True Detective: Night Country premiere: Chillingly good TV
Led by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, season four isn’t so much a return to form as a renaissance
TV Reviews True Detective
It’s been a long time since True Detective was on TV—and even longer since it was Much-Watch TV. A whole five years after the third edition of the HBO crime anthology, we’ve got a fresh new chapter of True Detective tales, with the first episode of Night Country bringing with it many of the elements that made the McConaughey-Harrelson original so addictive. There’s a starry detective duo with fraught pasts, both separate and mutual; a “dead” investigation mysteriously given new life; a setting simmering with tension and turmoil; and a healthy dose of supernatural spooks to top it all off.
But the differences here are conscious and, more importantly, compelling. Speaking of the elements, where the first season sweltered with the stifling humidity of the American south, the fourth bites with the briskness of the arctic north. We’re 150 miles above the polar circle, in an Alaskan town so icy and isolated, its tagline is “The End of the World.” It’s already been dark for three days—the frosty frontier unsettlingly engulfed in its annual period of perma-night—when Chief Liz Danvers (Oscar winner Jodie Foster) is called in to investigate the disappearance of an entire staff of scientists at Tsalal Arctic Research Station, a hub of geological study on the distant edge of an already desolate town.
The men’s vanishing is giving major The Leftovers vibes: the deli meat is still reasonably fresh on sandwiches left half-eaten, and Ferris Bueller is still crooning “Twist And Shout” from a blaring television set. “It’s like they went to take a leak and never came back,” Danvers proclaims. Except, there’s a human tongue on the carpet and a whiteboard menacingly scrawled with the sentence: “WE ARE ALL DEAD.”
That tongue likely belonged to a local native woman, the detective surmises, based on markings that mimic the repetition of licking a thread while fixing fishing nets. And her old partner, an Iñupiaq state trooper named Evangeline Navarro (Catch The Fair One’s Kali Reis), has a hunch about exactly who the tongue came from: the indigenous victim of a brutal murder that the now-estranged duo worked on together six years prior. That unsolved case caused a rift between the polar-opposite officers—Danvers, all blustering sarcasm, and Navarro, soulful stoicism—but this being True Detective, they’ll have to unite to uncover the mystery of what happened to the scientists, especially after their bodies are found naked and frozen together in a nightmare-inducing “corpsicle” by the episode’s end.
In between that glacial gore and a sprinkling of jump-scares—a polar bear pays a shocking visit to Navarro one night on the road and a child’s hand can be seen creepily ghosting over Danver’s shoulder as she sleeps—the two women also contend with slightly less gruesome events in the season opener. Liz is struggling to wrangle her rebellious step-daughter Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc), who was caught taping a sexual encounter with a fellow female teen, as well as the town drunk, who just DUI-ed her truck into a street pole yet again. And Evangeline is trying to support her mentally ill sister Julia (Aka Niviâna) while navigating her own personal demons, agitations she relieves with late-night visits to the bedroom of a hunky local home brewer (Joel Montgrand).
The premiere introduces us to some of the male townsfolk populating this frigid land—Liz’s put-upon young deputy Peter (Finn Bennett), as well as his father, veteran cop Hank (John Hawkes)—but Night Country is made by and about women, a Mare Of Easttown–meets-Yellowjackets thriller that subverts the male-dominated structure we’ve come to expect from the True Detective world.
Along with its leading twosome of Foster and Reis (the latter of whom, though better known as a champion boxer, is a searing new screen presence), the female focus extends behind the scenes. This is the first True Detective season sans creator-showrunner Nic Pizzolatto. Instead, Issa López—the Mexican director who spooked filmgoers with the 2017 horror masterpiece Tigers Are Not Afraid—has taken the reins on the series, directing and writing or co-writing all six episodes of Night Country.
