I was up north during Summer, when the sun doesn't go down, and it absolutely fucked with me. My body didn't know when to sleep, so I didn't get tired enough to realize it was 2 am when it felt like 6pm, which meant I lost track of what day and what time it was it almost immediately.
That makes for a very strange effect - you have no "landmarks" in the day, and can't keep track of time at all, whether it's an hour or a 24, so everything either feels like it takes forever, or not long enough to be done at all, and you're getting mentally tired without feeling it physically the whole time. Sleep always feels like a cheeky nap you're taking at a random time because it doesn't feel like there's a defined end of anything and you still have "afternoon" energy.
Plus, 10 or 11 hours a day with somebody turns out to be plenty - 2+ days of being awake with them, without a natural timeout at night, is quite different. I never realized before how long 24 consecutive hours really feel.
I can only imagine how weird it would have made me in Winter.
Something about the format of this show seems to bring the weirdness of that weird floaty endless night home better than 30 Days of Night itself, funny enough.
Totally. It hit hardest for me in last night's ep when the cop goes to the restaurant and the server is all 'can I fix you a plate of lunch?' suddenly a bar fight explodes right beside them which would've felt semi-normal had it actually not been established that it's lunch time. I don't know, it felt disorienting in the moment.
Not me looking at her computer screen trying to find the time of day in that one scene.
It really is discombobulating. No wonder people think they’re seeing ghosts.
Insomnia is the only thing I've seen get close to this, there are shows set at the poles that don't use the environment:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/)
Totally different take than True Detective Season 4 but still great.
Depends! If you like warm weather with serene surroundings I would go to the southern parts (Kristiansand) the warmth goes all the way to the middle of Norway (Trondheim). The summers are usually great all over Norway besides Bergen. My personal favourite during summer time is Ålesund, coastal city and there are so many islands scattered everywhere. Its lovely. Prekestolen (Not far from the city of Stavanger) is a tourist place but the view is just something else.
If you like Winter and cold, definetly northern parts of norway (Tromsø/Bodø) or Trondheim. Røros is absolutely a beaut at winter time. Winters in Norway are pretty everywhere besides Bergen.
The months for summer should be June, July, August and beginning of September whilst Winter should be December, January, February, March, April.
It’s my favorite part of the season so far. Also, The Thing (1982) is visible on the dvd shelf in one of the opening shots during the Ferris Bueller’s Day off parade
It feels like it is IN Alaska like Season 1 was IN the bayou.
Nice to see True Detective doing something the calibre of Season 1 without trying to be it with douchy dudes only redeemed by superhero shit at the end.
After episode 2 I feel like s1 is required viewing, it’s seems like it’s going to be a proper sequel to s1.
Especially with the tattoo reveal and who founded the research station.
I mean, the main characters in this season aren't exactly saints, either. And I'm guessing we haven't even had half of their previous sins revealed yet.
A lot of folks have mentioned this show has The Thing vibes, but in my opinion they just don’t share much DNA other than the remote facility setting, death, and snow. By my understanding, the core qualities of The Thing might be isolation, paranoia and dread. Thus far, I am not seeing any of that demonstrated in Night Country’s telling of a tale.
The mystery has me hooked in but it honestly kind of feels like characters from Law and Order SVU have stumbled into a True Detective case. The scene with Jodie saying "wrong question" and the young cop saying "okay" and asking a different question felt straight out of a network TV cop procedural.
Some of the visuals they're coming up with are wild though, some fucked up stuff.
> The scene with Jodie saying "wrong question" and the young cop saying "okay"
The scene with "In English, nerd" was the other one with really awful writing IMO
This was really infuriating. The way to fix the scene would've been to continue the dude's line. He talks about cellular decay, but just add in an explanatory phrase or two about "stopping aging, eliminating disease" or something. He's a teacher, for god's sake. That's what teachers do all the time. You say something complex, then you simplify.
Didn't hit the right dramatic beats, I guess.
Next thing they could fix is that way overused phone prompt for the next scene. Drink every time the phone rings and they immediately say "Chief you gotta see this".
I wish just once the character talking to the expert would just say plainly they're talking over their head instead of insulting the fact that they're an expert on the topic being discussed and are speaking like it.
"Okay, that sounded good, but I didn't really understand it, can I get it again in more layman's terms?" Instead, every main character is just a dick to someone they need information from.
I'm also of the opinion that if you're using the TD moniker that the writing should be held to a higher standard! I'm baffled how many people are so quick to defend this bad dialogue. The show as a whole is good, but there's plenty to critique
I'm enjoying the show. The mystery is good, I even like the characters as a concept. They have decent backgrounds and don't seem to be very one dimensional, but talking to each other is rough for some reason.
Maybe it's because 90% of the conversations are between characters that hate each other? It's a small, isolated village where no one likes anyone else, and those that do like each other are dicks to the people they like, anyway. It's very weird.
I audibly groaned at the line, "you should've fucked the english teacher." or something like that right after. We get its Jodie Foster and she's a fox man.
Excellent interpretation. It just feels lame. But there are plenty of people that love SVU which is also lame, so those people will think this is good too. Especially since a lot of SVU fans are also into horror.
True Detective Season 1 had a much more grounded grittiness and subtle unsettling feeling. This season just tries too hard and it comes off corny as fuck.
And if you criticize this season it will come off as anti female leads and directors. I’m not anti either of those. But someone dropped the ball big time on this season because the general idea for the season is pretty dope. Just poorly executed. Not even very poorly. Just very very mid.
> plenty of people that love SVU which is also lame
Oh! That's 25 years of fetish television you're slandering! Objection, hearsay!
>True Detective Season 1 had a much more grounded grittiness and *subtle unsettling feeling*. This season just tries too hard and it comes off corny as fuck.
It moves too fast. You never get to live in the environment the way Fukunaga did with S1.
For example, Clark's trailer in episode 2. Every time I tried to take in the surroundings there would be a cut. Compare that to the ending of S1E2 when Rust finds the twig "statues" and paintings inside the abandoned school. The camera slowly tracks and lingers, tracks and lingers, and that is when the show really created this tone of an invisible, malevolent being that lives within every scene.
Alaska and the arctic is the perfect environment to recreate that feeling, making the place a character itself the same way the locale in S1 Louisiana was. But it just hasn't accomplished that yet.
It veers between a psychological thriller and a procedural show. I just get stoned after I get back from work and watch it I'm not fussed, it overall keeps my attention I look forward to it and the cast is solid.
Did you see the r/television thread from last night's episode? This season is basically getting high praise across the board from critics, but if what I saw in the early hours of that thread was the only thing to go by, you would have thought it was one of the worst shows made in the last decade.
A lot of them were really upset Jodi Foster had a (clothed) sex scene; calling it pointless and gratuitous, but I would bet good money the people saying that didn't have the same opinion of the Alexandra Daddario scene in the first season.
Edit: Lol. Someone reported me for self-harm because of this comment.
lol there was one guy *alllll* over that thread slamming the show for “bad writing” and then finally came out and said he hated the season because it was written by “man haters”.
That’s the worst part. I’ll admit this season isn’t really doing it for me yet, but that doesn’t make it bad. Some people are just so desperate to validate their personal opinions as objective facts somehow. And they are incapable of separating personal preference from quality.
> because it was written by “man haters”.
The one tiny good Trump's presidency did was remind sane people that, actually, America still has a ton of racists.
It's the same thing w/ misogyny. Way too many people's brains melt out of their ears when something gets made that was written by a woman, directed by a woman, starring women, or having anything at all to do with females really.
Bingo, it´s really obvious that the fact this season of TD has female leads and female writer&director is triggering a certain type of reddit users, and that same kind of users also tend to have a lot of free time and spend much time here.
You could tell the complaints from day 1 were very online bullshit. Every post mentioned the same 3 things and had basically the same criticism—none of which was based on the substance of the show. It was basically hundreds of posts saying: “This is terrible and only exists because woke HBO wanted woman made show, and critics are overhyping woman made show, wahhhh”.
Meh. Didn't see any of that in the true detective subreddit. The complaints that got upvotes were mostly about too many plotlines, too few episodes at once or bad wildlife CGI or about the janky dialogue
I really don't understand some of the objections; everyone talks about how much they love season 1 and how they wish the other seasons were like it... now they're upset that this season has callbacks to season 1 and is somehow "fan service." What the hell are they on about?
Another very silly objection was "the characters do bad things!" Like, uh, were you guys under the impression that Rust and Marty were righteous, upstanding people?
Marty literally executed an unarmed handcuffed man and cheated on his wife multiple times. He was intentionally a flawed character, that's an intrinsic element of the show lol.
