True Detective: Night Country recap: “You’re not terrible”
As the chill between Danvers and Navarro thaws, the horror heats up in “Part 4”
TV Reviews True Detective
Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) can’t sleep. It’s December 24, the seventh day of night, and the Chief is kicking off Christmas Eve by doom-watching that haunting ice-cave video of Annie Kowtok being killed. Adding to that holiday cheer is the unwelcome news that Captain Connolly (Christopher Eccleston) is early packing up the Corpsicle bodies for Anchorage—and is sticking around Ennis to mitigate the messy mine conflict—and the fact that Danvers discovers Navarro’s younger sister having a shirtless mental episode in the middle of a snowy street.
Just a few weeks ago, such displeasures would set off our token “Alaska Karen” but episode four of True Detective: Night Country sees a slightly warmer side to our frosty police chief, who wraps a parka around Julia Navarro (Aka Niviâna) and gently calms the skittish, shivering woman. Liz calls in Evangeline (Kali Reis), who thanks her before checking Julia into the Lighthouse psychiatric center. It’s a clear thawing between the reluctant partners, a necessary one as this week’s episode plunges the women even deeper into the icy mysteries surrounding the murders and the culture of Ennis.
They do get a significant lead via Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), who manages to track down the medical records of Otis Heiss, a German national who had similar injuries to the Corpsicle crew: ruptured eardrums, burnt corneas, etc. (“You’re not terrible” is the closest Liz can get to giving the deputy praise.) With no records of employment, registered address or anything else to trace him, Heiss (Klaus Tange) is a veritable snow ghost but Danvers deems him a person of interest in the Tsalal case, so they add ol’ Otis to the ongoing Raymond Clark search.
And despite initially believing that ice caves like the one found in Annie K.’s video don’t exist near Ennis, Danvers’ former geology-teacher fling dispels that assumption when Liz and Evangeline turn up at his house, much to his wife’s annoyance. (“Is there anyone in this town you haven’t fucked?!” Navarro rage-whispers when they arrive.) In fact, there’s an entire system of such caves bordering Brooks Ranch but the cops would need an expert to guide them there, someone like the person who mapped out the cave system—you guessed it, Otis Heiss.
But before they can pursue Otis, Danvers has a little parenting problem to deal with first: Kate McKitterick (Dervla Kerwan), the owner of the Silver Sky mine and the wife of yet another one of Liz’s lovers, calls to tell her that Leah (Isabelle Star LaBlanc) was caught vandalizing the mine building. She convinces Kate not to press charges because it’s Christmas, but that doesn’t mean things are all that merry and bright over at the Danvers residence. The crevasse between mother and stepdaughter fractions even further, with Leah choosing to spend the holidays over at Prior’s and Liz left with an uncooked turkey, a bottle of vodka, and that awful Annie K. clip.
Navarro’s not having the jolliest Eve, either. Things start off very strong, with coupes of bubbly and a full spread over at Rose’s (Fiona Shaw), plus a sweet SpongeBob toothbrush surprise from Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand). But then a drunken Danvers calls her with a theory about the power being cut in both the Annie K. recording and that video of the Tsalal scientist mysteriously seizing before the researchers’ disappearances. Liz wants to re-question Oliver Tagaq, the equipment engineer from the research station, but she’s too wasted to drive, and Navarro doesn’t want to investigate with a plastered partner. Enter: Prior, who is not paid nearly enough. Oliver’s hut is largely abandoned by the time Navarro and Prior get there, though, with the only traces being left-out food and a spiral drawn on the floor. The Tsalal vibes are real.
And things only get worse for Evangeline. On the way back from the camp, she gets a tragic call from the coast guard. Julia, who she believed to still be at the Lighthouse, had left the center and died by suicide, walking out onto the frozen ice until she drowned in the Ocean below. Navarro takes the enormity of her rage and grief out on the Lighthouse staff and three local men on the side of the road, before showing up bloodied and battered at Qavvik’s for comfort.
The awfulness of the women’s evenings converge on Christmas morning, as do their ideas of morality and mysticism. “It’s a curse,” Navarro worries about Julia’s death. “Something calls us and we follow. It’s calling me now.” Questions about whether her anguish is of the supernatural or psychological sort will have to wait until next episode, though, because their argument over the living and the dead gets interrupted by a message from Prior. A man has been sighted wearing Annie’s pink parka out near an old gold-dredging machine. Could it be Clark?
No, it’s not Clark, but it is Otis Heiss, who is scared and strung out (Liz spots some syringes and spoons nearby) and tells Danvers that Raymond “went back down to hide” in the night country. “We’re all in the night country now,” he says. And if the night country is less a material world and more a metaphysical one, it’s clear Navarro is already there: having followed the vision of a dead woman down to the lower levels of the dredge, Evangeline is found by Danvers sitting on the ground, staring cryptically at a Christmas tree and suffering a bloody, ruptured eardrum.
