True Detective: Night Country S4E2 “Part 2” — Post-Episode Discussion Thread — Dibs Texts

We’ve often finished an episode of television and looked for a discussion thread online, only to be disappointed. Either no such thread exists, or all the oxygen is taken by puns and references that have been posted a thousand times. We wanted to be able to have some good jokes, some good analysis, and some good times.

That’s why we decided to take matters into our own hands (not unlike a hardened detective trying to crack a spooky case) and create the discussion threads we want to see in the world. So we asked writers, comedians, and filmmakers to hang out for a bit after an episode and make our own comment section. Welcome to the Dibs Texts Post-Episode Discussion Thread for True Detective: Night Country EPISODE TWO!

All the news on this site is “real,” but this stuff is really real. SPOILERS AHEAD.

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• Danvers just told this kid to ask questions and he said “I think it was a polar bear”
  • “keep asking questions.” “who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”
    • “wrong question.” “when… did someone live in a pineapple” (danvers points knowingly)

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• hmm, i thought that guy was frozen? maybe i missed something. it seemed like he was frozen and dead though.
  • it appeared that way to me as well phil

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• let me be the first to say that i am deeply disturbed by the amount of yeti denialism that we saw on display this episode
  • definitely one of the top 2 kinds of bigotry we saw exhibited by chief danvers
    • and yet she fully understands the difference between British and Irish people
      • the three types of white people: British, Irish, abominable snowman

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• let me be the second to say that it’s weird that dude jerked off in his bathtub
  • he seemingly made a whole damn bubble bath too. qavvik was having a self care night
  • imagine you’re settling in with a comfy bath and a wank. and then boom: you’re getting roasted by a cop
  • i think into a full bathtub is one of the top 5 most irresponsible places to jerk off. i’ll list the other 4 in a second here
  • did anyone else notice his cum floating around in the bathtub formed a spiral?

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• Quick inventory of S1 references: so far I’ve got; the spiral tattoo, Travis is somehow related to Rust Cohle (McConaughey’s character), and the company funding tsalal is owned by the Tuttles who were the family behind the cult in S1
  • how is Travis related to Rust? I missed that
    • They didn’t tell us how, they just have the same last name
      • oh that’s interesting
  • Re the Tuttles; from what I remember they were an influential and corrupt family (one of them was a Senator?) and though everything with the cult was kept (intentionally) vague, there was some sort of ritualistic sexual abuse of children. The deliberately unsatisfying end of season one is that even though they catch the killer they were looking for, they aren’t really able to touch this much bigger darker thing
  • also “we thought an anthology would be best to start with, to make sure people don’t need to do any homework”

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• So, as a person new to True Detective, how far off the rails does this show typically go? Is it like “we pulled the mask off and it was mr. ___ trying to pull a scheme” or does it always get supernatural
  • Season one plays with some supernatural iconography/vibes, but is not actually supernatural

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• I feel like it was a mistake to show that woman in episode one seeing Travis as a ghost. I think I’d be enjoying the mystery of the show a lot more if it was left ambiguous rn as to whether or not people in this town are genuinely seeing ghosts. because this episode alludes to that a lot, but it feels a bit silly when we all know people can genuinely see ghosts, they give helpful little hints, and they do stupid little dances. and maybe it will be revealed later or questioned if that really happened or was in her head – and I guess I kind of hope so. but 1/3rd into the show, i am kinda wishing it was more up in the air, personally
  • i guess the question on that is whether she’s hallucinating, but she got too specific and valuable information for it to be completely fake
  • I think it’s probably to set up something with the native cop’s sister. Since we know that ghosts are actually real but also so is just schizophrenia. I’m sure they’ll give her some important piece of information that either we as teh audience knows is real, but Danvers doesn’t trust.
    • maybe it will be a huge 180 and i will look like a FOOL
  • i feel like the first season did that too, albeit to a more subtle degree. there’s that moment when McConaughey’s character is looking at a flock of birds swarming and they suddenly make the shape of a skull. it’s sort of implied that because he’s the more mystical/spiritual type of the two detective, maybe he was more likely to interpret stuff like that, and the audience was just seeing it from his perspective?
    • i think it’s also kinda implied that mcconaughey’s character is like drunk out of his mind the whole show lol
  • Also like Danvers clearly distrusts natives “silly doodles” “spirit animal in a dream”
  • i may be reading too much into this, but it does feel weird for Rose, a (i believe?) white person, to be like “yes i can commune with spirits” but when a native person is seeing them, she goes “eh yeah sounds like mental illness”
    • I clocked that too
    • that’s a good call
    • I believe Rose also said something about the fabric of the world coming apart at the seams in Ennis and that people see ghosts there often. There’s actually a lot in the scene
      • the vending machine guy also implied that people in Ennis see ghosts all the time. i just think it would be more interesting if the Rose ghost scene didn’t happen or was more ambiguous up top, but i guess we will see how it unfolds

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• so, at the start of the episode, they mention that one or more of the corpses had burned corneas. burned corneas can be caused by prolonged exposure to snow and wind, but it can also be caused by sudden bright flashes. in the video on that guy’s phone of Clark shakin in the station, the video ended with a super bright flash of light off camera

