True Detective: Night Country finale: Revenge is a dish best served cold
The long darkness is lifted and mysteries are revealed in a gripping sendoff
TV Reviews True Detective
We’ve had a breakthrough—literally. The season finale of True Detective: Night Country opens with Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) cracking through the ice and descending into the caves that will finally reveal what happened to those Tsalal Arctic Research Station scientists, to Annie K (Nivi Pedersen), and to all of the Ennis residents who’ve been haunted by mine controversies or mass psychosis or whatever else has been making things go bump in the polar night.
We won’t deny, we doubted showrunner Issa López leading into this last episode, given all of the stray storylines and perplexing theories (Navarro as Sedna?!) that still needed tying up. However, with the final edition of her Night Country saga, López has honored her vision while still making this chapter feel very much a part of the greater True Detective universe.
Unsurprisingly, the vibes are bad down in the caves (though the surroundings themselves are beautiful, glimmering tunnels of glacial-blue rock candy that look downright delicious). And they quickly go from vaguely supernatural (Navarro is hearing voices, natch) to actually precarious when both Liz and Eve fall through the ice to an even frostier level below…where they find Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell). In pursuit of their primary suspect, the detectives discover what fans have been theorizing for weeks: an underground laboratory where Annie was likely killed (they find a star-shaped weapon that matches her wounds), with a ladder system that leads directly to—you guessed it—Tsalal station.
We’re back where we started: an eerily empty research station with “Twist And Shout” roaring over an abandoned TV. Except now the women have to contend with Clark, who very much does not want to answer their questions. (He traps Danvers in an outside passage and knocks Navarro out with a fire extinguisher.) They do eventually manage to strap the bastard to a chair to interrogate him, but even that success is tinged with uncertainty: There’s a storm whirling around them, and there’s no WiFi and no radio. “We’re stuck out here.” They might get answers but will they make it out alive to reveal them?
Clark does eventually start talking. Annie had found notes that revealed exactly what he and the researchers were up to at Tsalal: digging for the DNA of a microorganism contained in the permafrost that could potentially “save the world” and cure disease. Great stuff, except the scientists needed Silver Sky to amp up their pollutants—i.e., more waste in the water—to soften the permafrost and make it easier to extract that DNA. Hence, the cancers and the stillbirths and all of the other medical horrors being inflicted on the people of Ennis.
Annie tried to destroy Tsalal’s underground lab, but Anders Lund and the rest of the men discovered her and killed her. Did Clark participate in her murder? As with the Wheeler scenes, what’s said conflicts with what’s shown, and a distraught Raymond can be seen suffocating Annie to hasten her death. Clark quickly descends into mania following Annie’s murder: “I kept seeing her and hearing her voice more and more. I knew she’d come back. I knew she’d come for us.” During one night—the night—he rushed down to hide in the tunnel below after hearing voices and held the hatch closed for a week while the men above were attacked. By who, Annie’s ghost? By another vengeful spirit?
Navarro and Danvers don’t get that part of the story just yet, because Eve lets Clark die by suicide, walking out onto the ice and freezing to death just like the rest of his Tsalal comrades. Consider justice served there, but the women still have to deal with no power, no heat, and the weight of their own grief. When Navarro brings up Liz’s late son, she rages: “You want to follow your ghosts and curl up in a ball and die out on the ice out there, you go ahead, but you leave my kid out of it or I will rip you apart! I am not merciful, do you understand? I got no mercy left.”
And yet, when Navarro does follow her ghosts out into the torrential snowfall, a concerned Danvers tails her. And when the latter terrifyingly falls through the ice, Eve is the one to pull Liz to safety, to warm her by the fire and comfort her in her loss. Seems there’s still some mercy left in Ennis, after all.
While the women face the elements and their own demons at Tsalal, Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) is having his own New Year’s Eve rager back at Danvers’ house: scrubbing blood off the floors, ripping rogue molars from the walls, and bagging up the bodies of his father and Otis Heiss before a remorseful Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc) can come home wanting to make amends with her mother.
He drives her back to his house—under the guise that he doesn’t want Kayla and Darwin alone on New Year’s—and manages to reconcile with his wife before racing off to Rose Aguineau’s (Fiona Shaw) place to dispose of the corpses. “It’s gonna be one of those nights, is it?” Rose responds to dreadful predicament, just more proof that we needed way more Fiona Shaw on this show. As the bodies descend into the waters beneath them, the Aurora Borealis breaks out overhead, marking a new day.
For Navarro and Danvers, New Year’s Day marks the end of the storm but before they can escape Tsalal, Liz realizes a clue in Clark’s “holding the hatch” story. Using chemicals and a UV light from the researchers’ stores, they check the top of the tunnel hatch, which reveals not just handprints but distinctive ones: the pinky-less print of crab factory worker Blair Hartman (Kathryn Wilder), whose domestic violence case Navarro was called to back in episode one.
If you were one of the eagle-eyed viewers who thought Blair’s background appearance during that laundromat scene last week was weird, you were onto something. When the detectives go and question Blair at her house, they don’t just find her but also her coworker Bee (Diane E. Benson)—a fellow Tsalal cleaner and the woman who hit Blair’s ex-boyfriend with a metal bucket in the premiere—and a gathering of fellow indigenous women. Bee reveals that the women knew that “those fuckers killed Annie K.” but they didn’t report the scientists because “it’s always the same story with the same ending. Nothing ever happens. So we told ourselves a different story with a different ending.”
So how exactly does this story end? In retribution for Annie’s murder and for all that Tsalal has exacted on their community, Bee, Blair, and the native women rounded up the scientists, drove them out onto the ice, had them remove their clothes, and forced them to walk. They left the men’s folded clothes, in case they survived. “But they didn’t though. I guess she wanted to take them. I guess she ate their fucking dreams from the inside out and spit their frozen bones. But that’s just a story.”
Is “she” Mother Nature? Is “she” the spirits of all who came before? Is “she” the darkness itself? Bee doesn’t explain, and Navarro and Danvers don’t need to ask. They recognize the rage of the women, the unlawful but undeniable need to right oppressive wrongs. So they’ll willfully turn a blind eye to Bee’s story—one of justice and sisterhood, identity and reclamation—just as they did their own vigilantism during the Wheeler case, and instead will publicly put forward Connelly’s bogus slab avalanche story. They’ve opened the hatch, and now they’re free.
With much welcome-sunshine signaling a time jump, we pick up on May 12th, the first long day of the year. Danvers is being questioned about the ongoing investigation into Hank Prior’s disappearance: “Come summer, we’ll find him,” she tells the investigators. “We always do…unless we don’t.” It depends on whatever story’s told that day. In this story, the mine gets closed thanks to a taped confession Navarro got from Raymond Clark before his death. In this story, Danvers and Leah reconcile, and Prior returns home. In this story, Evangeline Navarro has reckoned with her ghosts and practically become one herself, leaving law enforcement and a SpongeBob toothbrush behind. But she’s never far. As Danvers says, “This is Ennis. Nobody ever really leaves.”
Stray observations
- “Some questions just don’t have answers,” Liz proclaims in the final scene of the season, a convenient catch-all for any of the stray bits left behind in True Detective: Night Country. What threads did you want tied up but weren’t in the finale?
- Speaking of, I don’t think it was entirely necessary to tie season four back to season one. The acts of justice from Navarro, Danvers, and the indigenous women nicely echoed similar moral tensions from the franchise’s previous protagonists—Rust and Marty with the meth cookers, Ray and Frank with the human traffickers—and those other Easter eggs (Tuttle cult, Travis Cohle) felt less substantial and more shoehorned by season’s end.
