Night Country: Part 6

"True Detective Season 4 was a letdown, especially its concluding half. What started with promise veered into drawn-out, dark, and somewhat tedious territory. The supernatural elements introduced failed to enhance the narrative, instead contributing to a sense of confusion and detachment from the core story. The final three episodes were particularly disappointing, lacking the tight pacing and engaging storytelling that defined the series' earlier success. While the series has always flirted with darkness, this season's foray felt unnecessary and unearned, leaving a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. In the end, the relief that it's over speaks volumes about its departure from what made 'True Detective' compelling."

My wife and I really enjoyed episodes 1 to 5. Great characters, great mystery. But the conclusion just felt weak. The Navarro conclusion was okay although unnecessarily ambiguous. The conclusion to the main mystery was unsatisfying. Without adding spoilers, it seemed out of the blue and unsupported by earlier episodes, the sort of ending a hack writer tosses in at the end when they have to tie things up rather than something the writers knew was the underlying solution from the beginning.

Overall, very disappointing. 7 for the Navarro ending. 3 for the main plot. 5 overall.

Loved all the characters though. Wished they had a better finale.

It is obvious that the director doesn't have much experience directing mystery/thriller work.

A good thriller not only needs a good story and characters but also a creative cinematography and a director with style and vision things that this show doesn't have.

It tries badly to imitate a bit Twin Peaks and Lost and fails miserably.

This show could have really used David Fincher, Kubric, David Lynch or John Carpenter at the helm.

There was a good story somewhere there. The script was undercooked and needed more revisions.

The story given was poorly constructed and edited.

The supernatural elements were poorly developed and displayed.

Characters were poorly developed. I did not care for any of the characters specially for the secondary ones.

This could have had been a great whodunnit mystery/supernatural/scifi/horror/thriller but it landed in amateurish hands.

Other than Jodie Foster and Finn Bennett, the show has no redeeming qualities.

We suffered through every episode with the convoluted plot and bad mysticism. Instead of telling a story, the writers took you in a multitude of directions to merely stretch out the series. It was certainly not for entertainment purposes.

It must be a huge town. When flipping between scenes occurring at the same time, it would be a terrible snowstorm in one location, but perfectly clear in another. The power would go off in part of the city, but not another parts of the city.

At least one thing became clear at the end. The polar bear gouged out his own eye after watching this series. I felt he same eay as the beat.

I had never watched True Detective before this Night Country season four campaign. It was Jodie Foster--and pretty much Jodie Foster alone--that brought me into the fold. It seems as if I stumbled into the party at exactly the wrong time.

For a very basic overview, Night Country tells the story of a mass disappearance of a group of scientists working at a research lab in Ennis, Alaska. Police chief Liz Danvers (Foster) and deputy Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) investigate the odd circumstances (a human tongue laying on the floor, for instance) and are pulled into a tangled web of intrigue both personal and mystical.

Simply put, Night Country is a rare major misfire form the HBO prestige TV department. Usually renowned for their hallowed Sunday night fare, this True Detective slate ends up an extreme disappointment. Though the production values are high enough to render each episode baseline watchable, this is a series that struggles to incubate a single coherent or interesting plot/character angle over its six episodes.

The first two installments aren't all bad--teasing an intriguing mystery and introducing all the interrelated personal connections in Ennis. But the next three episodes really go off the rails, setting up a finale that means well but by that point has lost almost all hope of mattering in any meaningful way.

The biggest problem here is that the six Night Country episodes are obscenely overstuffed--bursting at the seams with too many characters and hairpin plot zig-zags. Those impossible expectations aside, show runner Issa Lopez clearly wants Night Country to be a nuanced look at Inuit culture while also adding a mystical aspect to the proceedings. Add it all up and you get a giant mess of dead ends and false starts.

What Night Country needed was either 2-3 more episodes to let the content breathe, or a large pair of garden shears to prune away some of the storylines (however well-intentioned they might have been). As it stands, however, viewers got six episodes of irregular plot mechanics, far too many characters to handle, and a mysticism that belies the True Detective moniker. It's a shame to see such acting talent as Foster, Finn Bennett, Isabella LaBlanc, John Hawkes, and even Christopher Eccleston wasted in such a poor overall effort.