Given the dark and dread-like setting,
some fresh writers, a promising cast, and an initial mystery that has a great hook, I
thought True Detective Night Country would be a great season of television. But I couldn’t have
been more wrong and disappointed. I’m not gonna beat around the bush with a long intro so let's
dive into Night Country’s first major flaw which is its tone. A show’s tone is comprised of a
multitude of different elements and here I’m going to focus on 3 main ones that actively work
against what the show’s tone should be. A dark, serious, and twisted story and some of that is
here, but it’s constantly being contradicted. So the first area that contributes to the
show’s oddly more lighthearted tone at times is the dialogue. Night Country has a surprising
amount of humor. It’s so much to the point that it makes its way into most scenes. Now having
occasional comedic relief can ease the tension for a darker tone and can give the audience a
bit of levity. However, in Night Country, barely any dialogue scenes properly builds the drama
with serious and riveting dialogue. That’s how you make dialogue scenes engaging and with that
more serious dialogue, you tend to have equally weighted interesting character backstory. I can
only think of a few examples where Night Country gets these scenes right which are generally Rose’s
scenes, and the singular scene where Danvers tells Peter about her past case with Navarro. Like
this scene was genuinely great and reminded me of the quality of True Detective season 1. It
was gritty and dark, and through the editing, it juxtaposed Danvers’ statement by insinuating
she was lying. Other than this though, I found myself not caring about anything because barely
any dialogue scenes properly build the drama. They all essentially beat around the bush and this
general aura of humor taints the tone of Night Country. Like when you look back at season 1, the
dynamic between Rust and Marty had this extreme aura of seriousness that made them magnetizing.
While in Night Country, I find myself not becoming attached to these characters, because the writers
cheap out with humor in a lot moments instead of properly building strong and engaging scenes
between characters. The second aspect of the tone that contradicts the dark atmosphere
of Night Country is the music. This issue was partially alleviated in the later episodes,
but there’s a very odd amount of pop song usage within the show. The most jarring example is
Navarro going to investigate this potentially dangerous trailer and for whatever reason, a pop
song is blaring in the background. This type of music is misplaced because it communicates a more
lighthearted tone and detaches the audience from the moment when you instead want to engross them
with suspense. Another perfect example is simply the main title sequence. I know the main title
sequence doesn’t strictly relate to the actual contents of each episode, but title sequences in
general are integral in communicating the show’s tone. So when they used Billie Eilish instead of
a more dark, somber, and ponderous song, it feels extremely misplaced. Like just go back and watch
the intro for season 1 of True Detective. The music fits significantly better. Now this isn’t to
say that all the music in Night Country hurts the tone because the show’s score at times perfectly
aids the atmosphere. With the creepy and windlike vocals and dark ambient-type music. This is what
should be playing in almost every scene and it just feels so offputting when they instead use pop
songs. For the last aspect of the tone, we have the cinematography. This might surprise you that
I’m bringing this up because I’d say most of the exteriors are pretty gorgeous and perfectly aid a
darker tone, but the overall look of the interiors feels the opposite of atmospheric. Almost all the
interior settings are brightly lit and have a high saturation. Along with some sets being designed in
a way to bring out more colors. The only setting in which this works for the tone is in the opening
station where all the shit goes down. Because this really bright setting is ironically unnerving
because it gives you the allusion of safety when in fact these characters are in danger.
Besides this one setting, at no point visually does the cinematography ever make the show feel
gritty and dark. Which I’d argue is essential in building a more suspenseful visual atmosphere.
Instead, every set feels very clean and safe, and even where the bodies are stored is brightly
lit. Like these body props are immaculate, but the way they’re shot kind of robs the horror of them.