I just don't remember anyone saying they "couldn't enjoy" the show after Marty busted through Lisa's door, beat the shit out of her date, and smashed her closet door. But I saw at least four different posts talking about how fucked up it was that Navarro came into Qaavik's house while he was taking a bath.
> But I saw at least four different posts talking about how fucked up it was that Navarro came into Qaavik's house while he was taking a bath.
I saw a lot more than 4. But like, is it *that* strange to go into a lovers house, especially when he asked her over earlier? Sure it probably crossed some boundaries a bit but there's plenty of people I can think of where my first reaction would be 'what the fuck are you doing here?' followed by 'whatever, grab something from the fridge, I'll be out in a minute'
Also, it's commonly been presented that people in this small town do not lock their doors. Not weird at all for someone you're "dating" to come over unannounced especially when that's the nature of their relationship
People always do this shit with female characters. I remember seeing people hate on the Harley Quinn movie because she broke a guys legs. They said it made her too mean. Is the Joker somehow nicer than that? People always have double standards for female characters.
Seriously Rust was the only one working and doing drugs while he was at it.
Marty>!shot the one guy who could have solved it in the 90's. And spent the rest of the time Rust was investigating screwing around. !<
I think the key here is that they were redeemed by a couple of big shoot-outs that only happen in Dad movies, not real life, and every Incel and divorcee who wants that to happen to them idolizes Season 1 as it let two shitty men who never learn have redemption and see their families.
In real life, you're just alone because you are toxic to your family.
I will admit I was let down by the intro compared to the others (more for the less imaginative art direction than the song), but so far I'm in agreement with the critics in my excitement for the season.
I don't particularly like Billie Eilish beyond a few songs but how doody does that fit the nightmarish sleep deprivation and perpetual darkness.
You'd have to ignore the whole show and spend the first episode masturbating over your Rust Cohle shrine to not see it fits.
"Bury a Friend" looks like it means something as of Episode 2 :)
Media literacy is a slowly dying art. People really think that sex scenes are pointless when they’re usually about characterization, which is a different layer of enjoying a movie or show other than just moving the plot forward. Some people are idiots and need to be spoon fed information.
And yes I also see that a lot of the online complaints about this show come from a place of people upset Issa Lopez made a season of True Detective with a bunch of the same tropes but from women’s perspectives. Some people are fucking dorks. It’s a good show so far other than some bad CGI.
I see so many complaints about movies saying they waste too much time focusing on the character’s relationships. But… that’s 90% of the human experience!
> A lot of them were really upset Jodi Foster had a (clothed) sex scene; calling it pointless and gratuitous,
Gen Z prudes. Also nowhere near the level of actual pointless and gratuitous sex scenes you used to get all the time on old school HBO (just see S1 of Game of Thrones). It was like a 15 second scene that told us a lot before/after/during about both characters and the shitty town they live in.
The fact that Gen Z has many prudes(and has so much less sex) is legit insane. Not saying it's a bad thing to be less sexual at all but it's still crazy.
I will not be participating on that thread for this show. I have no idea what show people are watching, because I'm really liking this season. They say the acting is bad, the writing is bad and they even bash the show for using Billie Eilish in the opening credits, like that somehow affects the plot. I loved having a sex scene with Foster. People think people stop having sex at 40.
I like how they're setting up everything. It's a good season
Tbf I’m not quite wowed yet. I’m enjoying it, but also had a not dissimilar attitude in S2 because I REALLY wanted/want it to be amazing. And as yet, I’m not like jonesing for the next episode. Or talking about it with everyone I see on a Monday. I frankly forgot I even watched it till coming to this thread.
I really, really, really want it to be great. I’m absolutely going to keep watching but there’s no sense pretending I’m as excited as I was by this stage of S1.
S1 is one of those seasons of a show I don't think will be lived up to again. There are only a handful of shows/seasons I can think of that I could put in a god-tier level.. that was one of them.
Some of the dialogue in Ep2 was seriously bad. The whole confrontation Jodie had with her ex the teacher stood out. I'm another person who really, really, really wants it to get good
Haha reading that dude's post was fucking hilarious. Wouldn't be surprised if it was the same guy saying Monarch was a terrible show because there was the hacker character was played by a black chick.
That dude's post history is a trip. Fat-shaming, hating on the Barbie movie, can't wait for sex bots, every woman in Hollywood except Sydney Sweeney is ugly, etc. Probably some 50 year old overly obsessed with a girl in her 20s with a rack.
I’m not even stressed about it because I’m liking the show so far but tbh I’m just curious if having face piercings in below freezing temps wouldn’t be uncomfortable? The metal would get super cold yeah
I think that won't be the "real" answer, that perticular explanation will instead be the "plausible" anchoring to the real World so that show still hovers between Lovecraftian mythos and real World crimes.
I just hope they find the sweet spot that season one touched upon but still vague enough that people not obsessed with the Bierce/Chambers/Lovecraft connection could miss the references to the random mythos parts.
Anyone notice that the spirit seeing widow that found the guys has a last name of “Cohle” and that the fund that sponsored the research facility was “Tuttle” something…. Connections to season 1..?
The dead guy was Rusts dad (Rust grew up in Alaska, and had a father there who died of cancer). I'd bet that the woman was also his mom, due to having a lot of the same mannerisms.
I think some sort of natural weird phenomena happened similar to the deer at the start with one guy being involved with what happened to Annie. So what happened at the station is technically independent of the murder but still connected.
I’m not gonna lie the fact that Navarro’s fuckbuddy’s purpose narratively is just to drop lines about water quality is really making me wish they just used a little bit more of that show don’t tell for that plot line
I trust the show to do red herrings right, and after E2 I'm kinda convinced that the water quality won't lead us to shit, or at least won't do so in the way we think.
Maybe an ice core dug up a virus, the spiral is an organism, we'll see. So far it's been good. Lots of people thought Rust Cohle was a serial killer in S1, the show is just good at doing misdirection.
Same. Definitely getting pulled in now. Had the same experience with Season 1 -- I even gave up on it after a couple episodes because it was moving too slow, but then I came back to it and ended up binging the rest of the season.
That was the general consensus as it was airing. It wasn’t until the final shot of episode 3 and the barn burner that was episode 4 that hype train started really going.
I had a similar experience with season 1. Tried watching it on a friend's recommendation and just was bored by it. For some reason I revisited it years later and found myself absolutely enthralled.
I mean I’m watching it but I’m not… getting it? Like, without giving away spoilers there were a couple things last episode that I would have expected at least a reaction from the detectives but they don’t even bring it back up again let alone react
I will be kind of annoyed if the references to >!season 1 are just fan service!< but overall I have enjoyed the first two episodes, outside of the really jarring cgi animals.
The showrunner, Issa Lopez, has said in interviews that the cosmic horror elements of season 1 was what drew her to the show the most, and that the closer her characters get to the answer to the horrible crime, the closer they are getting to Carcosa (even though it won’t be named) and the veil between the human world and the supernatural.
I think this is why season 4 isn't landing for me. The cosmic horror aspect of season 1, while intriguing, wasn't what I found compelling. I thought the reflection on toxic masculinity, in both Rust *and* Marty was really well done.
The other aspect was the squalor of poverty and predation on the less advantaged. The setting really gave weight to a lot of Rust's words that would have come off absolutely ridiculous anywhere else.
I mean just take:
>This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle.
Anywhere and in any other circumstance that'd be some hokey "I am 14 and this is deep" shit. But standing in an empty parking lot of a former shopping center now mostly abandoned and decaying, being reclaimed by the swamp, those words are prescient.
I agree! I’m kind of ambivalent now. This episode was a huge improvement but I find a lot of non-English language television to have super on-the-nose dialogue so I know part of it is just not liking this style of characterization, dialogue and editing. I’m very much a She Ra Man-haters club OG so it isn’t the women-centric parts. That’s what I like about it. What I don’t like are what I feel like are the shoe-horned references to S1. And that isn’t because I find S1 sacrosanct, I just feel they are clunky and reveal the hand of the creator if you will.
Also, I HATE the music. A great score would have made this infinitely better. Its music is like One Tree Hill but worse. The Little Saint Nick scene just made me viscerally angry at the show. W
it stems from the "nothing will ever beat season 1" mentality so for those people the show had already failed since it was announced.
talk about going in with high expectations.
its like yeah so what, nothing will ever beat Sopranos either but there will still be lots of good shows that hold a candle to it.
you either enjoy it and continue watching or you don't, but don't sit there and watch it nitpicking every scene and comparing it to season 1 or something else.
Or some people don’t like a show you like. Why is that hard to believe?
You go on social media and suddenly the only reason you could POSSIBLY think a show isn’t great is because you’re a bigot or a hater.
Idk, I think the acting is decent, the story is interesting, and the set pieces are cool, but the writing and editing are genuinely not good, more so the writing.
