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

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.