True Detective Season 4: Night Country (Ice Capades!)

Clarice Starling IS Jodie Foster IN the new season of True Detective. Let!s get into it!

https://sm.mashable.com/t/mashable_in/article/t/true-detec/true-detective-night-country-is-travis-the-father-of-rust-co_sb5y.2496.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/00/01/65/000165d05b40653451205381756ef40a.gif

continuing discussions from the s1 thread TRUE DETECTIVE on hbo - matthew mcconaughey, woody harrelson, michelle monaghan, fukunaga, pizzolatto

haven't watched it yet, but I heard they flew native alaskans to Iceland for filming... that's kinda cool

Billie Eilish for the theme has caught me off guard both episodes. It’s not bad but it feels weird to hear it scoring something that’s not a TikTok/Instagram post.

Very interested to see what form the link from Season 1 to this one (Travis being Rust Cohle's father, and the same spiral symbol showing up) will eventually take.

When Fiona Shaw was talking about Travis dying and coming to her as a ghost and leading her out into the night snow, there was Song To The Siren playing very quietly in the background - I inferred she had put a record on to skin up.

(Whose version was it? Didn't sound like anyone I recognised.)

Tim Buckley?

I found a page that lists every track in the ep

EPISODE 2

‘Song for the Siren (Take 2)’ by Tim Buckley
‘Little Saint Nick’ by The Beach Boys
‘You’re the First, the Last’ by Blue Moment
‘Wannabe’ by The Spice Girls
‘I Love You Love’ by Johnny Cash
‘Pass Them By’ by Agnes Obel
‘Get Down Tonight’ by KC and the Sunshine Band

Didn't sound like Tim Buckley to me, guess I was wrong. Voice was deeper than that to my ears.

Did anyone catch the cover for the record Fiona Shaw took off the turntable and re-shelved in that one scene? Looked like a minimal ECM cover to me.

It’s not “(Take 2)”, it’s “(Take 7)”, taken from this 1999 unreleased-material compilation; the recording was made during the Happy/Sad era

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_in_Progress_(Tim_Buckley_album)

As far as I know, that version of the song remains un-pressed to vinyl… except for the hilariously rare OST to “Beautiful Boy” (2018). Idk if they sourced a copy of that vinyl into Fiona’s hands for this scene but it’s one of those collector’s items

The album Fiona then replaces on the shelf was Keith Jarrett Standards vol. 2 w Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette

The Watchers podcast had a good interview with Issa Lopez last week at the end of their ep1 recap episode, highly recommend

also i do find some of the needledrops a bit much (ie beatles) like ok Zaslav you have money to burn we get it calm down

but the tim buckley was nice & v fitting

Have just remembered that Christopher Ecclestone was also in Fortitude, which definitely shares something of a vibe with this: strange and violent murders in an Arctic serting

It wouldn’t surprise me if the addition of so much pop music is intended to expand the audience? That said, yeah, it’s distracting - it takes you out of the moment sometimes.

I don't know that I'd cosign on "so much pop music", it's not THAT overbearing. The Beach Boys was corny, but I actually that the Spice Girls song was effectively used to inject a little levity into Navarro's character and build on the hints of vulnerability she showed Qavvik since she spends the rest of the show in projecting hardass mode.

yeah i did like that one

one thing Lopez said in her interview was that her initial version of Danvers was a woman on the verge of a breakdown but i guess very mild
Foster met w her & said she wanted Danvers to be more unlikeable. After some discussion eventually Lopez was like “so, an asshole?” and Foster was like “yes!”

true legend behavior imo

She's a huge asshole, which is a lot of fun all by itself, but then there are moments where she smiles and you can tell that she (Danvers) gets real joy out of fucking with people. It's a great performance.

Ecclestone needs to put his ‘pumping old man’ rapidly fucking sweaty arse into retirement, or on the other hand it was pretty funny! I prefer the procedural/arctic community soap opera elements to this than all the gobbledygook squiggle nonsense.

That might have been the worst sex scene I've ever watched.

rmde

Tuttle

I had to re-watch the scene with Tim Buckley playing since I was focusing 100% on the version of Song to the Siren playing and missed the dialogue entirely

(and the second the Spice Girls song came on I just tensed up, expecting a ghost and/or car crash to be immanent)

I prefer the procedural/arctic community soap opera elements to this than all the gobbledygook squiggle nonsense.

I mean, a dark, gritty Northern Exposure reboot isn't the worst idea.

Watching E2. Foster’s character is a marvelously hard person

I *do* adore “bury a friend”

I thought the first episode was terrific. Not so sure about second episode. Some weird tonal shifts from scene to scene and honestly a lot of the set-up for this season is daffy rather than eerie or mysterious. Like, for instance, a pile of frozen naked men, all in mid-scream, thawing out in a local hockey rink where people can apparently just come in and out without any kind of security?

