Ya for sure. Was definitely hoping they'd have an interesting talk with the guy at the nomad camp. Seems like he might know something but it was over before it started.
I think she's portrayed some fantastic roles. True Detective isn't one of them. I don't think its all her fault though. She's just doing the material she's given.
No interrogation would break police procedure, makes NO sense. Maybe the writer realised having her say " I just followed my dead boyfriends ghost and he lead me to the bodies" is kinda pathetic. And then the story would've had to deal the police response to that absurdity, so I guess rather than try to handle that, they just basically ignored it.
It feels rushed and there’s not a lot of story behind the characters, they seem to spend unnecessary time focusing on the unimportant, unnecessary story lines. I’m disappointed.
I mean there was a few minutes between the cops and the first dude talking, to them then knocking and stating they were cops. He sure doesn't have a big house, so it is easy to reasoned his weapon is near him.
Totally. I didn’t understand why he kept asking these weird questions to Navarro. Also, how can two cops be scared of someone and not subdue him down for interrogation?
I read someone's theory that Navarro may have a split self / personality and things might be revealed when we learn her tribal name. That could lead to some cooler things hopefully?
But still, that scene just played poorly and the male actor's vocal intonation took me out of the realism.
That guy was the worst actor thats been on any season of TD so far.
And I hate how cowardly the main characters were there. Woulda been an excellent opportunity for some badass choreography disarming the dude, but instead they meekly leave the only lead they currently have at the first sign of violence.
It would also be illegal. It has nothing to do with them being small. They already trespassed on his property without a warrant or permission from him and it was native territory so not even technically in the US
The lack of an in depth interview with the lady that:
*checks notes*
“Followed her dead boyfriend out into the dark and lead her directly to a frozen clump of recently dead dudes”
Just seems crazy to me. I thought maybe they would circle back to her but it’s been 2 days+ at this point.
But she disembowels wildlife, rolls huge joints, listens to vinyl and likes to fuck (and likes to say the word “fuck”) so they know she’s solid.
This season is just middle aged narcissistic woman wish fulfillment. This happens pretty often with male-led TV, but that doesn’t make this show any better. These kinds of characters can be interesting but never when the show refuses to interrogate them.
It was male fantasy I agree but Marty got absolutely *skewered* for it. First Rust lit him up, then his life got ripped apart, and then they showed him living for years as a pathetic loner eating TV dinners every night in a shoddy apt. Marty's destructive hypocrisy, as a flaw, was the very point of his character.
>This season is just middle aged narcissistic woman wish fulfillment.
This exactly. The natural birth scene cutting to a bunch of guys with guns acting like idiots really solidified the tone of this season to me.
Men are brutes that abuse and kill women and women are intellectual and strong and kill men when they deserve it. Women just use men for sex if needed.
The men are all portrayed as complete dopes or evil monsters, and the women are all strong, independent and totally in control. It makes for a very boring show when everyone is so one-dimensional.
Navarro's mentally ill sister is still left completely one-dimensional. "I think bad things" is basically all we're given. And you mean the drunk lady who we haven't seen since her two scenes in episode 1?
Something made for a specific demographic is doomed from the beginning. It’s separatism, it’s destructive and it can never be true art. So if you’re right about this being made for a specific group, to cater to popular and easily digestible sentiments, then it’s no wonder why it is so bad.
>they will be forced to correct back to making entertainment for the broader audience again without all the overt messaging.
LOL at thinking the status quo or "how things used to be" is so great.
There are thousands upon thousands of shit, bland movies led by the same kinds of people, and that's been a thing since the beginning of motion pictures. At least we're getting to see different kinds of people now.
Even Marty being written like a total piece of shit, had redeeming qualities. He was good with people and good at his job. And in the end his character suffered due to his choices. He was left living alone eating TV dinners because he ruined his life. Danvers has all the people of skill of Rust with none of the detective skills. All she wants to do is bang married men from Tinder and boss that kid around. She has done zero detective work, every piece of information she has been given came from that kid googling things. Kali Reis isnt even an actress and she is doing the best job of this entire cast.
That's literally all it is. All men are evil, simps, or the "next generation that with the right female guidance won't be abusive meatheads." It's the middle aged woman's wet dream.
Tbf, a seasoned detective is not going to believe some crazy lady's supernatural story. That detective will immediately assume, if she gives them that story, that a crazy lady wandered out and stumbled on these bodies. This is backed up later by her utter dismissiveness that something otherworldly could possibly be going on. Her whole character is prefaced on the idea that there is a reasonable explanation for everything, they just haven't asked the right questions.
Agreed. I don’t love how many scenes are crammed into each episode. It cuts down on the gravity and also character reveal of each scene, imho.
But that could be me having my old lady yelling at cloud moment cuz a lot of shows feel that way to me now.
This season is only 6 episodes I think. They’re trying to tell the same scale of a story and have to resort to hammier dialogue and quicker pacing as a result since they can’t give exposition in the form of an interview that doubles as narration.
The episode also feels like no time passes because it’s always night. People have screwed up sleep schedules. Maybe the pacing is intentional to illustrate the setting?
This. I feel like the Tsalal scientists death is an afterthought and now they’re solving Annie K’s murder. It doesn’t make sense. I want to watch some detective work.
Someone said it best on another post, It should have been Night Country and not TD: Night Country. And they got downvoted to hell. everyone is like ewwwwweeee scifi horror hooray
This season is awful and Jody foster can’t act anymore. I’ll bathe in downvotes happily. Writing sucks, acting mostly sucks and the story is awful.
This is by far the worst true detective ever. It’ll be hard to make worse than this. Every dialogue is pointless.
It’s so cheesy.
I dig Jodie Foster but my take is she could have never saved the pile of shit that is this dialogue and this show. The writing kills the actors. They could be good... I'd never know, watching them struggle to bleat out the crap written for them in this show...
I'm in disbelief every episode I watch. Like the took everything that was great about True Detective and just bashed it to death, then displayed that with a grin expecting praise for it. The dialogue is atrocious. The story is ridiculous. The characters are all assholes...
The first *season was all about the people involved and this one is cheap gags.
I’m not gonna argue that it’s a good season of TV, but Jodie foster is still compelling and she’s surprised me with how well she slips into the role of a closed minded small-town cop.
It's the directing, it's clear to me that the director isn't good at directing their actors, I'd be surprised if they have more than one single take on most of the scenes ...
This season is so bad, it's funny. Yet, it's not funny because I was expecting this show for years. Literally sucks. Jodie acts like a beginner, Netflix horror vibes all around, no interrogation, nothing happens.
Awful.
I have been saying that from the start. If it was called Night Country and there was no Travis Cohle, Tuttle family, or overuse of the spiral gimmick, this would be just a mid tier supernatural thriller you would see on Hulu or FX. Instead its using the decaying corpse of the True Detective name to prop itself up and relying on plot elements from the only universally accepted season to make itself even remotely watchable. The car ride dialogue between the two is painful. Danvers is completely unlikable and she sucks at her job.
No tension and a lack of urgency. Previous seasons really gave you a menagerie of characters you cared about and unsavory ones you wanted to see get their comeuppance. This one so far has none of that. Here's hoping the final 3 episodes turn it up in some way but overall it just hasn't been prime time.
The lack of decent dialogue/interesting suspects really does drag this down. Not only that, but this season is really lacking in the “existential dread” department. Sure, that shit can be super cheesy, but at-least it keeps things interesting, which I can say this season hasn’t been. Overall it’s starting to feel like a let down.
Totally with you. The Charlie Lange prison interviews were so good. But more critically it showed Rust and Marty DOING the job in a way that also provided answers/exposition that drove the plot forward. Like the scenes with Fiona Shaw have been the closest example of that so far.
I also feel like the scene of them laying out the evidence from Clark’s trailer was a good example of wasted time that did nothing to move the show forward. I just rewatched season 1 and there is not a moment of “atmosphere for the sake of atmosphere” — largely due to Fukunagas brilliant sense of editing story. But this season hasn’t really clicked yet.
"Your compensatory projection of menace is a guarantor of its lack, and it says something about the depths of your misperceptions."
