s but with the high winds and rain, it was pretty cold. We passed through the Little Missouri/Athens-Big Fork area around 4pm and stopped to enjoy the amazing river views. The water at this point was flowing rapidly and there are some nice falls a few minutes walk from the recreation area at this trailhead. We were growing tired of the ceaseless rain and decided to make camp early. It was nice to get out of the wet clothes, eat a hot meal, and relax in the tent. We hadn't stopped to eat during the day because with all the rain, it was just more comfortable to keep moving. We were hoping that the rain would let up around 6-7 so we could have a small fire and chat but it kept going until we were asleep.
Day 3: We woke up the next morning and miraculously it was no longer raining. At this point everything we owned was soaked. Main socks, back up socks, shoes, pants, etc. Putting on a wet pair of Injinji socks is not my favorite feeling in the world. We trudged on and made our way along the Little Missouri river. As the day went on, the sun started to poke out and by 10am we hit the best weather of the trip. Sunny and high 70s. Around noon we hit our biggest crossing of the trip. The water was waist high on my daughter and above the knees on me. We bushwhacked a bit until we found a spot that seemed safe enough. We locked arms and crossed. It was a bit a of a rush but didn't feel too sketchy. I think that if we had gone with our original itinerary there was a crossing on Day 1 that would have been hella sketchy on day 2. I'm glad we opted to change our starting spot. The rest of the hike was fairly easy. There's a small summit once you pass Albert Pike and with the sun being out we managed to catch our first really bomber view. Up until now the summits had all been blanketed by thick fog. After taking some videos and pictures we descended back towards the Jeep. Annoyingly my knee started burning in the last 1-2 miles. We were right along the dirt road that we came in on so after slowing us down for a mile I opted to plant my ass on the dirt and have them pick me up. Not my proudest moment but I figured there was no use in causing more damage to my knee when they could easily grab the Jeep and pick me up. Turns out it was nothing serious. Just a mild strain.
Final Thoughts: This was a great hike and by far the best hike within 7 hours of Houston that I've experienced. My last big hike was the OML in Big Bend and it was wonderful to have an abundance of water this time. There is literally no need to carry more than 1L at a time as the water is everywhere. The area was more beautiful then i had imagined and the elevation was enough to get the heart pumping and the legs burning. I have never hiked the AT but it seems similar to a lot of the more Southern sections I've seen. Lots of switchback-less ridges, water, and trees. I would definitely like to try it again at some point and hopefully the weather will cooperate a little better. On day 3 when the sun came out the place lit up spectacularly.
I would recommend Guthook for this trail. It was really helpful in a lot of ways. GPS was accurate and there were lots of campsites with good descriptions and pictures on the app. The trail can be a little tricky to follow at times. We tended to get off trail around the water crossings and then would have to use the app to get back on track.
My poker vlog has basically turned into a hiking vlog at this point. Even when this is all over I'm not super keen on heading back into casinos. Seems like a bad place to be when there is a pandemic lurking. I will definitely be heading back out for more backpacking as soon as I can though. Looking for summer options in case that becomes feasible. Really have my eye on multiple loops in the Grand Tetons but a little worried that without having a permit already, walking up might be too risky. Seems a little less so since there is more than one loop and there are campsites that are outside the NP boundaries and do not require permits.

Trip Report: Eagle Rock Loop, Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas, March 8-10 2020

A Few More Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be True

1. Kennedy Assassination - The 2nd Investigation by Congress Few People Know About, United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)

The HSCA was established in 1976 to investigate the John F. Kennedy assassination and the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. The Committee investigated until 1978, and in 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated by a conspiracy involving the mob, and potentially the CIA.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook reinvestigations of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1979, a single Report and twelve volumes of appendices on each assassination were published by the Congress.
In the JFK case, the HSCA found that there was a "probable conspiracy," though it was unable to determine the nature of that conspiracy or its other participants (besides Oswald).
This finding was based in part on acoustics evidence from a tape purported to record the shots, but was also based on other evidence including an investigation of Ruby's Mafia connections and potential CIA and/or FBI connections to Oswald. To this day, many conspiracy deniers are unaware that the Congressional investigation into JFK’s assassination concluded beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was a conspiracy.
What made them come to this conclusion?
Aside from reading the report, many witnesses (some of whom were CIA agents and station chiefs in Dallas that morning) were killed the night before testifying.
For example, George de Mohrenschildt was a petroleum geologist who befriended Lee Harvey Oswald during the months preceding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He also worked for the CIA.
He also blew his brains out the night before he was to testify to the committee. The committee also uncovered, among many things, that Oswald left the marines where he learned how to speak fluent Russian (at the height of the cold war).
He was given money by the State Department to travel to Russia where he stopped off in Japan at a top secret US Military facility. The Warren Commission even mentioned this part. What most people do not know is that he probably was working in the Cold War infiltrating the Russians as either a “dangle,” “double agent,” or “defector" of some kind.
What is interesting is that upon his return he got more money from the State Department to buy a house and work with an ex FBI Chief and CIA officials in training anti-Castro Cubans for an invasion.
In Louisiana, where he was working, the CIA was involved in Operation Mongoose, where Oswald worked under CIA Agent David Ferrie, who killed himself before testifying in a trial on the Assassination as well. Operation Mongoose worked closely with Southern Mafia figures largely because the casinos in Cuba, which were shut down after Fidel obtained control over the country, were epicenters for control on the island.
The CIA even hired the Mafia to assassinate Fidel on many occasions, 3 attempts which failed are common knowledge.
What is funny is that figures who worked very close with Oswald either ended up dead (over 100 of them connected to the assassination died within a few years of unusual circumstances) or they ended up in other conspiracies.
For instance, E. Howard Hunt (CIA Agent) confessed to being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy on his deathbed.
E Howard Hunt was one of the Watergate Burglars. Barry Seal, who worked with Oswald and Ferrie ended up being one of the largest cocaine smugglers in the United States during Iran Contra, as a key player for the agency and informant for the DEA.
There is so much more to get into, but there just isn’t enough time. Oswald's tax returns are still classified top secret to this day. Why? Perhaps he was still getting $$ from the United States, which places him on the payroll. That money trail leads to figures, many of whom were murdered, that would have blown the story wide open. For 14 years, most didn't know this.
The HSCA investigations by congress went against the findings of the Warren Commission and both reports are from the same source, Congressional Committees.
Which is true? Why do we only teach one to our children in school?
VIDEO

2. 1919 World Series Conspiracy

The 1919 World Series (often referred to as the Black Sox Scandal) resulted in the most famous scandal in baseball history.
Eight players from the Chicago White Sox (nicknamed the Black Sox) were accused of throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds. Details of the scandal remain controversial, and the extent to which each player was involved varied.
It was, however, front-page news across the country when the story was uncovered late in the 1920 season, and despite being acquitted of criminal charges (throwing baseball games was technically not a crime), the eight players were banned from organized baseball (i.e. the leagues subject to the National Agreement) for life.
There are hundreds of other conspiracies involving throwing games, sporting matches and large scale entertainment events. It is common knowledge for many, this list would have to go into the thousands if we included all of them.

3.Karen Silkwood

Karen was an American labor union activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood's job was making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods.
After being hired at Kerr-McGee, Silkwood joined the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union local and took part in a strike at the plant. After the strike ended, she was elected to the union's bargaining committee and assigned to investigate health and safety issues.
She discovered what she believed to be numerous violations of health regulations, including exposure of workers to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment and improper storage of samples. She also believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities could increase the risk of employee contamination.
In the summer of 1974, Silkwood testified to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about these issues, alleging that safety standards had slipped because of a production speedup which resulted in employees being given tasks for which they were poorly trained. She also alleged that Kerr-McGee employees handled the fuel rods improperly and that the company falsified inspection records.
On November 5, 1974, Silkwood performed a routine self-check and found almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. Oddly, though there was plutonium on the exterior surfaces (the ones she touched) of the gloves she had been using, the gloves did not have any holes.
This suggests the contamination did not come from inside the glove box, but from some other source, in other words, someone was trying to poison her.
The next morning, as she headed to a union negotiation meeting, she again tested positive for plutonium. This was surprising because she had only performed paperwork duties that morning. She was given a more intense decontamination. The following day, November 7, 1974, as she entered the plant, she was found to be dangerously contaminated - even expelling contaminated air from her lungs.
A health physics team accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces - especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator.
The house was later stripped and decontaminated. Silkwood, her partner and housemate were sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of the contamination in their bodies. Later that evening, Silkwood's body was found in her car, which had run off the road and struck a culvert. The car contained no documents.
She was pronounced dead at the scene from a "classic, one-car sleeping-driver accident".

4. CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas

August 23, 1987, in a rural community just south of Little Rock, police officers murdered two teenage boys because they witnessed a police-protected drug drop. The drop was part of a drug smuggling operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas.
The Mena operation was set up in the early 1980's by the notorious drug smuggler, Barry Seal. Facing prison after a drug conviction in Florida, Seal flew to Washington, D.C., where he put together a deal that allowed him to avoid prison by becoming an informant for the government.
As a government informant against drug smugglers, Seal testified he worked for the CIA and the DEA. In one federal court case, he testified that his income from March 1984 to August 1985, was between $700,000 and $800,000. This period was AFTER making his deal with the government.
Seal testified that nearly $600,000 of this came from smuggling drugs while working for - and with the permission of the DEA. In addition to his duties as an informant, Seal was used by CIA operatives to help finance the Nicaraguan Contras. The CIA connection to the Mena operation was undeniable when a cargo plane given to Seal by the CIA was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of weapons.
In spite of the evidence, every investigator who has tried to expose the crimes of Mena has been professionally destroyed, and those involved in drug smuggling operations have received continued protection from state and federal authorities.
February 20, 1986 report on Mena Drug Smuggling: VIDEO DELETED

5. Bohemian Grove

For years, many conspiracy theorists were saying that the rich and powerful met every year in the woods and worshiped a giant stone owl in an occult fashion.
It turns out, ABC, CBS, NBC, and many other credible news agencies investigated this and found out, its true. It is said to be just all fun and games, like brotherhood style fraternity stuff.
These clips can be viewed here.

6. Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Office of Strategic Services, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency recruitment of German scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S. after VE Day.
President Truman authorized Operation Paperclip in August 1945; however he expressly ordered that anyone found "to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism" would be excluded.
These included Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph and Hubertus Strughold, who were all officially on record as Nazis and listed as a "menace to the security of the Allied Forces." All were cleared to work in the U.S. after having their backgrounds "bleached" by the military; false employment histories were provided, and their previous Nazi affiliations were expunged from the record.
The paperclips that secured newly-minted background details to their personnel files gave the operation its name.

7. The Round Table

British businessman Cecil Rhodes advocated the British Empire re-annexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an "Imperial Federation" to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace.
In his first will, of 1877, written at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society of the Elect) that would advance this goal:

“To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.”

In his later wills, a more mature Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees.
Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the University of Oxford.
Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies.
To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book The Commonwealth of God, began advocating for the creation of an imperial federation that eventually re-annexes the U.S., which would be presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support.
The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949 but it would only be a free association of independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner and Curtis.
The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States in the interwar period.
Originally envisioned as a British-American group of scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers and international lawyers organized in June 1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state, Elihu Root, that became the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the council’s projects was a quarterly journal launched in September 1922, called Foreign Affairs.
Some believe that the Council on Foreign Relations is a front organization for the Round Table as a tool of the "Anglo-American Establishment", which they believe has been plotting from 1900 on to rule the world.
The research findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (Cleon Skousen) and New Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though he argued that the Establishment is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis. Today it is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition.
Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly.
American banker David Rockefeller joined the Council on Foreign Relations as its youngest-ever director in 1949 and subsequently became chairman of the board from 1970 to 1985; today he serves as honorary chairman.
In 2002, Rockefeller authored his autobiography Memoirs wherein, on page 405, he wrote:

“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents... to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions.

Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will.
If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of "conspiracy" or "treason") and partly serious - the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe, and Japan, for example - an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party when there was an internationalist wing.
However, the statement is taken at face value and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations (itself alleged to be a front for an "international banking cabal", as well as, it is claimed, the sponsor of many "globalist" think tanks such as the Trilateral Commission) uses its role as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them into supporting a New World Order.
Conspiracy theorists fear that the international bankers of financial capitalism are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements with the intent to,

“create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole”.

In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller countered:

“I don't think that I really feel that we need a world government. We need governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can't imagine that there would be any likelihood or even that it would be desirable to have a single government elected by the people of the world...

There have been people, ever since I've had any kind of position in the world, who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crackpots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't true, and won't be true, and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible.”
Some American social critics, such as Laurence H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign Relations is an "imperial brain trust", which has, for decades, played a central behind-the-scenes role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices for the post-WWII international order and the Cold War, by determining what options show up on the agenda and what options do not even make it to the table; while others, such as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in fact a mere policy discussion forum, which provides the business input to U.S. foreign policy planning.
The latter argue that it has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for secret plans to be kept within the group; all the council does is sponsor discussion groups, debates and speakers; and as far as being secretive, it issues annual reports and allows access to its historical archives.

8. The Illuminati

The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age secret society founded on May 1st, 1776, in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Adam Weishaupt, who was the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt.
The movement consisted of freethinkers, secularists, liberals, republicans and pro-feminists, recruited in the Masonic Lodges of Germany, who sought to promote perfectionism through mystery schools.
As a result, in 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken and suppressed by the government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his campaign to neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow the monarchy and state religion.
In the late 18th century, reactionary conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist John Robison and French Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati survived their suppression and became the masterminds behind the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
The Illuminati were accused of being enlightened absolutists who were attempting to secretly orchestrate a world revolution in order to globalize the most radical ideals of the Enlightenment: anti-clericalism, anti-monarchism, and anti-patriarchalism. During the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy was a real concern of European ruling classes, and their oppressive reactions to this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very revolutions they sought to prevent.
Although many say that the Illuminati was disbanded and destroyed so long ago, it is well known that the Rothschild dynasty following the family’s involvement in the secret order in Bavaria received much attention for its major takeover of Europe’s central banks.
The Rothschild dynasty owns roughly half of the world’s wealth and evidence suggests it has funded both sides of major wars, including the United States Civil War.

