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True Detective: Night Country (Season 4)


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This season is fine so far. With these shows that try to keep you guessing it's typically all in the payoff anyway. Especially if you have normal cast/acting and not exceptional like in season 1. 

Game of Thrones made a run out of it. Seasons that were solid but somewhat meandering and convoluted but the last 2 episodes would hit you like a brick and you were left thinking the whole thing was great. Then seasons 7 and 8 came and they couldn't keep that magic streak going and it tanked the perception of those seasons. 

There's 2 problems I see with this season right now. First is they've crossed the line of excess of hinting at supernatural events but still being able to pull back and have it be supernatural free but not seem stupid. I can't imagine a way to pull that off at this point. If that's what they try it will fail to land. 

2nd is there are too many one note characters. It's fine to have Navarro be one note but to this point they haven't developed much depth with Danvers, Hank, Peter, or Leah. They've developed more depth with the dead girl through flashbacks than they have the main characters. Episode 4 would be a great time to really ramp up the emotional response in the viewer before hitting us with the conclusion to the story. 

It feels like this is going to revolve around the environmental factors of the mine and whatever works Tsalal was doing vs the health crisis and outrage of the community. Danvers' daughter is going to get in too deep and be a source of conflict for Danvers, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's revealed Annie was using Clark get access to Tsalal and that eventually got her killed. 

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On 1/22/2024 at 11:39 AM, Aqua Buddha said:

During the Jodie Foster sex scene, my wife chimed in "Well, she is a great actress...."

At first I was wondering, "how did they get a pinball machine in the room?"

(Self-imposed timeout for that one)

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“The mystery itself hardly feels like a mystery at all, with no sense of organic urgency or even a coherent investigation. The messy plot is bogged down in dreary, tedious exposition and repetitive dialogue. Pacing is all over the place. Every time something exciting or interesting happens, the show slams on its brakes, devolving into yet another tedious conversation or leaping to a new scene in the most jarring way possible. The fantastic setting cannot save this dismal story from itself.“

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Can’t wait to see what that cross necklace, one eyed polar bear, and twist and shout have to do with solving the murders.

Also interested to see how the catfished dude comes to the rescue/helps break it open

 

But mostly just ready to get to the end 

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Shock cuts to the ghost with an electrying blast of music have startled me a few times. The very essence of swapping cheap thrill for anything tied to a narration. It's fucking lazy.

How many of us are on the edge of our seats about the spiral shape? How many of us are deeply involved in the simplistically troubled family relations? 

I begin to suspect that the guys in the lab uncovered a boring-conversation virus, BC-24. The town is all affected. Humor, wit, irony, or interesting philosophical discussion are the first things in the brain to die. Then come the BC-24 hallucinations that nobody cares about: rolling fruit. 

Then comes series cancellation. It's merciful. TD is a horse with one strong leg, one weak leg, and two broken ones.

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For what very little it's worth, I find the intro and the accompanying theme song to be exceptionally captivating. 

We watch this show with the subtitles on, and listening to the song, reading the lyrics, and watching the "collage-style" opening sequence is always a sensory overload of allocating my attention. 

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2 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

The best part of that episode was that Mazzy Star song. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to anything else of theirs besides the mega hit and now I’m obsessed.
 

I've always loved that song. Reminds me of Velvet Underground.

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For what very little it's worth, I find the intro and the accompanying theme song to be exceptionally captivating. 
We watch this show with the subtitles on, and listening to the song, reading the lyrics, and watching the "collage-style" opening sequence is always a sensory overload of allocating my attention. 

It’s a cool Billie Eilish song but it’s not a fit with other seasons IMO. A pop megastar is out of place with the lesser-known artists they used for other seasons. S1 is probably still my favorite.



And as I mentioned before, season two introduced me to Lera Lynn and I’ll always be thankful for that.
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2 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:


It’s a cool Billie Eilish song but it’s not a fit with other seasons IMO. A pop megastar is out of place with the lesser-known artists they used for other seasons. S1 is probably still my favorite.

 

 

 

 



And as I mentioned before, season two introduced me to Lera Lynn and I’ll always be thankful for that.

 

That first season was steeped in southern and Texas sounds, including Austin's own Black Angels.

 

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On 2/1/2024 at 10:36 AM, Hermanator said:

Game of Thrones made a run out of it. Seasons that were solid but somewhat meandering and convoluted but the last 2 episodes would hit you like a brick and you were left thinking the whole thing was great. Then seasons 7 and 8 came and they couldn't keep that magic streak going and it tanked the perception of those seasons.