- Earlier this week, Night Country became the most watched season of the True Detective anthology, with 12.7 million viewers across all platforms. In our interview with Issa López, she said she’d be game for more if the network was. Your move, HBO. We’ll take one Rose Aguineau spinoff, thanks.
172 Comments
What an absolute dumpster fire this Season 1 rip-off was.There’s been better fan-fic floating around Reddit for years that was better written than this lmao. TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE LUL
This is how I feel about every season of True Detective. Even Season 1 was poorly written and trite and obnoxious. The only thing that makes that one a little better is it had more compelling characters and good direction, but it still sucks. You can’t overcome writing and storylines that are that bad. Season 2 was the absolute worst season and was a complete joke. Horrible writing, pacing, characters, etc. Season was 3 was all of those things, slightly less so, but also much more boring. Season 4 wasted some very good performances on – once again – terrible writing, ridiculous plotlines and a bunch of psuedo-spiritual garbage a la Season 1. This show is like a car wreck – I can’t look away. But it’s always sucked.
keep watching footy. saying TD1 sucked is mind boggeling
Season 1 was garbage. It fell apart after an episode. And by hour 4…biker gangs and shoot outs with drug deals? Fvking yawn.
“Even Season 1 was poorly written and trite and obnoxious”Objectively incorrect.
Yeah. The first season was trash. 1hr … maybe… of good quality mystery. After that? “Visions”? The Yellow King? Angry drunks? Oh…and the fact that one of the main characters just so happened to have infiltrated a biker gang in Texas … connected to some drug dealer in LA?Great ending, too.
nail head = hit
Compelling characters? The only decent person was the young rookie who dug up more leads than the two leads combined.
“Even Season 1 was poorly written and trite and obnoxious.” Yeesh, what shows do you consider to be well-written?
So the spiral was an ancient sea skeleton preserved in the ice? I’m also still not clear as to how Raymond Clark was believed to be in the block of ice if he wasn’t in the group sent to the ice.And, yeah, the ice caves were pretty spectacular.
Clark was initially thought to be in the block of ice because *all* of the researchers were missing so the cops thought they were all in there. The reveal that he wasn’t in there happened when the block thawed.
Jodie Foster died for this wet fart of a season.
Are you serious? This was horrible.
These reviews and interviews are paid HBO advertisement.
I really liked the last fifteen minutes of the episode. Everything before that, though, was kind of meh.
So, the tongue never gets explained, and Navarro becomes some sort of spirit of the land?
They were going to “save the world”? HOW exactly? No details at all, huh? Just going to say “micro-organisms”? Well, OK then!What a crap finale.
Especially since the micoorganisms being presented as a weird mysterious unknown entity gave them a pretty convenient excuse to explain what was happening with all the supernatural stuff. Instead the supernatural stuff is just…there?
Yeah, I was waiting for the reveal to be that the microorganism escaped or inhabited them something like that and killed them.
That makes sense, but I knew it wouldn’t happen, because it makes SO much sense that they already made that show and it’s called Fortitude.
But isn’t that what makes the scientists’ actions all the more horrifying? They’re convinced they’re tapping into some magical thing that will save the world based on scant evidence and in the process take all kinds of lives because they’re so convinced they have found the solution to all the world’s problems.
They were drilling for the midichlorians that will bring balance to the police force.
The micro-organisms thing WAS ridiculous. I’ll give you that. But then again, these guys were crap. If they were willing to fake pollution numbers, no surprise if they were willing to fake their own findings.
I was genuinely excited for this season, especially for Foster, Hawkes, Eccleston, and Shaw. Saw a couple interviews with Lopez that quelled that a bit but was still cautiously optimistic. I’m glad I waited til today to binge this because this was a sloppy, disjointed mess. The acting was the only good thing about it, but they were mostly all wasted here. I hope Reis, LaBlanc, and Lambe all find future work though.When Desmond Raymond from the hatch said “time is a flat circle” I swear I briefly saw the top of the inside of my skull. In all of seasons 2 and 3 combined Pizzolatto didn’t reference season 1 as much as Lopez tried to shoehorn it into every single episode of this season. And even Foster was eyerolling the Silence of the Lambs callbacks on Graham Norton the other night.There were no characters, just a jumble of cliches with some lame horror movie crap slathered on top. As much as I liked the acting even that couldn’t mask the shitty writing. Maybe if you like stuff like those stupid Conjuring movies this has appeal. It was like if the CW remade Fortitude.Even the music choices were bad. Like from a video game commercial from 15 or 20 years ago. The “haunting” versions of Eagle Eye Cherry and The Beatles had me fully expecting to hear some Evanescence or an Ellie Goulding remix by the end.Weird random questions about the abundant stupidity just in the finale: Why was Foster checking Desmond from the hatch’s pulse when he was visibly and audibly still breathing? Why wouldn’t she just shoot through the glass with the gun in her hand when he had her trapped?Ultimately the whole thing felt like instead of an actual story or characters, Lopez had an ending, a message or three, and a handful of visuals and then tried and failed to write backwards from there. I’m genuinely shocked Foster signed onto this.
Oh, and reading back through the reviews for this season it’s good to see the AVC is still using writers who are too busy on their laptops or phones to pay attention to the show they’re supposed to be reviewing. Why watch when you can just invent details or pose silly questions that were explicitly answered on screen?
so true. the first three “all A” reviews were the worst. so bad.
quite a statement, please do explain …
I was pretty excited to and like you when the talk of the season 1 references became a big part of the press prior to the premiere I got a little put off. Then I really tried to like it but… nothing. For six episodes nothing compelling really happened. Then there is all the supernatural stuff which was dialed up to 11 with no real reasoning behind it. It’s sad that this season really turned out to be the worst.
The supernatural shit was so silly. The one dude sitting up in bed and speaking in the demon voice about Navarro’s mother during the hospital riot… the security camera shot with the ghost or whatever appearing behind her… etc…. It was all so unnecessary. Do people not remember that nothing actually supernatural happened in season one despite all the internet speculation? There was just some cultish stuff and Cohle’s broken brain hallucinating. But yeah, this was a massive waste of talent and time.
Was the supernatural stuff here all just hallucinations from the pollution?
Exactly. Cohle hallucinated because of the past drug use, Frank hallucinating in season 2 because he was dying and Purple in season 3 was hallucinating because he had dementia. There was no real supernatural element. It’s not like all of this wasn’t obvious, Lopez apparently missed all of that.
You just hate lopez because she’s a girlboss
Is it a rule that there can’t be supernatural stuff?
You can do whatever you want, but people might question your decision to make True Detective season 5 about a talking unicorn that solves crimes.
People questioning the direction of subsequent True Detective seasons? Now that’s unheard of!
I took it that that was Navarro hallucinating. Like her sister, she too has her mother’s curse for seeing the dead. Recall also that she served in Iraq, and was probably also harboring PTSD.
I honestly got all excited about the demon voice talking to Navarro, then it went nowhere. I guess it was just her anger and guilt manifesting in her mind in the form of “torment” from the great beyond. Who knows? I just wish there was a final battle with actual demons and shit!
Stray question I have: why did the “detectives” split up when searching the tsalal station? Great way to start the end to an eyerollingly bad season.
Also, what was their whole plan going into the (looked like a half-assed soundstage) ice caves? They didn’t have any rope or ice gear, they didn’t even go in with guns drawn – were they planning to just die if they got caught off guard or trapped? Real stroke of luck that they just happened to find Clark. Why was he wandering around down there?