It is hinting at supernatural elements which were absent in the previous iterations of this show. I think that will turn out to be a red herring and they will chalk up some of what we've seen so far to just being hallucinations related to their isolating circumstances. On the other hand, if they do choose to lean harder into the supernatural, then I'll wish they just gave this show a different name and let it be it's own thing.

Yeah, Fiona Shawms character getting guided by a ghost to where the bodies were is…very different from Colin Ferrell et all descending upon a grisly corps on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Caught up. Is this a sequel to Dan Simmons the Terror? Maybe a bit too much of that going on.

did you all catch that Fiona’s ghost boyfriend Travis was Travis COHLE ie Rust’s dad (survivalist, alaska, died of leukemia)

did you all catch that Fiona’s ghost boyfriend Travis was Travis COHLE ie Rust’s dad (survivalist, alaska, died of leukemia)

Colin Farrell’s sad kid should appear as a ghost.

tbh i dont think it means much to the story, i just think lopez liked the idea of adding some easter eggs to tie it into the series

The lady being led by Travis Cohle says something along the lines of “don’t confuse the supernatural for the psychological” re: navaro’s sisters visions of their dead mother, emphasising it’s probably all psychological. Seems to me that’s how all this will be explained as has been the case for all previous seasons. The mask will be pulled of the ghost in the final episode and the big corporation behind the white sheet will state “we did get away with it! But it woulda been easier without you meddling kids!”

lol
otm

What if the real cosmic horror was the world that surrounds us?

The next episode better be a 50 minute long take of the dude who woke up with his hand breaking of giving us an explanation about all this nonsense. The final 5 eps can be Billie Eilish music videos I don’t mind

don't know that I'll ever erase the image of the 9th Doctor banging Clarice Starling from my brain

don't know that I'll ever erase the image of the 9th Doctor banging Clarice Starling from my brain

Was not expecting a slow haunting Lykke Li cover

So close to getting a ‘your mother sucks cocks in hell.’’

choompa loompa

goddamn they just keep turning up the dial on creepy-ass creepy shit

Caught up on the show today. Disconcerting. (That is a compliment.) Yeah _Terror_ vibes a bit. Already sensing a too easy out/explanation with the supernatural stuff so I want it to absolutely lean in on the cosmic horror now.

HBO completely botched the Christmas Episode rollout for this series.

Man the writing in this episode took a serious dip….. the car ride prayer scene to the Qavik quid pro quo scene was maybe the roughest run of dialogue in this series so fair. Still love the setting and want to see how this all gets tied up in the last episode but lord, dunno about this particular ep

I do like this Pete kid tho

scientists discover virus/organism/whatever in the ice that drives people crazy with fear/hallucinate/bad-stuff, big mining has drilled down to it. Maybe the virus thing was a time bomb, mining company hit something, trying to get tsalal to ya know, fix their mistake. Hence miners have to be loners, can’t date outside. Clark breaks the rules, dates the girl, spills some beans, she gets the chop. Time bomb goes off, tsalal guys either run off to die as a result of it, or to try kill it off if it’s an infectious thing. Old mate Oliver up north wanted no part and ran away from it all. I dunno, I’m getting hung-up on the “she’s awake” thing, but it’s clear that something in the town, and most likely something environmental is causing people to hallucinate, stillborns to happen, and scientists to convulse. There’s dirty water being drunk. The hallucinations are easily passed of as “this is Ennis, these things happen” by hippie lady earlier. But whatever was merely hallucinations and stillborns in the past looks to be potentially something worse now.

Episode 3 probably should’ve been two episodes

I have a bad feeling Pete is gonna snap and do something crazy before this season is over you guys

Ehhh I don’t know about the last scene of this latest ep.

I'm very interested in seeing how the Danvers/Navarro/Wheeler(?) stuff plays(played) out. My current theory is the flashback of Wheeler in the chair was accurate and Danvers was lying when she said "He was dead when we found him." Danvers killed him and they covered it up. Maybe this was the origin of the subsequent break between her and Navarro: Navarro likely would have approved of Danvers doing extrajudicial execution on a violent lowlife, but Danvers couldn't continue to work with someone who had seen her emotional nature take over like that. Somewhere in there, her kid dies; maybe she sees that as divine punishment, or maybe it's the reason she kills Wheeler. (Could his teenage wife have been pregnant when she died?) Danvers becomes a bitter asshole who quotes protocol at people, as a sort of atonement.

This, to me, is the most interesting part of the mystery, along with: What does the spiral on Annie K mean? Surely it can't be a symbol of evil, on this character who is presented to us as near sainthood. I have some theories but want to wait and hear what others think.

I don't think it's a theory. What we saw (or as much of it as we saw) is what happened. Danvers = unreliable narrator.

