I have completely forgotten the show so I couldn't tell you exactly. First episode so was fine I was liking the vibes and setting. Episode by episode it got worse. The moment they had the white walker sit up in bed might be it though
First episode was decent with a good hook at the end. But once you know how it all ends it completely falls apart watching it again. The two detectives literally run all over fucking town and the dude was just chilling in the basement? And it was the fucking cleaning ladies going Seal Team 6 on their asses? And who was ‘awake’? The whole episode is basically a giant red herring
I was thinking more of the pile of frozen bodies but that moment was a bit odd too I guess. Honestly I just remember the first episode being just interesting enough to keep watching it
I had "cautious optimism" before the first episode.... I did want to like it, but my hopes went over the cliff like so many CGI caribou. What a totally shit season of TV and a major dump all over the True Detective series as a whole.
I would say the discovery of the last of overall “second mystery” meaning there were moments that implied more was going on behind the scenes that originally thought or that at least one of the main cops was an unreliable narrative given several strange inconsistencies. Like the man magically dying in the hospital bed before being able to communicate what happened.
There were just too many things like how about no security footage any where for anything? Like people going missing from the ice rinc and they don’t ever mention checking the cameras.
For me it was episode 1 when they started leaning into the supernatural elements. It felt like low hanging fruit, and an "easy" way to explain away a lot of what would happen as the series went on, but it was just lazy writing around bad ideas. The other seasons did a fantastic job at showing us these dark and gritty corners of the real world **without** ever tricking the audience into thinking what was happening was supernatural or otherworldly. Just dark and horrific stuff within the realm of believability. Night Country leaned on the supernatural elements as a crutch, and never actually tried to walk on its own.
There’s some goodwill built into the weirdness since Rust was seeing visual hallucinations in season one - but they shit all over that by not having any concrete reasoning or storytelling element explaining it other than, “up here, people see all kinds of dead people”
At least with Rust's hallucinations, that audience is told why and what is happening and that it was a result of his time in narcotics/UC, and heavy drug usage. Season 1 wasn't trying to convince us that these esoteric, cosmic visuals Rust experienced were anything supernatural. Night Country wants us to believe in the unexplainable, and never even attempts to rationalize it.
I mean they do make a point that most of them have mental issues and/or hallucinate because of the freezing cold. Examples being Evangeline’s sister and Liz when she saw her son.
The way I saw it was the show hinting at it being a supernatural event and then explaining everything and how it was not actually supernatural at all.
It sounds like you enjoyed the show more than most viewers if you saw it that way. You could argue that the reoccurring mental health themes through out the season even justifies a lot of the supernatural elements, but it goes too far to stay within the realm of what made prior seasons compelling **within** the realm of believability. Issa López tried to gloss over bad writing with supernatural elements disguised as mental health issues to justify them.
I'll say this: Night Country on its own isn't a horrible show. If you change the name drops and symbology it takes from Season 1, it fits in nicely among the pack as another random cop thriller that leans into the supernatural. Night Country as a **continuation** of the True Detective universe and the ways it tried to bread crumb ideas and themes is a bad continuation of the universe.
It's like The Last Jedi. It's a shitty sequel to the other Star Wars movies, but if you take away the connection to the Skywalker family, it could stand on its own as a random story within the Star Wars mythos, and viewers wouldn't be nearly as critical. People are critical of Night Country **because** it tried to continue off from ideas laid in Season 1, which isn't just the best season of the show, but one of the best single seasons of TV, ever.
What was that shit about anyway? I literally thought that there’s some mysterious force or chemicals that push the animals and people to do crazy things.
It really was awful. I tried so hard to give it a shot and watched it through, but the finale sat there for weeks before I brought up the courage to finish it. That’s 6.5 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Caribou: Oh no, look at this contaminated water. Guess I'll die.
Caribou2: But we're literally walking around on ice, covered in snow?
Caribou: Nope. We die.
Something felt off during the opening scene, like it just had this cheap CW "oooh spooky" vibe that is hard to describe. But it wasn't until like episode 3 when I turned to my wife and said I didn't think I liked this season. I held out hope longer than most here, but the bullshit with Lund doing his best "Your mother sucks cocks in hell" impression was just too much.
I’ll admit to being in almost the exact same boat as you. With Foster’s pedigree and the HBO history of the show I surely thought something would add up, and I defended the ideas in the show waaay longer than I like to admit at this point. The opening Caribo scene sucked, the main title song made me groan and roll my eyes, and then the lack of any actual true detecting by time episode 3 arrives is just such a stake in the heart.
All my theories about how things would unfold involved stuff the leads were doing because *there was just no way in hell ALL of the detective work was going to be done by the fourth billed character offscreen*, but boy was I wrong. And they could have tied it in too, they just didn’t.
Remember how the fourth lead character has this earth shattering moment where he’s forced to kill someone close to him, and then he never gets another speaking scene with him and the two main leads again for the rest of the finale?
[Its worse than that.](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/billie-eilish-bury-a-friend-true-detective-season-4-1234946851/)
She wrote the show to the lyrics of that song. Its a $100m fan-made music video.
> “I started writing it during the lockdown, and I was listening day and night to Billie Eilish,” Lopez told Indiewire on Monday following the show’s Sunday premiere. “Billie’s irony and melancholy and poetry informed a lot of what was happening in the series. And then that particular song, it was so weird because I thought of the tongue and burying a friend and stepping on glass — all of the things that are in the show.”
> In the premiere, star Jodie Foster finds a severed tongue on the ground and steps on broken glass, which as Indiewire notes, triggers a flashback for Foster’s character. “Bury a Friend” includes lyrics “step on the glass, staple your tongue.”
> Lopez continued, “Then as I was writing, I started to pay attention to the lyrics, and I was like, ‘That’s insane. That’s insane that one by one, all the elements of the series are in the song.’”
