True Detective: Night Country’ Episode 1 Review — Such A Disappointing Premiere

Night Country’ Episode 1 Review 

True Detective: Night Country

As a critic, I've learned to anticipate the typical suspects in the lineup of irate fans who strongly disagree with my viewpoint. These consist of, but are not restricted to:

• Watch something else if you don't like it (yes, but I work as a professional TV critic.)

• All you are is a hater! (I apologize for the misspelling.)

• It's just not clear to you. (Possibly!)

• You have a prejudiced opinion. (Hehehe)

• You must not go out very often. Everyone says this game, movie, or show is fantastic! (Thank God, criticism is not a popularity contest!)

After writing this review of True Detective: Night Country's series/season premiere, which left me as cold as the story's desolate Alaskan setting, I'm sure I will run into some of these. It might be the final one. After all, this show is receiving high marks from critics. But then again, I've never been impressed by pleas to popularity.

I'm not especially impressed with the debut, but I haven't watched the other five episodes yet, so I can't tell for sure what the remaining three parts of the six-part season have in store. I may change my mind in the coming weeks.

Slate declares, "Night Country isn't a return to form," following all these positive reviews. "It's superior." USA Today exclaims, "Night Country is so good, it might be better than Season 1," so I had quite high expectations. After all, one among my all-time favourite television seasons is still True Detective's first season. Not after the primary episode, but in the first ten minutes of the primary episode, I turned into captivated.

Unfortunately, after only one episode of Night Country, I'm not feeling quite as enthralled as I once was. Although I like a slow burn, the premiere's clumsy pacing and dull, uninspired characters may be forgiven.

For the most part, the performances are excellent, with Jodie Foster leading the charge as the snarky Ennis, Alaska police investigator Liz Danvers. It's great to see Foster return to a law enforcement position, and Danvers is as grumpy as they come while yet demonstrating intelligence and skill. (If nothing else, I've realized I haven't watched The Silence of the Lambs in far too long.)

True Detective: Night Country

However, the tale is taking too long to get up steam; considering that this is a shorter season than normal, a large portion of the six episodes feel a little bit squandered.

Despite their past animosity toward each other over a cold case involving a deceased indigenous woman, Danvers and investigator Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) will undoubtedly collaborate to solve the current case of a group of missing scientists, all of whom are men.

Right now, I think my favorite character is the cold environment. The narrative starts on the very last evening of the year. Ennis is located far enough north that darkness falls there for two months and counting. Like the gothic southern swamps and ruins of Season 1, it's a depressing take on film noir that establishes a distinct tone.

That tone is not as harsh or expertly achieved as it was in Season 1. Nothing feels quite as authentic or lived-in as the sticky bayous that Marty Hart and Rust Cohle explored during their search for the Yellow King in Season 1, even though the cold and darkness create an eerie ambiance.

Regarding the Yellow King, there were a ton of supernatural allusions in Season 1. A pall of evil sorcery loomed over everything. It wasn’t genuine, of course. Though horrifying, the evil they faced was entirely human-made. Regardless of the ghosts that followed Marty and Rust while they searched for the truth, they were never real, apparent entities. It was enough that they were haunted by their past and the several bodies that lay around it.

The supernatural is presented to us in Night Country with all the nuance of a brick to the face. A herd of clearly computer-generated caribou may be seen screaming and leaping over a cliff in the opening shot. The lights waver. Individuals begin to lose their minds. At the same moment when the sun sets, the water turns foul. The victims, which have all frozen in a state of rictus fear, are discovered in the ice by an elderly woman who follows the ghost of her deceased husband. When the delivery guy arrives, we witness a creature of some sort—possibly human, but definitely creature-like—dashing about the laboratory facility.

To be honest, it feels like Yellowjackets, minus the oppressive fear. It appears that the score, complete with eerie female chants, was taken straight out of Yellowjackets. The combination of the supernatural and the frozen landscape makes True Detective's most recent season feel like it took elements from Wind River and Yellowjackets and combined them with the buddy cop formula from the first season, but with two female detectives instead of two guys. (Even the bear scene appears to have been ripped from Yellowjackets.)

That gives the whole thing a decidedly derivative vibe, which wouldn't bother me if I didn't find the plot itself all that engaging or the characters all that intriguing to follow in the first place. The success of the inaugural season could be attributed to those two factors. There was a genuinely compelling mystery with all sorts of odd and horrifying twists, and there were two cops with highly different personalities whose stormy relationship lifted the program beyond a standard murder mystery.

With Danvers and Navarro, perhaps we'll come near to that, but for now they just seem to detest one another because of a previous argument about an old case. More than anything, I think both of them are strong, impatient, competent women with somewhat similar personalities. Remember, this is only the first episode, so anything may happen. Perhaps Night Country's terror components will compensate for its flaws.

I'm not too interested in the mystery or characters, at least not right now, though it's too early to say that. While it's not terrible—thank heavens it's not Season 2—the opening episodes of Season 1 and the excellent but underappreciated Season 3 pulled me in and made me want more. I'm just wondering what the big deal is with Night Country. With any lucky, the second episode will pick up.

Scattered thoughts:

• The immensely popular Billie Eilish song "Bury A Friend" appears during the opening credits, which is, I suppose, appropriate but not really daring or intriguing. In contrast, The Handsome Family's far more obscure song "Far From Any Road" appears in the opening credits of Season 1. I apologize, but ultimately, this season feels so much better than the first that it's not even close. It's early days, I realize.

• This also applies to the music as a whole. The first season of True Detective, like the first season of Yellowjackets, did not rely too much on needle drops to make its point (or convey its mood). In the second season of Yellowjackets, every episode was overflowing with clever 90s tunes. True Detective's current season is gradually moving in that way. We'll see.

• While watching this, I couldn't help but think of how excellent the two investigators were in the television series The Killing. Though I know I've been complaining about how formulaic this program feels, I genuinely believe that a buddy cop dynamic would have been more fascinating if Foster had been paired with a younger male investigator. I guess what worries me the most is that there isn't enough difference between the two gruff, serious, and tough female detectives on the show. The key is contrast. Even though Rust and Marty were both white men, their personalities made them feel even more unlike Danvers and Navarro. In The Killing, Linden and Holder are similar.

I might add additional wandering ideas after watching it again. I've spilled enough ink for now. I'm not quite captivated, but I'm still excited for the episode that airs next week.