Yeah I mean I'm taking the unreliable narrator part as a given, just trying to fill in the blanks on what actually happened that we haven't been shown yet, on that day and in its aftermath.

I've been seeing the carpet in my gym differently.

https://i.imgur.com/9Ynr7TO.jpeg

O_O

that's what you get for working out at Tuttle Fitness, imo

They’re really going to have to crank up the pace in the last two episodes if they’re going for a self-contained resolution this series. There hasn’t really been any police work going on, per se, and they haven’t leaned in to the Laird Barron Alaskan cosmic horror angle that much.

Six episodes doesn’t feel like quite enough for this season - eight might’ve been more realistic.

that's what you get for working out at Tuttle Fitness, imo

lol

after four episodes this show has some fun dialog and great performances but there really isn't anything interesting going on. and how come whenever they're talking in the car it's daylight again?

enjoying the Ninth Doctor sounding like Michael Rapaport though

i am enjoying this show a lot in spite of the constant darkness. i assume "Ninth Doctor" refers to Dr Who, which I have never seen, so that sex scene was just sort of pleasantly awkward imo. I was glad they had some ugly (but not coercive) adult sex in there.

other thoughts:

* Travis reminded me of BOB and therefore I found him terrifying (interesting backstory, ty VG!)
* Did not expect to hear The Unthanks in Ep 1 -- pleasant surprise!
* can we hear it for Qavvik please? What an appealing male character (so far)
* worried for Pete and Kayla
* Alina subplot hopefully continuing to go nowhere

Ninth Doctor = Christopher Eccleston

another thing from ep 4 that was fun was that a woman got to go on a beat up rampage and then have a man tend to her wounds afterwards, not sure I've seen that reversal before

when the song about everybody dying came on when the sister was dying, i died

Everytime that whorl appears now I'm further creeped out, I admit.

That Christmas tree on the dredge was fuggin creepy

Yeah that whole sequence was kinda great. I retain the right to be disappointed if it's all explained away but hopefully we won't go down that road.

keep going back and forth on whether or not I actually like this or do I just find the setting/look of it so compelling?

So

There’s a theory that Danvers is catfishing Hank

woah

ums otm. Setting doing a LOT of heavy lifting this season

There’s a theory that Danvers is catfishing Hank

That would be hilarious but I don't see it. Someone who's as much of a mean asshole as she is wouldn't have the sense of humor necessary for that.

Hahah yeah that theory I'm not buying at all.

Setting doing a LOT of heavy lifting this season

And brilliantly so! A show (movie, etc.) can't really just be vibes, especially something that's a procedural no matter how you slice it, but I love what it does here.

setting doing 90% of the work is just barely above average for cosmic horror

Danvers, as played by Jodie Foster, is a pretty compelling character. I guess I don’t see it as mostly vibes and setting. Remains to be seen if they can wrap up the central mystery in a satisfying way.

The polar bear looked really funny around the eyes, almost like it had tried to claw them out and given up, so are we supposed to assume it's part of it too?

first watching is purely for the vibes...

second watching (sometimes just from the second /first ad break) is for the compelling characters..looking for plot points I have missed.

very mixed feelings about how far I want it to go into Cosmic Horror, as with only a few episodes left... I need a good resolution, but feel its too much Mare of Innsmouth to give me proper police procedural closure.

I was struck this past ep by how difficult this production must've been to execute, all the snow and night shoots and cold temperatures. Looks like hell to make. It does feel as if this was an 8-episode script, shot as planned, that had to be severely edited down to six episodes... the editing feels strange, each scene plays out at an appropriate pace but this sneaking feeling that there are many, many scripted scenes that've been edited out. (The fact that there were no scenes depicting Anchorage coming for the bodies felt very absentee, and the sewing up of Danvers concerns about this major plot point felt like the product of re-shoots). I'm enjoying it still but more like a six-episode B-movie than vanguard HBO television, I guess

I was enticed by the setting (guilty as charged), but I'm going to wait until this season is over to see if you all like it enough for us to bother watching. Nothing worse than suggesting a show to a friend or SO and having it suck, since it erodes cred better spent recommending stuff you *know* is good.

haven't watched yet but the twitter discourse is infuriating and it's negatively polarizing me to want to watch it more than i otherwise would have. it's opaque and ponderous, you say? the tv show true detective?

Lol there are lots of things worse than erosion of cred smh

I’m enjoying the b movie regardless.

I've also found a lot of the online discourse to be soiled by toxic misogyny. I mean this season ain't perfect, but it's very telling that the show was turned over to a female showrunner and features two female leads and I'm coming across so many over the top pans of it saying it's "the worst show ever", that Foster and Reis are both "terrible actors", that López "ruined the franchise". All real quotes I've read multiple times.

