True Detective: Night Country recap: Ask the right questions
In the penultimate episode, we’re left with a mess of mysteries and messages that still need untangling
TV Reviews True Detective
[Editor’s note: Episode five of True Detective: Night Country is available to stream on Max.]
We’re almost out of the darkness, folks. There’s only one more episode of True Detective: Night Country remaining and while I’ve been very cool with the arctic chill and existential dread that this season has offered up so far—the ice edge between the dead and the living, the gloom and the light, the mundane and the metaphysical—the amount of frosty ground left to cover has me very worried. I’ve given the mystical powers that be the benefit of the doubt, but have Issa López and her one-eyed polar bears bitten off more than they can chew? (Note: Though given all six episodes upfront, I’ve chosen to watch the series weekly to avoid spoilers and theories.)
After what felt like significant progress made on the Tsalal case in episode four, the fifth edition of Night Country—which dropped early on Max on February 9 due to Super Bowl Sunday—is stuck in the snow. We’re retreading over storylines that have seemingly little consequence where the fates of the researchers or Annie K. is concerned, from Leah (Isabella Star LaBlanc) agitating local law enforcement yet again with her protests against Silver Sky to Peter (Finn Bennett) navigating his umpteenth marital spat with wife Kayla (Anna Lambe). (BTW, young Prior’s trying to solve a sextuple homicide seasoned with a healthy sprinkling of the supernatural. Give the dude a break, huh?)
I love a whodunit mystery suffused with local color and character drama as much as the next true-crime-addicted TV fan, but those details and textures need a longer episode count than what they’re working with here. With little more than an hour left of season four (the finale next week will clock in at 75 minutes), there are far too many questions still left to mine (pun intended) about the murders to pause for a Prior family meltdown. How will all of these disparate figures—Raymond Clark and Rose Aguineau, Oliver Tagaq and Otis Heiss, microorganisms and mine workers—Corpsicle themselves together in the solving of these cases? Will the spooks lead to something substantial, or are they just there for eeriness sake? And, like Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) always pesters Peter, are we even asking the right questions to begin with?
Despite said questions, we do get some answers this week. Danvers learns the location of the ice caves’ entrance, thanks to Heiss (Klaus Tange), who will be guiding them through the cave system—after Liz tempts him with heroine lifted from the APS evidence room, naturally. However, when she and Navarro (Kali Reis) go to check out the entryway, which is located on Silver Sky land, it’s all too conveniently been dynamite-blasted shut.
And wouldn’t you know it, Silver Sky crops up yet again when Peter delves further into Tsalal’s financial records. The LLC that funds the station is apparently in cahoots with the mining company. “That means the mine bankrolls Tsalal and Tsalal pushes out bogus pollution numbers for them,” Danvers realizes.
It’s an accusation Liz poses when she’s called into a meeting with Captain Connolly (Christopher Eccleston) and mine owner Kate McKittrick (Dervla Kirwan). There’s security-cam footage of Danvers and Navarro trespassing on Silver Sky property earlier that day to check out the cave entryway, and Kate wants answers. (Get in line, girl.) Plus, she wants to drop some news: “This isn’t a murder case at all.” According to Connolly, “forensics” came back from Anchorage, determining that the scientists died in a sudden slab avalanche after they had gone out onto the ice to watch the last sunset before the long night began a week earlier. Liz is incredulous: “You’re saying the official word from Anchorage is that they froze to death?”
They’ve poked the old bear, who starts spewing expletives about the mine’s conflict of interests and insults about Kate’s husband. (“I’m sorry Bill is such a terrible lay. You have my sympathies!” Liz can be awful but she is funny.) Once McKittrick storms out, Connolly makes it clear that he knows what really happened during the Wheeler case three years ago, that there was no suicide in that murder-suicide. Danvers or Navarro killed Wheeler upon arriving at the crime scene and covered it up by falsely reporting his death. Connolly uses it as a bribe: the Tsalal case is now closed.
And Kate wants to make sure of it, so she ropes in Hank Prior (John Hawkes) to kill Otis Heiss before he can lead Danvers to the ice caves, and make it look like a drug overdose. It’s not the first time Hank has acted as Silver Sky’s hired hand. Though he himself didn’t kill Annie K., he did move her body for a price, but that money is long gone now. He tells Kate that he wants the position of police chief in return for Otis. “You do this and the job is yours,” she promises. We knew Hank was shady but multiple murder cover-ups feels like a swift about-face for the sad sack we last saw nursing his broken heart with an Elf rewatch.
Navarro gets some intel via Qavvik (Joel D. Montgrand) that to access the underground caves, they’ll need to crack down from above the system’s highest point. But it’s no use, and Danvers stuns her with the news that Connolly is closing the operation down. (Sidenote: Should Qavvik join the police force? Because clearly they’re in need of officers who aren’t batshit-corrupt and there’s only so much bad Peter can balance out on his own.)
Speaking of Peter, he’s been kicked out of his house by Kayla, so Danvers gives him the key to her back shed to sleep in for the night. (A real Airbnb Superhost over here.) Adding to his shitty day, Danvers works out that Hank had hacked into his son’s computer and found out the truth about the Wheeler case, which he then passed onto Connolly. (“How many times I gotta tell ya? Your father only seems like an idiot.”) Goes without saying but Petey is pissed.
On New Years’ Eve, it’s Hank, not the assumed Navarro, who shows up at Danvers’ door with word that he needs to take Otis in due to an outstanding warrant. Liz smells something fishy. How did Hank know Heiss was at her house? (She previously checked Otis out of the Lighthouse so that he could guide her and Evangeline to the ice caves.) When she says she’s gonna call Connolly, Hank grabs her gun. “I’m taking him. I’m gonna do this like you did Wheeler,” he tells her. But Otis makes a hasty move and Hank shoots him dead before turning the weapon onto Liz. The gunshots draw the attention of Peter from the backyard shed. He comes in armed and, though Hank reminds him “blood is blood,” when the elder Prior raises his gun to Danvers, Pete is tragically forced to shoot his father in the head.