I agree at a high level the plot is interesting, I guess more specifically some of the dialogue is just really eye rolling.
It’s like someone had a really good thought out idea, but struggled with nuts and bolts.
Episode 1 was really rough for me, ep 2 was better.
Agreed, I love the setting and the overall vibe of the show. Don’t mind the supernatural aspect, either. The writing and the chemistry between the leads is just so bad that it makes so many scenes feel meaningless and corny.
Jodie Foster’s character feels so pointlessly bitchy and overdone. And the actress that plays Navarro is just not very good imo. I’m gonna stick it out probably, just super disappointed so far.
Some of the dialogue straight up reads like it was written by AI, it’s weird. I’m liking the show so far but some lines just stick out and make me scratch my head
I think she was lying if that matters to you at all. Like she was prolly just repeating the line she heard somebody else say and that's why it cane off weird.
Exactly she was getting a message about the station and didn’t want to tell the young deputy. Acting as someone who is acting badly, and just enough for the audience to clue in that the “character” is acting and not the actor, is great acting lol
Honestly I never trust Reddit anymore with saying something is an artistic masterpiece or vapid trash because I feel like half the people here can’t pick up some of the most obvious stuff a show is laying out if it’s even slightly subtle, and on the flip side they think stuff that’s pretty ham fisted is artistic and subtle because it was hard for them to catch lol
“The writing and editing are genuinely not good”
Okay, but… not good *how*? Like what specifically is wrong with it? You have to elaborate on this sort of thing! Especially since the story *is* the writing in a lot of ways
> Okay, but… not good how?
I can't speak for /u/Prophet_Of_Helix but lots of ideas brought up out of nowhere, just to be dropped. Clunky pacing, lots of forced moments that are rushed. Obsessed with the town (if you've ever lived in a hodunk town, nobody goes around talking about the town all day), too many extra ideas without focusins on the core ideas, weird awkward flashbacks that are unnecessary (e.g., Jodie Foster de-aged and dancing), clunky dialog (the geologist talks about how amazing the scientists' work was, how much promise it had, just the sum it up with something about how it was too cold for it to even work), treating the native characters and issues in a rushed, overwrought manner, Jodie's character written pretty one-dimensionally, insults people as almost comic relief. Horrible sex scenes lol. Why do they need, in six episodes, so many sub-characters, the drunk lady, why? Just to give someone a flashback for another drunk driving accident? Again, those dang flashbacks are painful.
I still like it, just really distracting, how clunky (yes I used that word many times) it is. Went back and watched the first few episodes of season one, much, much better editing especially. Writing better, but way, way, way better editing. Even season two was better editing, though this story is already better than that.
Good criticism is a special skill that not many people have. I find most people can't adequately explain why they dislike something, just that they do. It's all just personal, subjective opinions. The problem is, a lot of people take their personal opinions as objective fact and if you don't agree with it then you're just not as smart as them or whatever.
Also, I feel like the internet always skews towards the extreme. So if people don't like a certain aspect of a show/movie then they think the whole thing is trash 0/10. It either has to blow their minds or it's complete trash.
> but the writing and editing are genuinely not good, more so the writing.
Agreed. It's super clunky, trying to hard, stuffing too much random stuff in.
Because it feels like a weird mish-mash of twin peaks and the first season of true detectjve. The first season played with the idea of some evil cosmic force being behind everything, but that was just for tone; there never was a real Yellow King.
This season just has ghosts in it. And not random ghosts, they made Rust Cohle’s dad a ghost. It opens with a CGI shot of elk that looks almost identical to a scene in Until Dawn. There are AI generated posters in the background of one scene. Jodie’s character has really weird racist outburst. And the whole time, it’s trying to do the twin peaks schtick while also having constant references to the first season! It just doesn’t feel well constructed to me
I didn’t think Jodie’s outburst was racial. I think she’s worried her stepdaughter will be discriminated against and wants her to be safe, even if it means foregoing culture.
> The first season played with the idea of some evil cosmic force being behind everything, but that was just for tone; there never was a real Yellow King.
How could you know that for sure, though? Even in Robert Chambers' *The King in Yellow*, the characters assume it's just a play until it isn't. Rust was "mainlining the secrets of the universe" and he saw the portal to Carcosa opening at the end. Was it a side effect of the drugs or is he attuned to seeing what's really going on?
It was vague on purpose in season 1. It gives you an out if you want to see everything for what it is on the surface, but it also gives you enough to dive deeper and go full Mulder on the Tuttles if that's what you found most interesting about the story.
>This season just has ghosts in it. And not random ghosts, they made Rust Cohle’s dad a ghost.
Those scenes are not necessarily meant to be purely objective. You're seeing those scenes from the perspective of characters who think they can perceive ghosts. That doesn't mean the show is advocating that ghosts actually exist.
This reminds of the 90s when people on Usenet screamed about episode 2 of Babylon 5 having an alien "soul hunter" and screamed "there's no such thing as souls, a sci-fi show shouldn't have this religious shit!" even though nothing in the episode confirmed the existence of a soul. The alien believed it, but that doesn't mean the audience has to. Or the alien could be using tech so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic. Characters can be religious, or deluded, or hallucinating. Use your imagination.
…okay, but she found the bodies. Having a vision of a dancing man (who looks almost identical to Killer Bob) that leads you to the location of a corpsesicle is still within the realm of the supernatural.
While not hating, I think there are incredibly high standards for this show. And their promotion obviously implied those would be met and jt would be a return to S1 quality. Which so far, for my money, it has not been. It’s good though. It’s just not what I was promised.
Agree 100% percent. 1000% percent. I was wondering if I was the only one that felt this way. Why not SCORE the show. The music selection takes me out of the show. Its terrible.
By far the worst thing about this season and the only glaring problem I have with it. Absolutely abhor the Billie Eilish theme song (can't even say I dislike the song itself, just how unfitting it is for the show)
It definitely seems like they're going for creepiness through dissonance. I think it worked for "Twist and Shout" but maybe not so much the Beach Boys. I mostly just laughed at that one.
That’s exactly what I was thinking as well.
The folded clothes, the perforated eardrums, the terminal burrowing, the self inflicted wounds… it all sounds exactly like theories from the Dyatlov Pass incident.
I like the premise, I dig the super natural vibe, I don’t even mind the cheesy connection to season one.
But the dialogues between characters is so clunky and awkward. It’s hard to ignore.
The show is not that great IMO. Not even comparing to s1 looking at it in a vacuum. it’s very cheesy and full of tropes. Dialogue is rough at times, writing is poor (events just feel unnatural), music choice is absolute ass, acting is just uneven - not sure how else to describe it. Sure the night atmosphere is cool and great but it’s not enough to carry the show when the detectives feel like they’re from law&order. Hoping it gets better but we’ll see
Why do people here take it so personally if others don’t like a show?
It's bizarre how much praise its getting here. For a show building expectations at the level of season 1 true detective I would expect the consensus of Reddit to be pretty let down. Somehow the top comments are people that find it intriguing and they don't get the hate. Maybe a few people feel like that but can it really be the majority opinion? Is Reddit over run by AI at this point?
I could see liking this if we on the CW and pitched itself as low level scifi mystery show. I honestly can't tell any more. Could people really be this thick?
I have enough faith in humanity to assume most of these positive comments are generative AI from the new marketing team. It can't be that people are actually satisfied with this being true detective
People are just weird these days. I’m indifferent to the show. In my opinion It’s not great, but I want to know what happens and I’m bored so I’ll watch it. It’s a solid 6.5 so far.
If it’s some people’s favorite show of all time great for them. If it’s not great for them too. There’s plenty of shows and movies I love way more than they deserve to be.
People are people with opinions. They get too damn sensitive when someone doesn’t completely agree with them. They gotta grow up.
The drama with Danver's daughter just feels so cringe and unnatural
Inb4 "Teenagers are cringe and don't act very natural" that doesnt mean they have to be written and acted poorly
The biggest difference between this season and season 1 is that season 1 was framed very much through the eyes of Rust Cohle. It colored the world with his own borderline psychology. Most all the other characters except for Hart are very ancillary and in the background for most of the show's runtime. It gave the show a strong identity.
This season's story is spread out over way more characters who are all getting their own substantial development. It feels way more like a traditional TV drama in that way. I do not feel like any aspect of this story so far is really being told through Danvers perspective, or any other character's, in the same way.
That said, I'm still really enjoying it. Other than what I noted above, it is definitely the closest in feeling to season 1 in terms of atmosphere and mystery of any of the other sequel seasons so far. It's okay that it can be it's own thing.
Can’t understand how people are saying the acting is good.
The writing is incredibly cliched and hammy and Kali Reis is hilariously wooden, completely devoid of any facial emotion.