Why are y’all reading this shit? I never look at “””the discourse””” tbh

I was about to say, following that garbage sounds pointless.

how can you not enjoy watching Jodie Foster ripping on everyone she engages with, friend family or foe

I mean, I don't actively seek it out, but I usually run across it when I'm trying to see if there are any easter eggs I've missed.

ok i never do that either. i guess i don't care about the little stuff, i just want to watch a show and be entertained. which i am.

i think the only time recently i have gone looking for what other people are saying was after watching 1) The Queer Ultimatum reality show and 2) Rap Sh!t, which totally rules and no one else I know has watched it.

xps I did see one "True Detective's latest episode scores a new low on Rotten Tomatoes" writeup in my feeds, hopefully the algorithm heard me rolling my eyes

rap sh!t is great, hopefully some other network picks it up for a third season

yeah it's my own fault for still being on twitter, which will feed me the odd dumb criticism of this season despite the fact that i've never interacted with any (one said something along the lines of, "take a shot whenever oscar winner jodie foster says one of the worst lines of dialogue you've ever heard in your life")

Yeah, I mean, you don't have to like the show! It's fine! But the criticism I've seen is so noxious and over-the-top, and it's always Foster, Reis and López that are specifically targeted as the "problems" with it.

Just bc someone brings a platter of poo to the potluck doesn’t mean you or I or anyone has to eat it.

Lol there are lots of things worse than erosion of cred smh

To be clear, I was talking about erosion of *my* cred, at home! Back when we were all here, it was very rare that we would all four of us watch a show or movie together, but I suggested we see "Knives Out" as a family, and everyone loved it. A couple of months later, during covid, when we had no choice but to spend a lot of time together, my kids requested something like "Knives Out,' so I suggested the 1974 Sidney Lumet "Murder On the Orient Express," which I'd never seen but had always meant to see. And everyone *hated* it, so much that they rejected any other suggestions from me for months.

In this case, I've never seen any "True Detective." We're close to being between shows, so I suggested to my wife that we start with the current season, which I'd heard (at the time) was good. She wasn't particularly interested, so I didn't want to push it unless I *knew* it was good, and not, well, a hit or miss b-movie vibe, which I don't think she would enjoy. If I recommended S4 and it sucked, or she thought it sucked, then that erodes my cred for when I suggest something else later.

I do sorta have the reflex now once I've watched a show or a movie (especially if I strongly liked or hated it) to go online and see what people are saying about it... ILX, Twitter, Reddit, etc

I'm pretty sure this could be categorized as a bad habit I need to break

Does Jodie Foster really have haters? Instablock if I run into that idiocy.

The soap in this last episode got me, in a good way. All prior soap sins this season forgiven. re: online discussion, I was seeing complaints that the story hasn't been pushed forward these past two episodes and genuinely what show are people watching because it ain't what I just watched. I thought pacing this episode was fantastic, very ready for the nice ribbon that ties this all together in the final two.

We’re all in the Night Country, now

Just a quick reminder the next episode is tomorrow:

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/true-detective-night-country-episode-5-debut-early-max-tv-news-roundup-1235898376/

Let’s go

Well.

Great episode!

Indeed! Feels like both a ‘real’ explanation and something more are still in play too.

:(

The mid-episode reveal, when we learn that certain characters have contradictory goals than other characters, it felt like the meal had finally arrived. Hooray! Looking forward to the finale and saying a prayer they stick the landing, which I think (after tonight) is likely

omg what a crazy good everything-bagel episode

however
that slowed down Eagle Eye Cherry cover over the end credits HAS GOT TO GO.

mr veg was v amused by how loud i shouted at him to turn it off

Lol. All this negative attention being given to non-bad parts of the show when the internet should really be getting furious about the musical selection, for real

Wooooooooweeeeee
Amazing ep, shame about the final song tho.
I turned it off immediately

Fantastic episode, and one that hopefully puts to rest those “this show isn’t going building to anything” whiners.

My wife actually did have something complimentary to say about that ending song - “hey, it’s better than the original”.

my prediction: ice caves finale episode is going to be hella scary

Well how about better musical news, namely that John Hawkes aka Hank wrote the song he did earlier in the episode:

Q. John, when I re-watched the episode, and you’re singing that song, I was frantically googling to figure out what it was — and couldn’t find it. I emailed HBO to ask whether it was original to the show, and the publicist wrote back, “John Hawkes wrote it!”

Bennett: It’s a John Hawkes original!

Q. I know it’s not the first time you’ve contributed a song to a project that you’re in, but how did that come about here?

