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!

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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

“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.