When the Mystery Doesn't Matter - True Detective: Night Country

Рет қаралды 17,415

Күн бұрын

I was extremely excited for Night Country. Not only do I love the setting and a shift in perspective (in protagonists as well as the show runner), but the early reviews also lauded it as a return to form. Unfortunately, Night Country has real issues in how it deals with its characters as well how little it focuses on its central mystery.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:05 The Characters
7:47 Danvers
14:06 Navarro
20:20 Side Characters
25:18 Story Problems
37:05 Spiral-Galore
44:53 Supernatural Inconsistencies
49:10 Conclusions
Subscribe Animations from:
@produced_by_eugene
Second Channel: @CritLIVE
follow me on tiktok ► www.tiktok.com/@criticalcoffeeyt
follow me on letterboxd ► letterboxd.com/Critcoffee/
📌TAGS📌
#kalireis #issalopez #jodiefoster

Пікірлер: 168

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

Do animals actually jump off cliffs like that IRL? I still don't know.

@MeatShield666 2 ай бұрын

Natives in Alberta did hunt bison like this. They got them to stampede off a cliff. There is a museum that has this find as its main wall... all some 6000 years ago en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-Smashed-In_Buffalo_Jump

@Huesos138 2 ай бұрын

Yes, they do. This was a fairly common way of hunting throughout the prehistoric world, according to those who know.

@electricbayonet2 2 ай бұрын

As depicted in the scene? No, not at all. As a means of hunting, it requires A) a decent amount of time and B) a decent number of hunters working together. You need numbers in order to actually herd the animals while not giving them obvious alternate paths of escape, and you need time to both herd them where you want them while also not giving them adequate chances to rest/feed/hydrate. If they're tired, hungry, scared, and positioned properly, you stand a chance to kill _some_ of them via cliff. The core thing to remember is that they're not trying to die, and the point of hunting this way is that it's a relatively low-risk way of hunting potentially dangerous game for very little energy (by human standards, anyway). You're essentially just following them at a casual pace, shouting 'Boo!' and then carrying off the ones that died of fright. In the show, they're just offing themselves for no in-universe reason. The reason for it being written into the show is because the writers are hacks and think that something being mysterious means it doesn't need any explanation.

@tankboi8249 2 ай бұрын

How about Lund surviving nude in the corpsicle in minus 40 degree weather for three days but Clark immediately freezes to death while fully clothed

@TranscendentaLobo27 2 ай бұрын

The whole show was just a mess. And the dialogue! Jesus, it’s been a while since I’ve heard dialogue THAT atrocious. Night Country was a disgrace to the legacy of True Detective.

@EzeICE 2 ай бұрын

@@TranscendentaLobo27And this current showrunner for Night Country is also running Season 5. So get ready for that 😂😂😂😂😂😂

@icchampion5 2 ай бұрын

Yep. I'd like to see Lopez try and explain that.

@TheRealBatCave Ай бұрын

@@icchampion5she would say, it's up to interpretation.........

@daysofapril2667 Ай бұрын

Absolute absurdity.

@redmudpei 2 ай бұрын

S4 was as deep as a puddle, and clear as mud. Just a quick thought, if they completely skipped the detective part and it was a show about the cleaning ladies working out on figuring a murder at their work place - that might of actually been interesting.

@nettewilson5926 26 күн бұрын

That is a brilliant idea…dang it

@thefinalboss2403 2 ай бұрын

True Defective.

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

lol

@paintingcube3853 2 ай бұрын

I do feel some things, small parts of the story are just nitpicks like the carabu herd dying. It's just supposed to be a strange ambiguous occurrence that sets the stage for the story. Not integral to the plot except to maybe imply that they were killed by the ice godess Sedna, which is meant to be sort of like this seasons Yellow King. Except an opposite of that. That's why the scientists dying is not overly explained, they were either killed by a strange entity or the cold temperature. That's probably why the dude that went full exorcist kept saying it was "her" that killed them on the ice, instead of a bunch of cleaning ladies. I also thought Danvers finding that cross in her hair was from her tripping and falling on the ice earlier and simply getting it stuck there. The polar bear was definitely under used, and I will agree that Issa Lopez had one major problem with writing this season that served as the catalyst to its failure, which was that even though it was a shorter season it still felt like it was meant to just be a feature length two hour movie. Makes sense considering her most praised work is a supernatural film called Tigers Are Not Afraid, with the involvement of Guillermo del Toro. I would be curious to know your thoughts on the writer's last serious talked about screenplay, Tigers Are Not Afriad. Which was done with del Toro's involvement. I know this is a rather long comment but I do feel that it is a major problem that no one wants to have anything of sincere interest to say about this seasons problems, it's just rants as usual and click-bait videos with no educational merit. And I do hope that Lopez will take this sort of feedback to craft a tremendously good season next time if she must write it. To illustrate that point I got, there's this comment pasted below from another video review on the series about what I would have done with the concept of this season: And as much as I did not mind the season I do think it would have been better if maybe the killer was changed: Imagine if it was just Clark who killed Annie and he drove himself to PTSD, and might have gotten possessed by her spirit. And he kills his co-workers, his friends, because what they're doing is not really work on finding some new microorganism to cure disease. It's just to pollute the town for some other financial gain to fill the Tuttles pockets with cash back in the states. The cleaning ladies being the killers are the "red herring".