Hawkes: Again, when Issa broached it early on, Hank playing music, for the reason stated, I wasn’t comfortable. And then I thought, “Well, it’ll just be a guy sitting in his living room playing an instrumental,” which I wrote and played for her over the phone, and sent her a version or two. And she said, “That’s great.” So I thought, yeah, it’s not going to be performative. It’s just a guy sitting around playing the guitar, and it will end up, as the script described, scoring some work between Danvers and Navarro and the mine riot.

It became a wonderfully good-natured argument between Issa and I, because I played a show while I was there with my friend Nikki Lorenzo, a talented musician. Issa came, and then it became, “Well, now you should write words, and you should sing to it!” I dug in so hard. I mean, I love Issa! We never had any argument at all, ever. It was always spirited discussion, with laughter afterwards. But I thought suddenly it was just too performative. What words would I even begin to write? I came up with the words pretty last minute, actually.

i loved that scene & his song!
kinda low-level Lanegan vibes imo
and it gave a nice extra dimension to his character in a way, you get a bit of soulfulness against awkward/antagonist/etc

Yeah, a deft addition for sure. Elsewhere in the interview he goes into working with Lopez to make the character not simply a cartoon shithead.

Great scene. And that character is a real walking question mark, isn’t he?

VG otm
Added dimension and also a very good song.

my immediate response was "i'll buy a John Hawkes album" without realizing he wrote the song.

I'm all caught up and can't wait for the finale. I've taken to calling it 'TD4: Angry Sex in the Snow'.

This show - in all its iterations (*and* Pizzolato's novel) - has pretty profound daddy issues, right? I need to have a proper audit, but it feels like a theme that runs throughout.

jeez time really is a flat circle I guess

I died a little inside when that line appeared

I died a little when twist and shout played during navaro and danvers hugging

yeah same PLEASE DON’T

the interview structure of the very end was a bit rmde … i’d rather an open-ended ending than tieing all the bows

but i liked a lot of this finale! it was intense & suprised me in a few ways

Yeah I’m more than fine with it. It gives a ‘real’ answer for those who want it and enough left hanging to make it more interesting than how season one ended. And boy a lot of this episode was properly unsettling.

Interview with Lopez. Worth a read.

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/true-detective-season-4-ending-who-killed-annie-scientists-1235908415/amp/

Still figuring out my feelings.

Mine aren't as positive as I'd like them to be

The “this is what happened to the dead men out on the ice” reveal is actually great! It’s just other aspects of the finale, and the fact that this needed to be an 8-10 episode season.

This got steadily less good by the episode, as the creepy and supernatural/
high end cop drama started to tip toward the latter.

I liked seeing hearing Tanya Tagaq in this

I was on board from the beginning with the deaths having a direct non-supernatural answer, but supernatural stuff is just happening in the periphery.

I'm not sure what their source was, but I heard that Issa López had approached HBO with a pitch, and they turned around and told her they'd do it if it was adapted into being a season of True Detective. Has anyone else heard something like that? If so, I'd be curious how the original pitch differed.

I’ve heard that a lot

"And what is your pitch?" "It's about interfering studio executives dying in agony naked out on the ice." "Seems on the nose, can you frame it for us?"

i like the idea that it ultimately partly hinges on grief (though this is maybe a tad underdeveloped)

rose says to the kid on the ice “you think the worst part is over don’t you. but the worst part is that it lasts forever”or something like that paraphrasing horribly …
so then the orange, the bear, etc all that seemingly creepy stuff are talismans of loss that the grieving ppl keep randomly seeing, like weird unearthly anchors that keep them in their grief idk just spitballing

and that being really fucking cold & really fucking tired can make you really fucking crazy

My favorite random moment may still be the plait of hair in the washer.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/2/18/24075084/true-detective-night-country-season-4-finale-review-what-happened

this review is interesting but since I don't engage with the (apparently super hetero dude) online fanbase of this series it's kind of weird so see that fanbase be the context for criticism.

I liked the final. Liked the resolutions for Danvers and Navarro (including the ambiguous final scene) and the solve for the deaths of the scientists. Had more issues with the overall series - felt like it went too wide with characters and subplots for a 6 episode series with a great setting, intriguing murder mystery and strong lead characters. Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine - thought the same thing about Murder at the End of the World.

yeah i feel a bit that way too

I was not expecting an essay by highly regarded horror writer Laird Barron about this season, but he wrote one, and it's really good.

oh awesome! love them. great read

Finale was a little slow — just finished watching so I’m digesting my thoughts. At least we got to see 😍Qavvik😍 again, feeding his wolf-dogs.

I liked it, overall. It felt a bit underdeveloped in the writing, and the LOTR ending upon ending tied things up a little too neatly for me. I wonder how the women attacking the station will settle over time, but right now I like it. The scene of the men in the truck, getting out, huddling in the snow, being told to take off their clothes - that scene has been enacted so many times throughout history, the other way around, that it felt partly like the whole thing had been written in an attempt to right that wrong. And I was here for it.