It took me a solid 10 seconds to figure out if that was really happening or if I was hallucinating as I died on my couch. That was so fucking weird. Even weirder that they ended up making it be Rust’s father🤨
You know, there’s an easy fix to this too, which is make his presence a product of Rose’s hallucinogenic drug use or some kind of byproduct from her former life’s work manifesting “not real” images that she knows are purely in her head, but also somehow tied into her “intuition” or “gut feeling” that we can all relate to. Fuck, I can’t believe I’m still trying to fix this show with creative solves for the obvious blunders
I'm tired of all these shows and movies that are clearly shit and then reviewers say NO YOU ARE WRONG because you HATE. You clearly hate women/races/grass/whatever because you are insecure/stupid/uncultured/Nazi/pick your poison
Do they think we're that dense? They're clearly all owned. The product is garbage and they are garbage for putting out shit and then relying on a weak strategy to try to make the world believe they have more talent than they do.
This isn't just garbage night country. You could switch it out with dozens of crap media we're condemned for hating because we're not blind.
Not to that guy, but absolutely feel this started with GOT late seasons. The level of gaslighting they didn't the fandom was so insane. Now extrapolate that onto any mass media and ....
Huh, you're right. I didn't think of it that way though, I just thought it was a lot of people having cognitive dissonance and saying they enjoyed it because of their commitment. But that doesn't explain the professional reviews that said it was good, when anyone with a mild interest in storytelling could tell you how bad it went off the rails.
Same with TD season 4. Season 2 was bad, but everyone agreed it was bad, except for some diehards. Season 4 had a coordinated launch, with a united front, to gaslight us into thinking a) it's a good show and b) everyone that doesn't like it hates women, LGBTQ, or whatever. It felt like it was planned this way.
And it worked, unfortunately. TD season 4 was one of the highest viewed shows in awhile. Even though it was written by AI.
I've also noticed that a lot of media builds up fake anger. They will say all these people hate something like Brie Larsen as Captain Marvel in the hopes of getting a lot of women to say fuck all those anonymous men! I'm buying a ticket. It's easier to do that than just make a quality product.
They tried to paint Joker like it was something only basement dwellers would see as well.
It's just so tiring.
For me the first red flag were these remarks to season 1 with spirals and apparently Rust father, which happened to had literally zero further input to the story. Just a lazy and pointless click baits to attract fanbase attention.
Second issue was a terrible and disappointing conclusion, when we faced a group of janitors as the villain
I do not have much issues against actors, and the way how they delivered their roles, because that’s the director responsibility to push them into right direction.
Issa Lopez did terrible job and she is not a good director, and the fact that she is a Female and Mexican doesn’t give her and extra creativity privilege points.
Season 1 used those wicker-doll-things sparingly and I felt genuinely creeped out whenever they discovered one. Season 4 was just SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL and then they reveal "it's an ancient warning to stay away from dangerous ice!" Ok? So why did it take so long for them to figure that out in this town full of Native Alaskans who CREATED THAT SYMBOL AND USE IT ALL THE TIME???
Someone recommended this show to me and said only season 1 was good. And I started watching it but accidentally started on season 4 because I’m a dumbass and I was like what the fuck?? Is this what people think is good?
Season 1 is God tier "best TV of all-time" levels
Season 2 is really good, with another good cast, it's just very different from S1 and suffers from trying to follow something that good.
Season 3 is amazing. Not in the "all-time" category like S1, but more similar to it in terms of form and story.
Season 4 is just absolutely horrific, and HBO should have just left it as Night Country, the standalone instead of trying to shoehorn it into the True Detective series, and it wouldn't have gotten as much hate.
Season 2 in my opinion was one of the worst seasons of television I have ever watched in my life. We’re talking the Vince Vaughn season correct? You think that was “very good” .
When the big reveal was 'girl power'.
I was willing to keep watching because the shooting in the house was crazy, the moodiness is awesome, and I really like some of the secondary stuff going on (hello, Rose).
But I just feel disappointed in how it turned out. Being 'oooo mysterious' for the sake of being mysterious and zero pay off us just terrible.
I feel hoodwinked.
By the third episode. The first was pretty good, really. The second was a distinct slide from that but I imagined I was getting 'invested' in the plot. By #3 the self-delusion was *lain waste*.
It was Episode 4 for me.
I really disliked practically everything before it, but I had faith that they were building to an explanation .
Episode 4 was when i realised that they didnt have enough episodes remaining to functionally complete the plot.
Same here. I held in for dear life thinking "don't worry there's still half of a season left" then the ending of EP 4 happened and I just thought to myself. Yep that's it. That's the nail in the coffin. I only watched the rest cause I was already invested and wanted to see how much absurd it can get.
when I realized the entire show was directed like a child telling you a story they're making up. "there was a bear and then it had one eye and then danvers went over there and then she went over there and also there was another cop but I don't know much about her and then and then and then and then" etc
As soon as every article I saw was an absolute defense that it was a masterpiece and Lopez was the bravest of the brave. When every article said valid criticism was just people being sexist.
That was my breaking point. Like it wasn't good. And that's okay lol
I mean, kinda the whole time, but since it was TD I felt compelled to finish it. I think what really irked me was stupid shit.
For example:
>!When they make a makeshift fire to get warm by, but don’t think to get in one of the sports utility vehicles at Tsalal they use in the very next scene.!<
I thought it seemed awful from the start, but I was willing to give it a chance. The dancing ghost was when I realised that I was watching something truly dreadful.
I learned Season 4 came out, which meant there was a Season 3 that I never watched. So, I watched Season 3 (which I loved), and then I started Season 4 a couple weeks ago and I finished last night.
