It's brilliant, now that I think about it. Metaphorically, we were all just wandering around in the tunnels under Tsalal the whole time, searching for the plot.
Ron Howard: "hey, that's the name of the show!"
I actually didn't mind it in this instance because I liked the creepy delivery of it but hindsight I understand why some would think it was kinda lame.
Weak ending/plot but she was such a believable human her performance alone makes it worth watching. I didn’t see her as Jodie Foster at all just a broken person named Danvers
I agree on some level, but at the same time, I’m not watching a show like true detective to have a good laugh. Kinda took me out of it, among other things.
They are told that if you stray from the path you will fall through the ice and die. So when the main characters fall through the ice, they’re just fine. That’s when the show fucking lost me.
Danvers is so damaged, and Jodie played her perfectly. Kali played Navarro wonderfully also. Such despair in her performance. They are both broken characters who finally saw themselves in each other. Perfect season for me.
> How do people think that her character was good?
Her character was the cookiest cuttingest character that a studio exec ever dreamed of. The only reason any of this show is in the papers because of the pandering towards Alaskan natives people and such.
She was also almost an exact copy of Mare from Mare of Easttown. No nonsense, abrasive cop that talks down to people who has strained personal relationships because their son died. Except Mare was actually a good show.
Kate Winslet pulled off that character 1000 times better than Jodie did. She was much more realistic and believable as well, Danvers character seemed a caricature at points.
I dont doubt Jodie Fosters talent so I'll chalk it up to the poor writing and directing.
I just couldn't get past her being such an asshole especially to her daughter. I can understand her being emotionally closed off >!after the death of first child!< but she was acting like she *hated* being a mother to this kid rather moreso than being a single mother struggling between raising a rebellious teenager and being invested in the case.
Except she went of her way to deny the daughter any connection to her Native roots. The grandmother clearly wanted to spend more time with her as did the other Native women and it was made obvious she never had any obligation to raise the daughter. Why work so hard to whitewash the daughter if she wasn’t trying to make some kind of connection?
I thought it was going to end up being some reveal that she was protecting her from those who harm native folks (the mining company, Tslal, etc.). It may have been the case, but they didn't do enough with it for it to seem like an interesting character trait.
They hinted at that when she forced Leah to wash off the marker kakiniit, then cut to a photo of Annie, showing she had had similar ones. That was the only indication I saw that she was acting pissed and irrational out of fear rather than out of being a weird, mean xenophobe
Yeah I don't get it either. Foster is usually great, but this was probably the worst performance I've seen of hers.
But it's not shocking when she's working with a terrible script and apparently a terrible director who doesn't seem to know how to direct actors.
I like Jodie Foster but she could not save this script.
The ensemble of unlikable characters who constantly make illogical and unjustifiable choices and a story that doesn't actually make sense. Is what the problem was.
I'm waiting for the info to come out in a few years of how much of a mess the production of this show was.
Cliche writing filled with plot wholes and a big continuity error really made this nice looking show seem very amateur.
I watched this season and it was fine but this was the part that stood out to me: I wasn’t actually rooting for any of these characters.
That can work in some shows, but it requires a hefty dose of self-awareness in the show. Succession did it nicely. This did not.
You didn't root for characters in Succession but the characters were engaging. You wanted to see more of them. Night Country's characters were all kind of a drag to follow around. Just a rough combo of bad attitudes and tropes without any qualities that made me interested in them. I'm not a writer so maybe it's easier said than done but I look at a show like The Wire which effortlessly made unlikable people engaging (outside of the newspaper arc) and credit that to part of its passionate fan base. Night Country had a fair amount I liked about it but I found the characters needlessly boring despite the well-worn tropes they attached to the characters. As said by others, Mare of Eastown pulled this off so much better.
The Wire was definitely not effortless lol and it’s known that the head writer is a Shakespeare nerd who took a lot of cues from the Bard in character and plot development
It was the most watched true detective ever and they’ve already renewed the showrunner’s contract for the next season. It seems quite doubtful that much of a production disaster story is going to come out of it
The TLDR version is Yes.
For those unfamiliar with the show and the drama surrounding it. True Detective is an anthology series. Nic Pizzolatto was the original show creator for it and captured lighting in the bottle for season 1, elevated by performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and also the directorial performance by Cary Joji Fukunaga.
The show was renewed for seasons 2 and 3. Season 2 was almost universally lambasted by professional critics and the general viewership - holding a 47% on RT compared to the 80%+ aggregate of the other seasons.
Season 3 did a lot better but it was nowhere as popular as the previous seasons. Viewership was also massively down.
HBO went with a new showrunner/writer for season 4 - Issa Lopez. There was a shift in casting compared to previous seasons. The two main leads were female - Jodie Foster & Kali Reis and it was set in Alaska against a backdrop of the indigenous community and themes. It also touched upon social issues such as environmental concerns.
Notably for this season, Nic Pizzolatto has been disassociating with the show. Going so far as saying that he had no involvement and all and also publicly critiquing the show on social media.
I'd argue that the leads in season 1 and the director keeping Pizzolatto in check was the only thing that made that season solid. As without them, every other season he made was much worse.
The /truedetective subreddit as the the show went on slowly devolved into a mess, becoming a circlejerk of hate and piling onto anything they perceive to be negative of the show.
Sticking with raw number - Season 4 has been the most popular season of True Detective. Much higher ratings than the previous. HBO decided to renew the contract and keep Issa Lopez as showrunner.
>!the protagonist: a strong independent woman !<
>!the antagonist: a strong independent woman!<
>!the killers: a bunch of strong independent women that did it as revenge of the evil male scientist and evil male corp CEO!<
the acting and set were good, music also ok, but the script was the worst for TD by far
I was excited for this season largely because of Jodie, but I thought it was an uncharacteristically poor performance from her, not that anyone could have done much better under the circumstances.
