They were good detectives when they focused. Other realities interfered with their lives. Hoyt derailed Purple, and Purple quitting to protect his family derailed everything else.
Purple's wife didn't tell him anything (of course)...his dementia used her as a device to convey the inspiration he got from reading the passage about the boy in her book. His thoughts with her voice in his head. Much better use of her character than the momentum killing marital spat flashbacks.
The show should have ended in the porch; fade into his eye as his dementia sends him back in time to Vietnam, not to a bar conversation with his wife. The jungle was a nice symbol of his broken mind. Also the time jumps are common with dementia...my father had it in his last two years and some days he would get up to "go to work" at a job he retired from 15 years earlier and complain about Ross Perot throwing the election to Clinton (in 2015). He was literally living in another year...it was sad. This show nailed what dementia is like based on my experiences with my grandfather, grandmother and father. Looks like I will have it if I live long enough. Not looking forward to that.
This show was good but not great because editors these days are either weak, hamstrung, or both. At least an hour's worth of material, mostly the extended husband wife conversations, could have been cut. When you give the artist total creative control they spin off into rambling rabbit holes and it kills the buzz. Edit, edit, edit.
I did like the ending. Maybe I'm just tired of the pedo thing in real life media (hey, here's looking at you, Catholicism!) or in drama series. Maybe part of it is I have young daughters and I internalize stuff. But I liked the "happy" ending to this series.