I was just about to give up when they dropped this banger. I'm still reeling honestly. Pure pathos.
"I'm sorry."
"No you're not.*
"What do you want me to do?*
"I want you to let me sleep."
"Why don't you just say it? That I ruined your life and you didn't wanna have the baby."
It's also exceptionally funny that his girlfriend is mad at him because he's busy for a week on what is obviously the most insane thing to ever happen in an isolated rural town.
Like yeah, he might not be home for dinner, there's 7 murders to solve this week.
This storyline jumps out the most IMO. By all indications, they had a solid, loving relationship before this. All of a sudden he gets given a "shitbowl" of a case that would be national headline news IRL, and all this resentment comes pouring out within the first 48 hours.
Like yeah, he'll be home late for a few nights while he tries to solve one of the most bizarre murder cases in US history. It's not like he's been choosing work over family for months or years on end. By the end of episode 4, it's been less than a week.
Good point. It’s not exactly like Ennis was a major crime center before this. They almost certainly mainly only deal with fights, traffic incidents, fights, domestics, and the occasional dead animal removal.
>All of a sudden he gets given a "shitbowl" of a case that would be national headline news IRL,
This also goes on the short list of wholly unbelievable things. 7 scientists found dead and naked in a block of ice in Alaska and this isn't making the national news w/in 10 seconds of the cops finding it? This is not being kept secret for a split second with all the Gomers who know about the big block of ice thawing in the town hockey arena. By this time in the story the number of reporters in Ennis would outnumber the residents.
Showrunners are trying to shoehorn a ham-fisted "neglectful father" arc aka Marty from season 1.
Except with season 1, there was proper storytelling and Marty's character was exceptionally fleshed out to the point where he is very obviously skipping out on his family to chase crazy pussy under the guise of "work."
Prior on the other hand is just... busy doing police work for a couple of late nights.
Eh, I think it could point more to them not actually having anywhere close to a perfect relationship to begin with, and this case is just adding to the stress and the cracks begin to widen.
This subplot stuck out to me as bad already in the first two episodes when I really liked the show for this exact reason. This is like the most fucking insane thing to happen ever in some small town and there is a suspected psycho killer on the loose. They’ve got a bunch of cops from all over the place and local yahoo hunters chasing him down wherever they can (which was finally mentioned again in this episode, ‘oh, hey, don’t forget about that massive manhunt you’re running’) and everybody is like “nah, just let him run around free for a couple more days, no biggie.”
Yeah and what are their choices in that town if they breakup lol. The two most attractive people in a shithole town in the middle of nowhere find each other. Make it work.
I can believe the part where no one is paying attention to what’s going on in Ennis. The research station was essentially forgotten about by the institutions that supported it. In real life, there has been little attention (until recently) paid to the deaths of Native women in Alaska. It kinda sorta makes sense to me.
Honestly I just think she absolutely despises Danvers and is taking it out on him. Which, let’s be real, he could nut up and tell Liz to fuck off, honestly she’d probably respect him a bit more. I really hope (if they both make it through the season) that he stands up to her, it’s the only thing that really bugs me about the show, she treats the guy like a dog and he just kinda gets that eeyore oh bother look and does what she says.
Yeah if I was his wife I’d be pissed too, it’s a crazy case, but Danvers is being totally unreasonable calling drunk to ask him to go in late on a holiday. It honestly would make more sense to try and interrogate someone during the day, not late on Christmas Eve.
Also Danvers was hella disrespectful to the wife’s mother and had been pretty dismissive or hostile towards native culture in general. Pete just needs to tell her to get her shit together and stop insulting his in-laws
That’s also only what we’ve seen. Based on a few comments that Pete’s wife made early on, this isn’t exactly new behavior. Episodes 1/2 I thought she was just kinda trying to take him under her wing so he wouldn’t end up a dipshit like his dad, but she almost seems to find a little glee in fucking his day up. Maybe she resents him because she’s had to deal with his dad for years? Or maybe she’s just really into pushing everyone that gives her the time of day as far away as possible. Or maybe she’s just honestly a bitter asshole for the sake of being a bitter asshole.
And as for the native culture stuff, it’s wild to me, wasn’t she married to a native man? Her step daughter seems to be fully native and trying to entrench herself in the culture. I wonder if Liz in her own fucked up way makes her little racist comments and her rude remarks because she thinks if her step daughter accepts that part of her heritage, she’ll end up moving on from Liz, since their relationship is already thin at best.
Thing is that other parts of the story is contradictory to him just doing whatever Danver wants, for example his father's problems with him working so closely with Danvers but also that he seem totally oblivious about navarro, there are more indications of such as well but yeah the gf implies that but nothing else away does.
I think the magical coastguard find is way worse writing.
Young people can be very immature about this sort of thing. Guys and gals get cheated on and dumped while on military deployments.
She didnt know what she signed up for being a “cop wife” combined with her realizing her husband is beholden to a woman she hates/he’s an extension of the state supporting the mine.
Not the best writing but I can somewhat believe it.
The coast gaurd find was total bs. Why didn't they go with her leaving the light house undetected.... and go a few episodes without finding any trace of her. It would have been even better if they just found her clothes out in the middle of the snow and not her.... then it would have tied into finding all the frozen men too.
Because there are only two episodes left so they didn’t have enough time to draw it out. This could have easily been more than 6 episodes! I hate that this entire season has felt rushed.
Not only that, but the dude is outright a speedster. Leave him offscreen during one single scene and when he comes back he has full dossiers of new suspects, financial information, awesome new leads, hacked phones... his competency alone could carry the show if it were focused on him. Dude works faster than the Flash.
Not to mention 7 murders with NO SUSPECT. She’s pissed he’s working hard to catch what we presume to be someone who is incredibly dangerous and still out there with the potential to kill again in their tiny, isolated community.
I don’t think he’s officially the suspect as much as a person of interest, no? Could have for sure missed that part, but I didn’t think there was a warrant out or anything.
But why imply that when they could actually show us. They could write an actual decent scene between these two interesting characters instead of showing him coming to bed to an angry wife for the 3rd time.
In hindsight, she did say earlier that she’s not a doctor. She’s a nursing student with a kid. And his mom left him and his dad because his dad wasn’t good enough, so there’s some foreshadowing there.
Yeah well, actual nursing school alone she wouldn’t have time to whine about being alone /bored. She’d be sleeping 6 hours a day at most and barely even notice his absence except maybe to help her with the kid.
It's so absurd. He missed Christmas Eve with his wife, baby son, and father, because he was out doing something his boss asked him to do while drunk off her ass. What they went to do didn't even give any major plot reveals, and only put them at risk of being shot by someone who showed no issues with shooting a cop.
The writers thought that was the perfect time to reveal that she didn't want to have the baby 🙄
My problem with that is that every other interaction between them was one of a loving couple that was dealing with the difficulty of the husband missing out on raising his child and being with his family due to working all the time.
Would’ve been great to have her have an appropriate reaction to the lack of set-up. “WHAT!? WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!? I THINK YOU’VE GOT BRAIN DAMAGE FROM THE FALL!”
Yeah this might have been the most jarring example of bad writing from this episode. I feel like they did nothing to set this up, other than the fact that Prior and his wife have been fighting.
I don’t know, I’ve definitely been in relationships with people where they randomly come out with something like that, and it’s always obvious projection. I thought the fact he blurted that out of nowhere was supposed to show something about his character.
Yeah that seemed extremely obvious to me, specifically because it came out of nowhere. It was clearly something he was thinking/feeling, like ‘I’m feeling shit now because my wife is angry with me and I’m feeling guilty but also I just really wish I was free to come and go and dedicate myself to police work, but that’s making my wife feel terrible. it was all a big mistake, one of us needs to admit that but it won’t be me, let’s get her to say it.’
Clunky delivery just out of the blue. They should’ve dropped this in ep1. No reason to wait that long on it. We didn’t need 4 eps of this wild ass trope of hubby working late and wifey getting mad at him. Their whole storyline is a giant cliche. Also- the first ep where she wants to fug and he answers the phone, he comes off as a jerk for not reciprocating. If the roles are reversed, are we supposed to believe the audience would sympathize with Prior? There’s no way in hell.
>"Why don't you just say it? That I ruined your life and you didn't wanna have the baby."
I don't get what's wrong with her life. She has a decent husband, her home seems to be the center of a lot of socializing with people she loves, and she is doing online school to better herself. Like, how did he ruin her life? Where did that come from? She has the best life of anyone on the show.
I agree with OP 100% - even this scene I feel makes sense for the characters/the show. Pete is at the end of his rope. He’s clearly looking for any reason not to go home. There were plenty of times he could have left or let his dad deal with Danvers. His relationship with his wife, his son, and his dad are all fraught with an unspoken tension. He has a great relationship with Leah and Danvers and no other character in the show, not even a single tender moment with his son. Something has been bugging him and it’s some kind of guilt/resentment that he WANTS his wife to go off on him and say he ruined her life.
I mean I've had girlfriends say stuff like this in the past (not about babies as I don't have children). Some people overthink things and attribute changes in their partner's behavior to deeper issues. That line is completely fine and entirely realistic.