9. The Trilateral Commission

The Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan.
It was founded in July 1973 at the initiative of David Rockefeller, who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In July 1972, Rockefeller called his first meeting, which was held at Rockefeller's Pocantico compound in New York's Hudson Valley. It was attended by about 250 individuals who were carefully selected and screened by Rockefeller and represented the very elite of finance and industry.
Its first executive committee meeting was held in Tokyo in October 1973. The Trilateral Commission was officially initiated, holding biannual meetings.
A Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, presented at the 1975 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, called An Outline for Remaking World Trade and Finance, said:

"Close Trilateral cooperation in keeping the peace, in managing the world economy, and in fostering economic development and in alleviating world poverty, will improve the chances of a smooth and peaceful evolution of the global system."

Another Commission document read:

"The overriding goal is to make the world safe for interdependence by protecting the benefits which it provides for each country against external and internal threats which will constantly emerge from those willing to pay a price for more national autonomy.

This may sometimes require slowing the pace at which interdependence proceeds, and checking some aspects of it. More frequently however, it will call for checking the intrusion of national government into the international exchange of both economic and non-economic goods."

March 29, 1981 News Clip on Trilateral Commission:
vid
May 2, 1995 News Clip on Trilateral Commission:
vid

The Junius Theory - & How Hays Could Crack The Case

(NB: for those who think ‘spoiler’ doesn’t go far enough - this post contains a theory about the role of an actor listed in the final 2 episodes on imdb - based only on his character name, previous roles & real-life physical appearance. In other words - ***IMDB Spoiler***)
Will Purcell is found dead, placed in the pose of his communion photo (taken by a Priest from St Michael’s Church of the Ozarks), and with straw dolls found leading to the scene (made by Patty Faber of the same church). Patty says that she sold these dolls to a black man with a filmy eye, these dolls were given to the children by two ghosts at Halloween, and the Priest says Julie was excited about seeing her Aunt (she has none).

The children had been lying to their parents about a secret playspot where they played Dungeons & Dragons, & had been given a bunch of new-ass toys - some of which had a third party's fingerprints on. Several statements place a white woman, a black man with a filmy eye/scarring, and an ‘upscale’ brown Sedan near to the playspot, murder scene & devil’s den in the months leading to and night of the murder.

Sam Whitehead says many black men sustained injuries whilst working on the chicken line. Lucy Purcell worked on the chicken line for Hoyt - who’s daughter (let's call her Heiress Hoyt) lost her child. This black man - let’s call him Junius (similar to the Latin 'juvenis', meaning 'young'/'children') - and let's say he looks exactly like this (actor Steven Williams, decent body of work, listed by imdb as cast as Junius for the final two episodes https://www.reddit.com/TrueDetective/comments/al6hkc/this_who_we_lookin_for_ppl/) could have sustained a facial & optical injury working on the chicken line, but his attitude/behaviour in his dealings with Hoyt in subsequent compensation conversations impressed the Hoyts, & maybe he ends up getting a much better job within the organisation, as an aide to Heiress Hoyt, say. Maybe he's romantically intertwined with the Heiress, I dunno. He buys himself a fancy brown Sedan once he's in his new role. Anyway, he's her right hand man, & following the loss of her child, Junius is directed to begin scouting children that the Heiress can Angelina Jolie (adopt/give a better life) to replace the one she lost.
Junius knows Lucy from the chicken line, her lifestyle & negative feelings towards her marriage and motherhood. He also suspects abuse within the home, given the way she talks (perhaps he even witnesses her beating her kids after work sometime). He works Lucy Purcell, & he is the conduit putting her & the Heiress in contact with eachother. He could have gotten photos for the Heiress of Julie & Will (communion photo) either from Lucy or from the Church that he bought the straw dolls, whilst scouting for new children (he bought lots of dolls 'for his nieces and nephews', says Patty Faber).
Lucy arranges meetings between the children & the Heiress with Junius supervising. Lucy tells the children not to tell their father about the meets. The Heiress falls in love with Julie. Sure, she could go down the adoption route for any child she liked. But this is the child that she wants. And the heady combo of being a millionaire spoilt brat who never hears the word 'No', & the mental health issues that come with losing a child & wanting *THIS* child to replace the one she lost is too great. Those around her have to make it work. She runs her plan past her father, Hoyt Sr, and he is livid. He pours cold water on it right away. Terrible idea. Warns her not to entertain it. But the Heiress doesn't care. She's got her heart set on Julie now. The Heiress directs Junius to arrange for Lucy to part with Julie for a fee (this cannot be done legally because Tom would not agree to it) and to set up Julie with a new identity. She waits for Hoyt Sr to be out of the country, on safari in Africa, before she snaps her plan into action.

Lucy is drawn in by the money, being able offload the motherhood responsibilities she never really wanted, and is comforted by the knowledge that Julie will go on to lead a better life (“children shud laugh”). Julie wasn't planned, she never wanted more kids, & at least now Julie can go on & experience tons of shit that she never would have growing up at Shoepick Lane (Shoepick?/Choupique? Choupique is caviar, right? The valuable offspring of mudfish/swamp trout? Damn, I need to crack a window up in here..). It's for the best. She gets paid, and Julie gets better. And fuck Tom, he, in all likelihood, isn't Julie's baby Daddy anyway (the Purcell grandparents allude to as much at the funeral, saying Tom was welding offshore in Texas when Julie was conceived). That's how Lucy feels about it. Maybe she says as much to the Heiress. Maybe not. But when the Heiress learns this, she begins to tell Julie that her parents aren't her parents, that SHE in actual fact is her real parent, and that Julie will be going somewhere not only better, but her TRUE home. Julie is now onboard. She's an aristocrat, and going home! The Heiress' mental health continues to decline. In her trauma, her lost daughter and Julie are now beginning to merge into one in her mind. She's losing the ability to distinguish between the two.

The children did not know that Nov 7th, 1980 would be their last day together, that their mother has sold one of them, as they cycle off to the meet spot. Maybe Will wasn't even supposed to go this time, but he goes out of protective instinct for his sister. When they realise what’s happening, they reject it. Will defends his sister, and distracts the adults, telling his sister to scatter & hide - he’ll find her later using his scouting ability (Hays in 1980 "you can imagine that little boy looking out for his sister. He was trying to defend her. That's what happened to him"). She flees on her bike. Will breaks free and cycles off in the opposite direction, forcing Hoyt & Junius to chase one or the other. They ignore Will, and pursue Julie. She's the target (West in 1980 - "they never wanted the boy"). After some time, thinking the danger has passed, Will tries to find his sister, asking Freddie Burns at Devil’s Den if he’s seen her. But Freddie chases him off. He runs back into the woods and back into Junius & the Heiress, who have found Julie and are taking her away. He tries to stop them taking her, and gives them little choice if they want their plan to succeed. During the struggle he is killed. To placate Julie, they place him in the cave in his communion pose (this is the Heiress' crazy way of trying to suppress Julie's screams & also convince her that her new Mom is compassionate, everything'll be okay) before marking the spot with straw dolls from his bag and leaving with Julie. They drive off, away from Devil's Den, in Junius' fancy brown Sedan.

On the way out of Arkansas, Junius contacts his cop on the Hoyt payroll and tells him to get on-scene to make sure he's in a position to tamper with any canvassing of neighbours or potential witnesses in the area. He’ll get a great job out of this off the Hoyts in the private sector, he’ll make sure if that. Sure enough, all mentions of a brown Sedan driving around, away from Devil’s Den, a black man with a filmy eye/scarring, by several neighbours are not included in field reports. The farmer was also interviewed by a white man with a badge immediately after the abduction, but this was not submitted either. The Hoyt Cop does his job well, & Hoyt’s Ozark Children's Outreach Centre charity disrupts the investigation with the reward, flooding the task force with bogus tips (Hoyt Sr knows nothing of this in Africa - he's left his corporation in the trusty stewardship of the Heiress, who makes the most of his resources while he’s gone). Finally, Junius completes the picture by passing evidence to the Hoyt Cop to plant on the Wrongfully Convicted Man - closing the case in 1980. Shortly after, the Hoyt Cop leaves the force & begins his six-figure salary job.

When Lucy realises what's happened to Will, that something terrible and unplanned has happened, she loses it. Her initial reaction is to blame & hit Tom ("All you had to do was watch HIM"). Although Will's death was unplanned, Lucy knows she's out of options. She has no choice. She has to stay silent. Telling the truth would result in either her murder or her imprisonment for child trafficking. After all, she played a part in this too. Junius calls her to underscore this warning. Later, seeing Tom's anguish, Lucy sends a ham-fisted note to her own home to inform the task force & her husband that Julie has not been harmed. The FBI agent even says ”the envelope’s handwritten, this isn’t a brainiac”. Lucy stays silent, and descends into alcoholism & despair. Out of guilt, she later commits suicide in Vegas, where she spends the last of the money the Heiress gave her (Sharon Stone in Casino-style). Prior to her death, hearing of her addiction (or that she was throwing around a lot of loose cash), her cousin, Dan O'Brien, visits her under pretence of caring for her welfare. Lucy tells Dan what she did before offing herself. Or maybe she didn't off herself. Maybe Dan's just a greedy fuck who sees the money Lucy's carrying, how she's suicidal, and sees the win-win. He spikes her needle with a hot shot, takes the money, & goes to find Junius to extort the Heiress for more. He's just as stupid & greedy as Lucy was. Junius brutally silences him, dumping his body, broken in a hundred places, in a quarry in Missouri.

Julie never accepts her new family after witnessing Will's death, and as soon as she is able, she flees, seeing her only choice as living as a homeless kid on the street (in 2015, Hays foggily recollects “in 90 I found the video footage, we learned about Julie Purcell, that group of street kids”). Approaching the authorities is not an option for her, as they would simply return her to the family she believes beat & sold her (she doesn’t yet know her mother is dead, believes Tom isn't her birth Daddy; & the peephole wasn’t a peephole, the children would pass messages to one another when Lucy would beat them). The Heiress despatches Junius & his mercenaries to hunt Julie down in 1990. Junius knows they can’t convince Julie to return to her new home - they just have to silence her. Hays was right, the clock is ticking - they need to find her first. And they don't.

In Episode 2, a website Elisa Montgomery shows Hays in 2015 is titled ‘The Purcell Murders’ - plural. Sadly, I think the Heiress' people get to Julie first. Her murder in 1990 causes her father, Tom, to commit suicide, devastating West. Or maybe the task force does find Julie, and returns her to Tom. Maybe Roland is real happy with himself, & promises Tom 'everything's gonna be OK from now on, buddy'. But right before she has a chance to settle in, be rehabilitated, & talk to the police about what happened to her & Will, Junius finds her & kills her. Either way, the end result is Julie is dead, & Tom takes his own life - and Roland is crushed with anguish. The Heiress' mental health completely implodes. West & Hays are pressured to withhold any evidence that does not support the conviction of the Wrongfully Convicted Man, and Hays, insisting they pursue the 'black man with scarring & white woman' is forced out for his insubordination. West knows Hays is right, but goes about things differently. He's a more sophisticated political beast, and doesn't have quite as big a mouth. He knows they'd need police resources to solve this case. So he bites his tongue, plays along with the Attorney General's request, and watches as his buddy gets canned. The case is closed, and it would appear that up to 2015, the Heiress' conspiracy to abduct Julie, which resulted in the murders of both Will & Julie, has not yet been publicly exposed.

My theory is that Hays continues to pursue the case in 90. Off the force, he will need all the investigatory help that he can get from Roland & Amelia to go rogue as a true detective and solve the case - just like Rust needed Marty. West is a careerist, but privately devastated at what happened to Tom Purcell, a man he steered from suicidal depression back to functioning sobriety only to lose him because they were too slow in getting to Julie first (or failing to protect her adequately once they did). He is onboard all the way. He owes Tom for what happened to him & his kids. He, like Marty in S1, 'has a debt', and just like Marty, he will bring police resources into play on the DL to repay that debt.

So - what ways can they go to crack the case wide open? :
- Option 1: Find Junius. Get that list of all work-related injuries sustained at the Hoyt plant by African-Americans. Check their vehicles, fingerprint all of them by open or clandestine means, and correspond fingerprints to those found on the children’s toys (requiring West's police access). This should give them a hit on Junius, who will give them the Heiress, who will give them what happened to Julie & Will.
- Option 2: Find The Hoyt Cop. Rundown all the police who worked canvassing during the ’80 investigation. Locate all the neighbours, which ones feel their statements were either redacted or suppressed, and whose signature is on them? Where are those cops now, what did they do, who left the police during or after the investigation, and who has links to Hoyt? Who came into money during or just after 1980? Who made large purchases, home, car during or after 1980? The evidence that was planted on the Wrongfully Convicted Man - who found it? Who processed it? Whose signatures are on the scene? West can provide that information. Once you got a list, take that damn photo array to the farmer. Have him ID the cop who visited him. This should give them the hit on the Hoyt Cop, who will give them Junius & the Heiress.
- Option 3: ID The Sender of the Letter. Compare family handwriting samples with the envelope handwriting the letter was sent in. West would need to supply this. This would give them Lucy, but she is dead, and so can't be compelled to talk. But at least now they know that this wasn't an abduction. This was child trafficking. Which gives them Option 4.
- Option 4: Follow The Money. Investigate Lucy’s finances. Child trafficking is highly profitable. If there was a transaction, the money must be somewhere, & come from someplace. Although, it would be difficult for West to investigate this without attracting the attention & fury of his superiors.

The only route here that protects West while still using his police resources without his superiors noticing is for Hays & West to pursue the Hoyt Cop (probably now an ex-cop, in a better paid role - similar to Junius, thanks to the Heiress). I think they find him (this is the guy - https://www.reddit.com/TrueDetective/comments/alk2ml/theory_the_suited_manwhat_hays_left_in_the_woods/), and beat him heavily for information. The ex-cop gives them Junius - everything he did, killing Will, snatching Julie, interfering with the investigation, and having Julie killed... But he senses he won’t make it out of this interrogation.. He makes a move, & tries to grab Roland's gun. Hays draws quickly & guns him down. This wasn't part of the plan. They're murderers now. The Hoyt Cop joins the Vietcong in Hays' 2015 hallucination of all the men he has killed. But now they gotta make this look right. They bury the Hoyt Cop deep in the woods (he is who Hays' 2015 hallucination of Amelia is referring to when she taunts him about what he ‘left in the woods’) before burning their clothes (that's what he's burning in the BBQ in the 'coming soon in the weeks ahead' trailer). This changes everything. They know who they're after now. But they killed their way getting there. There's no going back.