The way they’re introduced I think was incredible with a lot of disturbing close-ups, but outside of
the outstanding setting and great props, I never feel like the overall lighting and cinematography
does a good job with helping the tone become darker. There’s also not really a color grade to
this season like the first one having an uneasy yellow grade, or the third season have a colder
depressing blue/green color grade. Night Country besides the amazing setting, simply doesn’t have
a unique style that is alluring or is even that atmospheric. So with this combination of weirdly
humorful dialogue, pop song music choices that comes across as head-scratching, and a visual
language that doesn’t properly communicate a dark atmosphere, I think the tone of Night Country
is drastically inferior to the earlier seasons of True Detective. It’s kind of like whiplash
how different Night Country is in comparison. So that was the core identity of what I
think makes True Detective so special, and now let’s go into another critical aspect that
makes True Detective what it fundamentally is and that’s a riveting detective show. Now, I’m making
this review before watching the finale because I’m going away when the last episode comes out, and
when I get back there’s going to be an avalanche of content. But honestly, there’s nothing that
Night Country can do in the finale to make the season better in my eyes. Because the fact
is, the overall plot development was glacial, was never intriguing from the pure simplicity of
it, and it has practically no twists or turns. Before diving further into those negatives, I want
to say that the initial mystery was very alluring. It induced a strong feeling of dread, it had
Lovecraftian undertones that I personally love, and had a seemingly complex mystery that was
even tied into past events for our characters. All a great beginning for what a season of True
Detective should be. However, none of this is really upheld through the show to a satisfying
degree. The most confusing and inconsistent out of these is the Lovecraftian and supernatural
elements throughout the first 5 episodes. These elements are so unhinged at times that I honestly
don’t know how they are going to properly explain it in the finale. Like I assume it’s going to
be a tainted water supply that is infecting this population with an undiscovered virus, but even
if that is the reveal, it wouldn’t make sense. Characters are having shared hallucinations,
they’re being attacked by ghosts, ghosts are leading characters to dead bodies, like the show
is diving so far into this supernatural aspect to the point that I don’t know how the creators are
going to realistically explain this without having a pure fiction reveal. Which if they did that,
I don’t think that would suit True Detective as a series. So hopefully, the finale solves all of
this, but that’s pretty optimistic. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of this goes unexplained because
there’s a lot of hanging questions in the show currently. But going into the bigger problem
with Night Country is that it feels like 80% of the season is dedicated to character-related
drama and 20% of it is dedicated to the actual mystery. Hell, the entirety of episode 4 has like
5 minutes of actual detective work and the rest is purely character drama. Through Nic PIzzolatto’s
brilliant writing, True Detective gained the reputation as being an extremely complex narrative
with great depth. Even season 3, which I think is pretty underrated, has a pretty good unraveling
mystery. In Night Country, you can essentially boil down all the case development into a 2-hour
movie. It comes across as the writers artificially elongating this story with unnecessary character
drama that doesn’t really affect the plot. Which I’ll get into all the character drama in a
second and is essentially the other major flaw of the season. But the case development
is so uninteresting after the initial reveal and is basically simple interrogation scenes
that either don’t even move the plot forward, or the characters learn minimal information to
the point of it not being worth the time. Now having dead ends in general I think is good in a
detective show because it gives the protagonists a challenge, but since this season is 6 episodes and
barely any time is dedicated to the mystery, that feels terrible. And even then, there are certain
instances where golden leads show up out of nowhere like a picture of a main suspect turning
up out of thin air, or Peter randomly finding a person of interest. The overall mystery so far has
done nothing narratively to be worthy of the word complex. As I said before, the plot doesn’t really
have twists and therefore, the mystery is simply straightforward. By this point in seasons 1 and
3, the narratives have evolved so immensely with earth-shattering revelations that it kind of blows
this season out of the water. I feel like just a few episodes of season 1 has just as much and if
not more plot development than Night Country. The only thing that Night Country has going for it is
the superficial intrigue of this case, but through the season, the case doesn’t develop a satisfying
enough depth. It feels like the creators are dragging there shoes until the major ending
reveal. And even then, You can essentially predict where the story is going very early on. Which
should never be the case in this type of show. So since True Detective Night Country is kind
of backwards in which we have way more character drama than plot development, it’s kind of
impressive that the writers somehow aren’t able to create any compelling or interesting characters.
So let’s go into a 3 main reasons why the characters are lacking so much. The first and most
important one is that almost all the characters are unlikable assholes. Now having characters that
have flaws is integral, you just need to balance those out with positive characteristics or give
them some kind of relatable angle that allows you to sympathize with their viewpoint. Let's take
Danvers as the main example, given that she’s the main protagonist. Danvers has a laundry list
of negative characteristics. She’s pretentious, is unfriendly and uncaring towards her coworkers,
is regularly hostile, is disrespectful, is irresponsible like the time she started drunk
driving, is a hypocrite, she’s written to be smart but then doesn’t understand basic scientific
terms, she even started littering, and she’s kind of racist towards her daughter for denying her in
wanting to represent herself in a Native American light. The only redeemable aspect I can pin onto
her character is that she has a righteous drive in wanting to solve the case, but that’s constantly
overshadowed by her overbearing asshole nature. Along with it being a stereotypical characteristic
for these types of shows. So besides that, the only positive thing left about her is
that she cares about her adopted daughter, kind of? But again, there’s a background conflict
there that hasn’t been explored yet. I hope the finale finally touches on that, but we’ll see. So
to me, there’s nothing about Danvers that binds me to her viewpoint and makes me understand
or even sympathize with her. There’s just too many aspects that tips the scales against her
that makes her overly unlikable. There’s also a chance at redemption for Danvers in episode 5
where Peter gets kicked out of his house, due to him neglecting his wife from Danvers overworking
him, however, she doesn’t even acknowledge her own faults here. If the intention of the writers were
to make me hate Danvers then good job I guess. For Navarro, she’s pretty similar to Danvers in
that she’s extremely motivated and passionate, but like Danvers, she’s also kind of an asshole.