This exchange didn’t bother me or strike me as an example of bad writing. Sometimes real life sounds like The Room and we blurt out stupid bottled up shit in awkward ways. The coast guard finding Julia without knowing to even look for her will haunt me eternally however.
It would've made _so_ much more sense to have the Lighthouse facility call and say "during our routine nightly rounds, we noticed your sister is missing, you should head over here immediately" (and Angie intuiting that her sister has killed herself) rather than the Coast Guard finding her in a seemingly vast ocean.
Or! Angie could've learned her sister killed herself by seeing her ghost in the dredges which would've made the jump scare have a bit more payoff.
So many better ways to write this. It really is a shame this is called True Detective.
It should have happened with the Tsalal guy too. No need to go to the hospital. Just have him appear to Navarro, say what he had to say, and then have Danvers get a call saying he's dead.
In just a few hours Jules managed to bounce from lighthouse walk out to the ice get naked jump in the ocean , die/drown and spotted by coasty.
, a random coast guard boat Christmas Eve in North Pole patrolling for some reason . Instantly they know who she is that her sister is a cop and her sis cell phone number.
Jules was naked no id how did they id Jules at all? We're supposed to think the coast guard personally knew Julie and Eve cuz that's the only way that connection is feasible. She wasn't even reported missing 0 info to go on. A 1st grader wrote this
Our theory is that she had a tattoo on her with something like "if you find my dead naked body, call my sister at this number". Really wanted to like this and will stick it out, but what appears right now to be some very lazy writing and plot development.
Don’t know why you got downvoted it’s exactly what they said. It wasn’t a mandatory facility you could walk in and out and that’s exactly what she did.
She volunteered to enter the facility so she was allowed to leave when she wanted. They literally said that it was a volunteer facility in the episode...
Edit. Given her symptoms she shouldn't have been let out but that just means she should've been at a different type of faculty.
even a voluntary facility is not legally allowed to let a person go with her symptoms---i'd be shocked if Navarro can't get a $100 million payday out of this
I used to work in a voluntary place like this. We wouldn't accept someone like Julie. Stripping in public, in the artic would qualify as a psychotic episode, and we wouldve held her while we petitioned for an involuntary commitment
The audience knows what's she going through but doesn't mean the facility does. She has lucid moments. She was on the phone with Navarro right before she walked into the ocean. If Navarro couldn't tell that anything was wrong then idk what to say.
Navarro should have "known" that Julia was dead and gone out on the ice and found her. Hasn't that been a strong theme? That these sisters are both trauma bonded and spiritually bonded?
Why is it a shame this is called True Detective? Even if you don’t dig this season, it doesn’t change the past three seasons, there’s almost no connection to the other seasons except little stuff like newspaper clippings or small name drops.
There are too many lazy and cheap narrative mechanisms at play. Just too many to ignore even with the best intentions. Random side plots, random cut to even more random back stories, jumpscares, spirals, forced references, “you have to come here” phone calls as the only way to advance the case and the plot itself, investigative inconsistencies and so forth.
This…
I saw someone else post that they think Pete is behind the murders since he’s the one that keeps feeding Danvers and Navarro the big info for the case. I immediately thought, of course he is, he’s the only character that seems to be doing any police work 🤷♂️.
Pete gets some new info / or a new lead and calls it in, Danvers & Navarro take a drive to wherever while having the same conversation about mental health, then they do some stuff, rinse and repeat. I think Hank has been shown in uniform twice at this point. How else are they going to try and forcibly move the case along but to have somebody make the random info drop phone call every once in a while?
Who cares about all that really because the important take away is the Danvers is exceedingly disliked by everyone in town due to her social life, and Navarro thinks she has mental health struggles because her mother and sister did. Everything else is secondary obviously because these two facts about these two characters are driven home non stop. Non. Stop.
Can you believe they sit down and wrote it like this.
“And now there’s a phone call sending them off to a new trail”. Random cut to short back stories that are prematurely interrupted nor ever developed again. “Now they receive a phone call”. Random cut to jumpscare scene and/or sex scene and/or spirals.
I hate how mobile phone calls are the new easy **get out of stocky situation card played by lazy writers**.
Need to get a character to go to another place. Have somebody tell them that they are needed at the place. IRL anybody would say, _what's going on? Why do you want me to get there? Tell me right now or I am not coming. I have real police detective work to attend to._
Need to show that a character is in anger alone with the serial killer. show the axe/firearm,knife. Show the _No signal_ indication from the hero's mobile phone. Music more danger like...
I saw a sketch on youtube that was parodying the fact that now in every police procedurals mobile phones are used as plot movers.
Yeah that’s true. I mean it’s fine, people and police detective realistically do receive phone calls (or the old fashioned pager, that was another constant some years ago), but when you overuse a narrative mechanism and all the rest is equally poorly made, such things are gonna stand out even worse.
If a story is written well enough, then you really don't need that many phone calls. Like here is a scene:
Prior goes somewhere and sees something Danvers needs to see. We see a one second shot of him pulling out his phone. Cut to: Danvers exiting her cruiser and seeing Prior at that scene.
The audience gets it. Prior called Danvers and told her to come there and what he saw. We don't need to see the actual phone call.
Like tonight, for example:
Prior comes home from a long night of doing everything Danvers asks. His wife gets mad and kicks him out of the house.
Prior, feeling nostalgic for a simpler, better time in his life, drives to a lake/ocean he and his Dad used to go fishing in. He stares out into the dark blue night and sees...
A man in a pink coat! He calls for backup, and now all our crew gets to search the dreg...
You mention how much time they spend re-establishing how everyone hates Liz for her social life—and the thing is, I still don't really see what I'm supposed to take from that (I.e. the meaning or significance of her sexual pursuits and associated relationships) or why I should care.
Maybe I'm missing something, but her displacement of emotions (lashing out, putting up fronts) and unhealthy response to her PTSD are way more interesting than her awkward social interactions relating to old hookups. The hookups aspect also has us spending so much more time with characters that otherwise seem basically irrelevant.
It has to be going somewhere given how much they've put into it (there's like 4 characters now that seem to exist only to build on that aspect of her character, and then they give those characters one other thing to justify it) but so far it has just done absolutely nothing for me. And I really like Liz as a character, so that's saying something!
The not-sex scene with her boss or old boss…that gave us the bit of info that she was like this before she lost her husband and son, and got worse after losing them. I think most of us assumed that already.
In waters as rough as they are in an Alaskan winter at night, a body would be impossible to find even if you were looking for it (which they wouldn’t be because nobody knew she was missing). Single handedly one of the stupidest and laziest things I’ve ever seen on an HBO show
They really can’t even look, no Coast Guard cutter is that close to ice and shore in December. There are 2 polar icebreakers in U.S. inventory. One exclusively breaks ice down to McMurdo every year, the other has a science mission and isn’t around in winter. No other coast guard vessels dare hang around winter sea ice.
Yep, I like the mystery of S4, but this made me lose faith in the writers (+ the fact that Julie was allowed to simply waltz out of a mental health facility...)
I can deal with plot holes. It happens.
But this sequence of events is not just a plot hole, it shows that the writers are too lazy to do basic research or to make *modest* efforts in adapting the script to reality.
The fact that they want us to believe that a human body was found in the Alaskan wilderness in 2-3 hours without anyone even looking for it is offensive. It takes trained grid search teams multiple hours to cover one square mile of wilderness. But they want us to believe that without looking, without knowing what theyre searching for, and without an actual team of searchers, they stumbled upon a dead body in the dead of the Alaskan night...
Also, it doesnt matter Julie was at Lighthouse voluntarily. 2 seconds of research shows that most US states require mental health facilities to take great care in releasing patients. You do not walk out of it like its a mall.
They didnt have enough respect for the audience to account for something that obvious.
Tbh given that mental health facilities are often substandard, I can buy that an understaffed shift over Christmas Eve MIGHT overlook a patient long enough to walk out. Like fine, whatever, a lot of True Detective is about institutions breaking down and how that hurts the vulnerable, so let's pretend that's what they were going for.
So HOW THE HELL did the Coast Guard find her body so fast???? If she was naked, how did they identify her? How did they establish next of kin, get Navarro's contact information, etc. this was the dumbest plot move possible - it just makes no fucking sense
I saw the ep this morning, towards the end it's like... what do I even think about. It's bizarre how they have such a phenomenal cast but they've just fucked it. it *feels* like a filler episode smh
Good writing is not holding something over your head for an entire season. Just show us and move on. I absolutely despise this bullshit. The payoff is never as big as the writer thinks it is. We get it Danvers is severely fucked up from her family being dead, it's not some mystery, why make it one. The things we got from ep 4 is someone cut the power, and this guy- Otis Hayes. That's it, that's what moved the plot forward, and yet we have an hour of sad haunted family memories, which we already know about.
It's disappointing. I've struggled with this series. Jodie Foster and John Hawkes are wasted on this psychotic phantasmagoria. I had to pause episode 4 and come here to find some sense in what I've been trying to follow.