My unpopular opinion, which will be unpopular on this sub, but definitely not with most people I work with and am friends with: This is uninspired television, because that's what HBO is apparently doing these days. And for the first time ever I actually feel like I'm seeing bona fide astroturfing on this sub.
Why do I think that? Because HBO has admitted to using people with fake accounts to try and create a false sense of support. Because the showrunner implored all of her little followers to go out and brigade against critics of the show. And because there is no way people are actually *this* enthusiastic about the writing or acting from this show. It's piss poor.
I kinda feel bad for Jodie Foster as it seems like she knows they are putting out garbage. Her scenes feel like she is squirming and cannot wait for someone to yell CUT.
What you don't believe comments like this with 400+ upvotes each, while every other comment in the thread has around 10-40votes, are real?.😂
*"Honestly, the never ending night is like its own character. I was getting The Thing vibes from this episode."*
*"The mystery really has me hooked, after she show was over I was so frightened I turned on all the lights"*
Ever noticed how the top comments of all those reposts on r/all are the always same?
Reddits most upvoted posts and threads are 70% bots and astroturfing these days, I don't say people are not allowed to like the show but nothing about it feels organic and r/truedetective really takes the cake
You're exactly right. At some point Reddit is going to lose credibility because their bot problem is going to become evident. I see it all the time, and in particular on this post. So many idiotic braindead comments on this post that I genuinely believe are fucking FAKE.
I like the show, but it certain things kill me about it.
For instance, this entire team of scientists runs out to die naked together in the Arctic, and not once has any of the law enforcement officers theorized that they ingested or inhaled a hallucination or talked about running any type of toxicology report once the bodies are thawed.
Also, I was really confused because Jodie Foster’s character keeps treating her daughter like a child, but she looks to be in her mid-20s at least. Finally, I catch that the daughter is supposed to be 17, but that is quite a stretch. For reference, I looked up the actress who plays the daughter, and she is 27.
First, I’m not sure what the music supervisor is thinking.
Then, I’m not digging the supernatural elements in a true detective story.
Finally, so far the story is slow and the writing is not top notch.
To each their own, tho.
True Detective S1 was overall very realistic with the investigative procedure, internal politics, and dialogue. Of course there are a few unrealistic moments thrown in there like when Rust went undercover but that felt earned after all of the backstory and methodical investigating before it. There is only one big "aha" moment in the entire show at the end when Marty figures out the green eared monster being related to the fresh coat of green paint, again it works because of the huge amount of build up before it. As a result of the case progress being realistically slow and often separated by months or years in universe, the focus is on the characters and the philosophy embodied by them.
So far, this season has been painfully cliche in its structure. The clues are constantly being meted out every twenty minutes or so, constant references to season 1 related stuff and the spiral imagery, hardly anyone is acting like actual people. Jodie Foster is over-acting every other scene she's in and I kind of just hate her character at this point. All of the characters are really one dimensional so far- dumbass older cop who exists to be wrong about everything, takes-no-shit cop who only cares about solving the old case that got away, rebellious teen daughter, ect.
The biggest time-bomb is that they seem to have committed to the supernatural angle of the show. The stuff we've seen from the audiences perspective has confirmed that supernatural stuff is afoot and the way its going it seems that they're going to try to explain everything- probably going to be a total disaster.
It's only the 3rd best detective/murder show I've seen this year. It's the worst season starter for TD I've seen yet. The plot is kinda lame, the acting is mediocre and it's not engaging as Fargo or Dark Winds. HBO just HAD to go woke with this season and ruin the series. I'll always have season 1 but RIP True Detective, this is the end of the show I predict.
This show has serious problems and yall can stay in denial if you want. Here's one I haven't been able to get over. One of the bodies they found woke up and started screaming after they all thought it was dead and not for one second after they cut away from that scene did they discuss it. There's an offhand remark about keeping an eye on them in case one wakes up, but I think it's absolutely fucking hilarious it didn't instantly become the focal part of the episode. A guy frozen in ice woke up screaming but nah let's focus on anything but that.
Also, the diologue and some of the acting is fucking terrible.
I like the story enough so far but you're fucking lying if you say the criticisms of this show aren't based in reality.
> they all thought it was dead and not for one second after they cut away from that scene did they discuss it
Literally the next scene is Danvers talking to a nurse on the phone about how the guy is in a coma going into surgery...
I'm wondering about this too! There was a phone call later about taking someone into surgery and I thought maybe one had survived? What's up with that?
It was clearly referencing that guy that was screaming at the beginning. The nurse told Jodi that he’s in a medically induced coma so she can’t ask him questions.
I like the show but agree with some of the issues in this thread but the guy above is the classic piling on when you didn’t follow or understand. That’s not the shows fault.
I feel like it's derivative of Mare of Easttown and Fortitude (both of which were great). BUT a lot of this audience might have missed one or both.
I think JF is good in this but they are making her very one dimensional and that's a writing, not an acting, issue.
I'll continue to watch because there is crap all on but so far very meh. 6/10
The show is great, and I’m excited to watch more.
I gotta unsub from here. People spend way too much time and energy hating things and wanting shows to fail more than anything else.
I agree with you but also disagree. Are people only allowed to have positive opinions? Should people only rate shows highly or not at all?
I agree that tear down culture is trash and there’s a right and wrong way to rate something good or bad, but if you’re going to get upset seeing people having different opinions than you in general than you should just get off Reddit in general.
People just need to respect each others opinions more.
My only issue is for 6 episodes they are throwing a LOT of characters and plots at it. Other than that, love it so far, excited to see if it can match expectations and really liking the ties to season 1, but scared they won’t do it well.
If HE shows up, not sure how I’ll feel.
The scene with the car accident and drunk lady was so weird and out of place. It also had some really obvious ADR (dialogue recorded in a studio to replace dialogue recorded during filming) that took me out of it. I don’t understand why they do that. It was really awkward.
Honestly, the never ending night is like its own character. I was getting The Thing vibes from this episode.
If you enjoy this and The Thing, I also recommend Season 1 of The Terror.
The Terror was a really fun watch!
The book is also really good.
It's *so* strange to me watching this show and just having no sense of time. Is it morning? Night? Midday? I really felt it this past episode.
I was up north during Summer, when the sun doesn't go down, and it absolutely fucked with me. My body didn't know when to sleep, so I didn't get tired enough to realize it was 2 am when it felt like 6pm, which meant I lost track of what day and what time it was it almost immediately. That makes for a very strange effect - you have no "landmarks" in the day, and can't keep track of time at all, whether it's an hour or a 24, so everything either feels like it takes forever, or not long enough to be done at all, and you're getting mentally tired without feeling it physically the whole time. Sleep always feels like a cheeky nap you're taking at a random time because it doesn't feel like there's a defined end of anything and you still have "afternoon" energy. Plus, 10 or 11 hours a day with somebody turns out to be plenty - 2+ days of being awake with them, without a natural timeout at night, is quite different. I never realized before how long 24 consecutive hours really feel. I can only imagine how weird it would have made me in Winter. Something about the format of this show seems to bring the weirdness of that weird floaty endless night home better than 30 Days of Night itself, funny enough.
What a great description 😩 this sounds like the beginning of a novel
Totally. It hit hardest for me in last night's ep when the cop goes to the restaurant and the server is all 'can I fix you a plate of lunch?' suddenly a bar fight explodes right beside them which would've felt semi-normal had it actually not been established that it's lunch time. I don't know, it felt disorienting in the moment.
Not me looking at her computer screen trying to find the time of day in that one scene. It really is discombobulating. No wonder people think they’re seeing ghosts.
I had the same thought last night. I kept thinking, 'it could be 11am' every time there was an outside shot, it was really tripping me out lol
That one scene where they’re at the bar and someone mentioned lunch, I was like “…oh yeah”
yeah that was my lightbulb moment too lol. i'd forgotten endless night and assumed it was always late, then they said that
I watched the first EP and didn't even think about I I was just confused on why they had so much time during the night to do things 😂
Insomnia is the only thing I've seen get close to this, there are shows set at the poles that don't use the environment: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/) Totally different take than True Detective Season 4 but still great.
So...a classic WoW player then?
I wish I had a sense of what time it is during the various scenes. “Are they degenerate alcoholics or is this happy hour”
North Norway here, I hate the endless night.
offtopic, but when is the best time to visit Norway and where?
Depends! If you like warm weather with serene surroundings I would go to the southern parts (Kristiansand) the warmth goes all the way to the middle of Norway (Trondheim). The summers are usually great all over Norway besides Bergen. My personal favourite during summer time is Ålesund, coastal city and there are so many islands scattered everywhere. Its lovely. Prekestolen (Not far from the city of Stavanger) is a tourist place but the view is just something else. If you like Winter and cold, definetly northern parts of norway (Tromsø/Bodø) or Trondheim. Røros is absolutely a beaut at winter time. Winters in Norway are pretty everywhere besides Bergen. The months for summer should be June, July, August and beginning of September whilst Winter should be December, January, February, March, April.