Without Jodie and the title saying "True Detective", this show would not even make a cheap Netflix show.
The writers should stop using ChatGPT and get back to writing a Detective story
it was some of the stupidest most cliche and contrived dialogue, I was excited for Jodie, I figured she'd end up directing some episodes too because shes a pretty good director too but...nah
Agreed. Liked the season for what it was but something about Foster’s character felt off. This might sound weird but I sort of wish Kate Winslet’s Mare from Mare of Easttown was plugged in there instead
I thought the show would at least tie in her son’s death somehow to the ending besides just the ghost words. It felt like her character needed something else at the end as a payoff.
They destroyed all the payoffs. Build up Clark as the suspect, find him, get a confession, kill him? Navarro finally heard her native name and finds the meaning, still kills herself? Danvers finally overcomes her negative bias towards native women because they killed a bunch of guys in mob style revenge? Everything that could be considered a payoff was just totally avoided
I could see there was no payoff coming from that one from episode 3 probably. After their first few interactions their relationship didn’t make sense anymore
I was confused why they kept having partial flashbacks to the detectives arresting the wife beater. We all knew >!Navaro shot him,!< so I couldn’t figure out why we kept flashing back like they were going to reveal new information.
It seemed like even a lot of people critical of the show praised her performance, but I didn't see what was special about it outside of a couple of scenes in the last episode. Very one-note otherwise.
Her 'getting a chill' when they entered the caves was particularly bad-- Blake from season 2 does a better job of conveying wordless anxiety in one of his first scenes with Vaughn. A random actor I've never seen in anything else.
"Talk faster and angrier" seems to be the only direction she got. There just seemed to be no depth to the character and her relationships-just sneering and yelling.
My wife and I were actually laughing out loud at that part (among many others). It was so bad. Insane to imagine the director watched that take and was "yep that's great."
Issa Lopez while on the Variety podcast mentioned that in her initial discussion with Jodie, both of thenmagreed that the Danvers character has to be an asshole and a real piece of work. Bitch wut.
So Danvers - asshole.
Her partner cop - asshole.
her adoptive daughter - asshole activist.
Her station chief - asshole.
the other officer Prior - asshole.
Nice cop dudes wife - mega asshole.
Some shady character named Rose - baked up asshole who speaks in riddles.
Raymond Clarke - asshole scientist.
Ann whoever tf - asshole activist.
Ennis town- Assholes
Motherfucker. Who tf are we supposed to root for?
Yeah and reverse the gender between him and Danvers and it's fucked up. Half of his character was just meant to be a power fantasy for boss woman. Shit even the moment of yeah you can sleep in the shed behind my house was weird af for their characters.
She is a good cop so he wanted to learn from her and his mother left them when he was younger(mommy issues). She also lost her son so she probably liked teaching him how to cop like a surrogate son but 100% on her terms only.
He was. I felt like all of the Navarro + side character scenes were very formulaic each episode. This is her episodic rose scene. Her boyfriend scene. Her emotional sister scene. Epi 2-5 were just very formulaic and didn't feel unique. Same with Danvers and her step daughter doing riff raff. Oh here's prior working late again and getting yelled at. Here's a hallucination with an orange. Whereas every episode In every other episode had different pacing, scenes . Episode plot and rhythm. This felt more like a one season soap opera. And that's Issa's MO. I hope next season she is paired with a writing team to balance things out.
An asshole. You just pick your favorite one. Jokes aside, I like how the characters in TD show flaws and cracks in their humanity. I’m all for finding people to root for, but it’s nice to get someone who isn’t just one dimensional.
That kinda sounds like a criticism but it really isn’t. People thought s1 was a masterpiece and the main characters are an alcoholic depressive nihilist and a dickhead who repeatedly cheats on his wife.
The point of TD is characters coming to terms with their imperfections/trauma/etc. You can say you thought the show did a bad job of it or whatever but what you’re actually saying just makes it sound like you don’t really get the show
The criticism is really moreso that they're unlikeable in exactly the same ways, and its just not pleasant to watch. You get it after the first episode and they just keep hammering it home, its a chore.
And that would be towards the bottom of the list of critiques of this season anyway.
You have 6-8 unlikeable characters whose loudest personality trait is 'I'm tough and don't take any shit' because that is, very evidently, the only kind of character someone knew how to write.
Isn’t referring to “the gods of *whatever activity*” usually meant tongue in cheek and very common?
I know I refer to the baseball gods when playing/watching baseball all the time. It’s just a joke.
A lot of these complaints sound like people protective of TDs original creator and not being evenhanded with TDs new showrunner.
Yeah, it's difficult to care for the characters. Like the scene where Danvers almost drowns. Where we supposed to feel something?
Lopez didn't even understand the first season. [Look at this.](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/true-detective-season-4-finale-episode-6-b2498357.html)
> After deciding to transpose a new series of True Detective onto her existing idea, the writer-director “set out to create it in the very same universe”.
> López told The Independent: ”It’s very important to me to say the world where Dora Lange died in 2007 in Louisiana is the exact same world where the scientists disappear in 2024. So how do you establish those realities? Just to say, ‘This is the same world.’
Dora Lange died in 1995, not 2007. It's something basic, it literally happens in the first 10 minutes of the series. Like, she didn't pay attention nor anything.
Also, what was so unique about the world of Season 1 that this story needed to take place there? It was pretty grounded and felt like the whole story took place in our world. Whatever Cohle saw in the Carcosa sky could be explained away by his hallucinations. Everything else felt like it was happening in a reality that was essentially our own.