Hard disagree that the ice caves looked half assed. That segment was beautiful even though going caving without rope is unbearably stupid.
Counterpoint: they looked exactly like the sheeting and molded plastic that the PD says they used in a current interview elsewhere on AVC. i.e. Half-assed on a warm set.
I was also wondering what happened to the map they had before!
And why didn’t they just drive their own police cars back from Tsalal? It seemed like the ice cave was literally right next to the research station, they didn’t walk more than a minute or so in the cave?
Well said. Such a mess. So disappointing. At least we’ll always have Season 1.
And candidly, the ending of S1 was so bad it ruined something that was really special for the first 7 hours.
I guess I’m in the minority, but I thought it was great. Good acting, fun writing. Danvers had awesome one-liners. I’m semi-frustrated at the things not fully explained (tongue!), but I’m ok with not all loose ends tied up.
Also, even though Season 1 is one of the best shows ever, fuck Nic Pizzolatto. He did this well a sum total of once, and he did it with the help of liberal plagiarism. Seasons 2 and 3 don’t hold a candle to 4, and Nic should be hoping to find productive work in the future.
Judging by all the praise it’s gotten from critics, I’d say you’re in the majority. I personally thought most of the season was silly bordering on unintelligent, especially compared to season 1. Acting was good, the story was ridiculous. I know there’s a way to write a good “native peoples fight a corrupt and unjust system” but this wasn’t it.
I loved the whole season. I loved the supernatural over and undertones. I’m gobsmacked that there was a such a fantastic, moving, kick-ass explanation for what we all thought could not be explained: a bunch of assholes frozen on the ice. I’m enjoying how many people (judging by usernames mostly sporting penii) are upset that a bunch of invisible, downtrodden women banding together is the answer, instead of a single fucked-up man, as we have become so accustomed to. Two fucked-up dudes chasing a fucked-up dude that tortures and murders women and kids? TV LITERATURE. Two fucked-up women chasing the killer(s) of a bunch of corrupt dudes slowly killing an entire town? The killers quietly and stealthily dispatching them and then going about their business as wives, mothers, caretakers, factory-workers… getting all the shit done? Gosh, what shit. Well, I am HERE for that shit. I hope more keeps coming my way. And I can’t wait for the day when boys can identify with “complicated” female characters the way us girls have been brought up to bend over backwards to understand (and prop up) “complicated” men.
It’s a rough contradiction; the hard injustices of the real world will lead some people, rightly infuriated by those injustices, to embrace any ficional portrayal of them… given that basically none to few such portrayals have existed and embrace them whether the portrayal is “good” on its own terms, or not and that criticism of the portrayal must be seen as inescapably biased by those injustices.
Haven’t looked at the finale review yet, but the comments on the Vulture recaps are mostly positive to neutral. Different crowds I guess. Also, the writer there is great, reminds me of TV Club writeups from AVC’s heyday.
Did we watch the same ending!?
1). Who left Annie K’s tongue?2). What about the Tuttle cult (AGAIN?!)3). What about Ted the corrupt Cop?4). What about Kate the Mine CEO?5). What about the visions of the Dead? Why is there no logical explanation for it?6). Is Navarro just in Danver’s head now? Did she kill herself in her final scene on the ice?7). Why is Danvers willingly letting 12 murderers go free when she’s a police officer?8). What actually caused the scientists death on the ice? Vet says fright, ladies say supernatural freeze.9). Why did Danvers bother covering for Navarro on the Wheeler case at all?10). Why does Rose know so much about the disposal of corpses and cover for the police?11). What is the true meaning of the Polar Bear, and why did it matter?12). Why did we uselessly spend time on The LGBBQ love story if it has no ending?13). Why did we have Hank’s ‘Bride’ if it went nowhere?14). Danvers had her sidearm in the freezer but used a metal rod to break the glass. Why?15). Why the season 1 call backs if they didn’t mean a thing?16). Where the heck did Oliver Tagaq go?17). What was the point in Raymond Clark’s trailer if the subplot went nowhere.18). Where did the oranges come from?19). How did Otis experience what the others experienced if it wasn’t something supernatural that killed them?20). Navarro had burst ear drums at the end of part 4, and they never come back to that again. Why not?21). How did the cleaning lady figure out the secret entrance button/code?22). And how would she know the bit was the weapon if the public didn’t know the weapons shape? (Answered).23). Why wouldn’t the scientists walk out of sight, wait a bit, and turn back? They were all smart but were so dumb.24). This microorganism to save the world, why was it such a useless subplot?
1). Who left Annie K’s tongue?
5). What about the visions of the Dead? Why is there no logical explanation for it? I don’t think it really matters whether or not Navarro and Danvers actually saw ghosts, they believe that they did and that brought them closure. It should have been obvious by the first season that the show is never going to fall on one side or the other over whether or not the supernatural aspects are real or the result of some influence like drugs, mental illness, or polluted water.
Not confirming nor denying the supernatural is a pretty common trope in detective fiction (going back at least a century when Hodgson was writing his Carnacki, the Ghost-finder stories) especially when a work of detective fiction veers into “weird” territory.
Nothing in the first season was supernatural. Nothing. Honestly, there wasn’t anything supernatural in any of the TD seasons, save this season 4 mess.
The thing is, this isn’t some “could go either way” ending. The ghosts and hallucinations provide usable, verifiable information, in a way that makes natural explanations ridiculous. In this one, Annie K’s ghost calls Navarro into a narrow branch off the main cave where she falls directly into her murder site.I think you’re right that a lot of detective fiction does this, but a lot of it is also less ambiguous than it thinks it is because it’s a really tough line to walk. If actual magic is less implausible than whatever else it could have been, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t flat out state that it’s real.
I really disliked this season (each ep was a C- to F for me), but I think I have some genuine answers to your questions:1). Who left Annie K’s tongue? It’s implied it was the women as a symbol like, “Annie K may be dead but she still speaks”, but also that it could have been supernatural2). What about the Tuttle cult (AGAIN?!) who knows why they had to tie in season 1. HBO requirement probably. Ridiculous. 3). What about Ted the corrupt Cop?“Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄 4). What about Kate the Mine CEO?“Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄5). What about the visions of the Dead? Why is there no logical explanation for it?“Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄 but you can chalk it up to pollution in the mine causing people to hallucinate plus a propensity toward hallucination/deep spirituality for the native people living in that area6). Is Navarro just in Danver’s head now? Did she kill herself in her final scene on the ice? Sure seemed like she was killing herself to me. But also, “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄7). Why is Danvers willingly letting 12 murderers go free when she’s a police officer? Because she’s a shitty cop and this is an “empowerment for the disempowered” type of show.8). What actually caused the scientists death on the ice? Vet says fright, ladies say supernatural freeze. “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄9). Why did Danvers bother covering for Navarro on the Wheeler case at all? Danvers and Navarro may have been closer before the wheeler case, even though we’re never shown that. Their closeness is what I assumed because otherwise it makes no sense why Danvers would cover for someone she intensely dislikes. 10). Why does Rose know so much about the disposal of corpses and cover for the police? “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄11). What is the true meaning of the Polar Bear, and why did it matter? “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄12). Why did we uselessly spend time on The LGBBQ love story if it has no ending?The ending was the white girl running away during the riot. Implied an end to the relationship and the start of Danvers’s daughter going back to Danvers. 13). Why did we have Hank’s ‘Bride’ if it went nowhere? It was supposed to show how shallow, desperate, and sad a life Hank was living. Also that he’s incredibly stupid and easily manipulated.14). Danvers had her sidearm in the freezer but used a metal rod to break the glass. Why? I’d like to know why Danvers and Navarro split up in the first place to search for a killer in a dark building. Are they stupid?15). Why the season 1 call backs if they didn’t mean a thing? HBO executive demand, most likely.16). Where the heck did Oliver Tagaq go? Ran away so he didn’t get questioned further. 17). What was the point in Raymond Clark’s trailer if the subplot went nowhere. “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄18). Where did the oranges come from? Stupid thematic thing to imply supernatural events and also “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄19). How did Otis experience what the others experienced if it wasn’t something supernatural that killed them? “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄20). Navarro had burst ear drums at the end of part 4, and they never come back to that again. Why not? The bleeding ears came back for a minute in the scene when she walked into the blizzard in this ep21). How did the cleaning lady figure out the secret entrance button/code? No code needed, you see Clark just press a red button to open it during the raid scene22). And how would she know the bit was the weapon if the public didn’t know the weapons shape? (Answered).23). Why wouldn’t the scientists walk out of sight, wait a bit, and turn back? They were all smart but were so dumb. “Some questions just don’t have answers” 🙄24). This microorganism to save the world, why was it such a useless subplot? Because the writers couldn’t figure out come up with a sensible macguffin to drive the narrative.