Lopez uses her horror bonafides to infuse that otherworldly Alaskan terrain with a foreboding dread, not only in the mysterious case of the missing researchers but in the town’s everyday conflicts, like the clash between the indigenous community and the white settlers who’ve come to mine their land. (Danvers, whom Foster has described as “Alaska Karen,” seems particularly prickly where native identity is concerned.)
From the true-crime bleakness to the unnerving supernaturalism, there are more than enough chilling elements for our leads to chip away at over the next five episodes. (And, no, we don’t see the delicious novelty of having Jodie Fucking Foster back on screen as a steely detective wearing off anytime soon.) With a snowy tundra and a severed tongue, True Detective Sundays are officially back.
Stray observations
- There’s an ominous little subplot with Fiona Shaw’s Rose Aguineau, a mysterious survivalist woman we meet while she’s gutting a wolf. Rose is afflicted with visions of a barefoot dead man named Travis who leads her out into the snowy wilderness to watch him dance in his long johns like he’s in a Fatboy Slim music video. We don’t entirely understand how those flailing moves ultimately lead Rose to discovering the researchers’ frozen bodies, but we won’t be listening to “Praise You” the same way anytime soon.
120 Comments
I liked the minimalist exposition that filled in the back story for all the players. It makes them feel like people with actual lives and not just props for the protagonists. Like that little bit with Leah about “that day” that told you: She was Danvers’ stepdaughter, not her bio-daughter, that her dad died in a DUI car accident and Liz was taking care of her since then. I do wonder how hard they’re going to lean in to the supernatural. Barefoot Travis is a clue, I guess.
I agree. A lot of shows could learn a lesson from this episode for how to explain who all your characters are in a way that feels natural, not like characters are explaining things to each other that they obviously all know. The relationships and tensions between the characters played by Foster, Hawkes, and Prior (playing Hawkes’ son) is especially well done in this regard.The argument between Foster and Reis was also well done in establishing the characters and giving them both actual positions. The disinterest in crimes against Native women is clearly going to be a big theme this season, which makes sense, but runs the risk of turning didactic (looking at you, We Own This City). But Foster had a real point in the argument — that Reis was the one who was supposed to find the killer in the previous case, yet is blaming everyone else for not solving it. That seems promising for recapturing some of the dynamic that made Harrelson and McConaughey work — two people who find each other irritating, but also need the other to make up for their own shortcomings and blind spots.
I’m cool with the supernatural angle. Another rote cop thriller doesn’t appeal. Get weird.
In her AV Club interview, Issa Lopez specifically mentioned wanting to tap into the ambiguous supernatural vibes of season 1: “So this is the same—there is a path here where you can go, “Every single event has a natural explanation,” or there’s more than what we can see at stake. And I love that liminal space.”
really disappointed. cheap icelandic looking production, jodie foster was shockingly bad imo. maybe she’s rusty?
Agreed. Foster was unremarkable, but I expect that’s less because she’s out of practice and more because the script never gave her any reason to deliver. Feels like the writer/s spent a few days traveling around AK, then watched Fortitude and The Terror and decided to mix the dumber parts of the latter into the shell of the former. I lived in Fairbanks for 4 years and it’s a shame to see squandered the golden opportunity for this series that is rural AK, home to some of the nation’s most miserable crimes and painfully personal acts of human-on-human violence. But this premiere seemed to be laying the groundwork for a story more interested in hackneyed mystical bullshit like one-eyed polar bears and psychic white grannies who are led by dancing ghosts to tableaux of flash-frozen humans. A ton of other little things are off-base too, like Navarro’s face jewelry; you wouldn’t wear that in the winter up there on a job that takes you outside so often. It all adds up to a pretty grim prognosis.
Grew up & still live in Fairbanks. Doubt the writers came up here at all. They didn’t need to, we had a film and tv incentives program but the Republicans got rid of it because … reasons. 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle doesn’t get you into 24 hours of darkness territory, you have be much farther north than that. Sounds like there’s a bunch of unforced errors in the depiction of the Indigenous cop, who would really be a VSO. A crime like that would be handled by a Trooper. Oh well, everyone had a nice trip to Iceland! I hear the yogurt there is tasty.
