Old True Detective and new True Detective aren’t getting along
True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto reposted some nasty messages about the finale, prompting a response from star Kali Reis
Aux News True Detective
True Detective: Night Country’s finale ended with season-high ratings, according to Variety: 3.2 million viewers tuned in across HBO and its streaming service, Max. That capped off a viewership of about 12.7 million across all episodes, an all-time high for the franchise. As Variety notes, this new generation of True Detective has the benefit of new ways to watch (Max), but it’s undeniable that audiences were plugged in and often enjoying the show’s new direction… except for the series’ creator, Nic Pizzolatto.
According to screenshots saved to Twitter/X, Pizzolatto apparently reposted fan messages on Instagram that railed against the way True Detective’s fourth season “butchered and misappropriated” the first season’s “all time classic dialogue,” describing the season as a “hot mess” and criticizing the finale’s reveal as “self righteous vigilantism.”
Pizzolatto’s social media activity did not go unnoticed by fans—or by the True Detective cast. When one Twitter user observed that the creator was “posting other people’s stories about how Issa López ruined the franchise like an absolutely enormous baby,” fourth season star Kali Reis retweeted it with her own message. “That’s a damn shame…but hey I guess ‘if you don’t have anything good to share, shit on others’ is the new wave,” she wrote with a shrug emoji.
The sad thing is that Reis told The A.V. Club that she was a “huge fan” of Pizzolatto’s True Detective: “Like everyone else, I drooled over season one. It’s one of the best TV shows I’ve seen,” she said. “The second season wasn’t my favorite, but it’s because it was so different from the first, which set a high bar. But I’ve still seen it. And I loved Mahershala Ali in the third season. I know everybody is going to compare season four to the first one, but there are [no comparisons], even if there are some similarities.”
Fourth-season showrunner Issa López was diplomatic in her response to the shade Pizzolatto was throwing earlier this month. “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative,” she told Vulture. “I wrote this with profound love for the work he made and love for the people that loved it. And it is a reinvention, and it is different, and it’s done with the idea of sitting down around the fire, and [let’s] have some fun and have some feelings and have some thoughts. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”
The fact that Pizzolatto didn’t feel welcome to join the new True Detective might be part of the problem: he was teasing a pitch for the fourth season back in 2019, but he eventually left HBO for FX (and in 2021, it was reported he was negotiating an earlier exit from the FX deal). But Pizzolatto (alongside first season stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson) is still listed as an executive producer on True Detective, so he’s profiting off of the new show even though he’s not involved. Clearly, he didn’t extend the same spirit of welcome to López to play in the sandbox he created; he called the connections the new season made to the first “so stupid.”
Which is also sad, since López described those references as “love letters to the original series” in an interview with The A.V. Club. “Every time that it felt organic, I connected them, just to create a common universe—to say, ‘It is the same place,’” she explained later to Variety. “It is not a central part of the story, but it’s nice to know that there is a certain connective tissue between those.” Unfortunately, that connective tissue isn’t something everyone can appreciate.
254 Comments
Why can’t people let things be. Your opinion doesn’t fucking matter when someone is expressing love in their own way. People need to learn how to not be reactive and grow up enough to appreciate the individual experience beyond their own
That’s cause they are completely different shows. The only thing they have in common is the name. I’m done with this franchise. Going forward in my head True Detectives was an 8 episode miniseries that ended back in 2014.
The people I know who are watching S4 don’t even know the creative team changed, they just know it got good again after 2 seasons they didn’t like. I tell them it’s a new creative team and they’re super surprised.So yeah, dude should probably stfu.
lol everybody is a moron except murry chang!
No I wouldn’t say that, I may be pretty smart but I definitely wouldn’t call everyone a ‘moron’. Why would you say something like that? It’s extremely rude and uncalled for.
Lil’ Timmy is really committed to the “be a raging dickhead on kinja” bit, for whatever stupid/pathetic reason kinja trolls do kinja troll shit.I, too, cannot call everyone a ‘moron.’ I definitely can call *that* dude a gasping dipshit.
I just like to ask those kinds of questions to see if I can promote at least a tiny inkling of self awareness in people like that.
Yeah they are on a real race to the bottom with Recoegnition
As we continue to weather multiple existential crises – on multiple existential *fronts* – you’re going to see a lot more people get a lot more okay with being a lot more weird, a LOT more of the time.The modern Internet has conditioned many of us to engage in the sort of “pulling wings off of flies” shit that used to be the province of the weird kid in class that everyone stayed away from. Most of them have convinced themselves that since it’s online, it isn’t “real.”Yeah, we’re…we’re not “well,” no…
I mean, compared to you? Yeah.
good thing the people you know liked it.
I don’t see how it’s humanly possible that these people you talk to all couldn’t tell the difference in tone between s1-3 and s4. In s1-3 the mysteries are all unraveled by the detectives/Vince Vaughn (lol) uncovering clues as to what’s going on and piecing together theories along with the viewer. In s4 you have the “bad guys” in a car plotting.
What? I thought Season 3 was good and way better than Season 4. I think S4 might be tied with S2 in terms of quality.
I think a lot of people tuned in to the finale hoping for an answer about what the hell was going on, only to be left with about 90% of their questions unanswered.I stuck with this season because, despite it feelin extremely clunky, they dropped enough intriguing nuggets for me to stick with it, hoping to get some satisfactory closure.But the last episode was mostly a rug pull so they could point and laugh and say “gotcha!” while falling back on the old faux wisdom of “some questions don’t need to have answers”. Sure, you can use that as your crutch to introduce intriguing ideas that don’t pay off, but we’ve all seen enough J J Abrams to know that’s the go-to fallback of people with few truly good ideas.
Thank you. I don’t know what others in these comments were watching. This whole season was a hot mess. I hate sticking with a show hoping it gets better, only to watch it totally crash and burn in the spectacular fashion I suspected it might.
I would say that in TV or movies, yes indeed all questions be must provided satisfactory answers. They don’t need to be complete answers, or prove only one answer while disproving all others, or be the answers the audience wants, but the show must provide satisfactory reasoning(s) that function within the logic of the show. There has to be internal consistency.That is, if the show wants to be good. If they don’t give a rip, or aren’t really up to it and are just trying to get through the night (Lost, True Detective), or both (GoT), by all means create randomness. But just know that your ending won’t be appreciated, your audience will hate you, and they’ll be less likely to come back for the next one.
The thing is, throwing out crazy randomness is enough to interest people, for a while. Lost had crazy hype, for a while, as did TD, BSG, GoT.There’s a really good model there: borrow attention, sell it to your advertisers, fail to pay off anything resembling coherent storytelling at the end. By the time your viewers figure out your scam, it doesn’t matter, you got paid, your network got paid, your real customers got the eyeballs they wanted.The surprising bit is when they fail to acknowledge the game they play and try to stick around to do it again and again. Take the money and run, dipshits.
The season was compromised by the demands HBO placed on it. It was supposed to be an original storyline but HBO wanted to reboot True Detective so the story got butchered with callbacks to Season 1. Are they going to pull this nonsense with White Lotus and other properties when they are desperate to keep franchises alive?
I can’t help wondering if there is some misogyny in this and a lot of other criticisms of the season. Honestly, it may be my favorite season of the show.
Coming from Pizzolatto I’d say it’s probably half misogyny, half egomaniac showrunner/control freak.
While I wouldn’t rank it over S1, it is easily one of the more interesting seasons of television I’ve seen recently.
Ugh, this crap again…
There was *plenty* to criticize about Season 4 that had nothing to do with gender or race.
Just like there was in S1. The show is usually pretty good, but it’s not perfect and never has been. I just feel like I’ve seen a lot more shitting on this season that I didn’t see on S1, and I think a lot of what’s good and bad about this season is on par with the same from S1. So it does make me question why that might be.
Look into reactions to Season 2.
You can’t be serious. Look at this thread listing just some of the issues with this season. And this thread could easily be two or three times as long. If you think Season 1 had anywhere near this many issues, plot holes, nonsense decisions, contradictions, etc, you’re either being extremely disingenuous or your delusional:
> I just feel like I’ve seen a lot more shitting on this season that I didn’t see on S1, and I think a lot of what’s good and bad about this season is on par with the same from S1. So it does make me question why that might be.
That’s largely because this is the forth season of an anthology show that’s first season was a breakout smash hit. Even if the forth season is just as good as the first (it isn’t), it’s going to disappoint some fans by either being too different or too derivative. That’s completely normal.
S1 is a very high bar to clear, and I don’t the S4 quite got there. I’m enjoying it, but there’s a lot of shortfalls that have nothing to do with misogyny, more just poor writing.
Yeah the finale of S1 where McConaughey’s atheist character finds God or whatever (excuse me while I retch) was kind of crap even if I was digging it up to that point.
Such as?