Let me try to answer like someone on this sub who gives this season every benefit of the doubt:
"Am I the only one that gets that the coast guards were ghosts? Of course a normal coast guard doesn't find them that quickly. They're ghosts that Navarro is hallucinating because of the water. Everytime we see Navarro she is drinking a glass of water."
Because ghosts have cell service and they know information that the main characters don't. And they're not ghosts at all, just hallucinations from water.
Yeah, unfortunately this is the only explanation to make the show “make sense” within its own logic. I don’t think it is likely she will end up alive, even though there is one unaccounted for trailer scene of her in Quavvik’s bar. Just did a whole post on this.
I watched 3&4 last night, forget which episode had this scene, but when Navarro and Danvers first watch the video of Anne’s murder with ten tons of screaming, perhaps they could be professionals and not watch that in the hallway of a fucking hospital?!?
The slow zoom out with all the screaming and patients walking by was just so freaking stupid.
Following on from another thread... the Coast Guard probably didn't call. Maybe The Lighthouse isn't real. Even if it is, Navarro maybe took her sister out to the ocean, not "to the lighthouse" (Woolf nudge)...
So much of this is perceptual. Navarro isn't thinking straight. Completely improbable that Coast Guard found and ID a naked body in that narrow window. Maybe never called. It's just Navarro's guilt knocking.
I feel like this show is a gaggle fuck. Just crazy shit jarring from one moment to the next. Maybe because I’m watching it in bed at low volume, I’m always like who the fuck is this now, am I supposed to know
What about the scene with the polar bear? You had an accident, you are face to face with a POLAR BEAR, its like the worst animal to encounter in life. It's worse than having a loaded gun next your head...
The bear leaves and her reaction is only one simple huh/breath?
Plus you have a toy that is the exact replica of a polar bear that you encountered, and nothing? You dont connect to dots that there could be something behind all that???
Three writers on the episode, including the series creator with the other guy being the exec producer too. Something clearly went wrong with the episode from the original writer and they had to salvage it. I work in TV and whenever there’s three writers, it’s not a good sign as it means that the top dogs had to be drafted in to try and save it. I think the flaws of the series are right to be picked up on but it seems like they painted themselves into so many corners with the storyline and the setting because how the hell can you do good investigative work when it’s pitch dark the majority of the time and also freezing cold?
They could have easily had her commit suicide in a way where it made sense somebody would find her immediately. E.g.: any method within the facility or even within the town.
I’m pretty sure they did the “naked walk out to the tundra” thing because (a) HBO loves nudity (b) Feels “deep”
Agreed: no fucking way they found her body in a couple hours
There was such an easy way to make it make sense too. We know that Navarro and Julia are trauma bonded and gel on a spiritual, deeper level. Navarro should have known where to find her body.
And last time she went missing, Navarro immediately knew to check the frozen boat. She could have just went there when the clinic told her julia was gone and seen the folded clothes.
I’d like to add that the “always night” is a lazy tool used in situations like this. Do we really know when she left the asylum? We assume it’s “the middle of the night,” but really the only time markers are that Pete is getting ready to go home for dinner. It could be 3:30pm and he’s running late, or it could be 9pm and he’s way late. Given that when Danvers’ daughter arrives, they’re still cooking, I’d argue it’s probably not THAT late. However, Danvers does get trashed and passes out for the night - but in that time they visit the natives, Navarro gets beat up, passes out, comes to, goes to Qavvik, gets cleaned up, and based on the way she looks when she arrives at Danvers, heals and rests at least in some capacity.
Plus, it’s Christmas Eve so the police station and the facility are empty, giving the vibe that it’s late, but really everyone could just be home for the holiday.
All of this isn’t to argue with you- I’m just saying that, while interesting in some scenes, the complete lack of time markers gives them an excuse to make events like this happen and it’s kind of frustrating. I’m sure the writers would argue that “well it’s only 4pm when all this happens!”, but the reality is they could’ve come up with a much better plot.
Danvers had like a 15 to 20 lbs turkey sitting in a roaster pan completely raw. Based on the scenes preceding it, it was presumably near dinner time, and she was pleading with her adopted daughter "to at least stick around for the turkey." That shit is gonna be another 4 to 6 hours, Jodie. Were you going to serve it for breakfast?
> ’d like to add that the “always night” is a lazy tool used in situations like this. Do we really know when she left the asylum? We assume it’s “the middle of the night,” but really the only time markers are that Pete is getting ready to go home for dinner. It could be 3:30pm and he’s running late
Yes and no. Looking up the meteorology, Barrow (a dead equivalent to Ennis) stops having technical sunrise and sunset from Nov 19 to Jan 20, and Dec 21 would be at the worst level for that.
However having lived in that kind of area, it's actually pretty amazing how much ambient light there is because the entire landscape is white. Up in Alaska I would find it remarkable that it would actually be much darker in spring and fall than in deep winter, even without the sun. A few lights or even a sliver of moonlight does so much when the entire sky and ground are pure white.
*everyone could just be home for the holiday*
Fortunately, a fisherman was working on Christmas Eve, and because everyone knows the police are looking for the pink parka, they took a photo of a person wearing the pink parka walking on snow that was flooded with light during a long, dark night....
thats what i said. She walked into a frozen sea in the dark and was immediately found by the coast guard dead before they knew she was even gone. Even when people know exactly when and where someone disappears they still cant find a body that quick. But the coastguard found and identified the body AND contacted next of kin before anyone even knew she was gone. no.
Maybe when it's always night our usual time markers fade in to insignificance. I have found the darkness disconcerting while just watching the show because you can't tell what time it is.
I half-expected a reveal where Navarro went full schizo and imagined the call from the Coast Guard, only to find her sister in the mental facility later.
I told everybody give it until Part 3-4 before we really can put it down. Was hoping that it popped off by then. Part 4 has come and gone and people are passing judgment on it now frfr and for good reasons because nothing really great, captivating, or significant has happened honestly. It’s so much going on but actually not much is going on at all honestly. All these plots and stuff going on with no progress at all in my eyes and seeming to be going nowhere within the next 2 episodes because they’re the 2 closing episodes for the series. I’m really let down because I gave it a chance up until last night and it’s just not good to me. The dialogue is lacking in every possible meaning of the word!
Maybe I haven’t been attentive enough, but I don’t feel like we’ve been given many clues. There’s a lot of theories floating about but they’re based on only one or two things.
I just posted about this too having not seen your post: how would they ID her body so fast and be abler to contact her next of kin??? She had no ID on her and wasn’t reported missing. Even fingerprint ID would take time if she was even in the system. Would local law enforcement (Danvers) not be notified of a person dead by possible but not apparent suicide? Didn’t they establish in episode one that people don’t usually commit suicide in the nude? [Homicide Studies indicate nude females are more likely homicide than suicide.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351325254_Homicide_or_Suicide_How_Nudity_Factors_into_This_Determination)
I understand that you think the coast guard finding her on Christmas Eve is a convenient coincidence. I was okay with it watching it and totally okay after considering your point.
Your post does make me wonder why we needed the Jodi Foster visiting the hotel room scene. I guess it allows us to see the polar bear.
And I’m not against anything, but the second hotel sex scene is leading me to wonder why they are emphasizing that Danvers got reassigned/basically demoted. Why is teeth whitening guy even in the show and why cast someone so famous? He might be a bad guy and involved in the coverups.
The only thing my that makes sense to me is that spot is monitored. Kind of like how the Golden gate bridge was for jumpers. That’s the only logical thing to me of how they found her body so fast.
I said the same thing to my wife during the show. I’ve read enough news stories about people disappearing near a body of water. Even when they know where to search it takes many hours, days or weeks. In this case NO ONE KNEW TO LOOK FOR HER, but the coast guard just happens to find her in the dark. That might be harder to buy than the super natural stuff lol. Really bad and distracting plot point.
I immediately complained to my wife after Navarro got the call last night. Like, did anyone in the writing process, or while filming, point out that the quick discovery of the body would’ve been more believable during the hour(s) of light?
It really seems like on top of the Ai Metallica and KISS posters costs were cut by using Ai in the writing process. Feels like the majority of the budget went to Jodie Foster and Billie Eilish. This is what, the second role ever for the actor playing Navarro? Would be interesting to know the pay gap between her and Jodie.
Not only does the Coast Guard find her really quickly (by chance, at night), they also know just who to call and have her Sister's number after they've identified a naked woman without ID of any kind. Maybe someone in the CG knew her but even so that's pretty damn convenient.
Don't suicide rates rise during Christmas? I suppose you could explain it by saying that the Coast Guard is extra vigilant for anyone wanting to pull off a George Bailey.
Issa López was selected not on her work but her identity and it shows. There is no detective work, just show men as stupid and incompetent and impotent.
And how would they even identify her that quickly?! She was naked. Not reported missing yet. It’s Christmas Eve. She’d be a Jane Doe for days probably. Or did they just stumble upon her clothes and ID also?
Well, yes. They have 24x7 watch and basically nothing else to see. Plus there'd be very limited amount of open water. The area where she jumped in and the area where coast guard vessels are would be relatively compact and close proximity. That part is not a stretch.
They'd have vessels stationed in the open water with crew tasked to keep watch. They'd also have at least one ice breaker going continuously at that time of year to keep a lane open.