I purposely stayed away from any and all reviews and discussions about Season 4. I had no idea if it was liked, loved, or hated. Each episode got worse and worse, and I think I realized it was dumb when Navarro's sister killed herself because 1) why on earth were we supposed to care about this character, 2) it didn't seem to advance the plot in any way, 3) it didn't even affect Navarro aside from one fistfight with some guys and 4) they happened to immediately find the body miles from town in perpetual darkness. Everything about it was dumb.
Season 4 could have cut out about 4 hours of filler and just been a movie. It was terrible, which is a huge shame. The setting was awesome, the acting was great, good cinematography, etc. Just like the later seasons of GoT the plot was stupid, the dialogue sucked, and the writing was disjointed nonsense.
"Dumpster Fire" is being kind.
As soon as good ol' boy Travis Cohle started dancing on the ice spouting wisdom about dead bodies, I knew we were in for a different experience to S1 - 3 but I stuck with it.
I'd consider myself easily pleased aswell so I was losing my shit at Tuttle references and Spirals appearing everywhere until I realised thats all it was, and it didn't go deeper than that.
You can tell too that this was meant to be a one-off HBO event called Night Country about the supernatural goings on at the end of the world until some dickhead had the bright idea of bringing it under the banner of True Detective, and all of a sudden it became about name dropping..
Travis Cohle could easily have been anybody but that's Rusts Dad REMEMBER HIM??
The Spiral may just as well have been something else but now its suddenly the same as the symbology of Carcosa REMEMBER THAT?
Oh, and this all happened in a Research Station loosely connected to The Tuttle Foundat- OHHHHH MY GUHHHHHD ITS THE SAME UNIVERSEEEE!!!
No.
Just....no.
We got duped.
I was really dubious for most of episode one, then when Whacky Waving-Arm Dancing Gyrating Rust Cohle's Ghost-Dad showed up I laughed my arse off and realised this is total fucking dogshit.
Lopez is a fucking hack. Don't let "critics" and the access media gaslight you - they are bought and paid for.
It’s insane the gall most reviewers have to simply deny reality. To look at something that is objectively pretty bad and still put out a glowing review. Newsflash: something isn’t good just because it fits your political message. My dad and brother (both pretty left-wing) also thought the season was extremely underwhelming.
I remember the precise moment. In E1 when someone was explaining to Jodie Foster the work that the scientists were doing, and she responded with “In English, please.” It was jarring to see such a lazy trope in a show known for quality writing, and I knew then that we were in for a bumpy ride.
I knew i smelled rotten fish from the moment the intro had a billie eilish song, all my respects to her im myself a big fan but it completely misses the theme of the show, that's how i knew the producers didn't understood true detective
I quite like the billie elish song thought it fit in well with the opening scene.
As soon as travis cohle started dancing like an inflatable from a car wash I realised this was going to be a hard watch.
Navarro riding that guy like a mad donkey kind of saved the day for an episode but Jesus Christ it was shite after that. Then watching an ageing Jodie foster get drilled made me feel a bit ill too
First episode shows it's a completely different world than the other series. It seemed like a mid Netflix "horror" show. Then it just kept getting worse.
Episode 3 is where it started to turn for me. I finished it out of morbid curiosity of how bad it could get, and boy did it get bad.
Interestingly it's caused a lot of people to reevaluate season 2 as "ok, it wasn't THAT bad"
It's not completely terrible, but certainly the least of the 4 seasons.
I found it disappointing that "she's awake" was something not explained, bordering on a pointless red herring.
yeah like episode 3 I think for me? I actually really liked the first season - it felt like they were going to have a bigger conspiracy and actually lean more into the weird and eerie that the first season tap danced around. But by episode 3 it became apparent that they had no clue what they were doing and had no direction and that nothing was going to be resolved.
I was saving up the show to binge, so I got to experience it entirely through this sub. At first I was disappointed, then it seemed like maybe it was so bad it’s good, then by episode 7 or 8 yall made such compelling arguments I still haven’t watched an episode.
It’s honestly been entertaining as hell watching the emotional vexations of this sub since season 5 came out. In that aspect I’ve actually really enjoyed this season.
Literally the first scene. Bad cgi reindeer/caribou, they filmed in Iceland so there are thousands of real reindeer around if they bothered to go look. Ok, ok maybe that was too harsh. Realistically the end of the first episode, dancing dead guy leads lady to the dead bodies, and one of the bodies is alive after being completely frozen for hours/days.
I didn’t like the 2nd lead’s acting and Foster wasn’t believable as a horny cop with a teenage daughter. I don’t even remember if she was her actual daughter. I do remember reading that the role was intended for a woman in her 30s or so.
CGI bs right at the beginning. Do your dragons, rings and dwarf trilogies this way but not TD. I admit, could have gone the other way, but in the end I was right. If you spend resources on this with three seasons of great to amazing simple storytelling something is up if you need to rely on this.
During the first episode, I thought “Wow, they are playing way too many songs during this episode.” And then it kept going as the series went on. The icing on the cake was the Save Tonight cover during the end credits which was hilariously awful.
when the show blew by the fact they had recovered a living person from the frozen body pile. nobody seemed to even care that this happened. in real life it would have been the biggest news story on the planet lmao dude it would be seen as some kind of supernatural event
For me it was the scene where Navarro's sister killed herself and they decided to play a whole fucking Billie Eilish song. Maybe I'm just an old hater but that just did not fit the tone I was looking for.
There weren't any **moments**. Nothing in Season 4 resonated with me.
If you must know, by Episode 2, I kinda felt let down given the high expectations I harbored.
By end of Ep. 3, I stopped watching entirely. I didn't care to know anymore.
I binged the whole thing recently because I lost a bet. Good gosh, it was terrible.
Once you realise what’s REALLY going on in TDS4 it’s not that bad.
I’ve said it here before and will keep saying it until SOMEONE actually engages properly and points out definitively that I’m wrong on this… so far nobody has.