“Come on, baby, now. Come on and work it on out,” croons a spooky cover of “Twist And Shout” over the credits. Four episodes into True Detective: Night Country and it’s getting increasingly harder to work it on out: how Navarro’s visions and Danvers’ past and the racial tensions of Ennis and Annie’s pink parka and ice-cave systems and ruptured eardrums and Matthew McConaughey all connect and consolidate. It’s a lot of ground to cover in just two more episodes, two less than the previous seasons. How will Night Country do it? Well, it’s a mystery.
Stray observations
- Poor Hank (John Hawkes): As we all assumed, his foreign fiancée really is a catfish, a fact made even sadder by the champagne chilling in the fridge and the rose petals sprinkled all over the bed. He, like Captain Connolly, finds solace in the adventures of Buddy the Elf. Who knew yuletide Will Ferrell comedies were the go-to comfort movies for Ennis’ middle-aged and melancholy men?
- Poor Julia: Before she took her life, Navarro’s sister saw an orange roll out from beneath her bed at the Lighthouse center. So it does look like we’re following The Godfather rules where citrus fruits are concerned. Given that Evangeline had a similar experience during last week’s episode, does that mean Navarro will, too, soon succumb to the “night country”?
- Poor polar bear: Every time the dude tries to cross the road, one of these damn detectives nearly runs him down. Really not helping the whole “women can’t drive” stereotype, ladies.
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I want to like it but the writing on this show is really awful. The build up and intended payoff is incoherent. The tone is very muddled. What are they going for exactly? Thriller? Family drama? Polemic screed? The whole show is aesthetic and Jodie Foster busting her ass to try and make it all work.
Especially if the climax they are working toward really ends up being some version of “Community” Season 4.
I would rather they just went full True Horror, and did it as an off shoot, and already established some alien or ancient creature and they are all trapped with it for the last 2 episodes. but now we get a sloppy mess of everything, and the aesthetic is the shining quality aside from Jodie. also i cant ever buy a police officer with face piercings. Its a no no everywhere in the country and world. like please.
She’s been the saving grace for me in this–not sure it would be watchable with a lesser actress (there’s not been nearly enough Eccleston—which is an utter waste)
When Navarro said “We need to talk,” my stomach sank. I skipped through a *lot* of this episode.
Not sure if I’m giving this episode points for including a Jon Hopkins track, or taking away points for not having enough of it.Seems like we’re kind far along in this season not to have even one shred of solid evidence of environmental contamination from the mine being behind all this weirdness (which is what I’m assuming is going to be the culprit). It feels like the omission of this (and the presence of state or local environmental officials that would almost surely be involved by now) is merely a plot convenience in favor of prolonging the rather vanilla jump scares.
It was said that newborn babies have been dying in Ennis. Citizens have complained about the water being contaminated, unfit for use, and we were shown black water coming out of a sink faucet. I think if the reveal that the mines are causing delusions will happen, then it could play out in Episode 5. The autopsies on the frozen scientists could reveal poisoning in their blood from long-term exposure to a toxin that they extracted from their drilling and brought back to their station. Danvers and Navarro are ordered to stand down, because the case is solved officially, but of course they can’t let it go — certain things are unresolved, including the missing scientist, and there’s a vibe that there’s a cover-up by the mysterious company that owns Tsalal station. So it all leads to the finale in Episode 6.
All circumstantial signs point to the mining unleashing or thawing the microorganisms that are getting in everyone’s brains and causing them to see visions. It’s just annoying that as that conclusions gets more and more inevitable, the show seems intent on dragging out the reveal.
We’re far enough along that I’m definitely nervous about ‘too fast’ a wrap-up. A lot happened in this episode that just made the mystery deeper without any answers, which is frustrating when there’s only a third of the show to go. But there’s a lot frustrating about this show, and each one leads me to have less and less faith the ending will be satisfying.
I’m getting now why Nic Pizzolatto doesn’t like this season – WAY too much family/relationship drama!
I thought his issue with this season was that it also doesn’t plagiarize Thomas Ligotti and Alan Moore verbatim.
As none of his work plagiarizes them it’d be odd to take issue with this season for also not doing it.
maybe the person who wrote this new season should have plagiarized something?
Lmao.
Pizzolatto:
Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law.
Thomas Ligotti in Conspiracy Against the Human Race:
We know that nature has veered into the supernatural by fabricating a creature that cannot and should not exist by natural law, and yet does. Pizzolatto:
The only honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, and march hand-in-hand into extinction. CAtHR:
“…the human race will never do the honorable thing and abort itself…To end this self-deception… we must cease reproducing.” Pizzolatto:
I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution.
CAtHR: “…human existence is a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness-parent of all horrors…the evolutionary mutation of consciousness tugged us into tragedy…our captivity in the illusion of a self… the tragedy of the ego.”
Pizzolatto:
Once, there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.Alan Moore in Top 10:No. Once there was only black. We are winning.