@paintingcube3853 2 ай бұрын

The supernatural aspect is explored more so to just be a plot device that does not serve the purpose of finding out who killed the scientists or Annie, but serves to put a stop to the pollution. I do love the idea of taking the Lovecraftian concept further in that way. I would also have no step-daughter for Danvers sleeping around with an underage girl, but instead have more time spent on the rookie cop kid Pete and his father for one full episode doing doing some of the investigation, maybe they find the crazed man with his eyes burned out. We can get that scene of Pete's father trying to save him from falling through the ice, only in the present timeline working on the investigation. Not some flashback thrown in randomly. I would not have Navarro given a sister to take care of and instead place emphasis on her being the one with a physiological disorder that's getting worse. She feels she'll end up like her mother, but she goes to visit Rose who still see's Rust's father Travis and kickstarts the plot. She visits her for mental support/stability as the case wears her down. Maybe we can get a full episode about them together working on the plotline. Yes I suppose my answer to fixing this season ti make it really great is to take more inspiration than it already has from Twin Peaks: Clark getting possessed by the ghost of his victim like Leland Palmer taken over by BOB, only instead of the theme being about the evil that men do in this case, the point to Clarks possession is that the strange otherworldy forces need to course correct the work that's being done in Alaska, which is again not to help find cures to disease. Maybe CLark took out his friends one by one, and drove them out in that truck and took off their clothes, left them to die in the snow, but we still get the same implication that something supernatural killed them, hence the strange imagery that was placed in the series like the carabu killing themselves. He then cleans up any traces of footage or items that would lead anyone to finding them as he remains hidden in a nearby village, no secret chamber. We also get more emphasis placed on the spiral and the cult from Carcosa as being a part of the organization funding the program and that ONLY Clark was a part of the organization, while the other scientists were just bought off with large profits to do a job they were tricked into wasting time on. But Clark needs to be the only one who kills Annie because she discovers they were never polluting the water supply as a compomrise to finding anything worth merit. She tries to go to the police, and is accidentally murdered by Clark, not on purpose. Again, him being possessed is not supposed to feel like Twin Peaks with the theme of BOB possessing, it's a matter of his own guilt towards his belief in his cause supporting the cult. Maybe have it revealed that Pete's father was also bribed by the organization, and he has a conflict of interests in working for them now that his son is in danger. So we get some other characters that only now show up towards the middle to last half as the secondery villians, maybe a pair of assassins sent to kill Clark and the other missing person that knew who killed Annie. As much as this season is not trying to be like the other seasons it really needed an episode with full blown action, tension, more meat to the character growths, and supernatural horror that makes Danvers less of an athiest. After that type of climax leaves Pete's father dead with the only witness shot and killed, Danvers and Navarro find some other leads on their own as Pete discovers more on the Tuttle organization. Navarro has Rose only hide some evidence of the cult from Carcosa or destroy some. Pete never has a tense relationship with his family, only is father. Navarro adnDanvers are made to be more of opposites of each other that can grow more to be different towards the end of the season. AND THEY NEVER COVER UP A MURDER. No one does in the season. Clark has a huge chunk of time dedicated to his descent into madness before he makes a video confessing and providing physical evidence of his crimes. And that's the season. Maybe an after credits scene with some other characters in the states showing that the cult of Carcosa will always be around. I still like the idea of Rose finding the pile of frozen bodies, and I would only make it more clearly illustrated that the supernatural elements again serve a purpose not to help find the killers, but to guide the characters into putting a stop to the mining in the ice caves. Hope it helps, but hey. I'm just exhausted, exhuasted over how the big problem we have with garbage content creators and concumers getting screwed over is that we have both sides out of touch without anyone doing enough to admit to that. The whole diechotomy with people on KZfaq making clickbait videos that look like jokes in the thumbnails that look like they're trying to hard to be mean and critical put critics and content creators out of touch and think toxic fandoms are a bigger problem then toxic positivity. And on the opposite end of that specrum, you have rotten tomatoes doing the same thing, making people's reviews look like obscene positivity when their meant to be critical or mixed to negative. A lot of people need to stop doing these simple click bait visuel thumbnails, rather its positive or negative, becuase it will just turn people off more so and drift them further out of touch by thinking we are all just homophobes, racists, trans-phobes, or any of the other stereotypical complaints. I just wish this platform would become more of a place where educational information could thrive instead of us putting ourselves into the hirearchy further with click bait videos made by grifter being mostly the most popular, instead of thoughtful hour long video essays. These idiots like the Quartering, Yellowfish, Nerdrotic, Doomcock, maybe even Mr. H Reviews, and Critical Drinker all suffer from this to the point that it's no wonder they, like yourself are all called bigots and any other word you could recall. I know it's not the case, however, you all gotta admit, when your very biased towards a certain problem that you complain over it like a business without much care put into your content or topic, it does just become a grifter's tactic. The one Guy called Mr H. for instance made a video criticizing Robert England's recent interview where he said to the journalist how he thinks gay characters and LGBTQ people in general are not really represented in the horror genre of cinema. He criticized it in such a way that was not trans-phobic, but was definitely biased. Again, I don't hate the guys, love Mr H content on audiobooks and car nonsense, it's just that again the fact that he deleted the video after someone already critisized him fairly for it proves how biased we can be, even when criticizing lame writing or sincere subject matter. It's why more people just need to stop smoking the anti-woke pack of drugs. Because no one wants to admit to their own biases and realize simply put that we cannot afford to be right about something for the wrong reasons. Sorry again if this was to long for what you were expecting, I stayed awake all night writing this because that's how exhausted I am of feeling like this [platform is killing our creativity as reviewers. More people should be inspired to write and create instead of getting depressed because of how harsh or positive someone is being with their biased reviews. And I would love for you and others to do some videos on the subject if it ever interests you. I legitimately think no one wants to criticize this type of thing though.

@sole__doubt 2 ай бұрын

Top comment right there.

@thejamnasium6447 2 ай бұрын

like my buddy said about all the bullshit references to season 1: "I don't need to be reminded of a better show"

@MrKYLEforAwhile 2 ай бұрын

The most frightening and disturbing scenes in this season were the Jodie Foster sex scenes.

