‘True Detective’ S4 E3

More quality time with the detectives in Ennis, Alaska.

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

Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Navarro (Kali Reis) begin working together, searching for clues to solve the murders of Annie K (Nivi Pedersen) and the men at the Tsalal Research Station.

I will be honest that I’m not really enjoying this season so far, but I’m still trying to keep an open mind about it. I’m somewhat torn on this particular episode. There are elements that I really enjoyed and others that I thought weren’t executed as well. There was a moment about halfway through when I wondered if this could be the episode that turned this season around for me.

It’s not.

Let’s get into the episode!

One of my favorite parts of this episode is that we get to see more about who Navarro is. She’s introduced to us as this incredibly tough and powerful cop. We see her mostly policing alone, reinforcing this idea that she’s a loner and maybe doesn’t have that much community around her.

Over these episodes, we’ve seen her interact with those she cares about, like her sister Julia (Aka Niviâna) and Qavvik (Joel Montgrand). We see a softer side of Trooper Navarro — there are layers to her that are a joy to peel back to see what we discover.

In this episode, she has a conversation with Qavvik where she discloses more about her family. She shares about her abusive father and her mentally unwell mother, who was murdered, and the killer was never found. Navarro’s passion for finding justice for the Indigenous women in her community makes a lot more sense.

We also learn that she never learned her Iñupiaq name, which is a source of additional pain for her. This reinforces the distance that Navarro seems to maintain with everyone around her. She seems to be stuck between two worlds — unable to connect fully with the other Indigenous people in the community, but too Indigenous to be fully accepted by the white residents.

There are so many good character moments with Navarro. She’s a character that you want to root for.

The other element of this episode that I really enjoyed was learning more about the town of Ennis. The episode opens with Annie K and a group of other women helping to deliver a baby. This episode really effectively shines a light on the high infant mortality rate among the Indigenous population in Alaska, which is an important and overlooked statistic.

I really appreciate how this show is not just trying to entertain us with an interesting case but is highlighting inequities that populations such as the Iñupiaq face. When Indigenous women are murdered, the cases are less likely to be solved. Infant mortality rates are much higher than that of white infants. There are also inequities in the use of land and the ways that the land is being exploited by various corporations.

There are so many good themes in this show related to the town. I’m looking forward to seeing more of that.

Sadly, I don’t think that everything landed incredibly well in this episode. I think there are some elements that leave something to be desired.

One of my biggest complaints about this season is that Danvers just isn’t very likable. If I had met her in real life, I would run in the opposite direction. She is the type of toxic personality that I want nothing to do with, which is making it difficult for me to continue watching this show.

In this episode, we see a different side of her that we haven’t seen before. When Navarro is interrogating a woman, her young daughter comes and interrupts. Instead of scolding the child or being a bully (like how we’ve seen her interact with pretty much everyone else in the show), Danvers connects with this child. We see a tender and kind side to Liz.

While this was nice, it feels so incongruous with everything else we’ve seen from her. For me, this was too little too late. I needed to see a scene like this in the previous two episodes.

This tender interaction with this child is also a one-off. Most of the time, we see Danvers bullying or manipulating someone. She’s continuing to break boundaries (even the law) and be a generally mean person.

I’m so confused by the writing of Danvers. It’s an intentional choice to make her this unlikable, and I’m just not sure why the writers have done this. Maybe her demeanor will make sense at some point, but right now, she’s just a bully that I don’t want to be around.

I am, sadly, not enjoying this season of True Detective as much as so many others are. While I do think there are good elements here, they’re just not working together as well as I would expect them to.

Part of me wonders if the writers just don’t trust the audience to remember certain things. In the previous episode, there was a lot of mention of connections to the first season of True Detective, but none in the first or third episodes. Similarly, this episode is heavily focused on Navarro and her Iñupiaq name, something that hadn’t been mentioned previously.

I think if some of these pieces of information were spread out over multiple episodes, it would be more impactful than jam-packing them into one. We are smart and will remember things that are important, even from week to week. Those set-ups and pay-offs are really important and I wish that there was more of that in this season.

Maybe things will start looking up in the last few episodes. We’ll see.

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

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