She’s very abrasive and has even gone as far as to randomly start assaulting pedestrians. Which
is pretty crazy that no consequences stem from that. Her conflicted nature at least allows
me to sympathize with her partially, unlike Danvers. Although, her character hasn’t evolved
enough over the course of the season to make her that interesting. So this essentially leaves
Peter as the last beacon of hope, but he still isn’t likable because he has no spine. He allows
himself to be completely trampled by Danvers and he never stands up to her for taking advantage
of him. Hopefully, the finale rectifies this, but given how many issues we’ve been going
into, I’m not certain that’s going to be the case. So out of this entire season, the only
character dynamic that is remotely intriguing is Danvers and Navarro’s past and the conflict
that generates between them. And even then, that doesn’t really that last that long. Other than
that I can’t think of single character pairing, dynamic, or synergy that excites me. Going into
the second main reason is that the actual drama for these characters are either sleep-inducing
or are even contrived. Like an example for a contrived conflict is Peter and his wife becoming
more distant. So firstly, every single time Peter interacts with his wife, Danvers coincidentally
interjects into the scene to artificially drive a wedge into their relationship. It would be
fine if this happened maybe once or twice, but it happens almost every time. Since the
writers keep defaulting to using this as a point to start conflict, it in turn starts to expose the
fact that the writers want there to be conflict between them instead of it being natural. Then
there’s also the fact that this is probably the biggest murder case this town has ever witnessed,
so it makes sense that Peter would be really busy. His workload has drastically increased and for
good reason. However, his wife for whatever reason doesn’t understand this and is getting mad at
Peter for reasonably being busy during a massive murder case. That just makes her come across as
being unrealistically selfish. Then there’s also the fact that the show only takes place over the
course of a week so far. And you’re telling me that in this short time period, she’s so mad at
him that she’s kicking him out of the house? Like what? I don’t know this conflict seems so fake
and probably only exists to pump up the duration of these episodes. Another quick example of a
contrived character drama is Danvers’ daughter going to this mining protest and she happens to
be the person to be singled out and arrested. She did throw something at a cop, but the writers
are just forcing that to happen to instill this artificial conflict. Then there’s other
character conflicts like Hank’s love interest who no shows him that literally no one cares about
and Navarro’s sister who is kind of all over the place. Not to mention the ending contrivance with
the coastguard immediately finding her. Almost every character conflict is either so contrived,
misconstrued, or simply not interesting enough to spend time on. Then finally for the last reason
as to why the overall character drama sucks, there’s inherently an excess of characters in
Night Country. You could easily cut out a handful of characters and almost nothing would change. So
many characters are entirely inconsequential to the main plot. Like even though Rose is one of
the only characters I love, she really doesn’t have a place within the story. At the end of
the day, you have to think about how characters contribute to the plot and how much they affect
our main characters. Most of the side characters have minimal influence on our main characters
in Night Country, so their scenes feel more like filler rather than anything worthwhile. There’s
not enough tangible character development to justify their existence within the story. So for
the amount of characters the show tackles, it’s essentially a quantity over quality conundrum.
The writers stretch the show’s time between all of them so thin that they aren’t able to develop
them to a satisfying degree. This paired with uncompelling and weak dialogue makes the character
development even worse. So from the tone not being serious enough, the plot development
being laughable at times, and Night Country being a family drama show more than anything else
makes this a really disappointing season of True Detective. Hopefully, the finale is an absolute
banger, but given the direction the show is on, I’d be surprised if it’s able to course correct
so many of the shows faults. Thank you for watching and my Letterboxd, Patreon and Discord
links are in the description. Have a great day.