I appreciate the corroboration about the inaccuracies. I was living in Fairbanks when they canned the film and tv incentives program & mentally poured one out for it when I heard they were shooting this season in Iceland. Hope the winter’s treating you alright up there.
Spot on! I’m sorry to see your comment/thread descend into name calling. The amazing setting of rural Alaska seems to have been totally wasted by the show creators, you don’t really get a good feel for it, unlike southeast Louisiana in Season 1 (I lived in Nola for 2 years and their use of location and sense of place was amazing). One of the reasons for this, I think, is that this show so far moves WAY too fast. It’s frenetic, jumping around setting up stuff, totally disregarding the reality of time (does anyone sleep?) and just dumping one thing on top of another. It doesn’t slow down to let anything settle or create any atmosphere. Also, not only would you not have face piercings in the cold weather, but NO State Police agency would allow for neck tattoos and facial piercings. State Police agencies have the highest appearance/ uniform standards and many still do not even allow any visible tattoos, let alone double cheek studs. Ridiculous. The show feels like a rote ABC or NBC cop drama but with a bit more money and not in NYC or Los Angeles…or Chicago.
There’s one in every crowd. Since when does HBO have cheap production values for their prestige dramas? How many Oscars have you won, Tim? Rusty? You wish you had a fraction of that woman’s talent. But thanks for trolling.
“There’s one in every crowd,” lol! There’s as many opinions in a crowd as there are people in it, ya doofus. And consensus on this particular piece of shit is hardly global.
It’s bizarre that you’re using the apparent quality of completely unrelated shows as a defense for this one. I can only assume that you’re a huge fan of Crash and Green Book, considering you seem to think winning an Oscar makes one immune to criticism.
Jodie, you ok?
Well, there’s always one contrarian.
Nah man. It’s just bad.
Well, nothing is for everyone. And judging by your other comment, you don’t actually seem to be critiquing this particular program but rather just complaining that it wasn’t the show you imagined.Why don’t you go ahead and write that show?
That is indeed a thing that happens sometimes with some people, but not this time, and never with me. All sentences but one in my original comment state concrete reasons for why I think this was objectively bad television. If you’re telling me you think that’s not critique, I’ll send you a free dictionary.
Meanwhile, you’re out here calling people contrarians for expressing their opinion & leaving it at that. Why don’t you go ahead and put your money where your mouth is, and say more about why you think it’s good? I’m warning you right now though, if you say you liked the one-eyed polar bear I’m going to make fun of you.
it can’t be objective
Your concrete reasons were that you wanted this to be an entirely different program. And yeah, that’s a fine explanation for why you didn’t enjoy it, but it’s hardly engaging with the actual material. Not every piece of media is designed for a pompous white male audience.
Ah, yes, you’ve cracked the case— your baseless presumption of my gender and ancestry grant your opinion the status of “correctest”! If it’s not Michael Mann’s Heat, I detest it! You’re the TRUE True Detective! Which sticker do you want as a reward, the one-eyed polar bear or the psychic white lady?
(Seriously— that’s a completely insane card to be playing. I don’t know what you think engaging with the actual material is, but I sure don’t see you doing it to tell me why you disagree with me; just that you do, and without a shred of apparent humor or goodwill. So really, this kinda feels like you’re projecting more than anything else. Bye.)
Pompous critic in love with the smell of his farts has thin skin? Who would have thought.It’s always hilarious when someone is pretty sure that their overly mannered prose signifies their intellectual superiority rather than their inflated sense of self and cluelessness about writing. What was wrong with your freshman writing workshop instructor?
He said, without an ounce of self awareness 😂
Likewise, son.
I’m self-aware enough to know I’m not your son, son.