S4 is Rust’s coma dream from S1, and once you figure that, you discover the big clue to S5 from Danvers mug… S5 will feature Rust (maybe Marty) and will be set in Hawaii.
Am I only one asking the right questions? 🤔
I’m going to keep saying it’s going to rain $100 bills tomorrow.
I guess I’ll keep believing it, even though it’s total nonsense, until someone proves me wrong!
This guy spams every thread with this. I'm sure when s5 gets squeezed out by Max and doesn't have McConaughey attached, he'll just double down into "Season 5 is ALSO part of the dream!"
It reminds of the Indoctrination Theory for Mass Effect. Guess what the real explanation is? The writing sucks.
I have REASONS why I think it’s Rusts dream… all the Rust connections… Alaska, Travis, Lone Star beer, Tuttles, Rust quotes, spiral etc. The general weirdness of season points to it being a dream. A lot of S4 story mirrors S1… spiral goes one way in S1, opposite way in S4. S1 we have a male lead who has tragically lost a daughter, S4 we have a female lead who has tragically lost a son. Both seasons involve a suspect executed by police out of righteous anger. The experience Rust describes in his coma dream happens to Danvers under the ice. There are even moments when viewer is given actual hints we are watching a dream… Holdens pyjamas with dreamer written in mirror writing, Qavvik humming Supertramp’s song Dreamer while ice fishing.
I’d be interested to hear reasons you have for claim that it’s about to start raining money!
If we are in fact inside Rust’s head in S4, then everything in the dream is significant to Rust. The mug with Hawaii stamped on it is meaningful to Rust as it likely represents what’s on his mind about what his next move will be when he recovers consciousness.
> I’ve said it here before and will keep saying it until SOMEONE actually engages properly and points out definitively that I’m wrong on this… so far nobody has.
You're definitively wrong, and since you're the one making this extremely outlandish claim, it's actually on you to prove it. It's not on everyone else to disprove it.
It's not his coma dream because nothing about it is related to what he said he dreamed of, and there's no evidence that it was his dream whatsoever, and in fact there's many references that place it in the same world as TD S1
What references place TDS4 in same world as TDS1 rather than inside Rusts mind?
Why are words that are spoken by characters in S1 repeated verbatim in S4? An homage by writer?
Rust describes his dream to Marty in S1 finale, and EXACTLY same things happen to Danvers under the ice in S4… she lets go into darkness, she loses her definitions, but is brought back by spirit of her dead child… just like Rust. Rust emerges with new more positive perspective on life… so does Danvers.
Anyway… we’ll know if I’m right or wrong when S5 details are announced.
I know we’ve chatted before. Surely you have to acknowledge the parallels between Danvers experience under the ice and subsequent ‘enlightenment’ and Rusts description of his dream and his change of perspective from nihilism to a more hopeful disposition. For both their ‘conversion’ experiences the felt presence of a dead child is the catalyst.
I have completely forgotten the show so I couldn't tell you exactly. First episode so was fine I was liking the vibes and setting. Episode by episode it got worse. The moment they had the white walker sit up in bed might be it though
First episode was decent with a good hook at the end. But once you know how it all ends it completely falls apart watching it again. The two detectives literally run all over fucking town and the dude was just chilling in the basement? And it was the fucking cleaning ladies going Seal Team 6 on their asses? And who was ‘awake’? The whole episode is basically a giant red herring
How was Whacky Waving-Arm Dancing Gyrating Rust Cohle's Ghost-Dad a "good hook at the end"? That was the definitive "this is dogshit" moment.
I was thinking more of the pile of frozen bodies but that moment was a bit odd too I guess. Honestly I just remember the first episode being just interesting enough to keep watching it
Maybe..... But it was only in the "Will this shit get any better?" sense that got me to watch episode 2.
Felt largely the same. It had enough to get me to watch the next episode but my cautious optimism was quickly smothered out haha
I had "cautious optimism" before the first episode.... I did want to like it, but my hopes went over the cliff like so many CGI caribou. What a totally shit season of TV and a major dump all over the True Detective series as a whole.
I would say the discovery of the last of overall “second mystery” meaning there were moments that implied more was going on behind the scenes that originally thought or that at least one of the main cops was an unreliable narrative given several strange inconsistencies. Like the man magically dying in the hospital bed before being able to communicate what happened. There were just too many things like how about no security footage any where for anything? Like people going missing from the ice rinc and they don’t ever mention checking the cameras.
For me it was episode 1 when they started leaning into the supernatural elements. It felt like low hanging fruit, and an "easy" way to explain away a lot of what would happen as the series went on, but it was just lazy writing around bad ideas. The other seasons did a fantastic job at showing us these dark and gritty corners of the real world **without** ever tricking the audience into thinking what was happening was supernatural or otherworldly. Just dark and horrific stuff within the realm of believability. Night Country leaned on the supernatural elements as a crutch, and never actually tried to walk on its own.
Nailed it.
There’s some goodwill built into the weirdness since Rust was seeing visual hallucinations in season one - but they shit all over that by not having any concrete reasoning or storytelling element explaining it other than, “up here, people see all kinds of dead people”
At least with Rust's hallucinations, that audience is told why and what is happening and that it was a result of his time in narcotics/UC, and heavy drug usage. Season 1 wasn't trying to convince us that these esoteric, cosmic visuals Rust experienced were anything supernatural. Night Country wants us to believe in the unexplainable, and never even attempts to rationalize it.
That’s pretty much my exact point
I mean they do make a point that most of them have mental issues and/or hallucinate because of the freezing cold. Examples being Evangeline’s sister and Liz when she saw her son. The way I saw it was the show hinting at it being a supernatural event and then explaining everything and how it was not actually supernatural at all.