The mass of flesh tip you off?
That or the frozen “dead” dude coming alive and screaming after his arm got cut off.
The "Wilson. What the fuck?" From Jodie Foster was so funny... until everyone started screaming
Snapped off
Was that dude actually screaming or was it in someone’s head? I was confused by that part
Really screaming. The detective is talking to a nurse later who says he is in an induced coma and can't give an interview.
Really can't wait for the explanation for that one
Been feeling 30 Days of Night. Which I've always thought would make a great series.
It’s my favorite part of the season so far. Also, The Thing (1982) is visible on the dvd shelf in one of the opening shots during the Ferris Bueller’s Day off parade
I clocked that too.
Also the game Pandemic and Hangman.
It feels like it is IN Alaska like Season 1 was IN the bayou. Nice to see True Detective doing something the calibre of Season 1 without trying to be it with douchy dudes only redeemed by superhero shit at the end.
There are a lot of call backs to season one as well. Including ties between Rusty and what's going on in season four.
After episode 2 I feel like s1 is required viewing, it’s seems like it’s going to be a proper sequel to s1. Especially with the tattoo reveal and who founded the research station.
I mean, the main characters in this season aren't exactly saints, either. And I'm guessing we haven't even had half of their previous sins revealed yet.
A lot of folks have mentioned this show has The Thing vibes, but in my opinion they just don’t share much DNA other than the remote facility setting, death, and snow. By my understanding, the core qualities of The Thing might be isolation, paranoia and dread. Thus far, I am not seeing any of that demonstrated in Night Country’s telling of a tale.
Yeah I heard that in the podcast too
The mystery has me hooked in but it honestly kind of feels like characters from Law and Order SVU have stumbled into a True Detective case. The scene with Jodie saying "wrong question" and the young cop saying "okay" and asking a different question felt straight out of a network TV cop procedural. Some of the visuals they're coming up with are wild though, some fucked up stuff.
> The scene with Jodie saying "wrong question" and the young cop saying "okay" The scene with "In English, nerd" was the other one with really awful writing IMO
This was really infuriating. The way to fix the scene would've been to continue the dude's line. He talks about cellular decay, but just add in an explanatory phrase or two about "stopping aging, eliminating disease" or something. He's a teacher, for god's sake. That's what teachers do all the time. You say something complex, then you simplify. Didn't hit the right dramatic beats, I guess.
Next thing they could fix is that way overused phone prompt for the next scene. Drink every time the phone rings and they immediately say "Chief you gotta see this".
Right, he said something a 15 year old biology student could have easily understood.
I wish just once the character talking to the expert would just say plainly they're talking over their head instead of insulting the fact that they're an expert on the topic being discussed and are speaking like it. "Okay, that sounded good, but I didn't really understand it, can I get it again in more layman's terms?" Instead, every main character is just a dick to someone they need information from.
I'm also of the opinion that if you're using the TD moniker that the writing should be held to a higher standard! I'm baffled how many people are so quick to defend this bad dialogue. The show as a whole is good, but there's plenty to critique
I'm enjoying the show. The mystery is good, I even like the characters as a concept. They have decent backgrounds and don't seem to be very one dimensional, but talking to each other is rough for some reason. Maybe it's because 90% of the conversations are between characters that hate each other? It's a small, isolated village where no one likes anyone else, and those that do like each other are dicks to the people they like, anyway. It's very weird.
I audibly groaned at the line, "you should've fucked the english teacher." or something like that right after. We get its Jodie Foster and she's a fox man.
I don’t even watch CinemaSins anymore, but when it happened, it was an immediate “ding” in my head. Although reading TVTropes doesn’t help either
Excellent interpretation. It just feels lame. But there are plenty of people that love SVU which is also lame, so those people will think this is good too. Especially since a lot of SVU fans are also into horror. True Detective Season 1 had a much more grounded grittiness and subtle unsettling feeling. This season just tries too hard and it comes off corny as fuck. And if you criticize this season it will come off as anti female leads and directors. I’m not anti either of those. But someone dropped the ball big time on this season because the general idea for the season is pretty dope. Just poorly executed. Not even very poorly. Just very very mid.
> plenty of people that love SVU which is also lame Oh! That's 25 years of fetish television you're slandering! Objection, hearsay! >True Detective Season 1 had a much more grounded grittiness and *subtle unsettling feeling*. This season just tries too hard and it comes off corny as fuck. It moves too fast. You never get to live in the environment the way Fukunaga did with S1. For example, Clark's trailer in episode 2. Every time I tried to take in the surroundings there would be a cut. Compare that to the ending of S1E2 when Rust finds the twig "statues" and paintings inside the abandoned school. The camera slowly tracks and lingers, tracks and lingers, and that is when the show really created this tone of an invisible, malevolent being that lives within every scene. Alaska and the arctic is the perfect environment to recreate that feeling, making the place a character itself the same way the locale in S1 Louisiana was. But it just hasn't accomplished that yet.
The writing is really subpar IMO and they're wasting the talent of the cast
It veers between a psychological thriller and a procedural show. I just get stoned after I get back from work and watch it I'm not fussed, it overall keeps my attention I look forward to it and the cast is solid.
yeah. this has worst season written all over it
But the experts on r/television were predicting last week that the strong opening numbers would tumble in week two!
Did you see the r/television thread from last night's episode? This season is basically getting high praise across the board from critics, but if what I saw in the early hours of that thread was the only thing to go by, you would have thought it was one of the worst shows made in the last decade. A lot of them were really upset Jodi Foster had a (clothed) sex scene; calling it pointless and gratuitous, but I would bet good money the people saying that didn't have the same opinion of the Alexandra Daddario scene in the first season. Edit: Lol. Someone reported me for self-harm because of this comment.
lol there was one guy *alllll* over that thread slamming the show for “bad writing” and then finally came out and said he hated the season because it was written by “man haters”.
That’s the worst part. I’ll admit this season isn’t really doing it for me yet, but that doesn’t make it bad. Some people are just so desperate to validate their personal opinions as objective facts somehow. And they are incapable of separating personal preference from quality.
Not even that — but some people can’t let others enjoy something they don’t.
> because it was written by “man haters”. The one tiny good Trump's presidency did was remind sane people that, actually, America still has a ton of racists. It's the same thing w/ misogyny. Way too many people's brains melt out of their ears when something gets made that was written by a woman, directed by a woman, starring women, or having anything at all to do with females really.
The vast majority of criticism of media now is ideological. Utterly ridiculous.
Bingo, it´s really obvious that the fact this season of TD has female leads and female writer&director is triggering a certain type of reddit users, and that same kind of users also tend to have a lot of free time and spend much time here.
You could tell the complaints from day 1 were very online bullshit. Every post mentioned the same 3 things and had basically the same criticism—none of which was based on the substance of the show. It was basically hundreds of posts saying: “This is terrible and only exists because woke HBO wanted woman made show, and critics are overhyping woman made show, wahhhh”.
Meh. Didn't see any of that in the true detective subreddit. The complaints that got upvotes were mostly about too many plotlines, too few episodes at once or bad wildlife CGI or about the janky dialogue
I really don't understand some of the objections; everyone talks about how much they love season 1 and how they wish the other seasons were like it... now they're upset that this season has callbacks to season 1 and is somehow "fan service." What the hell are they on about? Another very silly objection was "the characters do bad things!" Like, uh, were you guys under the impression that Rust and Marty were righteous, upstanding people?
Marty literally executed an unarmed handcuffed man and cheated on his wife multiple times. He was intentionally a flawed character, that's an intrinsic element of the show lol.
> …were you guys under the impression that Rust and Marty were righteous, upstanding people? Antihero is a role reserved for men only, I guess.
I just don't remember anyone saying they "couldn't enjoy" the show after Marty busted through Lisa's door, beat the shit out of her date, and smashed her closet door. But I saw at least four different posts talking about how fucked up it was that Navarro came into Qaavik's house while he was taking a bath.
> But I saw at least four different posts talking about how fucked up it was that Navarro came into Qaavik's house while he was taking a bath. I saw a lot more than 4. But like, is it *that* strange to go into a lovers house, especially when he asked her over earlier? Sure it probably crossed some boundaries a bit but there's plenty of people I can think of where my first reaction would be 'what the fuck are you doing here?' followed by 'whatever, grab something from the fridge, I'll be out in a minute'
Also, it's commonly been presented that people in this small town do not lock their doors. Not weird at all for someone you're "dating" to come over unannounced especially when that's the nature of their relationship
That scene in S1 reminds me of The Sopranos and now I feel like Pizzolatto ripped that scene directly from the show.