Not enough to be comfortable with people using decades-old slang though, apparently. Sorry to make you bristle, sir.
OK, I get it. You’re just an asshole. Well, I’ll leave you with this, if you’re even reading what I write: the primary reason I think this season is bullshit, above all nitpicking, is because it’s a series that’s flirted for 3 seasons with supernatural elements, keeping them at the fringes— and now it JUST SO HAPPENS that when they start centering Indigenous and Native characters, they also start centering the supernatural shit? Get the FUCK out of here with that bullshit. I don’t care who’s writing it. It’s offensive in how stereotypical it is. If that’s your thing (as in you, the person reading this), then it seems you’ve got some television to enjoy! Go enjoy the rest of this season! I originally posted in reply to someone who also thinks this season is shaping up to be disappointingly bad, so I don’t even know what you think you’re doing any more. If you want to discuss how great an episode of TV this was there’s people here who seem very willing to do that with you. But I won’t be watching, and your weird negativity is a bad look. Legit peace to you because it seems like you need some.
It is beyond fucking hilarious that THIS DUDE is claiming to dislike “weird negativity” and calling me an asshole while simultaneously acting like Justin for calling him an asshole.At least it appears that I shamed him into abandoning his affected writing style.
You are kinda being an asshole, though.
Maybe, but at least I didn’t write “I think this was objectively bad television.”No overly pretentious phrasing or forced adjectives make up for how stupid that is.
I guess one of your multitudes is the inability to make an argument without dumpster diving into ad hominems, and then deigning to call the other guy “pretentious” for actually writing an argument. What a complete and utter train wreck you’ve made of this thread.
Okay, fella. Dunning-Kruger for everyone!
Are you not aware of how ironic that statement is given how you’ve conducted yourself in this thread so far?
Who are you and why are you trying to wake up a week-old thread?
What a pretentious asshole you are!
“your baseless presumption of my gender and ancestry grant your opinion the status” is fucking hilarious.
Just out here expressing opinions like you, except (mostly) without fixating on the human asshole.
I don’t understand why you’re not allowed to state your opinions with arguments. You did. They didn’t, they just hammered on you being a man.
But let’s talk True Detective. I liked the first episode, mostly because I wanted to like it. I was curious what the style difference would be compared to season 1, so I watched 10 minutes of the first episode. I suppose the biggest difference is that the supernatural elements were alluded to in S1. The show was such a gritty cop show, that all the super natural elements felt so out of place that the audience almost couldn’t believe that there was more going on… could they? Would they? I think we, as an audience, had never seen something like that before, and it was awesome. And afterward, you could have discussions about what was actually supernatural and what wasn’t. What it meant, and so on. And it was just a grand spending time with Woody and Matthew’s bantering. I feel in s4 it’s a bit too on the nose with the attitude so far.I don’t mind S4 going more towards the supernatural route. S2 and s3 leant more towards gritty realism. I think many of those things (the polar bear, the dancing dead husband) are a case of first person focalisation, they’re just in the mind of whoever we follow at that point. However, by now the tone has been set and your expectations should be proportionally altered. This is a new seasons, and it’s not ashamed to say it’s leaning more into the supernatural. How cliche or stereotypical or well they will do we’ll see in the next few episodes. But you’re saying it’s bad because it’s not something you expected it to be, while it clearly want’s to be it’s own thing.
Oh dude you’re a dinosaur. Your reflex id pol reaction to criticism of media is archaic. It had a wild and influential decade but it was only ever a trend.
Ummm okay.
Quite not very good.
Well, there’s always one contrarian.I think you’ve conflated “contrarian” with “moron” (or perhaps “gaping asshole” in that particular commenter’s case).
Well, this commenter didn’t say much, but this other dude sure qualifies. I’m not going to try to imitate his “dumb person’s idea of how a smart person writes” style, but his argument largely came down to “It is OBJECTIVELY bad that this season of a crime series that has always included supernatural elements that was created by a director famous for a crime film with supernatural elements contains supernatural elements rather than the supersophisticated material crime drama that I, an authentic genius, thought it was going to be, based on my ignorance of everything involved.”