There are two corpses to contend with by the time Navarro gets to Liz’s house, not to mention a distraught Peter. Danvers woefully comforts him and is horrified by his insistence on cleaning up the crime scene himself while she and Eve go search the ice caves. Navarro agrees: They’ll pretend Hank sought out and shot Otis, and then died in a car accident trying to hide the body, with the impending storm helping to cover their tracks. Peter will bring the corpses to Rose (Fiona Shaw), who will “take them to Julia,” a.k.a. the ocean below all that ice. (However, given how freakishly fast the Alaskan coast guard found Julia’s drowning body last episode, this might not be the foolproof plan Navarro thinks it is.)
Blood may be blood, but Danvers and Prior are family of sorts and now one bound in grief and guilt—she over her lost son, he over his lost parent, and both over decisions they’ve had to make in the line of duty. It’s a moving moment between the mentor and student but, again, we have no time to linger on compelling character beats. Danvers and Navarro are already racing for the caves and, hopefully, answers.
Stray observations
- Hank gets to sing his own swan song—literally. The failed musician is seen plucking an old acoustic and crooning a somber country tune: “There is no God, no hallowed ground. You’re forever bound to lose. So what’s the use?” A bit on-the-nose in terms of exposition, but Hawkes gives a haunting performance that we want added to Spotify STAT.
- After a few episodes that leaned more heavily on the Annie K. case rather than the Tsalal deaths, we are looking forward to heading down into the caves to finally find out what actually happened to the Corpiscle crew. Do you think what’s discovered will be biological, like an ancient virus unleashed from the ice, or supernatural, like a portal to another realm? Are we heading back to Carcosa?
- If sweet Alaskan cinnamon roll Qavvik ends up being evil, I’ll riot.
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“Hank died in a car accident”? With a bullet hole in his head? If they’re dumping the body in the ocean, how is that a car accident? Are they dumping his truck in the drink as well? Wouldn’t the police search for him?
They didn’t say “he died in a car accident,” they said “he had an accident.” The plan is to make it look like Hank shot Otis and was going to dump the body, but he fell in through the ice instead (like Navarro almost did earlier in the episode, which is how she got the idea).
And finding a body that fell into the sea through the ice during the middle of a weeks-long night is incredibly difficult, essentially impossible (which is why the coast guard finding Julia’s body was so damn goofy). So if Hank goes into the drink, that’s where Hank stays.
Now we need a spinoff following the exploits of the hypercompetent Coast Guard captain finding bodies left and right off the Alaskan shore in horrible conditions.
That sounds like a pretty great dad show that would last fifteen years and get three spinoffs.
A steely-eyed Coastie stands on the prow of a cutter, in a howling force-10 gale. Despite the heaving seas, with with office block-sized waves breaking over the tiny ship, flinging house-sized icebergs around like foam cups in a jacuzzi, he stands firm. Against the stinging Arctic spray, he squints. “Captain Pendle!”
Over the roaring waves, he is heard.“What is it, Whitmore?”“There! Nine hundred yards, twenty-three degrees starboard! She’s there!”“You can see her location!?”“No. I know it!”Captain Pendle guns the engines, and the two diesels roar into life.
Insert footage from The Wire with McNulty laboriously researching current charts and tidal patterns to stick Baltimore with all of the murders.
Say what you will about all those Baltimore murders, but crabs do get really fat and tasty feeding on human corpses, I hear.
So if Hank goes into the drink, that’s where Hank stays.
Unless the plot wants him to be found like Navarro’s sister. Finding her was super easy, barely an inconvenience. Just because Hank should be long gone, in this version of reality it doesn’t make it so.
I mean, yeah, that’s why I said it was really damn goofy they found her.
I just pretend that when they say “she walked into the sea” they just mean that she walked out on the ice and froze to death. Makes much more sense.
That could work, but then why was she found by the coast guard?
Finding random bodies in the middle of a weeks-long snowstorm and blackout along the frozen shoreline is TIGHT!
Don’t forget, there’s that category 4 storm coming in. That’s why they have to take care of it right away, before the weather gets too crazy. The Coast Guard won’t be patrolling in that storm.
Also, note that Pete shot his dad in the right temple, so they could make it look like a suicide, after that big song and dance about the flipped beating photos.
Pretty simple actually: stage car crash near frozen water, imply that Hank started to walk for help and fell through the ice. Body likely never gets found, so no need to explain bullet hole. Also, if the body eventually does get found, Danvers would be in charge of the investigation anyway.Wouldn’t the police search for him?…Danvers is the police chief, so the search will go however she orders it to go.
Chekhov’s crematorium.
What the hell kinda things do you keep on your mantelpiece, Cyril?
I think Navarro said something like “they’ll find his car, but not his body,” meaning Rose would help make his body disappear.
This was perhaps the most frustrating episode of a frustrating show.As I’ve mentioned before, one thing that’s driven me nuts about it is that it has some of the greatest writing peaks and valleys that I’ve ever seen in a series that can be literally minutes apart. This episode was an outstanding example of that with two of the stronger scenes of the series – Petey finding out the hard way that dad has gotten into his laptop followed by the denouement of Pops’ storyline (even if it would have been far more reasonable for him to just eat his gun) – offset by the probably single worst written scene in the series, which is twirling mustache mine manager Kate and Hank infodumping since somehow Lopez couldn’t figure out how to build a main plot that would have our detectives actually find this out on their own. It is hard to think of another show that demanded we pay incredibly close attention in E1 and E2 which 3 hours later just pukes out information because, well, we finally do have to get going on the main plot.It now appears that Kayla’s entire purpose in the series was to provide an excuse for Pete to be over at Danvers for Hank’s farewell, Navarro’s sis was around just to set up Navarro doing a couple of things (along with telling all of us ‘It’s all connected!’), and I have no idea what Leah does besides occupy character development time when Danvers isn’t twisting and shouting.The speculation I’ve read about the significance of the caves being ancient Native something or another grounds meaning the mine is illegal and they killed Annie to cover it up kind of makes a lot of sense. Whether or not anything else does in the finale is not something I have confidence in.