The previous exchange happened in nearly the exact same circumstances as the comic. Also, it’s important to note, Pizzolatto’s original scripts apparently lifted even more from Ligotti word for word but that was changed once the show started filming.
You could argue that philosophy isn’t something one can really plagiarize since it informs a lot of writers’ works, but Pizzolatto didn’t just lift Ligotti’s work, he went on to not even credit him, instead saying the dialogue was inspired by Nietzsche. Ligotti was, undoubtedly, influenced by Nietzche’s work but there’s a very clear difference between Nietzche’s nihilistic philosophy which is basically “make the best of the crap card we’ve been dealt” and Ligotti’s which is outright pessimistic and argues that humans shouldn’t even wallow in misery, we should stop reproducing and self-exterminate as soon as possible. The philosophy presented in True Detective Season One is much more that later.
As he’s not an academic or a a journalist he didn’t plagiarize anyone. TV shows don’t need footnotes or bibliographies either. One more thing – he talks about Ligotti as early as Jan 2014 interviews right around when the show released.
1. That’s not plagiarism2. True Detective season one is a pinnacle in anthology television.I don’t make the rules, sorry.
This is well researched. Good work. B-.–A. A. Dowd
Absolutely disingenuous to claim that Pizzolatto plagiarised Ligotti (a writer I love). This was a dumb claim then and a dumber claim now.
He’s a hack. Who cares what he thinks.
Give Nick a break! His Tweets about this season have more views than anything he’s ever produced since season 2!
The whole Marty Storyline in Season 1 was family/relationship drama.
Really weird how bad the show apparently expects us to feel for Hank, after all we’ve seen of him so far is being an abusive father and probable racist.
I’m not sure we’re supposed to feel too bad for him. I read it more as “this asshole is going to snap when reality hits him.”
Yep, this is the correct interpretation I think the show is trying to convey. He’s a power keg without much to lose at this point. And he’s a good character because he could plausibly have a turn for the better or the worse and either could work.
100% been my impression too–seems more like a ‘look at this loser of his own making’ vibe to me. I halfway expected him to off himself before the episode was over.
I mean, he can be all of those things, and still sad and lonely. You don’t have to take his side or sympathise or anything; it just makes him more of a human being, as opposed to a one-dimensional cartoon villain.
I think the Hank character could be a red herring — early on we suspect him of being involved in a cover-up. (This could still be the case.) But I could also see him pulling a heroic deed in the finale. The catfishing was obvious immediately to most of us viewers, but maybe it was intentionally set up this way by the writer so that we’d find Hank doing good in the finale as more believable.
It’s weird that you think you’re supposed to feel bad for him
Everything about the way the scene is shot and scored indicates it.
They indicated that he was sad and disappointed, I didn’t get the feeling that they wanted me to feel bad for him though
I didn’t get that. Just that he comes off as pathetic. Your reaction to the scene is however you take it though. I laughed the whole time, especially the next shots of him seeing the empty fridge and the bed with the rose petals.
His son still seems to care about him though, but it doesn’t redeem his character in my eyes. He’s still pathetic regardless, IMO.
Y’all are cold blooded. I felt sorry for him. He’s a romantic and a racist, poor baby. The rose petals got me, I must admit.
Feel bad? My gf and I were laughing pretty hard when he was standing on the snow with the stuffed animal, all alone.
Maybe I missed it, but where was it shown he was abusive? I mean, if where not supposed to feel band for Hank, then we’re not supposed to feel bad for Danvers, either, because she adopted Leah for the same reason Hank wanted to get a Russian bride.I do think the whole “lol, idiot man scammed by Russian bride” gag is played out, though.
How is that weird?People are complex, but still human and can be both worthy and sympathy and be shitty at the same time. If you didn’t feel sorry for him when he’s down, he’d just be a badly drawn 2 dimensional villain.
Since we’re talking about him, what hold does he have over Danvers? Isn’t she his boss? Why does he get to refuse to turn over case files or ignore her when she needs to talk to him? Is he unfire-able? Does he have something over her that we haven’t seen yet?
My only guess, because the show isn’t giving us much to work on there, is that he is basically un-fireable, due to seniority and/or lack of qualified officers. I assume that’s the reason Danvers is so hard on his son, he’s basically all she has to rely on.
I’m trying to figure out the point of the character. He is just so cringe in how stupid and unlikeable he is. That whole catfishing thing is just so cringe, how can he be so stupid, and how can the people around him let him make such an ass out of himself? They all have to know he is being catfished, unless the whole police force is brain-damaged.
“how can he be so stupid”
I don’t think you understand the depth of loneliness that’s possible in that setting. “how can the people around him let him make such an ass out of himself?”Who would or could stop him? I think we saw as close as his abused son was willing to get to the topic of catfishing. Danvers hates him. Subordinates on the PD aren’t in a position to say anything. Maybe a redneck friend tried and he ignored them in favor of the fantasy. I’ll agree that I’m not sure of the function of the character other than being a mean son of a bitch who undermines the protagonists.