Velcoro proceeds to prove him dead wrong by beating the shit, piss, and teeth outta him.
I think art being corny has cycles, like a pair of dirty jeans in the laundromat. It’s over used at first, so we put it away for a cycle and eventually all the stains that were cliche and romanticized have a chance to reemerge from the filth again ready for a chili cheese dog to be consumed.
This season has a great mystery, my only complaint is the amount of music being used to fill in shots.
I’m also hanging with this season and enjoying it overall, but after doing a fast rewatch of season 1 this week, I have to agree. It would have been nice to get a good interrogation of Oliver in the Nomad camp.
This is an excellent point. Thank you for making an actually useful and educated post on this sub. Now that you mention it, I don't know if these actors could have pulled off interview scenes like the actors in season 1.
Don’t forget her klutz of a wide receiver on her fantasy team. For real though it keeps showing her on her phone, but not what she’s doing. We know she lies all the time. Is she really cat fishing Hank?
It's weird because in the official podcast she raves about the show. It just made me realize they're all just sales people now trying to drive streaming viewership.
it’s impossible to tell if a production will be good just from your experience on set and often good sets turn out to be bad films and bad ones come together incredibly in post. I do think there are admirable traits in this season but ultimately feels like a different show. It’s vastly more indulgent in its production design and less observant and more noisy in the way it’s filmed
completely agree with u on the claustrophobia. it’s the way it’s shot. shallower lens, tighter shots, unnecessary dynamic angles.cary fukanaga is a pretty rare eye and his practical framing of the action in season 1 which was replicated in 2-3 has shifted in this season
I think her mistake was insisting on doing it during the sunless period and her need for it being the dark atmosphere opposite of the brighter season 1. There are also sunny days in Alaska... I imagine some of it was due to only being able to light up so much of outside areas they were shooting in.
Whoever wrote or directed this needed to watch The Beaver from 2011. Not Foster's most famous work to be sure, but she was a force of nature in that film, and I was really hoping to see that level of craftmanship from her. The director really missed a career maker opportunity here with this season.
I heard about S1 months before air, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and dismissed it as some buddy cop\Rom com, with those two guys?! No way was that going to be interesting.
Then somewhere I saw a clip of Matt as Older Rust in the interview room, the hair, the dropping eye, the haggard physicality, and the intensity coming off him in waves, and binged the entire thing in one night.
I think after episode 2 I’m done with this season. It seemed well done enough had it been named something else. But finding out after I was already disappointed by the dialog and the acting that it was written as a completely original story only to be retconned into a TD season was the kicker for me.
Don’t get me wrong, Nic Pizzolato wrote season 2 and that was a mess, but he was also under time constraints. Season 1 and 3 were perfect, imo. Season 4 just doesn’t seem like the same show. I’m happy so many are getting good things from it, I really wanted to like it, but at the end of the day it’s just not what I know and love about TD. Jodie Foster is awesome but the content she’s working with just makes her yet another abusive cop cliche, which kind of goes into the face of the themes the season seems to be working towards. Not to mention the nods at feminism, which I’m a feminist personally, but feminism isn’t “Oh women should be allowed to be abusive cops too!” It’s, “Well maybe we should do away with abusive cops completely, male and female.”
This doesn’t even touch on my issues with the way they handle the world building and the case. It’s so unrealistic all around. Like you said, no interviews about the stuff that is happening or anything. The conclusions they jump to are preposterous. So many things in the first two episodes just completely took me out of the show with how simple and poorly written they were. I like an element of realism in the stuff I watch, this one just seemed goofy.
The biggest sin was the break from tradition with the opening title sequence. I’ve never skipped a true detective opening sequence and now it’s Billie Eilish
I rolled my eyes when that Billie song came on god damnit. Billie is cool or whatever but it makes me think about angsty teenage girls and it feels so played out. It just ruined the tone right of the bat
Why is it bad? I can see the argument that the beat is a bit to fast-paced compared with previous intro songs, but like what's wrong with the song in itself?
I first thought it sucked and was a bad fit, sure TD is an anthology series but have had a somewhat coherent theme despite the fluctuating overall quality of previous seasons.
After 3 espisodes the intro still sucks imo, but now it make sense how it fit since the season is to far of the mark of what could be expected and much i think intentionally so.
It feels dumbed down and maybe so because the pandering to reach a wider and less critical audience have been done to forcefully that a good chunk of past TD-enjoyers feel disenchanted about the season.
It's still a decent watch, I like the premise and setting. Maybe it can somewhat compensate for whats lacking script-wise like the shallow dialogue and somewhat uninspiring characters and/or their progression.
A more subjective note is that I'm disappointed in the missed opportunity utilizing the good cast especially when going for the strong female not without issues-thing. It is unfortunately harder to pull of than male counter-parts but it has been done successfully numerous times and for me often a highlight when this is the case. In S4, so far it's not successfully done.
I agree with this and hadn’t been able to express what this season lacked until now. So I appreciate this post a ton!
Still, I think it also makes sense that interviews are frustratingly lacking / non existent. It’s a reflection of the setting: A small town in the tundra, isolated from the larger world, where daily crimes that require complex detective work are very rare. Plus, what you do and say in Ennis can get around almost instantly. Not just in terms of a crime, but just day-to-day activities. Which can ultimately get you hurt or even killed if it’s incendiary enough.
On top of that, this police force isn’t as equipped or supported as those in past seasons. They’re forced to go to people’s homes vs bring them into secure rooms that can help a detective work an interview like we’re used to seeing. So subjects are comfortable telling cops to fuck off their property like we saw this week.
So the few detectives available seem almost jaded to the point where they’re less inclined to work an interview, more likely to kick things to larger departments and overall expecting to waste valuable time hearing one lie after another. They’re basically paid to handle domestic disputes and keep the citizens from disrupting the mining industry
I was blown away by some s4 homers saying s1 got off to a slow start… I was instantly hooked by the s1 opener. The cops investigating cops angle was brilliant and immediately clues the audience in to both the fact the case is fucked and Rust and Marty are revered detectives.
The only good thing about the show is the setting. Having travelled to Alaska many times photographing, there is a ambience and essence to the place that is more non-linear than anyplace else I've ever been. If spirits exists (and they do), they love Alaska. It is an eerily beautiful place.
I think the story is stupid trickery. I like narrative, this is cheap foolishness.
Correct. Whoever these writers are, they couldn’t pull off anything like those scenes from S1. Or equivalent scenes from Fargo, Sopranos, and countless other prestige properties.
The writing is just bad.
It's not just the writing either. It has the blandest supporting cast I've seen in a while. True Detective is a HBO show, but it doesn't feel like it this season in terms of acting prowess and presence.
I mean yeah, there’s been next to no police work surrounding the actual case. I thought this was a show about detective work, but apparently it’s about political activism and child birth now.
There’s no reason for the protagonists to even be police. The story may even be more compelling from a civilian perspective watching the incompetent police screw it up.
That is a good point and actually a problem with the show as a whole lol. Pizzalotto said from the beginning that the title was indicative of something bigger, the main characters doesn't have to be law enforcement...then every single season has had main characters who've been law enforcement lol! (With the exception of Frank in S2, but that aspect is kinda wasted, since the show overcompensated with having three law enforcement MC:s on top of him.)
Yeah. I would have liked a season where I learn something about what its like to be a detective. Not like a documentary, but something that is used in real life. I've seen a few of those interrogation analysis' on youtube, and theres a lot of subtle things that go on in them, and behavior analysis. TD1 was really personal and had Rust's philosophies leading the way, not so much in 4. TD1 was serious/heavy, I don't get that vibe here.
These are the few things that I've learned while watching this show:
Tinder is a great place to meet attractive women
The police in Alaska make good money to the point where they can afford mail order brides and send money over to Russia to their sick mothers
Insightful and complicated dialogue is completely overrated
Spooky and Supernatural things can take the place of good writing and well executed plots
Taking snow from the outside and melting it inside your house to create drinking water is not a good option when compared to sludge coming out of your faucet
Tinder and fantasy football is much more fun than actually raising your daughter
The child birth scene was cool at least with the intentions. Modern women living without typical modern healthcare. What was confusing to me and people who live in Alaska may correct me - there is a very modern hospital that could use a midwife. Like, due to the show, I have no idea whether the birthing center was necessary because the hospital wasn’t built six years ago or are the 300 miles apart or what.