There was never any supernatural elements in True Detective. There were references to stories of the supernatural, but there was nothing actually supernatural. I’m not sure why you’re hyperfixating on that, considering it was a small part of the whole criticism.
They literally had one of the protagonists see the black stars of Carcosa in the finale of the first season. While the show wasn’t explicit about supernatural goings on, it strongly hinted that unknown forces were at play in the background.
Are you sure you watched this show?
Maybe you don’t know shit about acting?
Shut the fuck up, troll.
It was Alaska not Iceland…pretty sure shot on location…but otherwise spot on!
Well, the Griswolds do get new kids each movie.
So Twin Peaks or Fargo?
Everything i’ve seen and read about the new season gives me “Fortitude” vibes. Of course i’ll watch it and most likely will enjoy it immensely, but if the twist turns out to be “ancient virus/bacteria is found in melting ice, infects peoples brains and makes them mad”, i’ll be … mad.
I too am getting Fortitude vibes. I hope I am wrong.
don’t forget Yellowjackets, The Thing, and The Shining.
Funny, they had a DVD of The Thing on their TV Cabinet, clearly visible.
I, for one, am looking forward to a heady mix of:FortitudeThe ThingThe TerrorThe HeadTop of the LakeHold the DarkTwin PeaksYellow JacketsWind River, andFerris Bueller’s Day Off(But for real, I quite enjoyed it and am just letting it wash over me before judging too much.)
Kind of a conflation of both.
Got big Killer Bob vibes from Travis, minus the evil parts
I liked that Foster got to say ‘star-shaped’ in reference to a wound again, all these many years later.
really enjoyed it. beautiful Icelandic looking production. Jodie Foster was reliably good imo. No signs of rust.
It was fine, but it can’t help but feel derivative of things we have seen before. I remember the plot of the first 2 seasons of TD pretty clearly but really struggling to remember what happened in season 3. Hopefully this season will be more memorable.
Season 3 was more memorable than Season 2
I see what you did there. You might not have mean to, but kudos anyway.
Season 2 was such a mess. It could have been a good smoldering neo noir. Instead it was a lost plot with a good soundtrack.
I don’t remember Season 2 with much clarity relative to Season 3, tbh, so it may just be down to what you personally liked.
Season 2 was meandering junk, and season 3 was overrated dreck.
Do most people not like season 3? I thought it was as good as season 1. (Season 2 we need not mention)
Alright, I’m in. First episode was a bit of a slow, dry burn. It seems more like its own thing than True Detective. There’s no noir narration and the two leads seem more detached to the viewer compared to their predecessors. We’re introduced to them in a more naturalistic way instead of the scenery chewing exposition dumps that started on this show with talking directly to the camera. We’re not here, they’re just going about their day, and any information dropped isn’t volunteered so readily. The weirdness seems more Fargo, but the murder mystery and character stuff seems more like The Killing or Broadchurch, American and British versions respectively.That guy was livestreaming some food he was making. Vertical video is absolutely stupid for broadcasting to an audience and I hate it. So this video is going to resurface at some point, better sooner than later if they want the audience to remember it. There will be witnesses who saw something. I held my phone up to the speaker so Google Translate could get it, it’s nothing interesting aside from the quality of the translation: “…with good fermentation, otherwise it won’t work. To function, to, eh eh, eh, eh, now live for all of you, we are going to put the mayonnaise. The same one we made yesterday that today is with that taste. Look what this is, ugh uff, mayonnaise. Put a lot of people on it, don’t skimp on it, put it and this corner see the final product. Tada!” Dude made a ham sandwich with fuckin cucumbers? Why would anyone watch that? That’s such a weird and random thing to make a video out of.
