I'm not really sure I understand your criticisms here. It was impossible for us to show us the information revealed through backstory and 'showing' us. It was the most realistic and inevitable way of bringing the story up to pace. So far all we have had are theories and mysteries, and we know pretty much everything from Marty's perspective. The ONLY way he was going to get up to speed was through Rust telling him what he had found, this would have happened in real life. Nothing actually happened? We get conclusive evidence that the Tuttles are involved and confirmation that there is a secret group of men, we find out who the killer is.
How would you have had it done in terms of Marty and Hurt getting on the same track ready to take down the killer together?
How would you have had it done in terms of Marty and Hurt getting on the same track ready to take down the killer together?
You can obviously divulge information this way -- every story does it -- but things like mysteries are usually considered a little bit lax if they resort to using this method of moving the plot forward too much. You know, like when the villain ties up the good guy and then TELLS him all his motivations for everything he's done as the villain. It's cheesy when done poorly (and most of the time, it IS done poorly). And it's like taking a shortcut away from good, strong action scenes. But at least True Detective did it well. I'll definitely give it that.
But, I think putting all of this information into a single episode made it stand out. Just because we needed all this information doesn't mean the writers should cram it all in as a bunch of conversations in one episode.
Having said that, I again say that it was a minor concern over an otherwise stellar series/season. Plus, of course, I'm just trying to find reasons to gripe that it should have been 16 episodes instead of 8.