The thing about GOT up till season 5 before G.R.R.M. screwed us by being lazy is that meandering was part of the build up of characters and attention to detail. GOT was great at making something that seemed so irrelevant be completely essential to the story once things played out. Once GOT went of the rails loose ends arose and characters started being other people.  Season one of true detective did some of the same things and unlike GOT characters did not become different people all of a sudden. A good detailed story and character connection is what makes a series great. The Jodie character for instance is suppose to be a pain in the ass but why is it a loss of a child like season one? Look at Rus and how they got us to care what a loss of a child meant specifically to his soul and how GOT got us to care about Tyrion. This series needs to do some more of that in order to have a payoff otherwise people are uninterested in what happens to the characters.

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4 hours ago, bolverk said:

That first season was steeped in southern and Texas sounds, including Austin's own Black Angels.

 

So fucking good….and not having Burnett handle the music for season 4  is another strike against it 

 

And don’t know why it took me until just now to connect Danvers ripping off Rust with the “ask the right questions” line.

 

 

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i am so disappointed in this nonsense at this point.  the paranormal jump scare bullshit out of horror movie playbook is so lame.  

i still have no desire to root for anyone at this point.  i kind of hope a pack of polar bears just eats the entire town.  this director is fucking horrible at this.  we should be two, maybe three episodes in for the amount of information conveyed.  filling it over and over and over with drone shots of trucks driving through desolate, snowy roads in iceland every thirty seconds to extend it to six episodes is insulting and i have no idea how this director got this job.

consistent with some of the comments on this page though, the music supervisor for the show is the only person that should not be fired.  they are doing an absolutely fantastic job.  the use of jon hopkins's "feel first life" last night was excellent, if not too brief.

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Probably going to watch episode 4 tonight. I get it when a long running show like X-Files or Lost can’t figure out how to resolve its long story arcs and teased grand mystery. At least you got a lot of great standalone episodes along the way.

But if you have a 6 episode limited series, you have to have known how you are going to tie up everything in a neat bow at the end, when you started it, right?

Right?

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Laughing at everyone that called me out for bailing after 2 episodes. Looks like I was right.

Eh, I’m still in. If they manage to land the plane it could still be pretty awesome. I have absolutely no idea how they are going to do that.
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On 2/1/2024 at 10:36 AM, Hermanator said:

 

There's 2 problems I see with this season right now. First is they've crossed the line of excess of hinting at supernatural events but still being able to pull back and have it be supernatural free but not seem stupid. I can't imagine a way to pull that off at this point. If that's what they try it will fail to land. 

 

I could use a refresher of all of the supernatural events.

there’s the recurring “she’s awake” that we have to wait and see who/what that was…which I’m sure is the same thing that spooked the elk at the beginning 

there’s Rose’s husband’s ghost leading her out on the ice.

don’t know about either of those.

some of the Tsalal weirdness I think they tried to explain away with Danvers figuring out the power was cut.

everything else I can remember seems easy to explain (Danver having a dream), and/or really centered on Navarro (Navarro’s sister having delusions/hallucinations caused by her schizophrenia and same for Navarro (orange rolling back to her, possessed dude in the hospital, ghosts popping up randomly) who is clearly having increasingly serious mental health problems and basically said as much at the end of ep. 4.

Not saying it will be easy or completely believable, but I don’t think it’s as far-fetched as one might think.

(but again, I could be forgetting a ton that throws cold water on all of this)

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It's so fucking stupid I can't quit watching it.

It’s almost Plan 9 level of bad.

They talk about this town like it’s a tiny north slope village. When they show folks out driving in the dark it looks like Dallas at night in the background.

It’s a deserted dredge. Uhh did you think to look in there before?
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Probably going to watch episode 4 tonight. I get it when a long running show like X-Files or Lost can’t figure out how to resolve its long story arcs and teased grand mystery. At least you got a lot of great standalone episodes along the way.
But if you have a 6 episode limited series, you have to have known how you are going to tie up everything in a neat bow at the end, when you started it, right?
Right?

Navarro wakes up and it was all a bad dream. Resolves to stop eating peyote.
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Episode 4 of 6 is where you would assume the action / case starts ramping up more.  And you would think by now the detectives would have at least 2 solid theories or suspects for the case.  I really don't know what they are thinking or leaning toward. 

