True Detective: Night Country

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⭐ 7.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

Compared to season one of True Detective this is an absolute bomb. It's only six episodes, and I watched the whole thing and wanted to find out what happened, so even though I will probably talk like this is the worst thing ever it wasn't terrible.

I thought the atmosphere was amazing here. We are in Alaska during the period of total dark, and it feels creepy and remote in the same way the swamps of Louisiana did in the first season. The people of this town, the design of the different houses and vehicles and all that, I thought they nailed the setting, 10/10.

True Detective dabbles in the supernatural, and this show went fully supernatural at many points, something I didn't love. It just didn't seem to have the nuance, where are other seasons are more smartly written (except 2, which I barely consider a real show). I read that this show was originally just called Night Country, and HBO was like, cool, but can you make it True Detective? So it feels like the had to pull in random elements to make you be Leo pointing at the screen being like, Carcosa!? Spiral!? Yellow King?!. None of those elements pay off at all, and its kind of embarrassing that they even tried. I love the idea of this world being connected, but this didn't feel natural at all.

The 2 main cops are pretty good, but I don't think I ever fully understood their dynamic. They both are so extreme in different ways, and its hard to live up to the template of Woody and McConaughey. Navarro particularly had so many head-scratching moments, with supernatural connections that popped up when convenient.

The central mystery was interesting and very spooky, and I thought there were some amazing and tense scenes. I liked the dynamic with some of the other cops, and it did weave together a pretty compelling mystery. However, like so many mysteries the questions are more interesting than the answers, and I thought the finale fell totally flat. The conclusion of all the threads was so baffling, the supernatural stuff in particular. Nothing made sense in a satisfying way, and it felt like a very different show in terms of messaging and themes.

A show with some great elements, but felt like it was a victim of a short runtime, a meddling studio trying to use their own IP, and a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen writers room. Every episode features at least 1 slowed down moody pop song, which is an ultimate pet peeve of mine (see every single movie trailer in the past 5 years). Just kind of confounding that something with such a great premise and terrific actors could be such a dud.

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