You lost me at this this has some of the greatest writing peaks I’ve ever seen.
I think this season is pretty terrible, but… wut? Pete and Danvers found out about the mine’s connection to the research station prior to her meeting with McKittrick and Connelly. They didn’t “infodump” anything case-related. The detectives HAD already figured out the connection to the mine. All McKittrick and Connelly did was say that the scientists supposedly died of natural causes and that the mine own the cave.
Huh?All McKittrick and Connelly did was say that the scientists supposedly died of natural causes and that the mine own the cave.That scene !=which is twirling mustache mine manager Kate and Hank infodumpingIn the scene I’m referencing, we learn that it’s beyond crucial that the investigators not get to the cave, that Hank got paid a lot of money and did her a favor years ago, that part of the deal was supposed to be Chief (which for a character motivations is genuinely stupid, but whatever), and that he’s being solicited to accept a contract for murder (except he’s not, not that Kate’s disclaimer would do her any good in court.)That’s terrible writing, because we’re getting massive plot advancement by tell, not show, learn more about characters from them revealing their innermost secrets than we have all season long, and is the definition of an infodump.
Eh, that scene didn’t bother me. Danvers and Navarro were already like, “we MUST get to the cave” but we don’t know what’s there, so Kate bringing it up is not revealing much. Hank being involved is the big reveal but I see that as a narrative choice rather than “telling not showing.” We don’t need to be discovering things at the same time as the investigators. With the way it was done, Hank became more of a wild card in the episode and they got to play with that tension. It made his scenes with Danvers and Pete more interesting by adding a new aspect to his interactions with them.Qavvik’s random friend explaning the spiral symbology and conveniently revealing what “Night Country” means was the more awkward expository moment to me.As for Leah, her being Danvers’ stepdaughter started as an interesting wrinkle to Danvers’ misanthropic character as well as providing an indigenous perspective, but I wish we could have gotten more out of their interactions. Their scene in the bathroom felt like a missed opportunity. It’s not Danvers’ thing to be straightforward with an emotion that’s not anger, but I feel like there are still ways for her to say things that are revealing to her character without being too much, similar to Leah’s, “I haven’t given up on you yet.”
Just watched this ep, finally. I don’t find it odd that Hank has something shady in his past – I assume he was the one who helped cover up the cave – nor when we find it out, considering he’s not the main character (so it doesn’t really matter what he did, I guess). That stone/“Night Country” reveal was indeed ham-fisted, and felt like someone suddenly remembered that, oh, shit, there’s no way we can inform the audience what “Night Country” is and what the spiral means in only eight epi- OH SHIT, SIX, SIX EPISODES, FUCKSHITFUCKSHITFUCKSHIT – even though that’s, y’know, that’s pretty damn important to the whole show. Leah’s not Danvers’ stepdaughter – she her adopted daughter. I can speculate as to why Danvers has an adopted native daughter for plotting reasons – like you said, it’s just to give Danvers some sort of link to the Inupiat – but for an in-universe reason? I can’t see it. At this stage of the game, I can’t see why someone as selfish and narcissistic – and, most importantly, racist – as Danvers adopting any kid, let alone an Indigenous one. (The fact more hasn’t been made of Danvers’ racism in the discourse around this show is disturbing, to say the least.)There’s nothing nurturing about Danvers. That “care” she has for Pete, and had for Navarro, isn’t care: it was just exploitation and ego. There’s a parallel we could draw (but obviously aren’t supposed to) between Hank’s Russian bride and Liz’s adopted daughter – both are trying to take…shortcuts to their relationships, based on their on failings. Hank’s paying for a woman, and, naturally, is a pathetic loser for doing so, and righteously gets ripped off and emasculated, instead of being a man and finding a woman properly. Liz picks herself out a daughter, off the rack, from what’s available to her, instead of being able to find a man who wants to have a kid with her – but that’s nowhere near as explored as Hank being, lol, a pathetic loser who has to buy a Russian whore.We have to speculate on Liz’s reason for adopting because, welp, we’ve been given nothing as to why she’d ever saddle herself with a kid voluntarily and permanently. If she ever gets the nurturing bug – or at least wants to cosplay as a mum for a bit – she can just find some rookie on the force and fixate on him until she gets bored again – or they outlive their usefulness. For such a short show, they spend far too much time on Hank, and now they finally shove another reason for him being an unsympathetic character: he was meant to have Liz’s job, and did some shady shit to get that job, but Liz’s(whom he never knew existed until she got exiled) skill of failing upwards got in the way. That would’ve been enough to condemn him, to make him a villain, and would’ve been far more interesting than unopened bottles of Taittinger and playing sad guitar alone. Heck, it would’ve been better for the plot, setting him up as a malignant force in the background.But, I’ll bet, at the end of the next episode, Liz’ll get away scot free and learn nothing and be forgiven by Navarro and Pete and Dr. Who and Leah (not the mine owner, because Danvers out-sexied her, so she’s just a loser), and continue as she always have; a victim of circumstance and bad people – not of her own flaws and poor decisions.
I think she is Danvers’ stepdaughter. Leah mentioned her dad in the first or second episode with the implication being he had died and Danvers was stuck with Leah now.But, yeah, the idea that random guy just knew what Night Country meant but none of the cops who have lived in the town for years did is ridiculous.