When was it implied that the cleaning ladies left the tongue? They were pretty much like “wtf?” when asked about it.
The women wouldn’t have had access to her tongue, and were pretty explicit about not being the ones who left it. Which means that it had to have been Hank. But why in f**k’s name would Hank leave it, when all it accomplishes is linking the deaths to the Annie K murder, which should be the last thing on earth he would want? Just another example of this plot/series being ridiculous, awful, and having zero logical consistency.And stop with the “season 1 had stuff like that too” nonsense. Season 1 had zero actual supernatural stuff going on. There was a cult, but there was nothing supernatural in the slightest. Let alone did it have ghosts leading people to dead bodies and clues and whatnot. This season was just plain idiotic and ridiculous.
#25) How did Navarro get Clark to confess to the 11 levels of pollution and record it as if his beatings didn’t occur?Terrible how that critical plot point just is somehow assumed to be okay.
I thought that it was implied that Navarro made him a deal that if he confessed to the pollution from the mines, she’d let him commit suicide, like he was begging her to or either to shoot him.
From your questions – I get the feeling you are mostly a watcher of reality shows?Did I nail it?
The body had no tongue when it was found and ended up in the morgue so how did the cleaning ladies get a hold of it?
7). Why is Danvers willingly letting 12 murderers go free when she’s a police officer? She can’t prove it, and she probably thinks that’s as close to justice that Annie K and the townspeople were going to get. I think by the end she is pretty soured on the “by the book” thing after the deaths of Annie K, Heiss, and Creepy Cop Dad.
9). Why did Danvers bother covering for Navarro on the Wheeler case at all?Because she was going to do the same thing, but Navarro beat her to it.
They’re both insanely bad cops lol
I put them in the category of “talented, but completely hampered by the fact that they are very broken people.”
Exactly! Danvers understood that justice had been done, and the higher ups were already trying to pretend it wasn’t murder anyway, so easy out. This wasn’t a group of women who were going to go on a non-stop murder spree, and Danvers was valuing the native community above these interlopers whose actions were destroying everything.
Danvers had tried the by the book route, but by the end she realized the truth of the old saying “There is no justice, just us.”She is really the only character that significantly changes…she’s crusty, slightly racist, and unsympathetic at the beginning, and at the end, she is still crusty, but less racist and more sympathetic as she realized the evil perpetrated by the company.
22). And how would she know the bit was the weapon if the public didn’t know the weapons shape? (Answered).What is the answer on this? They showed her taking pictures of the wounds from some kind of files, but it wasn’t clear to me where/how she got the files. Does she also clean the police station and they just leave files lying around?
Yes, she was shown as the station cleaner in a previous episode. It is implied that these women are the “invisible” ones because no one pays attention to them or thinks they would do things like open up files on desks or poke around to try to figure out what happened to their friend who was murdered. These women knew the cops were corrupt, the mine was corrupt, TSALAL was corrupt and that they had to make their own justice. And they just so happened to have jobs that gave them extensive access to every place they needed to be.
Thank you. I knew she cleaned at the research station. I didn’t remember she cleaned the police station too.
the montage answers this, but unclearly. I’m thinking that first, they snoop into the police records on Annie’s death. That makes sense to me, she was of the community, a very important person in that community, and the circumstances were brutal, and it was clearly being brushed under the rug.
So, she tells the other women she found a tunnel. Ok, now here another assumption: they knew Annie was poking around the station looking for proof of the mining company’s dirt. Finding a hidden tunnel is what got them going again on their nancy drew train.
Finding the star-shaped tool is a little lucky, but making the connection to the wounds are not if they’ve seen the forensic photos.
A larger problem for me is how they make the leap to blaming all the scientists, unless the forensics report identified multiple attackers. In which case, you still couldn’t be sure if it was all or some.
So, let’s say that the scientists weren’t killed just for Annie. We have to say they were killed for all the dead babies as well.
AND that’ just a small fraction of the ridiculous plot holes, asinine narrative decisions, illogical plot points, etc, that made this season truly awful:
1). Who left Annie K’s tongue?This was implied to be a supernatural occurence.3). What about Ted the corrupt Cop?4). What about Kate the Mine CEO?Given Clark’s confession, I assume they were either prosecuted or got some sort of arrangement with the mine shutting down. I don’t see why we need some explicit outcome for them. This series was about women making their own justice to bypass corrupt and cruel men.5). What about the visions of the Dead? Why is there no logical explanation for it?You either have to believe it’s supernatural, like Danvers and Navarro did, OR you chalk it up to Navarro’s family history of schizophrenia.6). Is Navarro just in Danver’s head now? Did she kill herself in her final scene on the ice?This was ambiguous and I believe the show runners wanted the viewer to choose the story ending they wanted, like the women of Ennis. You can choose to believe she’s living a quiet life in hiding with Danvers to avoid the investigation and preserve her mental health or you can choose to believe Danvers is keeping her memory alive after she killed herself or disappeared.7). Why is Danvers willingly letting 12 murderers go free when she’s a police officer?Because fuck those scientists, they got what they deserved and those women technically didn’t kill them. The most they’d get is kidnapping and weapons charges, maybe negligent homicide. Danvers agreed with their actions.8). What actually caused the scientists death on the ice? Vet says fright, ladies say supernatural freeze.I’m sure it was both as they thought the women with guns could be chasing them and would shoot them.9). Why did Danvers bother covering for Navarro on the Wheeler case at all?Because she thought he deserved to die and was about to shoot him herself. She says that.10). Why does Rose know so much about the disposal of corpses and cover for the police?Rose is a bad motherfucker and a real one. She’s also a former college professor and a hunter, it doesn’t take a genius to know a body will float if there’s air in the lungs.11). What is the true meaning of the Polar Bear, and why did it matter?It represented violent nature forced into contact with humans due to their own stupid actions (climate change.)12). Why did we uselessly spend time on The LGBBQ love story if it has no ending?There were other relationships depicted as well with no closure. Gay people can be as normal and unremarkable as the rest of us.13). Why did we have Hank’s ‘Bride’ if it went nowhere?It was meant to show how lonely and foolish he was. This guy got royally scammed, so it was no surprise to learn he was doing dirty work for money.14). Danvers had her sidearm in the freezer but used a metal rod to break the glass. Why?You don’t shoot at bulletproof glass because ricochet could kill you. The pointed rod is also a much better tool to break through glass.23). Why wouldn’t the scientists walk out of sight, wait a bit, and turn back? They were all smart but were so dumb.Could be they were more afraid of being held responsible for murder or shot than freezing to death.24). This microorganism to save the world, why was it such a useless subplot?It was the motive for extensive corruption and murder. “Ends justifying the means” for all the scientists except Clark. Something it’s easy to see as important enough for an entire group of people to sacrifice the people of the town, their integrity and the environment in pursuit of. It’s man’s hubris.The women saying “so we wrote another story” accounts for a lot of the ending. We’re supposed to, as viewers, choose the story we think is best for this ending. I appreciate when shows don’t feel the need to sew up every little thread. Not everything can or should end like Six Feet Under with an epilogue for each character.
