Hah, beat me to it.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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So glad The Watch shared all of our frustrations. Their credibility would've been pretty shot with me if they had praised it.

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Good to hear. I'm just about to start listening, and was worried they were going to be easy on it. Especially since they had Lopez on earlier in the season and said they wanted to have her back for the finale.

Granted, not an entertainment site, but at least one major outlet is calling it like it is...

Truly awful. Just boggles the mind. #TrueDetectiveNightCountry

‘True Detective: Night Country’ Episode 6 Review — A Truly Embarrassing Season Finale via @forbes https://t.co/D8H0ch14py

— Erik 'daibo' Kain (@erikkain) February 19, 2024

I should have known the season would be a letdown after the opening scene. It's impossible to have your last sunset of the year on 12/17, and then they continued to butcher the whole polar night element throughout the finale. Well, at least their incompetence was consistent throughout.

Another popular classic for #HBO, as the #TrueDetective new Season #TrueDetectiveNightCountry scored 3.2M viewers during its Season 4 Finale on SUN night in the US alone across HBO & #Max, a record for the series.
The 6 episodes reached an average 12.7M viewers per episode,… pic.twitter.com/qrCN3YvbmO

— Luiz Fernando (@Luiz_Fernando_J) February 19, 2024

Isa Lopez was going to get more projects whether this season saw record viewership or not. True Detective is a big-name prestige brand, which gave her clout/exposure, not to mention she's a Latina woman with "edge." There was no way she wasn't going to be offered more opportunities after this.

All it guarantees is that the franchise will continue, but HBO will almost assuredly seek out new talent for season five, both in front of and behind the camera. Both because that already sounds like it's going to be the model going forward (a whole new team for each season), but also because I guarantee HBO is noticing the piss poor audience score/reaction.

TCTTS said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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So glad The Watch shared all of our frustrations. Their credibility would've been pretty shot with me if they had praised it.

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Good to hear. I'm just about to start listening, and was worried they were going to be easy on it. Especially since they had Lopez on earlier in the season and said they wanted to have her back for the finale.

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Man, that was refreshing to finally hear some mainstream entertainment people say they weren't fans, and explain exactly why in clear/concise fashion, to the point where certain left-leaning types can't accuse them of being misogynists, anti-woke, etc.

(Granted Greenwald didn't even like the first season, but still.)

Yeah, Pizzolatto needs to sit this one out. It's a bad look to be quoting stuff like this, especially when his seasons two and three also paled in comparison to season one. Not mention, his season three connected back to season one as well, with the newspaper article featuring Rust and Marty that the interviewer holds up...

I haven’t seen the new season of TRUE DETECTIVE so I have no opinion on it, but there has to be classier ways of handling a season you defintely made money on than this pic.twitter.com/El9U8RExIu

— Andrew Woods (@JimJarmuschHair) February 20, 2024

Speaking of, this is somewhat related, but an old friend of mine from LA ended up marrying Pizzolatto a couple years years ago, they just had a kid together, and seeing them on each other's Instagram feeds will never not be the weirdest thing. They're living in Austin now too, and a few months back I saw them on another friend's feed, this one a friend from high school, who now lives in Austin as well - they were all hanging out together - and the whole thing has my brain in a pretzel...

There's a way to respectfully disassociate oneself from this season, rather than quoting something that sh*ts all over it. He has every right to even be critical, but this whole quote just feels so needlessly "woe is me" and over the top. Also, I'm sure he could have come back for season four if he wanted. He didn't though, and HBO, who owns the property, had every right to then do whatever they wanted with it. I also don't think they or Lopez had anything but respect for Pizzolatto. Lopez, in particular, even praised the hell out of season one. She/HBO simply missed the mark in their efforts to pay tribute. All this anger in that regard seems so weird to me.

Yeah I hear you. But he also faced a TON of **** for seasons 2 and 3 of TD. If he felt slighted by HBO execs or felt hung out to dry during those seasons I don't blame him at all for his actions right now. He's getting **** on for something he had nothing to do with this go round

Who's sh*ting on him on this season? I'm not saying it's not happening, but I personally haven't see that anywhere. Seems to me most people are well aware that woman was in charge this go around. That said, I can certainly understand how the paranoia of thinking people might be blaming you can lead to being overly defensive.

Not critics but I guarantee he's heard/read pot shots of fans looping him into the criticism.

But either way we just disagree on tact. I would do everything I could to publicly separate myself from this **** show of a season if I were him

What an absolute waste of time. I couldn't even finish last night's episode. Colossal failure.

Maybe I'm confused, but Nick P is listed every week in the opening credits as an EP (along with McConaughey & Woody). Am I missing something? What the hell does an executive producer do?

Exactly. This kind of stuff is negotiated early on. I'm sure Pizzolotto's original contract ensured what is called a "life lock," meaning you're payed/credited as a producer for the life of the show, season after season, even if you're not involved on a day-to-day basis. Same for McConaughey and Harrelson. I'm sure a producer life lock is one of the perks that originally got them to sign, back when movie stars weren't doing as much TV as they are today.