@EzeICE 2 ай бұрын

The fact that Reis is the novice actor did a much more convincing sex scene. Go figure right. 😂😂😂😂

@sole__doubt 2 ай бұрын

I cant believe an actress on her level would be on this disaster of a show. They must have had blackmail on her or something. Truly cringe inducing those sex scenes were.

@GFYKTHXBYE 2 ай бұрын

Yeah...who in the whole world needed that to be included? Yuck.

@ryanrich06 2 ай бұрын

Lmao 100%!!!

@nont18411 2 ай бұрын

Peter Prior is the true hero of this season, no matter how much the script wants to shit on him

@Fedorevsky 2 ай бұрын

Peter is clearly the only "true" detective character featured in the season so yes he by default is the hero

@christdolphin69 2 ай бұрын

the entire point of this show was to shit on white men, especially priors dad

@m4nt1c0r3s 2 ай бұрын

@@Fedorevsky And as with most of these woke writers, its always unintentional, their goal was probably to make him look weak and a submissive so that their "diverse" characters can shine but in their ignorance and malice often they actually make a character which connects with people, a bit like Homelander was made to be incarnation of toxic masculinity and mockery of patriotism, yet people actually ended up liking him.

@tankboi8249 2 ай бұрын

The dialogue between Danvers and Navarro is painful to listen to. Danvers character is such a terrible person, cop, mom, wife, lead character that I found it difficult to be motivated to even finish the first few episodes. All relevant information was either googled by Pete and handed over to her or Qaviik provided it. The two “detectives” did nothing to work this case aside from her drunk and watch that cell phone video and spread out some photos. Other things like how Navarro can’t find ANY ice caves in her town but the teacher pulled them up immediately on Wikipedia is wild. If she had googled “ice caves near Ennis” that Wikipedia page would have shown up. Why did Otis have the same injuries as the scientists and how did they get those injuries in the first place when we saw how they were marched out into the ice? Why did they set Annie k’s murder six years before the show starts? Clark was just tweaking around his coworkers for six whole years and nobody nor did anything? Danvers being the size and age she is smashing that glass with barely any issue and then also immediately recovering from falling into the frozen ocean that just happens to be mere feet outside the door to the station. Navarros schizophrenia giving her legitimate psychic abilities and her learning her name lets her now control those abilities. Weird. Also, permafrost isn’t ice it’s the frozen soil, so they had a bunch of ice cores but they needed pollution to melt the permafrost to study these microorganisms? Was nobody consulted about any of the scientific aspects of the show or was any research done at all into Arctic research?

@e.t.3074 2 ай бұрын

Do you also find watching asshole male characters as repulsive though? Like Rust and Marty. I can appreciate a good asshole female character tbh. It's a breath of fresh air to see a female character as "traditionally masculine" as Danvers and somewhat Navarro too. Bossy, cold, bad parent, unemphatetic, manipulative, aggressive even etc., it's a lot more normalized for male characters.

@AngryPug76 2 ай бұрын

Of course not. They also didn’t get a consultant who knew about the real indigenous people in that area so while they kept the tribes name the same they made up everything else about their culture.

@FlymanMS 2 ай бұрын

Isa's "research" is terrible on all fronts, from science to Alaska life, I bet she never ventured farther than outskirts of LA while preparing the script and maybe superficially googled some stuff.

@patryk6242 2 ай бұрын

You have brought the best NC summary: Twin Peaks minus all the charm and any likeable characters.

@VideoClubRandom 2 ай бұрын

I agree with a lot of what you say here. I really wanted to like this season. The changes in the protagonists, Jodie Foster as the lead, I personally really liked the leaning towards something more supernatural. At first I was really interested in everything, but unfortunately it was a disaster. I struggled to finish it... Very good video and essay. You deserve many more views... Keep it up!

@thejamnasium6447 2 ай бұрын

for the love of God don't compare Night Country to Twin Peaks

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

To clarify that point, as I said in the essay: it's *closer* to Twin Peaks than other seasons of TD. I would never recommend Night Country as an alternative to Twin Peaks. All I'm saying is that the influence is pretty clear (adding to the fact that López herself lists it as an inspiration for Night Country). As per the essay, the season falls short of its inspirations.

@SixSioux 2 ай бұрын

He was clearly not comparing it to TP, but it's undeniable that NC tries hard to look like it. And fails harder, lol

@christdolphin69 2 ай бұрын

the dancing ghost (of rust's dad? for some reason) was ripped directly from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, specifically the blue rose scene at the hangar

@spencerhaabs 2 ай бұрын

OMG there is a human tongue on the floor!!! I wonder how it got there? It’s never addressed

@AbOveandBeOnd1 Ай бұрын

The detectives at the end literally ask Jodie Foster's character about the tongue, and she answers "Who knows". This season was a train wreck.

@criticalthot 2 ай бұрын

I am so here for a thorough and clinical AHS roasting 😂

@lilrobbie2k 2 ай бұрын

Yeah, my favorite part was when the cleaning lady said, "Look at me - I'm the true detective, now."

@mouroult2 2 ай бұрын

In the first scene at the science station, everything is there: The Thing, Aliens, Event Horizon... and even Twin Peaks, as you pointed out. So I said to myself, let's see what they're going to do with all this - fast forward, I find myself at the end of the first episode, and from then on I was absolutely certain that there would be no good development of the starting material, that scene in the science station... I didn't even bother to watch the other episodes; I could have clarified my thoughts if this message was not so distant in time, compared to the viewing. As for Issa López, I firmly believe that she had fun putting all this together, but... not for the right reasons, and I choose not to elaborate, because that would be cruel.

@SomeoneStillLearning 2 ай бұрын

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@emilys3757 2 ай бұрын

“Let’s see what they’re going to do with all this” I find this an issue with so many shows and movies these days. Interesting premises that just don’t go anywhere and/or can’t stick the landing.