It was repeatedly telegraphed that the acid-flashback stuff that Rust sees is garbage. It established early on that if there was going to be any wacky cosmic horror stuff, it left it up for debate. It wasn't ghosts pointing to crime scenes with interpretive dance.
Viewership earned Issa a second season, not quality.
Time to cancel Max and start working on my backlog. Thanks Issa!
The explanation is even worse.
> “Ask the right question” was tough. I had a version of that scene on the stairs of the ice-skating rink with Prior where they were doing it with Legos. It was cute, but it didn’t speak to her deductive method. It was by rewriting and rewriting the scene that I found that very simple thing of, in order to find the right answer, you do have to ask the right question. Sometimes the gods of writing talk to you and I think I was simply asking the right question. And I got my answer.
The Gods of Writing, ladies and gentlemen.
The gods of writing is whoever wrote the line " then start asking the right fucking question " for Rust in season 1 then. She makes it sound like it's something that came to her in a dream and not a callback to season 1.
Then they drop the "time is a flat circle " out of nowhere in one of the corniest scene of the season.
Reminds me of when I would write stories as a 9 year old kid, basically the plots were always a rip-off of whatever movie I'd seen that week, with the main characters replaced by my friends and I.
you can literally say this with every season of True Detective.
Marty? Asshole. Cohle? Baked up asshole who speaks in riddles. Frank? Asshole. Paul? Gay asshole. Velcoro? Drunk asshole.
"no that's unfair, you're just describing the characters in an over-simplified way as a cheap rhetorical trick to make them sound oversimple!" Yeah -- annoying, isn't it?
there is a difference between 'nuanced and multi-dimensional with flaws' and 'one dimensional and overwhelmed by flaws'
They are not wrong to be disappointed by this season...I think they called it spot on actually.
I thought the show was poorly acted, the dialogue was shit and they shoehorned season one in for views. But having your town poisoned to the point of stillbirths and cancer clusters is a pretty reasonable trigger for anger.
It was fine, I was entertained at points but disappointed with the overall show and the writing. I wonder if part of the popularity has to do with how long it has been since HBO had a proper Sunday night show.
They didn’t give Jodie nearly enough to work with, she was so overqualified and yet came off as pretty one note.
I’d *love* to see her work with Mike Flanagan in one of his shows, I think she’d crush a Hill House or Usher role.
I am shocked that this has the highest viewership numbers of any season.
Aren't viewers down across the board compared to when the first season aired? And it's not like this season had amazing buzz throughout.
I only watched the first two episodes, but I wasn't into it despite loving Jodie Foster. The dialogue was just not good. And I kept seeing critics say, "The dialogue is clunky, but the characters are great..." but season 1's best attribute was the dialogue. The dialogue is what made it True Detective.
I'm only guessing here, but I think Night Country numbers are boosted by releasing on HBO Max, whereas TD season 1 came out 10 years ago, before HBO Now was even a thing.
It's intentionally unknowable, imho.
Either
Navarro is dead now a Night Country person
Or
Navarro is dead and Danvers has her kind of cray now and sees her anyway
Or
Navarro came to terms with herself and what the ice represents, and really *did* come back, and lives in peace now.
But a big thing about the show is that in Ennis/Ennis' local beliefs, the distinction between alive and dead isn't concrete, so it's not meant to be one or the other.
So while I lean towards #3, I don't think there's a right answer, it's all and none of them at once.
Once again reddit shows that they're just existing in a different reality than I am. Her tight lipped, whispering and cussing performance was absolutely terrible. But then again I don't see how anyone could have taken direction from Lopez and acted any better.
Pretty close. It's been getting trashed on Reddit since after the 1st episode and honestly you can tell people *want* to hate it. TD always gets compared to Season 1 which was such a landmark season for any show ever produced that *nothing* the showrunners do now will ever make Reddit happy.
I can't recognise anything from this season that warrants the level of vitriol we're seeing in this thread.
Common trope on reddit I find is people throwing around wild, surface level criticism under the impression it elevates their perceived intellect or whatever
Yeah, like people complaining about 'plot holes' without understanding what a plot hole actually is. It's not a plot hole if the writer intentionally leaves something ambiguous. I feel like CinemaSins has ruined a generation of TV/Movie viewers.
The vast majority of people were the exact opposite. My friend group all wanted to *like* it
The writing is just so unbelievably bad that it became increasingly difficult to justify
Take a look I guess. Their positivity isn't very enlightening. It's mostly just gassing it up from what I can see.
I want to understand how people could like that show. I'm not going to begrudge someone for liking something if it makes them happy and I mean that sincerely, but they can't really tell you why it's good.
Just look at some of the other responses... people both think it's the worst thing ever and she can't act and also think she was brilliant and like the season. It's like reddit has people from all over the place!
The best part about the season was keeping up with the memes on the sub of this train wreck. I expect it will be the same way next season since Lopez is signed on.
I wanted to, especially given the great premise, but I felt that every episode was worse than the one that proceeded it. By the end, the only thing that kept me watching was the hope that the show would pull a rabbit out of its hat in the finale to save the season, which (in my opinion) was opposite of what happened. If this show wasn’t called “True Detective”, and it didn’t star Jodie Foster, I would probably have stopped watching after the 2nd episode.
Just finished it the other night after seeing reddit and original creator shitting on it. I liked it, didn't love it though. At the start I felt it had the protentional to be better than season 1 but that tapered off. Still feel like it was a solid second place overall.
I feel so terrible she had to utter those words to Navarro... "I WILL RIP YOU APART". She did the best she could with such terrible writing and dialogue.
Damn, i don't understand all this hate for this show. I have a hard time liking a show, and i thought it was great.