What did you do that indicated he was racist? I’ve already forgotten.
This show is half-thawed garbage.
I’m not sure how this rates an A- when you conclude with this:…it’s a lot of ground to cover in just two more episodes, two less than the previous seasons. How will Night Country do it? Well, it’s a mystery.The relationships this season have just not been interesting, and yet, we got almost an entire episode devoted to them. In a 10 or even 8 show season, this would have been a fairly weak character development episode that if the writers were really good might have been worth it to plant some ramifications down the road. In a 6 episode miniseries, though, it just wasted ~45 minutes of what was left of the 3 hours of the show on dysfunctional characters we’ve got very little reason to care about while the main plot got about 10.As for the latter, while it’s interesting to watch in the few minutes that it’s on, the main plot has its own problems in making little traditional True Detective ‘there’s a rational explanation for this’ sense as poor Jodie Foster gets to repeat to us periodically about ‘no ghosts!’. Even if it’s revealed the mine polluting the water table or the ancient organism infecting people caused hallucinations for everybody, HBO clearly bought a supernatural pitch and grafted some of their existing franchise onto it to put the label on the title. Then you get suspension of disbelief stuff like the Coast Guard (on Christmas Eve when everyone’s off no less!) miraculously finding a body in the dark almost as soon as it hit the water just to provide weak character motivation for Navarro; I guess she’ll get busted for the brawl by the captain next week. I gather despite the decorations they and most of the town aren’t particularly interested in Christmas based on what everyone’s doing, although we got lump of coal lines like ‘You’re in the Night Country!” and ‘I prayed so hard my knees turned black and I couldn’t walk at the funeral’ so maybe that makes up for it.I did like the first two episodes despite some reservations, but last week was mediocre and this was just bad. And yet, somehow despite all this we’re either apparently going to miraculously get 70% of the needed plot done in the next two episodes or face an even bigger train wreck. Should be interesting.On the bright side, if this were an 8 episode season I’d probably stop watching, but with 2 left I’ll see it through.
Seems like they made an agreement with HBO to never rank it below an A-. The first two episodes got perfect As, which was ridiculous.
I feel like because this is a woman showrunner with women lead characters and concerns the indigenous community, reviewers seem to be reluctant to grade this poorly in case they’re seen as not being “progressive” enough. But this is an absolute trainwreck of a show. (for the record I would be all in for a woman-led show about the indigenous community, I just want one better than this one)
I feel like I am watching a completely different show to the reviewers. If this wasn’t HBO it would be getting critiqued way more.
Agreed. I would rate these in the C to D range. The characters, setting, and plot are interesting, but they’re not entertaining. The season seems to be missing a soul, something to make us want more instead of waiting it out like having 33 bags of Skittles left when you thought buying them from Costco was a good idea. And people keep doing frustrating, stupid things. Throwing a whole ass turkey that was ready to bake in the kitchen trash can set me off. And Leah’s idiotic vandalism in a town with fewer than 9,000 people that mostly work in the mines accomplishes nothing but inconveniencing her step mother, who prevented her from being arrested, and she thanks Danvers by ditching her on Xmas. And Navarro displays more Karen behavior than Danvers ever did by screaming at a receptionist that doesn’t make any decisions in either hospital policy nor whether or not someone gets discharged. When she chooses to fight the douchebags, I was expecting her to pull out her gun once it got bad enough. That might have made the audience dislike her, but it would have been more impactful than anything else that’s happened so far.
The central premise of having as season of True Detective set on a research facility in the arctic should be streets ahead of what we’re actually getting.They dropped the ball. I did read this show was already written and they tacked the name of TD on to it, which explains a lot.
The setting is so damn cool though, I kinda think this show would work better as a game a la “Alan Wake” or “Silent Hill.” A co-op with Danvers and Navarro fighting off nomads, snow demons and possessed polar bears and wolves while interrogating suspects, listening to lore-filled recordings in all of these wild, snowy and dark levels? I’m in!
Actually, I think the behaviors you’re bothered by are spot on for these characters. Danvers is super impulsive. I wouldn’t expect her to do anything BUT toss that turkey in the trash. After a couple vodkas, I’d expect her to take it back out and rinse it off, too. :)I don’t see Navarro getting into that fight as being so much about punishing that guy as punishing herself for “letting” her sister die. Seem to remember a similar sort of thing in late-series Six Feet Under, where Nate starts a barroom fight he can’t possibly win and gets the crap kicked out of him.Just because behavior isn’t logical doesn’t mean it’s not what we’d expect from a character.
TL:DR this season is a mess of tones and consistency and pacing, and horror. its not good and i dont need gawker to shill it for me.