“I appreciate when shows don’t feel the need to sew up every little thread. Not everything can or should end like Six Feet Under with an epilogue for each character..”People always say this when they’re defending bad writing.
People with no imagination always complain when things aren’t gift-wrapped for them in neat little packages of fan service.
Yeah, I don’t get this obsession with every little item in a show tying together. Who cares what happened to the mine lady, other than the mine closed. Who cares what happened to the detective from Anchorage, he wasn’t helping. This wasn’t their story anyway.
Horsepucky. Leaving certain items open for interpretation creates a more personal experience for each viewer, imo. I don’t need every little thing spelled out, because in the long run, I’m not going to remember all those little details anyway. Look back at any of the great film noirs, can you remember how those plots actually resolved. Probably not, because the plot wasn’t the point. The characters and atmosphere were, and the plot helps tie them together, but it’s not the end-all-be-all. I love the way they tied this finale together because it’s tied into the idea of storytelling (as all of True Detective has tried to be) and stories are never fully the same with each retelling.
“Those women technically didn’t kill them. The most they’d get is kidnapping and weapons charges, maybe negligent homicide.” If I tell someone to jump in a lake by gunpoint and they drown, I murdered them. They were a lynch mob.
Well said. Thanks for typing all that out so I didn’t have to.
wow – you should definitely not have watched this show. Go back to unsolved mysteries maybe?
#14. Why didn’t she fire her gun to break the glass? Firing a gun in a small, closed environment will temporarily deafen you for at least 30 minutes. Plus do want to be in a confined space with a ricocheting bullet bouncing around?
Clark’s trailer led them to Annie’s phone, where they found the video of her before her death, which led them to the ice caves.
1b) What was with the weird silvery stuff where the tongue has been? The microorganism? For some reason?Moment to moment the show was enjoyable, but taken as a whole it was complete garbage. Lazy writing and hackneyed genre clichés, especially for the horror stuff. It’s one thing to be ambiguous, but it’s quite another to willfully be “I don’t fucking know….ghosts?”
25) That one scientist who survived being frozen – he didn’t think to mention that he and the others were chased out of the building at gunpoint?26) Oh, also—they found the corpsicle several days after the scientists ran out, right? Like, days. Has anyone ever survived DAYS stark naked in subzero temperatures, frozen into a block of frozen co-workers? Spoiler alert: no. Never.27) OMG fuck this show so hard.
28) Is the VCR in the station stuck playing, not just Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but specifically the Twist And Shout scene on repeat? Can you make a video player keep repeating a single scene?
4). What about Kate the Mine CEO? – Raymond Clark left a taped confession of the mine’s part in what they were doing at the lab, safe to say she’s in some sort of legal predicament
5). What about the visions of the Dead? – Why is there no logical explanation for it?
– the visions of the dead were only seen by certain characters. Always Navarro, never Danvers, for example. There’s a reason for this.6). Is Navarro just in Danver’s head now? Did she kill herself in her final scene on the ice? – that’s up to your interpretation 7). Why is Danvers willingly letting 12 murderers go free when she’s a police officer? and 9). Why did Danvers bother covering for Navarro on the Wheeler case at all? – Exactly, why did she let Navarro go when she shot that abusive dude in cold blood in the past? The answer is a clear throughline here in terms of her sense of justice11). What is the true meaning of the Polar Bear, and why did it matter? – The polar bear relates to the stuffed toy Danvers’ child had. Thematically this show is about ghosts of the past that still haunt the characters, the bear represented one of hers.
13). Why did we have Hank’s ‘Bride’ if it went nowhere? – sadsack characterisation to help humanise him, also to make it more shocking when it was revealed that he was moving bodies and would even kill someone for his own ambitions.
14). Danvers had her sidearm in the freezer but used a metal rod to break the glass. Why? – Hazardous materials/chemicals was my guess but looks like the answer relates to the fact it could be bulletproof glass15). Why the season 1 call backs if they didn’t mean a thing? – Easter eggs for funsies17). What was the point in Raymond Clark’s trailer if the subplot went nowhere. – misdirection in part but also solidified he was in a relationship with Annie
18). Where did the oranges come from? – a hallucination only ever seen by Navarro and her sister, relating to their mother who also had severe issues.24). This microorganism to save the world, why was it such a useless subplot? – It wasn’t useless at all, it was the thing which a) had the mine polluting the town so the scientists could extract it easier, and b) was so important that it had said scientists murder a young woman, basically the catalyst for the events in this season, and c) had the women essentially murder the scientists in turn, one of the key mysteries of the show.
I’m truly baffled people praising this show. Sure we all have different opinions but the writing, mystery, and characters all failed in anything interesting in a show called True Detective… So frustrating. I was excited and wanted to love this show so much but nothing worked and made sense…
I didn’t much care for this season. We of course have to suspend our disbelief, but this was just too silly.
Yeah, we have to suspend our disbelief but the writers/showrunners have to make sure the weight of our disbelief doesn’t get too heavy to suspend.
I didn’t much care for this season. We of course have to suspend our disbelief, but this was just too silly.
this should kill whatever is left of jodie foster’s career. I say this as someone who has loved her in lots of stuff. She was godawful in this. her default take was “gentle, befuddled grandma”??the standoff and murder at the end of the last episode didn’t matter at all. the ice cave sequences looked like star trek. fake lens flares on the helmets yet again. I like how they CGed their breath while they were in the tunnel but not when they reached the chamber. I guess it was less cold in there? everything was still made of ice. whatever! it’s actually embarrassing how many scenes in this show were shot on soundstages in front of those godawful LED screens.the true detectives meet another character who just explains the plot to them. and it’s another european actor! why were so many european guys working at a research station in alaska? probably because the show was shot in iceland.and we end on another callback to season 1: jodie foster is being interviewed on video by two guys, just like marty and rust! only this time the performances are terrible and jodie is hammily smirking when she’s lying about murdering someone? okay, whatever!really bad show!
****SPOILER*******
One of the theories about the woman with the missing fingers being the (or one of the) killer was right.
The fact that pretty much the entire reveal of the ending relied on Danvers discovering evidence of that specific character with that one defining trait leaving a distinctive clue right where it needed to be was too much. That strained credulity to the breaking point. Also it’s like, “there’s a full-grown man holding a latch shut from the inside, let’s get the skinny girl with eight fingers to be the one to try to open it.”
Pretty annoyed they had the cliche “Wait, what did you just say?” detective moment. Unless it’s for a comedy, that’s got to go.
I thought the exact same thing while watching. It doesn’t have to be this way writers!
Hey! You gotta see this!