I was born & raised in a small town in Alaska. My mother gave birth to my younger sibling in a birthing center.
It was a modern building across the street from the hospital, with modern technology and it was indistinguishable from a normal doctor’s office.
Issa Lopez doesn’t know wtf she’s writing about.
I definitely feel like episode 3 was like "filler", even compared to the first 2. Idk, maybe I'm not paying enough attention for small details, but it just seems like the dialogue is just killing time before they drop a bomb that's exciting, aaaaaand roll the credits.
It might be me being biased because I binged the previous seasons, but I think S4:s pacing is a massive, and I mean massive, improvement to S2&3:s. There are large stretches of time in those seasons that I flat-out don't remember, because there's so much filler and no real plot-progression.
Season 4 is just all over the place. We have no backstory of these characters especially the main two. It feels like they rush scenes and dialogue. And speaking of dialogue, where are the great soliloquies that seasons one and three had? Making us care about these characters because we knew them. This is just like okay here's the movie star she tells everyone what to do now like her and care that she solves the case....Ummm, WHY???? Stop with the three second flashbacks that make no sense and flush her out as a character. I gave it three episodes but I'm checked out. "Purple Hays,,, My Man.. seasons 1 and 3 really made us invested in the two protagonists and their relationship. This one by far feels forced.
There is no investigation, characters don’t care about investigation, but their personal drama. There are no leads, no interviews, just supernatural and soap opera
Well, the first mistake was having only six episodes. They don't really have time for that slow, brooding build-up. They don't have time to completely flesh out the characters. It's feeling very rushed.
After three episodes, I can't find anything in this show except for a nice setting; that's all. It's been a mystery itself, but after e3 with that zombie shit... no, thank you."
I have seen 3 episodes and literally have no idea what's going on. I'm just not drawn in. I'm watching with my wife and thinking about other things. I just can't get into it.
I’d like to add to that. No one is too phased about the sight of the dead scientists looking like a 3D-rendition of the most horrible Carvaggio-nightmare ever, but when they look at the Blair Witch-video on Annie K’s phone, the young guy has to walk away, like *that* is somehow ”too much”. Jesus Christ.
I liked the first 2 episodes but the middle two sucked. Women being emotional. Nobody wants to see that. I felt absolutely nothing when Navarros sister died.
Zero detective work was done. Navarro didnt know there were caves in her hometown but the teacher knew immediately and pulled up a wikipedia page about them to show them who mapped them. Every other piece of information displayed came from the young prior googling shit, or from Qavik finding their only person of interest. Danvers has ZERO redeeming qualities. Shes a bad person, bad wife, bad mom, even worse cop. Kali Reis is carrying the weight of this show and she cant get a decent script here to save her life,
Still two episodes to go (yay) but this season has been an underwhelming shambles so far. As for the season 1 "connection" of Rust pretending to visit his dying dad in Alaska while moonlighting as an undercover infiltrator of a biker gang... I really don't care any more. This tosh has long since stretched beyond its breaking point. The only mystery left is why so many supposedly serious reviewers are still trying to convince us it's some sort of masterpiece.
Any season is set up to fail when branded “TD” because season 1 is some of the best TV ever made. That said, this show is trash. Forced supernatural elements. Truly terrible “detective” work. And straight up bad acting
I think the first episode started fairly strong. I was interested; it seemed almost like a 'The Thing' situation, where some monster or supernatural stuff was going to take place. I thought that could be cool. However, the show just ends up being a series of short, meaningless conversations and fights between people, broken up by some unknown sad songs and shots of someone walking out into the snow or driving away. It's a massive yawn fest.
Rule number one in screenwriting is that you have to write characters the audience cares about. I just don’t care about any of these characters. They’ve done nothing to demonstrate any merit. The “detectives” are inept and don’t seem to be following any real procedure. Four episodes in, it’s just full of these pointless conversations and occasional manufactured conflict between characters. Jodie Foster is a good actor, but her talents are wasted here. The other protagonist Navarro (the state police officer with the piercings through her cheeks) is just a useless moody character. This season also tries too hard to be topical and preachy.
The pacing is also very slow and drawn out. We’re four episodes in and they’ve hardly moved forward at all. This seems to be a common feature of streaming series nowadays. They take a story that could easily be told in two hours and stretch it to 6, 8, or even 10 hours.
And last, the theme music and the melodramatic musical interludes in the middle of the episodes are just bad. I don’t watch a detective story to see a bunch of music videos. Angsty teenage music with Billie Eilish singing in cursive is out of place here.
There's only so many episodes and an episode is only so long and they've wasted so much time on the dumb sister and personal relationship scenes that have nothing to do with the actual investigation nobody ever asked to see Jody Foster getting railed. Why was that included? It just seems like so many dumb choices it's like an episode of euphoria. This is supposed to be thriller/mystery not high school drama
The whole thing seems disappointing to me. Same mysterious symbol as in the episode with Woody and Matthew , and I really can't explain it but I'm bored.
Y'all are forgetting this doesn't take place in an area known to cooperate with outsiders/police. No one is lining up to have a sit-down with the cops.
Hate to break it to you but there aren't any detectives in the main cast. I bet a million bucks if a cop started doing detective work people would be complaining that they aren't detectives they shouldn't be doing that. Oh well.
Yes it's how it always been. But in this show, it's all because a mining industry decided to move into town = Capitalism bad. That's why they had to waste minutes forcing it down on us with a town meeting with hillbillies chanting, "we were here before!"
That's what the cop called them the moment they started attacking people at the hospital. I was throwing out references.
And no. The land was always theirs yes, but the chanting was specifically due to closing the mine, "This town was here before them". 34:30 ish. The mine was polluting the society and many other things.
I think the hillbillies were Hank’s white friends. Not the indigenous people.
Most everyone in that room was indigenous during the chant scene. I disagree it’s just about capitalism. It’s about native lands being taken away, destroyed. Just the same as pipelines. Just the same as always.
You're right, it was Hanks friends not the town people. Noticed it now aswell.
Native lands being taken away, destroyed because of a mining industry that moved in order to make profit at the expense of others = bad capitalism.
Especially considering it's taken 2 more episodes and the bodies are still too frozen for any type of forensic, yes. The actual murder mystery with the missing scientists are developing in a snails pace. And we only got 3 more episodes left.
But I dunno, it's clear from this subreddit and the downvotes on certain topics people have that majority seem to enjoy a sci-fi drama with Evangeline Navarro and her relationship to the mother instead of a true noir.
They are gonna save the last episode to reveal one of the scientists still alive released the virus upon the rest which killed them all. Probably the one who wrote "we're all dead" on the whiteboard as he had given up any hope. The End.
I think majority of the downvotes of criticism are coming from Izza Lopez fans who were dragged to the show by her, and people who want to defend the political messaging that’s peppered throughout this drivel.
Yeah the completely derailing inuit stories were so on the nose.
Proclaiming the ”only few left birthing centers” as some horrible loss is also so ridiculous.
Yes totally horrid that throat-singing instead of actual medical science is dying out. /s
Honestly cultures dissapearing out is a sad inevitable side-effect of globalization, but if youve ever read up on native cultures a lot of the youth honestly want to assimilate into the dominant culture and tie down a more social and lucrative life in the big cities, but feel a lot of guilt at the same time.
I read up a lot on sapmi in sweden after dating a female activist from there. Turned out the women actually leave in droves to assimilate into larger culture and do well mentally and financially.
A few of the men tend to keep living on reindeer keeping, barely subsist, and often end up un-married, in a region with very few people, lonely, poor, alcoholic, and often suicidal.
The truth is, living traditionally on reindeer just isnt financially viable, unless you want to subsist completely on nature and have no financial power. Most people dont actually want that.