Agreed. The troubled sibling trope almost never pays off and sometimes can be the worst part of a show. In this case, it’s just dead space, a momentum killer.We have a lot of relationships that just don’t make sense, even though they should at least by now (like Hank evidently being both incompetent/corrupt and untouchable).I’ve also sort of had it with the slow Twist and Shout nonsense. It was clever enough to take a song merely associated with the Beatles (which was not written by them) to save some cash, but there is absolutely nothing spooky or unsettling about Twist & Shout in dirge mode.I am super worried about what the rational explanation for all this should be. I too was under the (mis)understanding that the everything had a plausible reason for happening, but now two separate people have seen the polar bear.Plus wasting Fiona Shaw is a greater crime any anything committed on the screen.More than anything I am just sick of all the hacky tropes:1. Nagging spouse while their partner has important and time-sensitive work.2. Troubled sibling3. Estranged work partners who largely resolve their differences in about 10 minutes.4. Important conversations cut short abruptly for unacceptable reasons.5. Idiot teenage child being beyond unreasonable and unwilling to accept how ridiculous their behavior is.6. Spooky dead child to explain cranky police officer’s detachment.7. Town with only one large and sinister employer that so far has been completely ignored and uninvestigated.Eh, I’m tired, but I’m sure you could all add to this list.
Nah that’s all fair. I was excited about this show the first couple of episodes in and it’s seeming ties back to the first season, but it’s all largely wheel-spinning around mostly bad dialogue. I am intrigued enough that I’ll stick with it to see if they can actually wrap all this up in two episodes, but my hopes of it having even a plausible explanation are dwindling by the minute. I still like my theory of ‘miners released gas combined with global warming melting ancient germs and shit’ to explain the hallucinations and crazy behavior, but the one chick is straight up seeing ghosts that give her valuable information and lead her to dead bodies, and that just doesn’t fit any kind of rational explanation.
I’m going to stick through it too, but setting my expectations very low for a satisfying ending. I was reading reviews from other publications as the ones here have been… lacking, and the pre-air season review from Paste said, “it feels as though the show ran out of time, resulting in a somewhat lukewarm finale that lacked the icy bite found elsewhere.” It also said the explanation was “somewhat anticlimactic.” They still gave it an 8/10 though. I wonder if it plays better in binge watching rather than an episode a week.
I was on a review-reading-check up after watching the show. I’m trying to figure out why it got so many positive reviews. Because let’s just say “we”, as in the audience with an increasing frown watching this show, is not having it. On the truedetective reddit they’re full on meme-ing the show now and just accepted it’s hatewatching. Which for some sad reason feels like I’m doing as well?
But an a-? Did we watch the same show? I’m only continuing because it’s 6 episodes but apart from the setting there has been nothing but amateur hour writing. Season 2 was boring from what I remember, but this is just bad.
Guess we’ll find out tonight…8/10 (like the reviews on this site) seems far too generous, though. The first season was really good with a weekly watch, but I watched it again just a few weeks ago and it plays better binging (the final episode doesn’t feel like such a jarring shift in tone when watching immediately after the previous episode, for instance). I just can’t see this one playing out like that–the issues with it are too ingrained.
Uh… pretty sure the Coast Guard doesn’t get Christmas off.
It’s really too bad you aren’t enjoying this season.
The Coast Guard doesn’t take Christmas Eve off, it’s a military branch. They still have to patrol.
That being said, it does absolutely strain credulity that they would’ve found her body in the dark.
I could have made that clearer for folks who aren’t aware of how the Coast Guard operates (which is just about everyone reading the comment) but here’s the long form version of it that I didn’t want to write up.Notwithstanding that the real world Coast Guard has no small boat capability on the North Shore of Alaska even in the summer, even if we pretend that there was a Station Ennis or (even more absurdly a Sector Ennis given a LT made the call and all but a handful of stations are run by enlisted members) for the sake of the show, and that the boat hadn’t been hauled out of the water for the winter as is routine at every Station that has the water freeze in its area of responsibility for the winter, there is zero, nada, nilch chance that without a missing person report that the non-existent 47′ somehow still in the water would be sent out on Christmas Eve without someone calling into them and a case being opened up. There are watchstanders at Sector on Christmas Eve, as there are every hour of every day, but unless you’re running a security perimeter as you were off of Gitmo for a decade plus or an Exclusion Zone like Obama had when he was at his rented Hawaii beach house and Bush Sr. did in Maine during the summer, no station anywhere is going out that night just to get some ops hours in without needing to respond to a documented SAR incident. Besides nobody being interested in freezing for no reason and a much greater risk of equipment failure in that environment, the other factor that I’m referring to tangentially is that the front line of the Coast Guard also takes leave heavily over the winter holidays precisely because it can’t during the ones over summer. Your Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day weeks as a civilian are the peak of high season for the Coast Guard; if you’re doing SAR or small boat law enforcement, you can spend 20 years without one of those days off. What that means in practice is that over the winter holidays when half your station is away, there’s a thinner roster where training (aka ‘patrol’) goes on hold to save equipment and resources for actual cases.I could go on and talk about the icebreakers and helos and their role in northern Alaska and why they wouldn’t be out there either on Christmas Eve, but the short answer here is that about the only way the Coast Guard would have found the body an hour or two later that night is if she had walked off the pier next to the station and someone was going outside to smoke. The more you know about the Coast Guard, the more the suspension of disbelief goes up from the ‘you’re not going to find the body at night off Alaska’ and ‘how would they know who it is’ that a lot of people caught; it’s truly awful, lazy, sloppy writing.