There have been so many moments like that throughout this season it’s frustrating. The “in English, please” trope is so damn tired I’d add that to the list of phrases that don’t need to be in anything anymore.
It was unfortunately also paired with the cliche that IMO is even worse, “YOU DON’T GET TO SAY HIS NAME!!!!”
what about the tongue tho?
Hoo boy, that was 10 pounds of narrative shit stuffed into a five pound bag.
Well, I liked it better than E3-5, although that’s not saying much.I could go over the plot holes (and the plot abandonments from previous episodes), but I think I’ll just say this: there was in fact some good material in the 6 hours, some of which we saw in this episode. In fact, I actually was kind of hoping the end was going to be some gruesome supernatural horror, since it felt that’s what it felt like it was best set up for.Unfortunately, there was only about 1 1/2 to 2 hours of it thinly spread throughout the series, and what might have been a decent pitch in its original format – which I suspect may have been a movie – got wildly bloated by Lopez when HBO came back with an order for a 6 hour series, then got further screwed up by trying to shoehorn it into an existing franchise. The result was a mess. In our interview with Issa López, she said she’d be game for more if the network was.Here’s the counterpoint: Now that we know what she was apparently trying to do, in someone else’s hands could the original A pitch have been expanded and supported with massively better B story arcs to make a much more compelling 6 hour show? I think so, and I’m actually more disappointed in Lopez than I was before this episode.As bad as S2 was, the one thing it did really well was its use of the scummy parts of California that are vastly underrepresented in film as its background, which was dead on. If she’d taken inspiration from that – rather than S1 – in making a real effort to get Alaska and small town culture right, this would have been a far better show.
Just rewatched season one. Made me realise just how little investigation work there is in Night Country. Like a ridiculous lack of police investigation work! I saw better investigational work in Paul Blart Mall Cop.
It seems like it’s mostly handled by poor Prior, following the paper trail on who was paying for Tsalal.
I mean, isn’t that supposed to be the point? You have this tiny department with all sorts of complicated history between the cops and one in particular who is actively trying to impede the investigation and another department who wants to come in and take over. The story was about more than the mystery to solve.
I didn’t dislike this season as much as most of the people here, but I agree. I was feeling a couple episodes that there isn’t much in terms of mystery plotting. They were mostly just running in circles (hated when they made a big deal of going to Tagaq twice and got barely anything from him).
Next season on True DetectiveTrue Detective: Night Court
December 27th…Tenth day of night court.
The first 5 episodes of this season prepared me for the most inane and embarrassing limp over the finish line. Glad to say it didn’t disappoint in that regard. I’ll endeavor to never upset the cleaning staff again. Season 5 when?
There were multiple parts during the finale where I actually groaned or yelled at the screen. The scene where they find the ladder and climb up and realize they’re in the TSALAL station…and then it shows an exterior showing the TSALAL station, as if it’s some grand reveal. Like YES, CLEARLY that’s where they are, you don’t need to show the outside like it’s shocking. And when Jodie Foster gets locked in the room with the microorganisms, she HAS HER GUN OUT. She can just shoot out the glass. Yet she bangs on it and hems and haws and then uses some other rod to smash the glass. You have your gun drawn! Bullets do things!
I asked my husband if the glass was bulletproof since that was the only reason I could think of for not using her gun. No one working on this show used their brain for anything. This is absolutely one of the most illogical shows I have ever watched.
To be fair, bullets also richochet so maybe she was worried in that confined space of shooting herself
I like how they went 50 ft into this crazy Ice Cave (from the top no less) and then came up directly inside Tsalal? Could they not see Tsalal from where they broke through the ice?
I would have never expected this show to lean so hard on the supernatural and mystical. I’m surprised that more people aren’t offended at this portrayal of the indigenous as a magical, superstitious group of sage super detectives. It reduces a compelling story of an indigenous death, townie indifference, and corporate malfeasance to… the Magical Negro trope.Baffling show. Atmospheric and pretty, but thoroughly lacking in substance. C- at best.
It leaned on the supernatural, but I feel it wasn’t enough, nor did it seem to affect the characters enough, other than the ones who walked into the sea. Why were some able to fight the voices and others were not? So many “why’s” still unexplained. I guess the theme of the show is “Let the Mystery Be”.
Agreed on the atmospheric and pretty. The setting was so immersive and lived-in that I didn’t hesitate to spend six hours in Ennis. That element really carried the show for me. I think if this show was just called “Night Country” it would not be so heavily scrutinized. Take out all of the True Detective season 1 references and tighten up some threads and I think you have a better season, probably even better as a movie.
Absolutely. Take out the references and the “true detective” in the title so that people won’t feel that the supernatural stuff was out of bounds, and half the criticism is gone. Still had other flaws, but a good chunk of the negative response is due to its connection to the previous seasons and the expectations of the fan base that came with it. I would’ve still been interested in a spooky mystery miniseries starring Jodie Foster.
As the bodies descend into the waters beneath themOne body – Prior’s. Heiss was left in the trunk of Prior’s car to make it look like he was trying to dispose of the body.
How on earth did this deserve an A- grade? How much were you paid?
Not much, which is part of the tragedy.
Just going out on a limb, but I’m guessing they gave it an A- because they really liked it. I loved the finale and how it came together. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you, why get upset if other people liked it?
This was not the worst season of True Detective. But by god it was the most disappointing. What a wet fart of an ending.
Two dumb questions:1. Did they ever tell us what the Silver Sky Mine was mining? For some reason I’m thinking lithium, but I don’t recall if we ever found out.2. When Danvers was locked in the outer room with the big glass walls, did she forget she was carrying a pistol? Was the glass supposed to be bulletproof?
If you’re not sure if the glass you’re about to shoot at is bulletproof or not, are you really going to risk ricochet in a small, enclosed room with a lot of metal surfaces?
It was implied that they were mining for unobtainium.
I had pretty low hopes for the finale after I saw where we left off after episode 5, but I think the finale did a fairly good job of tidying everything up. Overall the show worked for me as I’m fine with leaving the supernatural elements unexplained. My biggest gripes are some of the decisions the characters made (Prior taking a headshot on his dad, Hank trying to forcefully take Otis, Navarro letting Clark kill himself after they’d already captured him). But it was fine. Flawed, but fine.
Wasn’t going to watch it, but a show that makes a certain demographic froth like these comment writers? It’s now a must see!
You’re a complete loser.
*farts*
It’s worth watching. I think it’s hilarious watching people froth at the mouth upset about a tv show.
The thing I find most satisfying is the angry list of points they consider to be holes, defects, or moral failures in a show they hate watched in its entirety, assuming they didn’t just crib from a shitty MRA discord.Can you believe the women polices got away with violence and murder and the show let them be heroes? ThE iNjUsTiCe
What surprises me is that people watch the entirety of a show that they clearly do not enjoy. Who has time for that? If I don’t like something, I stop watching. This is a great practice, and allows me to focus my time on things that I enjoy doing (or chores).Anyway, I liked it.
“I’ll shoot your mouth right off your face,” is the dumbest line I have ever heard.
The people who disliked the shitty dialogue, plot that made no sense, and poor acting (with the exception of jodie foster) are just a bunch of haters who can’t stand seeing girlbosses succeed. It’s so IMPORTANT and BRAVE that they gave a property like this to an untalented hack like Issa Lopez. It’s far more important to further representation than to tell a compelling story or make a tv show that’s watchable.
It’s so IMPORTANT and BRAVE that they gave a property like this to an untalented hack like Issa Lopez.