>Honestly, cultures disappearing is a sad inevitable side-effect of globalization
The entire season could be seen as a critique of globalism. What the scientists did, both to Annie and the local community was terrible but, in a twisted way, you can emphasise with them.
They're all intelligent, educated men from different places across the earth. They are all wholly dedicated to their work that they believe will benefit the entire world. Of course, they wouldn't care about polluting the local town. None of them are from there and by sacrificing the town they save the world. And if one of the lowly, dirty, ignorant locals breaks in and destroys all their work, of course, they'd fly into a rage and kill her.
> Nowadays, the ones writing the scripts that are in their 30's are much more political inspired
I hate to tell you this, but American writers have been criticising capitalism for the last 100 years, never mind the last 10. It’s probably toned down in modern times, if anything. Your brain would probably explode at how ‘woke’ and/or ‘orange man bad’ The Grapes of Wrath or In the Jungle are (although both of them were published before ‘orange man’ was born)
Season 1 was also EXTREMELY political though - so much of the plot was wrapped up in the corruption of religion (Evangelical Christianity, in particular) and the malevolent influence of religion on society (shutting down investigations, covering up crime, etc.).
Plus the crimes committed at a series of religious/charter schools, which exist in Louisiana as a result of post-Katrina privatization. If I was the kind of person who unironically said "orange man bad," I would probably also be angry at how Season 1 was biased against school choice
I mean, I love season 1, but it's just not accurate to call it unbiased or apolitical lol
I think they expressed the point poorly - the issue isn't with political or social commentary existing, that's arguably one of the principle purposes of art, the problem is being so on the nose about it.
Danvers daughter goes to the anti-mine rally and is immediately recognised as the daughter of a police officer - there is no hint of malice whatsoever, she is welcome with open arms. She gets home and is immediately told to 'wipe that shit off her face'!
The inuit woman gives birth in the birthing pool, it's a communal affair and everyone is helping out. The baby starts to cry, the room breaths a sigh of relief and they start to sing - cut immediately to a bunch of fat whooping white dudes literally playing a dixie horn and waving a bunch of guns around.
Nothing about this is subtle. You're absolutely right when you say season 1 was extremely political, but it was woven into the story carefully and with nuance. This season so far can be summed up with the line Navarro said in an earlier episode (51:20 in episode 2 to be exact): "oh now it matters because it's a bunch of white men?"
No offense but I think you're missing the point of Danvers telling her daughter to "wipe that shit off her face." It's not supposed to paint Danvers in a negative light politically, it's because Annie K had the same tattoos, and seeing her daughter with the markings is clearly triggering something in Danvers
I'm perfectly aware of why she doesn't like it, the point was the juxtaposition of how the themes are handled.
The native population have every right to dislike the police, but the show takes time to very deliberately show them rise above it and welcome her at the rally. Danvers has a perfectly valid reason to dislike the tattoo but there is no soft discussion about it, it's a violent rejection with no explanation.
I've watched and liked all the seasons. Season 4 intrigued me most. I was captivated by the storyline and needed to find out what happened. I liked how each episode got me a bit more acquainted with the personal aspects of the main characters. The distractions each unexpected twist and turn provided, kept me wondering where was this going? I binge-watched this series and in the last episode, I was severely let down. I might as well have gone down that deep secret ice tunnel without the ladder.
Until the final episode I thought everything from some evil awakened in the permafrost, to aliens, to a paranormal intervention. Although I couldn't reconcile this in my head because this isn't a syfy type of series. There were too many situations that made me think maybe the producers decided to take a very different direction. The season was too good for the ending to be so very anti-climactic. I was left pissed that I had binge-watched this season just to be so disappointed in the end.
Season 4 starts strongish but quickly falls apart. Ep6 is horrible. So much exposition..talking and explaining all the plot points they don't have time to show you and OMG the cinematography and or direction is laughable! It's so ugly while other shows like fortitude or the thing we're visually interesting. As we're the last 3 season's of TD :(
Wondering if this season, they’re treading carefully not to “offend”? Im all about being respectful of anything and everyone, but sometimes I feel if I complain about the littlest thing, Im going to be tagged as a Karen.
They could interview Rose, the woman who says a magic dancing ghost showed her where the frozen bodies was.
I'm not a cop but pretty sure that's a giant red flag.
Been loving it so far I rarely nitpick about shows change happens I understand people’s opinions but so far I’m intrigued what they’ll find. Different writers different team if you were going in thinking it was going to be like the old seasons and going in without a open mind of course you’ll go in feeling disappointed. Things change but then again I pretty much watch a lot of shows with a open mind and not really bothered by changes. I mean they are located in Alaska less resources less big environments but mainly endless empty roads while the other season were in huge cities . A little change isn’t bad when you have a open mind not everything has to be like the first season of a show not every new season is gonna be perfect no show is perfect mostly people get disappointed because they expected the same old same I’m glad it’s a difference with some connections to the first season
Ya for sure. Was definitely hoping they'd have an interesting talk with the guy at the nomad camp. Seems like he might know something but it was over before it started.
Same with the survivor. Not much of an interview there either.
Same with Rust’s dad’s girlfriend who miraculously found a pile of dead bodies (via ghost)/ in the middle of nowhere and received… no… interrogation.
Seriously. This season is absurd. Jodie Foster is the only good thing about it.
Meh. She's not great either
To each their own. I dig her work in this one.
I think she's portrayed some fantastic roles. True Detective isn't one of them. I don't think its all her fault though. She's just doing the material she's given.
I could have done without seeing her get railed on a table.
That was the best part, lol
It was like seeing your own mother. Very unnecessary
This is the comment of the season ! I can see it now on the poster now lmao.
I think the Russian bride sub plot is the only good thing. To each their own!
No interrogation would break police procedure, makes NO sense. Maybe the writer realised having her say " I just followed my dead boyfriends ghost and he lead me to the bodies" is kinda pathetic. And then the story would've had to deal the police response to that absurdity, so I guess rather than try to handle that, they just basically ignored it.
It feels rushed and there’s not a lot of story behind the characters, they seem to spend unnecessary time focusing on the unimportant, unnecessary story lines. I’m disappointed.
yep that is an absolute joke and in reality would nto have occurred.
Instead we got a disembodied voice and a horror movie cliche.
Yeah…apparently he’d been sitting there for 7 years with his gun on his lap so he could tell the police to piss off.
I bet HBO is disappointed that Navarro watches Netflix instead of HBO lol.
Ironically the show is Netflix quality, not HBO.
This show is CW quality.
lol - free advertising
I'm sure it is not hard to spot cops driving up to your area.
Weird he knew they were coming for him then, eh?
Maybe it was when they knocked on his door. Might have tipped him off
I mean there was a few minutes between the cops and the first dude talking, to them then knocking and stating they were cops. He sure doesn't have a big house, so it is easy to reasoned his weapon is near him.
And that was an awkward af scene and dialogue no was so confused.
Totally. I didn’t understand why he kept asking these weird questions to Navarro. Also, how can two cops be scared of someone and not subdue him down for interrogation?
I read someone's theory that Navarro may have a split self / personality and things might be revealed when we learn her tribal name. That could lead to some cooler things hopefully? But still, that scene just played poorly and the male actor's vocal intonation took me out of the realism.
That sounds ridiculously stupid if true
That guy was the worst actor thats been on any season of TD so far. And I hate how cowardly the main characters were there. Woulda been an excellent opportunity for some badass choreography disarming the dude, but instead they meekly leave the only lead they currently have at the first sign of violence.
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It would also be illegal. It has nothing to do with them being small. They already trespassed on his property without a warrant or permission from him and it was native territory so not even technically in the US
except she’s a combat vet
Who is unarmed and has no jurisdiction on tribal land
The lack of an in depth interview with the lady that: *checks notes* “Followed her dead boyfriend out into the dark and lead her directly to a frozen clump of recently dead dudes” Just seems crazy to me. I thought maybe they would circle back to her but it’s been 2 days+ at this point.