@mouroult2 2 ай бұрын

@@emilys3757After watching several video reviews on KZfaq, I can confidently say that True Detective season 4 is not a good detective series, the science fiction part is barely developed, and the supernatural is... hollow. I'm sure that Issa Lopez knew how to make everything attractive for HBO during the presentation of the project, but what is more difficult to understand is how HBO thought that it was absolutely necessary to program a season 5 with the same showrunner... A few years ago, there was a french-speaking journalist who ran a fascinating blog called Le Monde des Séries, devoted to TV shows, and then one day, he simply and suddenly closed it: I believe this person could have explained what is happening, but what I can say anyway is that many transformations are taking place in the world of art, and that concerns video games, books, paintings, and films/TV shows - the quality is there, but the distribution channels have changed so much, and the quantity weighs heavily on the quality: there is probably a TV show on KZfaq produced by two people and seen by 5000 spectators, a truly remarkable TV show, and neither you nor I have heard of it.

@mouroult2 2 ай бұрын

@@emilys3757Welcome to an era where two people can make a fantastic TV show, seen by 5,000 people on KZfaq, and neither you nor I have heard of it.

@danielkeizer4174 Ай бұрын

49:10 🎶 a better written Story 🎶....not frozen ground, meets seven, meets the thing, meets sixth sense.... ending in some feminist pipedream where we don't prosecute the actual murderers because they are indigenous strong women punishing evil white scientist men who pollute mother earth...DEI requirements fullfiled, quotas reached and another political driven story line with zero actual story to speak of created. Lot's of borrowed plot devices though. Creatures buried in ice with special properties. Evil polluting corporations that have hidden agendas, dead bodies that turn out to not be dead and give clues to drive the plot along (unlike the one in seven this one needs supernatural help to do so...bad writing said anyone?)..... These visions could be part of the polluted water supply...but hey, who knows right. Maybe it was the creature's "magical dna" that somehow got into it. Terrible writing prevails and fails to impress. Leaving us with more questions then answers that could've and should've been explained...

@Manofthewhiteknife 2 ай бұрын

The best detective is Travis the ghost....

@sole__doubt 2 ай бұрын

I still think they had blackmail material on Foster to get her to participate in this disaster of a show.

@bennygerow 2 ай бұрын

I started fast forwarding during episode three when I was bored of the side plots that were literally repeating earlier points. I stopped watching during episode four when I realized I was only watching like half the episode, and I didn't really like that part even. 25:12 haha! Exactly!

@tankboi8249 2 ай бұрын

You forgot to mention the fact that not only were the season 1 references forced in there as nostalgia bait but almost all promotional material on social media for season 4 featured the spiral and they did several side by side shit comparisons to really force joke the fact that “hey we know that you know that we know you only liked season 1 so here you go”

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

1:50 ?

@tankboi8249 2 ай бұрын

Ah you got me there my mistake. I just always found it weird how hard the social media team doubled down on that

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

@@tankboi8249 yeah, super bizarre choice! Primed the audience to expect something that wasn't in the show at all.

@christdolphin69 2 ай бұрын

good point about s1 and the male perspective. the entire point of that season was to show the nature of man. how we need to allow use our evil nature to battle the true evil, and protect our loved ones (women and children) from actual evil

@zeonmx 12 күн бұрын

The extrajudicial cleaning ladies death squad is just hilarious. Even compared to season 2's standard, it's just comically stupid.

@LordMogatron 2 ай бұрын

Banger video. Would love to see you talk about AHS.

@SomeoneStillLearning 2 ай бұрын

...AND don't forget the infamous (and schizophrenically placed) phrase _"Time is a flat circle"_ attempting to be a reference of Season 1!!!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

@jamesmaybrick2001 2 ай бұрын

And shoehorning in the Tuttles.

@scionixx9568 2 ай бұрын

Her stepdaughter in the show was a literal sexual predator yet that’s completely glossed over

@cardboard2night 17 күн бұрын

She supposed to be 16 year old in the show, and her girlfriend is 15 year old, so the age difference is not that significant.

@shanemcnamara8657 2 ай бұрын

Check out what the spiral logo means on the F.B.Is list of criminal symbols it means nothing for this series but it dose in the first series 🤷‍♂️

@lukeluke333lukeluke 2 ай бұрын

I really wanted to like this show. I was all in and excited. While I had issues with the first episode. I did think it set up a interesting mystery. Then each episode only showed cracks and problems then the ending fall off the cliff. I can't believe how badly it ended. Its truly shocking. I know a little bit about the discourse and don't care but after watching. I guess its because the critics praised the show so much. Which is confusing and more baffling then the shows finale. I just like a good mystery but the show failed miserably... Anyways. Nice video and interesting takes.

@donellduck Ай бұрын

Dope video dude. I really liked the summaries n discussions ab the story writing. Feels like the way true detective season 1 used the interesting character story is s1 was usef to develop them. While This show used them as twists.

@0oSCHMILLENo0 2 ай бұрын

48:50 I actually hate that the writer refers to her own characters in such a way. It's like she hates them and it seems like she has some personal problem with scientists in general, so she made the scientists the bad guys in the show.

@cardboard2night 17 күн бұрын

I also want to point out, how 1 season of TD brilliantly used location of Louisiana, almost like it was another main characters: the scenes captivated you and aided to mystery. While season 4 uses Alaskan landscape like it's prope, interchangeable with any other: the winter night, tsalal station, the ship interior, the small Alaskan town, the caves... Don't feel real, but not in a good, mysterious way, but in a fake way... These cgi deer? Throw you out of the story in the first seconds, and they didn't even matter to the plot!

