True Detective Season 4: Episode 1 Review

Insultingly bad, above and beyond my worst expectations.

If you know me in person or have followed my writing for the past couple of years you should already know that I hold the HBO television show True Detective in high regard. I believe that season one starring Mathew Mcconaughy, Woody Harrelson, and Michelle Monaghan is some of, if not, the best television of all time and in my opinion the closest the visual medium has approached the heights of a good novel. I also found season 2, the one that takes place in Los Angeles, to be a flawed but still well written piece that doesn’t attain the heights of the first season but still stands above most television, and I particularly enjoyed the third season, a quieter, complex character exploration of memory, life choice, family, and friendship.

So, when I saw that HBO will be bringing the show back for another season, I got excited, an excitement which quickly deflated once I read that the original creator and writer, Nic Pizzolato will have nothing to do with it. But, then I saw that Jodi Foster was going to play the lead and the story was going to take place in Northern Alaska. This was enough to make me want to give it a chance.

I did not expect Night Country to come close to season 1, season 2 and 3 respectively did not come close to season 1. What I did expect was a high-quality dark HBO police procedural with acting and cinematography on par with previous seasons, comparable in quality to other recent prestige television shows like White Lotus or Succession. So, Sunday night after putting our kid to bed my wife and I hit the couch, turned on the television and waited for the first episode to begin.

The first episode didn’t go downhill, it started in the middle of a kamikaze nosedive straight into a steaming pile of garbage. The opening scene, a piece of grotesquely poor CGI caribou whose rendering would be an embarrassment to a PlayStation 3 artist, immediately set the tone and it never managed to crawl above pure cringy schlock. Like I said above, my wife and I did not go into this expecting season 1, but we sure as fuck didn’t expect it to be insultingly bad. Night Country was poorly acted, poorly directed, poorly edited, poorly scored, and downright boring. Not one of the characters was likable or sympathetic, the crime and setting itself was a mix of poorly done John Carpenter and David Lynch cliches. It was insultingly bad.

Here is the deal, when I decided to write reviews, I told myself that I wouldn’t sink to the level of writing negative reviews about things I didn’t particularly like. I’m not a hate watcher, I haven’t seen any of the Marvel movies, the last Star Wars I caught was the one with the podracers, and the idea of having a discussion about modern pop cinema brings vomit into my mouth. But, something about this one pissed me off because True Detective was so damn good and this shit is so damn bad, and to make it worse, the writer director, Issa Lopez went on X right after the premiere to attack everyone who didn’t like the season as “toxic bros and fanboys.” How fucking embarrassing for a writer and creator to attack people for not liking her poorly written amateur slop. Sorry Issa, this episode was embarrassingly bad, and no amount shit tier aping of Lynchian imagery could have saved this corny mess.

“Shes Awake..” ohhhhh scaryyyyy

Look, the shitty acting, the horribly stupid face piercings on a police officer in sub-zero temperatures, the poor verisimilitude where no breath was visible in outside scenes, nobody wore gloves, and the supposedly Alaskan interiors looked like IKEA vomited all over them was not the thing I hated the most. Not even the played out in 2024 badass girlboss whose personality is lesbian scowling, beating up men, complaining about white privilege, and being more unlikable than the villains of season 1 wasn’t the top of the garbage pile for me. Crap, I can forget the somewhat creepy part where the fact that the main characters “adopted, it wasn’t clear” daughter made pornographic videos was brushed off as kids will be kids, get with the times mom. This in a show where the first season dealt with the impact of child rape and murder, the second season the trafficking of women for rich sex perverts, and the third the kidnapping of children. Thinking about it, the fact that Jodi Fosters character brushed it off and didn’t really bring it up more was a direct and intended attack on Woody Harralson’s, Marty Heart scene where he finds out his teenage daughter is having group sex with two boys in public. It’s disgusting, but it’s played off as no big deal because you know, Native American lesbian teenagers can do no wrong.

Anyways, what bothered me most about this season opener was the complete lack of truth and substance of the setting. The previous seasons the setting itself was a character. In season 1 one of the best aspects of the show was the beautiful cinematography, all shot in Louisiana. Season 2 also holds a special place for me because a lot of it was filmed in Ventura County and City of Industry, the first where I spent a few years and the second a place I drove through all the time. In the second season the first murder victim, the catalyst of the story, is found at the arch rock on the Pacific Coast Highway where I used to hike almost every sunday. Most importantly the first season was real and authentic. The inhabitants of Erath, Louisiana, were portrayed accurately and with respect and pathos. Erath was a place populated by working class men and women exploited and neglected by their politicians, churches, schools, and institutions intended to protect them. The bars, brothels, police stations, highways, and tent revivals are all authentic, and expertly shot on location.

Season 4 by comparison does not feel authentic. The Alaskan landscape is poorly rendered CGI, the town looks like a greenscreen set, and most of all the show itself isn’t even filmed in Alaska or even the United States, but in Iceland, and it shows. There is nothing authentically Alaskan or American in the entire episode. Season 1 felt like Louisiana because it was Louisiana, season 2 felt like Los Angeles because it was Los Angeles, and the third season was filmed in Arkansas. I just find it somewhat annoying that a show, one that might be the best visual representation of the strictly American Southern Gothic genre is no longer helmed by a Southener, instead HBO gave it to a writer director that isn’t even American. The whole damn thing is pathetically inauthentic.

Anyways, I hated it and I’m not going to watch another episode. It was pure shit.