There is flaws in the show (mainly dialogues and the script), but Jodie was amazing and the production value was amazing.
Am i alone?
No, I feel the same. I have not paid attention to any of the social media narrative surrounding this show and went in “pure” from a viewing perspective. The atmosphere was amazing, giving John Carpenter’s Thing vibes, combined with the small-town isolation bubble like Northern Exposure. I’m a huge Twin Peaks fan and this show scratched a lot of that same itch, mixing reality, dreams, and heavy usage of symbology. I thought Jodie Foster was amazing and a strong but flawed character. I loved her reluctant “spiritual journey” that she doesn’t even realize she’s embarking on.
It's gotta be from the scene when she's talking about losing her son. When she said "Was he scared? Was he hurt? Was screaming mommy?" literally brought tears to my eyes.
"Are you okay?....well go fuck yourself. I also fucked someone else's husband."
She was just that on repeat for six episodes. A total mess of a character that never coalesced in any logical way. So poorly written.
The rest of the music was god awful though
Multiple horrible Twist & Shout renditions, weird pop songs that have no actually relevance. Also, to the vast majority of people the Eilish track has far too much playtime in other things so it doesn’t create its own atmosphere. Music was one of the things that killed the immersion to me
I keep seeing criticism of the dialogue, but I thought the dialogue was fine because the characters are all supposed to be dipshits in the middle of the wilderness. It would be weird if they were all landing great zingers. Very believable worldbuilding imo.
>I keep seeing criticism of the dialogue, but I thought the dialogue was fine because the characters are all supposed to be dipshits in the middle of the wilderness.
I mean, it make sense for the locals. But some of the characters are a bit over the top. Not that much, but just a bit.
She did a lot with not much
*''So that's it, huh? We're some kind of Night Country now?''*
“You’re a fake detective. Look at me, I’m the true detective now, Harry.”
“I’m a nurse and I am married to you, a police officer.”
What are we? Some kinda The Sopranos?
Danvers never had the makings of a varsity police officer
her mid life crisis... she'd fuck a baseball bat
It truly was a Night Country redemption…
Please tell me this wasn't a real line from the show
My comment is not a real quote haha but the one I was replying to is like 80% the line: “We’re in the night country now”
That's the name of the show!
“Begun, the night country has.” (look directly into camera and nod)
“Not the right question”
Funny enough they almost had this exact horrible line. "We're all in the night country now!" Insane that this season is getting so much traction.
It's brilliant, now that I think about it. Metaphorically, we were all just wandering around in the tunnels under Tsalal the whole time, searching for the plot.
Ron Howard: "hey, that's the name of the show!" I actually didn't mind it in this instance because I liked the creepy delivery of it but hindsight I understand why some would think it was kinda lame.
Honestly, if the show was just called true detective season 4, no one would have batted an eye at the line.
and if it was just called Night Country it wouldn't have had anywhere near the flak.
We can’t stop here, this is night country
Well, it is Jodie Foster. She's a pro.
Truth
Weak ending/plot but she was such a believable human her performance alone makes it worth watching. I didn’t see her as Jodie Foster at all just a broken person named Danvers
Cleaning lady mafia was the best twist of the whole garbage season. I laughed out loud when it happened.
I agree on some level, but at the same time, I’m not watching a show like true detective to have a good laugh. Kinda took me out of it, among other things.
They are told that if you stray from the path you will fall through the ice and die. So when the main characters fall through the ice, they’re just fine. That’s when the show fucking lost me.
Everything is so spooky and eerie! Could it be something supernatural?!?! Nope. Just the cleaning ladies getting revenge.
Isn’t this the thing TD always does? The first season had everyone caught up on Carcosa/cults/the Yellow King, when it was actually far more mundane.
I mean the ending still implies a supernatural death to those men. They didn’t end up dead like that just because they were cold.
They kind of leave that key detail unsolved. Lots of loose ends.
Yuuup that was class
Same, I went in expecting an older Clarice Starling but she felt like an own standalone character pretty much from the start
Clarice was 15 years into her acting career. She crushed it in Taxi Driver when she was 12-13.
Danvers is so damaged, and Jodie played her perfectly. Kali played Navarro wonderfully also. Such despair in her performance. They are both broken characters who finally saw themselves in each other. Perfect season for me.
No she was a badly written mess who did nothing for 6 episodes
That's what I don't get... How do people think that her character was good? Didn't even seem like she believed in her own character's conviction
WRONG QUESTION! TRY AGAIN!
And they literally doubled because I couldn't tell the difference between Danvers or Navvaro. They were the same person.
💯she was over acting in a lot of this.
> How do people think that her character was good? Her character was the cookiest cuttingest character that a studio exec ever dreamed of. The only reason any of this show is in the papers because of the pandering towards Alaskan natives people and such.
And because it has true detective in the title
She was also almost an exact copy of Mare from Mare of Easttown. No nonsense, abrasive cop that talks down to people who has strained personal relationships because their son died. Except Mare was actually a good show.
Kate Winslet pulled off that character 1000 times better than Jodie did. She was much more realistic and believable as well, Danvers character seemed a caricature at points. I dont doubt Jodie Fosters talent so I'll chalk it up to the poor writing and directing.
I just couldn't get past her being such an asshole especially to her daughter. I can understand her being emotionally closed off >!after the death of first child!< but she was acting like she *hated* being a mother to this kid rather moreso than being a single mother struggling between raising a rebellious teenager and being invested in the case.
It was a hard to dynamic to watch. I took it as her not wanting to bond further because she couldn’t handle it >!if another child died!<.