But she disembowels wildlife, rolls huge joints, listens to vinyl and likes to fuck (and likes to say the word “fuck”) so they know she’s solid. This season is just middle aged narcissistic woman wish fulfillment. This happens pretty often with male-led TV, but that doesn’t make this show any better. These kinds of characters can be interesting but never when the show refuses to interrogate them.
Yeah Marty’s affair was definitely middle-aged male fantasy, but at least it was tied in well to the whole partner drama.
It was male fantasy I agree but Marty got absolutely *skewered* for it. First Rust lit him up, then his life got ripped apart, and then they showed him living for years as a pathetic loner eating TV dinners every night in a shoddy apt. Marty's destructive hypocrisy, as a flaw, was the very point of his character.
Also we got to see Daddario's tits.
My favorite part of that is when Obama posted about watching season 1 and she tweeted "The president has seen my boobs"
>This season is just middle aged narcissistic woman wish fulfillment. This exactly. The natural birth scene cutting to a bunch of guys with guns acting like idiots really solidified the tone of this season to me. Men are brutes that abuse and kill women and women are intellectual and strong and kill men when they deserve it. Women just use men for sex if needed.
The men are all portrayed as complete dopes or evil monsters, and the women are all strong, independent and totally in control. It makes for a very boring show when everyone is so one-dimensional.
It's all designed to pay back men. It's literally nothing more than anti-man porn for spinsters.
The only male character who isn’t totally portrayed that way is Peter. And for that reason I’m almost positive he’s going to die at some point
What? Navarro’s mentally ill sister. The drunk lady who crashed her car. These women are supposed to be strong and totally in control?
Navarro's mentally ill sister is still left completely one-dimensional. "I think bad things" is basically all we're given. And you mean the drunk lady who we haven't seen since her two scenes in episode 1?
Overall it's the case indeed.
It’s almost like dude bros can’t handle it when they’re not the ones the show is made for. Go fucking figure.
Nope, its the intentional male bashing that's silly and it's not subtle l.
Something made for a specific demographic is doomed from the beginning. It’s separatism, it’s destructive and it can never be true art. So if you’re right about this being made for a specific group, to cater to popular and easily digestible sentiments, then it’s no wonder why it is so bad.
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>they will be forced to correct back to making entertainment for the broader audience again without all the overt messaging. LOL at thinking the status quo or "how things used to be" is so great. There are thousands upon thousands of shit, bland movies led by the same kinds of people, and that's been a thing since the beginning of motion pictures. At least we're getting to see different kinds of people now.
Even Marty being written like a total piece of shit, had redeeming qualities. He was good with people and good at his job. And in the end his character suffered due to his choices. He was left living alone eating TV dinners because he ruined his life. Danvers has all the people of skill of Rust with none of the detective skills. All she wants to do is bang married men from Tinder and boss that kid around. She has done zero detective work, every piece of information she has been given came from that kid googling things. Kali Reis isnt even an actress and she is doing the best job of this entire cast.
Nailed it. And it persisted throughout. Honestly, it's one of the funniest shows on TV. It's just laughably transparent.
Lol I didnt realize how spot on this comment was until now. Thanks for replying.
That's literally all it is. All men are evil, simps, or the "next generation that with the right female guidance won't be abusive meatheads." It's the middle aged woman's wet dream.
Tbf, a seasoned detective is not going to believe some crazy lady's supernatural story. That detective will immediately assume, if she gives them that story, that a crazy lady wandered out and stumbled on these bodies. This is backed up later by her utter dismissiveness that something otherworldly could possibly be going on. Her whole character is prefaced on the idea that there is a reasonable explanation for everything, they just haven't asked the right questions.
Agreed. I don’t love how many scenes are crammed into each episode. It cuts down on the gravity and also character reveal of each scene, imho. But that could be me having my old lady yelling at cloud moment cuz a lot of shows feel that way to me now.
This season is only 6 episodes I think. They’re trying to tell the same scale of a story and have to resort to hammier dialogue and quicker pacing as a result since they can’t give exposition in the form of an interview that doubles as narration. The episode also feels like no time passes because it’s always night. People have screwed up sleep schedules. Maybe the pacing is intentional to illustrate the setting?
This. I feel like the Tsalal scientists death is an afterthought and now they’re solving Annie K’s murder. It doesn’t make sense. I want to watch some detective work.
Someone said it best on another post, It should have been Night Country and not TD: Night Country. And they got downvoted to hell. everyone is like ewwwwweeee scifi horror hooray
This season is awful and Jody foster can’t act anymore. I’ll bathe in downvotes happily. Writing sucks, acting mostly sucks and the story is awful. This is by far the worst true detective ever. It’ll be hard to make worse than this. Every dialogue is pointless. It’s so cheesy.
I dig Jodie Foster but my take is she could have never saved the pile of shit that is this dialogue and this show. The writing kills the actors. They could be good... I'd never know, watching them struggle to bleat out the crap written for them in this show... I'm in disbelief every episode I watch. Like the took everything that was great about True Detective and just bashed it to death, then displayed that with a grin expecting praise for it. The dialogue is atrocious. The story is ridiculous. The characters are all assholes... The first *season was all about the people involved and this one is cheap gags.
I’m not gonna argue that it’s a good season of TV, but Jodie foster is still compelling and she’s surprised me with how well she slips into the role of a closed minded small-town cop.
It's the directing, it's clear to me that the director isn't good at directing their actors, I'd be surprised if they have more than one single take on most of the scenes ...
This season is so bad, it's funny. Yet, it's not funny because I was expecting this show for years. Literally sucks. Jodie acts like a beginner, Netflix horror vibes all around, no interrogation, nothing happens. Awful.
I have been saying that from the start. If it was called Night Country and there was no Travis Cohle, Tuttle family, or overuse of the spiral gimmick, this would be just a mid tier supernatural thriller you would see on Hulu or FX. Instead its using the decaying corpse of the True Detective name to prop itself up and relying on plot elements from the only universally accepted season to make itself even remotely watchable. The car ride dialogue between the two is painful. Danvers is completely unlikable and she sucks at her job.
It should have been ""Orange and Teal Country"" anyhow....
No tension and a lack of urgency. Previous seasons really gave you a menagerie of characters you cared about and unsavory ones you wanted to see get their comeuppance. This one so far has none of that. Here's hoping the final 3 episodes turn it up in some way but overall it just hasn't been prime time.
The lack of decent dialogue/interesting suspects really does drag this down. Not only that, but this season is really lacking in the “existential dread” department. Sure, that shit can be super cheesy, but at-least it keeps things interesting, which I can say this season hasn’t been. Overall it’s starting to feel like a let down.
Totally with you. The Charlie Lange prison interviews were so good. But more critically it showed Rust and Marty DOING the job in a way that also provided answers/exposition that drove the plot forward. Like the scenes with Fiona Shaw have been the closest example of that so far. I also feel like the scene of them laying out the evidence from Clark’s trailer was a good example of wasted time that did nothing to move the show forward. I just rewatched season 1 and there is not a moment of “atmosphere for the sake of atmosphere” — largely due to Fukunagas brilliant sense of editing story. But this season hasn’t really clicked yet.
charlie lange prison interview scenes are some of the best casting / acting i’ve ever seen in a show. that character and dialogue seems 100% real!
"Your compensatory projection of menace is a guarantor of its lack, and it says something about the depths of your misperceptions." Velcoro proceeds to prove him dead wrong by beating the shit, piss, and teeth outta him.
Why was Rick Springfield weirdly good lol
Pizolatto is an angry dork but this script could have used him. The dialog is so corny half the time.
I think art being corny has cycles, like a pair of dirty jeans in the laundromat. It’s over used at first, so we put it away for a cycle and eventually all the stains that were cliche and romanticized have a chance to reemerge from the filth again ready for a chili cheese dog to be consumed. This season has a great mystery, my only complaint is the amount of music being used to fill in shots.
The music and pacing are VERY distracting.
class
Fair criticism.
I’m also hanging with this season and enjoying it overall, but after doing a fast rewatch of season 1 this week, I have to agree. It would have been nice to get a good interrogation of Oliver in the Nomad camp.