Why did Angie steal Qavvik’s toothbrush? If she was leaving, why would she use his toothbrush? Girl, you don’t do that if you’re not staying.Shout out to this graffiti with a cat’s butthole.
I viewed the sandwich stream as being broadcast to a family member, which would be on point for people stuck in a remote location. It would also fit with the Spanish speaker call to the police station that the secretary completely garbled.They did a lot more show rather than tell, which is a plus, but did make the opening episode pretty dense.
Oh shit, good catch about the call from the Spanish-speaker that the secretary took. I think you’re gonna be right about that. I also figured he was recording a silly video for family/friends, but wasn’t sure whether he was broadcasting live or recording to send later since they seemed to imply internet was spotty there.
Why did Angie steal Qavvik’s toothbrush? If she was leaving, why would she use his toothbrush? power move?
“Why did Angie steal Qavvik’s toothbrush?”Gives her a reason to go back, without admitting it’s for anything more than that.
—cgi animals = lol. why are we doing this. why bother—the hook in the theme song is lifted straight from “people are strange” by the doors, if you’re wondering why it was so annoying—jodie foster absolutely MUGGING in every take, just terrible facial expressions and line deliveries. retire bitch!
Foster’s performance was distractingly flat. Someone else mentioned she might be rusty but I don’t know, it’s almost like she’s just disinterested or couldn’t find a way to bring the character to life. What a dud.
OMG lol
Yeah, F the CGI animals. Is Jodie that bad? So far she seemed convincingly cranky. Which seemed the point so far.
Not just the animals, but the entire landscape of that opening reindeer shot. Video games look more realistic in 2024.
Jfc, this is what passes for discourse here now. You literally just called Jodie fucking Foster a bitch and people are here acting like that’s normal and sane. Get a fucking grip, dude.
Funny that they kept repositioning the “The Thing” dvd so we would keep seeing it. Also, Kangaroo Jack?!?
That was a turkey sandwich, clearly, not ham.
In my head I put “Mare of Easttown” and “The Night of…” as unofficial “True Detective” series entries.
I’ve rewatched season one of True Detective a few times; I think it’s pretty much perfect. The previews for Night Country show clearly showed the spiral shape that featured prominently in that first season, and that coupled with Rust Cole’s backstory in Alaska gives me hope that there’s a direct connection between the two stories.
They made references to Season 1 in Season 3. I don’t know if they will make it overt if only because it hurts the awards chances of the show – tosses it out of limited series/anthology.
That would be fucking cool! The close read of s1 is appreciated— I love it too but I never thought of that when I heard this one was gonna be set in AK.
Having a copy of The Thing on DVD at the research outpost was a bit on the nose.
Not to mention reachy
They really love watching The Thing in remote outposts IRL. The researchers love the irony, I guess.
It’s realistic though. Anecdotally, it seems pretty common among nerdy scientists living in relative isolation. I’ve heard of it being tradition on a research station on a remote island, and from googling I found an article that mentions watching The Thing as a winter tradition for the crew at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/harvard-scientists-at-the-south-pole/
I thought there were a lot of elements successfully planted in the opener; whether or not they’ll pay off remains to be seen. The openly supernatural aspect is on one level fine but on another a little jarring given how the show has previously handled the hints of it; they’re going to have to walk a fine line with how its used. All in all, it’s off to a decent start: certainly better than the last two seasons, even if not to the viral watercooler level of S1’s first episode.I do want to comment on this though:Night Country is made by and about women, a Mare Of Easttown-meets-Yellowjackets thriller that subverts the male-dominated structure we’ve come to expect from the True Detective worldI’m certainly ok with this (the female led sex scenes were a sign this was where they were going), but my major concern would be that it already is getting close to male drone characters: the crab factory wife beater, the incompetent #2 at the police painting his walls blue, the homebrew guy who is the male version of the holler girl. The Bennett character seems to be the only one with a half a brain (and an attempt at writing something more than a trope given a girlfriend, kid, and background), but I also wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him offed at some point to provide character development/plot for Foster’s.As much as was made of Daddario’s boobs in S1, we tend to forget one of the better scenes of the season was her character just absolutely ripping into Woody Harrelson’s. I hope we get enough past stereotypes to provide at least the equivalent of that for the supporting cast, female led or not.