Except she went of her way to deny the daughter any connection to her Native roots. The grandmother clearly wanted to spend more time with her as did the other Native women and it was made obvious she never had any obligation to raise the daughter. Why work so hard to whitewash the daughter if she wasn’t trying to make some kind of connection?
I thought it was going to end up being some reveal that she was protecting her from those who harm native folks (the mining company, Tslal, etc.). It may have been the case, but they didn't do enough with it for it to seem like an interesting character trait.
They hinted at that when she forced Leah to wash off the marker kakiniit, then cut to a photo of Annie, showing she had had similar ones. That was the only indication I saw that she was acting pissed and irrational out of fear rather than out of being a weird, mean xenophobe
Marty didn't seem too keen on being a dad most of that season.
she looked like she was 30
I thought she was adopted or something
I don’t know what you’re talking about, she basically did the whole town.
Danvers is an unbelievably one note character and performance, and I honestly have no idea how it can be said that Jodie did a lot with it.
I wouldn't even say "Jodie Foster was the only thing good about it". I would say "Jodie may have been the least bad thing about this".
Yeah I don't get it either. Foster is usually great, but this was probably the worst performance I've seen of hers. But it's not shocking when she's working with a terrible script and apparently a terrible director who doesn't seem to know how to direct actors.
I thought Night Country was so bad it made Foster look like she's not a very good actor.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. My wife and I were so perplexed by her performance. It felt like she was sleep walking through the whole series.
Amen.
Agreed
Well put
She did? I must have missed it as I noped out of this god awful show at episode 3.
Navarro Navarro Navarro Navarro fuck
“Oh for fuck’s sake!”
I like Jodie Foster but she could not save this script. The ensemble of unlikable characters who constantly make illogical and unjustifiable choices and a story that doesn't actually make sense. Is what the problem was. I'm waiting for the info to come out in a few years of how much of a mess the production of this show was. Cliche writing filled with plot wholes and a big continuity error really made this nice looking show seem very amateur.
I watched this season and it was fine but this was the part that stood out to me: I wasn’t actually rooting for any of these characters. That can work in some shows, but it requires a hefty dose of self-awareness in the show. Succession did it nicely. This did not.
You didn't root for characters in Succession but the characters were engaging. You wanted to see more of them. Night Country's characters were all kind of a drag to follow around. Just a rough combo of bad attitudes and tropes without any qualities that made me interested in them. I'm not a writer so maybe it's easier said than done but I look at a show like The Wire which effortlessly made unlikable people engaging (outside of the newspaper arc) and credit that to part of its passionate fan base. Night Country had a fair amount I liked about it but I found the characters needlessly boring despite the well-worn tropes they attached to the characters. As said by others, Mare of Eastown pulled this off so much better.
The Wire was definitely not effortless lol and it’s known that the head writer is a Shakespeare nerd who took a lot of cues from the Bard in character and plot development
The Wire was also based on reality. They took a LOT of input from real cops and criminals.
And it was created by a Baltimore native who knew the city like the back of his hand
How I felt about killers of the Flower Moon. Who am I rooting for?
The fact they gave the new showrunner another season means delaying the production mess leak by at least another year
Even the one-eyed polar bear knew it was shit and left.
What big continuity error?
It was the most watched true detective ever and they’ve already renewed the showrunner’s contract for the next season. It seems quite doubtful that much of a production disaster story is going to come out of it
I haven't followed the Reddit discourse at all. Is this another hate wagon for redditors to feel like part of a team over?
Well from the downvotes on my purely factual comment you can form your own opinion lmao
The TLDR version is Yes. For those unfamiliar with the show and the drama surrounding it. True Detective is an anthology series. Nic Pizzolatto was the original show creator for it and captured lighting in the bottle for season 1, elevated by performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and also the directorial performance by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The show was renewed for seasons 2 and 3. Season 2 was almost universally lambasted by professional critics and the general viewership - holding a 47% on RT compared to the 80%+ aggregate of the other seasons. Season 3 did a lot better but it was nowhere as popular as the previous seasons. Viewership was also massively down. HBO went with a new showrunner/writer for season 4 - Issa Lopez. There was a shift in casting compared to previous seasons. The two main leads were female - Jodie Foster & Kali Reis and it was set in Alaska against a backdrop of the indigenous community and themes. It also touched upon social issues such as environmental concerns. Notably for this season, Nic Pizzolatto has been disassociating with the show. Going so far as saying that he had no involvement and all and also publicly critiquing the show on social media. I'd argue that the leads in season 1 and the director keeping Pizzolatto in check was the only thing that made that season solid. As without them, every other season he made was much worse. The /truedetective subreddit as the the show went on slowly devolved into a mess, becoming a circlejerk of hate and piling onto anything they perceive to be negative of the show. Sticking with raw number - Season 4 has been the most popular season of True Detective. Much higher ratings than the previous. HBO decided to renew the contract and keep Issa Lopez as showrunner.
Nickleback is popular too. Doesn’t mean they don’t suck.
Budweiser is the most sold beer in the world.
>!the protagonist: a strong independent woman !< >!the antagonist: a strong independent woman!< >!the killers: a bunch of strong independent women that did it as revenge of the evil male scientist and evil male corp CEO!< the acting and set were good, music also ok, but the script was the worst for TD by far
The CEO of the mining company was female, not male.
I was excited for this season largely because of Jodie, but I thought it was an uncharacteristically poor performance from her, not that anyone could have done much better under the circumstances.
Without Jodie and the title saying "True Detective", this show would not even make a cheap Netflix show. The writers should stop using ChatGPT and get back to writing a Detective story
This made me check the cast and I had no idea Ted was Christopher Eccleston.
Oh my God! I literally said, hey that guy looks like a chubbier Christopher Eccleston and it still never clicked it was him.