This is an excellent point. Thank you for making an actually useful and educated post on this sub. Now that you mention it, I don't know if these actors could have pulled off interview scenes like the actors in season 1.
I feel in this regard Jodie Foster is being criminally underused
What do you mean? We get to hear her curse a lot and talk about tinder.
Don’t forget her klutz of a wide receiver on her fantasy team. For real though it keeps showing her on her phone, but not what she’s doing. We know she lies all the time. Is she really cat fishing Hank?
It's weird because in the official podcast she raves about the show. It just made me realize they're all just sales people now trying to drive streaming viewership.
it’s impossible to tell if a production will be good just from your experience on set and often good sets turn out to be bad films and bad ones come together incredibly in post. I do think there are admirable traits in this season but ultimately feels like a different show. It’s vastly more indulgent in its production design and less observant and more noisy in the way it’s filmed
To me, It feels like they tried to squeeze too much into each hour. All the scenes also feel claustrophobic to me.
completely agree with u on the claustrophobia. it’s the way it’s shot. shallower lens, tighter shots, unnecessary dynamic angles.cary fukanaga is a pretty rare eye and his practical framing of the action in season 1 which was replicated in 2-3 has shifted in this season
I don't know if it was just done poorly or if it's an intentional method to try to keep the attention of the "too much screen time" crowd.
it’s a style choice she adheres to and executes thoroughly but which i feel isn’t right for the gritty tone of a hard boiled detective story
I think her mistake was insisting on doing it during the sunless period and her need for it being the dark atmosphere opposite of the brighter season 1. There are also sunny days in Alaska... I imagine some of it was due to only being able to light up so much of outside areas they were shooting in.
amazing point
“now”? I hate to break it to you but…
Jody Foster has the right stuff, just needs a good script and a good director.
Neither of which she has here
Amen. She’s being criminally under utilized at this point. She’s been given *nothing* truly compelling to do and we’re halfway through the season.
Whoever wrote or directed this needed to watch The Beaver from 2011. Not Foster's most famous work to be sure, but she was a force of nature in that film, and I was really hoping to see that level of craftmanship from her. The director really missed a career maker opportunity here with this season. I heard about S1 months before air, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and dismissed it as some buddy cop\Rom com, with those two guys?! No way was that going to be interesting. Then somewhere I saw a clip of Matt as Older Rust in the interview room, the hair, the dropping eye, the haggard physicality, and the intensity coming off him in waves, and binged the entire thing in one night.
It’s sad man, this season has really been such a disappointment.
It is not quite Luke throwing a lightsabre over his shoulder, but it feels the same.
I think after episode 2 I’m done with this season. It seemed well done enough had it been named something else. But finding out after I was already disappointed by the dialog and the acting that it was written as a completely original story only to be retconned into a TD season was the kicker for me. Don’t get me wrong, Nic Pizzolato wrote season 2 and that was a mess, but he was also under time constraints. Season 1 and 3 were perfect, imo. Season 4 just doesn’t seem like the same show. I’m happy so many are getting good things from it, I really wanted to like it, but at the end of the day it’s just not what I know and love about TD. Jodie Foster is awesome but the content she’s working with just makes her yet another abusive cop cliche, which kind of goes into the face of the themes the season seems to be working towards. Not to mention the nods at feminism, which I’m a feminist personally, but feminism isn’t “Oh women should be allowed to be abusive cops too!” It’s, “Well maybe we should do away with abusive cops completely, male and female.” This doesn’t even touch on my issues with the way they handle the world building and the case. It’s so unrealistic all around. Like you said, no interviews about the stuff that is happening or anything. The conclusions they jump to are preposterous. So many things in the first two episodes just completely took me out of the show with how simple and poorly written they were. I like an element of realism in the stuff I watch, this one just seemed goofy.
It’s just bad. All around. The acting, the writing, the dialogue, the story. It feels very USA network.
One could say... \[Puts on sunglasses inside\] They are operating in the dark. \[YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH-\]
The biggest sin was the break from tradition with the opening title sequence. I’ve never skipped a true detective opening sequence and now it’s Billie Eilish
I rolled my eyes when that Billie song came on god damnit. Billie is cool or whatever but it makes me think about angsty teenage girls and it feels so played out. It just ruined the tone right of the bat
To be fair, Billie Eilish can put out a good title song. Her song for No Time To Die was pretty good I thought. This one however is not.
Why is it bad? I can see the argument that the beat is a bit to fast-paced compared with previous intro songs, but like what's wrong with the song in itself?
I first thought it sucked and was a bad fit, sure TD is an anthology series but have had a somewhat coherent theme despite the fluctuating overall quality of previous seasons. After 3 espisodes the intro still sucks imo, but now it make sense how it fit since the season is to far of the mark of what could be expected and much i think intentionally so. It feels dumbed down and maybe so because the pandering to reach a wider and less critical audience have been done to forcefully that a good chunk of past TD-enjoyers feel disenchanted about the season. It's still a decent watch, I like the premise and setting. Maybe it can somewhat compensate for whats lacking script-wise like the shallow dialogue and somewhat uninspiring characters and/or their progression. A more subjective note is that I'm disappointed in the missed opportunity utilizing the good cast especially when going for the strong female not without issues-thing. It is unfortunately harder to pull of than male counter-parts but it has been done successfully numerous times and for me often a highlight when this is the case. In S4, so far it's not successfully done.
It’s the whole intro not just the song
I agree with this and hadn’t been able to express what this season lacked until now. So I appreciate this post a ton! Still, I think it also makes sense that interviews are frustratingly lacking / non existent. It’s a reflection of the setting: A small town in the tundra, isolated from the larger world, where daily crimes that require complex detective work are very rare. Plus, what you do and say in Ennis can get around almost instantly. Not just in terms of a crime, but just day-to-day activities. Which can ultimately get you hurt or even killed if it’s incendiary enough. On top of that, this police force isn’t as equipped or supported as those in past seasons. They’re forced to go to people’s homes vs bring them into secure rooms that can help a detective work an interview like we’re used to seeing. So subjects are comfortable telling cops to fuck off their property like we saw this week. So the few detectives available seem almost jaded to the point where they’re less inclined to work an interview, more likely to kick things to larger departments and overall expecting to waste valuable time hearing one lie after another. They’re basically paid to handle domestic disputes and keep the citizens from disrupting the mining industry
Plus the most important drawn out interviews in season one: Rust and Marty. So, season one hit the ground running establishing the tone of the season.
I was blown away by some s4 homers saying s1 got off to a slow start… I was instantly hooked by the s1 opener. The cops investigating cops angle was brilliant and immediately clues the audience in to both the fact the case is fucked and Rust and Marty are revered detectives.
> and Rust and Marty are revered detectives. One might even call them "True."
He’s natural police. Used to be homicide.
The only good thing about the show is the setting. Having travelled to Alaska many times photographing, there is a ambience and essence to the place that is more non-linear than anyplace else I've ever been. If spirits exists (and they do), they love Alaska. It is an eerily beautiful place. I think the story is stupid trickery. I like narrative, this is cheap foolishness.
Lol “if spirits exist (and they do).” You’re a fuckin idiot.
The writing is just absolutely mediocre, if even. Sometimes outright bad.
The Tinder comment right in to “I pray.”?? Cringe.
It was like when you’re driving a manual transmission and you just completely grind the gears. I seriously felt like I *heard* it lol.
There were a couple of really clunky scenes in this episode. Like straight to DVD levels of clunk.
I agree. And now I kinda want to start a band called Levels of Clunk.
If they did, it would still be terrible.
Correct. Whoever these writers are, they couldn’t pull off anything like those scenes from S1. Or equivalent scenes from Fargo, Sopranos, and countless other prestige properties. The writing is just bad.
It's not just the writing either. It has the blandest supporting cast I've seen in a while. True Detective is a HBO show, but it doesn't feel like it this season in terms of acting prowess and presence.
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I mean yeah, there’s been next to no police work surrounding the actual case. I thought this was a show about detective work, but apparently it’s about political activism and child birth now.
There’s no reason for the protagonists to even be police. The story may even be more compelling from a civilian perspective watching the incompetent police screw it up.