I think I might have really liked Lopez’s original story before the studio said she had to turn it into a True Detective show. I get the feeling a lot of the things people didn’t like about the season would have never had happened were it not for that mandate.
That is absolutely what happened here. Unfortunately, too often in Hollywood original scripts get bought by studies and are mutated into stories for existing franchises because that’s a more of a sure bet than developing something completely new. It’s a miracle that the first season of True Detective was made as it was, and not called “The Wire: Bayou Secrets.”
CSI: Ass End of Nowhere
I don’t think you watched the same show I did.
WUT? Recoegnitionsis awful, but thistle they are 100% spot on. This show was hilariously awful I every conceivable way. Legitimately one of the worst things I have ever watched.
Well, I’m glad to see I’m not alone in being pretty disappointed. I TRUST Jodie Foster and if this is the best Hollywood can cobble together for her….And I don’t understand the glowing critic reviews. Yes, the acting is outstanding, but as virtually everyone in these comments has said, after the first episode, it was hacksville. But we keep rewarding this crap with record ratings so maybe we have ourselves to blame. Let’s see what beloved A-list actor they use as bait next season. If Streep so much as takes a meeting I can’t be responsible for my actions.
This season was messy, primarily because there was too much going on. The same major touchstones could have been addressed with 3-4 strands of narrative. Still, this show has its energy back, but it needs to tighten up. A lot of people are forgetting how corny Pizzolatto’s writing was; season 1 didn’t stand out because he became a different writer in seasons 2 and 3. Season 1 worked because it had a world-class production design, cinematography and director team that deepened the mood and tapped 2 performers who could make goofy monologues feel weighty. The thing this season lacked (except in brief glimpses) was the great season 1 trick of showing one thing while a different set of facts is being recounted. That created so much of that season’s strong narrative tension. Anyway, this flawed season had some mojo; inevitably a woman (of color no less) at the helm was going to attract vitriol. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of valid critics and criticisms but the vile junk pushed at Lopez is often coming from a disgusting place.
You can’t be serious. It was TERRIBLE. I was legitimately shocked by just how awful it was. Between giving this an A- and the ridiculous Lisa Frankenstein review, this site has lost every last shred of credibility. This sums up some of the issues with the series and finale, and I feel like it could easily be twice as long:
This season feels like an answer to very silly criticisms about season 1. Dated beyond belief.
A- ? Did we watch the same show? This is an all-time bad finale for ANY show. Let alone one still chasing a Top 10 Season 1.
The worst thing I have read about this season is the BS interview where Issa Lopez is asked to explain the ending and all she says is she wants it to mean whatever you want it to mean. WHAT??!!?? If I hadn’t thought she was a clueless hack before, this would have proven it. She is basically saying she wrote a bunch of nonsense that she doesn’t have an explanation for, so it’s up to the audience to figure it out. Utterly ridiculous. Please don’t give her another show.
Do you think the Bret Easton Ellis is a hack too? Because he says American Psycho is open to interpretation? Any writer once they publish something are giving an amount of control over tot he audience. The audience is always free to interpret the work how they see fit.
There is a difference between saying something is open to interpretation and suggesting it has no meaning at all. American Psycho is a specifically bad comparison because it specifically is about a guy having a complete mental breakdown and entirely disassociating from reality. Batemen can’t tell delusion from reality anymore, therefore neither can we since the story is told from his perspective. That isn’t anything like this season of True Detective.
Bret Easton Ellis is a hack; he’s been rewriting the same book recently, and don’t get me started on his podcast/twitter. I do relate to what the OP is saying. Everything is open to interpretation, but I think what they’re getting at is if your questions come with a state of frustration, there’s some disconnect between art, artist, and observer. The blame could be laid at the feet of any of those three, but I think if someone engaged with this season in good faith and came away with “no, I needed a bit more from this,” that’s fair. That can be exacerbated if the artist responds to confusion with chilly “well that’s up to you” nonanswers. Funny enough, someone else in this thread mentions David Lynch, who I used to absolutely react to with “no, that’s bullshit; don’t just lay mysteries at my feet and tell me to sit with it.” I’ve come around on him a whole lot over the years; I don’t know if I’d describe my reaction to this season being in the same vein though. Time will tell.
The effectiveness of such a writing technique in a 30 year old novel is hardly proof it’s:1. Equal to that superior writing.2. Not a hacky, lazy cop-out for a modern television writer.It’s a false equivalence, first of all. Shamylan has had some good twist endings. That doesn’t make all twist endings comparable or just as good as the one in The Sixth Sense. If we have to go back decades to defend one thing with another completely different thing, it’s not a strong argument being made.And, for the record, many people viewed Ellis’ talk about the ambiguity of American Psycho as a pretentious excuse, as well. Because it pretty much is. And he’s known to be like that.
Your head will melt when you learn who David Lynch is.
Dont insult Lynch by comparing this dumpster fire to his work.Lynch makes things with intentionally surreal dream logic.This was just a trash, incompetent detective show gull of plot holes, loose ends, and idiotic narrative decisions that Lopez was not talented and/or intelligent enough to construct or wrap up in any meaningful way.
I did not really compare the shows. I just suggested that if the OP was frustrated by the lack of answers, he might have a hard time with something like a Lynch film.
This wasn’t the work of David Lynch. Not by a long shot. And Lynch is hardly a fair comparison of what solid TV writing is, the cult of Twin Peaks notwithstanding….especially since all but one season of that franchise is pretty much derided as Meh.
Late reply…but, I didn’t suggest it was the work of David Lynch. Or even in the ballpark. I was responding to the OP’s point about Lopez writing shit that didn’t have answers. I just suggested that there are others who often introduce ideas that dont always have easy answers. If anything, I read the OP’s post incorrectly. Not sure what your next point about comparisons means. And, while the second season of Twin Peaks was always recognized as a disaster (for various reasons, including studio demands) the first and Limited Event Series were and are pretty widely adored.
Issa: You are not Christopher Nolan. You have to earn that comment. The series was creepy fun, but too many unanswered questions for me to buy into the ending. I didn’t hate the show, I was just left a bit disappointed. I did enjoy the rise up of the women to go after the Tsalal scientists, but I wanted more understanding on why all those guys froze together is a scared to hell pile. They walked away from the women. There HAS to be a supernatural entity and while it was there as a hint, I think we deserved a bit more of the “why”. It needed at least 2 more episodes to flesh it out.Still, I give the series a B- and did enjoy it for what it was.
Wow. Talk about grading on a curve. This was not an A- episode. It was ludicrous and really bad. I was just glad to make it through and see if others felt differently.
I was right it was hothead Navarro that killed Wheeler, but disappointed that Danvers would have done it herself. This entire season, she covered up for Navarro, but looked down on her. Danvers had a legitimate reason to dislike and scorn her, but if she’s of the same mind with extrajudicial murder, then she had no reason to be even more venomous towards her early on than she usually is towards everyone.Navarro’s cheek piercings look like she sticks her face into a plastic recharging cradle to replenish her unstable rage.They explained who killed the scientists and why, but it’s disappointing that our two corrupt, immoral leads are willing to look the other way when a cult gang of mass murderers get no consequences for their actions. Annie K deserves justice, not vengeance. Who’s to say they don’t kill anyone else they disagree with? The owner of the mines is just some lady who lives in town and walks around without any bodyguards. And why is Annie K mad at the guys paying the polluters instead of the actual polluters? Permafrost is a misnomer of a name, as it’s just ice that’s been frozen for a long time. There’s no reason to use chemicals when they can just use bores and heat like they did before they were paying off the mine. And what the fuck were they mining that needed chemicals and caused mass health complications in the community? It would make more sense if there was some industrial factory for pharmaceuticals or maybe a nuclear power plant that was dumping its waste in the ocean.
