{"id":21555,"date":"2024-03-22T08:36:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T12:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/?p=21555"},"modified":"2024-03-18T08:43:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T12:43:08","slug":"true-detective-night-country-is-excellent-and-terrible-at-the-same-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/true-detective-night-country-is-excellent-and-terrible-at-the-same-time\/","title":{"rendered":"True Detective: Night Country is Excellent and Terrible At The Same Time\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The fourth season of \u201cTrue Detective,\u201d HBO\u2019s much-celebrated detective anthology series<\/a>, was recently released, and public opinion has been split. Although critics have praised the new direction creator Issa Lopez took the series, many fans have been furious and disappointed by the series. To be completely honest, I agree with both. The series has many, many things to admire, but is nevertheless frustratingly underwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I should acknowledge some context behind the series. The first season<\/a>, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as a pair of Louisiana investigators, was a revelation for prestige television, with many still claiming it to be one of the greatest seasons of television ever made (I wouldn\u2019t deny that statement). Writer Nic Pizzolatto helmed two more seasons over the next decade, both of which were met with lukewarm reactions, and for a few years, it seemed as though that was the end of \u201cTrue Detective.\u201d Just months ago, however, Issa Lopez tackled the challenge of writing a new season, this time setting it in the icy cold of an Alaskan winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any \u201cTrue Detective\u201d season is in a tough spot from the get-go, sheerly because it’s so difficult to live up to the heights of Season 1. I\u2019ll try, to the best of my ability, to review \u201cNight Country\u201d on its own merits as opposed to the incessant Season 1 comparisons many have made, but my inherent bias will likely seep in through the cracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start on a positive note. The show is really, really exciting! Beginning by showing us a genuinely terrifying murder, the investigation, for the most part, stays gripping throughout, and the series always provokes anxiety by hinting at the possibility of an occult influence behind the killing. Like any \u201cTrue Detective\u201d season, there are plenty of other story aspects to expect: gruff, philosophical cops, an unsolved murder from years ago, traumatic backstories, etc. Although these elements sometimes dip their toes into clich\u00e9, most of them are handled smoothly and heighten the emotional and dramatic stakes already established by the killer on the loose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all the good, the plotting of the show can feel hacky at times, and several storylines are at best predictable and at worst unbelievably boring. The series is often too dependent on a formulaic rotation between detectives doing detective things, then detectives dealing with troubled marriages and\/or children, then back to detectives doing detective things, then back to the overwrought kitchen sink drama. This makes each hour long episode feel almost endless, only buoyed by the excitement that comes from the central mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I\u2019d like to complain about it, I\u2019ll try to make this brief: Lopez\u2019s writing is quite awful. The characters are devoid of personality or likability, the dialogue is infuriatingly stale, and there are a plethora of lines that make you go, \u201cWait, what?\u201d Thematically, it\u2019s a trainwreck. Again, I don\u2019t want to just compare Lopez to Pizzolatto here, but man, he was on another level. He often used his crackling dialogue to take complex philosophical issues with purpose and unique viewpoints, while developing his characters subtly and strongly. Lopez does none of that. Ignoring any sense of depth, she leans far too heavily into such groundbreaking moral positions as \u201cClimate change is bad,\u201d \u201cSexism is bad,\u201d and \u201cThe big mining corporation in the small town is, shockingly, bad.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the bright side, the performances are mostly solid. Jodie Foster<\/a> nails it as Detective Danvers, elevating the script far above what I thought could be possible. Veteran character actor John Hawkes also does an admirable job in a supporting role, lending his character just enough sympathy to make you feel for him while still successfully pulling off a guy who\u2019s just a real jerk. Kali Reis is up and down as Detective Navarro; on some occasions, she comes across as wooden and unsubtle, but she does well in the more dramatic scenes to sell her character\u2019s anguish and trauma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that said, not all<\/em> the acting is stellar. Finn Bennett and Christopher Eccleston are both painfully awkward in their parts, in large part because they\u2019re both British. I don\u2019t know about you, but it certainly makes me wonder why they would be cast if they couldn\u2019t convincingly pull off an American accent. Is there some sort of shortage of American actors in their 20s who could play Bennett\u2019s part that no one told me about? That seems like a big deal. Someone should tell everybody about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technically, the series is pretty solid. The camerawork is strong throughout, capturing some gorgeous compositions of the barren ice fields of Alaska. For the most part, the CGI is fairly solid as well, not including the much maligned season opening scene in which a herd of definitely, definitely, definitely<\/em> real caribou charge off the edge of a cliff. I\u2019ve heard that caribou often run as if they were poorly animated animals in a TV show, so props to the CGI artist for being so real-world-accurate. Music is also employed well throughout. There are plenty of great needle drops, in particular one where John Hawkes sings a haunting tune while a tense montage plays over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I\u2019m on the subject of music, I\u2019d like to touch upon the opening theme, Billie Eilish\u2019s \u201cBury A Friend<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s been getting a whole lot of hate for a litany of reasons, and although some of them are valid, I\u2019m not afraid to defend it. The visuals are fairly decent, and the song itself lends an eerie atmosphere to the show. Perhaps the most common complaint has been that the song is so well known that it doesn\u2019t fit the \u201cTrue Detective\u201d vibe established in previous seasons. Although this is in some ways true, I think that\u2019s a perfect microcosm of what the show has become. \u201cTrue Detective: Night Country\u201d isn\u2019t the same show as Season 1, or the lackluster Seasons 2 and 3, for that matter. It\u2019s a far more generic, run-of-the-mill murder mystery, and although that clich\u00e9 is often disappointing, it’s nevertheless a perfectly decent show with plenty to love, as long as you don\u2019t focus too much on the \u201cTrue Detective\u201d label. It may be dark all day in Ennis, Alaska, but I have a feeling the sun hasn\u2019t set just yet on \u201cTrue Detective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fourth season of \u201cTrue Detective,\u201d HBO\u2019s much-celebrated detective anthology series, was recently released, and public opinion has been split. Although critics have praised the new direction creator Issa Lopez took the series, many fans have been furious and disappointed by the series. To be completely honest, I agree with both. The series has many, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":21556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3,58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21557,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555\/revisions\/21557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}