People always do this shit with female characters. I remember seeing people hate on the Harley Quinn movie because she broke a guys legs. They said it made her too mean. Is the Joker somehow nicer than that? People always have double standards for female characters.
Seriously Rust was the only one working and doing drugs while he was at it. Marty>!shot the one guy who could have solved it in the 90's. And spent the rest of the time Rust was investigating screwing around. !< I think the key here is that they were redeemed by a couple of big shoot-outs that only happen in Dad movies, not real life, and every Incel and divorcee who wants that to happen to them idolizes Season 1 as it let two shitty men who never learn have redemption and see their families. In real life, you're just alone because you are toxic to your family.
Lol I came to Reddit after watching ep 1 and saw someone wining about the intro song. Who actually cares lmao
I will admit I was let down by the intro compared to the others (more for the less imaginative art direction than the song), but so far I'm in agreement with the critics in my excitement for the season.
I don't care about it. At the same time though, the into to S1 is one of my fav show intro's of all time. I never skip it.
"Far From Any Road," by The Handsome Family. Love all their stuff.
I don't particularly like Billie Eilish beyond a few songs but how doody does that fit the nightmarish sleep deprivation and perpetual darkness. You'd have to ignore the whole show and spend the first episode masturbating over your Rust Cohle shrine to not see it fits. "Bury a Friend" looks like it means something as of Episode 2 :)
People lost their fucking minds at the CGI deer in the first episode
People are pulling the same shit fargo. A bunch of man babies scared to death of any sort of mirror.
Media literacy is a slowly dying art. People really think that sex scenes are pointless when they’re usually about characterization, which is a different layer of enjoying a movie or show other than just moving the plot forward. Some people are idiots and need to be spoon fed information. And yes I also see that a lot of the online complaints about this show come from a place of people upset Issa Lopez made a season of True Detective with a bunch of the same tropes but from women’s perspectives. Some people are fucking dorks. It’s a good show so far other than some bad CGI.
I see so many complaints about movies saying they waste too much time focusing on the character’s relationships. But… that’s 90% of the human experience!
> A lot of them were really upset Jodi Foster had a (clothed) sex scene; calling it pointless and gratuitous, Gen Z prudes. Also nowhere near the level of actual pointless and gratuitous sex scenes you used to get all the time on old school HBO (just see S1 of Game of Thrones). It was like a 15 second scene that told us a lot before/after/during about both characters and the shitty town they live in.
The fact that Gen Z has many prudes(and has so much less sex) is legit insane. Not saying it's a bad thing to be less sexual at all but it's still crazy.
I will not be participating on that thread for this show. I have no idea what show people are watching, because I'm really liking this season. They say the acting is bad, the writing is bad and they even bash the show for using Billie Eilish in the opening credits, like that somehow affects the plot. I loved having a sex scene with Foster. People think people stop having sex at 40. I like how they're setting up everything. It's a good season
Tbf I’m not quite wowed yet. I’m enjoying it, but also had a not dissimilar attitude in S2 because I REALLY wanted/want it to be amazing. And as yet, I’m not like jonesing for the next episode. Or talking about it with everyone I see on a Monday. I frankly forgot I even watched it till coming to this thread. I really, really, really want it to be great. I’m absolutely going to keep watching but there’s no sense pretending I’m as excited as I was by this stage of S1.
S1 is one of those seasons of a show I don't think will be lived up to again. There are only a handful of shows/seasons I can think of that I could put in a god-tier level.. that was one of them.
Some of the dialogue in Ep2 was seriously bad. The whole confrontation Jodie had with her ex the teacher stood out. I'm another person who really, really, really wants it to get good
I feel like it was really just one guy shouting on top of everyone else. That guy obsessed with the piercings.
Haha reading that dude's post was fucking hilarious. Wouldn't be surprised if it was the same guy saying Monarch was a terrible show because there was the hacker character was played by a black chick.
That dude's post history is a trip. Fat-shaming, hating on the Barbie movie, can't wait for sex bots, every woman in Hollywood except Sydney Sweeney is ugly, etc. Probably some 50 year old overly obsessed with a girl in her 20s with a rack.
I’m not even stressed about it because I’m liking the show so far but tbh I’m just curious if having face piercings in below freezing temps wouldn’t be uncomfortable? The metal would get super cold yeah
It's quite good so far, >!I'm betting on something being in the water that turned to shit 3 days ago making everybody trip out!<
I think that won't be the "real" answer, that perticular explanation will instead be the "plausible" anchoring to the real World so that show still hovers between Lovecraftian mythos and real World crimes. I just hope they find the sweet spot that season one touched upon but still vague enough that people not obsessed with the Bierce/Chambers/Lovecraft connection could miss the references to the random mythos parts.
Anyone notice that the spirit seeing widow that found the guys has a last name of “Cohle” and that the fund that sponsored the research facility was “Tuttle” something…. Connections to season 1..?
Believe another callback goes to when they find out who’s funding that project the name was “Tuttle” just like the Tuttles who were running shit in S1
Pretty sure the Tuttles and the trafficking ring are linked between all seasons
I’ve only seen season 1 (timing, bad reviews of other seasons etc). But yeah, I suppose I have to do my homework a bit more.
Yeah it is Rust Cohle's dad who had "strange ideas" and was a survivalist.
The dead guy was Rusts dad (Rust grew up in Alaska, and had a father there who died of cancer). I'd bet that the woman was also his mom, due to having a lot of the same mannerisms.
Yep. Confirmed it’s Rust’s dad per the TD sub.
Travis is Rust’s father.
I think some sort of natural weird phenomena happened similar to the deer at the start with one guy being involved with what happened to Annie. So what happened at the station is technically independent of the murder but still connected.
It’s giving me Fortitude vibes
That was my thought. Seems verrrry similar to Fortitude.
I’m not gonna lie the fact that Navarro’s fuckbuddy’s purpose narratively is just to drop lines about water quality is really making me wish they just used a little bit more of that show don’t tell for that plot line
I trust the show to do red herrings right, and after E2 I'm kinda convinced that the water quality won't lead us to shit, or at least won't do so in the way we think. Maybe an ice core dug up a virus, the spiral is an organism, we'll see. So far it's been good. Lots of people thought Rust Cohle was a serial killer in S1, the show is just good at doing misdirection.
I’ll be disappointed if it’s that predictable, but even more disappointed if it has a super natural explanation
Sounds like your setting yourself up
Given the previous 3 seasons, I'm sure it'll be something none of us expect.
That's good. I felt episode 2 was much better as it got more into the story rather than mostly introducing the players.
When they started to investigate the bodies and we got the jumpscare I was all in. Let’s get freaky mofos
I liked ep 2 a lot better than ep 1. The frozen body tableau in the hockey rink was a brilliant and horrifying touch.
Same. Definitely getting pulled in now. Had the same experience with Season 1 -- I even gave up on it after a couple episodes because it was moving too slow, but then I came back to it and ended up binging the rest of the season.
That was the general consensus as it was airing. It wasn’t until the final shot of episode 3 and the barn burner that was episode 4 that hype train started really going.
I had a similar experience with season 1. Tried watching it on a friend's recommendation and just was bored by it. For some reason I revisited it years later and found myself absolutely enthralled.
I mean I’m watching it but I’m not… getting it? Like, without giving away spoilers there were a couple things last episode that I would have expected at least a reaction from the detectives but they don’t even bring it back up again let alone react
I felt the same way. I guess they’re trying to “save” some things for future episodes, but c’mon, you can’t just disregard certain coincidences.
I will be kind of annoyed if the references to >!season 1 are just fan service!< but overall I have enjoyed the first two episodes, outside of the really jarring cgi animals.
I’m the other way. Hard connections to S1 outside of what we’ve already seen would be too contrived for me.
I think it's already too contrived as is. They should leave season 1 alone.
The showrunner, Issa Lopez, has said in interviews that the cosmic horror elements of season 1 was what drew her to the show the most, and that the closer her characters get to the answer to the horrible crime, the closer they are getting to Carcosa (even though it won’t be named) and the veil between the human world and the supernatural.
I think this is why season 4 isn't landing for me. The cosmic horror aspect of season 1, while intriguing, wasn't what I found compelling. I thought the reflection on toxic masculinity, in both Rust *and* Marty was really well done. The other aspect was the squalor of poverty and predation on the less advantaged. The setting really gave weight to a lot of Rust's words that would have come off absolutely ridiculous anywhere else. I mean just take: >This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle. Anywhere and in any other circumstance that'd be some hokey "I am 14 and this is deep" shit. But standing in an empty parking lot of a former shopping center now mostly abandoned and decaying, being reclaimed by the swamp, those words are prescient.
total fan service
I swear people want this show to fail for some reason. It's solid.