I'm not sure about the supernatural elements. Perhaps simultaneously over-coded and under-written (something that could be levelled at S1)? Not sure.

xp I wanted Navarro to end up with Qavvik!

I'm babbling now but I don't quite get Navarro's isolation at the end. Disappearing without disappearing?

maybe she did disappear! maybe it was her ghost w Danvers at the end

I'm not sure about the supernatural elements. Perhaps simultaneously over-coded and under-written (something that could be levelled at S1)? Not sure.

that's practically the True Detective hallmark now. It felt like a mess in the first season (as though the show actively worked against these elements because someone at the network said to dial it back; I don't know if that's true but that was always the feeling I got). This time around it felt like an attempt to address those dangling issues and give them more space in the overriding narrative, but I have no idea if anything will ever be more fully developed or if even doing that is a good idea. 'time is a flat circle' felt really hamfisted this time.

In season 5 there will be a scene featuring a construction worker accidentally running over a grandfather clock with a steamroller and saying to his foreman, "hey boss, looks like time is a flat circle now, eh?".

Lol

I think it's just really hard to do ghost stories effectively now, since your audience has seen dozens and dozens of them and spookiness depends on subtlety but anything you try and do now is amplified to the level of cannon fire by awareness of ghost tropes and Internet discussion

like how do you masterfully have something flit past behind a character and make the viewer think "did I just see that, or?" when they can just pause, rewind, and watch again until they are satisfied

(I thought the final episode of the season redeemed it a lot)

like how do you masterfully have something flit past behind a character and make the viewer think "did I just see that, or?" when they can just pause, rewind, and watch again until they are satisfied

I read an essay about writing recently in which the author argued that one should not write with one's worst possible reader in mind. And what you're describing falls into that trap. Don't write for people who live to go on Twitter and talk about "plot holes" and "gratuitous sex scenes" and other bullshit. Those people cannot be satisfied, because their only satisfaction comes from picking things apart until they're convinced no one else can enjoy it anymore either. Write for people who are willing to get on board the Fun Train and take the ride. Let the joyless nitpickers and doubters live their joyless, nitpicking lives out of your sight.

Not ghosts but seeing the Exorcist for the first time after growing up with the tropes made it difficult to understand its reputation.

idk dude, i still find it scary af

Prince of Darkness is scarier than the Exorcist to me

!!

prince of darkness still owes me for the 101 minutes it robbed from my life

I think Exorcist III is scarier than the first one, and it's also the only one I ever saw in a theater cold without any expectations

what is happening

Finally watched the finale. I know everybody fixated on the reappearance of "Time is a flat circle," but to me the key to the whole series is Danvers' mantra, "You're asking the wrong questions."

TBH I got really tired of her saying that over and over. when people complain about the lazy writing this time around (which i've seen people do) I'm guessing they're talking about stuff like that.

wtf i liked that

I think I like VG's angle about it being about grief, all the ghosts being projections of.

we usually locate the subconscious inside our bodies, but some cultures evert it and keep it in the world, we look haunted but this show took the other tack, to the grieving the world looks haunted, sadness is a place outside that you can go and it can kill you

“You’re posting the wrong opinions”

In general I wish the script was tightened, there had been a better editing model so the series didn’t feel so clunky, but it was totally fine and good

Interesting that Dr Who and Mining Lady were just absent in the finale but that’s ok I guess

My wife said that as a nonwhite woman (since we've been in Montana, multiple people have thought she's Native) the finale had a great deal of impact for her. She was thrilled by the fact that it turned out to be the Native women who'd done everything, and that no one had even thought that it could have been them because they were effectively invisible in the first five episodes, and indeed in the world of the show. "What? The cleaning ladies?" Yeah, motherfucker, the cleaning ladies, who watched you poison their water and kill their children! Of course they came for you!

otm

So did this turn out to be better than Fargo s5, or

I am not sure it worked as horror, as a mystery or as a policier but I didn’t hate it. Leaving aside the forced True Detective references, it would be interesting to know whether the original vision was so heavily focused on the two lead characters or had more balance with the community at large.

Unperson’s wife otm — the reversal of roles in that scene plus the fact that no one would have considered it was them made for a very satisfying conclusion to that storyline for me.

I’m still a little confused about who Holden is/was? I get the emotional impact of losing him but unless I’m just forgetting, idk more than “kid who died” about this character.

Also the scenes in the ice cave were SO stressful. I’m scared of caves I think.

We're going to Iceland next month and this show really got me in the mood for parkas and crampons. We will NOT be exploring ice caves.

I'm not easy with caves or confined spaces, even in movies. I'm haunted by that irl story about the caver who crawled into an extremely narrow dead end, got themselves firmly wedged in there and couldn't be rescued.