@EzeICE 2 ай бұрын

This season is even worse than Season 2. Geeeeezz 😮😮😮😮😢😢😢

@e.t.3074 2 ай бұрын

It had potential but shit was ass tbh.

@HeatherHolt 2 ай бұрын

What were the cleaning ladies gonna do if the scientists didn’t die on the ice… if Selinda or whatever let them live, in their eyes… they’d immediately go to the police and say hey these ladies had us at gunpoint and paraded us naked into the snow lol

@robrick9361 Ай бұрын

Cleaning Lady Mafia don't fuck around, they be coming with their Lemon Pledge and AKs in hand.

@martinez5566 2 ай бұрын

Lopez is flat out lying. The only reason the spiral and flat circle references are in series 4 is to tickle the balls of season 1 fans. Season 4 is a terribly written show. I was hoping the last episode would answer all the questions the previous episodes had created. It answered few, and the answers it gave were disappointing to say the least. Awful show that doesn't deserve the connection to the first season, which was one of the greatest series ever made.

@craigcharlesworth1538 2 ай бұрын

Night Country I found a competently made and compelling season that kept me engaged. It was not even close to the transcendent brilliance of season 1, for sure. But nor was it the pretentious awfulness of season 2. It had more in common with season 3; a middle-of-the-road, well acted police procedural that mostly hung together despite some flaws and plot holes. For me the biggest problem was the fact that the season was cut to 6 episodes from 8 in the first 3 seasons; those extra two episodes allowed the first season especially a sense of sprawl and scope where season 4 felt like it was rushing to a conclusion. People who act like season 4 has tarnished the lustre of season 1 forget that season 2 already did that. The show should never have gone on past season 1, but that genie was let out of the bottle in 2015.

@Mrch33ky 2 ай бұрын

TD has always been an excuse for actors to engage "Show Time" mode in this video game of a dramatic series. I ain't complainin', just tellin' it how it is.

@FlymanMS 2 ай бұрын

Wat

@helenastenvislavskovic 2 ай бұрын

Please elaborate

@joywagner979 2 ай бұрын

I'm an outlier among True Detective viewers in that I liked Season 2 much better than Season 1. Season 2 was also called "an abomination that ruined the legacy of True Detective", and it was written by the same guy who wrote Season 1. So, when seeing the same criticism about this season, I thought "time really is a flat spiral, lol." But the similarities ended there, because I didn't like this season at all. Honestly, if they had wanted to tie Season 2 into Season 1, that would have fit much better. Maybe a random spiral was carved into the cabin in the mountains, or painted onto a mirror at the first dead guy's weird orgy house. Why? Because a spiral is a common, sort of creepy symbol with a fairly universal correlation to the idea of chaos -- nothing deeper than that. I can also picture Rachel McAdams delivering the line "time is a flat circle" to a confused Colin Farrell. Why? "Something I heard my [weird hippie philosopher] dad say before. And I think there's something to it. Some kind of weird poetry." Then Colin thinks about it while he's trying to call his son before dying. But nothing deeper there, either, no confirmed supernatural happenings that tie the seasons together, merely strange coincidences. Rust Coehle would probably approve. There's my own fanfiction, which I think is better than what Season 4 tried to do. And that's all I've got.

@vulk4n_ Ай бұрын

Calling this season True Detective should be a crime punishable with life in prison

@DanLovesBooks 2 ай бұрын

I stopped 15 mins into first episode. Alaska is most-male state in USA, and police one of the most-male careers. Having two female lead detectives in Alaska is like having two heterosexual male football fans organize a child beauty pageant in Los Angeles. Technically possible but statistically hilarious.

@cardboard2night 17 күн бұрын

Damn... But yeah.

@pateramat 2 ай бұрын

Excellent analysis and critique! Thank you for articulating clearly why this season wasn't that good.

@jacobnapkins1155 Ай бұрын

Twin peaks "when the mystery doesn't matter" Majora's mask " when the adventure doesn't matter" just because you don't understand how lynchian devices work doesn't mean something's not good.

@ivanticristus 2 ай бұрын

I gave you my like at the 3 seconds of the video.

@mori1bund 2 ай бұрын

That' symbol is not the *spiral* from True Detective, season 1 - it's clearly the *spiral* that the White Walkers laid in Game of Thrones. 🙂 I mean, hello!! We are in the north and it's winter! The White Walkers are obviously out there!!1!!!111

@thegreenbaron6439 Ай бұрын

Definitely not the same spiral look it up

@TheRealBatCave Ай бұрын

Why did Clarke yell "Time is a flat circle"? The whole Tuttle storyline had absolutely nothing to do with the season.

@killarbeanso1327 2 ай бұрын

yep interested in American horror story

@vwmusicplaylist1935 2 ай бұрын

This was series was absolute garbage. If season 1 was 10/10, this was 1/10.

@Fedorevsky 2 ай бұрын

More like season 1 = 10/10 Season 4 = -10/10. Calling it 1/10 is an insult to 1/10 shows, lol.

@vwmusicplaylist1935 2 ай бұрын

@@Fedorevsky LOL!

@user-cj3pk2tm9s 2 ай бұрын

I thought she made it clear that she didn't want to support her daughter because of the status of indenginous people in that area. The more obvious her daughter made her connection to her ancestry, the less safe she feels her daughter would be. Would have to rewatch to make sure that wasn't just my own biases. 10:38

@daysofapril2667 Ай бұрын

It started off okay and had so much potential but it just declined as each episode went on. The final episode was so damn bizarre. Like, wtf was that?

@thelastattempt666 2 ай бұрын

It's not the worst thing ever, but it is at least too underwhelming. To me, the supernatural things ruin the whole thing of TD overall. Makes sense, the writer/director is mostly horror-led.