Well for starters, the bizarre ethics;
Navarro got away with killing the wife-beater and goading Clark into suicide. Both shown as something empowering. 1 clear-cut murder and 1 in the gray-area. You could also add several cases of assault.Peter got away with killing another officer in a police-shooting. It’s just written off as a missing person.Hank in turn got away with murdering Otis, partaking in the Annie K-cover up and possible attempted murder at another police-officer, among other things. At least 1 murder and 1 accessory to murder.Lynch-mobs are shown as something positive and powerful, as long as it’s the right group doing it. The climax of the show are the main-characters covering up an additional 6-7 murders. The perpetrators themselves confess, but added it was “hypothetical” and the detectives just roll with it and starts the cover-up due to one of them belonging to the same ethnic group. This is the darkest levels of nepotic corruption and racism.Rose got away with 2-4 cases of accessory to murder depending on how you count, based on her being friends with the detectives.Media in general seem to be non-existent, even social media. No one cares about grizzly murders on women or large-scale disappearances of scientists. No journalist ever asks any questions and there’s no press-conferences in the entire season. Same goes for politicians or the police internal affairs-investigations. No one is held accountable to anything.
Bro, you might want to rewatch Season 1 with an eye towards the police brutality on display if you think any of this is new.As for the media angle, you’re living in a fantasy world — most of America now lives in news deserts even when you’re not sitting on the frozen edge of Hell.
Bro, not the point. All are valid criticisms that have nothing to do with gender/race. OP asked for examples. Examples provided.
Time is a flat circle of orange peels lmfao. What a joke.
But you specifically mention gender and race in your “counter” examples. You just couch them in terms of “ethics”. What kind of counterpoint is that? Especially when your claim is that there was “plenty” wrong with the season and then offer only a fucking morality clause argument? Get in the analytical game, bro. Have a conversation about the actual craft that went into the show, brah. Talk about character motivations, A plot progression and how it balanced B and C subplots, satisfying an arc, etc, bruv. You know, substantive issues rather than sociocultural talking points bullshit, brosephus.
“Get in the analytical game, bro.”lmfao yes yes, in the comments section of the AVClub. Settle down there bro.
L your FAO all you want, YOU were the one who claimed to have a counterpoint. And then wrote a bullet point list of finger-wags.
And? Valid criticism is valid criticism. Or “finger-wags”, if you will.
Personal codes of ethics are not the basis for valid artistic criticisms.
“Traditionally, there were two opposing philosophical positions taken with respect to the legitimacy of the ethical evaluation of art: ‘moralism’ and ‘autonomism’, where moralism is the view that the aesthetic value of art should be determined by, or reduced to, its moral value, while autonomism holds that it is inappropriate to apply moral categories to art.”
Art, Ethical Criticism of | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (utm.edu)You’re not the gatekeeper of what is/isn’t valid criticism. 🙂
Now that’s more like it! Five seconds of online research for a definition that I doubt you were aware of before the moment it popped up on your browser. How hard was that?Also, I believe within the definition you posted is the crux of my point here, which is the opposing philosophical position.So do you have anything OTHER THAN shallow conservative traditionalist morality to discuss vis-a-vis this TV show or can we move on to the technical and/or narrative merits? (You’re kinda sorta there with the lack of media coverage but then you boil it down to some “accountability” bullshit.)And for the record, I’m aware that this started with some accusations of misogyny in the criticisms of the show and I’d like to point out that said accusation was leveled at the *criticism*, not the show itself. You then followed that up with moralistic criticism rooted in traditionalist moralism, which is itself pretty heavily tied to misogyny. Of course it’s not a direct link, OH NO, wouldn’t want to be accused of hashtagallconservatives or hashtagallmoralphilosophers or whatever. But it strikes me as pretty funny nonetheless.Please do provide more argument by way of Google search results if you feel so inclined.
*presents valid criticism*
“nah man, present something else”
Yeah that’s alright. Keep looking for bigots/misogynists elsewhere.
I don’t agree with the validity of the criticism. Within your own copy + paste bullshit you underline this. Did you even READ the shit you copy + pasted?
You’re not asking the right question
I think critisizing ethical behavior in any cop/detective/crime show is fine. A good crime show takes the viewer along for a morally grey ride, and when we see cops going down a path ‘outside of the law’, ‘going rogue’, we as an audience are left to wonder what we would do in a situation like that. Can we understand the real emotions underneath the face of the law? Etc. The problem is that in season 4 it hardly ever feels earned. And we cannot have a normal discussion about it precisely because of the misoginyst or misandrist finger pointing. A big reason is that the writer actually seems to have an agenda, but I dont understand the point – Danvers and Navarro have so many male toxic traits, but are we as an audience supposed to feel empowered, simply for the sake that they are women taking justice on men? Or should we feel bad for them? I find writing tough female characters as toxic alpha males bit too simplisric for a prestige HBO show. Injustice on women is not a bad theme. But earn that shit. Instead we see them using men for loveless sex, having conversations devoid of any empathy, torture a guy because they think he did something, and turn a blind eye towards actual killers of 7 people. Its not that the plot line couldnt be the same, but there were scenes of injustice missing; show us the pollution. Show us the crimes against the women, the heart broken mothers of dead babies, show us that these scientists would be capable of murdering a women for the sake of the Greater Good. But instead, we are told that its happening. Continuously, through expositional dialogue. And we are left with a finale that we are supposed to agree with, because the idea of oppressed women fighting white men is inherently good? (Looking at the symbolism here).The whole story needed 3 more rewrites and it would be fine. Right now it has so many questionable policing and character motivations, cringey dialogues, expositional scenes, paranormal wishiwashiness (its either not explained, or in the eye of the beholder, so its just there to excite the viewer) that yes, it in my opinion, it takes a bunch of cognitive dissonance to defend the show.So yeah, in a show where characters motovations are questionable, not because of morally grey area’s, but because the writer thinks we should accept it for the sake of it, can be a critique of a show.
But that’s all completely consistent with the show as a whole. Every season of this ridiculous TV show is full of questionable policing and motivations, cringe dialogue, exposition, awkward tone mixing, etc. There’s nothing in this season that stands out as particularly egregious in the context of the IP. And I’m not saying that’s a good thing necessarily. Just that there seems to be some pretending that S4 is somehow an outlier. And what is the substantive difference between the seasons? I’ll give you a hint: it’s related to the genitals of the main characters and showrunner.
I might agree with there being bad things on every season. But youve forgotten the backlash of season 2 (as have i – i just remember the show being boring).But the critiques ive read have nothing to do with the show being led and written by women. If anything there has been a new appraisal of shows like Sharp Objects, Mare of Easttown and Dark Places that do get it right. Season 4 was just a dumb, no matter who made it and whose it with.
I’m saying that the specific criticisms of S4 are criticisms that can be levied against EVERY season of the show. How dire those problems actually are might change per season (for me, S2 was the height of ridiculous, 1 and 3 were quite good) but substantively they don’t seem all that unique. The primary unique element between them is the showrunner.It’s also worth saying that just because you haven’t seen those sexist critiques doesn’t mean they don’t exist. (And likewise just because some people’s only exposure to critiques have demonstrated sexism doesn’t mean every critique is sexist. If you only read The Mary Sue and Jezebel you’re self-selecting.)Generally I’m pretty tired of the discourse around misogyny in criticism. Because it’s fucking *obviously* there. But it’s also *obviously* not the only origin of most criticism. That said, given the prevalence of misogyny and toxic masculinity in our culture I’m MUCH more willing to hear those voices than the “hashtagnotall” crowd.
Nah, bud, you’re the one bringing the expectation to the table that the examples from Season 4 were supposed to be read as empowering, rather than chilling, or confusing, or the least bad of a shit ton of shitty options or whatever. You’re filling in the blanks with your own biases and putting that on the show’s… politics? Okay, sure, whatever.
Nah bud, you’re just looking for a bigot/misogynist where there isn’t one. Okay, sure, whatever.
Yo kid, I invited you to defend your premise that the show presents these acts of vigilantism — consistent with the acts of vigilantism in Season 1 — as celebratory. If you want to mutter nuh-uh and slink away, that’s, again, on you. From my perspective, all you’re offering is garbage pail reactionary bullshit, on which you have been called.
Yo child, time is a flat circle of orange peels. You sound upset with some of the examples I provided. You can have a much more thorough discussion on this topic elsewhere *shrug*
I watched Season 1 for the first time right before Season 4, and found it dreadfully mysogynist, with an absurd, laughable premise more turgid and fantastic than that of Night Country. That said, McConaughey and Harrelson were divine, and they carried that whole mess on their shoulders and then some. There was plenty of vigilante justice in Season 1, and plenty of longueurs, but more time allotted to sorting through the emotional beats, which would have helped this season. There was simply too much going on for 6 episodes.
AND there is the problem. Every season of every show is shorter than the last. It used to be about 20 episodes per season, then 10, then 8, now 6. Characters and stories do not have time to develop. So much has to be crammed in and so much is left out. It’s the shrinkflation of entertainment. Also, I need to rewatch season 1. Other than time is flat circle I can’t remember any other references to that season. Not sure if it was intended, but it seemed like a little bit of teasing when the line was used. I don’t know, it made me chuckle. Maybe that’s why Pizzolatto was butt hurt.