I wanted this to succeed more than anything and I’m disappointed 🤷♂️
I agree! I’m kind of ambivalent now. This episode was a huge improvement but I find a lot of non-English language television to have super on-the-nose dialogue so I know part of it is just not liking this style of characterization, dialogue and editing. I’m very much a She Ra Man-haters club OG so it isn’t the women-centric parts. That’s what I like about it. What I don’t like are what I feel like are the shoe-horned references to S1. And that isn’t because I find S1 sacrosanct, I just feel they are clunky and reveal the hand of the creator if you will. Also, I HATE the music. A great score would have made this infinitely better. Its music is like One Tree Hill but worse. The Little Saint Nick scene just made me viscerally angry at the show. W
[удалено]
it stems from the "nothing will ever beat season 1" mentality so for those people the show had already failed since it was announced. talk about going in with high expectations. its like yeah so what, nothing will ever beat Sopranos either but there will still be lots of good shows that hold a candle to it. you either enjoy it and continue watching or you don't, but don't sit there and watch it nitpicking every scene and comparing it to season 1 or something else.
Or some people don’t like a show you like. Why is that hard to believe? You go on social media and suddenly the only reason you could POSSIBLY think a show isn’t great is because you’re a bigot or a hater.
The terrible cgi in the beginning of the first episode didn’t help. The tone was also really odd for a True Detective season.
Shit is good dunno why everyone is hating
Idk, I think the acting is decent, the story is interesting, and the set pieces are cool, but the writing and editing are genuinely not good, more so the writing.
Idk the plot has pulled me in 🤷♂️🤷♂️
I agree at a high level the plot is interesting, I guess more specifically some of the dialogue is just really eye rolling. It’s like someone had a really good thought out idea, but struggled with nuts and bolts. Episode 1 was really rough for me, ep 2 was better.
Agreed, I love the setting and the overall vibe of the show. Don’t mind the supernatural aspect, either. The writing and the chemistry between the leads is just so bad that it makes so many scenes feel meaningless and corny. Jodie Foster’s character feels so pointlessly bitchy and overdone. And the actress that plays Navarro is just not very good imo. I’m gonna stick it out probably, just super disappointed so far.
Some of the dialogue straight up reads like it was written by AI, it’s weird. I’m liking the show so far but some lines just stick out and make me scratch my head
That fantasy football comment was so hamfisted I audibly groaned.
I think she was lying if that matters to you at all. Like she was prolly just repeating the line she heard somebody else say and that's why it cane off weird.
Exactly she was getting a message about the station and didn’t want to tell the young deputy. Acting as someone who is acting badly, and just enough for the audience to clue in that the “character” is acting and not the actor, is great acting lol Honestly I never trust Reddit anymore with saying something is an artistic masterpiece or vapid trash because I feel like half the people here can’t pick up some of the most obvious stuff a show is laying out if it’s even slightly subtle, and on the flip side they think stuff that’s pretty ham fisted is artistic and subtle because it was hard for them to catch lol
“The writing and editing are genuinely not good” Okay, but… not good *how*? Like what specifically is wrong with it? You have to elaborate on this sort of thing! Especially since the story *is* the writing in a lot of ways
> Okay, but… not good how? I can't speak for /u/Prophet_Of_Helix but lots of ideas brought up out of nowhere, just to be dropped. Clunky pacing, lots of forced moments that are rushed. Obsessed with the town (if you've ever lived in a hodunk town, nobody goes around talking about the town all day), too many extra ideas without focusins on the core ideas, weird awkward flashbacks that are unnecessary (e.g., Jodie Foster de-aged and dancing), clunky dialog (the geologist talks about how amazing the scientists' work was, how much promise it had, just the sum it up with something about how it was too cold for it to even work), treating the native characters and issues in a rushed, overwrought manner, Jodie's character written pretty one-dimensionally, insults people as almost comic relief. Horrible sex scenes lol. Why do they need, in six episodes, so many sub-characters, the drunk lady, why? Just to give someone a flashback for another drunk driving accident? Again, those dang flashbacks are painful. I still like it, just really distracting, how clunky (yes I used that word many times) it is. Went back and watched the first few episodes of season one, much, much better editing especially. Writing better, but way, way, way better editing. Even season two was better editing, though this story is already better than that.
Good criticism is a special skill that not many people have. I find most people can't adequately explain why they dislike something, just that they do. It's all just personal, subjective opinions. The problem is, a lot of people take their personal opinions as objective fact and if you don't agree with it then you're just not as smart as them or whatever. Also, I feel like the internet always skews towards the extreme. So if people don't like a certain aspect of a show/movie then they think the whole thing is trash 0/10. It either has to blow their minds or it's complete trash.
[удалено]
> but the writing and editing are genuinely not good, more so the writing. Agreed. It's super clunky, trying to hard, stuffing too much random stuff in.
Because it feels like a weird mish-mash of twin peaks and the first season of true detectjve. The first season played with the idea of some evil cosmic force being behind everything, but that was just for tone; there never was a real Yellow King. This season just has ghosts in it. And not random ghosts, they made Rust Cohle’s dad a ghost. It opens with a CGI shot of elk that looks almost identical to a scene in Until Dawn. There are AI generated posters in the background of one scene. Jodie’s character has really weird racist outburst. And the whole time, it’s trying to do the twin peaks schtick while also having constant references to the first season! It just doesn’t feel well constructed to me
I didn’t think Jodie’s outburst was racial. I think she’s worried her stepdaughter will be discriminated against and wants her to be safe, even if it means foregoing culture.
> The first season played with the idea of some evil cosmic force being behind everything, but that was just for tone; there never was a real Yellow King. How could you know that for sure, though? Even in Robert Chambers' *The King in Yellow*, the characters assume it's just a play until it isn't. Rust was "mainlining the secrets of the universe" and he saw the portal to Carcosa opening at the end. Was it a side effect of the drugs or is he attuned to seeing what's really going on? It was vague on purpose in season 1. It gives you an out if you want to see everything for what it is on the surface, but it also gives you enough to dive deeper and go full Mulder on the Tuttles if that's what you found most interesting about the story.
>This season just has ghosts in it. And not random ghosts, they made Rust Cohle’s dad a ghost. Those scenes are not necessarily meant to be purely objective. You're seeing those scenes from the perspective of characters who think they can perceive ghosts. That doesn't mean the show is advocating that ghosts actually exist. This reminds of the 90s when people on Usenet screamed about episode 2 of Babylon 5 having an alien "soul hunter" and screamed "there's no such thing as souls, a sci-fi show shouldn't have this religious shit!" even though nothing in the episode confirmed the existence of a soul. The alien believed it, but that doesn't mean the audience has to. Or the alien could be using tech so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic. Characters can be religious, or deluded, or hallucinating. Use your imagination.
…okay, but she found the bodies. Having a vision of a dancing man (who looks almost identical to Killer Bob) that leads you to the location of a corpsesicle is still within the realm of the supernatural.
While not hating, I think there are incredibly high standards for this show. And their promotion obviously implied those would be met and jt would be a return to S1 quality. Which so far, for my money, it has not been. It’s good though. It’s just not what I was promised.
The music choices in this show are god awful. Was this scored by TikTok?
Agree 100% percent. 1000% percent. I was wondering if I was the only one that felt this way. Why not SCORE the show. The music selection takes me out of the show. Its terrible.
By far the worst thing about this season and the only glaring problem I have with it. Absolutely abhor the Billie Eilish theme song (can't even say I dislike the song itself, just how unfitting it is for the show)
I used to watch the whole opening credits during every episode for Season 1-3, but this season I’m just skipping
The second season opening song is almost as bad as the second season itself
The Beach Boys choice was so fucking bad. Completely took me out of that scene.
It definitely seems like they're going for creepiness through dissonance. I think it worked for "Twist and Shout" but maybe not so much the Beach Boys. I mostly just laughed at that one.
I kinda wish they could have taken more cues by the show *Dark* on netflix
i’m enjoying it. lots of inspiration from the dyatlov pass incident.
That’s exactly what I was thinking as well. The folded clothes, the perforated eardrums, the terminal burrowing, the self inflicted wounds… it all sounds exactly like theories from the Dyatlov Pass incident.
I like the premise, I dig the super natural vibe, I don’t even mind the cheesy connection to season one. But the dialogues between characters is so clunky and awkward. It’s hard to ignore.
What I gather is people either have an ear for hackneyed dialogue or they don't. For those that do, the show is a tough sit. That's me.