@tearfakk 24 күн бұрын

As far as I recall from the first season, Rust and Marty discovered the kidnapper who delivered children to the cult, but they didn't uncover the full extent of the cult itself. It would have been intriguing to witness other characters in the second season who, like Rust and Marty, only scratch the surface of the cult and are deeply affected by it. The creators could have included hints of magical realism, such as a character seeing the spiral while under the influence of drugs. The appearance of the spiral in the eyes of a character experiencing hallucinations would have sufficed. This could have added a cosmic horror element, suggesting that something vast and incomprehensible is occurring within the cult. It feels like the creators of the first season struck gold but then discarded it.

@cernunnos_lives Ай бұрын

This clearly didn't suck the viewer in like the first season story. It's not as iconic or mysterious. The story and mystery is what needs to hook the audience. It needs to intrigue you. You should care about what is going on and the clues brought up. It just wasn't tied in well enough.

@slevin003 2 ай бұрын

Fully agreed and happy to see a video that points out the problems in story telling, direction, etc instead of just crying about women being the protagonist. Theres so many reasons to not like this season besides trying to drag into america's bizarre culture war. The dialogue was also terrible, just a lot of swearing for no reason and huffing and puffing. I wish they left the references to season one out of it, none of them paid off in any way. Also how does a whole troop of cleaning ladies come in and round up the scientist take them away in a truck and not leave tracks?

@quintonbackhand2519 Ай бұрын

Bruh no one cares about the fact its a female protagonist, identity politics result in bad entertainment almost automatically and ik people don't like when you say it but "wokeness" is directly effecting the quality of entertainment

@mattmetawolf8634 2 ай бұрын

9:46 Doesn’t take away the execution of how shit it was for the character just because you do one or two good things doesn’t really make the whole character all that redeemable in terms of hey I should be invested in this

@jawojciechdrzymala Ай бұрын

I noticed that multiple criticisms of the show question why Danvers doesn't want her "daughter" to put on the native make up and you did too, so I just wanted to add my interpretation to this. I think this is because she's afraid that by joining the protesters and embracing the symbolism she could end up a similar fate to Annie K., who also did wear the make up and was a protester. This is supposed to show that Danvers deeply cares for her but can't show it in a loving way but instead by restricting and limiting her, which also comes across as racist. I think this season would work best as a separate show, targeted more towards an audience interested in the emotional drama and female perspective, which I appreciate deeply. I enjoyed it quite a lot but the vengeful nature of the final reveal left a strong distaste in me. Making all the scientists into disgusting beasts capable of cold-blooded murder and then making a huge spectacle out of the women taking revenge on them... just felt, I don't know, cheap, emotionless. Completely detached. Completely shattered my immersion in the story. It was weirdly reminiscent of revenge cinema like Inglorious Bastards but this time it was women pulling one on men. But it just reminds me of that scene from "Barry", where there's a pitch for a new show about women taking vengeful revenges on men who cheated on them and its satirically portrayed as a wannabe feminist show, but completely missing the toxicity of its own premise. In the case of Night Country's finale I also feel that that's the case. By making the scientists into these barely believable bunch of monsters, it just makes it a terrible target to take that revenge upon. And it just feels weirdly like the writers tried hard to have male antagonists for revenge sake, but their motivation for killing Annie K. barely holds. The scene where they all jump on Annie and start stabbing her as animals. That is where my view of Night Country truly shattered. (Unless this was just a play by Clark to cover up that in fact he did kill her, but nothing points to that)

@mattmetawolf8634 2 ай бұрын

8:08 that’s because he actually does most of the detective work came from Pete or the ghost they didn’t really do shit the entire story let’s not even like kid ourselves these guys are not written as detectives they’re written as people who basically think what a detective show should be like

@Golden_Ghoul 5 күн бұрын

What was the point of the tongue again?

@PerfectoKiss 2 ай бұрын

The elusive tunnel being next to the lab is utter comical and lazy writing. How did someone approve the script? So stupid!

@RichardCThurston 2 ай бұрын

Interesting. New to True Detective and started with the current season. Then we watched Season 1. Night and day. Very much liked the concept of Night Country but the execution is feeble. In particular a pretty good cast is betrayed by really, really, really bad dialogue and poorly drawn characters. Foster and Reis are sabotaged at every turn by an endless recitation of the word f**k and fine actors such as John Hawkes and Fiona Shaw are forced to portray characters who are not very well developed. I didn't find Night Country unwatchable but I did find it forgettable. Season 1, on the other hand, had a super cast which portrayed characters of depth who said interesting things. While Night Country had me multi-tasking, Season 1 had me riveted to the screen. I will now definitely watch Seasons 2 & 3 and very likely season 5 when it drops. But Night Country is a dud.