They track down Junius, and Roland needs no invitation to deal with him. "You had the last one, Purple. This one's all mine..." He looks at Hays. "For Tom." Hays watches as Roland brutally beats & tortures Junius. Finally satisfied, Roland pulls out his gun and takes aim at Junius' head. But before he can execute him, a familiar hand pushes his arm down once more. "Don’t. Wait a minute. I want to know the whole story" says Hays. "Tell me why. What was all this for, a paedophile ring? A trafficking ring? Who's running the show? How many other girls are out there?" Junius says it was neither. It was all about Julie. He tells about the Heiress, her lost child, her trauma, how he tried to get her to go down the adoption route, but once she met Julie, it was all about her. And Lucy agreed to it. She got paid. It was win-win-win: a willing mother's pain soothed, an unwilling mother's burden lifted, & a better life for a little girl. Or at least, that was the plan. But Will wasn't supposed to be there. It wasn't supposed to go down like that. And once Julie fled the nest, having witnessed that, they could never let her talk. He never really had a choice. Hays is rocked. But Roland is unmoved. Still focused. "We done here, Purple?" Hays nods, and moves aside, stunned by this revelation. Roland puts a bullet in Junius' good eye. "Now they match, motherfucker." He goes to spit on Junius in his vengeful rage, but Hays pulls him off. “DNA.... DNA, man! C’mon! Get yourself together.”

This leaves only the Heiress. They track her down to the castle-type home drawn in Julie's pictures. But when they finally catch up to her, they look at each other, stunned. She's now almost completely vegetative in her mental collapse. Hays shakes his head. No, man. We can't do this. Let's just do this legit. Put all what we got so far on the table and send her ass to jail. Roland darkens. He can't believe what he's hearing. He shakes his head. "Im sorry partner, but u whistlin’ Dixie on this. Think. Think! Think on what she done. Will! Julie! Tom! A whole entire family. Wiped out like a turkey grease spot. Because of this person. This woman. Now, she got to pay. And even if we got all our evidence admitted in court, we'd surely go down with it....... Junius? The Hoyt Cop? We'd be in the jail cell right next to hers. Except she ain't going to jail, son. When Daddy Hoyt gets wind of this shit, he's gonna spend every last million he has getting his daughter off the hook. She's crazy, your honour. Diminished capacity. She never done nothing, your honour, she was just rambling crazy! They’ll put as much of it as they can on Junius. Best case scenario, she eats the manslaughter wrap, cushy psychiatric discharge to a mental facility. She'll live out her last days in pretty much the same way she doing now. Comfortable. Warm bed. TV. Regular nappy changes. Visits from family whenever she wants. Don't you see? Don’t you SEE? Whether she eats the conviction or not, her life won't change. It won't make a difference. She won't pay for what she done. And to let her skate, after doing what she done? No. We got no choice. We got to put her down for real. For good."
But Hays believes in a fair kill. He hunts boar because if you miss, they can kill you too. He'll only hunt deer with a bow - & never with bait or using a stand. He'll only pull the trigger when shot at. He killed the Hoyt cop because he drew him down first, and he killed in Vietnam because they were shooting at him. No. This ain’t him. They've gone all the way, done so much in this case together, but this, he can't do. The Heiress is defenceless. It’s not a fair kill. Hays puts a hand on Roland’s shoulder. “I'm sorry, partner." Hays walks away as Roland takes a deep breath, & puts his leather gloves on. He takes long, shaky, multiple swigs from his hip flask. And then he murders the Heiress.

The Heiress doesn't appear in Hays 2015 vision of all the people he killed, because he put it on Roland. That ends their friendship in '91. Hays can't look at him anymore - and Roland can't look at himself. Roland hits the bottle big time. He's glad he got Junius for Tom. He had to do that. But murdering a woman with your own hands? That's not him. But now, it is him. This was something he never thought would be in his life. And now he can’t shake it. There’s no one he can talk to about it. He'll never forgive Hays for putting all that weight on him. His drinking collapses his relationships. His girlfriend doesn't understand why he's lit all hours of the day, always angry, always tense, or won't talk about it. The nail in the coffin of their relationship comes when State Attorney General Kindt figures out that Roland's been pursuing a closed case.
Kindt walks into West’s office & closes the door. Roland looks weathered, still wearing his hangover, but lights up when he sees a real friend for a change. “Mornin’ Sir”... Until he sees the look on Kindt’s face. “Take a seat, West.” "You were given strict orders Lieutenant West. Your remit was to lead a task force supporting the conviction of the Wrongfully Convicted Man. The murder of Julie Purcell closed that case. Now, Hays wanted to go off all half-cocked and pursue 'a black man with scarring', was it? And start running down former cops from '80? He wanted to go off running his own detail unsupervised. So he got canned. And lookie here, in the news. A black man with scarring found shot up. And a former cop from '80 is reported missing by his family. Now, I'm not saying it's you, West, but there's no way Hays could have done this without access........ I sure liked you....... But you're done. Turn in your badge and gun by the end of the day." Kindt gets up to leave, before turning around. "But because I liked you, I'll be fair. Drop on your sword. If you resign today, and you keep your mouth shut about all of this? You can keep the pension. Your good name. Your freedom. Or we can go that other way. I'll make sure you end up in the same cell as half the men you put away. You ever hear what happens to cops in prison?...............Yeah.......... Good day to you...... Mr West.” West knows this is checkmate. He's toast. He got no moves here. He is constructively canned, and walks into his home to tell his girlfriend he just lost his job. They don't last long after that. West lives alone with his demons, bitter & haunted, into old age.

24 years pass.

By 2015, Hays has been robbed of his memory of these events by his dementia. Hays does not solve the case in 2015. He simply figures out that he already done solved it in 1990! Maybe, with his condition, this isn't the first time he's gone through this process. He's trapped in a locked room. Having the same dream. Again. And again. And again. Time is a flat circle for him now. 2015 Roland knows this. He sees his friend's condition. He just doesn't wanna go back into that head place. Maybe this is the first time Hays has approached him about this, maybe it's the 10th time. But Roland don't wanna know, don't wanna go back there. The bleakest time of his life. He smoked his own career to make that shit right. But the murders they done. Tom's suicide. Their failure to protect Julie, breaking his promises to Tom, all whilst he was steering the task force. And the murder of a woman (the Heiress) by his hand. All that pain, death & anguish. "Nah, man. I don't wanna think about that shit or eat no boar meat, man. Motherfucker. Just get me two fingers of Southern Comfort."

The purpose of the 2015 timeline is twofold: 1. to help Hays remember (maybe not for the first time, but for the final time) that he brought satisfactory closure to the case, and also to his life. Amelia is dead, & Roland won’t go beyond cryptic hints about what they done. But Hays’ visions of Amelia & interactions with Roland & Elisa help him finally piece together & remember what they did. He finally reads the closing chapter of his Wife’s book, which contains a warm & loving tribute to him, with hints that she knew exactly what he & West went through to bring justice to the children's killers. What it cost them. What it cost him. In their souls, their careers. Carried for life, like a weight. And that in the end, as a marriage, they did live a genuinely loving, loyal & happy life together. And now, satisfied in remembering that, Hays can take the handgun from his drawer and return peacefully to be with his wife ("I may be deciding I don't want to stay alive without your mother"), whilst also simultaneously tying up the one last loose end of the case....
The second purpose of the 2015 timeline is to blow the Hoyt corporation & the political careelegacy of State Attorney General Kindt into the ether, and overturn the conviction of the Wrongfully Convicted Man. This couldn't be done in the past, because in blowing the lid off this mess, Hays knew he would be exposing himself to a murder charge, & possible retribution from the Hoyt corporation. But in 2015, with the Hoyt family mostly deceased, and no death row awaiting him in the afterlife, Hays is comfortable blowing the lid off this godforsaken mess, giving Roland some sweet revenge on his old boss Kindt, & giving the Wrongfully Convicted Man's family the peace of mind they deserve. Because now that he has found peace of mind & closure, Hays realises that everybody deserves peace of mind & closure. And he wants to give it to them.
After Hays' funeral, his son, Henry, finds a note directing him to the dictaphone, which details from start to finish the real truth about the Heiress' child trafficking activity, Junius, the murders of Julie & Will, Lucy's complicity, the Hoyt cop, Kindt’s purposeful obstruction of justice.... and Henry gives it all to Elisa.

Elisa gets exactly what she wanted. True Criminal goes viral globally - Serial style - blowing the case wide open. Elisa obtains Sarah Koenig-style celebrity, but more importantly, this allows the Wrongfully Convicted Man's family to finally clear their father's name, with the reputation of the Hoyt corporation & the political career of State Attorney General Kindt blown to dust. Hays & West become folklore renegade heroes for their acts, just like Rust & Marty.

But Henry knows the details now shared could expose his father's old buddy Roland to a charge, despite his age. He owes that old man a visit, an explanation, maybe some modern legal advice on how to protect himself from the media & legal intrusion that's a-coming by pinning all the murders on his father, Wayne. He secretly loves that his father did that vigilante shit. He's happy for him to take the weight. Maybe Wayne already did put the weight on himself in the dictaphone message, maybe Henry taped over the bits that mentioned murder, but the media/law are still surely gonna come knocking for Roland at some point now, with questions. Cause this shit is worldwide. It's viral. Everybody’s gonna want a piece of Roland. They need to co-ordinate, he owes him that courtesy as a minimum.

The final shots of the season are of the family of the Wrongfully Convicted Man paying their private respects at the side-by-side graves of Wayne & Amelia Hays for salvaging their father's name (if the Wrongfully Convicted Man is Woodard, maybe it would be cool if they sung the Native American Warrior's Mourning Song with a solemn dignity, draping their father's Vietnam medals over Wayne's grave in respect https://youtu.be/uzf3bjyDNAY); and Henry Hays arriving at Roland West's home to give him the dictaphone, tell him what his Dad said, and co-ordinate.
As he arrives, Roland is hollering & hoo-eeeing with delight at his TV watching the news as the cuffs go on Gerald Kindt. They go outside & share a Soco dub on the porch in a knowing, satisfied silence. They look up, watching the big harvest moon. What it means to them. How before, it was just a reminder of the cold. Of all the pain. And now, how it floods everything with light. After some time, Roland glances at the dictaphone that Henry brought. Roland grins, looks toward the harvest moon, then, at peace with his past, finally, drawls "Y'know, sunnnn... The thing about yr Daddy.......... He always did have a big fuckin’ mouth". They laugh. Henry: "Yessir :) He sure did.. He sure did."
CREDITS.

Critic's Criticisms Part III: Length

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.
-Roger Ebert
The length of TLJ was the most common criticism by far, with 50% of RT Top Critic's citing it as a problem. Thus, this is the longest entry of this series, and possibly the last, unless I do a smaller part on niche issues. Previous parts cover Humor and Canto Bight.

The movie is overstuffed with plot, and by the time the visually intoxicating and eye-popping last showdown happens, it feels like a set piece that should have been saved for the next film. At a whopping two hours and 32 minutes, “The Last Jedi” overstays its welcome just a tad.

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service - Fresh

Writer-director Rian Johnson steps into the franchise fray and does a creditable, if uninspired, job. At about 2-1/2 hours, it’s a long sit.

Peter Rainer,Christian Science Monitor - Fresh

Rian Johnson delivers a film that’s a bit too long at 2½ hours

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Fresh

Does the movie, like its predecessor, rely on familiar tropes a bit more than it should? Yes, I think it does. Is it, at a solid two-and-a-half hours, considerably longer than it needed to be? Yes, that too.

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic - Fresh

It’s simply too long at two hours and 36 minutes – and sometimes too damn much. The screen is so crowded with character and incident that you might need a scorecard to keep up.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone - Fresh

The problem is that the narrative threads connecting them are lazily knitted and sometimes tangled or broken. The overall plot is underwhelming and there’s far too much padding, especially during the first hour. There’s a sense that Johnson is giving busy-work to certain characters while others are catching up. The Last Jedi is a great 105-minute movie stretched too thin.

James Berardinelli, ReelViews - Fresh

The midsection sags and, other than the heroes’ desperate attempts to survive, there’s no central story line to pull the various satellites of action in its wake. Some of the characters, like Captain Phasma, get frustratingly little screen time.You feel the 2½-hour length at points.

Ty Burr, Boston Globe - Fresh

The movie, though - at 152 minutes, easily the lengthiest in the series - drags in the middle, particularly when Rose and Finn go off on a complicated mission to disable an enemy tracking device. The subplot not only goes nowhere, it takes forever to do so, and makes me wonder if this new trilogy is going to have the same problem as the prequels - material for two terrific films stretched out over three.

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger - Fresh

The film’s paunchy middle section includes a trip to a casino that might better have ended up on the cutting-room floor. The unnecessary padding accounts for the 152-minute running time, a franchise record, which will test the patience (and bladders) of even the most devoted followers.

Peter Howell, Toronto Star - Fresh

Nor is its frankly excessive 152-minute running time. There is no excuse for a long, inessential stampede of runaway space horses that has zero value beyond the sheer "Ben-Hur" spectacle of the thing.

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune - Fresh

Johnson's many additions become too much of a good thing and The Last Jedi grows crowded, busy and long. Johnson's dialogue is flat and sounds stilted in the mouths of his younger actors, while their comic delivery can be so offhand that it dismisses the jokes.

Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail - Rotten

The film simply drags too much in the middle. Somewhere in the film’s 152-minute running time is an amazing 90-minute movie.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh

Johnson at times overreaches trying to balance these separate storylines and myriad of characters into one cohesive unit. Lupita Nyong’o has nothing to do in her glorified cameo appearance, while the Del Toro section fails to reach its potential. The result is a bloated running time of about 2 ½ hours — that includes about seven different points in which I was sure the movie was going to end only to see it continue to plow ahead. You always want your Star Wars films to move at light speed, not drag in the middle.

Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly - Fresh

At other points in the 152-minute film, time should have been compressed, and wasn’t. The storytelling bogs down in a middle section having to do with finding a code-cracker who can gain access to an enemy destroyer. (A dubious character played by Benicio Del Toro isn’t sufficiently amusing.) Kylo’s inner conflicts, while central to the plot, leave him looking awfully mopey for long periods of time as he struggles to resolve them.

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal - Fresh

With a running time of two and a half hours, “The Last Jedi” drags a bit in the second act. Ridley and Hamill are great together, but the Reluctant Jedi act plays on for at least one scene too many.

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times - Fresh

Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic — a process that chewed up and spat out helmers such as Colin Trevorrow, Gareth Edwards, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But Johnson was either strong enough or weak enough to adapt to such pressures, and the result is the longest and least essential chapter in the series.