They explained that Fiona needed to cut Hank’s lungs open so he wouldn’t float, and yet Danvers sunk like a rock as if we didn’t see a bunch of bubbles come out of her mouth.Kayla and Leah are the worst characters. Leah is just rebelling for no reason and Kayla is the worst on screen wife I’ve seen since Problem Child. Peter has his hands full with his job for less than two weeks and she’s acting like he hit their children.The unique locale, the nature of the murders, and the presence of Jodie Foster promised something that was worthwhile, but each episode just added more bad flavoring to each character, and by this finale, I kept checking the runtime, wanting to be doing anything else. People I follow on Twitter were praising it, specifically saying it stuck the landing. More like it got stuck while landing. It’s just a mess of superstitious indigenous spirit magic that should have died with the white writers that pushed that nonsense into pop culture back in the 50s. You might as well have Jehovah’s Witnesses being right about blood transfusions and depicting their god punishing a doctor for saving someone’s life. I can’t believe people have praised this junk.
I would’ve loved if Hank’s mail-order bride showed up at the very end, after all. Would’ve been a nice way to subvert that annoying trope, if nothing else.
Anyway, sure would be nice if the entertainment world were responsible enough and respected the justice system enough to stop romanticizing vigilante violence as if it’s noble and fair.
Maybe if the justice system would take violence against women seriously, ESPECIALLY native women, there would be an argument there. But maybe there are cases where a community needs to be there for its own because no one with any institutional power is going to do anything meaningful. What’s actually noble and fair about our justice system?
Why in the world would they, or anyone else, respect a justice system that allows for what ours does to native women, the environment, etc.? What a moronic take on a TV show and the justice system. Read a fucking book, ya know?
I NEED to know the answer to this…when the power went out, and especially after Danvers fell through the ice…why didn’t they just sit in one of the vehicles and crank the heat?!
Here are my gripes with the show:Despite being set in the “night country,” there’s no actual exploration of what it’s like to live someplace with 24/7 darkness for two months, except to suggest that ghosts come out to haunt during this time. The show tries to have it both ways with the ghosts, being a b-horror movie shocker — a possessed dead body speaking in a creepy voice — vs. the ghosts and the afterlife being a device to explore grief and spirituality. The show has little detective work, and almost all the detective work proves inconsequential. Navarro, Danvers, and the audience only come to understand the who/what/where of Annie’s murder through Clark’s confession, and Danvers figuring out who killed the scientists through the handprint was just ridiculous. It was implied that the women had evidence that the town’s water was being contaminated by the mine, but then they did nothing with it. Danvers and her stepdaughter reconciling simply wasn’t earned. As others have said, the show felt like López had a script for a movie about two women struggling with grief and depression, and HBO asked her to rework it into a season of True Detective, and someone else came up with the gimmick of it being set in Alaska during the endless night.
I really enjoyed the ending as well even if it left some open ended stuff. But this episode made up for the last one that I thought was so-so.In the end, the evil of men is always the true answer.
True Detective Season 4: Let The Mystery Be.
The internet entertainment comment section is definitively a place where if you don’t shit on something, you really think you’re just worthless.
The Annie murder doesn’t line up at all with what we saw in the video, right?
I get the feeling that many of these comments are from folks that really don’t like shows with female detectives (unless they’re eye candy) – and don’t like shows directed and written by women – especially if they don’t have some boilerplate answer session at the end, like CSI.You are watching the wrong show – just walk away. Some of us enjoy something that is not the same damn formula time after time after time. To each his own.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
This was no Silence of the Lambs.
It certainly wasn’t – and I felt that Silence of the Lambs was criminally over-rated, so you can see that there is a range of opinion on these things. Whether you agree or not.
In the end women scored one for Girl Power so, despite the insane amount of unanswered plot holes and flat out embarrassingly unrealistic shit it took to get there, it’s an A- right? Fuck off, Christina. You stink.
Another A-, almost as absurd as this whole sorry season. That was one of the lamest finales of a series I’ve ever watched. And I didn’t hate the series, I just found it mediocre, but this episode was so bad it beggars belief Foster signed up for this trash. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the big reveal was the research base was attacked by a horde of cleaning ladies moving like a SWAT team. And zero trace of all these women were found by the forensic team?
Why on earth would supremely intelligent, well educated researchers team up to murder a woman? Because she destroyed their work? Haven’t they got it backed up? Why aren’t they growing the bacteria themselves, they’ve no need to keep drilling for “more”. Why was Foster only mildly shivering after being submerged in the Arctic waters? True Detectives? They tortured and murdered a man for information and allowed a gang of killer cleaning ladies to go free. True Sociopaths more like. I’d carry on but it’s giving me a headache thinking about how utterly stupid this episode was. A- my ass.
I extended this show a lot of trust even though there were some
nagging questions all along to the effect of “Why is this happening, other than
that the director/production designer thought it would look cool?” That, and they think we won’t notice because of another common issue, what I call “People In Hollywood Have Never Been North Of Seattle And Don’t Know How Cold Climates Work.” (Typically manifested in bankable leads in supposedly minus-30 climates wearing stylish car coats, gloves and nothing covering their ears.) In this instance, the
gruesome corpsicle of scientists all seemingly flash-frozen in a moment of
abject terror. Look, if this is a horror/supernatural thing, that works… but
the show seems to want to have it both ways, be a True Detective and a Weird
Detective story at the same time.At the very least, Danvers’ constant
refrain—ask the question, wrong question, ask the real question—gets set aside
for the sake of the corpsicle. Like, that should be the first thing they’re
noticing because it’s *weird.* Yeah, people hallucinate when they’re dying of
hypothermia but not in a way that leaves them actively freaking out and screaming like a monster’s coming after them up until the very last second. There
is a very basic Mulder vs. Scully conversation that needs to happen there but if it did, it would quickly rule out any non-supernatural explanation.(Oh, and “slab avalanche?” Do the writers know what an avalanche is? Typically they happen in areas that, you know, AREN’T flat an also they leave the victims buried. Or did they just think, “Avalanches happen in cold places, this place is cold, boom, done, lunchtime?”)The other thing is the “story” whereby these guys didn’t just
run out into the cold for no reason but… were forced out at gunpoint by a dozen armed
women… and none of the cops who first came to the scene saw any evidence of a whole bunch of people in the station? In this case…. jeez
louise, if you’ve ever lived anywhere that’s snowy and frozen outside, you know
that when you come in, there’s gonna be melting snow and footprints EVERYWHERE. Not to
mention truck tracks from where they drove the scientists out into the middle
of nowhere. Okay, there were a few days, so maybe they came back and cleaned everything up. I suppose I can assume that but given how sloppy the rest of it is, I feel like this actually didn’t occur to the writers.This “some questions don’t have answers” BS is super grating. In a mystery, you don’t leave A WHOLE BUNCH of questions unanswered. It’s unsatisfying even in other genres. But here it feels like a kissing cousin to the old “Oh, it’s only a movie, stop overthinking it” excuse for bad writing. I know that the corporate concentration of the story telling industry plus the saturation of Hollywood ranks with nepo babies means that the basic craft of storytelling doesn’t matter anymore…. but I won’t overthink it as long as you don’t keep giving me reasons to go “wait, what?”