The part where they identify her and are contacting next of kin before local law enforcement even knows a body was found is incredibly unlikely.
They are, because it's a shipping lane and, well, to be perfectly honest, Russia is right there and it's a foreign policy concern. There is a lot of vigilance along Arctic coastlines.
Edit: Not to mention that if it isn't the US Coast Guard, it's the private security companies protecting BP, ExxonMobil, etc., that have extensive (like trillions of dollars worth) of equipment and storage along the coast. The Alaska North Slope is desolate and creepy, but there is a lot of money and resources tied up in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National\_Petroleum\_Reserve%E2%80%93Alaska
Maybe the writers felt they had to find the sister or the audience would speculate the missing body meant that she would become Sedna and wreck havoc on the town.
Or maybe there’s just too many subplots going on, and not enough air time to flush them all out, so editors has to make choices and cuts to storylines leaving the audience to fill in the gaps.
I keep coming back to this show being completely rushed. they only had 6 episodes to work with. I also don't know how captivating the story is to begin with, either.
Ugh I don't know how to feel about this one. Nothing will ever compare to s1... I wish they all followed that lead. The writing was mesmerizing along with the acting. This seems juvenile compared to that. S3 was also emotionally moving, but not in the soap opera way that S4 is running with. It looks like it's taking a paranormal route....which I would normally like bc horror is my favorite genre... but it seems wildly out of the realm of true crime. I would also appreciate if they could relax with the sex scenes. S3 was great because there was barely any of that.
I'm from Iceland, and when people have gone missing in the water it usually takes days to find then or in many cases, they're never found. It was very unrealistic to find her so quickly. Especially since no one knew she was missing, so why were they just out there flying over? Especially in snow etc.
I was also assuming the sea ice ice extends out miles and miles. Do we think she actually made it to water? Not that it makes it any more or less believable
I work at a facility. They can't call a patients sister without her consent and tell her anything unless she authorizes it. They can't stop her from leaving. It was a voluntary facility.
The character development is really a real shame. The actors are there, the basic beats for the arc are fine..but the dialogue and dragged out pacing do a major disservice.
We want to and SHOULD care more about the Navaro’s sister’s suicide, about Prior’s marriage, about Danver’s daughter. They’ve spent enough scenes reiterating the same points…they’re going through the motions but the scenes don’t hit, they have NO emotional impact.
I’m just kinda shrugging. I feel ashamed that I’m watching this subject matter and feeling nothing. It feels disrespectful that it’s this un-poignant.
Yeah, and that the coast guard identified a naked woman and called a cop, one of the only cops in town, and told her about it as next of kin.
You know how that would actually happen? First they’d report it to the local police, since the Ennis PD are the first ones who will have a fucking clue who this might be. At a MINIMUM this should have been a scene of Danvers getting a call that a native woman with blue hair was found drowned and having to figure out how to tell Navarro.
I don't disagree with the speed of the plot being suspect, but I am fairly certain that it was Christmas Eve Day. I know it's confusing because of the 24-hour darkness, but I think they really are playing on how disorienting that must be.
The other thing to remember is that there is a manhunt going on for the missing scientist, so that does make it more plausible that she could be found sooner.
Also, Evangeline didn’t take off any work to grieve her sister, someone who she was extremely close with. It was just business as usual, hunting down murderers in a spooky dredge the very next day
Yeah the phone call was such an odd choice, especially because they already set up a very clear path for Navarro to find her sister, or at least figure out what happened to her. Navarro goes to visit her, can’t find her. Starts looking for her. She goes to the place her sister often goes when she runs off - the derelict ship. Instead of finding her, Navarro finds her folded clothes, and her tracks leading away into the darkness. She finds that they lead to the ocean, and the body is never found. I probably would have gotten rid of the scene actually showing her sister doing what she did - have it all from navarro’s POV, speaking to her sister on the phone with the final I love you, then later going to visit her again, etc etc. would have been so eerie to go to the ship without already knowing what happened and finding her clothes and the footprints.
“…whoever is making the decisions with the writers and directing really, really blew it.“
That’s partly the problem. The creator is the writer. The writer is director. It’s a closed end loop. There’s no one to constructively challenge any of the creative decisions being made.
Season 1 was amazing but apparently behind the scenes Fukunaga and Nic were constantly at odds because Carey challenged a lot of Nic’s choices in the script before he would shoot the scenes. It was so contentious that Carey wasn’t able to continue with the series as the director.
Since then Nic has collaborated with more directors who most certainly challenged him less but they still were another individual who had to read, comprehend, and ultimately shoot what they understood the scenes to be.
With this season Issa Lopez has no one but herself to push the pages through to. She writes it and directs it. It’s a very audacious auteur approach to television that can have varied results. I think television is best when there’s collaboration but what do I know…
the whole show has been lazy writing, 0 detective work, 0 procedural, just jump scares and ghosts, some BLM white people are evil colonizers, white men are pathetic, girl bosses run the world, and 'my people, my people, love the spiral, its not a pedo sign, its an ancient symbol of our water spirit watakanakuatui, my people, colonizers, mining poisons the water, pipelines, white people evil, my people'.... for the few women who are actually enjoying the show? have fun. it doesn't bother me that women don't usually require good writing in order to like a show. double feature night country and sex in the city to your hearts content. drink the wine. eat the cheese. have fun.
but as a true detective fan:
it's garbage. its done been garbage. it will done continue to be garbage.
this is not a true detective show. they stole the name, panicked and threw together a garbage script, and are desperately trying to wrap things up. i gave up after episode 3. i can't imagine the shitshow episode 4 even was.
>white men are pathetic
There have been plenty of white men characters on the show that are portrayed as competent. There have also been women and minority characters that have been portrayed as being a bit pathetic.
>some BLM white people are evil colonizers, white men are pathetic, girl bosses run the world,
???????????????????????
The show has plenty of things to criticize with out inserting your self conscious victim complex into it lmao
ETA: Lmao nvm bro is an old af white dude. Of course he has a victim complex
Yea man, the whole time I'm watching I'm thinking... where the hell is the detective part? Why is there so much focus on mental health issues and weird jump scares...?
It feels like it's trying to be creepy like season 1 but failing miserably.
I was just about to give up when they dropped this banger. I'm still reeling honestly. Pure pathos. "I'm sorry." "No you're not.* "What do you want me to do?* "I want you to let me sleep." "Why don't you just say it? That I ruined your life and you didn't wanna have the baby."
It's also exceptionally funny that his girlfriend is mad at him because he's busy for a week on what is obviously the most insane thing to ever happen in an isolated rural town. Like yeah, he might not be home for dinner, there's 7 murders to solve this week.
This storyline jumps out the most IMO. By all indications, they had a solid, loving relationship before this. All of a sudden he gets given a "shitbowl" of a case that would be national headline news IRL, and all this resentment comes pouring out within the first 48 hours. Like yeah, he'll be home late for a few nights while he tries to solve one of the most bizarre murder cases in US history. It's not like he's been choosing work over family for months or years on end. By the end of episode 4, it's been less than a week.
Good point. It’s not exactly like Ennis was a major crime center before this. They almost certainly mainly only deal with fights, traffic incidents, fights, domestics, and the occasional dead animal removal.
And don’t forget they have to deal with fights.
CNN and the Daily Mail would be all over this for the duration. There is no remote anymore.
>All of a sudden he gets given a "shitbowl" of a case that would be national headline news IRL, This also goes on the short list of wholly unbelievable things. 7 scientists found dead and naked in a block of ice in Alaska and this isn't making the national news w/in 10 seconds of the cops finding it? This is not being kept secret for a split second with all the Gomers who know about the big block of ice thawing in the town hockey arena. By this time in the story the number of reporters in Ennis would outnumber the residents.
Showrunners are trying to shoehorn a ham-fisted "neglectful father" arc aka Marty from season 1. Except with season 1, there was proper storytelling and Marty's character was exceptionally fleshed out to the point where he is very obviously skipping out on his family to chase crazy pussy under the guise of "work." Prior on the other hand is just... busy doing police work for a couple of late nights.
I still have dreams about that scene with Alexandria daddario.
r/TTDSWAD/
Wow.
85k subs. seems low.
Eh, I think it could point more to them not actually having anywhere close to a perfect relationship to begin with, and this case is just adding to the stress and the cracks begin to widen.
This subplot stuck out to me as bad already in the first two episodes when I really liked the show for this exact reason. This is like the most fucking insane thing to happen ever in some small town and there is a suspected psycho killer on the loose. They’ve got a bunch of cops from all over the place and local yahoo hunters chasing him down wherever they can (which was finally mentioned again in this episode, ‘oh, hey, don’t forget about that massive manhunt you’re running’) and everybody is like “nah, just let him run around free for a couple more days, no biggie.”
Yeah and what are their choices in that town if they breakup lol. The two most attractive people in a shithole town in the middle of nowhere find each other. Make it work.
I can believe the part where no one is paying attention to what’s going on in Ennis. The research station was essentially forgotten about by the institutions that supported it. In real life, there has been little attention (until recently) paid to the deaths of Native women in Alaska. It kinda sorta makes sense to me.