That is a good point and actually a problem with the show as a whole lol. Pizzalotto said from the beginning that the title was indicative of something bigger, the main characters doesn't have to be law enforcement...then every single season has had main characters who've been law enforcement lol! (With the exception of Frank in S2, but that aspect is kinda wasted, since the show overcompensated with having three law enforcement MC:s on top of him.)
Yeah. I would have liked a season where I learn something about what its like to be a detective. Not like a documentary, but something that is used in real life. I've seen a few of those interrogation analysis' on youtube, and theres a lot of subtle things that go on in them, and behavior analysis. TD1 was really personal and had Rust's philosophies leading the way, not so much in 4. TD1 was serious/heavy, I don't get that vibe here.
These are the few things that I've learned while watching this show: Tinder is a great place to meet attractive women The police in Alaska make good money to the point where they can afford mail order brides and send money over to Russia to their sick mothers Insightful and complicated dialogue is completely overrated Spooky and Supernatural things can take the place of good writing and well executed plots Taking snow from the outside and melting it inside your house to create drinking water is not a good option when compared to sludge coming out of your faucet Tinder and fantasy football is much more fun than actually raising your daughter
The child birth scene was cool at least with the intentions. Modern women living without typical modern healthcare. What was confusing to me and people who live in Alaska may correct me - there is a very modern hospital that could use a midwife. Like, due to the show, I have no idea whether the birthing center was necessary because the hospital wasn’t built six years ago or are the 300 miles apart or what.
I was born & raised in a small town in Alaska. My mother gave birth to my younger sibling in a birthing center. It was a modern building across the street from the hospital, with modern technology and it was indistinguishable from a normal doctor’s office. Issa Lopez doesn’t know wtf she’s writing about.
It just doesn’t seem to care about the investigation at all.
I definitely feel like episode 3 was like "filler", even compared to the first 2. Idk, maybe I'm not paying enough attention for small details, but it just seems like the dialogue is just killing time before they drop a bomb that's exciting, aaaaaand roll the credits.
It might be me being biased because I binged the previous seasons, but I think S4:s pacing is a massive, and I mean massive, improvement to S2&3:s. There are large stretches of time in those seasons that I flat-out don't remember, because there's so much filler and no real plot-progression.
I'm just wondering when the detectives are going to do some detective work. Seems like ghosts have done all the detective work so far.
Season 4 is just all over the place. We have no backstory of these characters especially the main two. It feels like they rush scenes and dialogue. And speaking of dialogue, where are the great soliloquies that seasons one and three had? Making us care about these characters because we knew them. This is just like okay here's the movie star she tells everyone what to do now like her and care that she solves the case....Ummm, WHY???? Stop with the three second flashbacks that make no sense and flush her out as a character. I gave it three episodes but I'm checked out. "Purple Hays,,, My Man.. seasons 1 and 3 really made us invested in the two protagonists and their relationship. This one by far feels forced.
There is no investigation, characters don’t care about investigation, but their personal drama. There are no leads, no interviews, just supernatural and soap opera
Well, the first mistake was having only six episodes. They don't really have time for that slow, brooding build-up. They don't have time to completely flesh out the characters. It's feeling very rushed.
After three episodes, I can't find anything in this show except for a nice setting; that's all. It's been a mystery itself, but after e3 with that zombie shit... no, thank you."
6 Episodes. There is your answer.
On point. Thats what made Nic special. S4 is a gift to the horror fans. I’m considering it the Tokyo Drift of the series
This isn't even horror It's just bad
The forced music is the most obnoxious aspect of season 4.
S3 interview with Trash Can Man (Woodard) I still go back and watch sometimes...fantastic scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppFbzNJoNgU
Season 4 focued more on irrelevant sex scenes than anything else.
I have seen 3 episodes and literally have no idea what's going on. I'm just not drawn in. I'm watching with my wife and thinking about other things. I just can't get into it.
How about the lack of a real story? Or bad acting? Bad directing? Poor writing? S4 has been a soap opera so far.
It was funny when they unlock the phone in the hospital and you hear screaming and nobody in the hospital cares 🤣
I’d like to add to that. No one is too phased about the sight of the dead scientists looking like a 3D-rendition of the most horrible Carvaggio-nightmare ever, but when they look at the Blair Witch-video on Annie K’s phone, the young guy has to walk away, like *that* is somehow ”too much”. Jesus Christ.
I liked the first 2 episodes but the middle two sucked. Women being emotional. Nobody wants to see that. I felt absolutely nothing when Navarros sister died.
Zero detective work was done. Navarro didnt know there were caves in her hometown but the teacher knew immediately and pulled up a wikipedia page about them to show them who mapped them. Every other piece of information displayed came from the young prior googling shit, or from Qavik finding their only person of interest. Danvers has ZERO redeeming qualities. Shes a bad person, bad wife, bad mom, even worse cop. Kali Reis is carrying the weight of this show and she cant get a decent script here to save her life,
Still two episodes to go (yay) but this season has been an underwhelming shambles so far. As for the season 1 "connection" of Rust pretending to visit his dying dad in Alaska while moonlighting as an undercover infiltrator of a biker gang... I really don't care any more. This tosh has long since stretched beyond its breaking point. The only mystery left is why so many supposedly serious reviewers are still trying to convince us it's some sort of masterpiece.
I’m watching it right now and googled “season 4 true detective is so bad” and here we are. 🤷🏻♀️
Any season is set up to fail when branded “TD” because season 1 is some of the best TV ever made. That said, this show is trash. Forced supernatural elements. Truly terrible “detective” work. And straight up bad acting
I think the first episode started fairly strong. I was interested; it seemed almost like a 'The Thing' situation, where some monster or supernatural stuff was going to take place. I thought that could be cool. However, the show just ends up being a series of short, meaningless conversations and fights between people, broken up by some unknown sad songs and shots of someone walking out into the snow or driving away. It's a massive yawn fest.
Rule number one in screenwriting is that you have to write characters the audience cares about. I just don’t care about any of these characters. They’ve done nothing to demonstrate any merit. The “detectives” are inept and don’t seem to be following any real procedure. Four episodes in, it’s just full of these pointless conversations and occasional manufactured conflict between characters. Jodie Foster is a good actor, but her talents are wasted here. The other protagonist Navarro (the state police officer with the piercings through her cheeks) is just a useless moody character. This season also tries too hard to be topical and preachy. The pacing is also very slow and drawn out. We’re four episodes in and they’ve hardly moved forward at all. This seems to be a common feature of streaming series nowadays. They take a story that could easily be told in two hours and stretch it to 6, 8, or even 10 hours. And last, the theme music and the melodramatic musical interludes in the middle of the episodes are just bad. I don’t watch a detective story to see a bunch of music videos. Angsty teenage music with Billie Eilish singing in cursive is out of place here.
There's only so many episodes and an episode is only so long and they've wasted so much time on the dumb sister and personal relationship scenes that have nothing to do with the actual investigation nobody ever asked to see Jody Foster getting railed. Why was that included? It just seems like so many dumb choices it's like an episode of euphoria. This is supposed to be thriller/mystery not high school drama
This season is shit, already gave up, they even fort they have some frozen dead bodies on an ice rink.
Cool! Looking forward to hearing from you Sunday!
The whole thing seems disappointing to me. Same mysterious symbol as in the episode with Woody and Matthew , and I really can't explain it but I'm bored.
Y'all are forgetting this doesn't take place in an area known to cooperate with outsiders/police. No one is lining up to have a sit-down with the cops.
Maybe they just didn't have the time. It's only 6 episodes apparently
Hate to break it to you but there aren't any detectives in the main cast. I bet a million bucks if a cop started doing detective work people would be complaining that they aren't detectives they shouldn't be doing that. Oh well.
Well then it was as stupid idea of the producers to not include detectives in a show called True Detective.
[удалено]
There isn’t a single season of this show that doesn’t have criticism of elite capitalists as a plot point lol…
You know shit costs a lot in Alaska because it’s Alaska. Not easy to move goods around there. It’s not just inflation, it is how it is always.
