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Notes -
True Detective Night Country
There is a culture war internet discourse happening around HBO’s newest show True Detective Night Country. The discourse can generally be summed up as follows: HBO newest show TD Night Country is the 4th season of an anthology mystery/crime miniseries. The first season came out ten years ago and it starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two detectives searching for a killer in Louisiana. The plot does not particularly matter, but the show is widely viewed as one of the greatest single seasons of TV ever. Speaking for myself, I agree with this assessment. I return to it every few years and I am still impressed at how good the acting, story, and cinematography are.
Fast forward ten years…two mediocre seasons (2 and 3) were released, and HBO announced the release of True Detective Season 4, co-named Night Country. Season 4 stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as two detectives unravelling a murder mystery in Alaska and people were very, very excited for this season. Prior to release, Night Country received overwhelming critical reception from TV critics. It currently has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score (RT can be gamed, but the 93% score shows the general reception).
I was also very excited for this show. Critics were calling it the best season of True Detective since season 1; some were even saying it was better than season 1. With these very lofty expectations, I watched the show as it was released, week by week.
By episode two, I knew this show had problems. By episode four, I knew it just wasn’t very good. By episodes 5 and 6, I was hate watching. Many people have reviewed and discussed the show’s problems much more eloquently than I. This video is quite good and sums up the many many problems the show has:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y2TCOd_YZF4
What I will say is that the show is simply…boring. It is a six-hour miniseries and at least 70% of the show is filled with boring relationship drama (the remaining 30% being focused on the actual…criminal investigation). The characters are uninteresting, low stakes, and unlikeable. The easter eggs paying homage to season 1 are like a frying pan to the face in their obviousness. The story carries no emotional weight, has major plot holes, and the ending is unsatisfying and bewildering. It’s bad. I would not recommend this show to anyone.
Now here is where the culture war comes into play. Online, fans of the True Detective series are panning the series. Go check out the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it is a paltry 61%. The True Detective subreddit is especially critical of the show. People are especially disappointed and confused given how critically hyped it was before its release.
But what has happened is that many critics, podcasters, even Issa Lopez, the director, are blaming the backlash on sexism and misogyny. They say that male fanboys of season 1 are brigading review sites and review bombing the show. They are saying that the viewers dislike the show because it features two women lead detectives and that viewers can’t stand the lack of masculinity that was so integral to season 1. Even the professional critics who have dared to post their negative opinions on Twitter are being called misogynistic.
The problem with this read is that…the show sucks. It’s just not good for all of the reasons I’ve listed above. It’s extremely frustrating to see people called misogynistic and “anti-woke” for criticizing a show with two women leads. I find it particularly unfair because other detective shows with women leads, such as Mare of Eastown or Sharp Objects, were fantastic. It didn’t receive the critical backlash because those shows were actually good. We now exist in a bizarre universe where a magazine like Rolling Stone overwhelmingly praises the show while a magazine like Forbes pans it.
I’m not one who normally gets involved in the culture war, but I found this discourse particularly egregious. I don’t know what the future of this series holds, but I’m hoping someone at HBO sees the light.
Update: Issa Lopez has been hired to write and direct season 5 of True Detective. Whoosh.
Issa Lopez is a telenovella writer. She just (obviously) doesn’t have the skills to take on a show like this.
Hiding behind “that’s sexist!” makes the problem of sexism worse, since it means we are to believe that this is what a top tier female writer is capable of producing.
I think something that needs to happen for stories like this to be taken seriously is that they need to be more realistic about the shortcomings of the characters. For instance: one of the opening scenes is a female cop absolutely [wo]man-handling a guy twice her size. This scene plays a lot better if she tries to [wo]man-handle this guy, and gets the shit beaten out of her for it. It establishes this character as arrogant (which she is) and humanizes her. We should see multiple instances of these two lady-cops being unable physically interact with the criminals they are supposed to be policing. Maybe at some point they can play this to their advantage somehow.