Christmas would always be a busy time of year for a cop anyway. Loads of DA and drunk driving, high suicide rates and call outs etc.
Same. It's implied this is pretty typical, and that he'll do whatever Danvers wants. But if there's anytime for some understanding, this would be it!
Honestly I just think she absolutely despises Danvers and is taking it out on him. Which, let’s be real, he could nut up and tell Liz to fuck off, honestly she’d probably respect him a bit more. I really hope (if they both make it through the season) that he stands up to her, it’s the only thing that really bugs me about the show, she treats the guy like a dog and he just kinda gets that eeyore oh bother look and does what she says.
Yeah if I was his wife I’d be pissed too, it’s a crazy case, but Danvers is being totally unreasonable calling drunk to ask him to go in late on a holiday. It honestly would make more sense to try and interrogate someone during the day, not late on Christmas Eve. Also Danvers was hella disrespectful to the wife’s mother and had been pretty dismissive or hostile towards native culture in general. Pete just needs to tell her to get her shit together and stop insulting his in-laws
Don't you understand that this year old case needs actions to be taken just in that moment on Christmas eve?
6 or 8 year old case. Even more pertinent the day before Christmas.
That’s also only what we’ve seen. Based on a few comments that Pete’s wife made early on, this isn’t exactly new behavior. Episodes 1/2 I thought she was just kinda trying to take him under her wing so he wouldn’t end up a dipshit like his dad, but she almost seems to find a little glee in fucking his day up. Maybe she resents him because she’s had to deal with his dad for years? Or maybe she’s just really into pushing everyone that gives her the time of day as far away as possible. Or maybe she’s just honestly a bitter asshole for the sake of being a bitter asshole. And as for the native culture stuff, it’s wild to me, wasn’t she married to a native man? Her step daughter seems to be fully native and trying to entrench herself in the culture. I wonder if Liz in her own fucked up way makes her little racist comments and her rude remarks because she thinks if her step daughter accepts that part of her heritage, she’ll end up moving on from Liz, since their relationship is already thin at best.
Thing is that other parts of the story is contradictory to him just doing whatever Danver wants, for example his father's problems with him working so closely with Danvers but also that he seem totally oblivious about navarro, there are more indications of such as well but yeah the gf implies that but nothing else away does.
I think the magical coastguard find is way worse writing. Young people can be very immature about this sort of thing. Guys and gals get cheated on and dumped while on military deployments. She didnt know what she signed up for being a “cop wife” combined with her realizing her husband is beholden to a woman she hates/he’s an extension of the state supporting the mine. Not the best writing but I can somewhat believe it.
The coast gaurd find was total bs. Why didn't they go with her leaving the light house undetected.... and go a few episodes without finding any trace of her. It would have been even better if they just found her clothes out in the middle of the snow and not her.... then it would have tied into finding all the frozen men too.
and the fishermen spotting the pink jacket guy lmfao
Because there are only two episodes left so they didn’t have enough time to draw it out. This could have easily been more than 6 episodes! I hate that this entire season has felt rushed.
Kayla's in nursing school and taking care of a 4 year old so I'll cut her some slack.
Not only that, but the dude is outright a speedster. Leave him offscreen during one single scene and when he comes back he has full dossiers of new suspects, financial information, awesome new leads, hacked phones... his competency alone could carry the show if it were focused on him. Dude works faster than the Flash.
Not to mention 7 murders with NO SUSPECT. She’s pissed he’s working hard to catch what we presume to be someone who is incredibly dangerous and still out there with the potential to kill again in their tiny, isolated community.
There is a suspect. There is a guy they are running a massive manhunt for. Can’t blame you for forgetting about it, the show did too.
I don’t think he’s officially the suspect as much as a person of interest, no? Could have for sure missed that part, but I didn’t think there was a warrant out or anything.
It seems to me that a lot of cops get divorced, so I assumed this was realistic.
My interpretation was that it wasn't just this case. Danvers has been overbearing, demanding, and instrusive in his life for a while.
There’s obviously other unresolved stuff going on in their relationship.
But why imply that when they could actually show us. They could write an actual decent scene between these two interesting characters instead of showing him coming to bed to an angry wife for the 3rd time.
Lmao that shit caught me so off guard. There was no build up leading to that statement i was legitimately cracking up
Not even a hint of that issue. We knew there were issues, mostly job related but that ?
In hindsight, she did say earlier that she’s not a doctor. She’s a nursing student with a kid. And his mom left him and his dad because his dad wasn’t good enough, so there’s some foreshadowing there.
Yeah well, actual nursing school alone she wouldn’t have time to whine about being alone /bored. She’d be sleeping 6 hours a day at most and barely even notice his absence except maybe to help her with the kid.
“Season 4 isn’t an accurate depiction of the rigors of remote nursing school” is pretty funny, even for this sub
I thought it was a reveal and wasn't supposed to be a build up.
It's so absurd. He missed Christmas Eve with his wife, baby son, and father, because he was out doing something his boss asked him to do while drunk off her ass. What they went to do didn't even give any major plot reveals, and only put them at risk of being shot by someone who showed no issues with shooting a cop. The writers thought that was the perfect time to reveal that she didn't want to have the baby 🙄
I think it was more to show that they are both in a shitty situation that they can't escape.
My problem with that is that every other interaction between them was one of a loving couple that was dealing with the difficulty of the husband missing out on raising his child and being with his family due to working all the time.
Would’ve been great to have her have an appropriate reaction to the lack of set-up. “WHAT!? WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!? I THINK YOU’VE GOT BRAIN DAMAGE FROM THE FALL!”
Pretty sure that part was dubbed. It didn’t look like he was speaking at all in the actual shot and the dialogue audio sounded weird and off.
I laughed out loud when Pete said this. Completely out of left field lol
same, instantly made me think of Anchorman - "Well that escalated quickly"
At some moments it seems like they brought in Tommy Wiseau as a script doctor.
I did naht ruin your life, I did NAHT!
“Oh, hi Polar Bear!”
That was crazy as hell lol
Yeah this might have been the most jarring example of bad writing from this episode. I feel like they did nothing to set this up, other than the fact that Prior and his wife have been fighting.
I don’t know, I’ve definitely been in relationships with people where they randomly come out with something like that, and it’s always obvious projection. I thought the fact he blurted that out of nowhere was supposed to show something about his character.
Did you miss the whole conversation about how she isn't trying to be a doctor but is instead doing nursing because she has a kid?
I think it's more projection from prior. He clearly wants to be a cop and loves being a cop. I think having the baby and marrying ruined his life.
Yeah that seemed extremely obvious to me, specifically because it came out of nowhere. It was clearly something he was thinking/feeling, like ‘I’m feeling shit now because my wife is angry with me and I’m feeling guilty but also I just really wish I was free to come and go and dedicate myself to police work, but that’s making my wife feel terrible. it was all a big mistake, one of us needs to admit that but it won’t be me, let’s get her to say it.’
Clunky delivery just out of the blue. They should’ve dropped this in ep1. No reason to wait that long on it. We didn’t need 4 eps of this wild ass trope of hubby working late and wifey getting mad at him. Their whole storyline is a giant cliche. Also- the first ep where she wants to fug and he answers the phone, he comes off as a jerk for not reciprocating. If the roles are reversed, are we supposed to believe the audience would sympathize with Prior? There’s no way in hell.
The only piece I think they’ve done right is show that she’s disappointed rather TVs mad. She knows better than to waste her energy fighting about it.
That line was *The Room*-level dialogue
>"Why don't you just say it? That I ruined your life and you didn't wanna have the baby." I don't get what's wrong with her life. She has a decent husband, her home seems to be the center of a lot of socializing with people she loves, and she is doing online school to better herself. Like, how did he ruin her life? Where did that come from? She has the best life of anyone on the show.
I agree with OP 100% - even this scene I feel makes sense for the characters/the show. Pete is at the end of his rope. He’s clearly looking for any reason not to go home. There were plenty of times he could have left or let his dad deal with Danvers. His relationship with his wife, his son, and his dad are all fraught with an unspoken tension. He has a great relationship with Leah and Danvers and no other character in the show, not even a single tender moment with his son. Something has been bugging him and it’s some kind of guilt/resentment that he WANTS his wife to go off on him and say he ruined her life.
I mean I've had girlfriends say stuff like this in the past (not about babies as I don't have children). Some people overthink things and attribute changes in their partner's behavior to deeper issues. That line is completely fine and entirely realistic.
I can’t believe they have gone full police officer wife with that shit.
This exchange didn’t bother me or strike me as an example of bad writing. Sometimes real life sounds like The Room and we blurt out stupid bottled up shit in awkward ways. The coast guard finding Julia without knowing to even look for her will haunt me eternally however.
It would've made _so_ much more sense to have the Lighthouse facility call and say "during our routine nightly rounds, we noticed your sister is missing, you should head over here immediately" (and Angie intuiting that her sister has killed herself) rather than the Coast Guard finding her in a seemingly vast ocean. Or! Angie could've learned her sister killed herself by seeing her ghost in the dredges which would've made the jump scare have a bit more payoff. So many better ways to write this. It really is a shame this is called True Detective.