(I only know all of this because we're currently trying to negotiate a life lock ourselves, for a show we just sold to Universal. They offered us two seasons guaranteed and now we're pushing back, trying to get a life lock, seeing as we already got one on another show.)

Edit. Wrong emoji

Yeah. There's a difference between an EP and THE EP. And for anthology series' that would trade out talent in front and behind the camera the early birds are going to get the worm.

How many lazy, pointless references back to season 1 were there in this season?

Cohle family
Spiral
Tuttle
Detectives killing a bad guy and covering it up
Time is a flat circle
Rift between two main detectives
One detective sleeping around with multiple people
Cover up from dirty cops and at higher levels of law enforcement
One detective having a deceased child
Even the ice cave/night country being an Alaskan version of carcosa

I'm sure I'm missing more. It seemed like Lopez just thought let's cheaply copy/throw in popular elements from season 1 but with women in Alaska and add pollution and scientists so it doesn't look like plagiarism.

Incredibly disappointing.

I just finished it and haven't read anything yet. I wanted to go in unspoiled. Immediate reactions from someone who knows nothing

(1) what a disappointment. there was promise there, but nothing ever connected for me. feels like a waste of time.

(2) my biggest problem is that I just didn't care at all about the other storylines. season one made me care about what happened to Rust, about Rust and Marty's relationship. there was never ever anything to care about in this season other than the A storyline, and it just was boring as hell when they weren't on A. I'll never get over "admit you never wanted my kid" from prior, the sole redeeming character. just bad.

(3) I don't need mysteries to be solved so long as we acknowledge the mystery. this show tried to acknowledge it but never really got there. makes all of that feel like a total waste of time. at least one season 1 we got that moment of Rust in front of the spiral tornado thing.

(4) they spent far, far too long dehumanizing Danvers for her to get any kind of redemption about her son. honestly, none of that arc made any sense to me whatsoever.

(5) I'm tired of angry, brooding women. I'm not even talking about the weird coven of ladies that ran the men out of Tslal station. I'm talking about Navarro. I feel like the actor that played her is talented, but that was about the most one dimensional character this side of….Jodie Foster playing Danvers.

(6) I complained about the B and C storylines above. the only one worth a damn at all was Prior vs his father, and they managed to waste that one, too. after the last episode, I had some hope that was going to be important, but it wasn't except to show more misery without purpose. another waste of a couple of talented performances.

(7) if the payoff is going to be the mine getting shut down and some justice for the town, please give me some of that besides Danvers in the Rust Cole interrogation room attempting exposition. that felt extremely pander-y. speaking of….

(8) the whole season was wasted pandering. invoking true detective isms for the sake of invoking them puts you in Home Alone 3 territory. to quote the letterkenny coach, "It's ****ing embarrassing."

All in all, I've rarely been this disappointed in a show. I can almost always find something redeeming about he journey, even if the payoff isn't great. This was a 2 hour drive down 35 to Waco. The trip sucks, sucks when you get there, and sucks on the ride home.

I'll be actively telling people that haven't watched to skip it.

As far as the show goes, are we to believe that Navarro killed herself, and that Danvers asked her to come back and visit her as a ghost, which is why we see Navarro on Danvers porch at the end? That makes NO sense at all.

Absolutely no clue.

There were only minor hints that Navarro might kind of sort of have a death wish, but even those hints felt like temporary afflictions or spells - like she was just sad that her sister died, or maybe the drinking water was causing hallucinations or something - but nothing to suggest outright chronic depression to the point of suicide. It just didn't at all feel like she wanted to disappear from the world, or that life was too hard, etc. She had a good job, a good boyfriend, she reconciled with Danvers, they solved the case, she learned her native name, AND she got closure with the whole Annie thing. All things considered, relatively speaking, she had a decent life and I thought she conquered whatever demons she had, but then she just… wondered off into the unknown for… reasons? And then maybe came back? But probably didn't?

Granted, she obviously suffered from whatever genetic form of mental illness her family had, but even then it didn't seem as nearly as her sister, nor did she feel as "cursed" as her sister either.

So why did she suddenly/seemingly want to join her death?

I thought it was hilarious that one of the Ringer podcast guys we were talking bout earlier thought that the final shot at Danvers' house was of Danvers and her daughter. Ha, he's been covering the show every week and even he didn't even know it was Navarro. The whole thing was just so weird and pointless and confusing.

Wow, even Joanna Robinson didn't like the finale, which is saying something. I'm legit surprised, and it only makes the Twitter crazies, who have been defending it/calling everyone who didn't like it misogynists, sound even more insane...

#TrueDetective finale…we have some notes! (But like in a non-toxic way probably maybe.) https://t.co/JT6j96Ys9n

— Joanna Robinson (@jowrotethis) February 20, 2024

Props to all the Ringer folk on this one. They didn't bow down or capitulate at all. Not that any of them do consistently, but every so often they can get a little too chummy with directors, showrunners, actors, etc, pull their punches, and not be quite as harsh as they probably could or should be.