I believe the implication is that Leah was Liz’s dead husband’s daughter from a previous relationship, who Liz continued to raise after her husband’s death (unclear how long ago that was). Hence Leah saying something like, “You know you don’t have to be my mom. My dad would’ve understood…” in the first episode and later saying that she was leaving so Liz could “stop pretending.” Leah also mentions memories of Liz and her dad dancing to the song that Prior was listening to in a TikTok. So I take Liz being Leah’s mom as being out of obligation (at worst), though it was a role she was not prepared or equipped for. Also, said husband presumably had a kid with Liz—the little boy who we keep seeing in flashbacks/visions (kind of a fucked up reading of adoption you have there, but an interesting parallel with Hank that I hadn’t considered).There are also moments where she’s shown to have a soft spot for young kids, like Pete and Kayla’s kid and the kid of the hairdresser that Navarro was questioning. Eccleston says she always had a shitty personality but the deaths of her husband and kid made her worse (surprise surprise), so I think she’s meant to be the “grump hardened by tragedy but still has a heart” archetype. She is such an irredeemable asshole/narcissist/etc. at times though that it’s hard to totally buy into it, but it’s walking the line in a way that’s mostly intriguing (sometimes irritating) to me. I think I read somewhere that Jodie Foster played the character as more of an asshole than as originally written so that might be part of it.
Danvers seems eminently human and the racism charge is conjecture. She is clearly dysfunctional but not lacking in empathy and shows a frustration over her daughter’s behaviour (adopted or otherwise) that clearly implies that she loves and cares for her.
I think what was even worse than the Kate/Hank exposition dump was Hank showing up at Danvers’ house to collect Otis. His directive from Kate was to make it look like Otis died of an overdose. How was he supposed to do that if he personally picked up Otis from Danvers? Otis was somehow supposed to overdose on the way to the police station? And then when Danvers doesn’t give up Otis, Hank almost immediately decides to kill Otis in front of her, then kill her (but not before talking to her), and then somehow cover all of this up? It makes no sense. Not to mention how Hank confesses to moving Annie K’s body without ever even being asked about it. No one had been looking at him regarding Annie K so why even bring her up? The writing tried way too hard to create some big shocking moment but it doesn’t make any logical sense.
I don’t think Hank knew Otis was as Danvers’ house for what it’s worth. Hank said he needed to bring Otis in and Danvers asked how he knew Otis was there. His surprise at this information seemed to be genuine. Everything after that was definitely a mess though.
I think the main problem for me, is that there’s just not that much to go on in most of the relationships in this show. Each character pairing gets maybe two or three scenes spread out through the whole show. And that’s not really enough for me to understand why (for example) Danvers has such a testy relationship with her step daughter. Or why Prior and his wife can’t just sit down and have a talk like grownups. Or what the deal is with Prior and his dad. Or Navarro and her sister. Nobody really talks to each other, and everyone hates each other. There might be some history there, but there’s no time to get to it!Contrast with the first season, where you had Marty and his family, Rust, and… that’s it. 8 whole episodes just on that. With this you’ve got a dozen or more things going on, with only 6 episodes to stretch it over.
Contrast with the first season
And that’s your mistake. I’ve given up trying to compare any of them to the first season. It was an anomaly. The more True Detective seasons they crank out the more you realize how (literally) perfect, the first season was
They tried telling an interesting story in the first season. That lasted about 1.5 episodes. The rest was filler. And it totally fell about by the 4th hour/4th episode. With the worst ending in tv history. Season 4 is….the same. Not abject shit. But pretty forgettable.
“Worst ending in TV history” do you watch TV mate
Nope. I have tried multiple shows. Not happy with any, really. So, I just dont watch. But the ending to Season 1 was beyond disappointing. Even for a show – which I just sat down and watched for the first time a few months ago – that, itself, was incredibly disappointing.
What? He’s not wrong. It was crap on so many levels. An inconsequential killer. A ludicrous, expository evidentiary device about a years-old receipt for a can of paint from a hicktown hardware store. A silly labyrinth maze from nowhere – and dumbest of all, MM getting piked up the gut and suspended in the air – then having a minor flesh would the next morning for a lazy and awful hospital scene. It was a STUPID ending. Great beginning though, then all downhill.
Exactly. I try to remind people what a shitshow the finale was and how average-to-poor the second half was in general. Revisionist history has people making like it was the greatest story ever told.
lmao “C+”
You can dress up a turd, but it’s still just a turd.
“Start asking the right fucking questions” is the last line of the first episode of season 1. This season is such a terrible knock-off.
Thank you for the first realistic rating for this show on AV Club.
Whoever wrote the pure A rating reviews previously, should be fired and never be allowed to judge a single piece of TV.
Like everyone I had a fleeting high hope, after abysmal seasons 2+3, read the reviews and started watching enthusiastically.
But it felt so unbelievably off, I thought I was watching something entirely different, until I read the community comments.
We knew Hank was shady but multiple murder cover-ups feels like a swift about-face for the sad sack we last saw nursing his broken heart with an Elf rewatch.I mean, not really. Sure he seems sad and lonely, but we’ve had little peaks all season long that he is masking something angry and violent beneath.
At first I thought it was far-fetched for him to be killing a random guy to become Chief of Police of this tiny town, but the last couple episodes have underscored how little he has going on in his life so his desperation to have something makes sense.
Like many things, I didn’t buy Hank. You show him goofing around the whole time, being naive as fuck to think a literal russian bride will show up, being a bad dad, a cop who doesn’t care, and at the last moment, the show sort of drops two bombs; that he is in cahoots with the evil mining corp, and that he knows about the last murder. Fucking foreshadow that shit better man. And the whole last scene? It probably could’ve ended up the way it ended, but it fell so flat. Hank’s whole character, to me anyway, is way past the point of caring about any semblance of career. To bluntly stand in front of Danvers and kill her, then aim a gun at Danvers, and all of the stuff with Petey there doing what he’s doing? This show. Man.