I feel like I know more than them because I have seen season 1 with the spiral cult stuff and they have not, lol.

I chalk up their slow detective work to being a small ass town and also too much emotional baggage for each of the two main characters.

Just too much of the back stories and family stuff...we don't need to hammer on all of that.  They needed to find that ship halfway through the episode.

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Navarro is terrible. Every scene with her is brutal. 
Some of the character development doesn’t make sense at all and now they’ve really started confusing the supernatural with mental health issues with the sister.

No clue where this is going to go or how they wrap all this up in two eps. 
Only one of the seasons had a satisfying ending in terms of the “reveal”. This I expect will disappoint 

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2 hours ago, Helobious said:

Started watching Severance on AppleTV and it’s roughly 5000x more interesting so far. 

Oh yeah, love severance 

42 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

Navarro is terrible. Every scene with her is brutal. 
Some of the character development doesn’t make sense at all and now they’ve really started confusing the supernatural with mental health issues with the sister.

No clue where this is going to go or how they wrap all this up in two eps. 
Only one of the seasons had a satisfying ending in terms of the “reveal”. This I expect will disappoint 

Well she's not really an actor.  She's a professional boxer. 

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6 minutes ago, EvilCaseMcCoy said:

Oh yeah, love severance 

Well she's not really an actor.  She's a professional boxer. 

Then she shouldn’t have been cast. She sucks. The scene where she freaks out at the clinic was a disaster.

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14 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

everything else I can remember seems easy to explain (Danver having a dream), and/or really centered on Navarro (Navarro’s sister having delusions/hallucinations caused by her schizophrenia and same for Navarro (orange rolling back to her, possessed dude in the hospital, ghosts popping up randomly) who is clearly having increasingly serious mental health problems and basically said as much at the end of ep. 4.

I’m enjoying the ride so far, but going to be pissed if this is all resolved as mental illness in the family (which the help line PSA’s for every episode may be indicating). I recently watched A Haunting in Venice and all the supernatural elements were explained away with “hallucinogenic honey” that the perpetrator managed to get a bunch of people to ingest. Lame.
 

It still wouldn’t explain your first couple of points about the caribou and dead Travis showing Rose where the frozen Tsalal guys were. No follow up on Travis Cohle being related to Rust either. There may be more to Rose’s story coming out, as they hinted in her dinner with Navarro. 
 

I also think mental illness producing hallucinations would have the same rolling orange hallucination, which is so random as to beggar belief that two schizophrenics would both have it. It also doesn’t explain the Tsalal scientists doing the same thing as Navarro’s sister - nearly folding their clothes and walking out in to their frozen doom. 
 

I’m in for the rest of the ride, but they need to do a lot of work to start tying some of this shit up on Friday’s episode. 

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5 hours ago, hobbes2702 said:

Then she shouldn’t have been cast. She sucks. The scene where she freaks out at the clinic was a disaster.

That scene reminded me of the Zoolander "what is this, a school for ants?" bit.

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Every female (and most of the males) are absolutely miserable.  Do Inuit women ever smile or do they just sit around humming all the time?  There are exactly 2 1/2 redeeming characters on the show - bar owner, kid cop, and pothead, ex prof.  I thought Lafonda was going to step out of the plane as dad cop looked exactly like Kip.

/random thoughts from a flu-riddle brain

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it looks great. the lighting and cinematography are excellent (I know I will get strong disagreement there), and I catch myself stopping to appreciate how technically proficient the work is, to keep figures well illuminated and focused, but yet convey the overbearing sense of darkness and isolation. that's all I've got. at this point, it would be better if the show fully committed to the supernatural bit, because it's just a mess at this point. reminds me of WestWorld that way; writers trying desperately to say something smart and deep, and just failing 

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Then she shouldn’t have been cast. She sucks. The scene where she freaks out at the clinic was a disaster.

And then went and picked a fight with four dudes.

I was entertained and mildly invested after three episodes. About 20 mins into this disaster of E4 and I was watching the clock. That was turrible.
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10 hours ago, naija said:

it looks great. the lighting and cinematography are excellent (I know I will get strong disagreement there), and I catch myself stopping to appreciate how technically proficient the work is, to keep figures well illuminated and focused, but yet convey the overbearing sense of darkness and isolation. that's all I've got. at this point, it would be better if the show fully committed to the supernatural bit, because it's just a mess at this point. reminds me of WestWorld that way; writers trying desperately to say something smart and deep, and just failing 

Excellent analogy.

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