True Detective

[therewillbeblus]

Much respect to you as well! I think in my case it's that I've been having the reverse experience, in that I've been highly critical of HBO and other premium channels for many years, feeling like much of their content are poorly scripted and plotted stories dressed up as original with lavish production design, and so many become convinced that we should like it. Kinda like the person who goes to bat for a bad movie from Criterion solely because of brand-loyalty and its esteem against competitors (obviously this board is not the target demographic I'm aiming that at, and this is really more like reddit 5-10 years ago!) So I've adjusted my expectations very, very low over time. I only recently watched S3, putting it off forever, and it was pretty good, much better than Mare of Easttown, but I liked the departure from the over-literary elements from S2, even if contrivances were offloaded casually to 'make it work'.

I do wish the middle episodes (2-4) were more compelling. I wanted to get a lot more out of the two high-profile male actors involved, and while I get this was meant to be a series feminine spirit, burying their depth, emasculating them, and subsequently eliding characterization or existence altogether from the narrative wasn't necessary as an ancillary support for that vision. It was just disappointing and confusing.

[Mr Sausage]

I liked the finale and the series as a whole more than most, it seems. I didn't love it--it was fine, not great--but I certainly didn't hate it. It basically works.

The left wing ideological structures are overbearing and didactic, so the thing did feel confining and hectoring. But one thing I did like in the finale was the reveal of who murdered the researchers. It's very left-wing class conscious, but I enjoyed how there's this whole class of people who go unseen and unregarded, and therefore have such unfettered access to all the right places--research station, police office--that they can piece together all the evidence, solve a murder, and act all while being socially invisible. It's perfect. And unlike so much else, it's subtle, relatively anyway. It doesn't put the class element into a pat verbal formula like the "our story" feminism motif, which gets all the emphasis. It just shows it in two brief flashbacks and lets you fill in the significance. I found the answers satisfying.

Anyway, to everyone who thought the setting, atmosphere, and vague supernaturalism promising, but found the show itself a letdown, I very much recommend the first season of Fortitude. It's another arctic murder mystery that involves police, researchers, polar bears, and the deadly cold. Plus terrific actors like Sofie Gråbøl, Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, etc.

[Big Ben]

I thought that it was just okay, which as far as True Detective goes is the best you can seemingly hope for at this point. The reality that this Season faced was that like the previous two seasons it has to live in the shadow of the titanic, lightning in a bottle first season. It's a perfectly milquetoast slice of magical realism murder mystery cheesecake with the name True Detective attached to it. Regarding people's (Rather extreme in my opinion) negative reactions to this Season it strikes me as incredibly odd how very quickly those same people forget that the Series' original creator was responsible for a far worse season with considerably more trite and asinine moments. But also, even more cynically I would like to point out despite Pizzolatto's open disdain for this current season he still served as an Executive Producer for it. Given the ratings I doubt HBO is going to shitcan the show again which means that we'll be watching more and be back here again because time is indeed a flat circle.

[therewillbeblus]

I liked the finale and the series as a whole more than most, it seems. I didn't love it--it was fine, not great--but I certainly didn't hate it. It basically works.

The left wing ideological structures are overbearing and didactic, so the thing did feel confining and hectoring. But one thing I did like in the finale was the reveal of who murdered the researchers. It's very left-wing class conscious, but I enjoyed how there's this whole class of people who go unseen and unregarded, and therefore have such unfettered access to all the right places--research station, police office--that they can piece together all the evidence, solve a murder, and act all while being socially invisible. It's perfect. And unlike so much else, it's subtle, relatively anyway. It doesn't put the class element into a pat verbal formula like the "our story" feminism motif, which gets all the emphasis. It just shows it in two brief flashbacks and lets you fill in the significance. I found the answers satisfying.

Anyway, to everyone who thought the setting, atmosphere, and vague supernaturalism promising, but found the show itself a letdown, I very much recommend the first season of Fortitude. It's another arctic murder mystery that involves police, researchers, polar bears, and the deadly cold. Plus terrific actors like Sofie Gråbøl, Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, etc.

That's the reveal I was referring to, and it seems like we had similar impressions of the finale and show overall. Your explanation in favor of the reveal is right on, and I wasn't able to articulate 'why' it worked for me until reading that, so thanks. Guess it's time to check out Fortitude!

[The Curious Sofa]

Intrigued by the first two episodes, mildly bored by the next two, wanted to wrench my projector off the ceiling and throw it out of the window by the end. I didn't check who Issa López is till late in the run and that should have served as a warning. This suffered from the same problems as the equally clunky, equally overpraised Tigers Are Not Afraid. But at least that didn't waste Jodie Foster on one of the most cliched and gratingly one-note characters in recent memory.

[Roger Ryan]

For the most part, I thought the finale was better than I feared it might be with some good suspense and an intriguing reveal. The pat denouement, which tried to wrap things up too neatly, was more indicative of the lesser moments of this season where answers are provided when it would have been better dramatically to withhold them.