I’m trying hard to find positives in the show, and I’m still watching it, so there’s that at least. But it’s really the brand, and the brand is also what’s making most of the viewers in a much more negative light, had it’s been it’s own thing.
who among us hasn’t been tempted with heroine? why, i once robbed a liquor store after being tempted with a strong dose of elizabeth bennet.
There’s no “e” at the end of heroin.
I kind of hate all the characters. I love me a good flawed character, but no one here is nuanced, they’re all paper thin. A lot of them just seem like Jesse Pinkman without any redeeming qualities. Leah and Navarro are the same person in different situations, as if they were being role played by one person that only knows how to be self destructive, pious, and full of angst. Kayla is sobbing because her husband has been working too much for about a week.
Funny, last week’s episode was the one where I was feeling most frustrated, while this one kind of got me back on board. At least things were happening. I think there’s little chance that the mystery and story will get wrapped up in a satisfying way that makes all the dawdling worth it, so all I’m looking for now is to not be bored during the episode. This one delivered with some interesting character interactions (Pete/Hank; Navarro/Leah) and tense scenes (Navarro almost falling through the ice and of course the standoff). Also thought Jodie Foster and Kali Reis were excellent in the scene where Danvers practically begs Navarro to let go of Annie K’s case and Navarro responds with the, “No, you carry her now.”Stray observations:Annoying that there’s no mention of Navarro’s ear bleeding at the end of the last episode or what the hell happened to her in the dredge.I don’t really see how Hank looking at Pete’s computer would’ve led him to figure out the Wheeler stuff unless Pete was keeping a diary of his theories, but alright. Sooo is Leah going to decide to join her stepmom for New Year’s and walk in on the dead bodies too?
I don’t expect them to explain any of the supernatural shit. They’re basically red herrings at this point and it makes for terrible writing.
How does it make for terrible writing?
Supernatural elements for the sake of it almost never work. Especially if it is done at the expense of native American characters in the year 2024.
I mean, did you not see season 1 of True Detective? All sorts of supernatural creepy imagery, references to Lovecraft, Carcosa, the Yellow King… and then in the end it was a close knit group of sexual predators in a small town, and all the supernatural stuff was just Matthew McConaughey’s drug flashbacks. I haven’t seen season 2 or 3 (because apparently they were ass), and since this season has been lauded as a return to form, I’m banking on all of this weirdness being the result of chemicals or ancient microorganisms leaching into the water… Everything else is just creepy mythology tacked on for flavor, as is the True Detective way.
Annoying that there’s no mention of Navarro’s ear bleeding at the end of the last episode or what the hell happened to her in the dredge.It’s not directly mentioned, but it’s touched on when Danvers asks if she’s ok and when she goes into a trance and starts walking into the water. She’s definitely got whatever her sister and the researchers had.
And also when she sees the length of wet hair in the washing machine at the laundromat? I just thought that ending the previous episode with Navarro’s ears bleeding meant that was going to be major development, but her spooky visions have been about the same, maybe ramped up slightly.
I feel like the entire season has been dawdling, disjointed, and borderline incoherent. Writing and direction have been medicore. Zero sense of immediacy. No single episode felt like it was building toward anything of consequence.
Kali Reis gave a great performance in Episode 5, though. She was a big red flag for me initially, as I was skeptical of her range and whether she could hold her own with Foster. She’s slowly upped her game over the season.
I think I’m not as down on this season as you, but I agree the writing has been mediocre, especially plot-wise. They’ll throw in some moments that seem like they’d be important or something to build on but then nothing really happens with them. Also agree with being impressed by Kali Reis.
Yes, all this 100% agree. I feel exactly the same. Enjoyed the series but it either needed more episodes or less because the pacing and plotting logic is all over the map as they race to finish in 6 episodes.
….wut? So you gave each of the first 4 episodes, which were awful, A grades. And then you give this episode, the best by a wide margin and the one where FAR AND AWAY the most progress is made and most information is revealed, a C because you claim that nothing progressed and it was “stuck in the snow?”Are you trolling? Is this a joke? Or are you just exceptionally bad at this? I mean, taste is subjective and all, but to claim that the episode is bad because no progress is made and nothing happens, in the episode where more progress is made/information revealed than the other 4 episodes COMBINED, is just patently ridiculous.Almosy zero progress was made in episodes 2, 3, and 4, to the point where it often felt like they kind of forgot about the actual case they were supposed to be solving. In this episode we find out about the connection to the mine, the mine owning the cave, Hank and Connelly being on the mine’s payroll, the meaning of the symbol, what happened with Wheeler, etc etc… and you say that nothing progressed and it was stuck in the snow…lol. Unreal.Articles like this and the laughably awful and offensively disingenuous Dakota Johnson/Madame Webb article by Emma Keates are exactly why AV Club has such a terrible reputation and has become internet shorthand for how bad media journalism is today.
The final scene was the best thing in the entire season and you give this a C+?
Look, the contract with HBO only specified 4 of the eps had to get As.
Or, this was a dumb meme from jump.
Yeah a whole lot more happened this episode than the last one. At least a “B.”
I was intrigued at the beginning and think the performances are good but it’s turned into Lost on Ice at this point. Issa apparently cribbed from The 10-Minute Writer’s Room by JJ Abrams about setting up a bunch of intriguing plot lines and then spending 90% of the actual scenes of your series with kids and parents and partners and lovers resenting each other.Much like Lost and, well, every other JJ Abrams clusterbungled plot, there’s good acting work going on but is being drowned out amid the audience chorus of WTF. I am both looking forward and sort of dreading how these threads will be closed.
It’s incredible how JJ Abrams is linked to Lost when all he did was write part of the pilot (and direct the first episode of season 3). Lost was not a JJ Abrams series. And Lost was fantastic to the end.
Disagree to agree there, friend. Search for Abrams and Lost is in every intro. He does not deserve 100% of the blame/credit; his ersatz minion-hack Lindelof is who truly dragged that show to hell.
