(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
"True Detective: Night Country" is a Dark, Disorienting Crime Saga [1]
['Olivia Weeks', 'The Daily Yonder']
Date: 2024-03-07
Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, a newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, retrospectives, recommendations, and more. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.
HBO’s “True Detective” kicked off in 2014 when a pair of troubled small-town Louisiana investigators, played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, took down a web of meth cooks and corrupt Catholic priests. The show’s critically acclaimed first season was followed up by two reportedly lackluster — if similarly star-studded — seasons in 2015 and 2019. “Night Country,” the anthology crime drama’s six-episode revival, was written and directed by a newcomer to the show, Issa López. The season’s finale aired on February 18.
An official trailer for ‘True Detective: Night Country’ (via Max on YouTube).
Set in the fictional northern Alaska town of Ennis during a polar night, “Night Country” is a fast-paced snapshot of a community roiled by corruption, death, and darkness. The town is roughly half Native Alaskan and half white. The cast mirrors this makeup, though its Native actors come from a wide range of Indigenous backgrounds.
The season opens with the disappearance of an international group of scientists from the Tsalal Arctic Research Station, an isolated laboratory on the outskirts of town. Chief of Police Liz Danvers (played by Jodie Foster) is sent to investigate the abandoned station. There, she finds few clues aside from a severed tongue — a possible connection to the murder and mutilation of a local Iñupiat activist named Annie Kowtok six years prior.
In traditional “True Detective” fashion, the crimes of residents, cops, and the truly wealthy pile up over the course of the season. Bodies pile up too, after they thaw out. No matter the geography of any given season’s plot, the backdrop of the show is conspiracy. In “Night Country,” every system of power in town is implicated, from the state police force to the local mine. Public institutions are consistently shown to be reliant on industrial profits. Ennis’s corruption and remoteness combine with the extralegal proclivities of Danvers and her unofficial police partner Evangeline Navarro (played by champion boxer Kali “KO” Mequinonoag Reis), widening the gulf between the protagonists and any hope of outside help.
Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in ‘True Detective: Night Country’ (2024) (Credit: HBO via IMDb).
Many of the white side characters seem to have followed industrial jobs up to Ennis, and they’re accordingly more likely to see the town’s existence as contingent upon the spoils of resource extraction. It’s Native people protesting pollution from the mine who provide the counterargument to that attitude: “We were here long before, gonna stay when you’re gone!” But the battle lines aren’t drawn in a racially reductive way. Annie Kowtok’s brother Ryan, a miner, tells Navarro that he worried about the consequences of his late sister’s protests: “We got into some shitfights. I told her, ‘You kill the mine, you kill Ennis. No jobs, no mine taxes, no schools, nothing.’ She didn’t care.” All of Ennis’s residents are afraid of the future, choosing what to fight for from a set of bad options.
It’s been a long time since I watched the first season of True Detective, so I missed a lot of the easter eggs that tied it into this new story. One connection that didn’t escape me, though, was the choice of a compelling rural setting. By Crown Vic, McConaughey and Harrelson traversed Recession-era rural Louisiana, from shabby small-town strip malls and county jails to the lush, humid beauty of the bayou; Foster and Reis are all over their far-northern landscape, stopping by the main street diner before offroading around a system of underground ice caves that promise to break open their case. Ennis is vivid — close-knit but deeply conflicted, freezing cold but undeniably cozy.
But the inherent intrigue of the season’s setting actually led to my primary frustration as a viewer: the frenetic plot allowed little time for enjoying the scenery. It’s two episodes shorter than prior seasons, and disproportionately more frantic. For the first few episodes, each scene ends with an unexplained flashback, callback, or conflict. In the first half hour they introduce the Tsalal disappearances, the tongue, a ghost, an unrelated brawl at a crab factory, a teen sex tape, and a near-collision with a drunk driver. All that’s before we know who’s related to whom, or how.
Kali Reis in ‘True Detective: Night Country’ (2024) (Credit: HBO via IMDb).
Chief Danvers, the character who gets the most screen time, is written with a penchant for conflict and indiscernible redeeming qualities. (Equally annoying: Trooper Navarro is written with a penchant for calling her adult sister “babygirl.”) The incessant drama is less successful at building suspense than at wearing the viewer down. Even if it was only McConaughey’s drawl countering the pace of personal and political strife in the first season, its absence is felt in the fourth.
By the day the finale aired, after five episodes of unrelenting mounting tension, I was tired of stressing about the fates of unlikeable characters, and certain that the layers of crime and corruption and mystery were piled too high for a graceful descent. Most dispiritingly, I was convinced that the writers were about to use some fetishistic call to Indigenous spirituality as a deus ex machina.
Thankfully, I was wrong about all that. (Well, mostly, I think. I still have questions about the show’s depiction of Native spirituality, and would love to read an Indigenous person’s take on it — did “Night Country” veer into the Magical Native American trope?) In the last episode, answers come rapidly, and they’re satisfying. I was still annoyed about the pacing and the one-dimensional main character, and those flaws meant the season was never the emotional heavy-hitter it wanted to be. But I was glad I stuck it out, if only for the impressive, heist-movie-esque conclusion. If you’re considering a trip into “Night Country,” do with that what you will.
True Detective: Night Country airs on HBO and is streaming on Max.
This article first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, recommendations, retrospectives, and more. Join the mailing list today to have future editions delivered straight to your inbox.
Related
Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://dailyyonder.com/true-detective-night-country-unfolds-under-cover-of-darkness-at-breakneck-speed/2024/03/07/
Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/