Peter Debruge, Variety - Fresh

Unfortunately, The Last Jedi has almost as much Attack of the Clones as it does The Empire Strikes Back in that it’s overlong, under-edited and has at least one particularly long-winded CGI flurry of a sequence that harkens back to the darkest days of the franchise. There’s no whining about sand getting everywhere and the acting is really strong across the board (Hamill is particularly great back in Jedi robes, ham and all) but The Last Jedi could definitely have used a second editorial pass.

Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh

At 2 1/2 hours, Star Wars: The Last Jedi could have been tightened-up in the editing room, cutting out that bloated middle section and removing things like Maz Kanata’s cameo and the cute slave kids which feel like they dropped in from a totally different movie. When it works, it really works but when it doesn’t, it feels like bad fan-fiction with a million dollar budget.

Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh

I can only wonder what The Last Jedi might have been with Finn and Poe taking a backseat (like how the latter was absent for three-quarters of The Force Awakens) so thirty minutes could be cut and the “important” stuff made tighter. Because there is a great film within what’s ultimately a good one.

Jared Mobarak, BuffaloVibe - Fresh

Whereas the first half is a sort of a convoluted mess just for the sake to pad out the runtime especially with an inconsistent tone, "The Last Jedi" becomes a dark and exciting sequel that becomes the film you've been looking for by the 75-minute mark.

Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews, Fresh

the film is probably 10-15 minutes too long. Yes, Snoke (Andy Serkis) was not given near enough explanation and Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) was wasted.

Robert Daniels, 812filmreviews - Fresh

It's a two-and-a-half hour movie. It needs to be good in its own right, not just setting up for the next episode.

Tony Baker, Tony Baker Comedy - Rotten

Johnson ends up biting off more than he can chew. He's juggling too many storylines, and takes too long to move the narrative forward. Fatigue sets in about three-quarters of the way in. He doesn't heed the lesson of the chapter “Jedi” often resembles, “The Empire Strikes Back.” That film, still the best “Star Wars.,” ended with a whopper of a cliffhanger. Johnson resists the urge to leave most of his strands unresolved, and as a result his film begins to feel unwieldy when it should be picking up momentum. At two and a half hours, it could have used a trim of at least 15 minutes.

Ruben Rosario, MiamiArtZine - Fresh

but there are problems with the first half of "The Last Jedi." After an exciting initial space battle, to say that the mid-section of the movie drags would be an understatement. First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.

Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is also, at two hours and thirty-two minutes, the longest of the nine movies thus far, and deep into the second hour it can feel a little draining. There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.

Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh

At times it burns a tad too slow: two-thirds through its jam-packed 152 minutes, I felt the need for a 7th-inning stretch.

Michael Sragow, Film Comment Magazine - Fresh

Aunque este clímax habría funcionado bien como final, “The Last Jedi” no termina (desafortunadamente) después de esto. Es seguido por otros 40 minutos, con baches, en los que los héroes se reúnen y tienen que pelear una batalla final. Sin embargo, la película pierde un poco de su trazabilidad aquí, cuando los personajes, las fuerzas y las explosiones siempre aparecen exactamente donde se necesitan para la trama.

Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh

The movie’s main failing is that it tries to stuff too much plot into its over-long 2 hour and 30 minute run time. The result is an ending that feels endless and anti-climactic while several elements that could have been gob-smacking feel rushed and underdeveloped. It particularly does a disservice to Kylo Ren, as we’re never quite sure what his motivation is.

Megan Basham, WORLD - Fresh

I both loved it and strongly disliked it at the same time. I feel like there's a really great movie in there, all the pieces are there, everything is brilliant, but then there's a lot of extra fat that needed to be trimmed off or rearranged or omitted completely.

Steph Cozza, Aggressive Comix - Fresh

At two-and-a-half hours, with about nine separate cliffhanger endings, it’s a bit long

Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper - Fresh

If you can accept the excess, the weird humour, the entirely inessential subplot, and the fact that it could stand to end a scene earlier, then the series will continue to thrive in a galaxy far, far away.

Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh

The script is flabby; every scene has purpose, but certain aspects feel overlong and jarring. Just like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, it also suffers several endings too many.

Owen Richards, The Arts Desk - Fresh

At two and a half hours, this is the longest Star Wars picture to date, and I wondered if they’d tried to pack too much in.

Molly Laich, Missoula Independent - Fresh

I’m saying some of this movie seems a little half baked, and also overstuffed. If there’s any kind of movie I want to be over two and a half hours long, it’s a Star Wars movie. But, at that length, it needs to be a really good Star Wars movie, not a so-so one. The Last Jedi is so-so.

Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh

The Last Jedi has a few good ideas but these are utterly lost amidst an over-long and utterly unsatisfying overall plot. Replete with poor dialogue, irritating tonal shifts and superfluous scenes, The Last Jedi adds very little to the saga except an overwhelming sense of disappointment not felt since the release of The Phantom Menace.

Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten

It is more than 150 minutes long. It has too many plot twists and too much fighting and too many characters.

Mark R. Leeper, Mark Leeper's Reviews - Fresh

Many have complained or commented on the length of The Last Jedi. It did start to feel long towards the end, yet I don’t think it was due to the actual time stamp of the film. Instead, I believe it is because of the drawn out plots within the film itself. Many parts of the story are over showcased destroying the strength and believably in the plot.

Stephanie Archer, Film Inquiry - Fresh

This film did not need to be 152 minutes and should have been closer to the 120 minute standard established by the earlier films. I hope one day we’ll see a fan cut that is actually closer to two hours.

Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh

The Last Jedi is still overstuffed, slightly too long, reliant on some vaguely-defined powers, and mostly consists of an endless chase towards a shifting MacGuffin.

Vincent Mancini, FilmDrunk - Fresh

The Last Jedi is 50 fucking minutes too long, and the most excruciatingly boring movie that has ever been released in this franchise. And this is a franchise that once opened up a movie by talking about controversial tax legislation.

Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten

The Last Jedi has some issues. Pacing is the biggest one. This is the longest Star Wars film so far, and it feels like it. Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag.

Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh

While Luke leads the Force thread, the battle between good and evil, the rest feels a bit standard issue action film lurching through one, or two, too many cycles of near peril. This is in part down to writer-director Rian Johnson and also down to patchy leads.

Aine O'Connor, Sunday Independent (Ireland) - Fresh

Writedirector Rian Johnson’s movie is underwhelming. Where it falters is a story that borrows heavily from others in the franchise like The Empire Strikes Back. That I can live with, but I can’t live with unnecessary length. This is an overdone 2 1/2 hour movie that would have been a terrific 90-minute extravaganza.
The first hour drags. The predictable second hour is just as tedious in more spots than not before Johnson finally moves you to the even more predictable slam bang action of the last half-hour.

Gary Wolcott, Tri-City Herald - Fresh

At 152 minutes, The Last Jedi is the longest of the nine Star Wars films to date — it’s also the only one where the length is felt. While all the scenes involving younglings should have been deep-sixed, the rest of the fatty tissue can be forgiven, since it simply meant Johnson wanted to make sure fans were saturated and satisfied. Yet there aren’t many vignettes that couldn’t have benefited from a judicious trim here or there.

Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing(Charlotte) - Fresh

At 2 hours and 32 minutes, the longest ever in the series, there are lots of highlights and probably a few too many endings

Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily - Fresh

Despite the Rey-Luke drama, the first half of The Last Jedi is its most lumbering and uneven, never really clicking as it rambles through its multiple plotlines in a manner that feels simultaneously rushed and overlong.

James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk - Fresh

However, there are moments towards the end of the film that feel as though they are just a tad unnecessary, that the race to the finale is going on just a little too long.

Irene Falvey, Film Ireland Magazine - Fresh

So what's necessary to know about the 40th anniversary "Star Wars" is that, at two and a half hours, it's at least a half-hour too long (maybe 45 minutes) and it's overfull of the usual digital battle sequences which so many of us have come to consider a wee bit old hat in the decades since "Star Wars" introduced us to a new thing back in 1977.

Jeff Simon, Buffalo News - Fresh

Johnson has sorted all of this material into an elaborate roundelay that feels endless (the movie is way too long at two and a half hours). Surely sections of the film could have been trimmed—maybe the Laura Dern scenes, which cry out for compression, or the training sequences with Luke and Rey (in which he says things like "Reach out with your feelings").

Kurt Loder, Reason Online - Fresh

The film is long, however, and begins to feel more than a little labored by the time the various epic showdowns finally take place.

Piers Marchant, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - Rotten

A lot of “The Last Jedi” is engrossing and emotional—but there’s also the long runtime, uneven pacing, and slightly underdeveloped characters to deal with. “The Last Jedi” is often exceptional, but its desire to do too many things, tell too many stories, and continue expanding its own cast and narrative makes the film fundamentally imbalanced.

Roxana Hadadi, Chesapeake Family Magazine - Fresh

There is a great deal going on in The Last Jedi and the way it splits off the main characters into separate but intertwined stories makes for a long, over-plotted film that even starts to drag a little in the middle.

Allan Hunter, Daily Express (UK) - Fresh

A few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.

Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh

If “The Last Jedi” has a main flaw it’s that it’s too long at just over two-and-a-half hours. When the film is cross-cutting between the escape of the Resistance and the showdown with Snoke, one might assume this was the climax of the film. In fact, there’s much more to come.

Daniel M. Kimmel, New England Movies Weekly - Fresh

At 152 minutes, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" is too long, and could have been trimmed by at least 10-15 minutes.

David Kaplan, Kaplan vs. Kaplan - Fresh

Despite being overlong and drenched in déjà vu (replete with conversations about one’s parents, whether or not one will ‘turn’, whether one is the last hope or the new hope, etcetera etcetera) I appreciated a lot of The Last Jedi, in the same way I appreciate re-reading a decent book – respecting the structure and craft of it, and feeling no sense of surprise.

Luke Buckmaster, The Daily Review/Crikey - Rotten

At 152 minutes, “The Last Jedi” is probably 20 minutes too long yet never fails to entertain.

Maria Sciullo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Fresh

If some of these detours drag on a bit, hampering momentum and bulking up The Last Jedi’s not-entirely-necessary two-hour-and 32-minute runtime, well, at least the various locales are fun to look at.

Rebecca Pahle, Film Journal International - Fresh

a running time of 152 or so minutes that easily could have been tightened down quite a bit

Jim Judy, Screen It! - Fresh

While many complained – justifiably – that the previous entry, The Force Awakens, was nothing but a remake of 1977’s A New Hope, the same sort of narrative déjà vu is at play here, to a certain degree. Equally troublesome is Jedi’s bloated running time. Clocking in at 2 ½ hours, the movie seems longer than it actually is due to the fact we’re going over well-covered narrative territory.

Charles Koplinski, Illinois Times - Rotten

It’s too long by a good 30 minutes, feels like two films mashed together, has about five endings and it seems to be taking cues from the George R. R. Martin school of right-angled plot twists.

Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh

Overly long and consistently clunky, The Last Jedi ultimately proves a bit of a mixed bag. Too often the dialogue is exposition heavy and played for easy laughs.

Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh

The Last Jedi is overlong, heavy-handed and fun if mostly uninspired.

James Verniere, Boston Herald - Fresh

At 151 minutes, the film is overlong and repetition sets in, not just for this film but for the series in general

Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews - Fresh

The Last Jedi is the party that never wants to end. It keeps going and going – and going – until there is no corner of the house left to decorate. It pushes all the buttons. It is constantly in competition with itself (it comes with two huge ending sequences). It is also baggy in places, and that’s not something I’d expected.

Chris Wasser, The Herald (Ireland) - Fresh

At the same time, it does take a while for “Last Jedi” to get up to speed. Some of the humor feels a little distracting and the lengthy final product suggests a tighter execution might have felt more resonant.

Josh Terry, Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - Fresh

Or maybe it's just a case of "The Last Jedi" itself overstaying its welcome with a running time topping two and a half hours.

Greg Maki, Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) - Fresh

This is the longest Star Wars movie yet, clocking in at 150 minutes, and it has at least one ending too many, and a middle that sags a bit.

Rain Jokinen, MullingMovies.com - Fresh

We’ve seen this story before. Sure, “stuff” happens over the film’s 157-minutes but our main characters remain pretty much in the same place. You’d swear time stands still.

Dana Barbuto, The Patriot Ledger - Fresh

“The Last Jedi” is the longest of the “Star Wars” efforts (152 minutes) and feels it

Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com - Fresh

At 152 minutes, it’s also way too damn long. And Rian Johnson should not have been allowed to write and direct. The script is a problem — it has only two really great “moments” which isn’t enough for 152 minutes. But it also doesn’t feel quite right — the language, the iconography, the weirdly campy humor at the beginning — it doesn’t feel a part of the Star Wars universe.

Ray Greene, CineGods.com - Rotten

But the character moments and the explorations of moral ambiguity aren’t quite compelling enough to compensate for the slow pacing in the middle (one thing a Star Wars movie should never be is dull), and it takes too long to get to the most rousing action sequences.

Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly - Fresh

I don’t want to be too generous. I would cut 15 minutes out. There are editing choices that leave the film feeling choppy when it should feel smooth.

David Poland, Movie City News - Fresh

In truth, it takes a very long time to get from the film’s exhilarating start to that moving sign-off. Stars Wars: The Last Jedi lasts fully two-and-a-half hours, and there were moments towards the end when I felt like one of those poor Cubans listening to Fidel Castro at the height of his oratorical vigour: just as you’re planning your route to the exit, it lurches into yet another new lease of life.

Brian Viner, Daily Mail (UK) - Fresh

Editor Bob Ducsay moves the individual sequences along with dispatch; it isn’t his fault that at two-and-a-half hours the movie overstays its welcome. That’s the fault of Johnson’s decision to pile climax upon climax as if they were on sale at Screenplays-R-Us, apparently unwilling to jettison any of the ideas he’s had for propelling the story forward.

Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion - Fresh

Which leads into another problem I mentioned briefly earlier -- the pacing. Watching the first hour, I had the uncomfortable sense that maybe it needed trimming by about ten minutes or so, and that Rey's and Luke's story kept stalling and going in circles for a while. Then, the pacing in the last hour is so spot-on, it confirms all of those earlier feelings. Adding to the problem is the choice of starting point for the film. I realize kicking off with a more action-driven sequence has benefits, but it felt disorienting since we remember how the last film ended and probably want to pick up that thread first. It was an easy call, I feel, and the film's choice merely confirms my own sense that there was a better option.

Mark Hughes, Forbes - Fresh

The 2 hr and 30-minute runtime really hurt the film. I feel like there are just certain spots throughout the film where it just drags. It hard to pinpoint exactly when and where they occur on just one viewing but I was definitely bored at times.

Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment - Fresh

“The Last Jedi” suffers from “The Lord of the Rings” syndrome — it seems like it might never end. It also poaches scenes, ideas and moments from “Harry Potter,” “The Hunger Games” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

David Frese, Kansas City Star - Fresh

At 152 minutes, “The Last Jedi” runs long, with a bit too much time spent on Ahch-To. And Hamill — who shares the weathered, lion-like look of modern-day Robert Plant — turns in a true love-it-or-hate-it portrayal of an aged Skywalker.

Ross Raihala, St. Paul Pioneer Press - Fresh

At over two-and-a-half hours, the film had me reconsidering if I really needed a Finn v. Phasma fight, or a five-act structure. So consider the urgency. A wordsmith in his own right, Johnson seems to be dumbing himself down here for the sake of the brand. He manages to pose some of the most complex ideas on morality and war this franchise has ever attempted, but is forced to breeze through and cap them off with trite buzzwords.

Conor O'Donnell, The Film Stage - Fresh

The film is overlong at two and a half hours, and you may well catch yourself thinking “this could probably have been cut.”

Jonathan Hatfull, SciFiNow - Fresh

Yes, it’s probably half an hour too long. There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.

Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh

The middle section loses its shape and is subject to longueurs.

Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh

The Last Jedi is the longest Star wars movie, and it does feel like it. The third act is a beating drum of moments that each seem like they could be a satisfying climax.

Susana Polo, Polygon - Fresh

Where the film falters is in its pacing. Even jumping between three storylines, there’s a lack of momentum at times as no one is really going anywhere. The Resistance fleet is crawling away from the First Order; Rey is in a stalemate with Luke on Ahch-To; and obviously things aren’t a breeze on Canto Bight. And yet the dramatic tension of the first two storylines hold up intact. The fleet storyline plays like the excellent Battlestar Galactica episode “33” and everything is Ahch-To is great because Johnson is doing some fascinating things with the character dynamics between Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren. But the Canto Bight stuff is a bit of a drag, and then you feel it in final act of the film where, despite some amazing moments, you can’t shake the feeling that The Last Jedi is probably a bit too long even if it’s difficult to know what to cut.

Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh

There's a lot going on - too much. The film could have used a hard edit to lose about 20 minutes or more. Resistance ships explode and the fleet's fuel running low, but it doesn't keep us on the edges of our seats. Poe, Rey and Finn- the new heroes we're supposed to fall in love with - are uncharismatic and bland.

Julie Washington, Cleveland Plain Dealer - Fresh

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a long work of art that doesn't know when to quit

Scott Mendelson, Forbes - Fresh

If there's a problem, it's only that it's a little too long at two and a half hours (a first for the franchise), which might prove challenging for younger viewers. It turns out you can have too much of a good thing after all.

Matthew Turner, Hero Collector - Fresh

Tran is a rock-solid addition, but here, and elsewhere, one is reminded of the deftness of editing on both (yes, both) previous trilogies. Intercut sequences that moved swiftly in earlier films feel clumsy. Where once the passing of time was cannily implied yet compact on screen in, say, “Empire,” in “Last Jedi,” well ... you can fit a lot of movie into 152 minutes.

Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh

But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico.

Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten

Some tighter editing would have relieved most of my mid-movie tension — as well as my bladder concerns as “The Last Jedi” stretches to an unnecessarily long 151 minutes. If not for that spectacular final act, it would be tempting to refer to it as “The Lasts and Lasts and Lasts Jedi.”

Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh

The Last Jedi is a whopping two-and-a-half hours, and it would have been much improved if an editor had taken a lightsaber to its less crucial sections.
To cut a long story short (and I wish Johnson had cut his own long story short): if you’re getting bored halfway through The Last Jedi, hang on in there. Just when you think it’s about to end, it really gets going.

Nicholas Barber, BBC.com - Fresh

For the first half of a punishingly long film, we repeatedly cut back to Star Wars Island where Rey is begging Luke to train her as a Jedi.

Donald Clarke Irish Times Rotten

There are times, however, when the wow factor and compelling character beats give way to the feeling that Johnson lost the run of himself with the film's duration, and that the longest adventure in Star Wars history really didn't need that distinction.

Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh

Several characters remain underdeveloped, and appear as well dressed plot devices which contribute to an unevenness hard to justify in the 151 minutes running time.

Jon Lyus, HeyUGuys - Fresh

Even Johnson’s sense of fun and mischief can’t sustain the film for two-and-a-half hours; the warring gets boring. One scene is replayed three times with different interpretations but it’s hardly Rashomon and a movie this long can’t afford to dawdle. No one could mistake The Last Jedi for an outstanding contribution to cinema, or even to escapism, but it has its attractions.

Ryan Gilbey, New Statesman - Fresh
Indeed it does, Ryan. And that concludes part III. TL;DR:TLJ is TL.