It does not mean anything that he is in the intro, plenty of people who did nothing are, he was not involved in the show almost at all.
Yes, it’s not a JJ show, it’s a Lindelof show, and it was the most frustrating television series I’ve ever seen through to the end.
It was one of the best TV shows ever made on a network, by far. And I don’t know of course about you but most people who were “frustrated” just did not understand. Even GRR Martin thought “they were dead all along” when the show said explicitly the opposite. Almost all mysteries were solved. Not everything was perfect and the last season was the weakest by far and had many problems, but it was still great TV.
I would go see LOST: ON ICE. Like a bunch of figure skaters acting out the plot of Lost.
“Plot” as in the JJA sense of words and images extruded as a linear sausage of characters and scenes without any composure, arc or deliberate storytelling. So yea, that would work pretty well for a couple hour skating show as opposed to say, a six-season, 121 episode co-dependent relationship. Or a bunch of Star Trek movies. Or a Star Wars movie. Or Cloverfield. Or Super 8.
To be fair I remember Cloverfield and Super 8 making sense.
You’re right. I’ll step back on Cloverfield and Super 8 before he tried to turn them into a universe. They were supposed to be chaotic and confusing.Super 8 also kind of grandaddied a few tropes that Stranger Things carried on, like groups of junior high kids going toe-to-toe with adults.
I have a feeling this is all going to down to industrial waste being dumped in the caves and polluting the water and violating tribal lands.My guess is there is something in those caves of indigenous origin and of cultural significance that if found would cause the mining operation to be shut downCoupled with fact that the mining company has been dumping illegal toxic waste down there for years, not only from the local mine but from all of Tuttle’s companies.Annie found out and was about to blow the whole thing wide open and was murdered for it.
I was thinking the “they dug too deep” trope as well (i.e., they’re all high on pollutants/hallucinating), but that wouldn’t explain the shared delusions, people seeing/hearing the same things. I suspect they won’t bother to explain that part, because ambiguity is too often used to replace good writing/logical plotlines.
It could be if the digging released hydrogen sulfide into the town – one symtptom of exposure is hallucination. Also – in small doses it smells like citrus so… oranges?
it’ll turn out the caves, station and town are all built over an old native-american cemetary…. but they never moved the bodies!! i mean, they’ve already kind of ripped off “they’re here” with “she’s awake” so might as well keep going
Maybe it’s been noted before, but it seems to me that Prior is the only main character that is not a complete asshole. The “Good Guys” sometimes make it a little hard to root for them.
And he seems to be the one doing most of the detecting work.
I genuinely think Prior may be the most likeable character in the entire series.
So at this point, who’s Annie’s killer? Or was it simply an accident — she suffered a lethal accident — and Hank was ordered to take her body out and relocate it? (And that’s it — the cover-up was the conspiracy, and maybe the mines are an ancient native burial ground).
But if Annie was intentionally murdered, then the list of suspects has become awfully short after Part 5. It could either be a major supporting character, or some rando who’s only had a line or two in an earlier episode.
I assumed it was the guy Clarke who had like a shrine to her? I’m not sure how supernatural they’re going to go, but I wonder if Annie got “infected” by whatever and he felt he had to kill her. She wouldn’t die easily cause of the alien spores or whatever so that’s why she was stabbed so many times.
There’s so many stupid, hilarious bits of writing in this show. too many to point out, but I love that there’s a protest/riot in this tiny alaskan town, and some of the cops are in riot gear beating up protestors, but some of the other cops are just chilling at home and have no idea what’s going on? really??also the stand-off at the end; the timing of the young cop entering with his gun drawn was great. What was he doing during the first half of the tense conversation that ensued after the unexpected arrival of his father? finishing his coffee??
“but I love that there’s a protest/riot in this tiny alaskan town, and some of the cops are in riot gear beating up protestors, but some of the other cops are just chilling at home and have no idea what’s going on? really??”there’s two police forces involved. Alaska State Troopers and town of Ennis police force. It was the state troopers that responded to the riot at the mine. Danvers even makes a comment about how the mine is not her jurisdiction when she’s called to the meeting there later.
it’s a town of 9000 people. every cop would be there. everyone in the town would be there, cop or not.
Trust me, bro.
100% untrue. Jurisdiction matters. The Ennis police would not be there, specifically because if anything untoward went down the first element of the lawsuits would be “they shouldn’t even have been there”.
They WOULD, however, absolutely have been made aware and kept informed of what was going on.
A bit odd too that the mine corporate office (at least what looks like it) is in the town itself. Mining corporate offices are almost always located in a major center. Any mining office in a place like Ennis would be a small field office, likely even modular trailers. Certainly not the ultra modern architecture that they have in the show. It’s a nitpick, but it pisses me off that they pretty much nail the aesthetic of a rough northern community, but fall on their face with other simple world building design features.
I’ve noticed this too. Ennis seems to be shorthand for the North Slope but without the established infrastructure of the actual North Slope. I’ve been amazed that Ennis has half the things it does. A very modern mining home office, an addiction treatment center (?!?), a shockingly modern-looking police HQ. It’s like they want the show to take place in Anchorage but with the weather and isolation of something like Barrow.
Ennis as depicted is also probably too big for a community that remote. It would be a few thousand people, tops (and I agree), certainly not the amenities you mentioned…with most of the workers being fly-in/fly-out.
Peter was in the shed in the back yard when Hank arrived. Peter then came into the house, gun drawn, after he heard Hank’s gunshot. This part makes sense, the rest of it not so much.
Yeah, in this particular case, the writing isn’t what’s stupid.
Is it not still strange that 5 episodes in, and with 1 left, we still essentially know nothing about what was presented as the main “mystery”?? >>How a bunch of scientists chilling and partying in a research station ended up supernaturally dead in a writhing naked pile of tundra ice?
