Why was it so bad?
Feb. 22nd, 2024 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootI'm not over True Detective Season 4.
I may try to binge watch it at some point just to see if I missed something. Maybe it surpasses Season 2, is more inventive with less depth than Season 3 and can't compare to Season 1. But right now, I am still trying to understand what it is that makes this such a disappointment.
It was always going to annoy the incels of Carcosa, Schrodinger's Fandom, who hate it for at once being a sequel and not being a sequel to Season 1. The two seasons are connected by a few mentions and the formula; 2 detectives, an unspeakable crime, the moment at which they themselves break the law, their unbearable enmity and shared secret etc, ping ping ping, like a pinball hitting all the bumpers; only nothing lights up, cos by itself formula isn't enough.
The Night Country is a mirror world to Carcosa; Two suns versus total darkness, the sweat of men, cold beers and a sweltering hot place, versus muffled women and immense implacable cold. And yes, we bump into some tropes; Men connected to aloneness and winning and killing and sex, Women connected to each other and birth and death and land, and behind both existences, vengeance for the harmed, redemption for those who try. I can see it, yes, I understand what it is like on the edge of the real. Why then is Season 4 such terrible pap?
Ennis is too weird at the outset. Ghosts everywhere seen by everybody become ordinary, a shrug-worthy nothing. One of the first things that scares us in real life is to see that thing/person who should not/cannot be here. If anyone can be anywhere, then up the pace and make it a fever dream, lean into the surreality. Terrifying visitors must terrify. A bloody great polar bear staring into your car should have major impact beyond that sense of how bizarre. Even if - especially if - you feel it is a minister from the spirit world, you may stand your ground, you should need a change of underwear.
But also, Danvers and Navarro...Eh. They're just not very well written, and neither is the story. We learn about the hot messes that Cohle and Hart are via and around their investigation. Here the investigation seems incidental to the rubbish of living, like bits of radio chatter coming in through a wall of static. Marty Hart is as toxic a good ole boy as you'll ever meet, but he's an excellent detective. Rustin Cohle is some kind of genius of justice, but he crushes the murderous mother with as much brutality as Marty uses in beating up his daughter's lovers, he's just cleaner. Cohle and Hart are poison and they forget their casualties as soon as they create them, but by God they will make this work. You never get that with Danvers and Navarro; are they actually good at their jobs? I couldn't tell you. I know that Danvers likes to shag with her socks on* and Navarro has a thing about oranges and her mother. But what are they like, really? Jodie Foster calling her character an 'Alaska Karen,' tells us nothing except that the actress is buying into some currently popular stereotypes. But oh, the sense of fumbling and contrived dialogue, the hopeless padding out into jumble, a story that's done in three stretched out for six. It's just irritating. Given that, how long can we wait before something takes us forward?
The answer is too long. I want to like Season 4 but try as I might, there's a time to give up.
*Christopher Eccleston no less. She's a braver woman than I am.
I may try to binge watch it at some point just to see if I missed something. Maybe it surpasses Season 2, is more inventive with less depth than Season 3 and can't compare to Season 1. But right now, I am still trying to understand what it is that makes this such a disappointment.
It was always going to annoy the incels of Carcosa, Schrodinger's Fandom, who hate it for at once being a sequel and not being a sequel to Season 1. The two seasons are connected by a few mentions and the formula; 2 detectives, an unspeakable crime, the moment at which they themselves break the law, their unbearable enmity and shared secret etc, ping ping ping, like a pinball hitting all the bumpers; only nothing lights up, cos by itself formula isn't enough.
The Night Country is a mirror world to Carcosa; Two suns versus total darkness, the sweat of men, cold beers and a sweltering hot place, versus muffled women and immense implacable cold. And yes, we bump into some tropes; Men connected to aloneness and winning and killing and sex, Women connected to each other and birth and death and land, and behind both existences, vengeance for the harmed, redemption for those who try. I can see it, yes, I understand what it is like on the edge of the real. Why then is Season 4 such terrible pap?
Ennis is too weird at the outset. Ghosts everywhere seen by everybody become ordinary, a shrug-worthy nothing. One of the first things that scares us in real life is to see that thing/person who should not/cannot be here. If anyone can be anywhere, then up the pace and make it a fever dream, lean into the surreality. Terrifying visitors must terrify. A bloody great polar bear staring into your car should have major impact beyond that sense of how bizarre. Even if - especially if - you feel it is a minister from the spirit world, you may stand your ground, you should need a change of underwear.
But also, Danvers and Navarro...Eh. They're just not very well written, and neither is the story. We learn about the hot messes that Cohle and Hart are via and around their investigation. Here the investigation seems incidental to the rubbish of living, like bits of radio chatter coming in through a wall of static. Marty Hart is as toxic a good ole boy as you'll ever meet, but he's an excellent detective. Rustin Cohle is some kind of genius of justice, but he crushes the murderous mother with as much brutality as Marty uses in beating up his daughter's lovers, he's just cleaner. Cohle and Hart are poison and they forget their casualties as soon as they create them, but by God they will make this work. You never get that with Danvers and Navarro; are they actually good at their jobs? I couldn't tell you. I know that Danvers likes to shag with her socks on* and Navarro has a thing about oranges and her mother. But what are they like, really? Jodie Foster calling her character an 'Alaska Karen,' tells us nothing except that the actress is buying into some currently popular stereotypes. But oh, the sense of fumbling and contrived dialogue, the hopeless padding out into jumble, a story that's done in three stretched out for six. It's just irritating. Given that, how long can we wait before something takes us forward?
The answer is too long. I want to like Season 4 but try as I might, there's a time to give up.
*Christopher Eccleston no less. She's a braver woman than I am.
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no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 03:25 pm (UTC)And I really wanted to like Season 4. Female showrunner! Female-dominated cast!
But I just...didn't...
no subject
Date: 2024-02-23 03:51 pm (UTC)I wanted it to work!
But I could barely discern them as characters at all. And it's not that I need to care that much... but they need to be more than grimly pensive matchstick people.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-22 04:34 pm (UTC)It was a total failure. With the slight exception that the peripherals of the show are archetypal and symbolic and definitely work on the subconscious / unconscious mind. LOTS is going on along the edges and I think that's why the main characters and storyline are so deeply disappointing.
What WAS the magick that is TD S1???? And it was gloriously magical. Definitely Rust and his endlessly spiraling dialogue. Also, the establishment of the characters at that table...being interrogated. Then the swinging back and forth in timelines, the creeping sensation of time being, actually, a flat circle. The inescapable truth of destiny, the inability to step off or out, the passion of these two men despite their flaws.
I was offended by S4 calling back any of S1. It tarnished it.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-23 03:48 pm (UTC)There was indeed something so utterly magickal about TD S1, and like true magic it may be impossible to recreate. I could make my peace with that; this spell is so solid and strong it can be discussed, recalled, rewatched without marring one touch of it, it's not like those ephemeral things you can't look at too closely.
S4 couldn't touch it, and perhaps I knew that was going to be the case. I accepted it couldn't be that perfect constellation in the dark... but surely it didn't have to be such rubbish.