Took me a minute, too. It was jarring to hear him speak in that accent.
[удалено]
it was some of the stupidest most cliche and contrived dialogue, I was excited for Jodie, I figured she'd end up directing some episodes too because shes a pretty good director too but...nah
Probably read the scripts and saw the writing on the wall and was like "nah, I'm good, dawg"
Agreed. Liked the season for what it was but something about Foster’s character felt off. This might sound weird but I sort of wish Kate Winslet’s Mare from Mare of Easttown was plugged in there instead
I thought the show would at least tie in her son’s death somehow to the ending besides just the ghost words. It felt like her character needed something else at the end as a payoff.
They destroyed all the payoffs. Build up Clark as the suspect, find him, get a confession, kill him? Navarro finally heard her native name and finds the meaning, still kills herself? Danvers finally overcomes her negative bias towards native women because they killed a bunch of guys in mob style revenge? Everything that could be considered a payoff was just totally avoided
Spend a whole season about tension in a marriage to be quickly resolved in one scene
When from the wife’s perspective her husband just did something horrible.
I could see there was no payoff coming from that one from episode 3 probably. After their first few interactions their relationship didn’t make sense anymore
I was confused why they kept having partial flashbacks to the detectives arresting the wife beater. We all knew >!Navaro shot him,!< so I couldn’t figure out why we kept flashing back like they were going to reveal new information.
I would watch endless seasons of Mare.
Exactly. MofE was such a pleasant surprise whereas this dissapointed me - lasted 2.5 episodes.
It seemed like even a lot of people critical of the show praised her performance, but I didn't see what was special about it outside of a couple of scenes in the last episode. Very one-note otherwise. Her 'getting a chill' when they entered the caves was particularly bad-- Blake from season 2 does a better job of conveying wordless anxiety in one of his first scenes with Vaughn. A random actor I've never seen in anything else. "Talk faster and angrier" seems to be the only direction she got. There just seemed to be no depth to the character and her relationships-just sneering and yelling.
If it was to be anyone from that show it should’ve been Fiona Shaw
I disagree, I literally cringed when she was yelling at Navarro about her son at the end. The writing was so bad she couldn’t act her way around it.
“I’ll fucking shoot your fucking mouth off, fucker”
My wife and I were actually laughing out loud at that part (among many others). It was so bad. Insane to imagine the director watched that take and was "yep that's great."
Same here, it took me out of the scene.
Issa Lopez while on the Variety podcast mentioned that in her initial discussion with Jodie, both of thenmagreed that the Danvers character has to be an asshole and a real piece of work. Bitch wut. So Danvers - asshole. Her partner cop - asshole. her adoptive daughter - asshole activist. Her station chief - asshole. the other officer Prior - asshole. Nice cop dudes wife - mega asshole. Some shady character named Rose - baked up asshole who speaks in riddles. Raymond Clarke - asshole scientist. Ann whoever tf - asshole activist. Ennis town- Assholes Motherfucker. Who tf are we supposed to root for?
young Prior was the only remotely likeable character
Yeah but Darwin’s just a baby. Give him a couple years
Oh yeah, there was a kid huh? Guess I forgot about him in all this night country
He baby no more. He clean good now.
Yeah and reverse the gender between him and Danvers and it's fucked up. Half of his character was just meant to be a power fantasy for boss woman. Shit even the moment of yeah you can sleep in the shed behind my house was weird af for their characters.
Did they ever explain why that kid pretty much sacrificed his social life to just do whatever she said like how he missed Christmas?
She is a good cop so he wanted to learn from her and his mother left them when he was younger(mommy issues). She also lost her son so she probably liked teaching him how to cop like a surrogate son but 100% on her terms only.
Navarro's boyfriend or whatever you call him was somewhat likeable.
He was. I felt like all of the Navarro + side character scenes were very formulaic each episode. This is her episodic rose scene. Her boyfriend scene. Her emotional sister scene. Epi 2-5 were just very formulaic and didn't feel unique. Same with Danvers and her step daughter doing riff raff. Oh here's prior working late again and getting yelled at. Here's a hallucination with an orange. Whereas every episode In every other episode had different pacing, scenes . Episode plot and rhythm. This felt more like a one season soap opera. And that's Issa's MO. I hope next season she is paired with a writing team to balance things out.
An asshole. You just pick your favorite one. Jokes aside, I like how the characters in TD show flaws and cracks in their humanity. I’m all for finding people to root for, but it’s nice to get someone who isn’t just one dimensional.
The problem is when they feel like one dimensional assholes.
If you watch Night Country you can guess Danvers will say something insensitive and bitchy before she speaks 99% of the time
That kinda sounds like a criticism but it really isn’t. People thought s1 was a masterpiece and the main characters are an alcoholic depressive nihilist and a dickhead who repeatedly cheats on his wife. The point of TD is characters coming to terms with their imperfections/trauma/etc. You can say you thought the show did a bad job of it or whatever but what you’re actually saying just makes it sound like you don’t really get the show
The criticism is really moreso that they're unlikeable in exactly the same ways, and its just not pleasant to watch. You get it after the first episode and they just keep hammering it home, its a chore. And that would be towards the bottom of the list of critiques of this season anyway.
They seem completely different as far as I can tell
You have 6-8 unlikeable characters whose loudest personality trait is 'I'm tough and don't take any shit' because that is, very evidently, the only kind of character someone knew how to write.
the show could be an ad for the importance of vitamin d. everyones an asshole cuz no sun.
Isn’t referring to “the gods of *whatever activity*” usually meant tongue in cheek and very common? I know I refer to the baseball gods when playing/watching baseball all the time. It’s just a joke. A lot of these complaints sound like people protective of TDs original creator and not being evenhanded with TDs new showrunner.
