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

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.