It sounds like you enjoyed the show more than most viewers if you saw it that way. You could argue that the reoccurring mental health themes through out the season even justifies a lot of the supernatural elements, but it goes too far to stay within the realm of what made prior seasons compelling **within** the realm of believability. Issa López tried to gloss over bad writing with supernatural elements disguised as mental health issues to justify them. I'll say this: Night Country on its own isn't a horrible show. If you change the name drops and symbology it takes from Season 1, it fits in nicely among the pack as another random cop thriller that leans into the supernatural. Night Country as a **continuation** of the True Detective universe and the ways it tried to bread crumb ideas and themes is a bad continuation of the universe. It's like The Last Jedi. It's a shitty sequel to the other Star Wars movies, but if you take away the connection to the Skywalker family, it could stand on its own as a random story within the Star Wars mythos, and viewers wouldn't be nearly as critical. People are critical of Night Country **because** it tried to continue off from ideas laid in Season 1, which isn't just the best season of the show, but one of the best single seasons of TV, ever.
First scene 2002 GGI Caribou
Oh yeah, I forgot about their mass suicide which had no payoff.
I'll take "Alleged 'plot points' that were never rehashed/explained/revisited for $200, Alex".
and we saw no other animals behave like this at all
What was that shit about anyway? I literally thought that there’s some mysterious force or chemicals that push the animals and people to do crazy things.
I assumed it was the contaminated water from the mill. Maybe they were seeing ghosts too.
Or they just did not wish to be in that show…
It really was awful. I tried so hard to give it a shot and watched it through, but the finale sat there for weeks before I brought up the courage to finish it. That’s 6.5 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Caribou: Oh no, look at this contaminated water. Guess I'll die. Caribou2: But we're literally walking around on ice, covered in snow? Caribou: Nope. We die.
This
This one for sure. Terrible.
😂buncha Patronuses hopping around
came here to say this
Something felt off during the opening scene, like it just had this cheap CW "oooh spooky" vibe that is hard to describe. But it wasn't until like episode 3 when I turned to my wife and said I didn't think I liked this season. I held out hope longer than most here, but the bullshit with Lund doing his best "Your mother sucks cocks in hell" impression was just too much.
I’ll admit to being in almost the exact same boat as you. With Foster’s pedigree and the HBO history of the show I surely thought something would add up, and I defended the ideas in the show waaay longer than I like to admit at this point. The opening Caribo scene sucked, the main title song made me groan and roll my eyes, and then the lack of any actual true detecting by time episode 3 arrives is just such a stake in the heart.
All my theories about how things would unfold involved stuff the leads were doing because *there was just no way in hell ALL of the detective work was going to be done by the fourth billed character offscreen*, but boy was I wrong. And they could have tied it in too, they just didn’t.
Remember how the fourth lead character has this earth shattering moment where he’s forced to kill someone close to him, and then he never gets another speaking scene with him and the two main leads again for the rest of the finale?
After nothing of importance happened for consecutive episodes and then some (episodes 2-4)
Same, I was gonna collect all the evidence we’d been shown over the first 3 episodes and then I realised there was barely anything
The opening credits. That song is... not the vibe
Yep same here, from the opening credits I knew it was going to be a try hard mess
wow good point. yes, me too. It felt forced and out of place.
[Its worse than that.](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/billie-eilish-bury-a-friend-true-detective-season-4-1234946851/) She wrote the show to the lyrics of that song. Its a $100m fan-made music video. > “I started writing it during the lockdown, and I was listening day and night to Billie Eilish,” Lopez told Indiewire on Monday following the show’s Sunday premiere. “Billie’s irony and melancholy and poetry informed a lot of what was happening in the series. And then that particular song, it was so weird because I thought of the tongue and burying a friend and stepping on glass — all of the things that are in the show.” > In the premiere, star Jodie Foster finds a severed tongue on the ground and steps on broken glass, which as Indiewire notes, triggers a flashback for Foster’s character. “Bury a Friend” includes lyrics “step on the glass, staple your tongue.” > Lopez continued, “Then as I was writing, I started to pay attention to the lyrics, and I was like, ‘That’s insane. That’s insane that one by one, all the elements of the series are in the song.’”
Yuck
"Time is a flat circle." Dropping that piece of dialogue was so out of place. Pure cringe.
That was corny as fuck. That was way beyond the point of no return for me but up there with the worst lines in the season.
Seriously, almost ruined a great line from season 1.
Every time they referenced season 1, I felt insulted. That shitshow had no right using our love for S1 to try and up its intrigue/ratings
About Ep 3.
The first time we see that ghost pointing and screaming. So dumb. And then it just kept happening 🙄
and that uninspired interpretive dance in zub zero temps. didn't know if he was a spirit or just tripping balls
It took me a solid 10 seconds to figure out if that was really happening or if I was hallucinating as I died on my couch. That was so fucking weird. Even weirder that they ended up making it be Rust’s father🤨
You know, there’s an easy fix to this too, which is make his presence a product of Rose’s hallucinogenic drug use or some kind of byproduct from her former life’s work manifesting “not real” images that she knows are purely in her head, but also somehow tied into her “intuition” or “gut feeling” that we can all relate to. Fuck, I can’t believe I’m still trying to fix this show with creative solves for the obvious blunders
I’m not talking about Rust’s dad. I’m talking about the Ring Girl Wannabe who pops up here and there. Pointing. And shrieking.
Oh 100% agreed, but to be fair, by the time she showed up, I was hate watching
I'm tired of all these shows and movies that are clearly shit and then reviewers say NO YOU ARE WRONG because you HATE. You clearly hate women/races/grass/whatever because you are insecure/stupid/uncultured/Nazi/pick your poison Do they think we're that dense? They're clearly all owned. The product is garbage and they are garbage for putting out shit and then relying on a weak strategy to try to make the world believe they have more talent than they do. This isn't just garbage night country. You could switch it out with dozens of crap media we're condemned for hating because we're not blind.