The wife beater was already a murderer. Navarro killed a murderer.Peter killed a corrupt police officer who had just committed murder and he did so to keep another police officer from being murdered.Hank didn’t get away with them. He got his comeuppence.The perpetrators of the Tsalal murders were getting justice for the fact that the men of the station killed Annie K. and were active participants in the pollution of the ecosystem which led to countless stillbirths, cancer cases, etc.Rose was funI’ve got a lot of issues with this season but… ethics… isn’t one of them. Everybody who was killed got what was coming to them, except for maybe Otis.
Good points. I had issues with the numerous plots that went nowhere as well, so ethics weren’t my only issue with the season.
Retard-pilled. It’s okay if the extra judicial killings align with my feelings!
I enjoyed this season, second or third best overall. But each point made here is valid.
Yep, a lot of the “hero” protagonists committed terrible acts, and people got away with their misdeeds. But that’s the point—to bring up moral quandaries for viewers to ponder—which is why I don’t think sketchy ethical situations merely existing in the story is a valid criticism. The questions raised by your examples have been a staple of prestige crime dramas for decades: what is justice, especially when the powerful are heavily insulated from repercussions? Is an eye for an eye justice? Do the ends justify the means? etc etc.Re: lynch mobs, I thought there was an interesting symmetry in how it all played out. It’s discovered that the research, an end which Clark claims could have saved many lives around the world, is being produced by means that are actively killing people in the town, so an individual destroys the research. In turn, this individual gets killed by a group of researchers. Then, because this one person died, a larger group of townspeople kill the other group. In every case, we’re meant to consider whether the good outweighs the bad and whether the death and destruction was justified. I also don’t see the ending as “the detectives start the cover-up because one of them belong to the same ethnic group” as the mob. The cover-up already began with the highly questionable forensics results, which were pushed by the higher ups and the mining company. Also, while the group was mostly indigenous, the unifying factor was that they were all women on the lower rungs of society (janitors, laborers), so I read it as the detectives considering the power dynamics (and lack of evidence) in not acting on this “confession.” Lastly, is a group of outsider for-profit researchers working with a mining company to knowingly pollute the land and town for a hypothetical miracle cure not an EVEN darker level of corruption and racism?
This. I think leads did good job, but at the half way point at least it’s not really very coherent series. I hope it ends with stronger note.It’s still relatively good show, but the first season was one of the best (if not the best) series since The Wire. The successors have gone down on quality, but still overall I think it’s been great ride.Anyho I think it continues the theme these days. One has to have visually stunning scenes, if there’s something between those that is at least half baked, one should be grateful.
Yeah, but when you look at the primary demographic who is frothing at the mouth about this terrible season, rather than perhaps just accepting that it wasn’t for them and maybe different people like different things, it does feel pretty evident that there’s misogyny involved…. No, not everyone who didn’t like it is sexist, but we see the same virulent responses every time a story centers on women, and we know what that pattern means.
My point was that there were valid criticisms that were not related to race or gender. That’s it. I get that there are sexists/racists/bigots spouting nasty garbage.
Misogyny and racism are always part of the mix, but I think we can also embrace that some people just reasonably hated the way this season was crafted. Two things can be true. But Pizzolatto just has no class. He walked away from this show. And he can’t extend a little grace to its inheritors? Dude needs thereapy.
I mean, Pizzolatto has always come off as an asshole and he’s done it again here, but that aside, I’m bewildered at how anyone can think Night Country is the BEST season of True Detective. Speaking for myself, my problems with this season have everything to do with the overall stupidity of the plot, the supernatural stuff that went nowhere and the schlock-y jump-scare horror elements that went along with it, and the totally shoehorned-in attempts at connecting this season to season 1.
“Self-righteous vigilantism” in particular is a weird criticism. Pizzolatto literally says in an “Inside the Episode” feature that he considered both Cohle and Hart to absolutely be heroes after the episode where they blew away a suspect and then conspired to cover it up.
It’s my 2nd favorite (I loved season 1) but I really liked this season. I loved the ending and evil of men should be punished. And as a brown man, I didn’t say the evil of white men, but all men. That ending was wonderful.
a few minutes on the subreddit will confirm a LOT of it is misogyny and racism. Whooole lot of piss babies bitching about DEI.
Sorry, season 4 was a poorly written and highly flawed slog. No misogyny needed.
Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realise that HBO demanded that Issa López graft on TD Season 1 references that had no place there. It ruined the story and it’s HBO’s fault.
source?
Why is it so commonly labeled “misogyny” to criticize the work of women but we all can be as critical as we want of the work of men without being lambasted for sexism?
Oh come on man it’s not as good. It’s just not. And honestly the two leads were the best part. It’s the rest of the show that sucked.
The season didn’t suck because of female empowerment or whatever, it sucked because the pacing was terrible, the supernatural elements were ham-fisted, the interpersonal drama varied wildly in quality, the ties to season one were goofy and unnecessary, and the whole interaction between the research station and the mine wound up making no fucking sense.There WERE good elements, mostly with the actors who were all giving it 100% and deserve every accolade they’ve received. And the initial setup was a pretty compelling one. I also don’t mind the concept of the ending, but I thought the execution was thoroughly botched in a very GoT S8 kind of way.For a far better female-created-and-focused murder mystery short series, Top of the Lake is wonderful (though the second season is a bit shaky, the first is rock-solid). And if I want Issa López doing a magical-realist crime story, Tigers Are Not Afraid is fantastic and absolutely the sort of movie that would convince HBO to hand her the reigns for True Detective.
And hell, I’m not convinced she doesn’t have a good season in her! But I am convinced that season wouldn’t have a sad cover of Twist and Shout on the soundtrack.
I fucking love both Reis and Foster in this. Their performances are awesome, and it’s worth watching for that alone. Reis deserves a stellar career; she’s like a worthy heir to what Angela Bassett was like in 90s – an incredibly badarse who can be extremely vulnerable at the same time and be fully believable at both.Buuuut…“Oh, yeah, Night Country? That’s what literally everyone around here calls the ice caves. Dunno how you missed that. You probably should’ve known that, having lived and worked in this town for ages, or someone should’ve at least mentioned it earlier, but then that wouldn’t have the dramatic impact we wanted until the second to last episode.” I rolled my eyes when Navarro’s fuckbuddy just hid the stone under bar and they all immediately forgot about it, because it was such an obvious Chekhov’s gun, especially when the season wasted a bunch of time on pointless stuff. What I think the first series got right is that heavily implied some dark, gothic, possibly supernatural forces, but were simply just…people doing people things. I wasn’t a fan of the whole actual supernatural stuff that was deliberately shown in this season. Instead “what’s the human motivation for this?” it was more “Oh, it’s just magic”. Man, I tried getting into China Girl. Holy shit, Elisabeth Moss is literally the only American on the planet who can pull an Australian accent. We need to give her some sort of award for that.But I went through the Aussie, such as it is, arts university system, and there’s a lot of problems mean I couldn’t get past the first episode. There’s a lot of stuff in there that shows Campion has not evolved beyond the 1970s. I could tell it wasn’t going to work in the 2010s.
oh shut up. its more sexist to think that women can’t create something stupid and they are above criticism because they pee sitting down.
I think it’s the most cohesive season. As fun as the first season was, in the end it didn’t really add up to anything. This season was about people with real, human issues at least.
I don’t know. I was really feeling it at first but it fell off hard at the end for me. I think calling it True Detective in general is fine, but it would have been a lot better off not doing all these callbacks that ultimately did not matter. It’s a constant reminder of a better season.
Um, yes definitely part of it.Same crowd which hated She-Hulk looked for every possible reason to shit all over it.For my money, Rose Aguineau needs a spinoff show.
Jfc… stop it. This is such an ignorant and ridiculous comment. People disliking and criticizing the show, which was legitimately one of the worst things i have ever watched, has absolutely nothing to do with misogyny. I’m sure there is a very small percentage of people that may apply to, but to paint anyone who criticized the show with that same idiotic broad brush is amazingly ignorant.I wanted to like the season. I wanted it to be good. I have a young daughter, I hate conservatives and incels, I hate review-bombing incel dipshits, etc etc. I would have loved nothing more than for it to be good. And guess what? I hated it. The season was f**king terrible. It was laughably awful, in a vast multitude of ways. I could spend literal hours listing the vast multitude of glaring plot holes, asinine and nonsensical narrative decisions, ridiculous developments, etc etc. It was, again and in all sincerity, one of the most ridiculously awful seasons of a television show that I have ever seen.Which is all to say that claiming people who don’t like it are just mysogynists and/or that they don’t like it solely due to misogyny, is aggressively ignorant and ridiculous and irresponsible. Why, it’s almost like some people have different taste than you! It’s almost like some people have higher standards and expect a show that is supposed to be about detectives to actually feature detective work, and to not have enormous plot holes, and not have idiotic bulls**t about ghosts, and to have a tightly structured mystery, and for everything to actually fit together and make sense! If you enjoy mediocre shows with terrible plots that have gaping holes and whose “mystery” was a complete joke and often a complete afterthought, then more power to you. But claiming people who feel otherwise have ulterior motives is legitimately asinine.