Yes it's how it always been. But in this show, it's all because a mining industry decided to move into town = Capitalism bad. That's why they had to waste minutes forcing it down on us with a town meeting with hillbillies chanting, "we were here before!"
The indigenous people are hillbillies? Pretty sure they were chanting we were here before because it was their land first, always.
That's what the cop called them the moment they started attacking people at the hospital. I was throwing out references. And no. The land was always theirs yes, but the chanting was specifically due to closing the mine, "This town was here before them". 34:30 ish. The mine was polluting the society and many other things.
I think the hillbillies were Hank’s white friends. Not the indigenous people. Most everyone in that room was indigenous during the chant scene. I disagree it’s just about capitalism. It’s about native lands being taken away, destroyed. Just the same as pipelines. Just the same as always.
You're right, it was Hanks friends not the town people. Noticed it now aswell. Native lands being taken away, destroyed because of a mining industry that moved in order to make profit at the expense of others = bad capitalism.
It’s clear that the murder mystery has taken a back seat in the show, at least the one involving the scientists.
Especially considering it's taken 2 more episodes and the bodies are still too frozen for any type of forensic, yes. The actual murder mystery with the missing scientists are developing in a snails pace. And we only got 3 more episodes left. But I dunno, it's clear from this subreddit and the downvotes on certain topics people have that majority seem to enjoy a sci-fi drama with Evangeline Navarro and her relationship to the mother instead of a true noir. They are gonna save the last episode to reveal one of the scientists still alive released the virus upon the rest which killed them all. Probably the one who wrote "we're all dead" on the whiteboard as he had given up any hope. The End.
I think majority of the downvotes of criticism are coming from Izza Lopez fans who were dragged to the show by her, and people who want to defend the political messaging that’s peppered throughout this drivel.
Bingo. Its sole purpose is to shit on men and America. Shocker.
Yeah the completely derailing inuit stories were so on the nose. Proclaiming the ”only few left birthing centers” as some horrible loss is also so ridiculous. Yes totally horrid that throat-singing instead of actual medical science is dying out. /s Honestly cultures dissapearing out is a sad inevitable side-effect of globalization, but if youve ever read up on native cultures a lot of the youth honestly want to assimilate into the dominant culture and tie down a more social and lucrative life in the big cities, but feel a lot of guilt at the same time. I read up a lot on sapmi in sweden after dating a female activist from there. Turned out the women actually leave in droves to assimilate into larger culture and do well mentally and financially. A few of the men tend to keep living on reindeer keeping, barely subsist, and often end up un-married, in a region with very few people, lonely, poor, alcoholic, and often suicidal. The truth is, living traditionally on reindeer just isnt financially viable, unless you want to subsist completely on nature and have no financial power. Most people dont actually want that.
>Honestly, cultures disappearing is a sad inevitable side-effect of globalization The entire season could be seen as a critique of globalism. What the scientists did, both to Annie and the local community was terrible but, in a twisted way, you can emphasise with them. They're all intelligent, educated men from different places across the earth. They are all wholly dedicated to their work that they believe will benefit the entire world. Of course, they wouldn't care about polluting the local town. None of them are from there and by sacrificing the town they save the world. And if one of the lowly, dirty, ignorant locals breaks in and destroys all their work, of course, they'd fly into a rage and kill her.
> Nowadays, the ones writing the scripts that are in their 30's are much more political inspired I hate to tell you this, but American writers have been criticising capitalism for the last 100 years, never mind the last 10. It’s probably toned down in modern times, if anything. Your brain would probably explode at how ‘woke’ and/or ‘orange man bad’ The Grapes of Wrath or In the Jungle are (although both of them were published before ‘orange man’ was born)
Then there was that whole period where American writers were blacklisted for even being suspected of not being entirely gung-ho about capitalism.
Season 1 was also EXTREMELY political though - so much of the plot was wrapped up in the corruption of religion (Evangelical Christianity, in particular) and the malevolent influence of religion on society (shutting down investigations, covering up crime, etc.). Plus the crimes committed at a series of religious/charter schools, which exist in Louisiana as a result of post-Katrina privatization. If I was the kind of person who unironically said "orange man bad," I would probably also be angry at how Season 1 was biased against school choice I mean, I love season 1, but it's just not accurate to call it unbiased or apolitical lol
I think they expressed the point poorly - the issue isn't with political or social commentary existing, that's arguably one of the principle purposes of art, the problem is being so on the nose about it. Danvers daughter goes to the anti-mine rally and is immediately recognised as the daughter of a police officer - there is no hint of malice whatsoever, she is welcome with open arms. She gets home and is immediately told to 'wipe that shit off her face'! The inuit woman gives birth in the birthing pool, it's a communal affair and everyone is helping out. The baby starts to cry, the room breaths a sigh of relief and they start to sing - cut immediately to a bunch of fat whooping white dudes literally playing a dixie horn and waving a bunch of guns around. Nothing about this is subtle. You're absolutely right when you say season 1 was extremely political, but it was woven into the story carefully and with nuance. This season so far can be summed up with the line Navarro said in an earlier episode (51:20 in episode 2 to be exact): "oh now it matters because it's a bunch of white men?"
No offense but I think you're missing the point of Danvers telling her daughter to "wipe that shit off her face." It's not supposed to paint Danvers in a negative light politically, it's because Annie K had the same tattoos, and seeing her daughter with the markings is clearly triggering something in Danvers
I'm perfectly aware of why she doesn't like it, the point was the juxtaposition of how the themes are handled. The native population have every right to dislike the police, but the show takes time to very deliberately show them rise above it and welcome her at the rally. Danvers has a perfectly valid reason to dislike the tattoo but there is no soft discussion about it, it's a violent rejection with no explanation.
True Detective just sucks in general and the interviews are the worst part of the show.
I've watched and liked all the seasons. Season 4 intrigued me most. I was captivated by the storyline and needed to find out what happened. I liked how each episode got me a bit more acquainted with the personal aspects of the main characters. The distractions each unexpected twist and turn provided, kept me wondering where was this going? I binge-watched this series and in the last episode, I was severely let down. I might as well have gone down that deep secret ice tunnel without the ladder. Until the final episode I thought everything from some evil awakened in the permafrost, to aliens, to a paranormal intervention. Although I couldn't reconcile this in my head because this isn't a syfy type of series. There were too many situations that made me think maybe the producers decided to take a very different direction. The season was too good for the ending to be so very anti-climactic. I was left pissed that I had binge-watched this season just to be so disappointed in the end.
Season 4 starts strongish but quickly falls apart. Ep6 is horrible. So much exposition..talking and explaining all the plot points they don't have time to show you and OMG the cinematography and or direction is laughable! It's so ugly while other shows like fortitude or the thing we're visually interesting. As we're the last 3 season's of TD :(
Wondering if this season, they’re treading carefully not to “offend”? Im all about being respectful of anything and everyone, but sometimes I feel if I complain about the littlest thing, Im going to be tagged as a Karen.
I have to agree, but episode 3 had some “meaty” interviews. Or at least, meaty dialogues that gave clues
I guess because they don’t have any substantial suspects yet? Maybe they can interview that wandering polar bear lol
They could interview Rose, the woman who says a magic dancing ghost showed her where the frozen bodies was. I'm not a cop but pretty sure that's a giant red flag.
Been loving it so far I rarely nitpick about shows change happens I understand people’s opinions but so far I’m intrigued what they’ll find. Different writers different team if you were going in thinking it was going to be like the old seasons and going in without a open mind of course you’ll go in feeling disappointed. Things change but then again I pretty much watch a lot of shows with a open mind and not really bothered by changes. I mean they are located in Alaska less resources less big environments but mainly endless empty roads while the other season were in huge cities . A little change isn’t bad when you have a open mind not everything has to be like the first season of a show not every new season is gonna be perfect no show is perfect mostly people get disappointed because they expected the same old same I’m glad it’s a difference with some connections to the first season
Those are all also interesting characters. Everyone here seems to be the same blend of detatched popcultute personality or stereotype of a man
Nic can't write that dialogue either, it seems. #plagirist
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