@electricbayonet2 2 ай бұрын

I think the overt inclusion of supernatural elements just gave the writers more opportunities to showcase their fundamental lack of talent. They couldn't write an even remotely solid mystery, so they just spackled over all the holes with 'mysterious' clues to dupe the audience into thinking there must be something else going on when it was just another layer of nonsense. Just consider the first stage of the mystery that this entire season revolves around. The research station staff 'mysteriously' vanished without a trace? Bull. A dozen people trampled all over that station rounding everyone up at gunpoint. That station should be _covered_ in evidence, but Danvers acts like the only clues there are the smell of the clothes in the washer and the texture of the mayonnaise. And if the killers cleaned up so thoroughly that there was no physical evidence (which we learn they explicitly _didn't,_ Danvers just didn't bother looking until the last episode), then there ought to be signs of cleaning that are more recent than the food that was left out. And I guess this research station doing _incalculably_ _important_ _and_ _valuable_ _research_ doesn't keep any sort of log of entries/exits from the building. If you use a keycard to enter a building, you're basically leaving your fingerprints on the doorknob. And if for some bizarre reason they went with the cheapest keycards possible and all they do is unlock the door...well, you've narrowed down the suspects to people with access to those keycards. I'm willing to pretend that 'oooo, secret lab must be secret' is justification for not having cameras they can check...even though it's not, not in the slightest, but this post is already getting long. But surely Danvers' complete lack of detective work will lead to this mystery grinding to a halt and the audience realizing that she's a talentless moron, right? Wrong! Explicitly Supernatural Element #1 has entered the fight: that stupid severed tongue, which coincidentally has marks on it from mending fishing nets that mean it could only belong to a native woman. Just ignore how the person with similar marks they mention was an older woman who had implicitly gotten the marks over the course of decades, and that the tongue's owner was a 20-something that doesn't look like she's ever been in the same room as a fishing net, much less mended them by hand for so many years it left permanent marks on her tongue. It's mysterious! It explicitly comes from nowhere, was cut out in the first place for no discernible reason, and looks very fresh despite supposedly being six years old and cut out in a completely different location. Then I guess they never would have found the bodies if not for the _fecking_ _ghost_ that leads some random bint to them. And one of them, despite being so thoroughly frozen after at least _three_ _days_ of exposure that his arm snaps off like it's Styrofoam, is still alive. And at the end, after being led by the nose by ghost-clues because they couldn't detect their own asses with both hands and a map, they find a purely mundane murder...and opt to lie that it was a purely mundane accident. What? And they somehow blackmail their way to a 'happy' ending? What?! Whatever. Screw this show. I'm rewatching S1 to get its stench off my brain. Solid video, too, btw.

@shreddhead23 23 күн бұрын

🤗🙏💯

@mothmomsmith-zp4zj Ай бұрын

Ways the show ripped off other sources; not an homage, just ripped off. 30 Days Of Night. Dyatlov pass 1959 & Korovina group 1993. Exorcist. Blair witch. The Thing (including "Clark".) The Graduate. The Cecil Hotel. Event Horizon. There are probably more. Season 1 was just used to ensnare viewers ,

@brans0217 2 ай бұрын

Brought shame to the IP

@daysofapril2667 Ай бұрын

They wrote these women as though they were men. They didn’t have feminine sensibilities. They slept around like men, fought like men, behaved like men. If two men had played the roles nothing would have been different about the characters or the script. It’s astonishing how female showrunners even fail at writing strong female leads without capturing the nuances of what makes them female. Instead, they just write them as though they are men. There’s no balance.

@RevoVansen 2 ай бұрын

This season was garbage.

@robrick9361 Ай бұрын

Cleaning Lady Mafia don't fuck around. They got their Lemon Pledge in one hand, their AK in the other.

@PortlandsTransport 2 ай бұрын

Agreed. This show was trash. Very disappointing.

@mattmetawolf8634 2 ай бұрын

0:44 So they essentially just gave this trash ass show runner another season that’s great now that’s absolutely fantastic give someone who basically already showed that they were terrible at the first season another shot at it

@dominicvietti8922 Ай бұрын

The feminist taco vendor running the show was a fcking disaster.

@zanpakutoman4225 Ай бұрын

So, I'd say overall Season 4 is better than season 2. It's just that season 4 has more of a frustrating focus on gender that doesn't need to be there. All the men are monsters, pushovers, and/or dead and most of the women are strong, stoic, and/or have a smug aura of "WomEn Get ThiNgs DONE!" However, both seasons make the same mistakes and it feels like they both put the "Detective" aspects of the show on the backburner. This whole comment is just to say I didn't care for either, that much. Season 2 is COMPLETELY muddied, with the inciting case practically being shooed away even when they solve it. It focuses more on the corruption of the government and is like "I guess Ben Caspere got killed by two siblings that nobody really knew about. Whatever, we don't care about them. Time to expose the government!!!" Season 4 kind of ditches the original case of the frozen scientists for Annie K. But, at least it's still a murder mystery. Season 4's conclusion doesn't feel that connected to eveything we've focused on either. But, at least it feels like they needed to solve one case to solve the other. Both seasons also have a weird way of conveying character info, where they withhold character backstories for the climax of the season. Navarro, Danvers, and Bezzerides from season 2 reveal full details of their trauma like after the halfway point of each season. Even Woodrugh takes an episode or two to explicitly mention his sexuality and that's like his only character trait. Also, people are saying season 4 has bad dialogue, but 2 also had some bad lines. They're just opposite sides of the spectrum. Where one is overly simple and expository with curse words shoved into so much of it. The other is overly complicated and ridiculous. The Tinder conversation doesn't feel that much worse than the E-Cig one.

@GFYKTHXBYE 2 ай бұрын

I wanted this to be good. It just isn't. I think I got through 3 episodes before it was so bland, I went to do chores instead.

@mothmomsmith-zp4zj Ай бұрын

Forgot to mention yet another rip-off...I, Robot.

@jerrydinoballs 2 ай бұрын

Nice works as always coffeeman. It was just a bad show, true detective or not. I'll just go watch season 1 again

@Elactyrl9343 2 ай бұрын

Also…? Was the crying baby they heard after killing Wheeler Holden or did the baby crying after they killed him just mean nothing like every other thing in this show, so hilariously bad!!!

@lowrider81hd 2 ай бұрын

Such a stupidly dumb show.

@sorryitookthisname2 15 күн бұрын

Eh,I enjoyed it.

@Haymaker72 2 ай бұрын

Just awful. Sigh....

@coryy9745 2 ай бұрын

S4 is a cheap knockoff of S1. I dropped off 20 minutes into episode 5 and probably won't be tuning in for S5 either. Another series bites the dust.