It’s misogynistic to pretend women can’t make B- television.
Just like the first season, the fourth season was abject garbage.
Of course you can’t. Its not possible to criticize a female centric cast of a show without being branded that way. You know it is actually possible that some people just didn’t like it. Season 2 got absolutely destroyed because it was so bad. Were you defending that one too?
Yeah, especially with glorifying the first season which has its strengths but also has a lot of gratuitous nudity to the point of being silly (the scene where Alexandra Daddario donald ducks it in half the scene with her butt to the camera being probably the biggest example) and a lot of female characters who were just romantic partners, hookers/strippers or victims. The current season has been a bit meandering but it’s at least trying something new. As much as I like Mahershela Ali the 3rd season was the most derivative and that random “kidnapped girl was kept in the mansion of a crazy heiress” solution was truly weird and nonsensical
The fact that this ridiculous, insulting, irresponsible, asinine, disingenuous bulls**t comment somehow has 74 Likes is legitimately embarrassing. Someone is a misogynist because… they dont like the same shifty tv show as you. So f**king absurd, so reductive, so intellectually lazy and disingenuous. Everyone who liked this comment should be ashamed.
I agree. This season is so freaky different. Overall, I enjoyed it, and it needs time to simmer before my final thoughts about it are congealed. As for that guy, it’s the same old story with outraged and punitive men towards women creating/starring in media in male-dominated franchises. It’s so predictable and boring. And he’s just proving some of the assertions in Night Country.
For a show that coasted so much on *vibes* Pizzolatto sure has a high f’ing opinion of his own fun but stupid writing.
Thank you. Every single season so far has thrived by creating an atmosphere of lurking dread that’s a little occult in nature. Each season then undercuts that atmosphere with “reveals” near the season’s end.
Knowing this I stilll come back each time! That’s how much I love the vibes and take each season’s weaknesses in stride.
The fact that Lopez has taken any of that hilariously baroque season one dialogue and repurposed it should DELIGHT Pizzolatto.ETA: Honestly, his reactions have made me think he has more in common with a guy like Neil Breen than he’d probably like to admit.
That is borderline insulting to Mr Breen.
IT’S A MAGICAL DAY!
“Little occult” might be the understatement of the year. Season 4 straight up had ghosts. I figured they’d tried to explain it as hallucinations induced by the toxic water supply or something but they didn’t. They just straight up had ghosts. I’m not sure what the writers were thinking but they completely jumped the shark.
See, that actually makes me look forward to the rest of the season. I thought all the other seasons “blue balled” me with some Scooby-Doo-ass explanation that undercut the aforementioned “vibes”.
Different strokes, I guess?
I don’t remember the previous seasons having any supernatural vibes. Everything was clearly grounded in reality and all occurrences, discoveries, etc, stemmed from humans.
Unlike some whiny crybabies I’m not going to “spoilers!” you. Because it will either work or won’t. That said, I’ve waited until the season was over to watch.But that’s okay! Not only because I don’t believe in spoiler outrage bullshit but because now I’m even MORE excited to dive in! I LOVE when a story starts weird, pivots towards “normal”, and then pivots back to weird/supernatural. The Last Exorcism is one of my favorite found footage films for this reason. I suspect that I will disagree with your assertion of shark jumpery.
Sorry for potential spoilers. I assumed everyone reading the comments about a TV show that just finished would have already seen it.The problem in this particular instance is that True Detective is an established brand that has, up until now, had zero supernatural elements. Its occult elements were limited to crazy death cults, not actual supernatural stuff.
No sorry necessary! I don’t believe in spoilers.And for me the turn towards actual supernatural stuff is welcome. You say “problem”, I say “solution”. I always wanted the show to push the weirder aspects.
I feel the opposite. To me, the appeal of True Detective has always been about exploring the human condition and how people deal with weakness and trauma. As such, it’s important that humans be doing all the horrific shit. Humans also need to be the ones figuring things out and solving problems. If ghosts are doing the bad stuff or helping the detectives figure out who did, that cheapens the whole experience.
Like what you like. But “cheapens”? I don’t get this sentiment. It’s not “cheaper”, just different. And in a way you don’t like. That’s totally valid. “Cheapens” is such a needlessly pejorative way to put it.
I believe it did cheapen season 4 and made it worse so, yeah, it was meant to be pejorative. We’re talking about an established IP here which built a fanbase around specific strengths. It’s reasonable to criticize season 4 for undermining those strengths by resorting to supernatural stuff.
Sure.
“And for me the turn towards actual supernatural stuff is welcome.” Exactly. I can understand that some people don’t like those elements, but I don’t feel that the show is really beholden to anything other than telling an interesting story (which tbf I don’t think this season completely achieved). It’s just different strokes for different folks.
Yep. And *some* folks really seem to think their strokes are superior. To be passive-aggressive about it.
I mean most of the “ghosts” were from the point of view of the character with some sort of genetic schizophrenia running in the family. If you remember who the point of view character is there, it’s not necessarily supernatural so much as potentially just her hallucinating. She talks a lot about having a history of mental illness too
*SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO HASN’T SEEN THE ENTIRE SEASON*Nah, there were supernatural occurrences from multiple characters’ POVs. The flickering lights, spooky whispers, scientist having a random seizure right before the lights go out, etc. Hell, in the first episode, the old lady sees the ghost of her dead husband that leads her to the dead scientists. Then in the last episode, nobody knows why Anna’s tongue was at the science outpost. Oh, then there were the numerous ghost orange cameos which only made sense when you saw the orange fall out of the fridge in the final episode. There would have been no reason for Navarro to hallucinate that in the previous episodes. Danvers also sees ghost footprints manifest right before her eyes in the last episode.Basically, the show heavily implies that Anna’s ghost was helping the detectives solve her own murder, which is a common trope in ghost stories.
I didn’t take those incidents to mean that the Annie’s ghost helped them solve her murder. Just indicating that different spirits were around. Navarro following the wet footprints in the dredge and finding the random Christmas tree led to nothing, case-wise. The oranges seemed to be signs from Navarro’s mother, since Julia also saw them. They learned what happened to Annie by torturing Clark, for better or for worse.
The final episode heavily implies that Anna’s ghost placed her own tongue at the lab to help the detectives link the two cases together. The women who killed the scientists stated that they didn’t place it there and nobody else had any logical reason to do so.I do agree that there were likely multiple spirits involved, like Rose’s dead husband leading her to the scientists. That just makes the whole thing even more hokey, though. It’s like they couldn’t figure out a logical and organic way for certain key events to occur so they just resorted to ghosts.
Ah right. Yeah, I don’t think there’s a good answer for how the tongue got there. I took the supernatural explanation to be that it was left by whatever entity “took” the Tsalal crew rather than Annie herself. My convoluted handwavey explanation is that Hank or the scientists (Clark could be wrong) cut out her tongue there and it got somehow preserved in their freezer storage, and then it somehow came out in the chaos of the attack. The show seemed very suggestive of a supernatural explanation though, with the moment where Danvers is looking at the spot where she found the tongue and there’s weird ice crystals(?) there.Another thing, Annie’s murder was already solved by the women who killed the Tsalal crew. So I guess it was just there (if it was left on purpose) to bring closure to Navarro?
Yeah, none of it really made sense. If the spirits’ goal was to avenge Anna’s death, the angry mob of women already accomplished that. Maybe the spirits’ goal was actually to shut down the mining operation? If so, this was a pretty convoluted way to do it.In any case, the fact that we’re even talking about spirits at all in a True Detective show is kinda the whole problem.
Half of True Detective’s appeal was the idea that there was always something deeper and weirder to the mythos….There wasn’t.But that was enough to get people deeply invested in his storytelling style. I think he’s kind of frustrated that someone new took up the title and is getting better viewership and similar critical praise. There’s no door for him to kick open, step in, and say “Haha! You need me!” Because HBO clearly doesn’t.
“Similar critical praise.”Wut? No, it’ not. Only from hack websites with zero credibility like AVClub and TheRinger (and even the latter finally admitted after the finale that the season was pretty bad). The general consensus that I’ve seen is that Night Country is mediocre at best (I would argue that jt’ hilariously and shockingly terrible) and isn’t even in the same league as Season 1. I mean, look at the True Detective subreddit. The vast majority of people hated it, and rightfully so. Because it’s awful.
Love that you started this conversation. Part of the appeal for me of Season 1 was that the *detective* story itself was kinda weak; the bigger message was a meta-commentary on detective stories (and so much else). Hell, even the title was part of that meta-commentary. Looking back on it, with NP’s reactions here, maybe I was giving him too much credit? Maybe the *detective* story at the center of Season 1 wasn’t intentionally weak? hahaha
When I watched S2 I did a little background “research” on his other work and… yeah, I think there’s a pretty good chance that all the fun stuff in Season 1 was *in spite of* Pizzolatto. I think he’s a very self-serious Writer who does not understand how funny his bullshit is.