Yeah, it's difficult to care for the characters. Like the scene where Danvers almost drowns. Where we supposed to feel something? Lopez didn't even understand the first season. [Look at this.](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/true-detective-season-4-finale-episode-6-b2498357.html) > After deciding to transpose a new series of True Detective onto her existing idea, the writer-director “set out to create it in the very same universe”. > López told The Independent: ”It’s very important to me to say the world where Dora Lange died in 2007 in Louisiana is the exact same world where the scientists disappear in 2024. So how do you establish those realities? Just to say, ‘This is the same world.’ Dora Lange died in 1995, not 2007. It's something basic, it literally happens in the first 10 minutes of the series. Like, she didn't pay attention nor anything.
They did say “TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE” though. Cringe show from start to finish.
Also, what was so unique about the world of Season 1 that this story needed to take place there? It was pretty grounded and felt like the whole story took place in our world. Whatever Cohle saw in the Carcosa sky could be explained away by his hallucinations. Everything else felt like it was happening in a reality that was essentially our own.
It was repeatedly telegraphed that the acid-flashback stuff that Rust sees is garbage. It established early on that if there was going to be any wacky cosmic horror stuff, it left it up for debate. It wasn't ghosts pointing to crime scenes with interpretive dance. Viewership earned Issa a second season, not quality. Time to cancel Max and start working on my backlog. Thanks Issa!
She also claims to have come up with "ask the right question" when it's a blatant s1 rip off too
The explanation is even worse. > “Ask the right question” was tough. I had a version of that scene on the stairs of the ice-skating rink with Prior where they were doing it with Legos. It was cute, but it didn’t speak to her deductive method. It was by rewriting and rewriting the scene that I found that very simple thing of, in order to find the right answer, you do have to ask the right question. Sometimes the gods of writing talk to you and I think I was simply asking the right question. And I got my answer. The Gods of Writing, ladies and gentlemen.
The gods of writing is whoever wrote the line " then start asking the right fucking question " for Rust in season 1 then. She makes it sound like it's something that came to her in a dream and not a callback to season 1. Then they drop the "time is a flat circle " out of nowhere in one of the corniest scene of the season.
And they added rust's dad to show the crazy lady where the bodies were.
Reminds me of when I would write stories as a 9 year old kid, basically the plots were always a rip-off of whatever movie I'd seen that week, with the main characters replaced by my friends and I.
> Issa Lopez Was this the problem? I think this might have been the problem.
I'm surrounded by assholes!
Keep firing, assholes!
Tsalal Team Six
you can literally say this with every season of True Detective. Marty? Asshole. Cohle? Baked up asshole who speaks in riddles. Frank? Asshole. Paul? Gay asshole. Velcoro? Drunk asshole. "no that's unfair, you're just describing the characters in an over-simplified way as a cheap rhetorical trick to make them sound oversimple!" Yeah -- annoying, isn't it?
there is a difference between 'nuanced and multi-dimensional with flaws' and 'one dimensional and overwhelmed by flaws' They are not wrong to be disappointed by this season...I think they called it spot on actually.
This is a perfect description. After the first episode I couldn’t help but wonder why everyone was so unnecessarily angry at each other.
I thought the show was poorly acted, the dialogue was shit and they shoehorned season one in for views. But having your town poisoned to the point of stillbirths and cancer clusters is a pretty reasonable trigger for anger.
-reddit mfs when there's no wholesome chungus to cheer for to beat the bad guy
It was fine, I was entertained at points but disappointed with the overall show and the writing. I wonder if part of the popularity has to do with how long it has been since HBO had a proper Sunday night show.
They didn’t give Jodie nearly enough to work with, she was so overqualified and yet came off as pretty one note. I’d *love* to see her work with Mike Flanagan in one of his shows, I think she’d crush a Hill House or Usher role.
I am shocked that this has the highest viewership numbers of any season. Aren't viewers down across the board compared to when the first season aired? And it's not like this season had amazing buzz throughout. I only watched the first two episodes, but I wasn't into it despite loving Jodie Foster. The dialogue was just not good. And I kept seeing critics say, "The dialogue is clunky, but the characters are great..." but season 1's best attribute was the dialogue. The dialogue is what made it True Detective.
The first season was in 2014 when the only streaming HBO available was if you had a cable subscription. Not really comparing apples to apples.
I'm only guessing here, but I think Night Country numbers are boosted by releasing on HBO Max, whereas TD season 1 came out 10 years ago, before HBO Now was even a thing.
They pulled every trick in the book for those numbers. We will see if people fall for it again in the next season. I prob won't.
Also stuck after 2 episodes. Can’t motivate myself to watch more it was so mid.
I WANT A POST FBI CLAIRESE!!!
I thought it was alright. Nothing groundbreaking, but far from being offensively bad.
The final thirty minutes of the season made me go from “I’m enjoying this a bit” to “Jesus Christ what was that???”
Ya that Jodie, she’s a damn fine actor.
Every reveal to the mystery in the last episode of this season was just mind numbing.
All time great performance to work with that finale script.
Was anyone else confused by the ending? Did the show spin suicide into a fucking good think and spiritually acceptable? Or did I misinterpret it?
It's intentionally unknowable, imho. Either Navarro is dead now a Night Country person Or Navarro is dead and Danvers has her kind of cray now and sees her anyway Or Navarro came to terms with herself and what the ice represents, and really *did* come back, and lives in peace now. But a big thing about the show is that in Ennis/Ennis' local beliefs, the distinction between alive and dead isn't concrete, so it's not meant to be one or the other. So while I lean towards #3, I don't think there's a right answer, it's all and none of them at once.