True Detective Season 2 and the Tibetan Book of the Dead: part 2/3

https://www.reddit.com/TrueDetective/comments/6wlztq/true_detective_season_2_and_the_eastern_book_of/
Episode 2: Night Finds You
Episode 2 begins with a pseudo face-to-face between Frank and Jordon. During this particularly revealing exchange, Frank describes his fears that he died as a child, and that all of reality is trying to tell him so. From their exchange:
What if I’m still in that basement in the dark? What if I died there? That’s what that reminds me of...something’s trying to tell me that it’s all papier-mache. Something’s telling me to wake up, like… like I’m not real. Like I’m only dreaming.
Other relevant info from this exchange includes the importance of children to the couple, and some commentary on death.
Jordon: "You don't take anything with you." Frank: "Just yourself, whatever that was."
Following this is Woodrugh's enfoldment into the case, and then a brief meeting between Frank and Ray. During this meeting, Frank becomes angry when he realizes Ray considers him his best source of information for the case.
Later we witness Woodrugh and his mother's interactions in her trailer: this scene is oddly sexual, with Woodrugh's mother demonstrating inappropriate body language and comments to her son. A herpes-sore visible above her lip. This sequence might be another nod toward the maiden/mother dichotomy that plays throughout the season. His mother's multiple suggestions of his staying in his old room is possibly indicative of a return to the womb.
Afterward, Antigone and Ray visit a medical center ran by Dr. Pitlor. His nurses/aides all demonstrate a detached, Stepford wife-like demeanor. On his book shelf, Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope is visible: this book is out of character for the doctor, but its title is indicative of the fruitlessness of hope in the third Bardo. Further, a painting of a raven in a Native American style is visible near the door, and a distinctly vaginal geode is on his desk. In the dialogue between Antigone and the doctor, we learn that he knew her father when they both worked with a hippy commune known as "The Good People." Antigone comments that 2 of the kids from the commune are in jail, and 2 have committed suicide. This era would have aligned with Antigone's abduction and murder in the cave. "I left all that behind," she tells the doctor. "It was a fucked up place." This line points toward Antigone's unique ability, between the 4 mains, to reject the past and remove herself from it.
Following this is a discussion between Frank and the mayor, during which the latter describes his fears that his son is losing his mind. "I fear he is a destroyer," he says. This harkens to the archetypal relationship between son and father as described by Joseph Campbell, and is depicted in such stories such as Zeus and Cronus and, more recently, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker (George Lucas cited Campbell as an inspiration for Star Wars). The mayor goes on to state that "children are a disappointment." Later in the season, we learn about the mayor's death and his son's taking of the office, representing dharmic lineage through rebirth, similar to Ray's relationship with his ex-cop dad observed later in the season. Further, I might also suggest the element of the son destroying the father is also present in Frank and Osip's relationship, with Osip serving as proxy father.
In the next scene, Ray tells Antigone his theory on how the world works: "We get the world we deserve." This is the ultimate underlying concept of the third Bardo: an afterlife tailor-made to force us to relinquish who we were. Also notable in their exchange is Ray stating, "Bad habits: haven't lost one yet." This line helps to set up Ray's redemptive journey through the third Bardo.
Next, a scene between Woodrugh and his girlfriend demonstrates his character's biggest flaw: he has little individual identity outside of the roles placed on him by other people, and is driven by a misguided commitment to living up to those standards. "Who the @$#@ am I supposed to be?" he demands of her. "I don't know who you are supposed to be!" is all she can tell him. As she attempts to break off their relationship, Woodrugh tells her, "...this isn't me doing this. This isn't me."
Later in the episode, we observe Antigone on an escort-service website advertising "Naughty Cali Angels." Rather than demonstrating the expected disgust with the pornographic images, she appears engaged and fascinated. This a commentary on her own dharmic challenge, to attain a healthy sexuality and capacity for relationships. Recall the following quote from Jacob's Ladder (which, again, I'd contend was a major influence on season 2):
"If you're afraid of dying, and you're holdin' on, you'll see devils tearin' your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freein' you from the world."
The connection between this line and the "Naughty Cali Angels" might feel a bit weak, if not for the scene immediately following, where-in Woodrugh observes two gay men dressed only in briefs and angel-wings walking down the street. The intensity in his stare suggests tortured feelings, anger or frustration (recall an earlier scene, when he describes wanting to hit a guy at the bank for hitting on him). This was a clever touch, as we don't have any info on our initial watch at this point about Woodrugh's sexual preferences. It is only later in the season the Woodrugh is forced to meet his own nature face-to-face, which will ultimately culminate in his release from the third Bardo.
Speaking of face-to-face, the following scene is another with Frank and Ray in the bar. During their discussion, Ray makes it plain that he is suicidal in light of his loss of visitation rights with his son. "I got no reason to keep at this," he tells Frank. Still, he takes Frank's info and visits Caspere's second house. Prior to his getting shot-gunned to the chest, a copy of a book of photographs by Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki is visible. I'd like to think its Love and Death, or Self,Life,Death or some other thematically relevant title, but it might just be Tokyo Lucky Hole.
Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow
Rather than rehashing the beginning of episode 3, I'm just going to borrow some text from Ray's character description in part 1 of this analysis. Also, I'd suggest you review the description of the second Bardo in part 1 as well.
At the beginning of episode three, Ray is sitting at a table across from his father [face-to-face example]. In the background, a Conway Twitty impersonator sings "The Rose," a song about releasing fear and being reborn. His father foretells Ray's death in the final episode, "running through trees," until they "shoot you into pieces." As he describes this soon-to-be event, the lyrics sang in the background are:
It's a dream afraid of waking That never takes the chance/ It's the one who won't be taken Who can not seem to give/ And the soul afraid of dying That never learns to live.
"Where is this?" Ray asks his father. "I don't know," his father responds. "You were here first."
Ray then looks down, and sees his shotgun wounds.
This, in accordance to the working theory, is Ray's encounter with the second Bardo. It is already constructing the events that will move him toward release, but he is not ready accept his death. This results into a transition into the third Bardo, with him appearing to wake up on the floor with no apparent wound or serious injury. This series of events appears to be little more than a David Lynch homage with serious compromises to narrative integrity, unless considered in light of the Bardo Thodal. Video of this scene below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt67YwRx1T8
Following this scene, we get a look at Ray, laying in his urine on the floor of Caspere's second house. The camera angle allows a skewed look at his face: his complexion is ashy, pale, and corpse-like. We are given every suggestion he is dead, right up until he opens his eyes and says, "Pissed myself." This line has nothing to do with the Bardo theory, but it makes me laugh so I am including it.
We soon learn he was shot with riot shells containing rubber pellets. This is how he is still alive. Despite the fact that riot rounds are always billed as LESS LETHAL ammunition (those caps aren't mine: websites that sell these rounds frequently advertise them with that description in all-caps. Example: http://www.americanspecialtyammo.com/12-ga--less-lethal.html) Here's the deal: if you take one of these rounds in the chest from less than ten feet away without a vest (both of which apply to the first shot Ray takes) there is a very good chance you will die from impact trauma (including internal bleeding and heart-stoppage from force of shock). From point-blank range, which the second shot was from, you are all but guaranteed to die. At the least, the wound would be significant and totally unlike the bruising Ray demonstrates.
So are we to believe Pizzolatto didn't know this? That he would include Ray's shotgunning just for the point of an episode's cliffhanger followed by a Lynch homage, and then just explain it away with something as weak as, "Oh, they were just riot rounds, and none of that stuff (including his father foretelling his "true" death) meant a thing?
Alright folks: I'm going to be blunt. If you feel that way, watch it again, and consider how meticulous the violence and surrealism is. Remember that, regardless of your previous opinion of season 2, that it was written by the guy who gave us season 1. Really, really ask yourself if this is just something poorly written and underdeveloped, or if it had underlying (i.e., esoteric) significance that could radically change the course of the story without appearing to (as is the nature of the third Bardo experience). If you can't do that, than you may as well stop reading. I'm not going to be able to convince you. However, if you are still on the fence, keep going: lot's more evidence to come.
Next up is Frank and Jordan at the fertility clinic, and Frank is unable to provide sperm. This highlights not just his momentary impotence, but his larger impotence in the world: he is a hungry ghost who can never reach his desired status (legitimate businessman, father, wealthy). The third Bardo is not a place of progression or accomplishment: it is a place of release and surrender. "There is no part of my life not fraught with liver-dying importance," he tells Jordan.
At ~10:50, we get a face-to-face in the bar between Frank and Ray. Prior to Frank's arrival, Ray is giving a haunted look to the stage area in the bar, recognizing it as the scene of his second Bardo experience. Ray confronts Frank with his suspicion that he had been walked into an ambush, and that another ambush could be coming. Another notable touch is Ray switching to water: this is indicative of the beginning of his redemption journey, as he begins to attempt to master his vices. "Is Ray hurt? What happened?" the bartender asks Frank. "Somebody murdered him," Frank replies (another line that is either garbage or very meaningful...).
During Antigone and Woodrugh's visit to the mayor's house, we meet his trophy-wife. Her Russian accent pegs her as a prostitute/mail-order bride, which foreshadows the involvement of Russian underworld influences in Vinci's city government and upper-class. Fun moment: when the mayor's son denies knowing Caspere ("Some old man who worked with my Pops."), a howling wind blows open the door, scattering his step-mother's fashion cutouts. "No, no, no! Who left the door open?" she screams. Caspere, the friendly ghost, that's who. Watch it, see if you agree.
Man, now I gotta start looking for weird Caspere moments.
Anyway, in the next sequence we have Ray at the doctor's office. This is notable because it's sort of describes how he had been living, and allows him to express his redemptive desire to "change some things." As he exits, the doctor says, "Can I ask you something, Mr. Velcoro? Do you want to live?" Ray can't even respond. He stands there, mouth open, staring at his chest x-ray, haunted by what he can't admit yet.
Shortly thereafter we are given our first exposure to the blue diamonds. The most famous blue diamond in the world is the Hope diamond, and remember that "hope" is a bad word in the third Bardo. Incidentally, the Hope Diamond is notorious for being cursed. http://mentalfloss.com/article/19579/quick-10-10-victims-hope-diamond-curse
This abandonment of hope is further developed in the following sequence with Ray in the police chief's office: in the background is a poster of the familiar "Hang in there" kitten, but with the caption reading "Eat shit & die" instead. Ray definitely eats some here, though he is not ready to die.
In a later scene, we observe Ray and his father, an ex-cop and unpleasant man. As stated before, Ray carrying on with the family profession is indicative of dharmic lineage, which is further reinforced as Ray studies old family photos that span generations. By salvaging his father's badge from the trash while the old man decries the fallen state of police work, Ray makes another step toward his own redemption.
Next, we have another scene with Frank and Osip: the previously mentioned painting of the snake in the crocodile's mouth is again prominent in the background (see episode 1 analysis).
Following this is the revelation of Woodrugh's sexuality with his former military mate. "That stuff about the past...not denying it...letting it be a part of you..." his friend says, and describes Woodrugh's dharmic challenge. Still, Woodrugh does his best to hide that part of himself from himself, even to the point of pushing his friend down. However, in a scene occurring later in the episode (42:37), Woodrugh, while questioning prostitutes, observes a man dressed as an angel (recall the previous episode analysis) giving oral sex to another man. He makes the acquaintance of a male prostitute who provides him info.
Later, Ray's ex-wife stops by to tell him the state police have been by, asking questions about him. He is on borrowed time; the third Bardo is already collapsing around him.
During the episode's close, the song playing is "Intentional Injury" by Bonnie "Prince" Billy. It's first lyrics are: "In time you find your way to release..."
We having fun yet?
Episode 4: Down Will Come
The title of the episode likely comes from the nursery rhyme "Rock-a-bye-baby," and indicates calamity for our four mains. Early in the episode we witness Frank angry because his avocado trees won't grow, a metaphor for he and Jordan's inability to conceive (which, in a larger sense, is a metaphor for the impossibility of anything to thrive in the third Bardo). Jordan attempts to discuss their options for having kids, suggesting "alternate" options, specifically adoption. Frank doesn't like this idea, saying he doesn't want to take on another parent's "grief," and that, "They all come in with their own...don't you and I and every other hapless monkey on the planet? At least with your kid its your sins." This continues the established theme of children as figurative rebirth, and the idea of dharmic lineage passed from parent to child.
One of my favorite things about season 2 is the relationship between Frank and Jordan. She forgives him everything, and gently nudges him in the right direction. She is consistently portrayed as his equal in intelligence and ferocity. She is his true soulmate, his anima. This is a theme I will develop more in further analysis and edits to previous material, but this scene was warm enough for me to want to initiate discussion here.
A less functional relationship is presented in the next sequence, with Woodrugh waking up hungover (with plenty of beer bottles in evidence) and uncertain of his location. He learns that, while blackout drunk, he ran into his military mate the night before and went home with him. "You let yourself go, man," his mate tells him. "Be what you want. It ain't bad." But, as we are probably getting used to at this point, Woodrugh is unable to let go of his perceived identity. In the following scenes, as he tries to get back to his motorcycle, and is visibly horrified by his previous night's activities.
Woodrugh's motorcycle, it should be said, is an extension of his character, similar to a knight on his horse. He desires the simplicity and single-mindedness the life of a bike cop provides him: even when using it in a suicide attempt, it is a means of escape. When he arrives at the club, only to find his bike missing from its parking spot, he is nearly hysterical. As the reporters chase him with questions about atrocities committed by Black Mountain, the mercenary group he was a part of, a claustrophobic and nightmarish tone is created as Woodrugh is increasingly being brought face-to-face with who he is, and now without his bike to escape with.
Later in the episode, when Ray has picked Woodrugh up and they are driving, Ray tells him that after his experience with Black Mountain, "...everything else should be a cakewalk." Woodrugh, becoming upset, tells him this is not the case (implicitly stating how much the events of the last 12 hours have shaken him). He goes on to say, "I did everything they said: army, PD...but it doesn't matter. You do what they say, it doesn't matter. Been listening to them for so #$%#ing long that I don't even know who the #@$@ I am."
Ray: "You're a survivor. Everything else is just dust in your eyes. Blink it away man."
Woodrugh: "I don't know..."
This exchange hits a few of our themes: Woodrugh's reliance on other's for his sense of identity, the subsequent crumbling of that identity, as well as doubt regarding his "survivor" status...that final line seems to indicate his own doubts on that score.
Flash forward to about 23 minutes in, and we see Woodrugh's reaction to the revaluation that his girlfriend is pregnant. His reaction is confused, then excited. My suspicion is this is only Paul doing his usual thing: taking on a dutiful role to avoid having to be himself.
Next up is a visit to the Panticapaeum Institute with Ray and Antigone to visit her dad regarding info on Dr. Pitlor. During this visit, her father makes some interesting comments, telling Antigone she had an "old soul" from the start, and that Ray "must have had hundreds of lives." Ray responds with, "Well, I don't think I could handle another one." He also comments on Ray's aura, stating it is green and black. Google isn't giving me a good answer on this, but according to a quick survey of some websites, the consensus is that green is the color of the heart and lungs (the same area that Ray was shotgunned and fixated on during his visit to the doctor), while black is the color of grudges against self and others, as well as "past-life hurts." Perfectly possible Antigone's dad was spouting nonsense too.
Here's the thing though: later in the episode, during another Ray and Frank face-to-face at the bar, Frank comments that Ray's talents are being wasted and that, "Black rage goes a long way." Seems an odd line. I'd contend that the black in Ray's aura are his rage and destructiveness, while the green in it is the nurturing side we see with his son, as well as with Antigone and Woodrugh. Another line from this face-to-face from Frank: "Sometimes your worst self is your best self." This line causes visible conflict on Ray's face as he struggles with the correct course of action. Should he join up with Frank and go deeper into his worse self, or maintain on the redemptive road as a cop.
In the next scene, he seems to have made up his mind. We see him gift his father's badge to his son, telling him to look at it when he wants to remember him. "But it's grandfathers," his son says. "Yeah. My father, me, now you," Ray replies. Another reference to dharmic lineage.
Following this is are scenes with Frank and Jordan in the casino. At the end of this is a bit of foreshadowing: Jordan suggests she and Frank walk away from this. Frank asks if they walk away, "...what do we walk with." Jordan does not reply verbally, but takes his hand in a gesture of solidarity. This, I think relates to Frank's ultimate end in the desert, as he makes his long walk, he envisions her beside him even as he leaves his body behind.
The episode ends in the engineered ambush of our main 4, fulfilling the oft-repeated warning from the Eastern Book of the Dead: Beware the ambush of the Bardo...
Episode 5: Other Lives
Superficially, the title references the life changes that have occurred for our 4 mains in the months following the previous episode's ambush and its aftermath. In the first shot, a license plate is prominently displayed that reads 3THO479. I'm getting wacky here, but Pizzolatto is the type of guy who likes to hide stuff in the visual details as well as the dialogue. 3THO4 could read as "three though four," a reference to the 3 partners (the cops) and their hidden/occult/underworld partner (Frank). Also "479" is the area code for Northwest Arkansas, where Pizzolatto completed his Masters degree in creative writing, and where season 1 was originally set in the scripts.
This is pure speculation for the fun of it. I've already had too much coffee this morning.
For Frank's part, we find him in his new house. It is apparent that he has liquidated his previous residential asset for money; it also apparent he hates it. He cannot deny he is diminished (to answer a question he posed in episode...2 I think?).
Ray has lost the glorious, God-given 'stache, and has taken Frank up on his offer (as intimated by his giving his son his father's badge in the previous episode). While speaking with his previous supervisor, Ray says, "Better to walk before they make you run." This line is foreshadowing for his death in forest in the final episode, where he is indeed forced to run by the very people he thought his resignation would remove him from. Another line of interest: "I appreciate a good rut." That's kind of the problem, Ray. Finally, his supervisor tells Ray that he can no longer live in his house (reserved for municipal employees), and tells him, "C'mon Ray: you don't want to live here anymore." Ray is still figuring this out. In a following scene, Ray is collecting rent money in an immigrant ghetto building. Disgusted by himself and his surroundings, all he can do is say, "Jesus Christ," indicating his rising to need to return to the redemptive path he had been on.
Next up is Antigone at a sexual harassment education class. Note that all the males in the room are clustered together, while she sits apart from them. She refuses to acknowledge that she did anything wrong. Unlike Woodrugh (who's choices are often "wrong" because they do not align with his own character) Antigone choices are "wrong" because they go against what is expected of her (by her father, coworkers, superiors, etc). This is inline with her classical namesake: the Greek Antigone's most notable characteristic was a willingness to defy convention based on her own personal moral code.
This dichotomy between Woodrugh and Antigone is further explored in the next scenes. While Antigone easily controls her class by being unapologetically sexual, Woodrugh is at the mercy of the actress who accused him of sexual misconduct. "I. Am. Innocent," he states coldly. This innocence extends not only to the accusations of the actress, but also those of her attorney regarding his activities with Black Mountain. Not that it matters: Woodrugh has been put on insurance fraud duty, about as far from the bike as he can get.
Something random but notable: when Antigone was talking with the lady from episode 1 whose sister was missing, she looks at a party invite depicting two black mountains embossed in gold...I have always thought that Woodrugh's Black Mountain mercenary group was especially ominously named...possibly something there worth developing? A few scenes later, Antigone asks her partner for info regarding the missing sister's last phone call. He tells her it came from somewhere in the mountains north of LA. Also, she promises that, if he will help her out, she will do a "fearless and searching moral inventory." This is foreshadowing for her upcoming dose of MDMA at the party, and its subsequent revelations.
In the following scene, Ray is making another recording for his son. He tells him that "Pain is inexhaustible; it is only people that get exhausted." The suggestion, of course, is that there is a limit to how far a man can carry forward in the face of endless and intensifying suffering; the is the point when the third Bardo breaks, when the constricting illusion becomes intolerable and must be escaped from, even at the cost of everything we are.
Shortly thereafter, in the club with Frank and Jordan, he tells her that "The design does not work, when I am knee-deep in dirt; You don't bring a kid into a situation like this." Reference to him being buried, and the impossibility of birth (i.e., rebirth) at this stage. This is Frank's hubris though: he still believes he can ascend. He doesn't understand his rebirth can only happen via the "alternate" means Jordan suggested in the previous episode. "...me, I didn't ask for this world...I took it." Frank states his desire to be transparent about who they are and their intentions going forward as they continue to face crisis; Jordan responds by telling him that she can't be a mother. Again, as his soulmate and equal, Jordan cannot do what Frank cannot do: engage in the rebirth process in their current state.
The previous scene contains brutal honesty between Frank and Jordan regarding who they are (paraphrased, "I'm barren and you are a pimp."). This sets up a exploration of the the polar dichotomy between Woodrugh and Frank in the following sequences, where we shift between Paul having dinner with his fiancé and her mother, and back to Frank and Jordan. As Jordan gives Frank unconditional love and support with spot-on criticism (leading him to a moment of catharsis and self-realization of what he values), we know Paul is only suffering, stealth-pounding drinks to get through dinner, and biting his tongue. Jordan tells Frank that she is going home, that he should join her: and while he can't do this to the extent that the Bardo demands, he will that night, anyway. Woodrugh is already "home," but his true character chafes there; his "home" is an ego construct that will not ultimately survive.
Next up is a face-to-face in the bar with Antigone and Ray. It is made explicit the 3 cops are all miserable, that their attempted or forced new lives are choking them all. Ray states "...my powers of influence are so meager in the sublunar world of ours...," a smooth, likely subconscious comment on his own existence in the world of the third Bardo. Ray is not interested in being enfolded in Antigone's desire to continue their investigation into Caspere's murder.
That is, until he is offered a chance to retain custody by the state liaison who also want to continue the investigation. During this conversation, Antigone suggests, "Its never too late to start over again." Very bardo-esque in attitude. This is also when Ray is told that the man he took retribution on for his wife's rape was the wrong man, and that the man recently arrested shares DNA markers with his son. Ray is visibly upset by this, of course.
In the following scene, Frank attempts to extort the Catalyst executive. I hadn't noted that the waste company that poisoned the land that was bought was name "Archon." This is a word whose most common meaning is the ancient Greek word for "ruler." However, in ancient gnosticism, the archons were servants to the demigod that helped to keep souls of from reaching transcendence, instead remaining imprisoned in the demigod's world (that is, the world we are born into). This resonates well the the Bardo themes obviously, and its likely the Pizzolatto would have been exposed to them through Grant Morrison's work on The Invisibles (another comic with recognized influence on season 1.)
http://comicsalliance.com/true-detective-comic-books-weird-fiction-secrets-influences-alan-moore-grant-morrison-invisibles-hbo/
Anyway, this meeting also provides the narrative impetus to enfold Frank into the investigation (due to shared interest in Caspere's hard drive). Perhaps this is what the license plate was referring to at the beginning of the episode?
Next up is Ray's solo meeting with Dr. Pitlor. Prior to Ray's entrance, Pitlor can be seen reading Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality. He questions Ray's "perceptions of reality" prior to receiving a major beat down.
Later, we see Ray and his ex, as she describes her rapist being arrest, and her own desires to put an end to the "fake story" of Ray's parenthood. This leads him to Frank's house, to confront him. Prior to his arrival, Frank and Jordan have come to an agreement on the possibility of adoption, of moving forward with the "alternative" path. Frank is willing to adopt a child, meaning he is willing to reach out to child like himself at that age, to heal the errors of his past. Frank notes the ceiling is free of water stains, further suggesting the movement away from a collapsing bardo, but on of rebirth into a different life.
Maybe in a separate reality.
Episode 6: Church in Ruins
Episode 6 picks up where 5 left off: Ray's confrontation of Frank regarding him being set up to kill a man he believed was his wife's rapist. Ray states that he "sold his soul for nothing." Frank replies that Ray used the info to become what he had "always waited to become..." and, "if that that's the sort of thing that keeps you out of Heaven, I don't want to go." This highlights a key difference between Ray and Frank: the former fell from higher state, while Frank has been damned for much longer.
Gradually, Ray begins to believe Frank's protests that he was not attempting to set him up. Their conversation turns to the Caspere investigation. Frank drops the following line: "This past? Shit you're worked up on? It can go away." This is also the part where Frank becomes firmly enfolded, and his abandonment of the "alternative" path he'd been considering.
Later in the episode, when Ray confronts the man arrested for his wife's rape, we see the darkness of his aura. Through dark wardrobe and use of lighting, Ray appears to be little more than a silhouette as he describes what he will visit on the man if he gets out of jail. He is cruelty and death made flesh; he is terrifying.
In a scene following this, Antigone's sister is giving her information about the party. She also gives her a painting, saying she was trying to paint "a woman drowning on dry land."
In a following alternating series of scenes, we see Frank interacting with Stan (the employee murdered by Blake), and Ray in a observed visit with his son. The contrast between the two is apparent: Frank is warm and supportive, while Ray is unable to achieve a connection with his son (who appears nervous to be in his presence). "Things are going to be hard for awhile," Frank says, "but you'll come out. Because you got him in you. His fight. (dharmic lineage). Sometimes a thing happens," he continues, "that splits your life: there's a before and after.." This exchange highlights that Frank is a creature of pure will, for whom pain only serves to peel back the crude material of a man to reveal the "gold" within.
Ray, for his part, is deeply hurt at his son's refusal to express love or interest in him: rather than coping with this pain in the manner that Frank does, attempts to kill himself in the following scenes via a liquor and cocaine bender. He is attempting self-destruction in this sequence, because his one hope for decency (i.e., his role as a father) is apparently doomed. He attempts to push for release from the third Bardo, but is unable to due to unresolved dharma (possibly echoing Woodrugh's suicide attempt at the end of the first episode). At the end of the night, we see that Ray has demolished the contents of his house, including the emotionally significant models he'd done with his son as a way to connect. While his attempt at suicide was not successful, he has cleared the emotional blocks needed for him to complete his redemptive journey and achieve eventual release from the third Bardo (as indicated by his call to his wife, where he surrenders to her wishes). This indicates a break from dharmic lineage for his son, freeing him from the cruelty inherent in being brought up by Ray (as it was for Ray and his father). This is a strong metaphor for rebirth in the sense of the Eastern Book of the Dead: releasing the past so something new can come to exist. "Say yes," he tells his ex-wife, "and I'll leave your lives forever."
Later, Antigone is waiting to take the bus to the party outside of a place called the "Kali Club." This is a clever double entendre: a homophone for "Cali" (as in, California), but also a reference to Kali Ma (recall this death goddess's appearance in episode 1...see analysis for refresher). As stated in the previous episode (when Antigone was speaking to her sister on the beach), this party is going to occur in the area where Antigone was abducted, raped and murdered as a child. She is going home, to her place of death, to lay herself to rest. But with Kali Ma evoked, we are promised perversions prior to rebirth.
Prior to her arrival at the party, we see Frank and company move on the Mexican cartel. Upon entering the apartment, the camera rests for a moment on the shrine to Sante Muerte, the female saint of death in Mexican folk religion (a common object of reverence in the Mexican criminal world). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte This is the same crowned female skeleton character that we saw, life-size, in Caspere's apartment. Recall again, the close temporal association between Kali Ma and this figure in episode 1: in that episode and the current episode, these parallel religious figures are literally one scene-sequence apart, their relationship undeniable.
A notable line occurs during Frank's exchange with the cartel regarding the girl he is looking to speak to about Caspere's hard drive: "But we need to meet...face-to-face... at some point." The presentation of this line isolates "face-to-face," giving it great intensity. A smooth reference to the "face-to-face" emphasis in the Bardo Thodal.
Next, Antigone is shown receiving a dose of "pure Molly." Molly, of course, is a common term for MDMA. While widely known as club drug, MDMA began as a miracle drug in phycho-pharmacology, often described as worth a year of therapy in one dose. This provides Antigone the means to access the trauma she experienced as a child, and begin her rebirth process.
During her time in the mansion, she has a flashback to the face of the man who abducted her. We later learn that this is man with long hair and beard we've seen in the photographs containing Pitlor, her father, and the mayor. Again, I'm leaning hard on the notion of Antigone's father being her abductor: partly because of the awkwardness of their dialogue (especially in an upcoming episode), partly because of her rebellion against his values, the role of incest in the classical Antigone narrative, but also because her father is never identified in the picture, though his long hair makes him most identifiable with the only guy in the picture with long hair.
Interesting note: the man in her flashback lures her into the forest by telling her there is a unicorn there. In antiquity, the unicorn was often associated with virgin maidenhood.
Anyway, get ready. It gets real in our final episodes.
Continued in part 3
https://www.reddit.com/useHonest_Richard/comments/bc2tzc/true_detective_season_2_and_the_tibetan_book_of/