What are you even talking about? At least they occasionally did actual detective work, which was entirely absent from Night Country. They never even investigated the freaking crime scene, outside of one cursory look around at the beginning. And then at the end, surprise! There’ an obvious tunnel leading directly to the suspect and evidence, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN CRIME SCENE. Gee, if only these detectives had ever bothered to actually look around and examine jt. Not to mention idiocy like finding a handprint missing two fingers, and never bothering to question or investigate the lady missing those same two fingers who worked at the fucking scene of the crime. It was hilariously stupid.I find it absurd that people are now trying to retroactively paint Season 1 as being bad in order to defend the complete dumpster fire that is Night Country. It’ so blatantly disingenuous and ridiculous. Everyone loved Season 1, but now that Night Country ended up being garbage they want to suddenly pretend as if Season 1 was never actually very good, either. It’ a joke. Much like Night Country itself!
In Season 2, Pizzolatto literally wrote the line, “I will come back here and butt f*ck your dad with your mom’s headless corpse.” I think whatever mantle he held regarding quality or “classic dialogue” ended right there. Also, so much of what made season 1 what it was the acting and direction. Many of the ideas were cribbed wholesale from Thomas Ligotti, Robert W. Chambers, and Laird Barron, which is well known at this point. Yes, Season 4 isn’t quite the cinematic long form masterpiece S.1 was—it is a bit more conventional in its horror elements, and a little more “made for TV’ in its look and feel—but it’s world’s above the second and third seasons. So he sort of needs to stfu.
In Season 2, Pizzolatto literally wrote the line, “I will come back here and butt f*ck your dad with your mom’s headless corpse.” Bwa-ha-HAAAAAAAT!? That’s a real thing?
Also, “It’s like having blue balls… in your heart.”
Holy SHIT that’s awful.
Yep.
Yes, and the character that said it was saying it to a child. TD season 2 deserves all the dirt that’s been thrown at it over the years, it was a total mess.
Yes, and the character that said it was saying it to a child. Holy shit, I may need to see this thing. That’s wild.
I LOVE S2 from the POV of someone who enjoyed S1 but felt like people overlooked how pretentious and goofy S1 was. S2 is Pizzolatto feeling himself and it made me laugh soooo hard.
As real as “It’s like blue balls in your heart.” Sure, this line was supposed to be told by someone who was clumsy at expressing his feelings, but still…
Yeah, but like… it wasn’t a particularly good person saying it.
Holy crap, no wonder my friends are telling me to watch seasons 1 and 4 but skip 2 and 3…
I liked Season 3. It’s an interesting story with what I thought was a good resolution. Also, the acting is really good.
Well I was planning on watching all 4 of them really, not like they’re that long anyhow.
I agree, with so much debate a few weeks back about how S4 was a “return to form” I felt that conversation overlooked a very good S3. The acting was fantastic, Ali/Dorf had wonderful chemistry, and the dialogue felt a bit more natural than S1 (though that also made it a bit less memorable). Also, it balanced three time periods quite well and had an interesting resolution. S4 was very good too, but a couple more episodes or trimming a few plotlines that didn’t go anywhere (fake Russian brides, the bait/switch supernatural plots) would have helped.
I felt the same way about S3 of the Fargo show, S1, 2, 5 got a ton of credit, rightfully so, but S3 got overlooked. That cast was stacked!
eh, I liked s3. Much better than 2, still streets behind 1.
Season 2 sucks. Season 3 is interesting but can’t touch season 1.
If you’ve seen 1, you’ve already seen the better version of 3’s ‘Remember when’ retread.
Season 3 rules.
Whaat? Season three is objectively great.
I’ve never seen the show but I actually like that line.
I’m trying to figure out the logistics. Like is the moms head very small or the dads butt hole really huge?
I would disregard what people say about S2 as bad, I didn’t even know Vince Vaughn could act seriously until this season. I thought the acting was phenomenal from this whole cast. Story is confusing and very dark, but that’s my kinda thing. I am only in S4EP3, but I see no comparison between S4 and S1. I don’t think that season could ever be paralleled let alone topped and S4 ain’t it.
The way Colin Farrell delivers that line with psychotic earnest while chewing the scenery actually works though.
It really does… but that doesn’t make the line itself good. In the hands of a lesser actor it would be an embarrassment
agreed! he is so good in that season
Everything Vaughn says in that season is insane nonsense but it’s so, so funny.
That was a line coming from the mouth of a raging alcoholic, and he was threatening a child. I thought it was absolutely hilarious and completely within the characters’s mindset to say something so unhinged.I don’t see the problem with that line. But I think you’re spot on with the rest of your comment.
If “time is a flat circle” is the go-to example, did he ever deserve that mantle?A circle is a two-dimensional shape — it’s flat by definition.And it’s hardly a profound thought either. It’s just a somewhat more cryptic version of Battlestar Galactica’s “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again”, which itself was borrowed from the classical philosophy of… uh… Disney’s Peter Pan.
The full line is “You ever bully or hurt anybody again, I’ll come back and buttfuck your father with your mom’s headless corpse on this goddamn lawn.” Is that any better, though?Season two also includes Vince Vaughn saying, “It’s like blue balls, in your heart.” And there’s much more shitty dialogue where that came from: https://deadspin.com/true-detective-season-two-lines-ranked-1723048186
And let’s not forget McConaughey’s final speech in season 1 seems pretty directly lifted from Alan Moore’s Top 10 comic series (Pizzolatto has directly cited Moore as an influence).
That one’s probably the most OTT, but if you’re gonna mention S2’s dialogue you gotta include Frank Semyon:‘The enemy has yet to reveal himself. It… stymies my retribution. It’s like, blue balls. In your heart.’‘In the midst of being gangbanged by forces unseen, I figured I’d drill myself a new orifice. Go on and fuck myself for a change.’‘Shouldn’t a reasonable man infer, from Osip’s arrival, and departure, and fuckin’ failure to make good on our terms, as being not just connected to Caspere, but prefiguring Caspere, in a causal sense?’‘Guy’s been around less the last three months than my wife’s period.’His character also inspired the brief trend of Vinceposting, which was hilarious:
Thank you for posting those quotes, cause I can never remember them. Just amazing. For that second to last one about Osip and Caspere, you can just tell he was watching Deadwood when or shortly before he wrote that. It reads like someone who isn’t Milch trying to write Swergen.
Aww cmon thats like the best line
He also scripted a character that was a VERY thinly veiled swipe at Cary Joji Fukunaga because he was jealous the Fukunaga was getting so much praise for the show.Of course, Fukunaga turned out to be a creep, but it still shows you what a small baby Pizzolatto is.
The man had one idea ever and he used it up for season 1. Ten years later he’s still cranky about that.
Buddy is out here acting like he isn’t a one-hit wonder who shit the bed on seasons 2 and 3. Funny how he doesn’t bring up the critical reception of those seasons. He’s just pissy because S4 finally got some positive attention, even if it wasn’t universally adored.
What a nerd ass post. That line was hilarious.
I disloke Pizzolatto, but Season 3 is leagues better than Night Country. Night Country is embarrassingly awful. It’s shockingly bad.
Naw. It goes 1, 3, 4, 2..Big drop off between 1 and 3. Bigger drop off between 3 and 4. Biggest drop off between 4 and 2.
I’ve seen season 1 and I’ve seen season 4. There was some parts of season 1 I liked better than four, and there was some parts on season 4 that I like better than one. But I enjoyed both. Why do we have to pick sides?
This your first day on the Internet?
We don’t which is why Nic Pizzolatto is such an idiot here. He is probably earning money from this season too. Criticism can be fine but this just seems bitter and petty and overimpressed with his own work from season 1
Seeing how many creators of smash/cult hits then crash and burn without doing anything of note afterward (Nic Pizzolatto! Marc Cherry! Mitch Hurwitz! Come on down!) begrudgingly makes me appreciate Chuck Lorre.
NOTHING will ever make me appreciate Chuck Lorre. He’s a hack.
He’s the guy behind the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song.That counts for something.
How dare you slander the Koog
When you aim for the middle…
I know this is a controversial opinion, but Bryan Fuller is also another writer I tend to think that can write a really good story for a single season or episode, but then shoots blanks trying to continue it, causing him to walk away from projects or separate because of “creative differences.”It also gives some credence to the theory that these writers are capable of writing really good stories, but only if they’re given the time to refine them. S1 was a perfect storm of acting, directing, and writing. Subsequent seasons arguably suffered from the writing, because many of these actors were more than capable. It wasn’t until this season when a new team came onboard (with a very green actress as one of the main leads!) that people came back around to liking the show.
Mitch Hurwitz! Hey the US version of Sit Down and Shut up! was great! It has fans , there are dozens of ..well about six or seven of us!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit_Down,_Shut_Up_(2009_TV_series)
This man is celebrated for 1 season of television; he wasn’t a better writer in season 1 than he was for seasons 2 or 3. The difference was 1) 2 strong performers who really gelled with the material and each other and 2) a fantastic blend of direction, cinematography and production design that was not repeated in later editions. So if season 1 is brilliant and seasons 2 and 3 are not, I think we can safely say that Pizzolatto’s range and impact is limited at best. And notice none of his fan boys are spanking it to Galveston or The Guilty, which NO ONE talks about (unlike Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid).