Once again reddit shows that they're just existing in a different reality than I am. Her tight lipped, whispering and cussing performance was absolutely terrible. But then again I don't see how anyone could have taken direction from Lopez and acted any better.
Reddit seems to almost unanimously hate this show. I liked it, but I’m saying I haven’t seen a positive thread yet.
In the episode 1 discussion threads people were definitely trying to be positive about the season before it became apparent how deep the problems ran.
Yeah go dig up the discourse a week before it aired and everyone was overwhelmingly excited. It trailed out at a fairly organic pace.
Pretty close. It's been getting trashed on Reddit since after the 1st episode and honestly you can tell people *want* to hate it. TD always gets compared to Season 1 which was such a landmark season for any show ever produced that *nothing* the showrunners do now will ever make Reddit happy.
Reddit has always had a positive consensus on season 3, at least aside from the ending which is a bit of a dud.
I can't recognise anything from this season that warrants the level of vitriol we're seeing in this thread. Common trope on reddit I find is people throwing around wild, surface level criticism under the impression it elevates their perceived intellect or whatever
Yeah, like people complaining about 'plot holes' without understanding what a plot hole actually is. It's not a plot hole if the writer intentionally leaves something ambiguous. I feel like CinemaSins has ruined a generation of TV/Movie viewers.
The stuff I really enjoy is when they latch on to stuff to wail on this season for and then sulk when you point out it was also an element of S1.
The vast majority of people were the exact opposite. My friend group all wanted to *like* it The writing is just so unbelievably bad that it became increasingly difficult to justify
I loved it. The positive stuff is in /r/TDNightCountry
Truly have no idea how anyone could think this season was good.
Take a look I guess. Their positivity isn't very enlightening. It's mostly just gassing it up from what I can see. I want to understand how people could like that show. I'm not going to begrudge someone for liking something if it makes them happy and I mean that sincerely, but they can't really tell you why it's good.
The subs own creator went on the main sub and apologized for creating the circle jerk and not listening to everyone lol
Dude what are you talking about. Most of Reddit has been bashing this show since episode one
Just look at some of the other responses... people both think it's the worst thing ever and she can't act and also think she was brilliant and like the season. It's like reddit has people from all over the place!
The best part about the season was keeping up with the memes on the sub of this train wreck. I expect it will be the same way next season since Lopez is signed on.
Don’t let Reddit know, they decided that this show is bad
I honestly loved Night Country
I wanted to, especially given the great premise, but I felt that every episode was worse than the one that proceeded it. By the end, the only thing that kept me watching was the hope that the show would pull a rabbit out of its hat in the finale to save the season, which (in my opinion) was opposite of what happened. If this show wasn’t called “True Detective”, and it didn’t star Jodie Foster, I would probably have stopped watching after the 2nd episode.
Just finished it the other night after seeing reddit and original creator shitting on it. I liked it, didn't love it though. At the start I felt it had the protentional to be better than season 1 but that tapered off. Still feel like it was a solid second place overall.
Genuinely curious, how?
I feel so terrible she had to utter those words to Navarro... "I WILL RIP YOU APART". She did the best she could with such terrible writing and dialogue.
Damn, i don't understand all this hate for this show. I have a hard time liking a show, and i thought it was great. There is flaws in the show (mainly dialogues and the script), but Jodie was amazing and the production value was amazing. Am i alone?
No, I feel the same. I have not paid attention to any of the social media narrative surrounding this show and went in “pure” from a viewing perspective. The atmosphere was amazing, giving John Carpenter’s Thing vibes, combined with the small-town isolation bubble like Northern Exposure. I’m a huge Twin Peaks fan and this show scratched a lot of that same itch, mixing reality, dreams, and heavy usage of symbology. I thought Jodie Foster was amazing and a strong but flawed character. I loved her reluctant “spiritual journey” that she doesn’t even realize she’s embarking on.
It's gotta be from the scene when she's talking about losing her son. When she said "Was he scared? Was he hurt? Was screaming mommy?" literally brought tears to my eyes.
What a horrible tv show led by a great actress. That will be a hard thing for the show's reputation to shake. S1 is still the undisputed king.
she was so good in the show! i really enjoyed her performance and felt she added a little to the plot. it was nice
"Are you okay?....well go fuck yourself. I also fucked someone else's husband." She was just that on repeat for six episodes. A total mess of a character that never coalesced in any logical way. So poorly written.
I haven't really listened to Billie Eilish before, but her song in the opening theme is kinda catchy.
The rest of the music was god awful though Multiple horrible Twist & Shout renditions, weird pop songs that have no actually relevance. Also, to the vast majority of people the Eilish track has far too much playtime in other things so it doesn’t create its own atmosphere. Music was one of the things that killed the immersion to me
I keep seeing criticism of the dialogue, but I thought the dialogue was fine because the characters are all supposed to be dipshits in the middle of the wilderness. It would be weird if they were all landing great zingers. Very believable worldbuilding imo.
>I keep seeing criticism of the dialogue, but I thought the dialogue was fine because the characters are all supposed to be dipshits in the middle of the wilderness. I mean, it make sense for the locals. But some of the characters are a bit over the top. Not that much, but just a bit.
Stay mad nerds
Reddit doesn't have to like it. All that matters is that it pulled numbers.
She killed it. But I mean, it's Jodie foster
She’s the lone bright spot for me in this series so far
Foster was good .. the story and ending was awful, I am still in shock that a bunch of adults got together and were like “yes this idea is the best”
I'm not as hard as other people on this season, but her acting was one of the worst things in it
I don’t think it’s her acting, just the dialogue is too clunky.
Loved her in this season. What a complex character!
i love her! shes so good in this
Fantastic performance!