The only reason I was in the mood to read this entire post is because I’m also listening to The Box right now and minutiae of operations is totally my jam. So well done!
Agree that that bit of writing was sloppy. I don’t think I’m down on TD as much as you are but that entire thing strained my own credulity, and probably stood out more because the show is trying to prime you to “accept” supernatural stuff going on – so when something not really supernatural strains logic, it’s amplified even more in the brain.
It’s so easy to be negative and even find fault in the best of shows. I appreciate the reviews here, support the well-deserved grades and have really enjoyed this X-Files-inspired season.
So, I’ve liked this series overall so far. But the relationship between Prior and his wife is bugging me a bit.She married a cop, presumably understanding what this meant. He’s one of the only cops in town, having to deal with a homicide case on the level that nobody in this place has ever seen before, having to look at shit that would traumatise any regular human being. And she’s mad at him because he’s working late hours?Like, you’re studying to be a nurse! You’ll be working weird hours too if there’s a nursing emergency! Maybe give the guy a break?
As she said in one of the previous eps, he wasn’t a cop at the time they got married. Whatever his work, he is being used and abused by Danvers, who has absolutely zero compunction about taking him when she wants, on her own whim, without regard to anything else.
Well, I still think a quintuple homicide probably merits a little bit of overtime? They don’t appear to have a lot of staff.
There’s overtime, and there’s being called upon at all hours for non-critical stuff just because it suits Danvers’ fancy at that moment. “I’ve been home all evening getting hammered. I know you were JUST about to call it a day after working non-stop, but put in a few more houes, go run out to the edge of town and almost get yourself killed.”
I’m really not liking this at all. I hate that I keep coming back to True Detective expecting anything resembling that banger that was season one. Fool me three times, I guess…
Wait, is the parka supposed to be pink? I thought it was the standard tan. Are my eyes messed up or do I need to adjust the color calibration on my TV?
I hate to tell you this…but you need to schedule a visit to your ophthalmologist.
It’s always looked to me like when something red fades over many years into a pale pink.
Thank goodness–thought I was nuts for a second. I also thought it was some sort of military color–certainly not pink. Maybe it was the way flashlights tend to mute color? I didn’t think it was pink in the picture she was flashing in that earlier episode, either, though.
Looked pretty pink to me, but a dusty, somewhat muted pink. Watched back the scene where Danvers finds Otis and it was more muted than I thought, so maybe I was primed from it being described as pink in earlier episodes.
I’m actually angry at how bad this is and pretty shocked to see this getting anything higher than C-grades week after week. They added jump scares and a couple of easter eggs to season 1 to what is essentially one of those crummy AMC shows that came out in the wake of Breaking Bad/Season 1 of TD that were attempting to ride the wave of “prestige tv” but weren’t on the level.This is closer in quality to something like The Killing or Low Winter Sun than any previous season of True Detective including the second season.
Do not compare The Killing to this show, they had better characters and executed what they were going for at a high level, even if it wasn’t the best show.
That’s fair, The Killing does A LOT of things better than this show.
The Killing made me so angry. I don’t think I’ve ever abhorred a fictional character more than Sarah Linden. And I suppose that’s good writing, but goddamn, after a single season of it, I couldn’t take any more.
This show is the limp D rip off of dark winds in the artic.
I enjoyed The Killing. This is starting to feel like a homework assignment that you stopped giving a shit about the grade on because it’s so much work and is going on forever and you just want to be done with it.
It’s like “Darkness at Noon” from The Good Wife, lol…
For a series that is veering wildly into supernatural/occult territory, the thing I find the most credulity-straining is just how fucking dumb Hank is. I mean, I get that the lovelorn and desperate can do pretty stupid things, but it’s a pretty transparent scam at about the level of those Nigerian prince emails. Even if he is dim enough to see through, you would figure someone in his life would pull him aside and tell him “Hey, buddy, you know this is all just a con. Exchange texts and emails if you really must, but do not, under any circumstances, offer up any personal details or wire any money!” Maybe they just didn’t bother because he seems like a bit of an asshole and he kinda deserves this, but now they’re just going to have to deal with the blowback.
FWIW that’s one of the more realistic angles in a very sad sense.Lot of victims do have the people telling them in many and increasingly concerned and strident ways. Lot of times that just makes the victims believe the scammer more as they get fed “of course they want to break us up, they’re jealous.” or what have you.I worked for a guy whose father fell hard for the “I just need you to advance me money, here’s a check that will never cash but will look just convincing enough to get you to deposit it” scams – repeatedly. It turned out to very likely be related to early symptoms of dementia, but early enough that there weren’t any blocks put in the path of something like this happening.