[tenia]

Pizzolatto's public reaction to this new season is abysmally despicable. He clearly looks like a jealous a-hole publically venting about not being picked as the main project leader, despite him being exec producer (and thus making money out of it).
I get not being happy with how things might have turned out production wise, but at some point, either deal with it or quit entirely. You can't have it both ways, and it makes him really looks like an awful person as a whole now.

[Mr Sausage]

Based on reports of his previous on-set behaviour, Pizzolato doesn't seem the most emotionally mature person.

[oh yeah]

Nic seems like a difficult guy to work with (friend of a friend said working on S3 was a disaster due to Nic's temper, hence why Saulnier quit instead of directing the whole season). But I can't blame him too much for giving his opinion on Season 4 after it's used references to his own work in the most asinine way more fit for a Marvel movie than True Detective. Issa Lopez has also been saying some very silly things online, including her plea after the season premiere for people to positive-review-bomb it because "S1 fanboy bros" were supposedly negative-review-bombing the show on RT. (In other words, the RT audience score was at like 65-70 percent, which I suppose to her is absolutely unacceptable and can't be an honest reflection of people's mixed feelings).

[Matt]

"Please manipulate my show's ratings because other people are trying to manipulate my show's ratings." Miserable culture we live in.

[oh yeah]

Yup. It's like shows like this are increasingly just as much about the culture-war debate and the online arguments as they are about the show itself. The hardcore fans of the season become not just fans of a TV show but moral crusaders fighting the hatefulness of the other side; it's basically the same tribalism you see in US politics, except grafted onto a TV show. And it works really well in driving up engagement when people feel so impassioned about the content they consume. It honestly feels like HBO and Lopez put more effort into the marketing and PR than they did the script - like, the whole narrative that anybody who dislikes the season is a S1 fanboy bro/misogynist/racist is pretty much what HBO is banking on, and has been using fairly successfully, to keep word-of-mouth from being too negative. HBO has in the past couple years been caught using fake accounts to bash critics and others online who criticize their shows, including using the misogynist/racist/etc accusations against any negative feedback... so I figure they didn't just suddenly quit that.

[therewillbeblus]

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today who had seen an interview with Jodie Foster, asking her something along the lines of “what made you want to be a supporting character to Navarro?” and I suddenly understood a more specified key element that likely stopped me from fully gelling with the season's wavelength.

Foster was so clearly the main character for me, that it feels a bit insulting to the viewer to suggest otherwise. For Navarro to be the main character, we needed more world-building. There was a strange vibe occurring: A simultaneous strong sense of atmosphere and yet no real strong sense of the cultural beliefs of the Native Alaskan collective. So Navarro's trajectory was about self-discovery, in a sense. Like, ‘I don’t know who I am and I struggle to engage with this world, and culturally there was something about connecting with dead souls that was comforting - like her ability to connect with Foster’s son, or her people who were ‘at peace’ to a degree or something rather than angry and fighting all the time. I think they could’ve done a much better job with her character, around thwarted belongingness, a drive for connection, self-consciousness around her anger issues… that all could have been really interesting vulnerable reasons for a stoic soldier to quietly tap out of life for. But I felt like we got some surface-level sparknotes there. I personally did not care one bit if she was really with Foster or not in that final scene, but I also think it was clearly meant to be “'in spirit' we women are connected."

But no, Foster was the main character, a surrogate kind of hardened, jaded ‘provider’ who is simultaneously exhausted by and rejects her stereotypical ‘feminine’ traits (she seems to want to suppress emotions, caring for a child is a chore, career ambition is taken not with gusto but as a kind of last-option burden), but also can’t not care. I think she represents Americans(/..people, generalized?) over the last decade, becoming desensitized and frustrated with the world and themselves for not being as aligned internally: there are parts that pull towards ‘protect self/harness energy’ and ‘do right/participate/be ‘other-focused’/hope’. Navarro helps her realize this, but Foster was the only really 'developed' character (which could also be fairly challenged as being 'enough'), and so she was the more interesting one, and who we saw a lot of objective information unravel through (i.e. the outcome of the storming of the rapist's home). If the narrative was shaped in any way around how Navarro evolved, that would make sense. The story and the creator’s desires spirit was certainly communicated more through her, but the show didn't seem nearly as interested in her complexity as it was in Foster’s. Yes, showing Foster’s flaws and growth does wind up consequently bolstering that worldview and vision, but that doesn’t mean it enriches Navarros’ character.

I could even try to entertain a generous reading where, through what's elided by Navarro's lack of response to Foster bringing up the incident, the show itself is trying to say that Foster and our preoccupations are ultimately self-constructed and vapid barriers weighing us down, and that Navarro is trying to move forward towards a more collective consciousness kind of spiritual healing. Yet the show emphasizes plot so strongly, and how heavily events weigh on these characters, that this wouldn't be earned and doesn't even really make sense. So if the show is revolved around Foster but wants to be about Navarro and yet can't figure out a way to make that happen, it's a 101 writing problem that was never addressed or worked out, and potentially never even recognized.

[Big Ben]

Renewed for Season 5 with Issa López because Time is indeed a flat circle.