Trying to see how Ani could be Antigone makes Ani's character seem pretty inconsistently drawn, to me. I can see how her pursuit of justice could stand in for Antigone's honoring of the gods but I don't know what it is that Ani really wants when I sit and think about it. Rough sex? That's all I know for sure that she…

Both Ani's mother and Chissani's wife killed themselves. Both women were involved in Ani's father's commune. Chissani's daughter and Pitlor both describe Chissani as Beyond Evil, and Pitlor added something about him having "strange patriarchal ideas." So I guess the culprit could be The Patriarchy and all the…

I know. I'm disappointed in myself for guessing at all. But it's just in my nature, like blue balls in my heart, I guess.

Are we supposed to know why Chessani has been undermining Frank? Is it just supposed to be a generalized, rival kind of thing, or is there something specific that I missed? Or do we not know yet?

Paul conveniently suffers from blackouts.

We wouldn't know yet. But it would be something he blacked out about and Caspere would turn out to be his father. I admit it seems less plausible to me this week but I still can't figure out what the hell Paul is doing in the show if he ISN'T the killer.

I would have liked it were it not for the Mongoloids.

But Pizzolatto's writing IS film/literary analysis.

I said last week that the conspiracy is too vast for me to care too much who the killer is since it could be anyone. But now I'm invested in it being Paul.

Yeah but that was ostensibly for her sexual harassment suit.

Oedipus spends all of Oedipus Rex "searching and searching" for the culprit, so the Oedipus figure has to be the detectives, not the victim.

If it's Oedipal then the victim has to be the detective's father and the detective can't have known that when he killed him. How this would work out with three detectives I don't know but it could work out literally in Paul's case.

But how can any of these characters act sociable with that score amped up to Serious Tension Crisis level in every single scene? Vaughn's acting is the fault of the directors.

I think in that scene with the lawyers we were definitely supposed to be on his side and against his wife.

I guess in Pizzolatto's world a guy who wants to see his kid is de facto a hero.

Yes.

As much as I like Ani and Paul, they are the problem. I get the feeling the bones of the story are Frank's World and Ray's World.The comparison and contrast of their characters is the point of the whole thing. But P got scared and added a woman and a gay guy to show that he had "range" and everything got muddied.

The problem is that Vaughn and Farrell are meant to be the two central characters. The woman and the gay dude are there to prove that P can write women and gay dudes.

We are supposed to take Semyon seriously. He is supposed to be a darkly comic but ultimately tragic figure. His name is basically "semen" for Christ's sake. And he desperately wants kids and can't have them. He is supposed to be the heart of the show.

This defense gets brought up every week and it doesn't work for me. I think it's just the opposite, that Vaughn's character is meant to seem cleverer than he thinks he is — dropping hilarious malapropisms that are actually profound and witty. Pizzolatto just doesn't have the touch to make it happen.