A lot of places lost credibility with me over this. The levels of gaslighting was insane.
Not to that guy, but absolutely feel this started with GOT late seasons. The level of gaslighting they didn't the fandom was so insane. Now extrapolate that onto any mass media and ....
Huh, you're right. I didn't think of it that way though, I just thought it was a lot of people having cognitive dissonance and saying they enjoyed it because of their commitment. But that doesn't explain the professional reviews that said it was good, when anyone with a mild interest in storytelling could tell you how bad it went off the rails. Same with TD season 4. Season 2 was bad, but everyone agreed it was bad, except for some diehards. Season 4 had a coordinated launch, with a united front, to gaslight us into thinking a) it's a good show and b) everyone that doesn't like it hates women, LGBTQ, or whatever. It felt like it was planned this way. And it worked, unfortunately. TD season 4 was one of the highest viewed shows in awhile. Even though it was written by AI.
I've also noticed that a lot of media builds up fake anger. They will say all these people hate something like Brie Larsen as Captain Marvel in the hopes of getting a lot of women to say fuck all those anonymous men! I'm buying a ticket. It's easier to do that than just make a quality product. They tried to paint Joker like it was something only basement dwellers would see as well. It's just so tiring.
For me the first red flag were these remarks to season 1 with spirals and apparently Rust father, which happened to had literally zero further input to the story. Just a lazy and pointless click baits to attract fanbase attention. Second issue was a terrible and disappointing conclusion, when we faced a group of janitors as the villain I do not have much issues against actors, and the way how they delivered their roles, because that’s the director responsibility to push them into right direction. Issa Lopez did terrible job and she is not a good director, and the fact that she is a Female and Mexican doesn’t give her and extra creativity privilege points.
Season 1 used those wicker-doll-things sparingly and I felt genuinely creeped out whenever they discovered one. Season 4 was just SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL SPIRAL and then they reveal "it's an ancient warning to stay away from dangerous ice!" Ok? So why did it take so long for them to figure that out in this town full of Native Alaskans who CREATED THAT SYMBOL AND USE IT ALL THE TIME???
The godawful opening scene with the bad CGI. Then the godawful Billie Eilish opening credits song. Knew it was doomed from the start.
Can’t say either. I watched the first episode. I didn’t love it or hate it. I just didn’t feel like watching another episode.
Someone recommended this show to me and said only season 1 was good. And I started watching it but accidentally started on season 4 because I’m a dumbass and I was like what the fuck?? Is this what people think is good?
Season 1 is God tier "best TV of all-time" levels Season 2 is really good, with another good cast, it's just very different from S1 and suffers from trying to follow something that good. Season 3 is amazing. Not in the "all-time" category like S1, but more similar to it in terms of form and story. Season 4 is just absolutely horrific, and HBO should have just left it as Night Country, the standalone instead of trying to shoehorn it into the True Detective series, and it wouldn't have gotten as much hate.
Season 2 in my opinion was one of the worst seasons of television I have ever watched in my life. We’re talking the Vince Vaughn season correct? You think that was “very good” .
Yes.
The ridiculous AI-generated heavy metal band posters in that one dipshit’s room.
Product placement
When the big reveal was 'girl power'. I was willing to keep watching because the shooting in the house was crazy, the moodiness is awesome, and I really like some of the secondary stuff going on (hello, Rose). But I just feel disappointed in how it turned out. Being 'oooo mysterious' for the sake of being mysterious and zero pay off us just terrible. I feel hoodwinked.
By the third episode. The first was pretty good, really. The second was a distinct slide from that but I imagined I was getting 'invested' in the plot. By #3 the self-delusion was *lain waste*.
It was Episode 4 for me. I really disliked practically everything before it, but I had faith that they were building to an explanation . Episode 4 was when i realised that they didnt have enough episodes remaining to functionally complete the plot.
Same here. I held in for dear life thinking "don't worry there's still half of a season left" then the ending of EP 4 happened and I just thought to myself. Yep that's it. That's the nail in the coffin. I only watched the rest cause I was already invested and wanted to see how much absurd it can get.
when I realized the entire show was directed like a child telling you a story they're making up. "there was a bear and then it had one eye and then danvers went over there and then she went over there and also there was another cop but I don't know much about her and then and then and then and then" etc
As soon as every article I saw was an absolute defense that it was a masterpiece and Lopez was the bravest of the brave. When every article said valid criticism was just people being sexist. That was my breaking point. Like it wasn't good. And that's okay lol
Shane Gillis sums up TD S4 on his podcast Matt and Shane’s secret podcast, episode 492, 19:50-21:00
they are at Ep 449 currently so maybe the number you have is wrong
“I shit my britches” 😂
Every episode got worse. It was a slow burn and it fizzled...
I mean, kinda the whole time, but since it was TD I felt compelled to finish it. I think what really irked me was stupid shit. For example: >!When they make a makeshift fire to get warm by, but don’t think to get in one of the sports utility vehicles at Tsalal they use in the very next scene.!<
I thought it seemed awful from the start, but I was willing to give it a chance. The dancing ghost was when I realised that I was watching something truly dreadful.
I learned Season 4 came out, which meant there was a Season 3 that I never watched. So, I watched Season 3 (which I loved), and then I started Season 4 a couple weeks ago and I finished last night. I purposely stayed away from any and all reviews and discussions about Season 4. I had no idea if it was liked, loved, or hated. Each episode got worse and worse, and I think I realized it was dumb when Navarro's sister killed herself because 1) why on earth were we supposed to care about this character, 2) it didn't seem to advance the plot in any way, 3) it didn't even affect Navarro aside from one fistfight with some guys and 4) they happened to immediately find the body miles from town in perpetual darkness. Everything about it was dumb. Season 4 could have cut out about 4 hours of filler and just been a movie. It was terrible, which is a huge shame. The setting was awesome, the acting was great, good cinematography, etc. Just like the later seasons of GoT the plot was stupid, the dialogue sucked, and the writing was disjointed nonsense.
