‘True Detective: Night Country’ and Slippery Authority
No one is really in charge in Ennis, Alaska, and that has made all the difference.
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All TV shows are eventually The Ship of Theseus. In the beginning is a premise, and a showrunner, and a team (of writers, actors, and technicians). Over time, if the show is successful, everything slowly changes1. People leave, get replaced. Storylines end prematurely, or get sidelined for more interesting stuff. Several years in, it’s often a very different show than when it started.
True Detective debuted in 2014 with a greasy smear of old-school gothic horror coupled with some dynamite acting, both of which were potent enough to make “time is a flat circle” seem almost brilliant, for a while2. It’s a great season of television, even if it does kind of fumble the ending a bit. Ten years later3, a fourth season has appeared. Always an anthology show with a different set of characters and a different mystery each season, the fourth season is the first to not be written by and largely influenced by creator Nick Pizzolatto. While the show maintains much of the darkness and themes of the first season, at this point it’s essentially a separate creation.
The change of showrunners, the people in charge of the show, is fitting, because season four—sub-titled Night Country4 and set in an Alaskan town where they experience the Polar Night5—is low-key all about authority. More specifically, it’s low-key all about a lack of authority, which is an interesting idea to explore in a genre typically obsessed with it.
This is Gonna Be a Shit Bowl
Detective stories trade a lot in authority. Police, of course, are typically depicted as personifying it—they’re the duly-authorized agents of the law, after all, empowered to investigate, to detain, and to arrest6. Private detectives lack those powers, of course, but your prototypical detective has some kind of authority—physical, in the sense that they can control a situation by beating on it, or intellectual authority, in the sense that they’re smarter than the people around them. And often, when a detective lacks inherent authority as a character they will be paired with a member of the police or other person with explicit authority7.
In other words, whether you’re conscious of it or not, authority matters in detective stories. It has to; the whole point is to solve a crime and bring on some justice. Someone has to be able to do that.
The town of Ennis, Alaska in True Detective: Night Country sure needs someone in authority. It’s a grimy little mining town that experiences the Polar Night each year—an extended lack of sunlight caused by the tilt of the planet. Ennis is rough and impoverished, the indigenous population (the Iñupiat) aren’t exactly thriving, and the mining company seems to be poisoning the environment pretty aggressively. The scientists living at the nearby and mysterious Tsalal Research Station vanish suddenly and mysteriously, and are later found out on the ice, naked and frozen to death in an apparently voluntary manner8.
The disappearance links to an earlier crime, the violent murder of an Iñupiat woman who had led protests against the mines, which brings Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster)9, the Chief of Police in Ennis, and state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis10) together for the first time in years after a falling out back when Navarro was part of the Ennis police force.
Chief Danvers would be the obvious choice for an authority figure11. Trooper Navarro carries herself with confidence and physical authority (it’s a terrific performance from Reis). They both have badges and guns, they both should be in charge. And yet neither of them really is. The secret of True Detective: Night Country is that no one is in charge. Danvers is challenged by her subordinate, Captain Hank Prior (John Hawkes), who disrespects her at every turn. She operates largely through Prior’s son, Officer Peter Prior, who is young and pliable. Navarro’s desire to seek justice is thwarted at every turn, and her angry pleas to do something about the injustices she sees are generally ignored by everyone.
And each character repeatedly demonstrates their lack of authority. In a flashback, Navarro arrives somewhere to make an arrest, only to discover a childbirth taking place in the back room. Her authority melts away as she meekly begins to assist with the process. In another scene Navarro and Danvers arrive at a camp near Ennis to question someone about the case, and they are easily rebuffed and forced to flee without accomplishing anything. And Danvers’ attempts to control her stepdaughter Leah (Isabella LaBlanc), a person she has explicit authority over, end in failure every time. Eventually, she’s reduced to begging Leah to come home, and meets blank-faced defiance in response.