It was freak avalanche! You know, the kind where you take all your clothes off when you see it headed your way.
I tried. I *really* tried.I SWOONED at the first episode, and had TONS of goodwill for the cast, the setting, the whole MOOD they were giving. (Plus, I really dig the Billie Eilish-themed opening credits!)But, slowly, over the past four episodes, this show has (for me) rounded the corner into exasperated hate-watch (see “Revenge” 2011, Madeline Stowe, Emily Van Camp).Below, my blow-for-blow re-cap for a friend. You have been warned. (Also, spoilers *everywhere*.)
~~~ – digging the cold-open of Julia Navarro’s cremation (loving the
mundanity of it all; especially focusing on the dials, buttons, etc and
the brand names of the various crematory appliances)
– so, it’s been a week since Navarro found out about her sister and got into that fist-fight. Her face has healed remarkably well. – “Be careful, it’s hot.” Nice line. – THOSE OPENING EILISH CREDITS! –
(Foster interviewing creepy/recovering dredge guy, Heiss) Those stains on the
headboard (of his bed) really struck me. For reasons passing
understanding. /mildly interesting – “SHE’S AWAKE” I audibly groaned at the mention of the supernatural shit, at this point – If this bitch gets this motherfucker some heroin, I am 100% out /smfh – Jesus Fucking Christ. Deputy Petey’s wife handing him his bags. I mean…*sigh* –
Seriously, though – was there some previous, underlying shit that happened between them, BEFORE the show? Because – AGAIN – he is a
COP. This is a GIGANTIC murder investigation. The town has historically
been pretty tame/quiet, so this event is (assumedly) an outlier. I
understand she’s upset – being the holidays + their tenuous relations with Danvers – but does she not see the (current) big picture?
AITA? –
Soo…are Danvers and Navarro going out to this (KNOWN UNSAFE) cave
system…ALONE? With ZERO backup and/or ZERO experienced
spelunkers/survivalists? Are we getting into “Prometheus” levels of dumb
smart people? – OMFGZ. Of COURSE they went there ALONE. /jfc Thank GOD the fucking entrance was collapsed. /smfh – are we seriously gonna have a bleak, lonely Johnny Cash cover moment for Officer Catfish? – (though to be fair, if that’s his voice, the actor’s got a great voice) – I absolutely do not care about the protest – this ENTIRE 14 days (since sundown), Navarro has been on her own
recognizance/lent out to the local PD (with Danvers) from the State police. Why is she
suddenly attached to the SWAT team? I… don’t think that’s how any of
that works. /shrugs – Also – though on a MUCH
lesser scale of importance – I doubt Deputy Petey could hear much of
ANYTHING, standing outside in the weather; let alone his Catfish
dad, singing the blues. – Okay. Sincerely: what’s the whole point of this protest scene? –
…and the whole storyline of Danvers’ daughter being a “crazy, radical protester”? I just don’t get it. I’m not understanding why half of these
plotlines/scenes were thrown into the mix. They’re not adding in anything that
we didn’t already get from a handful of OTHER storylines. – …aaaaaaand WHY is Navarro (who is a State cop) booking the daughter at the TOWN Police Station, besides to create a scene for the show? – (Danvers and Navarro talking about the protest, in Danvers’ office) W H Y
is the *town* police chief getting calls about a *state* trooper/SWAT-member? Those phone calls would have been made to the STATE
police chief (whoever s/he is). I’m just saying: they are separate
fucking entities – state police and local police. They serve the same
purpose – oftentimes in overlapping locales -but are wholly separate
creatures. – OH MY GOD. Danvers is NOT going to
the meeting with Silver Sky boss, AND BRINGING THE ONE BIT OF EVIDENCE
SHE HAS ABOUT THE MINING COMPANY?! Way to tip your hand, buddy. –
“Why were you and Trooper Navarro out at a remote section of Silver Sky
land?” Because I’m a cop and I’m doin’ some investigatin’ and shut the
fuck up, is why. – I literally can not believe
Danvers told them (that she has evidence) about Silver Sky’s connection
to funding Tsalal. Is she THIS bad of a cop? /facepalm- AND WHERE EXACTLY THE FUCK IS SILVER SKY BOSS GOING WITH DANVERS’ FOLDER OF EVIDENCE?! – Jesus. I’m not even halfway through the episode yet. /facepalm- Navarro: “Liz! I know how we can get into the caves! We can crack this case wide open!” Danvers: “We can’t. It’s over.”Navarro: “What? Why? What are you talking about?”Danvers: “Well, FIRST, I told Silver Sky boss we had evidence against her company…”Navarro: “?”Danvers: “THEN…I let her TAKE the evidence. There was NOTHING I could do. It’s out of my hands…”Danvers: “Oh, and I also told her to go fuck herself. In front of an office full of witnesses.”/COP OF THE YEAR –
(Regarding Connelly knowing about the guy they shot, all those years
ago) So? So what? He has an idea. Does he have any proof? Any evidence? – *UGGGGH* (Navarro letting Danvers’ daughter out of the holding cell) NAVARRO IS NOT A LOCAL COP. THIS IS NOT HER POLICE STATION. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?- *sigh* Of COURSE they’re out
on the ice, all alone, just whacking away with a goddamned pick on
who-knows-how-thin ice. Zero safety equipment. Zero extra bodies to wait
outside, in case of emergency.
– Ah, okay. Just burying her sister. And again, I’d completely forgotten Fiona Shaw was part of this. – the ice cracking /whatevs
–
So…Officer Catfish snuck onto his son’s laptop while he was staying with him (for a day? A few hours?) and spotted the evidence Petey had dug up on the old Navarro/Danvers case? Okay. /shrugs – I barely care that Danvers and Navarro killed the abusive, murderer husband dude –
Okay. That is a LITERAL shack to which Danvers gave the keys to Petey.