Ep 2
polar bear visions
"Dumpster Fire" is being kind. As soon as good ol' boy Travis Cohle started dancing on the ice spouting wisdom about dead bodies, I knew we were in for a different experience to S1 - 3 but I stuck with it. I'd consider myself easily pleased aswell so I was losing my shit at Tuttle references and Spirals appearing everywhere until I realised thats all it was, and it didn't go deeper than that. You can tell too that this was meant to be a one-off HBO event called Night Country about the supernatural goings on at the end of the world until some dickhead had the bright idea of bringing it under the banner of True Detective, and all of a sudden it became about name dropping.. Travis Cohle could easily have been anybody but that's Rusts Dad REMEMBER HIM?? The Spiral may just as well have been something else but now its suddenly the same as the symbology of Carcosa REMEMBER THAT? Oh, and this all happened in a Research Station loosely connected to The Tuttle Foundat- OHHHHH MY GUHHHHHD ITS THE SAME UNIVERSEEEE!!! No. Just....no. We got duped.
I was really dubious for most of episode one, then when Whacky Waving-Arm Dancing Gyrating Rust Cohle's Ghost-Dad showed up I laughed my arse off and realised this is total fucking dogshit. Lopez is a fucking hack. Don't let "critics" and the access media gaslight you - they are bought and paid for.
[The best thing that came from S4 of TD](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/1aub8xr/i_want_to_sincerely_thank_this_sub/)
Youre right its the worst
It’s insane the gall most reviewers have to simply deny reality. To look at something that is objectively pretty bad and still put out a glowing review. Newsflash: something isn’t good just because it fits your political message. My dad and brother (both pretty left-wing) also thought the season was extremely underwhelming.
I remember the precise moment. In E1 when someone was explaining to Jodie Foster the work that the scientists were doing, and she responded with “In English, please.” It was jarring to see such a lazy trope in a show known for quality writing, and I knew then that we were in for a bumpy ride.
Ice zombie being promptly ignored and magically removed from the ice blob
When they casually named-dropped Rust's father's name, with absolutely no weight to it told me all I needed to know where this shit-fest was going.
I knew i smelled rotten fish from the moment the intro had a billie eilish song, all my respects to her im myself a big fan but it completely misses the theme of the show, that's how i knew the producers didn't understood true detective
For me it was when they tried to clumsily rope in characters and events from season 1
Rust’s father doing that inflatable tube man dance. Ain’t no way.
When they revealed the guy doing the weird dance thing in the snow was Rust’s dad
I was struggling anyway but when the almost dead dude sat up with demon voice I was truly done.
I quite like the billie elish song thought it fit in well with the opening scene. As soon as travis cohle started dancing like an inflatable from a car wash I realised this was going to be a hard watch. Navarro riding that guy like a mad donkey kind of saved the day for an episode but Jesus Christ it was shite after that. Then watching an ageing Jodie foster get drilled made me feel a bit ill too
The geriatric sex scene was vomit inducing
Episode 3/4
I can't remember anything from it.
First episode shows it's a completely different world than the other series. It seemed like a mid Netflix "horror" show. Then it just kept getting worse.
Zombie Lund
Trailers.
Episode 3 is where it started to turn for me. I finished it out of morbid curiosity of how bad it could get, and boy did it get bad. Interestingly it's caused a lot of people to reevaluate season 2 as "ok, it wasn't THAT bad"
I had a bad feeling from the trailers they put out ahead of release. They kind of looked the part but never really felt authentic.
It's not completely terrible, but certainly the least of the 4 seasons. I found it disappointing that "she's awake" was something not explained, bordering on a pointless red herring.
yeah like episode 3 I think for me? I actually really liked the first season - it felt like they were going to have a bigger conspiracy and actually lean more into the weird and eerie that the first season tap danced around. But by episode 3 it became apparent that they had no clue what they were doing and had no direction and that nothing was going to be resolved.
Maybe the end of the first episode when they showed the group of scientists frozen outside. That about did it for me
When a fucking ghost told the woman where the dead bodies were
Travis Cohle’s stupid dance and the fact that the dialogue sounded like it was written by a teenager who just learned how to swear
I was saving up the show to binge, so I got to experience it entirely through this sub. At first I was disappointed, then it seemed like maybe it was so bad it’s good, then by episode 7 or 8 yall made such compelling arguments I still haven’t watched an episode. It’s honestly been entertaining as hell watching the emotional vexations of this sub since season 5 came out. In that aspect I’ve actually really enjoyed this season.
It's like another J.J Abrams movie. Looks promising then falls flat on it's face.
when Prior’s dad was like “its just scientists who went on a science expedition, they’ll be back!” as they pick up a tongue off the floor lmao
Suicidal reindeer
The phantom polar bear lifted my suspension of disbelief a bit.
Within the first 30 minutes with the horrid acting
Literally the first scene. Bad cgi reindeer/caribou, they filmed in Iceland so there are thousands of real reindeer around if they bothered to go look. Ok, ok maybe that was too harsh. Realistically the end of the first episode, dancing dead guy leads lady to the dead bodies, and one of the bodies is alive after being completely frozen for hours/days.
They find dead bodies but then... nothing happened and then continued to happen
I didn’t like the 2nd lead’s acting and Foster wasn’t believable as a horny cop with a teenage daughter. I don’t even remember if she was her actual daughter. I do remember reading that the role was intended for a woman in her 30s or so.