The lack of authority in Ennis isn’t just a way to underscore the “wild west” nature of this frontier town that’s barely part of the United States. It’s also a terrific writing trick, because whether you’re consciously aware of it or not this lack of authority, this lack of any character who seems to be in charge in any real way, creates a subtle sense of anxiety and fear12.
Older Than the Ice
There’s a comfort in thinking that a detective is going to crack the case. Terrible things might happen, but Sherlock Holmes or Darby Hart is going to figure it out, or Colombo is going to wear down the killer and see justice done. It’s part of what we expect from a detective story, that sense that the correct order will be asserted. Hinting that our protagonists maybe don’t have the necessaries to get the job done is a powerful storytelling choice, especially when its wielded subtly, as it is here. Both Danvers and Navarro have obvious authority in spades—except when it counts, except when they’re called on to exercise it. That undermines our faith that mysteries will be solved and justice served.
That creates a chaotic energy that serves the story well. The beauty of it is that you can still have your detective characters do all the usual detective things, you can still hit the same story beats that are expected in a detective story, but now the result can’t be anticipated. When your detectives lack authority, their chances of solving the mystery drop to 50-50 at best13. All options are on the table, and that’s a good thing from a storytelling perspective.
I know this because this is the precise energy I bring to everything in my life. I lack any kind of natural authority14—small children and cats more or less instinctively treat me like a servant—and this allows me to do random shit all the time, because no one has any expectations of me whatsoever. It’s a glorious way to live.
NEXT WEEK: Anatomy of a Fall and powerful ambiguity.
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The ultimate example: Law & Order, which I have been completely disinterested in for a record 34 years.
Almost.
TEN YEARS? Sweet baby jebus. My hair just turned white.
Do they have a character portentiously say "YOU’RE IN THE NIGHT COUNTRY, NOW!”? Yes, yes they do. Sigh.
One thing the producers manage to do perfectly is make small-town Alaskan life look absolutely miserable. I once spent an evening in Seward, Alaska in the off-season an it was terrifying. In other words: No thank you.
And who can straight up murder you and face little more than a suspension. America! What a country.
If I was a detective, I would need an imposing person to be my Watson. Otherwise every case would end with me announcing who the killer was while everyone ignored me just like they do at parties.
The “corpsesicle” that results is a terrific piece of horror imagery, especially the painterly poses given to the scientists. The image is so effective the show gets 15% less interesting the moment they cart it away.
At this point, Jodie Foster has been acting since I came into existence. She’s like the sun.
The moment you see Reis you know she was a boxer. You don’t have to be told. I would do anything this woman ordered me to without hesitation, because I know in my bones that she could beat me to death with one hand.
I enjoy Foster’s performance a lot; Danvers is a bit of a slut, but she approaches her sexual affairs with a bland disregard for shame or guilt that’s refreshing. She just wants to get laid and does not care what anyone thinks.
Similar to the fear I experience when I walk into a crowded bar and there’s no bartender in sight. WE’RE LIVING IN A SOCIETY HERE, PEOPLE!
These are the same odds as the chances of me wearing pants at any given point, which can’t be a coincidence.
I was made Senior Patrol Leader of my Boy Scout Troop when I was 14 and all you need to know about the experience is that I am still traumatized by it to this day. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to get a dozen 12-year old kids to go collect firewood and instead they tie you to a tree.
I spent an off-season weekend in ANCHORAGE (allegedly an actual city) and it was miserable. Also very dangerous. I walked out of a restaurant ten minutes before someone else walking out of the same restaurant got shot in the doorway. The next night, there was a shooting in the street outside my hotel. The NEXT night, there was a police standoff in the alley next to my hotel that I watched from my balcony. Shots were fired, but I don't think anyone got hit on this one.
Anyway, I found Night Country interesting because of the performances, production values, mood. But there were too many threads left untugged while the main plot both didn't make a whole lotta sense. You could see a better show hiding under a lot of unnecessary complexity. Oh well.
The lack of authority was an interesting choice. The lack of actual detecting by our leads was, in my opinion, far less successful.