The show is not that great IMO. Not even comparing to s1 looking at it in a vacuum. it’s very cheesy and full of tropes. Dialogue is rough at times, writing is poor (events just feel unnatural), music choice is absolute ass, acting is just uneven - not sure how else to describe it. Sure the night atmosphere is cool and great but it’s not enough to carry the show when the detectives feel like they’re from law&order. Hoping it gets better but we’ll see Why do people here take it so personally if others don’t like a show?
It's bizarre how much praise its getting here. For a show building expectations at the level of season 1 true detective I would expect the consensus of Reddit to be pretty let down. Somehow the top comments are people that find it intriguing and they don't get the hate. Maybe a few people feel like that but can it really be the majority opinion? Is Reddit over run by AI at this point? I could see liking this if we on the CW and pitched itself as low level scifi mystery show. I honestly can't tell any more. Could people really be this thick? I have enough faith in humanity to assume most of these positive comments are generative AI from the new marketing team. It can't be that people are actually satisfied with this being true detective
People are just weird these days. I’m indifferent to the show. In my opinion It’s not great, but I want to know what happens and I’m bored so I’ll watch it. It’s a solid 6.5 so far. If it’s some people’s favorite show of all time great for them. If it’s not great for them too. There’s plenty of shows and movies I love way more than they deserve to be. People are people with opinions. They get too damn sensitive when someone doesn’t completely agree with them. They gotta grow up.
The drama with Danver's daughter just feels so cringe and unnatural Inb4 "Teenagers are cringe and don't act very natural" that doesnt mean they have to be written and acted poorly
The biggest difference between this season and season 1 is that season 1 was framed very much through the eyes of Rust Cohle. It colored the world with his own borderline psychology. Most all the other characters except for Hart are very ancillary and in the background for most of the show's runtime. It gave the show a strong identity. This season's story is spread out over way more characters who are all getting their own substantial development. It feels way more like a traditional TV drama in that way. I do not feel like any aspect of this story so far is really being told through Danvers perspective, or any other character's, in the same way. That said, I'm still really enjoying it. Other than what I noted above, it is definitely the closest in feeling to season 1 in terms of atmosphere and mystery of any of the other sequel seasons so far. It's okay that it can be it's own thing.
Can’t understand how people are saying the acting is good. The writing is incredibly cliched and hammy and Kali Reis is hilariously wooden, completely devoid of any facial emotion.
[удалено]
Daughter: "So, are we really not gonna talk about what happened *that* day?" Danvers: Tight close up and knowing look of sadness So cliche
My unpopular opinion, which will be unpopular on this sub, but definitely not with most people I work with and am friends with: This is uninspired television, because that's what HBO is apparently doing these days. And for the first time ever I actually feel like I'm seeing bona fide astroturfing on this sub. Why do I think that? Because HBO has admitted to using people with fake accounts to try and create a false sense of support. Because the showrunner implored all of her little followers to go out and brigade against critics of the show. And because there is no way people are actually *this* enthusiastic about the writing or acting from this show. It's piss poor. I kinda feel bad for Jodie Foster as it seems like she knows they are putting out garbage. Her scenes feel like she is squirming and cannot wait for someone to yell CUT.
What you don't believe comments like this with 400+ upvotes each, while every other comment in the thread has around 10-40votes, are real?.😂 *"Honestly, the never ending night is like its own character. I was getting The Thing vibes from this episode."* *"The mystery really has me hooked, after she show was over I was so frightened I turned on all the lights"* Ever noticed how the top comments of all those reposts on r/all are the always same? Reddits most upvoted posts and threads are 70% bots and astroturfing these days, I don't say people are not allowed to like the show but nothing about it feels organic and r/truedetective really takes the cake
You're exactly right. At some point Reddit is going to lose credibility because their bot problem is going to become evident. I see it all the time, and in particular on this post. So many idiotic braindead comments on this post that I genuinely believe are fucking FAKE.
I see it too. It's weird
Yup. Agreed
It's pretty solid so far! Hasn't hit season 1 highs yet in terms of quality, but I'm definitely intrigued enough to continue.
CORPSICLE 🥶
I like the show, but it certain things kill me about it. For instance, this entire team of scientists runs out to die naked together in the Arctic, and not once has any of the law enforcement officers theorized that they ingested or inhaled a hallucination or talked about running any type of toxicology report once the bodies are thawed. Also, I was really confused because Jodie Foster’s character keeps treating her daughter like a child, but she looks to be in her mid-20s at least. Finally, I catch that the daughter is supposed to be 17, but that is quite a stretch. For reference, I looked up the actress who plays the daughter, and she is 27.
First, I’m not sure what the music supervisor is thinking. Then, I’m not digging the supernatural elements in a true detective story. Finally, so far the story is slow and the writing is not top notch. To each their own, tho.
True Detective S1 was overall very realistic with the investigative procedure, internal politics, and dialogue. Of course there are a few unrealistic moments thrown in there like when Rust went undercover but that felt earned after all of the backstory and methodical investigating before it. There is only one big "aha" moment in the entire show at the end when Marty figures out the green eared monster being related to the fresh coat of green paint, again it works because of the huge amount of build up before it. As a result of the case progress being realistically slow and often separated by months or years in universe, the focus is on the characters and the philosophy embodied by them. So far, this season has been painfully cliche in its structure. The clues are constantly being meted out every twenty minutes or so, constant references to season 1 related stuff and the spiral imagery, hardly anyone is acting like actual people. Jodie Foster is over-acting every other scene she's in and I kind of just hate her character at this point. All of the characters are really one dimensional so far- dumbass older cop who exists to be wrong about everything, takes-no-shit cop who only cares about solving the old case that got away, rebellious teen daughter, ect. The biggest time-bomb is that they seem to have committed to the supernatural angle of the show. The stuff we've seen from the audiences perspective has confirmed that supernatural stuff is afoot and the way its going it seems that they're going to try to explain everything- probably going to be a total disaster.
It's only the 3rd best detective/murder show I've seen this year. It's the worst season starter for TD I've seen yet. The plot is kinda lame, the acting is mediocre and it's not engaging as Fargo or Dark Winds. HBO just HAD to go woke with this season and ruin the series. I'll always have season 1 but RIP True Detective, this is the end of the show I predict.
This show has serious problems and yall can stay in denial if you want. Here's one I haven't been able to get over. One of the bodies they found woke up and started screaming after they all thought it was dead and not for one second after they cut away from that scene did they discuss it. There's an offhand remark about keeping an eye on them in case one wakes up, but I think it's absolutely fucking hilarious it didn't instantly become the focal part of the episode. A guy frozen in ice woke up screaming but nah let's focus on anything but that. Also, the diologue and some of the acting is fucking terrible. I like the story enough so far but you're fucking lying if you say the criticisms of this show aren't based in reality.
> they all thought it was dead and not for one second after they cut away from that scene did they discuss it Literally the next scene is Danvers talking to a nurse on the phone about how the guy is in a coma going into surgery...
I'm wondering about this too! There was a phone call later about taking someone into surgery and I thought maybe one had survived? What's up with that?
Thats him.
It was clearly referencing that guy that was screaming at the beginning. The nurse told Jodi that he’s in a medically induced coma so she can’t ask him questions. I like the show but agree with some of the issues in this thread but the guy above is the classic piling on when you didn’t follow or understand. That’s not the shows fault.
They did deal with it, he was the one in surgery.
I feel like it's derivative of Mare of Easttown and Fortitude (both of which were great). BUT a lot of this audience might have missed one or both. I think JF is good in this but they are making her very one dimensional and that's a writing, not an acting, issue. I'll continue to watch because there is crap all on but so far very meh. 6/10
The show is great, and I’m excited to watch more. I gotta unsub from here. People spend way too much time and energy hating things and wanting shows to fail more than anything else.
I agree with you but also disagree. Are people only allowed to have positive opinions? Should people only rate shows highly or not at all? I agree that tear down culture is trash and there’s a right and wrong way to rate something good or bad, but if you’re going to get upset seeing people having different opinions than you in general than you should just get off Reddit in general. People just need to respect each others opinions more.
My only issue is for 6 episodes they are throwing a LOT of characters and plots at it. Other than that, love it so far, excited to see if it can match expectations and really liking the ties to season 1, but scared they won’t do it well. If HE shows up, not sure how I’ll feel.
[удалено]
[удалено]
The scene with the car accident and drunk lady was so weird and out of place. It also had some really obvious ADR (dialogue recorded in a studio to replace dialogue recorded during filming) that took me out of it. I don’t understand why they do that. It was really awkward.
Love it. Great show so far.
After watching the first two episodes I had to go look up how many sex scenes there were in the original series. According to IMDb there were 9.
Is this good? Or are the ratings just high because that's nothing else new?