What's happening around town (Wed, Nov 29th - Tue, Dec 5th)

Oklahoma City's event list.

Wednesday, Nov 29th

1/2 Price Game Day (Dave & Buster's of OKC - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 11:00am Need a little midweek pick me up? Come to Dave and Buster's for 1/2 Price Game Day, ALL DAY LONG. Come for the games, stay for the amazing food and drinks.
♪ Anthem Drown Night! (HiLo Club - Oklahoma City) Our local friends at Anthem Brewing Co. have some great beers! Every Wednesday night from 9pm to close enjoy $8 Drown Night! Their Power Pils will be flowing!
Bi-Weekly Meetup (51st st. Speakeasy - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 5:00pm
🏆 Oklahoma City Blue G-League TICKETS (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm
🏆 Oklahoma City Blue vs. Santa Cruz Warriors (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Cheer on the OKC Blue as they take on the Santa Cruz Warriors at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.…
🎨 Cartoons & Comics: The Early Art of Tom Ryan (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 10:00am Acclaimed Western artist Tom Ryan (1922-2011) spoke often about those who inspired him: N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Frank Reilly, even Rembrandt. Yet sketches from the…
♪ Digitour (89th Street Collective - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 5:30pm with Lauren Godwin, Nathan Triska, Simon Britton, Blake Gray, Aaron Melloul, and Danielle Cohn 3:30pm VIP M&G // 5:30pm GA Doors // 6:30pm Show Time
🎨 Fall Adult Classes | Block II (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 9:00am Taught by local artists, our adult classes offer a vital creative outlet for Oklahoma City residents. Around 700 adults of all ages find creative outlets in ceramics,…
🎓 Heritage Hall Middle School Parent Preview Days (Heritage Hall Middle School - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 9:00am An exceptional education opens many doors...so we're opening ours!
We would like to invite you to witness "a day in the life" of our Chargers at one of our Middle…
Insure it Forward (Guthrie Library - Guthrie) Start Time: 4:00pm Here about your insurance options during open enrollment time. Come prepared to have all your questions answered Insure It Forward, Inc. Talk around guthrie where…
♪ Live Music- Lee Rucker (Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:30pm
♪ Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma Opening (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 9:00am Celebrating Hip Hop Month, Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma will feature 10 artists who will make the walls of Oklahoma Contemporary’s gallery their…
NRHA Futurity & Adequan Championship Show (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd The National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) is an international equine association that is headquartered in…
🎨 OAG Small Works (1219 Creative - Oklahoma City) Thru Fri, Dec 1st Start Time: 8:30am Art 12" and under by members of the Oklahoma Art Guild. Opening reception November 17th 6:00-9:00pm.
Plaza Beer Walk (Plaza District - Oklahoma City) The last Wednesday of every month, thirsty locals take to the streets of OKC's vibrant Plaza…
😂 Sam Norton (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd
Santa's Wonderland returns (The Shop - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 10:00am Santa’s Wonderland returns to Bass Pro Shops and Oklahoma City-area families are invited to enjoy this magical Christmas village offering free photos with Santa and…
🎨 Showroom | Showcase: Ginna Dowling | Heiroglyphics 2017: The Spirt of our People (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 11:00am Oklahoma City native Ginna Dowling will install a visual storytelling. Hieroglyphics 2017: The Spirit of Our People is based on what Dowling calls “contemporary…

Thursday, Nov 30th

🎨 Cartoons & Comics: The Early Art of Tom Ryan (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 10:00am Acclaimed Western artist Tom Ryan (1922-2011) spoke often about those who inspired him: N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Frank Reilly, even Rembrandt. Yet sketches from the…
Christmas on the Western Frontier (Downtown - El Reno) Christmas on the Western Frontier features an old-fashioned Christmas parade with more than 50 floats, along with…
The Christmas Show (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd The Oklahoma City Philharmonic presents its annual holiday performance "The Christmas Show." This show is a…
♪ CMGT Thursdays Happy Hour! (The Deli - Norman) Start Time: 7:00pm Join us for Country Music Group Therapy every Thursday from 7-9pm with your host Kierston White. You can expect a rotating cast of great singesongwriters from near…
♪ COOP Showcase (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm Cavern Compay, Space4Lease, Local Man Ruins Everything
🎨 Fall Adult Classes | Block II (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 9:00am Taught by local artists, our adult classes offer a vital creative outlet for Oklahoma City residents. Around 700 adults of all ages find creative outlets in ceramics,…
♪ Groovement (Bison Witches - Norman) Start Time: 10:00pm Groovement is a 6-piece funk-rock band that embodies the soul of Northwest Arkansas – fun, unpredictable, and full of life. Currently the band is touring the U.S. in…
Jaimee Harris (The Blue Door - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
Michael W. Smith et al. (Crossings Community Church - Oklahoma City)
♪ Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma Opening (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 9:00am Celebrating Hip Hop Month, Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma will feature 10 artists who will make the walls of Oklahoma Contemporary’s gallery their…
NRHA Futurity & Adequan Championship Show (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd The National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) is an international equine association that is headquartered in…
🎨 OAG Small Works (1219 Creative - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 8:30am Art 12" and under by members of the Oklahoma Art Guild. Opening reception November 17th 6:00-9:00pm.
🎡 OKC Improv Winter Festivus (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 7:30pm OKC Improv is Oklahoma's premiere showcase of the best local and regional improvisational comedy and theater! Improvisation, or improv, is a form of live theatre in…
🎡 OKC Improv Winter Festivus (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 9:30pm OKC Improv is Oklahoma's premiere showcase of the best local and regional improvisational comedy and theater! Improvisation, or improv, is a form of live theatre in…
OU Sooners vs North Texas Mean Green (The Lloyd Noble Center - Norman) Experience the action and excitement in Norman as the Oklahoma Sooners take on the North Texas Mean Green. Since the…
Peppa Pig Live (Hudson Performance Hall - Oklahoma City)
🏆 Poker Rodeo Association World Finals - Team Penning & Sorting (Lazy E Arena - Guthrie) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 8:00am FInd all details at pokerrodeo.com
😂 Sam Norton (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd
Santa's Wonderland returns (The Shop - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 10:00am Santa’s Wonderland returns to Bass Pro Shops and Oklahoma City-area families are invited to enjoy this magical Christmas village offering free photos with Santa and…
🎨 Showroom | Showcase: Ginna Dowling | Heiroglyphics 2017: The Spirt of our People (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 2nd Start Time: 11:00am Oklahoma City native Ginna Dowling will install a visual storytelling. Hieroglyphics 2017: The Spirit of Our People is based on what Dowling calls “contemporary…
Statewide Together Oklahoma Meeting and Merry Making (Paseo - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 5:30pm The Together Oklahoma coalition invites you to join Statewide Meeting and Merry Making on November 30th at 5:30 pm in locations all over Oklahoma! We'll be video…
Teen Tardis Day (Guthrie Library - Guthrie) Start Time: 6:00pm Woo-oooooo Wooooooooo Woo-oooo, Woo-ooooo woo-oo-ooo-ooo!!! Partake in the wibble-wobbliy time- whimey celebration of Dr. Who! Time to celebrate the ol’ girl!…
Territorial Christmas Celebration (Harn Homestead Museum - Oklahoma City) Experience the wonder of a truly old-fashioned Christmas at the Territorial Christmas Celebration at the Harn Homestead…
🏆 Thunder Basketball (Lower Bricktown - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm
Under the Streetlamp in Concert (Grand Casino Hotel & Resort - Shawnee) Celebrate the holidays with Under the Streetlamp as this vocal group stops by Grand Casino Hotel & Resort in…
🎭 The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph's Baby: An Original Folk Musical (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 7:30pm The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph’s Baby
An original folk musical by Don Chaffer of the band Waterdeep and Chris Cragin-Day.
Every December, a bunch of people…