THANK YOU FOR POINTING THIS OUT! Now, can you say it louder for the trolls in the back?
Yep, I think that it’s similar to the way that George Lucas got lucky with the people he worked with in the original Star Wars trilogy, but then the wheels fell off the wagon when he surrounded himself with yes men for the prequels.
Eh… Pizzolatto is a blowhard and a one-trick pony, but the writing in S1 is significantly better than S2 and 3, mostly because he had a significantly longer time to work on it and iron out all the kinks. The pacing and structure work much better than in later seasons and that’s all in the script.He absolutely benefited from having actors capable of delivering his dialog, but Colin Farrell is no slouch and he couldn’t sell the bullshit in S2.
S2 is like he was taking a beginner class on Mamet dialogue.
For season 1 he was also cribbing heavily from not only Chambers’s The King in Yellow (which was, of course, explicit) but also works by Laird Barron and others—especially Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, from which whole monologues by Cohle are lifted. Accusations of plagiarism got thrown around back then as awards season was starting up. At the time I was hoping that it was mostly unintentional but, man, it’s not hard to buy into an explanation that his best writing by far is season 1 of True Detective because it’s largely others’ ideas.
This is fair, but lots of creators don’t have unbroken years to ramp up their work and turn out brilliance repeatedly. Which is the apples to apples way to compare TD to other shows like Fargo or even non-anthologies like Mad Men or Atlanta. Some people have one good thing in them and chase it the rest of their lives. And then get SUPER bitter when the spark isn’t recaptured.
Oh yeah, I’m not defending Nic Pizzolatto as a writer in general, I just think subsequent seasons have caused some people to play down the legitimate qualities of the first (and other people to glow it up far beyond what it was).
The difference between working on your first record for years and having to recapture the magic for record #2. Come on.
Lots of bands and countless shows actually have better second (and third and fourth) efforts; if the criteria is needing years of unbroken time to develop a single decent season, that’s not sustainable (or repeatable).
I’m not a Pizzolatto fanboy – in fact, I think s1 probably works so well in spite of him. I personally enjoyed the dialogue in it but I think the acting/direction go a long way in making s1 so quality.
As an aside, Galveston is an underrated flick (had no idea Pizzolatto wrote the book/screenplay until after the fact). I have only seen the original film The Guilty was based on and it didn’t do much for me so I skipped the remake. Had no idea Pizzolatto had a hand in it.
I haven’t watched this new season yet (definitely planning to), but holy hell is the reddit sub for TD a total shitshow since this season debuted. It’s just full of people falling over themselves to fellate Pizzolatto and shit on the new season (and yeah, there are quite a few dog whistles about “wokeness” and “DEI” sprinkled in the more “objective” criticisms). It’s plainly obvious that a good percentage of the fans were never going to accept this season regardless of it’s quality.
I suspect you may have missed that after what some felt was unjustified criticism of the first couple episodes, someone set up an entirely new subreddit, TDNightCountry, that made it a point to moderate the dogwhistling and was generally filled with positive comments about the show. It apparently became the the default suggested subreddit for it if you searched despite having far fewer subscribers.After watching the finale, in a remarkable move the founder of TDNightCountry took it private yesterday, essentially shutting it down deliberately. They were just that disappointed with the show and the finale.There were indeed some ‘fellating Pizzolatto’ from the start who were never going to be happy with a feminist reimagining of True Detective, but those threads and comments weren’t nearly as upvoted (and sometimes were outright downvoted) as ones pointing out the plot holes, terrible supporting characters, and nonsensical plot arcs.Given you’re commenting without having watched it I won’t discuss those here to avoid spoiling it for you, but before making any more conclusions, you should understand that over the course of the 6 episodes there’s pretty solid evidence that it wasn’t just the mouth breathers that were critical; instead, it was an awful lot of people who were rooting for it to succeed, gave it a fair shake, and were rightfully frustrated with what they got instead.
Man I was so pissed he shut down that sub. We could actually talk about the damn show there.
The question people should ask is how this miniseries would have been regarded if it were a standalone thing rather than something called True Detective.Mare of Easttown was a crime miniseries starring Kate Winslet on HBO. It was extremely well received, including on r/TrueDetective. It’s not as if people weren’t in a capacity to appreciate a gritty female-centric crime show on a premium network.I honestly doubt that Night Country would have made such a splash if it hadn’t been attached to the True Detective franchise. There was some good stuff, but also a lot of clumsiness and forced moments. Sure, it triggered a lot of trolls, as if True Detective had suddenly become some kind of masterpiece that shouldn’t be handled by the lesser hands of a woman, as if season 2 had never existed for instance. But we have basically the same situation as with the Ghostbusters reboot. Both Night Country and the GB reboot had to endure an awful lot of attacks based on misogyny and prejudice for desecrating a flawless franchise, even in a world where Ghostbusters 2 already existed. But you know what, the Paul Feig Ghostbusters movie wasn’t that good actually…
As I’ve written before, it just really feels like this was pitched as a 2 hour movie with heavy supernatural elements that HBO decided to expand and graft onto an existing franchise, with not so good results. If this had just stayed Night Country and kept the horror side of things with weird polar bears and Native Northern Goddesses demanding sacrifice, I suspect this would have worked a whole lot better. It’s a shame it didn’t.
Yeah this really could have been a hell of a movie.
After 2 episodes I thought: “This would probably be a better show if they hadn’t shoehorned it into TD.” After the last 4 episodes, I don’t think it matters. TD or not (which isn’t really saying much given TD has 1 well-regarded season from 10 years ago), this season needed a lot of work in the writing department to be good. It was so incredibly nonsensical at every single turn. I can totally understand there’s an audience for it – there’s an audience for everything. What I can’t wrap my brain around is how critically acclaimed it was. They could have easily picked this thing apart. I know, I know, don’t trust critics, but generally speaking I can usually see where critics are coming from when the garnish something with a ton of praise. This show is kind of the flipside where critics are loving something that by all accounts should be panned but audiences (for the most part) are the ones calling out legitimate criticisms with the writing/storytelling.
this was heaps better than Mare of Easttown (despite a very good Winslet, that show struggled).
I seen the show mentioned in HBO reddit and they didn’t like it either. So it you can’t just wish that away.
It was somehow even worse than the Witcher Netflix sub in its posters shitting on women showrunners.
No, it f**king wasn’t. Stop it. The overwhelmingly vast majority of criticisms were legitimate. A tiny fraction was anti-woke dipshits. So are you being blatantly disingenuous, or do you just have no idea what youre talking about and are just making shit up? This narrative that the only reason people dislike it is due to misogyny is incredibly idiotic, insulting, asinine, disingenuous, and intellectually lazy.
I agree that it was over the top in that subreddit, but the show was just not very good at all. There were good moments from the actors but there were just soo many plot holes and inconsistencies it was hard to not agree with a lot of the criticism.
Or maybe, just maybe… hear me out now, because this may sound crazy… maybe the new season is legitimately not very good, and people legitimately didn’t like it. Weird!!!Ive seen a tiny percentage of the criticisms stem from asinine conservative incel bullshit about being woke. The vast majority have been legitimate, honest, justified critiques. I have seen far far more of the opposite: people who want to defend it stupidly and disingenuously claiming that anyone who didn’t like it are misogynists and/or that the only reason they didn’t like it is due to misogyny, which is complete and utter bullshit. It sucked. I wanted to like it. I wanted it to be good. The fact that having demale leads and supposedly being woke would piss off dumbass incels was even more of an added bonus, if anything. But unfortunately, it was insanely awful. Like, shockingly bad.
I’m not dismissing all criticism of the show as being disingenuous, only the ones that specifically make a big deal about it “being woke” or focus too much on the identity of certain characters. Also, the amount of people going way over the top with criticizing and writing off the show after the first episode was a pretty good indication of who was actually willing to give the show a shot.
It was better for the industry when they tried to maintain some mystique and keep some things behind the curtain. Being this petulant – esp when you’re making money off it anyway – just looks immature.
He’s such a little bitch. He pitched a season 4 idea to HBO and they didn’t want it. He created a shitty season 2 and a mediocre season 3. He hadn’t proved himself to create a show that’s consistent enough quality each season. HBO likely didn’t trust that he could deliver.He could be exiting the franchise gracefully and allowing a new generation of storytellers to play within the True Detective sandbox, but instead he does this. It’s pathetic and shameful. If he’s that disappointed in the new season, he should’ve asked to have his executive producer credit taken off so that he had no association with it… and received no money from it. But instead he chooses to keep his name associated with it so he can profit, then bitch and moan about it and undermine HBO’s financial investment and essentially bite the hand that’s been feeding him for years. It also is super disappointing that he’s this willing to try and sabotage the reputation of a show that’s female-led. It’s not a great look. He could’ve said it’s not a direction he would’ve taken while still celebrating the amazing work done by Issa Lopez and everyone involved with the show.Again, a little bitch. It makes me not want to watch anything else he makes.