Oh I instantly 100% pegged “the kid” cop isn’t getting out of this alive. Might as well have a flashing sign with an arrow pointing at him, in that regard. But hey, maybe we’ll be surprised.
I’m going for the kid having to shoot his dad when it’s revealed that he was involved in killing Anne Kowtok or protecting the killer.Another assumption is that the mine caused the water to be polluted and makes people and animals hallucinate to the point of killing themselves. That could be a way to explain the caribou leaping off the cliff, all the supernatural stuff and the woman the room is being painted blue for not existing. Yet another guess is the dancing guy (Travis?) was killed by Rose because she thought he killed Anne. And Navarro will get into a life threatening situation and when she calls the guy she hooked up with he does what he said would and doesn’t answer the phone.
I appreciate your comment and I do think the show could benefit from more supporting characters of substance, but given how prevalent paper thin female supporting characters have been on TV for the past 80-years, I think the show can succeed just fine even if the only real heroes are female.
I mean you’re not wrong, but stereotypical dumb men have also become a bit of a fast cliché within the span of a few years – if we want quality, we can’t just say “but you’ve been doing it too so now it’s our turn nananana”.Having said that, I didn’t really mind the way all of the characters were presented in this show so far. The two lead women seem to go a bit too far in the bitchy for bitchiness sakes department – like we get it, you want to not be nice to each other because reasons!!- and we can’t always have fully fleshed out minor characters in everything.
True, it reminds of (one of many) issues I had with the last two Indiana Jones. Like, God didn’t actually show up, just very heavily implied. Then they go and show the damn aliens…
Eh, I think it’s bit early to be concerned about the male supporting characters being stereotypical when it’s just getting started. Other than the crab factory guy, we’ll probably get more shades of the #2 cop (John Hawkes does interesting work so I wouldn’t write off his character yet—he seems ripe to snap from Foster’s bullying eventually), the dead woman’s brother, the hookup, hell, maybe even mysterious dead Travis. We haven’t even gotten to know the all-male crew yet, though I realize there’s only so much you can do with a bunch of deceased characters.
I’m enjoying the small town vibes, which is somewhere between Fargo and Mayberry. That’s a new dimension that, paired with the gothic horror, is helping keep this show fresh. Also, I would totally live in the TSALAL station. Gym, library, big ass kitchen? Sign me up.
It’s a nice setup, but the show is try hard hack shit. Which is basically the brand, so I guess good job?
It’s fine to not like something. Everything’s subjective. But the whole “try hard” insult people picked up somewhere along the way is just strange. “Eeeew, look how hard they’re trying. Gross. Their effort is so evident. Yuck.” Of all the things to ding a show about, hard work is a curious one.
This didn’t click for me. I have no idea why they kept the True Detective moniker, when nothing about it resembles any of the previous seasons. Jodie Foster is a pretty bland lead.
IP/name recognition is huge. Many productions start out as their own thing, a creator’s pet project that won’t get greenlit unless it gets crammed into an existing IP with some minor tooling to make it fit.
Yeah, I was hoping it wouldn’t be just an IP gimmick. Really takes away from whatever it was supposed to be, prior to jamming it into a familiar IP.
It wasn’t originally written to be a True Detective show. HBO came to the showrunner and said they would make the series IF they in turn made it a True Detective. So they went back and rewrote some things to fit the True Detective narrative.
I didn’t know this! Really takes away from whatever it was supposed to be, prior to jamming it into a familiar IP.
The first season remains one of the most overhyped seasons in television history.