I had a distant co-worker that I liked a lot from the few interactions I’d had with her over the years, but she suddenly left the company one day. I eventually found out she’d straight up fallen for one of those “hey you won a bunch of money, but you have to send us a small amount first so we can send it to you” and apparently ended up getting in really deep with money she didn’t have. She was really good at her job and seemed really sharp, but just didn’t have a clue until it was too late that she was falling for a scam. Almost everyone I’ve known that has fallen for a scam of some sort or other has always surprised me. I think for some of us on the outside looking in they always seem obvious, but I assume people that fall for these types of things have specific (and likely) desperate reasons for why they are vulnerable at that moment? Believing someone (especially someone in Alaska) is so lonely that they’d fall for a scam based around something I think nearly everyone accepts as reality (mail-order brides) is not that big a stretch. Fuck scammers, is my point.
People fall for obvious scams all the time. My wife as part of her job deals every day with people being conned/scammed or who have been conned, in many cases far more obvious than the one depicted on this show. Sometimes they are cheated out of large sums of money and then they turn around and get taken for more money in the exact same scam.
Young Prior did bring it up but too late. Given what we’d seen of their interactions before, Hank would probably be pretty hostile to Pete telling him what’s what so I could see Pete tiptoeing around the subject because he knows it won’t get anywhere.
I don’t think Hank is dumb, I think he is just desperate.
This show keeps trying to make “Twist and Shout” work as some sort of creepy symbol of the show and it just is not doing it for me. No matter how much you slow it down with moody pianos or have creepy characters drawl it. It’s not creepy.I wish they’d just tell us already since it seems pretty obvious to me what’s going on. I’d love to be proven wrong but reckless mining combined with freaky microorganisms seems like a recipe for a bunch of “supernatural” stuff going on fully inside peoples’ minds.The recap got less stuff wrong this time, but worth mentioning that the “vision of the dead woman” followed by Navarro is OBVIOUSLY her sister, the only character who has bright blue hair in the show.
The average cost of a 15 pound turkey in Alaska is $42.35. Who do you think you are, Danvers? Paulie? I’m mad. That could have fed both of them for weeks, and it was ready to go in the oven, just put it in. And why throw it in the fucking trash can, are you kidding me? That’s just going to make your home stink. Why would they do this to us?
I don’t think money is an issue for Danvers, as she’s probably been a cop (albeit in a small Alaskan town) for presumable years, if not decades. She was seeing red because the turkey reminded her of the lovely family Christmas dinner she will never get to have. Good juxtaposition of Hank opening up his fridge and seeing the champagne he was saving for his Russian mail order bride, who didn’t throw it at a wall in a hissy fit like Danvers but just started picking up the rose petals sadly. Actually even more sad that she didn’t seem to be a catfish; she clearly saw him as she was about to come off the plane and actually decided to sit back down for the 10+ hour return flight to Russia rather than being with him.
RIP to the sister. she experienced mental health, and that’s important!
I’ve managed to fast-forward large chunks of the last 2 episodes and haven’t missed *anything* relevant to the case itself. This isn’t True Detective, it’s True Drama.
And an A- no less? Get real lmao
I’m not sure I’ve ever disagreed more with the ratings of a show. I don’t hate it, but As for every episode is outrageous.
Welcome to the AV Club, where grades and ratings don’t matter!
Milch ain’t coming to save this Season like he did Season 3.
Rewatching season 1 of TD along with Night Country does not do NC any favours at all. It just doesn’t ‘feel’ like that season, at all. There’s none of the patience, atmosphere or dread that season 1 expertly delivered. You never get the sense this case/ mystery is driving the show like it did in season 1.Too many characters we don’t care about. Too much exposition rather than have the viewer ‘detect’ with the lead characters (which made s1 so compelling). Oddly edited with any attempt at atmosphere undercut with weird attempts at humour or clawing needle drops. They’ve not done a great job in making us care about the central mystery at all.
How has literally nothing happened with the actual crime this season is based on??? Episode One has scientists disappear then reappear dead in an ice cube, and literally nothing has advanced about the crime in 4 episodes.
Seriously! Until they found Otis at the end I realized that in 45 minutes, almost nothing to advance the mystery happened.
They had that one guy who they pulled out of the ice. He screamed, said some cryptic things, and then died(?). That wasn’t revealing enough for you? 😂
Definitely think we’re watching a different show. A-? Straight Cs all season for me. Sub par acting, glacial pace for a six-episode series, and a weird, doesn’t-quite-work mix of Lovecraft, Lynch, and the Conjuring. This is a network show with HBO dreams. And Fs all around for how slow the site is on mobiles.
