Night Country: Part 2

The central mystery is mysterious and there's enough general intrigue to keep things interesting. The season claims to be an inverted spiritual successor to Season 1. So far it isn't. It's a slickly-produced grim and dark television cop show with some possibly supernatural elements, and it's fine, but even with some callbacks and easter eggs it doesn't even belong in the same conversation as legendary Season 1.

And since the writer/director made a point of blaming the tepid audience response on a bigoted reaction to two female leads I have to ask: where are the female leads? Jodie Foster and Kali Reis are female actresses, but the two lead characters they portray are stereotypical alpha male dudebro pigs: stoic, emotionally repressed, confrontational, verbally and physically aggressive, crude, vulgar and always down for some empty fornication with whoever they can use. How can people be "review bombing" a show over its female leads when there aren't any?

The second episodes continues where the first one left off, bad acting, terrible writing, average dialogue and 50min of nothing really happening. Reis acting is awful trying to play a tough cop continuously making comments about 'white boys' just doesn't work on any level not to mention the cringeworthy sex scenes in episode 1. This whole show so far is just mediocre and nothing remotely close to the quality of season 1 & 3. I'm hoping it's improves as I unlikely to finish the season at this rate. There's some hints at a decent show in there somewhere if they can stop focusing on everything other than the main story line.

Come on in and look all you want. We'll also put this unarmed rookie police kid in charge.

Honestly, I never much thought of Jodie Foster as an actress but she's pretty dire in this even by her poor standards.

An absolutely train wreck of an anthology that has failed to recover even a slightest pulse after the jaw dropping 1st series.

The dialogue is hilarious, acting to make your eyes bleed and a drama so devoid of tension, charisma and credibility that it's enough to ruin careers.

I gave it a chance. The setting was promising, an isolated community in a sunless season in Alaska. Unexplained deaths unleash the most comical detective work on the face of the earth. Not carrying on after ep2.

Before the show runner accuses me of being a hating dude bro: I'm a woman.

I like the underlying mystery of the dead scientists but how are dancing ghosts more grounded in reality than what we've seen this episode?

Frozen bones don't just crack like that. Has nobody in the writing team ever handled frozen meat that's still attached to the bone? Sure if you flash froze it with liquid nitrogen you may make the bones brittle like that, but the temperature is apparently warm enough for the head, neck and lungs to unfreeze.

This is some real Gomu Gomu no freeze ass bs that could be in a light hearted One Piece adventure but not in True Detective.

And why is everyone so cool with seeing such a traumatic event?

Is everyone there a psychopath? That's nightmare fuel lmao.

We get so many throwaway scenes, how about one character acknowledging what they just saw. "Hey, about that human being we just saw scream like a zombie after we snapped off his hand... how are you dealing with that?"

And sure if this was a dark comedy it would work but TD season 4 takes itself very very serious.

The thing is I really like this season. I love the atmosphere, I like Jodie's role, I like the mystery. It's okay to like something but still acknowledge that it's not that good.

Everything the first episode did well, this episode did better. It's finally starting to find its identity as a season of True Detective vs some weird amalgamation of American Horror Story/Fargo. I don't mind some supernatural undertones, especially related to the culture of the Alaskan natives, but the first episode was way too blatant. This episode, (with the exception of one scene that was never referenced to again), played it more straight and realistic, which I think plays better with the show's tone.

The setting and set designs are fantastic. The barren Alaskan wilderness feels like it's own exterior force against the characters, that I hope plays a more important role as the show progresses.

Jodie Foster's acting is wonderful even when her character is written a little lazily. I like the trope of the rough seasoned cop who's seen it all, but the "know it all" aspect is overplayed. Kali Reis is also doing a great job, even though her character also seems a little one dimensional.

Lastly, I think the suspense of the show was done a little better this episode as well. The ending of this episode finally felt like an actual True Detective ending. Excited to see where this goes.