There is also a weird culture war happening right now where suicide is being presented as hip and cool. This is a serious problem. I have a teenage niece who has had multiple friends kill themselves. This is obviously happening in Canada with the bizarre commercials for their suicide program, and then the end of this show one of the main characters killing herself (seemingly out of nowhere) as a means of "closure" or something? Ridiculous and actually bad for society.
Is there a scene of a heroine getting manhandled in a fight, anywhere? I can't think of this happening in media at all. It's all Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black Widow, Peggy Carter, Emma Blunt, Rey... Probably there is stuff that I can't think of. Edit: replies show I haven't watched many recent action films.
I recall there was a backlash when the advertising for X-men Apocalpyse had Jennifer Lawrence getting manhandled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_Apocalypse#Billboard_controversy
I made this point before, but I think people truly underestimate how utterly brainwashed people can be by media.
As a non-culture war example that I've given before, I play a game called Commands & Colors: Ancients. It's a tactical dudes on a map game that has a bunch of Roman battles you can simulate. And it has cavalry. But these aren't armored knights, they are just dudes on horses. They are squishy, don't hit that hard, and mostly only useful for flanking or chasing down weakened units. If you try to form a wedge with them and ride right into the enemy's center with them like you see in movies, they will all die, and you will lose. Badly.
I played probably 50 games in a row with a guy who did that every single time. And no matter how many times I explained to him these aren't armored knights, these are just dudes on horses that predate that by about 1000 years, it never stuck. He couldn't stop thinking in terms of what he saw in movies. It had monopolized his brain, with it's rich sensory experience, in a way 50 less visceral personal experiences on a board couldn't displace.
Likewise, the US public at large has been brainwashed by decades of Hollywood action girlbosses, and nothing but. I honestly believe this is where all the confusion about men playing in women's sports is coming from. Forget all the scientific facts about male puberty changes versus female puberty changes, and documented physical advantages in nearly every measurable physical attribute, be it strength, reaction time, depth perception, you name it. Forget the fact that every 4 years in the Olympics you see the men's divisions regularly annihilate the women's divisions if you compared them apples to apples. 30 years of Hollywood girlboss action movies renders all that moot in the minds of most. The Olympics doesn't have a badass soundtrack, and dozens of camera angles edited together with just the right amount of CGI to saturate your brain in dopamine. So most people in their heart of hearts believe women can easily beat up men, or that men might be a little stronger.
The average MSNBC consuming normie probably has beliefs not that different from when Adam Conover beclowned himself on Joe Rogan arguing about how sports were sexist if men outperformed women in them.
You mean in a medium where: people have fantastical powers; get up after taking ridiculous beatings; fights that are choreographed in the heroes favour, women can be given unrealistic advantages? Yes. Is it part of a concerted effort? Yes it is; just the same as how media was criticised and influenced under previous cultural censorship. Even under that previous censorship, it came out through pushing women into roles and different ethnicities into new roles and criticising it when done badly. The status-quo has been feminism and women's equality for a few decades now. We got Black presidents in movies, many many times, before we saw Obama became president, and a woman president is just a matter of time now as well. A group of people thought that society would be better if women were more equal and ethnicities like Black Americans can have equal rights and opportunities with the rest of the population, and influence on the media was an important tool in making that happen.
The ironic part of the cultural control is that we project present values back into depictions of the past as well. It leads people to think that people in the past behaved within current cultural frameworks. This seems to create a perception erasor for the people in the present whose main context with the past is through that same media. Most people only really understand concepts like ancient rome through the lens of movies and television shows, maybe a few documentaries if they are more inclined. Shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation were epically popular at the time, but the values explicit to that show are normalised for today's audience. The same perception that caused the opponents to run their 'knights' head first into your troops is the same impulse that sees women as being equal by default. The sad part though is that with the abundance of dopamine hits, in our 'brave new world', people can pick the drug of their choice, or their entire perspective of how the world is.
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