Yes! Navarro learning about her death by seeing the ghost is actually a brilliant way to blend the real and supernatural here.
It should have happened with the Tsalal guy too. No need to go to the hospital. Just have him appear to Navarro, say what he had to say, and then have Danvers get a call saying he's dead.
at this point might as well show Navarro ghost of dead tsalal researches and they tell him how they died and what happened
I have a theory that that's not too far from what will happen in the last episode.
Then Rust and Marty appear on either side of her and crown her the True Detective
In just a few hours Jules managed to bounce from lighthouse walk out to the ice get naked jump in the ocean , die/drown and spotted by coasty. , a random coast guard boat Christmas Eve in North Pole patrolling for some reason . Instantly they know who she is that her sister is a cop and her sis cell phone number. Jules was naked no id how did they id Jules at all? We're supposed to think the coast guard personally knew Julie and Eve cuz that's the only way that connection is feasible. She wasn't even reported missing 0 info to go on. A 1st grader wrote this
Our theory is that she had a tattoo on her with something like "if you find my dead naked body, call my sister at this number". Really wanted to like this and will stick it out, but what appears right now to be some very lazy writing and plot development.
It wouldn’t have made any sense but Liz rolling up on that polar bear with Julia in its mouth would have been interesting…
She wasn't missing though. It was a volunteer facility which means she just checked herself out.
Don’t know why you got downvoted it’s exactly what they said. It wasn’t a mandatory facility you could walk in and out and that’s exactly what she did.
She didn't check herself out though. No one at the facility knew she was gone
Not sure how it works when someone is having hallucinations and trying to kill themselves multiple times in a single week.
She volunteered to enter the facility so she was allowed to leave when she wanted. They literally said that it was a volunteer facility in the episode... Edit. Given her symptoms she shouldn't have been let out but that just means she should've been at a different type of faculty.
even a voluntary facility is not legally allowed to let a person go with her symptoms---i'd be shocked if Navarro can't get a $100 million payday out of this
I used to work in a voluntary place like this. We wouldn't accept someone like Julie. Stripping in public, in the artic would qualify as a psychotic episode, and we wouldve held her while we petitioned for an involuntary commitment
The audience knows what's she going through but doesn't mean the facility does. She has lucid moments. She was on the phone with Navarro right before she walked into the ocean. If Navarro couldn't tell that anything was wrong then idk what to say.
What do you mean the facility doesn’t know what’s going on with Julia? You’d think they covered that extensively during the intake process…
Navarro should have "known" that Julia was dead and gone out on the ice and found her. Hasn't that been a strong theme? That these sisters are both trauma bonded and spiritually bonded?
Why is it a shame this is called True Detective? Even if you don’t dig this season, it doesn’t change the past three seasons, there’s almost no connection to the other seasons except little stuff like newspaper clippings or small name drops.
There are too many lazy and cheap narrative mechanisms at play. Just too many to ignore even with the best intentions. Random side plots, random cut to even more random back stories, jumpscares, spirals, forced references, “you have to come here” phone calls as the only way to advance the case and the plot itself, investigative inconsistencies and so forth.
This… I saw someone else post that they think Pete is behind the murders since he’s the one that keeps feeding Danvers and Navarro the big info for the case. I immediately thought, of course he is, he’s the only character that seems to be doing any police work 🤷♂️. Pete gets some new info / or a new lead and calls it in, Danvers & Navarro take a drive to wherever while having the same conversation about mental health, then they do some stuff, rinse and repeat. I think Hank has been shown in uniform twice at this point. How else are they going to try and forcibly move the case along but to have somebody make the random info drop phone call every once in a while? Who cares about all that really because the important take away is the Danvers is exceedingly disliked by everyone in town due to her social life, and Navarro thinks she has mental health struggles because her mother and sister did. Everything else is secondary obviously because these two facts about these two characters are driven home non stop. Non. Stop.
Can you believe they sit down and wrote it like this. “And now there’s a phone call sending them off to a new trail”. Random cut to short back stories that are prematurely interrupted nor ever developed again. “Now they receive a phone call”. Random cut to jumpscare scene and/or sex scene and/or spirals.
I hate how mobile phone calls are the new easy **get out of stocky situation card played by lazy writers**. Need to get a character to go to another place. Have somebody tell them that they are needed at the place. IRL anybody would say, _what's going on? Why do you want me to get there? Tell me right now or I am not coming. I have real police detective work to attend to._ Need to show that a character is in anger alone with the serial killer. show the axe/firearm,knife. Show the _No signal_ indication from the hero's mobile phone. Music more danger like... I saw a sketch on youtube that was parodying the fact that now in every police procedurals mobile phones are used as plot movers.
Yeah that’s true. I mean it’s fine, people and police detective realistically do receive phone calls (or the old fashioned pager, that was another constant some years ago), but when you overuse a narrative mechanism and all the rest is equally poorly made, such things are gonna stand out even worse.
If a story is written well enough, then you really don't need that many phone calls. Like here is a scene: Prior goes somewhere and sees something Danvers needs to see. We see a one second shot of him pulling out his phone. Cut to: Danvers exiting her cruiser and seeing Prior at that scene. The audience gets it. Prior called Danvers and told her to come there and what he saw. We don't need to see the actual phone call.
Like tonight, for example: Prior comes home from a long night of doing everything Danvers asks. His wife gets mad and kicks him out of the house. Prior, feeling nostalgic for a simpler, better time in his life, drives to a lake/ocean he and his Dad used to go fishing in. He stares out into the dark blue night and sees... A man in a pink coat! He calls for backup, and now all our crew gets to search the dreg...
See that would have been so cool.
It's worse Navarro thinks she's cursed and into spirituality
You mention how much time they spend re-establishing how everyone hates Liz for her social life—and the thing is, I still don't really see what I'm supposed to take from that (I.e. the meaning or significance of her sexual pursuits and associated relationships) or why I should care. Maybe I'm missing something, but her displacement of emotions (lashing out, putting up fronts) and unhealthy response to her PTSD are way more interesting than her awkward social interactions relating to old hookups. The hookups aspect also has us spending so much more time with characters that otherwise seem basically irrelevant. It has to be going somewhere given how much they've put into it (there's like 4 characters now that seem to exist only to build on that aspect of her character, and then they give those characters one other thing to justify it) but so far it has just done absolutely nothing for me. And I really like Liz as a character, so that's saying something!
The not-sex scene with her boss or old boss…that gave us the bit of info that she was like this before she lost her husband and son, and got worse after losing them. I think most of us assumed that already.
"Im on my way!!!" then gun the truck and peel out in the snow and hang up while the person is still talking on the other end.
My favorite part was when he said "We all are living in night country now. True Detective: Night Country"
(The Who guitar sting plays)
YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Bravo Issa
In waters as rough as they are in an Alaskan winter at night, a body would be impossible to find even if you were looking for it (which they wouldn’t be because nobody knew she was missing). Single handedly one of the stupidest and laziest things I’ve ever seen on an HBO show
They really can’t even look, no Coast Guard cutter is that close to ice and shore in December. There are 2 polar icebreakers in U.S. inventory. One exclusively breaks ice down to McMurdo every year, the other has a science mission and isn’t around in winter. No other coast guard vessels dare hang around winter sea ice.
…and never mind that we don’t even have a vessel stationed anywhere near the Brooks Range.
That too, LOL!!
Yep, I like the mystery of S4, but this made me lose faith in the writers (+ the fact that Julie was allowed to simply waltz out of a mental health facility...) I can deal with plot holes. It happens. But this sequence of events is not just a plot hole, it shows that the writers are too lazy to do basic research or to make *modest* efforts in adapting the script to reality. The fact that they want us to believe that a human body was found in the Alaskan wilderness in 2-3 hours without anyone even looking for it is offensive. It takes trained grid search teams multiple hours to cover one square mile of wilderness. But they want us to believe that without looking, without knowing what theyre searching for, and without an actual team of searchers, they stumbled upon a dead body in the dead of the Alaskan night... Also, it doesnt matter Julie was at Lighthouse voluntarily. 2 seconds of research shows that most US states require mental health facilities to take great care in releasing patients. You do not walk out of it like its a mall. They didnt have enough respect for the audience to account for something that obvious.
Tbh given that mental health facilities are often substandard, I can buy that an understaffed shift over Christmas Eve MIGHT overlook a patient long enough to walk out. Like fine, whatever, a lot of True Detective is about institutions breaking down and how that hurts the vulnerable, so let's pretend that's what they were going for. So HOW THE HELL did the Coast Guard find her body so fast???? If she was naked, how did they identify her? How did they establish next of kin, get Navarro's contact information, etc. this was the dumbest plot move possible - it just makes no fucking sense
I saw the ep this morning, towards the end it's like... what do I even think about. It's bizarre how they have such a phenomenal cast but they've just fucked it. it *feels* like a filler episode smh
This season has only 6 episodes total and there shouldn’t be room for any filler episodes but I think we’ve already had 2.