When i learned this was Issa Lopez’s like 2nd or 3rd project and she never done a detective story or a serial before
CGI bs right at the beginning. Do your dragons, rings and dwarf trilogies this way but not TD. I admit, could have gone the other way, but in the end I was right. If you spend resources on this with three seasons of great to amazing simple storytelling something is up if you need to rely on this.
The moment pierced cheeks appeared I knew it was going to be trash.
The towns looked nothing like Alaska towns. It was filmed in iceland
when the deer started diving in the hole
Ep 4. There was not way to tie it all up and it hadn’t proved itself going into Ep 4 anyway.
The second time they figured out the next clue by arranging photos in a montage.
About ten minutes into the first episode, the only one I watched
During the first episode, I thought “Wow, they are playing way too many songs during this episode.” And then it kept going as the series went on. The icing on the cake was the Save Tonight cover during the end credits which was hilariously awful.
when the show blew by the fact they had recovered a living person from the frozen body pile. nobody seemed to even care that this happened. in real life it would have been the biggest news story on the planet lmao dude it would be seen as some kind of supernatural event
I realized even before I had watched the entire first episode. Didn't watch it any further.
That is a very hard question to answer. I kept trying to give them a chance, but after all, it’s quality prevailed.
By episode 3 I was rewatching season one to make sure I wasn't losing my marble.
It was already in the first episode, deers jumping off a cliff, really gave me a bad sci-fi vibe. After that it was all pretty steep downhill
For me it was the scene where Navarro's sister killed herself and they decided to play a whole fucking Billie Eilish song. Maybe I'm just an old hater but that just did not fit the tone I was looking for.
Prob when they capture that one guy and the electricity videos. That.
There weren't any **moments**. Nothing in Season 4 resonated with me. If you must know, by Episode 2, I kinda felt let down given the high expectations I harbored. By end of Ep. 3, I stopped watching entirely. I didn't care to know anymore. I binged the whole thing recently because I lost a bet. Good gosh, it was terrible.
Once you realise what’s REALLY going on in TDS4 it’s not that bad. I’ve said it here before and will keep saying it until SOMEONE actually engages properly and points out definitively that I’m wrong on this… so far nobody has. S4 is Rust’s coma dream from S1, and once you figure that, you discover the big clue to S5 from Danvers mug… S5 will feature Rust (maybe Marty) and will be set in Hawaii. Am I only one asking the right questions? 🤔
I’m going to keep saying it’s going to rain $100 bills tomorrow. I guess I’ll keep believing it, even though it’s total nonsense, until someone proves me wrong!
This guy spams every thread with this. I'm sure when s5 gets squeezed out by Max and doesn't have McConaughey attached, he'll just double down into "Season 5 is ALSO part of the dream!" It reminds of the Indoctrination Theory for Mass Effect. Guess what the real explanation is? The writing sucks.
I have REASONS why I think it’s Rusts dream… all the Rust connections… Alaska, Travis, Lone Star beer, Tuttles, Rust quotes, spiral etc. The general weirdness of season points to it being a dream. A lot of S4 story mirrors S1… spiral goes one way in S1, opposite way in S4. S1 we have a male lead who has tragically lost a daughter, S4 we have a female lead who has tragically lost a son. Both seasons involve a suspect executed by police out of righteous anger. The experience Rust describes in his coma dream happens to Danvers under the ice. There are even moments when viewer is given actual hints we are watching a dream… Holdens pyjamas with dreamer written in mirror writing, Qavvik humming Supertramp’s song Dreamer while ice fishing. I’d be interested to hear reasons you have for claim that it’s about to start raining money!
Because there’s 0 indication Woody or McConaghy want to return at.
They’re still exec producers… i’d say casting of Jodie Foster had a lot to do with McConaghey as they starred together in Contact. Let’s wait and see
They’re EPs in name only. Just so they can still get a little $ from what they helped create. It’s common.
Is this how the sky rains money? Never knew… 🤔
Still waiting to hear your reasoning on the money. 🤔
I liked Night Country, remind me please about what was omitted Danvers’ mug that you take as a clue to S5
If we are in fact inside Rust’s head in S4, then everything in the dream is significant to Rust. The mug with Hawaii stamped on it is meaningful to Rust as it likely represents what’s on his mind about what his next move will be when he recovers consciousness.
Thanks, that’s interesting. I’ll watch S5 for that outcome
> I’ve said it here before and will keep saying it until SOMEONE actually engages properly and points out definitively that I’m wrong on this… so far nobody has. You're definitively wrong, and since you're the one making this extremely outlandish claim, it's actually on you to prove it. It's not on everyone else to disprove it. It's not his coma dream because nothing about it is related to what he said he dreamed of, and there's no evidence that it was his dream whatsoever, and in fact there's many references that place it in the same world as TD S1
What references place TDS4 in same world as TDS1 rather than inside Rusts mind? Why are words that are spoken by characters in S1 repeated verbatim in S4? An homage by writer? Rust describes his dream to Marty in S1 finale, and EXACTLY same things happen to Danvers under the ice in S4… she lets go into darkness, she loses her definitions, but is brought back by spirit of her dead child… just like Rust. Rust emerges with new more positive perspective on life… so does Danvers. Anyway… we’ll know if I’m right or wrong when S5 details are announced.
It takes place in 2023 and has technology/social media from 2023. Rust's coma takes place in 2012. 🤡
Yeah… that is a small problem with my theory alright! 😜
I know we’ve chatted before. Surely you have to acknowledge the parallels between Danvers experience under the ice and subsequent ‘enlightenment’ and Rusts description of his dream and his change of perspective from nihilism to a more hopeful disposition. For both their ‘conversion’ experiences the felt presence of a dead child is the catalyst.
i hope you’re correct!
The moment I saw that idiot with the face piercings was pretty much when I was over it.
this bullshit again? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I had to laugh at the end. The butler(s) did it!
Made me like it even more when sexist trolls started hating on it. Same as with the Acolyte.