Not related to this story at all, but Nic Pizzolatto was a home-run guest on Andy Daly’s Bonanas for Bonanza podcast. He was startlingly familiar with Daly’s catalog.
It’s not dissimilar to the “gas leak” season of Community when new company men took over and used Dan Harmon’s leftover whiteboard plans to butcher his beloved characters using his own ideas. Pizzalatte might be an asshole, but he’s also correct. The references to season 1 were more pandering and pointless than the few shots of Taylor Swift during Chiefs games, and at least that got little girls into football.
not defending pizzalatte, but all three seasons he wrote at least have moments or individual episodes that are much, much better than anything in season 4
You just defended him dipshit
Seasons 2 and 3 are so universally reviled, and so utterly dissimilar to Season 1, that it’s fair to say that Pizzolatto probably never really fully understood his own lightning. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t like about Season 4 (especially as an Alaskan, questioning why the show felt the need to cast a non-AK Native lead to play a Native character, and so clearly lacking local consultants on terminology etc.)… but it certainly isn’t any worse than 2 or 3, and wouldn’t say it has diminished or misunderstood 1 in any way.
Who are you talking to? Hardly anyone thinks season 3 is bad, not up to 1’s standards, but still quite good.
Mahershala Ali is great, but other than that, the entire season is like a particularly drawn out and dull Law and Order SVU. Like Season 2, there’s next to no ‘strangeness’ at play. He’s a kind-of shitty husband and father, but not particularly problematic. He’s a kind-of shitty/kind-of talented cop, but not particularly unique. He’s a kind-of shitty friend, but not in a way with any real drama. He’s got a great setup for him to be an unreliable point of view character, with crucial information missing from his memory to set up interesting betrayals/twists/reveals, but the season never actually uses that, he remembers just about everything and anything important. I just never really understood where the drama was supposed to be, and the whole thing felt like the blandest possible story to play out from the setup in episode 1. There aren’t any quotable sayings, exciting moments, or memorable visuals from the entire season.If hardly anyone feels that way, I’m surprised.
I’ve never heard anyone call season 3 bad. It wasn’t as good as S1 but still good on its own merits and way better than seasons 2 and 4.
I wanted to like this season. But having seen the final episode (which I was surprised was last night – thought the series would have more episodes) I was distinctly underwhelmed. Better than season 2, but worse than 1 and 3.
Well he is right this was a disaster of a season and had nothing to do with True Detective but the name – and I am not a fan of True Detective in particular. It was badly written and badly acted incoherent mess. If some people liked it, good for them.
Does this guy’s “classic dialogue” include the lines he ripped off from Alan Moore? (Specifically his brilliant Top Ten comic).
Pizzolatto is a pretty arrogant guy who thinks he’s a genius – not uncommon in Hollywood – who uncommonly doesn’t try to filter this at all, which I suspect is one contributing factor why most critics were really rooting for Lopez to succeed since they grew tired of his act a long, long time ago. Being a jerk over and over is not a good way to get good press.Unfortunately, she didn’t. I wish she had. End of story.Also, quoting the “every time that it felt organic/love letters” bit at face value without any criticism after watching the full series is disingenuous. The S1 hints in the first couple episodes were really tantalizing, but not only were they never followed through on, but the finale’s use of “Time is a Flat Circle!” was so bizarre to require an EW article by Lopez loudly defending something that made sense only to her. Shoehorning it in after doing a fairly terrible job at the worldbuilding was not a particularly wise choice on her part.
Well reasoned take. Why is it always a binary? If you like Nik’s shows you can’t like Issa’s or vice versa. I mostly liked Nik’s shows and wanted Lopez to continue and make a great show. Sadly, I think she whiffed. The story was too “on brand” for gen Z (evil white corporation, men bad, native women power!!!!) for me and the mystery was poorly (IMO) teased out and solved compared to previous seasons. Even the acting was subpar to me (I know, I know…I’m a misogynist even though I really liked Rachel McAdams, Carmen Ejojo, Michelle Moynahan, and Kelly Reilly’s work in previous seasons) but I think Jodie Foster and Reis lacked the gravitas for this type of show.It’s ok though. I’d not be mad if Issa got another shot at it. I just won’t expect it to be great this time.
Season 4 was decent. I liked the setting. I liked the leads. The end didn’t really bother me. The mystery was weak-sauce and villains were head-scratching with beyond pithy motivations (World’s Greatest Microorganism FTW!) and evil corporate broad and her toady from the BBC!Worst part: the horned-in season 1 call-outs. 1) Kohles father???2) The Tuttles???3) The Carcosa symbol???4) “Time is a flat circle” ???5) Other season 1 references I might have missed/blocked outwere completely distracting and unnecessary. The season 4 show runners did themselves a disservice. That said, it was better than unwatchable season 2 and I liked it better than couple episodes too many season 3. Season 1 smokes it though. Final rambling thought: Wild River is a much, much better version of TD season 4’s themes.
Yeah I think you’re dead on. Multiple things can be true here… S4 was certainly better than the previous 2 seasons and felt fresh and had some exciting moments. But all the criticisms are well warranted and Pizzolato isn’t wrong about them. (He’s just an asshole for the way he shared them)
I didn’t even realize there were references to the first season. How do people remember these small details from 10 years ago?
Well first of all tv shows don’t just air once and never again, especially now in the age of streaming when they are archived and can be accessed at the touch of a button. Some people watch stuff more than once, some people may have watched it more recently than a decade ago. Second, the references to s1 in Night Country weren’t exactly subtle, they were drawing from very popular elements of that first season. “Time is a flat circle” became a well-known and often-quoted line. The spiral symbol was one of the signature images from season 1 and prominently showcased in the promo for Night Country, which got people primed to look for connections.
No idea.
Nic comes off as an asshole, but yeah S4 was a massive let down. But I did rewatch S1 because of it so I guess there’s a silver lining!
A one-hit-wonder desperately craving for attention?Say it ain’t so.
S1 of True Detective is one of the most over praised show’s ever created. What made the show memorable had nothing to do with Pizzolatto’s amateurish film school writing but was more so because of Woody Harrelson/Matt McConaughey chemistry, Cary Fukunaga’s directing & Alexandra Daddario’s physique.
“Alexandra Daddario’s physique”Which led to one of the greatest Tweets of all time…
“Alexandra Daddario’s physique”Thats a very ..diplomatic and polite way of putting it.
Disagree. That first season had “something”, probably a combination of things, but one of them was definitely his writing. You are just doing a reverse-fanboy thing and refusing to give credit where credit is due.
The direction was all over 4th season and is my lease liked. The first season was the best and and has slowly declined every season since. Not looking or even caring who wrote each season that is my view point.
IMO, Season 1 of True Detective is both incredible and overpraised. Pizzolato’s writing of female characters is sketchy as hell; the dialogue and angst go overboard at times (fully so in Season 2). If you’ve spent any time around creative writing students (which Pizzolato was) you’d recognize Rust Cohle as a Mary Sue for people who view themselves as tortured artists. Also, I feel like Pizzolato’s writing is a prime example of that thing a lot of movies/TV shows do, where depictions of toxic masculinity are framed as critique, but the critique feels like an excuse for the depiction.
All that said, it’s still damn good: the writing is generally solid and at times brilliant, it’s atmospheric as hell, the mystery/story/Lovecraftian elements are super compelling, and it ends on a reasonably satisfying note. But it doesn’t surprise me that Pizzolato is being a piss-ant like this.
Similarly, season 4 is both under-and-overpraised. It feels like it’s doomed to be subsumed by culture-war bullshit, where left-wing sources sites like this site insist that it’s fantastic (and intimate it’s better than S1) while (possibly misogynistic) S1 fanboys insist it’s the worst thing ever written. This is partly the writers’ own fault for the callbacks to S1 – which were lame, and did feel shoehorned in/studio-mandated, not like a ‘love letter.’ Not to mention the simplistically woke ‘the villain is every white man!’ ending and its rather unsubtle handling of Native American spiritualism – which it ultimately sides with over modern (white people) rationalism even as it purports to maintain ambiguity. Up to the point where it sorta sides with vigilantism and presents suicide as just accepting a call to the spirit realm. Things like the deer at the beginning, the polar bear, the aurora and the skeleton spiral struck the perfect, S1-esque balance of supernatural vs natural. But there were way too many scenes of hallucinations/spooky ghost figures etc.
There are a few other flaws too, especially with the finale. Too many unanswered questions (in a bad way) and things that don’t make sense, not enough momentum towards the end, a few periods of too little happening. I have a feeling that a significant amount was cut from towards the end of the show, and possibly that two episodes were smushed into one, which might’ve been an attempt to fix the pacing. I also feel like this was probably a different property before execs decided to rebrand it as the latest True Detective.