Calling it right now:
Yeah I picked up on that comment too. Was wondering if it was going to pay off later.
A few things kinda leads me to it:1. The caribou suicide leap at beginning. I figure it’s in the water table and effects anyone that drinks it with hallucinations (auditory and visual). You see them react to something specifically and panic run.2. Each time something weird happens, there seems to be a connection with water in a way. When the two cops see and hear weird shit (polar bears and the dreams), they had just brushed their teeth in the water. I am guessing the scientist that was freaking out was dealing with a core sample (hence why he wrote that on the dry board)3. The woman who watches the ghost, seems to see something prior happen with the wolf she is skinning then consistently sees it near the kitchen window overlooking the sink.4. Suspicion on the DUI as she is losing her mind and sobbing as she sits in the truck after the crash. They think she is drunk and she probably is….but also I think she is having hallucinations. (Maybe she mixes drinks or using ice cubes in her booze). Kinda lines up to her drying out as well and is back in a bit of normal after a while. My guess on the overarch is the woman that was murdered was done so because she found that something the mining company unearthed in the ground was seeping into the water table and she tried to close the mine despite people telling her she was ‘killing the town’. Now that its been some time since her death, the damage is done and we are now seeing the effects as people are starting to see/hear things . The scientists are the start as they were working directly with the water table by doing core samples of the permafrost so they probably received a concentration of the whatever.We will see if I am in the right lane in a couple of weeks.
Ben, that is some miiiiiiiiiighty fine reasoning right there. I am subscribing to your newsletter and buying what you are selling, friend. I will say that I will be disappointed if you are correct as it’s pretty similar to that Fortitude show. But nevertheless, will watch and find out.
Fargo can’t get above a B+ no matter what but this “just okay I guess?” opener get a straight A?
So far it reminds me a lot of the first season of Fortitude.
It really wasn’t very good. It might get good, but this was a poorly written start. There was some visual flair and an interesting setting but this was all pretty lame. I think there should have been more playing with time, to put it in line with the other seasons. The stories don’t need to solidly connect but it would be nice to have some continuity in how the stories are told.
I don’t think it’ll get better. I won’t be watching to confirm.
One of my takeaways is that Jodie Foster is very short. And the dude from Deadwood has aged a lot.
Heavy handed, try hard pablum. Consistent with the brand, then. I thought it might be better absent Pizzalatte’s involvement, but it’s still spendy garbage.
Glad that weekly reviews are happening! Excited for this season and to recapture some of that old TV Club magic.
That was a lot. We got thrown into this town and everything happening in it. Some things we get, other things we’ll understand later. I really liked the clue-linking montage when Liz Danvers spots the pink parka in the case photos. Well done. But yes, thanks to Mare of Easttown and Yellowjackets, I am prepared for twists and turns I have seen before. That young APF detective, Peter Prior (really?) seems doomed. Surprise me, show.
I too am curious if they go full supernatural with this season or it it’s still grounded. Either way I’m in after episode 1.
The setup is incredibly derivative of The Head. And Fortitude. And a million other Nordic Spooky Murder shows on Netflix. Also the animal CGI is giving Narnia. Bummed this didn’t click for me at all. Still it’s nice to see Fiona Shaw pop up in anything.
Calling it now- there is no murderer. This is all related to the Dyatlov Pass incident from Soviet Russia and they were all just killed by a freak avalanche that beat them up (including the original woman). Some sort of hypoxia or water contamination might have caused them to have a mass delusion and leave and get caught in it or something.
I dunno I actually thought Jodie was pretty good. She looks great and she’s good at her job. I almost always enjoy that kind of performance. Also I’m rooting for her.I thought it was a good start, I’m looking forward to the rest of it. I work with a lot of people who are at the McMurdo base in Antarctica. This might hit a little too close to home in that regard.
Eh, it was a mildly interesting opening episode but nowhere near an A.
The CGI deer shots were hilariously bad.