‘True Detective’ S4 E1

They talked me into trying this show again.

In this season of TV & Us, we are reviewing the latest season of HBO’s True Detective.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the first season of True Detective. I know… there’s clearly something wrong with me. Because I didn’t love the first season of the show, I had no desire to continue watching the series. But peer pressure won out.

So, we’re giving this show a whirl again with a new cast and a new mystery.

In this season of True Detective, we are transported to Ennis, Alaska, a small town that is in complete darkness at the end of the year. We are introduced to Police Chief Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Trooper Navarro (Kali Reis) as they investigate two seemingly unconnected murders. Of course, there’s some bad blood between these two, which I’m sure will be explored over the course of the remaining episodes.

This first episode does a lot of foundation-laying. We’re getting to know this small town and the residents who live there. We also get to experience the rift between the white residents and the Indigenous residents, which I’m sure will continue to be a major storyline. The show also creates intrigue around who these main characters are, what drives them, and how they've gotten to this point.

I’m not sucked into this show yet, but I am interested to see where the story takes us. There are a lot of characters in this and a lot of seemingly separate events, so I’m curious how these will all come together in the end.

Something I’ve been thinking about since watching is how women in powerful positions, such as police officers, are portrayed in TV and film. The two leads in this season are women, so I was really interested in how we’re introduced to each of them.

When we first meet Navarro, she’s responding to a call of an assault. She finds a man on the floor with a broken nose; he was hit with a bucket after assaulting another woman. Navarro asks some questions and finally gets the man to his feet. He tries to resist, but he is no match for her. She’s easily able to physically subdue him.

Navarro is powerful, tough, and no-nonsense. We like that in our TV cops.

Then we meet Chief Danvers. She’s responding to a call at a research station where the entire crew seems to have disappeared. There are two other male officers already on the scene when she arrives.

She immediately tears through the building seeking to stop the music that is blaring from the TV. Despite protests from a young officer that there’s no remote, she continues undeterred and ends up finding the secret compartment in order to turn off the movie.

Next, she begins searching through the research station. She’s looking for any clues about what happened to the people living and working there. Though her officers have made some assumptions about what happened there, she has another theory — she’s picked up on some clues that they have missed. And she’s unafraid to tell them when they’re wrong.

Danvers is intelligent, witty, and has a keen eye. She’s direct and has no problem being in charge. We like that in our TV cops.

In these introductions to these female police officers, we learn a lot about them, including that they are good at their jobs. This foundation is absolutely necessary if we’re going to go on this journey with them. If they weren’t competent, we wouldn’t want to watch anymore.

Right off the bat, this show is telling us that they are worth our time. These are the types of cops that we like to see on TV.

True Detective has returned with a new story taking place in a remote location in Alaska. The residents in Ennis are living in perpetual night and dealing with the strange happenings that occur during that time. This show introduces us to an interesting group of characters who are tasked with solving a real mystery.

We’ll see if they are up to the task.

Listen to our review of True Detective Season Four wherever you get your podcasts!

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