Rose-Colored Recap: A-
I’m still not sure why Julia existed. Her operatic suicide didn’t advance the story and didn’t reveal anything new — nothing worth depicting someone ending their life. It seemed careless.I like Foster a lot, but the writers have basically cast her in the same part Al Pacino played in every bad thriller in the 80s/90s. Alcoholic, promiscuous, vaguely tortured. There’s a reason Marge Gunderson is such an iconic character: imagine an emotionally balanced, genuinely decent person tackling the worst events of her community. And doing it with grace. Now THAT was interesting. THAT was unique. I’m just so bored with self-destructive cops. Give us something new, please.I also think I’m just annoyed with this episode. It felt like a lot of big, empty gestures and very little forward propulsion. This season is incredibly strong compared to seasons 2 and 3, but it’s definitely not without its deficits.
An A? It’s borderline unwatchable.What happened to this site?Automatic A due to themes of colonialism, feminism, environmentalism which are tacked onto a awful story.
The put-upon cop wife is perhaps my least favourite crime serial cliche, and it’s at its most risible here. Literally every interaction Hank’s son (forget his name) and his wife have had is some version of an argument about him working late. Unbearably tedious.
The trope is tired, yes, but she’s kinda got a point. Her husband jumps and snaps to attention and immediately does whatever Danvers asks, meanwhile the ENTIRE REST OF THE POLICE FORCE is like “Fuck you, Alaska Karen; I do what I want!” I’d be annoyed to. And that’s without taking into account her proclivity for fucking every dude in town.
Am I the only one who noticed the girl who has a patch over her eye and thinks she might be related to the polar bear somehow?
it’s funny that jodie foster complained about working with younger actors after filming this show. I’d like to know their thoughts on working with her, because her performance on this show is baffling and terrible. She’s consistently delivering takes that would fit a stressed mom character in a light family drama when she’s supposed to be an edgy/gruff alcoholic cop type. It’s distractingly bad!
Wow, the man babies are really not happy about female protagonists taking over their manly show. This season is better than the first. The second season was some of the worst shit ever put on TV. Get over it. Writing, excellent. Casting, excellent. Acting, excellent. Scenery and filming, excellent.
Nobody gives a shit about your gender politics, we just want to be entertained and told a good story in a competent way that doesn’t feel like a patchwork of references to better things. Signed — Man Baby
“this season is better than the first” is an absolute madness take. Have you been drinking the clearly mine-contaminated water from this show?It’s not sexist to say that a particular TV show is bad even though it’s led by women creators with a primarily woman cast. A show can be bad no matter who was directing or acting in it, and that seems to be the case with this one.I’ll agree that the setting and the scenery are probably the biggest draw to the show, but everything else is getting weighed down. It’s just not very good, and that’s ok.
I definitely think there is an element of man-babyness here buuuuuuut . . . i just don’t think is very good. The story feels both rushed and unfocused, and the genre bending doesn’t seem purposeful enough to be anything but confusing. The visuals are gorgeous but some of the dialogue is just super awkward and therefore sounds awkward being said aloud by otherwise competent actors. Also, I love Jodie Foster but she seems badly miscast here. The writers seem to be trying to make her complicated but it’s just coming off as, again, confusing and inconsistent. Kali Reis is great though.
For the love of what good is left in the show, someone PLEASE protect Qavvik from the spiral rock that Navarro dropped in his house (and presumably left there). If he ends up getting cursed because of it I’m going to be pissed.Sigh… had high hopes for this season but it’s not panning out. Last week I was of the opinion it’s not great but I’m still along for the ride. This week, though, I’m definitely feeling frustrated at how drawn out things are. There’s some interesting threads at the edges here and there, but they’re always lightly touched on and never explored enough to be satisfying and make up for the slow-moving plot. Maybe Navarro’s encounter with the ghost will be a turning point but I’m not holding my breath.
Also side note: was it just me or did Otis look like cross between Willem Dafoe and Arnold Schwarzenegger?
For a split second I thought it was Brian Thompson (from the X Files).
This season appears to be running out of steam. The first couple of episodes sucked me in, and now we’re in a family drama quagmire.
A’s for this is absolutely wild to me. Just every facet of the show is falling on its face.
Straight A/A-’s for the first 3 episodes in fact. Absolute joke, probably being paid to rate it highly. I don’t hate it but it’s mediocre and laughable in parts. The fight that broke out at the hospital with the hillbillies in this episode was pathetic. If it wasn’t a meagre 6 episodes I’d bail.
quick note – the caves are by the Brooks Range, not Brooks Ranch. The Brooks Range is the northern mountains in Alaska (way north of the Alaska Range and Denali) and north of the Arctic Circle.
A-??? This can’t be real.
One of the best Christmas episodes of any show I’ve seen. Maybe the best.Just one tiny gripe. I don’t think Navarro would have been given the bad news over the phone. She would have been told to come into the station. That would have been one more trip in an episode full of car journeys.
That’s a girl bear.
The writing for this show is abysmal. Evangeline’s sister commits suicide, walking into the ocean. Within an hour or two the Coast Guard stumble across the body, which is naked, identify it and call Evangeline to break the news. Hilarious stuff.