Friday, Dec 1st

🎭 4 of a Kind (American Legion Post 12 - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm
🏆 Oklahoma City Blue G-League TICKETS (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm
🏆 Oklahoma City Blue vs. Salt Lake City Stars (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Cheer on the OKC Blue as they take on the Salt Lake City Stars at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.…
Boys Ranch Town Drive-Thru Christmas Pageant (Edmond) Thru Sun, Dec 3rd The Boys Ranch Town Drive-Thru Christmas Pageant has been an annual gift from Boys Ranch Town to the community and…
🎨 Cartoons & Comics: The Early Art of Tom Ryan (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 10:00am Acclaimed Western artist Tom Ryan (1922-2011) spoke often about those who inspired him: N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Frank Reilly, even Rembrandt. Yet sketches from the…
A Celtic Christmas (The Gate Church - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Usher in the Christmas season Celtic style with a ticket to A Celtic Christmas at the Gate. During this festive,…
The Christmas Show (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) 1 day left The Oklahoma City Philharmonic presents its annual holiday performance "The Christmas Show." This show is a…
♪ Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm This film is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America. More Information HERE NOTE: This is a movie screening and NOT a live performance event.
First Friday Gallery Walk (Paseo Arts District - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:00pm The First Friday Gallery Walk in the Paseo Arts District occurs on the first Friday of every month. Friday night…
Holidays on Paseo (Paseo Arts District - Oklahoma City) Bundle up and head to the Paseo Arts District for great art and opportunities to create unique pieces, just in time…
♪ Humble Vibes (51st st. Speakeasy - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 9:00pm Mixed Genre Show! HIP HOP. INDIE. POP. Druce Wayne and Jarvix have joined forces to create Humble Vibes, a show that supports music of all genres!
HOST: Jarvix…
🎓 Medieval Fair Free Lecture Series - Water, Power & Beauty: Aqueducts & Fountains in Medieval Italy (Norman Public Library - Norman) Start Time: 6:15pm Medieval Fair Free Lecture Series cosponsored by the OU Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies presents "Water, Power, and Beauty: Aqueducts and Fountains in…
NRHA Futurity & Adequan Championship Show (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) 1 day left The National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) is an international equine association that is headquartered in…
🎨 OAG Small Works (1219 Creative - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 8:30am Art 12" and under by members of the Oklahoma Art Guild. Opening reception November 17th 6:00-9:00pm.
🎡 OKC Improv Winter Festivus (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 7:30pm OKC Improv is Oklahoma's premiere showcase of the best local and regional improvisational comedy and theater! Improvisation, or improv, is a form of live theatre in…
🎡 OKC Improv Winter Festivus (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 9:30pm OKC Improv is Oklahoma's premiere showcase of the best local and regional improvisational comedy and theater! Improvisation, or improv, is a form of live theatre in…
🏆 Oklahoma Football (Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium - Norman) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 3:30pm Oklahoma Football Tickets. Oklahoma Sooners Schedule. Sooners Tickets.
🏆 Poker Rodeo Association World Finals - Team Penning & Sorting (Lazy E Arena - Guthrie) 1 day left Start Time: 8:00am FInd all details at pokerrodeo.com
Ronnie Milsap in Concert (Rose State College Hudiburg Chevrolet Center - Midwest City) Head to Rose State College Hudiburg Chevrolet Center in Midwest City for a night full of tunes cranked out by country…
Saints: Tony Foster Jr. Band (Plaza District - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 9:00pm
😂 Sam Norton (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) 1 day left
Santa's Wonderland returns (The Shop - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 10:00am Santa’s Wonderland returns to Bass Pro Shops and Oklahoma City-area families are invited to enjoy this magical Christmas village offering free photos with Santa and…
Sassafras Shopping Event (Heart of Oklahoma Expo Center - Shawnee) Day 1 of 2 Start Time: 5:00pm Vendors from all over Oklahoma will present their best wares at the Sassafras Shopping Event in Shawnee. This…
♪ Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox (The Criterion - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 8:00pm Hear your favorites like never before when Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox takes over OKC’s Criterion…
🎨 Showroom | Showcase: Ginna Dowling | Heiroglyphics 2017: The Spirt of our People (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) 1 day left Start Time: 11:00am Oklahoma City native Ginna Dowling will install a visual storytelling. Hieroglyphics 2017: The Spirit of Our People is based on what Dowling calls “contemporary…
🏆 Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Minnesota Timberwolves (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Experience the thrill of fast-paced pro basketball as the Oklahoma City Thunder take on the Minnesota Timberwolves. Wear…
UCO WinterGlow (Nigh University Center - Edmond) Bring the entire family out to UCO WinterGlow in Edmond for an evening of holiday festivities. The event kicks off at…
🎭 The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph's Baby: An Original Folk Musical (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 7:30pm The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph’s Baby
An original folk musical by Don Chaffer of the band Waterdeep and Chris Cragin-Day.
Every December, a bunch of people…

Saturday, Dec 2nd

♪ All State Second Round (Westmoore High School - Oklahoma City)
Bank of America Museums on Us (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 10:00am The Museum welcomes Bank of America customers taking advantage of Museums on Us the first full weekend of every month. Any ATM, credit, or check card from Bank of…
🏆 Oklahoma City Blue vs. Greensboro Swarm (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Cheer on the OKC Blue as they take on the Greensboro Swarm at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City. Get…
Boys Ranch Town Drive-Thru Christmas Pageant (Edmond) 1 day left The Boys Ranch Town Drive-Thru Christmas Pageant has been an annual gift from Boys Ranch Town to the community and…
🎨 Cartoons & Comics: The Early Art of Tom Ryan (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 10:00am Acclaimed Western artist Tom Ryan (1922-2011) spoke often about those who inspired him: N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Frank Reilly, even Rembrandt. Yet sketches from the…
Mustang Christmas Bazaar (Mustang) The Mustang Christmas Bazaar has everything you need to get in the holiday spirit. Browse over 50 vendors featuring…
🏃 The Christmas Carroll 5K and 1 Mile Fun Run/Walk (Southern Oaks Church of Christ - Chickasha) On behalf of the Chickasha Optimist Club, with the assistance of the Chickasha Runners Club, we would like to invite you to the Third Annual Christmas "Carroll" 5K and…
The Christmas Show (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Last Day The Oklahoma City Philharmonic presents its annual holiday performance "The Christmas Show." This show is a…
Christmas with Southern Living (Penn Square Mall - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 10:00am You're Invited to a Southern Living Christmas Celebration at your local Dillard's. There will be holiday decorating, mocktail making,gift wrapping, tablescapes and…
Circle W Arts & Crafts Show (Heart of Oklahoma Expo Center - Shawnee) Day 1 of 2 The Circle W Arts & Crafts Show features handcrafted items from over 90 vendors under one roof. Located at the Heart…
Cowboy Christmas with Santa (Stockyards City - Oklahoma City) Saddle up and ride into Historic Stockyards City this holiday season for the annual Cowboy Christmas Celebration. The…
🎨 Fall Signature Tour (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 1:00pm 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Meets at Canyon Princess (cougar sculpture in West Hallway) From Remington and Russell to Native American works, see some of the finest Western art…
🏆 FREE Learn To Skate Lesson (Skate Galaxy - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 12:00pm FREE Learn to Skate Lesson Every Saturday from 12:00pm-12:45pm! The lesson is free and no sign up required! Don't have a pair of skates? No problem! Rentals start at…
Holiday Hop (Edmond) Don't miss out on Holiday Hop in Edmond, a free family event that lets you create a holiday craft in the Edmond…
🏃 Holiday Hustle 5K/10K (Oklahoma Christian University, Edmond, OK - Edmond) Annual Holiday Hustle 5k \-USATF certified 5k and 10k courses \-flat and FAST \-prize money to top 3 male and female \-pancake breakfast following race…
Minco Honey Festival (Minco High School - Minco) Satisfy your sweet tooth at the Minco Honey Festival with pure Oklahoma honey. During this celebration of Nature's…
🎨 Jason and Janice Artist Reception (Studio112 and a Half - Shawnee) Start Time: 6:30pm Studio 112 and a half 112 ½ E.Main. Shawnee, OK. 74801. 405-314-4702
MEDIA RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: SHAWNEE, OK. 11/27/2017 Janice Batts and Jason Wilson to…
Jen Kirkman - Presented by: Black Mesa Brewing Co. (ACM@UCO Performance Lab - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:30pm *Women's Audience Only* (Trans-inclusive)
Benefitting the local OKC Chapter of Planned Parenthood.
John Moreland et al. (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Join beloved Oklahoma singer-songwriter John Moreland for a special homecoming when he takes over the historic Tower…
KATT Wreck The Halls (Diamond Ballroom - Oklahoma City) If you like Christmas mixed with rock and roll, head to the Diamond Ballroom for the annual Wreck the Halls concert.…
K-Love Christmas Tour (Council Road Baptist Church - Bethany)
🏃 Little Willie's Triple Dog Dare (Leadership Square - Oklahoma City) Little Willie's Triple Dog Dare is the Ultimate Stair Climb competition in OKC. Competitors will climb and descend both North and South Towers of Leadership Square and…
The March Divide (Red Brick Bar - Norman)
NRHA Futurity & Adequan Championship Show (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Last Day The National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) is an international equine association that is headquartered in…
OKC Beard and Mustache Bash (51st st. Speakeasy - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 4:30pm The OKC Beard Club is breaking back into the competition scene! We need to raise some money for a friend.
Ashley is member of our community and friend of the OKC…
OKC Gun Show (Heritage Place Inc - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 For a high quality gun show with great prices and selection, visit the OKC Gun Show in Oklahoma City. Held at Heritage…
🎡 OKC Improv Winter Festivus (The Paramount OKC - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 7:30pm OKC Improv is Oklahoma's premiere showcase of the best local and regional improvisational comedy and theater! Improvisation, or improv, is a form of live theatre in…
🏆 Oklahoma Football (Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium - Norman) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 3:30pm Oklahoma Football Tickets. Oklahoma Sooners Schedule. Sooners Tickets.
🏆 Poker Rodeo Association World Finals - Team Penning & Sorting (Lazy E Arena - Guthrie) Last Day Start Time: 8:00am FInd all details at pokerrodeo.com
🏃 POOP Trail Run (Lake Thunderbird State Park - Norman) POOP (Protect Our Oklahoma Parks) Trail Run is to raise money for Oklahoma State Parks, increase awareness of the state budget crisis, and celebrate the public lands…
♪ R. Kelly (The Criterion - Oklahoma City) Join Grammy Award-winning R&B artist R Kelly at OKC's Criterion for a very special evening. With six…
😂 Sam Norton (Loony Bin Comedy Club - Oklahoma City) Last Day
Santa's Wonderland returns (The Shop - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 10:00am Santa’s Wonderland returns to Bass Pro Shops and Oklahoma City-area families are invited to enjoy this magical Christmas village offering free photos with Santa and…
Sassafras Shopping Event (Heart of Oklahoma Expo Center - Shawnee) Day 2 of 2 Start Time: 5:00pm Vendors from all over Oklahoma will present their best wares at the Sassafras Shopping Event in Shawnee. This…
Saturdays for Kids: Holidays (Western Heritage Museum - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 10:00am Make a Western-inspired ornament to take home for the holidays. Create old-time favorites such as pine cone birdfeeders, as well as new projects for your family tree.…
🎨 Showroom | Showcase: Ginna Dowling | Heiroglyphics 2017: The Spirt of our People (Oklahoma Contemporary - Oklahoma City) Last Day Start Time: 11:00am Oklahoma City native Ginna Dowling will install a visual storytelling. Hieroglyphics 2017: The Spirit of Our People is based on what Dowling calls “contemporary…
Oklahoma City Train Show (Oklahoma State Fairgrounds Jim Norick Arena - Oklahoma City) Day 1 of 2 The Oklahoma City Train Show is one of the largest model train shows in the region with operating model train displays,…
♪ Trans-Siberian Orchestra Skating Nights (Myriad Botanical Gardens - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:00pm Chesapeake Energy Arena presents Trans-Siberian Orchestra Skating Nights at Devon Ice Rink. Enjoy skating to the holiday music of Trans-Siberian Orchestra all evening…
Trinket & Bauble Show (Red Cup Coffee Shop - Oklahoma City) Join the staff of OKC’s Red Cup in welcoming the holiday season with their Trinket and Bauble Show.
At this…
Winterfest Craft Show (Kingfisher County Fairgrounds - Kingfisher) Perfect for holiday shopping, the Winterfest Craft Show in Kingfisher features over 65 booths of gifts, crafts and home…

Sunday, Dec 3rd

Boys Ranch Town Drive-Thru Christmas Pageant (Edmond) Last Day The Boys Ranch Town Drive-Thru Christmas Pageant has been an annual gift from Boys Ranch Town to the community and…
Circle W Arts & Crafts Show (Heart of Oklahoma Expo Center - Shawnee) Day 2 of 2 The Circle W Arts & Crafts Show features handcrafted items from over 90 vendors under one roof. Located at the Heart…
Freddy & Francine (The Blue Door - Oklahoma City)
Hollywood Undead (Diamond Ballroom - Oklahoma City) Hollywood Undead has released a continual stream of their unique blend of rap rock tracks since forming in 2005. For a…
Maria Bamford (Tower Theatre Studio - Oklahoma City) Get ready for an evening of hilarity when Maria Bamford takes over the historic Tower Theatre in OKC.
Known for…
Messiah (Civic Center Music Hall - Oklahoma City) Celebrate the reason for the season with a performance of Messiah by the Canterbury Choral Society at Oklahoma…
Motorcycle Swap Meet (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Get ready to see some unique, top-of-the-line motorcycles and turn your bike parts into cash at the Motorcycle Swap Meet…
OKC Gun Show (Heritage Place Inc - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 For a high quality gun show with great prices and selection, visit the OKC Gun Show in Oklahoma City. Held at Heritage…
OU Sooners vs Florida Gators (The Lloyd Noble Center - Norman) Head to Norman to watch as the Oklahoma Sooners Women's Basketball take on the Florida Gators. Since the team's…
Sleigh Bells Market (Farmer's Market - Oklahoma City) Come to the historic OKC Farmers Public Market for a holiday retail extravaganza you won't want to miss. 50…
🏆 Oklahoma City Thunder vs. San Antonio Spurs (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 6:00pm Experience the thrill of fast-paced pro basketball as the Oklahoma City Thunder take on the San Antonio Spurs. Wear your…
Oklahoma City Train Show (Oklahoma State Fairgrounds Jim Norick Arena - Oklahoma City) Day 2 of 2 The Oklahoma City Train Show is one of the largest model train shows in the region with operating model train displays,…

Monday, Dec 4th

Barrel Racing Futurity World Championship (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 9th The annual Barrel Racing Futurity World Championships come to Oklahoma State Fair Park. Put on by the Barrel Futurities…
OU Sooners vs UTSA Roadrunners (The Lloyd Noble Center - Norman) Experience the action and excitement in Norman as the Oklahoma Sooners take on the UTSA Roadrunners. Since the…

Tuesday, Dec 5th

Barrel Racing Futurity World Championship (Oklahoma State Fair Park - Oklahoma City) Thru Sat, Dec 9th The annual Barrel Racing Futurity World Championships come to Oklahoma State Fair Park. Put on by the Barrel Futurities…
🏆 Oklahoma City Blue vs. Memphis Hustle (Cox Convention Center - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Cheer on the OKC Blue as they take on the Memphis Hustle at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City. Get in…
Food Truck Tuesdays (Jackson - Blanchard) Every week, treat your taste buds to new flavors. During Food Truck Tuesdays, a different food truck will park in…
🏆 Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Utah Jazz (Chesapeake Energy Arena - Oklahoma City) Start Time: 7:00pm Experience the thrill of fast-paced pro basketball as the Oklahoma City Thunder take on the Utah Jazz. Wear your blue…

Casinos in or near Little Rock, Arkansas AR - Find Near Me

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Trip Report: Eagle Rock Loop, Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas, March 8-10 2020

Trip Report: Eagle Rock Loop, Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas, March 8-10 2020

A Few More Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be True

1. Kennedy Assassination - The 2nd Investigation by Congress Few People Know About, United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)

2. 1919 World Series Conspiracy

3.Karen Silkwood

4. CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas

5. Bohemian Grove

6. Operation Paperclip

7. The Round Table

8. The Illuminati

9. The Trilateral Commission

The Junius Theory - & How Hays Could Crack The Case

Critic's Criticisms Part III: Length

True Detective Season 2 and the Tibetan Book of the Dead: part 2/3

What's happening around town (Wed, Nov 29th - Tue, Dec 5th)

Wednesday, Nov 29th

Thursday, Nov 30th

Friday, Dec 1st

Saturday, Dec 2nd

Sunday, Dec 3rd

Monday, Dec 4th

Tuesday, Dec 5th

See Also

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