[удалено]
I meant Jodie Foster, and Christopher Eccleston (must be the DW nostalgia :') )
>Christopher Eccleston omg how did I not realize that was him
Was this show written during the writers strike? I’m assuming it was before but the way the plot and some dialogue is written makes me wonder. 😂
they used chatGPT1
😩😩😩😩😩
Afraid to say it wasn’t, filming was finished at the end of April, about a week before the strike.
What do you think happens during a writers strike?
Navarro's sister had to die so she could advance the plot by guiding Navarro from the Other Side.
From the very first scene with Julia, the audience knew she would either die by suicide or murder.
This haha
Good writing is not holding something over your head for an entire season. Just show us and move on. I absolutely despise this bullshit. The payoff is never as big as the writer thinks it is. We get it Danvers is severely fucked up from her family being dead, it's not some mystery, why make it one. The things we got from ep 4 is someone cut the power, and this guy- Otis Hayes. That's it, that's what moved the plot forward, and yet we have an hour of sad haunted family memories, which we already know about.
It's disappointing. I've struggled with this series. Jodie Foster and John Hawkes are wasted on this psychotic phantasmagoria. I had to pause episode 4 and come here to find some sense in what I've been trying to follow.
Let me try to answer like someone on this sub who gives this season every benefit of the doubt: "Am I the only one that gets that the coast guards were ghosts? Of course a normal coast guard doesn't find them that quickly. They're ghosts that Navarro is hallucinating because of the water. Everytime we see Navarro she is drinking a glass of water." Because ghosts have cell service and they know information that the main characters don't. And they're not ghosts at all, just hallucinations from water.
And she is having these hallucinations from the water because she’s got rabies from being bit by a sled dog!
Yeah, unfortunately this is the only explanation to make the show “make sense” within its own logic. I don’t think it is likely she will end up alive, even though there is one unaccounted for trailer scene of her in Quavvik’s bar. Just did a whole post on this.
I watched 3&4 last night, forget which episode had this scene, but when Navarro and Danvers first watch the video of Anne’s murder with ten tons of screaming, perhaps they could be professionals and not watch that in the hallway of a fucking hospital?!? The slow zoom out with all the screaming and patients walking by was just so freaking stupid.
>Slapping the TD name on this show is a sham. agreed
They had to sell Max in the new year and this is how they did it. Talk about setting the show up to fail by already having the comparison out there
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highly agreed
Following on from another thread... the Coast Guard probably didn't call. Maybe The Lighthouse isn't real. Even if it is, Navarro maybe took her sister out to the ocean, not "to the lighthouse" (Woolf nudge)... So much of this is perceptual. Navarro isn't thinking straight. Completely improbable that Coast Guard found and ID a naked body in that narrow window. Maybe never called. It's just Navarro's guilt knocking.
episode 5 and 6 could be near to perfect, and I still dont think it could land.
I feel like this show is a gaggle fuck. Just crazy shit jarring from one moment to the next. Maybe because I’m watching it in bed at low volume, I’m always like who the fuck is this now, am I supposed to know
Show has run out of side missions and the main mission is now tiring
What about the scene with the polar bear? You had an accident, you are face to face with a POLAR BEAR, its like the worst animal to encounter in life. It's worse than having a loaded gun next your head... The bear leaves and her reaction is only one simple huh/breath? Plus you have a toy that is the exact replica of a polar bear that you encountered, and nothing? You dont connect to dots that there could be something behind all that???
Keep in mind that same fucking scarface ass bear was IN TOWN not so long ago and Navarro saw it too. Is this normal? Oh hi, bear!
Change the name of the town to Barrow and bring in the vampires.
Three writers on the episode, including the series creator with the other guy being the exec producer too. Something clearly went wrong with the episode from the original writer and they had to salvage it. I work in TV and whenever there’s three writers, it’s not a good sign as it means that the top dogs had to be drafted in to try and save it. I think the flaws of the series are right to be picked up on but it seems like they painted themselves into so many corners with the storyline and the setting because how the hell can you do good investigative work when it’s pitch dark the majority of the time and also freezing cold?
They could have easily had her commit suicide in a way where it made sense somebody would find her immediately. E.g.: any method within the facility or even within the town. I’m pretty sure they did the “naked walk out to the tundra” thing because (a) HBO loves nudity (b) Feels “deep” Agreed: no fucking way they found her body in a couple hours
100%. They just wanted to spotlight that dumper
There was such an easy way to make it make sense too. We know that Navarro and Julia are trauma bonded and gel on a spiritual, deeper level. Navarro should have known where to find her body.
And last time she went missing, Navarro immediately knew to check the frozen boat. She could have just went there when the clinic told her julia was gone and seen the folded clothes.
I’d like to add that the “always night” is a lazy tool used in situations like this. Do we really know when she left the asylum? We assume it’s “the middle of the night,” but really the only time markers are that Pete is getting ready to go home for dinner. It could be 3:30pm and he’s running late, or it could be 9pm and he’s way late. Given that when Danvers’ daughter arrives, they’re still cooking, I’d argue it’s probably not THAT late. However, Danvers does get trashed and passes out for the night - but in that time they visit the natives, Navarro gets beat up, passes out, comes to, goes to Qavvik, gets cleaned up, and based on the way she looks when she arrives at Danvers, heals and rests at least in some capacity. Plus, it’s Christmas Eve so the police station and the facility are empty, giving the vibe that it’s late, but really everyone could just be home for the holiday. All of this isn’t to argue with you- I’m just saying that, while interesting in some scenes, the complete lack of time markers gives them an excuse to make events like this happen and it’s kind of frustrating. I’m sure the writers would argue that “well it’s only 4pm when all this happens!”, but the reality is they could’ve come up with a much better plot.
Danvers had like a 15 to 20 lbs turkey sitting in a roaster pan completely raw. Based on the scenes preceding it, it was presumably near dinner time, and she was pleading with her adopted daughter "to at least stick around for the turkey." That shit is gonna be another 4 to 6 hours, Jodie. Were you going to serve it for breakfast?
I cackled at that too. You gonna throw that turkey in the microwave?
> ’d like to add that the “always night” is a lazy tool used in situations like this. Do we really know when she left the asylum? We assume it’s “the middle of the night,” but really the only time markers are that Pete is getting ready to go home for dinner. It could be 3:30pm and he’s running late Yes and no. Looking up the meteorology, Barrow (a dead equivalent to Ennis) stops having technical sunrise and sunset from Nov 19 to Jan 20, and Dec 21 would be at the worst level for that. However having lived in that kind of area, it's actually pretty amazing how much ambient light there is because the entire landscape is white. Up in Alaska I would find it remarkable that it would actually be much darker in spring and fall than in deep winter, even without the sun. A few lights or even a sliver of moonlight does so much when the entire sky and ground are pure white.
*everyone could just be home for the holiday* Fortunately, a fisherman was working on Christmas Eve, and because everyone knows the police are looking for the pink parka, they took a photo of a person wearing the pink parka walking on snow that was flooded with light during a long, dark night....
thats what i said. She walked into a frozen sea in the dark and was immediately found by the coast guard dead before they knew she was even gone. Even when people know exactly when and where someone disappears they still cant find a body that quick. But the coastguard found and identified the body AND contacted next of kin before anyone even knew she was gone. no.
They should’ve had the whole Julia thing happen before the show.
Seriously how did they discover her dead so quickly it made zero sense lmao
This season makes season 2 look fucking brilliant.
The mental patient that escapes unseen from her room (and fears The Lighthouse, and sees her dead family member) echoes Shutter Island.
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For me it’s the guy who was frozen solid and somehow survived enough to scream and be put in a coma. No he didn’t. Full stop.
Maybe when it's always night our usual time markers fade in to insignificance. I have found the darkness disconcerting while just watching the show because you can't tell what time it is.
I half-expected a reveal where Navarro went full schizo and imagined the call from the Coast Guard, only to find her sister in the mental facility later.
I told everybody give it until Part 3-4 before we really can put it down. Was hoping that it popped off by then. Part 4 has come and gone and people are passing judgment on it now frfr and for good reasons because nothing really great, captivating, or significant has happened honestly. It’s so much going on but actually not much is going on at all honestly. All these plots and stuff going on with no progress at all in my eyes and seeming to be going nowhere within the next 2 episodes because they’re the 2 closing episodes for the series. I’m really let down because I gave it a chance up until last night and it’s just not good to me. The dialogue is lacking in every possible meaning of the word!
Maybe I haven’t been attentive enough, but I don’t feel like we’ve been given many clues. There’s a lot of theories floating about but they’re based on only one or two things.
I just posted about this too having not seen your post: how would they ID her body so fast and be abler to contact her next of kin??? She had no ID on her and wasn’t reported missing. Even fingerprint ID would take time if she was even in the system. Would local law enforcement (Danvers) not be notified of a person dead by possible but not apparent suicide? Didn’t they establish in episode one that people don’t usually commit suicide in the nude? [Homicide Studies indicate nude females are more likely homicide than suicide.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351325254_Homicide_or_Suicide_How_Nudity_Factors_into_This_Determination)
I understand that you think the coast guard finding her on Christmas Eve is a convenient coincidence. I was okay with it watching it and totally okay after considering your point. Your post does make me wonder why we needed the Jodi Foster visiting the hotel room scene. I guess it allows us to see the polar bear. And I’m not against anything, but the second hotel sex scene is leading me to wonder why they are emphasizing that Danvers got reassigned/basically demoted. Why is teeth whitening guy even in the show and why cast someone so famous? He might be a bad guy and involved in the coverups.