Like, is it even heated? There seems to be zero insulation. Let alone a bed/bathroom/anything. That barely makes sense. – *UGH* She got Heiss some heroin. /smfh –
Anytime I see the “heroes preparing to venture forth/Act 3″ part of a
movie/storyline/show, I always think, “Damn. It’s gonna be a
long, harrowing thing they’re embarking upon. I hope they get a good
night’s sleep and a hot meal beforehand.” /be prepared –
Umm…if Officer Catfish’s job was to let Danvers go out into the cave
with the drugged-up Heiss to (hopefully) get lost/die…WHY did Officer
Catfish just shoot Heiss? –
Whoa, whoa, WHOA, Junior! A fucking HEADSHOT?!?!?!?!?!?! You were,
like, TWO FEET AWAY FROM HIM. Just shoot to wound/disarm! He’s your
fucking DAD. There’s no way you could have missed (trying to shoot his
arm/whatever). What the FUCK.~~~Apologies to anyone who ploughed through the entirety of this semi-coherent, bullet-pointed rant; no harm was intended, but I hope a wry grin may have been had by some.I had hopes for this show. I WANTED to love it. Shit, the cast alone had me sold on it.Guess I’ll just watch (the solidly B-tier) “Fortitude” again. (7/10, can recommend)
damn that was awful to read
You are *not* wrong, sir or madam.
Not a single happy person in Ennis, AK. Rose might be the most well-adjusted but no one is actually “happy.”
First, heroin, the drug, is spelled “heroin,” not “heroine,” as in a female hero in slightly antiquated use.
C’mon. You folks probably get paid to edit these articles. Don’t let A.I. replace you without a good fight, a spell check, and a second read. Unless you’re already gone and we can’t tell.
Otherwise, as to the substance of the review, I certainly agree they are trying to pack a great deal of dense material, mythology, and terrifying implications into too small a package. Six episodes would be OK — if it was a split season and a few more episodes would come to complete the story and allow some consideration of how the characters are affected in the never ending “end” of all this.
I mean, I’m still wondering what the story “laundromat grandma” was telling Peter’s kid that caused him to draw a giant woman with stars for eyes standing over smaller figures… I don’t think it was a “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” reference just to make Danvers irritated. Or it shouldn’t have been since we know she dislikes the Beatles now because she associates them with her dead child.
This is the first episode that had me chomping on the bit for “get going!”. I’ve loved this season and am worried like the reviewer about only have one left. For all the series that stretch a short story into 10+ episodes… I really don’t get the 6 here. So why did they essentially waste an entire one on important story beats that could have been taken care of in 20 minutes? Let’s see if they can pull off a Triple-Lindy (Back To School) next week. I really can’t predict what the hell is going to happen. Which is cool in it’s own way.
I don’t like the way they’ve done the season one connections. Like Tuttle’s whole thing was like ritualistic child abuse and murder. If that’s not a part of what’s going on, why bring them in here? Plus it seems like it’s just a huge coincidence that Rust’s dad was involved. I guess they could tie it into season one more directly in the finale, but I don’t see how.
They’ll get down to the caves and find Woody Harrelson chilling out smoking a joint. Matthew Mcconaghaghghy walks in from off-screen, takes one look at the camera, then says “Well…alright, alright, alright.” Cut to black.
Or you know, a post-credit scene with Samuel L Jackson: “I’m putting together a team of… True Detectives.”
The Tuttle connection really does seem completely superfluous.
I hate to bring science and facts into this story, and I haven’t read all the reviews of this season, so this comment may be a repeat. But the two-month night cannot start in December. It has to be centered around the winter solstice (Dec 20th or 21st). That means it has to start in November and end in January. It doesn’t matter if the fictional town is not supposed to be Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow). That’s the way the Earth is. It’s a fact of nature. How did they get that wrong? Or did they just want the long night to start closer to Christmas because that fit better with the story? If so, why not do it on another planet where they could decide the science. Here’s a story about the two-month night: https://www.newsweek.com/photos-show-alaskan-town-first-sunrise-two-months-1863558
The MOMENT they showed mine owner Kate and Hank planning to kill Otis (Kate: ‘I never said kill!’ LOL) — I genuinely got a feeling of dread and envisioned this weekly review giving the show it’s first ‘C’ grade. Like, I just *knew* it was speeding things up at that moment due to the erroneously-short season we got.
At the very least, this was a decent episode, one that hopefully leads to a WTF finale (maybe like The Curse?)
“Pete is tragically forced to shoot his father in the head” forced?? feel like he could’ve gone for almost any other body part at all and didn’t have to shoot to kill Also Danvers lost her son due to making a choice in the line of duty? I thought her son and baby daddy were killed in a car crash?
They either enter the caves and find a swirly portal and creepy witch woman (“she”) or sweet fuck-all, because it now feels like the supernatural stuff is useless window dressing. Oh it builds “atmosphere”, does it? Maybe for anyone who’s never seen a horror movie before and finds jump scare screeching corpses the height of cinematic art, but otherwise eeeehhhhhh.
Kali Reis was really good in this episode, though, and Hank’s death was a genuine shock, so it’s not all bad.
I’m still hoping for “She’s awake” to mean Cassilda to tie it in to Carcosa, but I suspect we’re going to get a Scooby Doo reveal.
The first episode showed so much promise, and yet here we are.
Well this took a a sudden TD Season 2 turn. Our heroes have gone rogue. We know what happened to Collin Farrell in Season 2 when he went rogue.
Damn, this show is dumb and bad.
Issa Lopez has done something truly great with this season. By “truly great”, I mean she’s made season 2 truly great when compared to this garbage.
I swear to god if the big reveal is a pile of barrels leaking pollutants into the ground water, I will swear off this series entirely. I will refer to it as a one-season show, just like there were only two Alien movies and then they stopped making Alien movies.
Have we gotten to the part where they discover documents, with signatures.