@AnaFolkenstal 18 күн бұрын

The show was boring and even the mystery was as interesting as warm milk on a hot summer day. The WAHMAN side of things was obviously pushed and they wanted them to be the good guys or at leas tunderstood. But they failed horribly and I hated all of them. Only the husky guy and the young cop were interesting characters, but they got cucked by the wahmans

@bottlethrower1544 2 ай бұрын

2:24 Was going to sub. Was interested in a Finnish pov... And then you spouted this DEI bilge. Just FYA, we dont need more DEI nonsense

@lordfresh 2 ай бұрын

This season was sooo shallow. True Detective for women

@arjay9745 2 ай бұрын

This woman hated it. Just sayin'.

@bradfeuerhelm4794 2 ай бұрын

It was fine. It had severe holes, but it was better than the two before it. It should not have been marketed this way, but why not, with JF also having legacy ties to influential crime films? We would never get anything comparable to Season 1, so why not consider this the better part of a trilogy between 2,3 and 4? If you take away HBO pushing the link to Season 1, it would have been a decent thriller despite the holes.

@RobNeeth 2 ай бұрын

At least women waited for men to ruin True Detective first.

@danielkeizer4174 Ай бұрын

@thibaldus3 2 ай бұрын

"I want representation" -> The whole show is sh*t -> Guy is actually surprised. Listen man. I know you don't want to hear it but representation always sucks as soon as it becomes a concern. It always leads to activists writers/producers who care more about it than making a story with any kind of verisimilitude or depth. Their objective is to fight reality and hence avoid that verisimilitude that makes a story good.

@quintonbackhand2519 Ай бұрын

Well said , a lot of reviewers like this guy are great and have good breakdowns, but it does annoy me that they ignore and dismiss political elements which are a direct reason for the shitty show/movie. Yea it's other shit too but pretending that politics and shitty entertainment aren't intertwined is silly.

@joeychick9045 2 ай бұрын

This was a piece of woke garbage. Totally ridiculous with zero context. The first season was legendary. They’ll never learn

@damo9961 2 ай бұрын

This show was woke trash

@bottlethrower1544 2 ай бұрын

This is such an ugly, poorly written, horribly wasted opportunity

@monicawhitm9335 2 ай бұрын

This season sucked. Compared to 1 and 3 it’s an abomination

@dangermouse8640 2 ай бұрын

I want to say thanks, because your video essay made me realise how much I enjoyed the 4th season, for many of the same reasons you seem to dislike it! 🤷‍♂️ I really appreciate how open-ended it is. Also, not interested in American Horror Story, as I stopped watching long ago, but your videos are engaging and of high quality, regardless of the subject.

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

I'm glad you liked it!

@Spencerharrison 2 ай бұрын

You liked that it was shallow, badly written junk?

@johnrichmond8978 2 ай бұрын

You can desire 'representation' but that's as far as I listened. The reality is that by simply using that word you are positioning yourself in the political spectrum. 'I can desire representation and still...[want]... shows to be written well.' That only makes sense if some people 'want representation' and they also want their shows to be 'written badly'. Of course no-one does. Let's compromise? Let's have the homosexual population enjoy 'representation' in line with their actual real numbers in society? Eh? No. Thought not :) Cheers.

@e.t.3074 2 ай бұрын

Uhhhhhhh... What? "That only makes sense if people want --- their shows written badly", that's some mental gymnastics right there. Also who was even talking about homosexuality? "The reality is that simply using that word you are positioning yourself in the political spectrum" also not everything is about american politics ffs.

@johnrichmond8978 2 ай бұрын

@@e.t.3074I'm not American and I don't live in America. Your swearing DOES rather remind me of Americans however :)

@e.t.3074 2 ай бұрын

OoOOoo swearing bad

@johnrichmond8978 2 ай бұрын

@@e.t.3074It's boring. Swearing at strangers online is so boring. It usually means you have nothing to sat.

@e.t.3074 2 ай бұрын

Bruh I literally said "ffs". 😭 So sensitive.

@MA-go7ee 2 ай бұрын

Never ever do the sort of throat clearing you did in the intro. It's not only completely unneeded, it also wastes the time of viewers. No one cares, just get to what you're talking about.

@SixSioux 2 ай бұрын

chill the f out boi

@adventuresingamedevelopmen5708 2 ай бұрын

False

@procrastnwriter 2 ай бұрын

As a screenplay writer myself, not once did the word snarky enter my head. Sadly, that is a male POV you are showing in that assessment and it negates the rest of your essay when you could have good points. Sigh.

@criticalcoffee 2 ай бұрын

I said the exact same thing about Rust and Marty though? Is it my male POV in that case as well? You're entitled to your opinion, just don't make false assumptions about me.

@tankboi8249 2 ай бұрын

How great of a screenplay writer can you be if that’s your take on this video? Seriously? So if this video was exactly the same but was made by a woman it automatically is more valid and has more weight? That’s so weird. I felt like he could have really cut into this show and how bad the writing, plotting, dialogue, and performances were. Along with the weird musical choices, but he didn’t. So just by nature of him being a male every valid point he had is negated? That doesn’t seem very equal or fair.

@BiggieTrismegistus 2 ай бұрын

😄😄 This comment is amazing in its ignorance. It's like a perfect distillation of what an idiot thinks a smart person sounds like.

@Spencerharrison 2 ай бұрын

What an incoherent response. 👍

@katieeasley4678 2 ай бұрын

@@tankboi8249the music really was weird. It really didn’t fit with the tone it seems like they were going for.

@Elactyrl9343 2 ай бұрын

I thought season 3 was bad until this came out. This was so hilariously terrible, terribly written, acted and presented. I thought I was a die hard True Detective fan but I won’t even watch more from this crap writer and director, they should feel humiliated and embarrassed by this product and how dare you sully the True Detective name. No wonder the original creator is pissed!

@hedjanc.s.9214 5 күн бұрын

Season 3 was awesome.

@mothmomsmith-zp4zj Ай бұрын