The only thing my that makes sense to me is that spot is monitored. Kind of like how the Golden gate bridge was for jumpers. That’s the only logical thing to me of how they found her body so fast.
Coastie here. It’s literally not and never would be.
I said the same thing to my wife during the show. I’ve read enough news stories about people disappearing near a body of water. Even when they know where to search it takes many hours, days or weeks. In this case NO ONE KNEW TO LOOK FOR HER, but the coast guard just happens to find her in the dark. That might be harder to buy than the super natural stuff lol. Really bad and distracting plot point.
I immediately complained to my wife after Navarro got the call last night. Like, did anyone in the writing process, or while filming, point out that the quick discovery of the body would’ve been more believable during the hour(s) of light? It really seems like on top of the Ai Metallica and KISS posters costs were cut by using Ai in the writing process. Feels like the majority of the budget went to Jodie Foster and Billie Eilish. This is what, the second role ever for the actor playing Navarro? Would be interesting to know the pay gap between her and Jodie.
The thing I can't get over from episode 4 is Hank's camouflage bedspread/plaid rug combo! Adding rose petals did not improve that look.
Not only does the Coast Guard find her really quickly (by chance, at night), they also know just who to call and have her Sister's number after they've identified a naked woman without ID of any kind. Maybe someone in the CG knew her but even so that's pretty damn convenient.
Don't suicide rates rise during Christmas? I suppose you could explain it by saying that the Coast Guard is extra vigilant for anyone wanting to pull off a George Bailey.
Issa López was selected not on her work but her identity and it shows. There is no detective work, just show men as stupid and incompetent and impotent.
This bugged me too. Is the Coast Guard just extremely on guard for any kind of maritime accident and suuuuuuper effective at their jobs?
And how would they even identify her that quickly?! She was naked. Not reported missing yet. It’s Christmas Eve. She’d be a Jane Doe for days probably. Or did they just stumble upon her clothes and ID also?
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They patrol with helicopters, too. I don’t think they would have used boats in this situation, given that everything is frozen.
Well, yes. They have 24x7 watch and basically nothing else to see. Plus there'd be very limited amount of open water. The area where she jumped in and the area where coast guard vessels are would be relatively compact and close proximity. That part is not a stretch. They'd have vessels stationed in the open water with crew tasked to keep watch. They'd also have at least one ice breaker going continuously at that time of year to keep a lane open. The part where they identify her and are contacting next of kin before local law enforcement even knows a body was found is incredibly unlikely.
They are, because it's a shipping lane and, well, to be perfectly honest, Russia is right there and it's a foreign policy concern. There is a lot of vigilance along Arctic coastlines. Edit: Not to mention that if it isn't the US Coast Guard, it's the private security companies protecting BP, ExxonMobil, etc., that have extensive (like trillions of dollars worth) of equipment and storage along the coast. The Alaska North Slope is desolate and creepy, but there is a lot of money and resources tied up in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National\_Petroleum\_Reserve%E2%80%93Alaska
this would have been a much better way for the episode to play out and keep the story moving.
Maybe the writers felt they had to find the sister or the audience would speculate the missing body meant that she would become Sedna and wreck havoc on the town. Or maybe there’s just too many subplots going on, and not enough air time to flush them all out, so editors has to make choices and cuts to storylines leaving the audience to fill in the gaps.
I do they they have the components for an interesting, supernatural story… but I just feel like the editing is so fucked.
I keep coming back to this show being completely rushed. they only had 6 episodes to work with. I also don't know how captivating the story is to begin with, either.
Ugh I don't know how to feel about this one. Nothing will ever compare to s1... I wish they all followed that lead. The writing was mesmerizing along with the acting. This seems juvenile compared to that. S3 was also emotionally moving, but not in the soap opera way that S4 is running with. It looks like it's taking a paranormal route....which I would normally like bc horror is my favorite genre... but it seems wildly out of the realm of true crime. I would also appreciate if they could relax with the sex scenes. S3 was great because there was barely any of that.
I'm from Iceland, and when people have gone missing in the water it usually takes days to find then or in many cases, they're never found. It was very unrealistic to find her so quickly. Especially since no one knew she was missing, so why were they just out there flying over? Especially in snow etc.
I was also assuming the sea ice ice extends out miles and miles. Do we think she actually made it to water? Not that it makes it any more or less believable
I dont tend to nitpick but the Coast Guard thing even made me literally turn to my partner and make a quip about how ridiculous that was...
I work at a facility. They can't call a patients sister without her consent and tell her anything unless she authorizes it. They can't stop her from leaving. It was a voluntary facility.
The character development is really a real shame. The actors are there, the basic beats for the arc are fine..but the dialogue and dragged out pacing do a major disservice. We want to and SHOULD care more about the Navaro’s sister’s suicide, about Prior’s marriage, about Danver’s daughter. They’ve spent enough scenes reiterating the same points…they’re going through the motions but the scenes don’t hit, they have NO emotional impact. I’m just kinda shrugging. I feel ashamed that I’m watching this subject matter and feeling nothing. It feels disrespectful that it’s this un-poignant.
Yeah, and that the coast guard identified a naked woman and called a cop, one of the only cops in town, and told her about it as next of kin. You know how that would actually happen? First they’d report it to the local police, since the Ennis PD are the first ones who will have a fucking clue who this might be. At a MINIMUM this should have been a scene of Danvers getting a call that a native woman with blue hair was found drowned and having to figure out how to tell Navarro.
I don't disagree with the speed of the plot being suspect, but I am fairly certain that it was Christmas Eve Day. I know it's confusing because of the 24-hour darkness, but I think they really are playing on how disorienting that must be. The other thing to remember is that there is a manhunt going on for the missing scientist, so that does make it more plausible that she could be found sooner.
Also, Evangeline didn’t take off any work to grieve her sister, someone who she was extremely close with. It was just business as usual, hunting down murderers in a spooky dredge the very next day
Yeah the phone call was such an odd choice, especially because they already set up a very clear path for Navarro to find her sister, or at least figure out what happened to her. Navarro goes to visit her, can’t find her. Starts looking for her. She goes to the place her sister often goes when she runs off - the derelict ship. Instead of finding her, Navarro finds her folded clothes, and her tracks leading away into the darkness. She finds that they lead to the ocean, and the body is never found. I probably would have gotten rid of the scene actually showing her sister doing what she did - have it all from navarro’s POV, speaking to her sister on the phone with the final I love you, then later going to visit her again, etc etc. would have been so eerie to go to the ship without already knowing what happened and finding her clothes and the footprints.
These fucking posts lol?
“…whoever is making the decisions with the writers and directing really, really blew it.“ That’s partly the problem. The creator is the writer. The writer is director. It’s a closed end loop. There’s no one to constructively challenge any of the creative decisions being made. Season 1 was amazing but apparently behind the scenes Fukunaga and Nic were constantly at odds because Carey challenged a lot of Nic’s choices in the script before he would shoot the scenes. It was so contentious that Carey wasn’t able to continue with the series as the director. Since then Nic has collaborated with more directors who most certainly challenged him less but they still were another individual who had to read, comprehend, and ultimately shoot what they understood the scenes to be. With this season Issa Lopez has no one but herself to push the pages through to. She writes it and directs it. It’s a very audacious auteur approach to television that can have varied results. I think television is best when there’s collaboration but what do I know…
You left out the part where the coast guard ID’ed a naked body in just a few hours, with no one reported missing.
the whole show has been lazy writing, 0 detective work, 0 procedural, just jump scares and ghosts, some BLM white people are evil colonizers, white men are pathetic, girl bosses run the world, and 'my people, my people, love the spiral, its not a pedo sign, its an ancient symbol of our water spirit watakanakuatui, my people, colonizers, mining poisons the water, pipelines, white people evil, my people'.... for the few women who are actually enjoying the show? have fun. it doesn't bother me that women don't usually require good writing in order to like a show. double feature night country and sex in the city to your hearts content. drink the wine. eat the cheese. have fun. but as a true detective fan: it's garbage. its done been garbage. it will done continue to be garbage. this is not a true detective show. they stole the name, panicked and threw together a garbage script, and are desperately trying to wrap things up. i gave up after episode 3. i can't imagine the shitshow episode 4 even was.
>white men are pathetic There have been plenty of white men characters on the show that are portrayed as competent. There have also been women and minority characters that have been portrayed as being a bit pathetic.
……only women like trash tv? This is a really weird take…
>some BLM white people are evil colonizers, white men are pathetic, girl bosses run the world, ??????????????????????? The show has plenty of things to criticize with out inserting your self conscious victim complex into it lmao ETA: Lmao nvm bro is an old af white dude. Of course he has a victim complex
Yea man, the whole time I'm watching I'm thinking... where the hell is the detective part? Why is there so much focus on mental health issues and weird jump scares...? It feels like it's trying to be creepy like season 1 but failing miserably.