Night Country from True Detective Season 4 is one of the worst mystery shows I’ve ever seen. For some reason, I can’t think of another mystery show that I hated as much as this one did. The second season of True Detective wasn’t as good as the first, and this doesn’t even feel like the same show, even though it tries hard to be different.
Note: This review is based on all six episodes of the new crime show on HBO. Aside from some comments about the scene and characters, it doesn’t give anything away. As each show airs, I write a summary or review of it. Every review I’ve written is linked to below.
The Long Night: True Detective Season 4 Unveiled:
When Night Country first came out, I wanted to watch one episode at a time with other viewers, even though I had seen all six episodes before they played. I do this with a lot of shows because it helps me stay in touch with the people who watch them. I can guess, make predictions, and do other things with everyone else. It’s fun a lot of the time, especially when it comes to mysteries, and it lets me write about each show without knowing what’s going to happen next.
The third episode of Night Country was the last one I watched because I didn’t care about what happened because I wasn’t liking the show that much. I wanted to see if it got better. Was there a pleasant reward at the end that made all the hard work worth it? Would all the mysterious hints and character threads come together in the end to make a satisfying ending?
I’m sorry to say that I can only safely answer “No” to these questions. The second part of Night Country is even worse than the first. The show isn’t sure what it wants to be because it started out as its own mystery and HBO decided to lump it into the True Detective series. The mystery itself doesn’t feel much like a mystery—there’s no real sense of urgency or even a logical way to look into it. There is a lot of boring exposition and dialogue that makes the story hard to follow. The speed is all over the place. If something exciting or interesting happens, the show stops right away, either for a boring talk or a sudden change in scenes that are very hard to get used to. This sad story can’t be saved by its amazing setting.
There aren’t any figures that you really like. That’s a big problem, but it might not have been so bad if the story they were in was interesting enough to make such unhappy people interesting to watch. This tricky juggling act is done very well by shows like White Lotus. Not in Night Country. The character of Liz Danvers, played by Jodie Foster, is very unpleasant, and Detective Navarro, played by Kali Reis, is even worse. You can only get away with a detective being this bad as a person if they are smart like Hercule Poirot in other ways. One thing that neither Danvers nor Navarro have a lot of is little grey cells. At the end, I had nothing but contempt for both characters because of what they did in the ending of True Detective season 4.
The people who make the show don’t seem to believe that. They want us to feel like we know these cops and what they decide. I’m sorry, but it’s never won. The show’s completely predictable and unsatisfying finish or its long list of cliches are also not very interesting. However, if you like preachy shows, this might be the right one for you.
True Detective Season 4: A Complete Disaster Unfolds:
Night Country is predictable, dull, nasty, preachy, and rehashed, which is a sad list of things. Add some terrible CGI and terrible photography to the mix, along with all the pointless needle drops, and you get something that barely looks like True Detective Season 4. As I thought it would from my very first review of an episode, the last one feels less like the series it’s supposed to be a part of and more like a cheap copy of the movie it so obviously takes ideas from.
Early this week, I finished watching Deadloch on Amazon Prime Video. It’s amazing how much the two shows are alike. Both have some roots in the Nordic noir style. Both stories take place in strange small towns that are far from cities. They are set in Ennis, Alaska, and Deadloch, Tasmania, respectively. Both have two female agents looking into the deaths of men, and both have male police bosses who are too controlling and threaten to get involved. Believe it or not, each riddle has something to do with missing tongues.
Deadloch, on the other hand, has people you care about, a crude but endearing sense of humor, and a mystery that makes sense and has real suspects that keeps you guessing until the very end.
The cast of Night Country is so big and messy that it’s hard to keep track of the case the cops are trying to solve. In the season opener, I guessed the ending (or at least most of it). The only thing that’s shocking about this show is how clear it is.
But please, please don’t stop watching! I’ll be talking about each show as we watch it, and I’d love to talk with you about it each week. Even the biggest fans of the show might be let down in the end. There are a lot of different theories, but I can’t see how the ending of this show will be satisfying in any way.
It’s possible that I’m just asking the wrong questions.
True Detective Season 4 Update:
I also wanted to say something about how the same story beats happen over and over again in every show. This part will give away some things about episodes 1 through 4, but not about the last two episodes. All it says is that these problems keep coming up over and over again. A lot of people have said in the comments that the last two episodes will need to be sped up, but the pattern stays mostly the same, and every episode has the same problems with pacing.
In any case, here are some things that Night Country seems determined to show us in every episode:
• Hiding the information—This is often done in a number of different ways. They show Danvers and Navarro getting there, and the bad guy is still alive, but they don’t show us what happens. It’s being dragged out like a drip feed. There are times in both the Annie phone tape and the Lund hospital scene when they are about to say something important but then they die. This is known as the “His Name Is…” trope on TV Tropes. This has also happened in conversations where one character is about to say something and the other character cuts them off because they don’t want to hear it, unlike the viewer.
• There is also a scene in every show where the characters talk to each other over and over again. As usual, Navarro shows up and helps Julia, but Qavik takes it like a good doormat, and Danvers treats Peter badly, but he takes it because she’s his boss. Peter and Kayla have a tense conversation because Kayla is a Wet Blanket Wife trope, and something supernatural happens, making us wonder if there is really supernatural stuff going on or if it’s all in their heads. There is also a forced conflict between Danvers and Leah or between Danvers and Navarro, where the same problems keep coming up. Danvers does “detective work” that’s just looking at pictures, listening to something, or going through documents to look busy, Hank does something to remind us of how bad he is, and so on. These things happen over and over again; they don’t just happen in one scene and then change into something else.
• Heavy-handed symbols—There was a lot of symbol-usage (which is not the same as symbolism) in Season 1, but the little stick devil’s nests were used in a way that made us think about what they meant, which made us fear what they meant. They were not common, and when they happened, it always meant that the agents were getting closer. From season 1, the spiral is a sign in Night Country. There are also oranges, polar bears (both CGI and stuffed animal), the color blue, and more.
• As for “Needle Drops,” the music used to match the mood of the scene. We get needle drops this time of year to tell us how we feel. In episode 4, the scene where Julia kills herself was set to the song “Everybody Dies” by Billie Eilish. Really—ugh—why? When they used a cover of “Toxic” to show that John Hamm’s character was a stereotypical toxic male, it made me think of the most recent season of Fargo. It’s the master of being incredibly stupid. Stop treating your viewers like kids. (By the way, Eilish is very skilled, and I have nothing against her.) But she’s also not the best choice for the opening credits.
There is no progress. The case hasn’t moved forward very much. Since last season, decades have passed, only a few days have passed. No change in character. No better knowledge of any of the riddles. This is not only a slow-moving mess, but also a boring nightmare where the story seems as still as that body in the rink. What a mess.
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