But I really enjoyed it, for the most part. The characters were almost all super compelling and felt fresh, not like your usual detective-show archetypes. The details of the setting were interesting. The scripting was great, barring a few moments of clunkiness. The central mystery was great. The plot is fantastic in the first two episodes, good for the remainder. The season itself could’ve been great, but I think falls shy of that. But most of the problems came in at the resolution. The rest was pretty damn good.
So basically – TL;DR – I think there’s valid criticisms to be made, and I think trying to pretend s4 is perfect is a bit silly, but I absolutely feel like there’s misogyny behind some of the criticism. As for Pizzolato, I think it’s fair for him to feel a little aggrieved – obviously this was taken out of his hands, and the appropriation of S1’s mythology was pretty weird and cynically done. But there was a much, much classier way to say this that didn’t involve throwing a social-media tantrum.
I think you mostly hit it on the head. Forget comparisons to season 1, I don’t understand anyone thinking this was a special season of television. I’m not much of a television critic so I’ll lack the insight to pick out specifics but I thought there were many mediocre elements to the show but still ultimately kept me entertained and mostly intrigued. But yeah unfortunately I think right now the show’s biggest legacy is showing how silly culture wars have become on both sides. People that convinced themselves it was great bc they wanted it to be great so badly because its protagonists featured women and indigenous peoples clashing with the people that are so far down the “woke” rabbit hole that they can’t conceive anybody could or would want to tell a good story about those same people without it having some kind of contrived motivation. Ultimately I thought it ended up being a bit disappointing but was still a decent show.
I can understand Pizzolatto being pissed. Night Country was supposed to be an original story, but HBO demanded that TD Season 1 references be grafted on to it. And you could tell they were just added for fan service. They were all just cosmetic, and meaningless to the core plot. I don’t blame Issa López. She was just doing what HBO wanted. But I found it disappointing that HBO were so desperate to revive TD that they ruined an original story.
All well and good (and true) but that shouldn’t keep it from being criticized. The RT score on this season is just bizarre and frankly inexplicable. There’s so much to tear apart, regardless of how it all shook out behind the scenes, but nah, A-.
I’ve just crticized the season and you are annoyed that I am somehow keeping it from being criticized??
I was referring to professional critics who have mostly given it glowing reviews, which I have a hard time reconciling.
It’s just a story
What a little bitch
I enjoyed S4 but these criticisms still have some validity, and there isn’t some inherent evil in daring to voice them.
Was True Detective Season 1 better than Season 4? Yes. Would I rather get kicked in the face than rewatch a single episode of the absolute turd that was True Detective Season 2? Yes.Am I super excited to see what Issa Lopez does next? Yes. Do I feel that way about Nic Pizzolatto? No.
Cleary, with the first 3 seasons having a strong male cast in the leading role positions. The creator of the series is having a difficult time processing the lead characters being strong women for season 4. Oh well….
This is the creative genius who keeps penning ‘Magnificent Seven’ remakes, right?
What a fucking petty piece of shit. I love his seasons of TD, but goddamn. Keep your fucking mouth shut sometimes.
This season was terrible, but Pizzolatto just handed ammunition to the Twitterati, so now we get to have the dumbest possible discourse around it as possible. That’s a bad job outta everyone here.
I recall Pizzolatto being under a lot of pressure to create a season 2 as good as 1. This is definitely on him but this probably could have been avoided if it was a mini-series that ended with the one concept.
Nic screwed himself with Season2. Never get high on your own supply! He’s lucky there was an s4 full stop.
Honestly, it’s been so long since I watched S1, that I didn’t even notice any of the references, and wouldn’t even know about them if not for here, so I don’t think they stuck out that obviously unless you’re someone who was really *invested* in S1.I get that that’s a sign the references were added in rather than something being built off of, but is it really that offensive for it to be S1-adjacent rather than entirely grown out of S1? It should be disappointing at worst (or is this just a product of so much modern Internet running on ragebait?)
Didn’t he also have a big tiff with Fukunaga, complete with Twitter beefs, after season 1?
People should remind Pizzolatto that he also made the second season of True Detective…
He’s a silly goose.
Dammit. Now I gotta watch it! Actually it turns out I know a couple of people who worked on it, so that’s what’s peaked my interest. But the part where it hurts some fee-fees does cause a frisson of unhelpful glee. It’s stupid and petty and pointless so maybe I’ll get some Bud Light to wash down the popcorn.
I get this dude conflated with Noah Hawley.
Season 4 is the best season of True Detective…so far. I feel sorry for Pizzolatto. He had a good run, maybe it’s over? But taking it out on other creators is not how you get back on your feet.
Well fuck him then. I personally thought season 4 was fantastic.
Wait, so did they decide to do a shared universe thing with season 1? I watched season 1 when it came out a decade ago but don’t remember many details, do I need to rewatch it to enjoy Night Country?
I haven’t seen the first season since it aired and I was fine.
No, you don’t need to rewatch season 1. They just make some minor references to elements of it, but it’s not important to understanding what’s going on in season 4. Probably better that you don’t, judging by the many people grumbling about the references (they were kind of corny but easy enough to move on from) and how this season is supposedly forsaking the style and themes of previous seasons (they’re also vague memories to me, I don’t mind supernatural elements, and it’s an anthology series so I didn’t care about it needing to be the similar). Just treat it as its own thing.
Doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s probably better if you don’t remember much since the callbacks were more distracting than anything else.
This dude made one perfect season of television and then two shitters and people say this new season is somehow disrespectful lol
Seasons 2&3 were unwatchable garbage, so he lost his own creation. Now he has to crap all over possibly the best iteration of the show. I will make sure to avoid ANYTHING this toad ever does.
Blah blah blah blah blah. It was fucking awful. And the best part of the last episode was that it was the last episode. They couldn’t even do a full 10 episodes because it was all absolute go nowhere bullshit. Fuck everything about it.
Blah blah blah no one cares merc
What a fucking prick.
That guy is real party pooper.
Hot take I guess: season 4 was one of the worst TV shows ever conceived, and Nic has every right to be vocal in his disappointment for being associated with such garbage writing.
Im just gonna say that Kali Reis is gorgeous and i hope to see her in more stuff after this
On the one hand, Pizzollato seems like an insufferable asshole with a hilariously inflated opinion of himself.On the other hand, Night Country was fucking TERRIBLE. Like, hilariously awful.(On the third and only slightly related hand, anyone claiming that any criticisms of Night Country are somehow due to misogyny are complete fucking morons.)
Few shows have been so polarizing, but even in light of ad hominem attacks about being an misogynist, an incel, an asshole… I stand by my opinion that this show was crap. Not because it delved in to Inuit womens’ issues and pollution, but because 1) It was pitched to the viewer as a True Detective crime story with the intriguing setup of a lab full of men found frozen in the ice, located in an interesting setpiece of “tiny” Ennis in the eternal dark of Alaskan winter. By the second episode the plot part was wrecked and it wandered senselessly like Gerald Ford. 2) It was simply NOT a well written, well directed, or interestingly filmed show. They wasted a good-to-great cast. They wasted the setpiece of endless night. They couldn’t even hold together the portrayal of the town – was it a tiny town with two cops and a trooper, or was it a big city with a giant municipal police building, sleek corporate headquarters and an army of nearby troopers and personnel carriers? They completely missed the effect of eternal night by NEVER establishing when “day” was, so we, lower 48 viewer, might as well have been watching the night shift instead of experiencing “endless night”. Pete, the morose teenage deputy should be an Interpol agent for all he discovered OFF CAMERA in any given afternoon. He must have been in charge of the Expository Division. NO evidence of an army of vigilantes, yet their folded clothes are sitting there….Cheap jump scares with “real” ghosts… Illuminated Christmas trees in abandoned trawlers. Naked bodies found in icy dark snowstorm and ID’d and phoned in before the coffee is even cold – and it hardly mattered to the plot at all anyway. A finale blizzard-ofthe century scare that showed no evidence of its existence just a few hours after it arrived and departed.Why was Fiona Shaw even IN this thing? Her special “skill” was knowing to poke a corpse’s lung? Or f*** a ghost from Louisiana? It’s comically stupid and a waste of talent. The actual direction and cinematography was network TV level dreck.
We heard about these isolated, dangerous ice caves for better or worse for five weeks – spent maybe ten minutes in them – and wound up right back in the lab where we started because the cave MUST have been about 200 yards away from the lab.Jesus…this could go on and on… there are SO many holes and inanities to this thing. She should have written an Alaskan “Silkwood” and she could have married the Inuit Womens’ issues with the pollution villain tying it together. That would have been compelling. But she wrote a terrible “crime” drama instead. And it was directed and filmed like plodding network level fare. She blew it. The cast kind of saved it. Criticism of poor film making has nothing to do with misogyny in this case.
S1 was so long ago and we only watched it once. But I do recall the season being amazing until the last episode aired and it was pretty much just a police procedural; nothing exceptional or fantastical. It was a …. fine ending, I guess.
I’ve never thought this show was all that, overall. This season was fine. (The only bad-bad season was season 2, and I still watched it. I thought Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams did what they could with what they were given and did it well.) Season 3 was decent.