I’m still a little confused about who Holden is/was?

Danvers' son, that seemed fairly explicit. I'm not sure who the father was or what happened to him.

Yes -- I gathered that she was his caretaker/mother, but was he adopted? Who was the father? I guess it doesn't matter ultimately, maybe that is the point? IDK.

xp I actually really like small spaces and am not claustrophobic for the most part. Still, I remember very clearly one time my boo and I were hiking and there was a known cave entrance. We walked up to it, talked about checking it out, I was feeling brave and got about half of my body inside and was immediately seized by a wave of ABSOLUTELY NOT and scooted right tf out. The prevailing feeling was "not going out like that" and I was glad my body's danger sensors still worked. Do NOT crawl under the earth's surface.

When I was watching these scenes I kept worrying they wouldn't remember which way they turned and would be lost down there. When they finally found the entrance to the lab I was SO relieved. At least they can chill in this cursed lab.

My read was that Danvers married Leah's dad, they had Holden, and Holden + dad were killed in a car accident, leaving Danvers and Leah as the family unit.

Ahhh, ok. I guess I missed that, or forgot. That makes sense.

One thing I thought was cute was whenever someone was chomping on a bag of chips (Cheetos, Funyuns) they always offered to share it with the person they were with -- Prior and Leah in the jail, Danvers and Navarro in the lab. That was a nice realistic touch.

haha, I had to go back and watch previous episodes when Holden was mentioned because I forgot who he was! Like I was talking about earlier, the medium changes the way you watch these things.

I think I was also confused because I thought Danvers was relatively new to this environment, that she had been transferred there in spite by Dr Who, so it was confusing that she had a whole family storyline that, apparently, was also set in this same town.

I think I was also confused because I thought Danvers was relatively new to this environment, that she had been transferred there in spite by Dr Who, so it was confusing that she had a whole family storyline that, apparently, was also set in this same town.

Some stray thoughts & questions:

—I can’t remember if this was mentioned upthrasd or elsewhere in the internet but major kudos to the cinematographer for making a show set almost entirely at night but always keeping the action visible. All other tv shows please take note, it can be done.

—re the mysterious tongue… one clue which I can’t put together is on that last night in Tsalal when Danvers and Navarro solve the mystery of the hatch - at one point Danvers looks under the table and sees a residue where the tongue had been. At this point weeks have gone by - what does that mean that there would still be some kind of substance still there?

At this point weeks have gone by - what does that mean that there would still be some kind of substance still there?

Ectoplasm, obviously.

otm re cinematography — also the myriad ways they made all the different types of snow/ice look beautiful and/or creepy

my one complaint, or a complaint, and maybe it's a question of the shorter season, is at the end when beardo is like "we could've saved the world", I feel like the show could've spent more time setting that up, so you felt like these guys really felt like something was at stake. Not that that would justify killing Annie obviously, but it just seemed to come out of nowhere. Until then I read the tsalal guys as well-meaning scientists who maybe fudged numbers for their funder, maybe it would've felt more impactful if it built up the sense of what they thought was at stake instead of introducing it at the last minute?

Also, all of Clark's Carcosa-style sculpture work, his notebook, they did lay groundwork for him going insane. Just guilt about Annie with some fan-service for season 1 stans?

I assumed guilt, coupled with his obvious loneliness, guilt over his distance from his son, slowly going a little batty in the long, dark winter. It may have been fan service, but I'm glad they just obliquely hinted at that stuff rather than leaning into it (obviously aside from THAT line).

yeah, and I know everybody already said this, but that pure groan-worthy cringe.

The falling through the ice a few times on the other hand I found very effective.

Honestly, after the Tuttle namedrop earlier and the Cohle revelation, I was bracing myself for some dumb "oh look, Bobby Ray Tuttle killed those scientists because they found their new ritual sacrifice room buried in the ice" twist so I was pretty pleased by the ultimate reveal. The more I let the finale sit, the more I like it.

my one complaint, or a complaint, and maybe it's a question of the shorter season, is at the end when beardo is like "we could've saved the world", I feel like the show could've spent more time setting that up, so you felt like these guys really felt like something was at stake. Not that that would justify killing Annie obviously, but it just seemed to come out of nowhere. Until then I read the tsalal guys as well-meaning scientists who maybe fudged numbers for their funder, maybe it would've felt more impactful if it built up the sense of what they thought was at stake instead of introducing it at the last minute?

otm - this was the weak part of the story. Like... in what was is the ancient DNA locked in the permafrost supposed to save humanity exactly? That it's worth secretly poisoning a whole town? That is a fairly large MacGuffin to just gloss over.

On the other hand I thought the twist with the ladies from the town was terrific, even as their story was only peripherally told in the previous five episodes.

I think they mentioned in passing that they’d discovered the secret to ending cellular decay.

yeah like generalized “cancer” cure was i thought thrown in amidst the technobabble

That just feels so fantastical... like the writers were just throwing darts at why it would be important for scientists to be doing the work they were doing. It feels totally half-baked.

I’m telling you, they needed at least two more episodes to really make this a satisfying season.

yeah i agree with that for sure

Yeah I've worked in a lab processing fresh blood & tissue samples for DNA and RNA, and no part of the science here makes sense. It's not important though, I just treated it like pure fantasy magic and pretended to hear something other than the words they were literally saying.

^yeah the “explanation” was just a bunch of science words put together. I treated it the same way.

Well I find it irritating how tossed off it was, considering it's the main driver for the scientists' behavior.

Are you familiar with the term "MacGuffin"? Remember how in the movie Ronin everyone's chasing a suitcase, and at one point Robert De Niro's character literally asks another character, "What's in the suitcase?" and she says, "You don't need to know"? Same deal here. They were working on Magical Mystery Miracle Science Stuff.

but WHY is that one ring so powerful

I don't need it to be scientifically accurate or even make sense. But a macguffin only works if you know it's there. This was more of a negative deus ex machina, something I just made up.

overall this season (I didn't watch seasons 1-3) does feel like it had huge swathes of narrative edited out of it

Wouldn't the True Detective MacGuffin be the supernatural elements? The mumbo jumbo sciencey explanation (and most of the finale) was more like opening the Pulp Fiction suitcase and revealing that it was just full of LED lights.

but WHY is that one ring so powerful

If you'll allow me to explain. *several centuries pass*

overall this season (I didn't watch seasons 1-3) does feel like it had huge swathes of narrative edited out of it

that's ok, seasons 1 & 2 are huge swaths of narrative that go nowhere (I like season 1 actually but the misdirection with the supernatural or weird elements is way more irritating there in the end). Season 3 is exceptional storytelling though, feels like everyone has over looked how good it is.

overall this season (I didn't watch seasons 1-3) does feel like it had huge swathes of narrative edited out of it

that's ok, seasons 1 & 2 are huge swaths of narrative that go nowhere (I like season 1 actually but the misdirection with the supernatural or weird elements is way more irritating there in the end). Season 3 is exceptional storytelling though, feels like everyone has over looked how good it is.

Never got past two episodes of season 2 but really liked season 3.

I'm still kinda annoyed that they just let the explanation of "yeah were researching something and it cures EVERYTHING" stand as a plot point.

And here we go

https://deadline.com/2024/02/true-detective-renewed-season-5-hbo-issa-lopez-overall-deal-1235834470/

Mostly I'm just amused about how much this'll piss off Pizzolatto.

it's a long fucking night, even the dead get bored

my one complaint, or a complaint, and maybe it's a question of the shorter season, is at the end when beardo is like "we could've saved the world", I feel like the show could've spent more time setting that up, so you felt like these guys really felt like something was at stake. Not that that would justify killing Annie obviously, but it just seemed to come out of nowhere. Until then I read the tsalal guys as well-meaning scientists who maybe fudged numbers for their funder, maybe it would've felt more impactful if it built up the sense of what they thought was at stake instead of introducing it at the last minute?

otm - this was the weak part of the story. Like... in what was is the ancient DNA locked in the permafrost supposed to save humanity exactly? That it's worth secretly poisoning a whole town? That is a fairly large MacGuffin to just gloss over.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Tuesday, February 20, 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Interesting contrast can be found in the new Apple show Constellation, where Jonathan Banks is fixated on the discovery of a "new kind of matter and a double quantum helix" or whatever it is he says. It's equal to True Detective insofar as it's a totally outlandish MacGuffin. But him telegraphing its importance early on, vs the way it felt kinda tacked on in TD, just shows that the right writer can make a macguffin feel meaningful.

Perhaps another reason why it felt like a harder sell in TD is because it felt like a piece of sci-fi storytelling in a show that, while flirting with the supernatural, was not a science fiction show. Whereas that's squarely Constellation's genre.

the moment Danvers got trapped, put her gun away and then proceeded to find some useful tool to break glass was offensively dumb by even this show's standards.

uh shooting toughened glass in a confined space? dude that would mean shooting herself via ricochet

we're talking television show logic, c'mon. toughened glass bullet ricochet is the least of a screenwriter's concerns.

thing is that every circle is flat

Good thing Jodie Foster is in this. Otherwise it would be some second tier Netflix horror schlock.

Great interview with Reis here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/style/kali-reis-true-detective.html

Despite the taste of HBO fame, Ms. Reis has no plans to change: Authenticity is nonnegotiable with her. “On the red carpet, you’re supposed to wear Gucci, and I’m like: ‘Listen, I don’t wear heels. I wear all black,’” she said.