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• i felt like the direction for some of the investigation was particularly disjointed– i was confused why they brought a character named claire in specifically to say “no, i dont recognize that symbol” and walk off screen, but it seemed afterwards like they were trying to show how most things end up as dead ends. it felt a little pointless and stupid and then when i realized it felt pointless and stupid kind of front-and-center, it changed how i felt about it
  • yeah parts of this episode felt like law and order. i would have liked fewer police work scenes and more long shots of the ice at night. and rose smoking and saying odd shit
  • They did the aaron sorkin walk and talk
  • it is extremely funny that people don’t know what spirals are in this show. if someone showed me a spiral and asked if i knew what it was, i’d be like “yea that’s a spiral” lol
    • yeah a little of that stuff goes a long way. the more you show the spiral the less important it feels
      • it just becomes “oh shit it’s another one”

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• Some funny needle drops in this one. “Little Saint Nick” was really great. I forgot this was a Christmas show! I also saw The Holdovers today so it’s been a big day of Christmas Content
  • True Detective Season 4 Is A Christmas Show
    • THANK you

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• i do think it was interesting that chief danvers, after being wildly racist about native culture, goes home and goes “help me put up this stupid fucking christmas tree” – showing that it’s not out of some pride, she doesn’t even like celebrating the culture she in theory subscribes to.
  • also, i think that the recent racism is probably going to be tied to whatever happened to her husband. i think the hints about her being happy, fun, loving, etc. are trying to paint a lot of this as a recent development. and i wonder if she’s aware of (or perhaps even somehow complicit in?) some anti-native power that she’s trying to, very crudely, “protect” her daughter from by forcing her to hide her culture
    • I think you’re right. They’re also setting up the tensions in town that might connect to, or at least contextualize that

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• sadly i was correct about this in the prediction thread
  • honestly i am starting to wonder if the toothbrush is going to end up being important somehow
    • He still needs it!
      • it’s disguised as a “bit” but it keeps coming up

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• (danvers reads the captain an excerpt from the police practices binder)
  captain: sure. but nothing in the rulebook says a dog cant exhume frozen corpses

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• DIBS NEXT FACT CHECK: it is apparently true (according to me googling right now) that russian people DO wear their wedding ring on their right hand. TIL
  • yes they do!
  • I also googled this

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• damn that email that peter sent danvers with that pdf had phishing scam written all over it. it would be easy as shit to scam the ennis police department
  • one of them is literally being scammed by a fake russian bride lol
    • the main message of this show, and the news at large, is that the police are really fuckin dumb
    • the big twist of the season is that the russian bride is the person theyre all talking about. “she’s here”
      • hahahahah
      • and she’ll be wearing the ring on her RIGHT FINGER

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• Why did the tattoo shop still have that reference photo lmao. Incredibly important piece of evidence being given through a tattoo artist who keeps an neat catalogue to send to any asker (i have no tattoos, maybe this is how that works)
  • she also was like “LADY? ARE YOU THERE?” soooo fast lol

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• It was really funny when Navarro HAD to call her sister to let her know “Wannabe” by Spice Girls was on the radio. How often does that happen? Ten, twenty times a day?

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• for anyone reading this, in the rural US a tattoo that size would not cost you $600. if the shop quotes that much they’re fleecing you. that was $450 tops’
  • maybe they’re paying for discretion. in which case they got even MORE scammed
    • i tried that when i got my pregnant sonic back piece and let me tell you it doesn’t work
  • maybe that’s why he cried after!
  • i think true detective is weighing in on the controversial issue of inflation

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• very small thing: i would have ended the episode with the shot of the ram’s head and the crow hanging on the wall, instead of ending with a character saying “he’s alive”

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• okay, so, wait, the guy who was frozen and had his arm broken off and started screaming got sent to the hospital and put into an induced coma? that’s what that scene was saying? i completely missed that
  • Yeah he’s alive
  • I totally missed this too
  • i thought they said he ran off?
  • nah, it was broken up by the credits, but i went back and checked, and it is at least heavily implied that the guy whose arm got broken off was alive. after the credit sequence, it cuts to danver in the school on the phone. a woman on the phone says “it’s bad, they’ll have to amputate at least one leg” and also mentions he’s in a medical coma
    • That exposition comes out in a phone call so it was a little easy to lose track of. But that’s all 8 scientists, right? The 6 in the ice, the 1 in the hospital and then Clark

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• the Danvers sex scene in this episode was like MacGruber level lol. it’s also the second episode in a row where the woman having sex angrily yells at the guy to keep going. i will be keeping track to see if this happens in episode 3!
  • This is Issa López’s directorial signature
  • dude i was gonna say this, the sex in this show is played for laughs. season 1 had legit sex scenes. people were fuckin. it takes a certain amount of bravery to do a sex scene that’s not funny because you risk being cringe
    • Alexandra Daddario’s boobs became iconic because of true detective season 1 (this is a joke, no one read this as genuine)
      
  • i hope this happens to a new character every episode. i won’t rest unitl the awful cop dad has been told to keep going

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• Navarro throwing the cross out the window was a HUGE MISTAKE bc now she no longer has the Lord’s power on her side. I assume this show is about how being Christian is the only way to fight Ice Demons, right?
  • it’s actually based on a novel by Dan Brown so you’re pretty close
    • the only cross that’s safe to throw is the boomerang one from Castlevania that comes back to you. which would also probably be helpful against the ice demons
      • it comes back to you in three days
      • in the middle of the season, ennis is going to flip upside down and reveal another whole ass town below it
        • ………..i would actually like that i think
  • jokes aside, do we think this meant anything more than throwing away that memory?
    • it definitely looked like Symbolism but it’s not like Navarro is christian or anything. it could just be her throwing away that bad memory? or tossing behind the culture of the white people she’s struggling with?
    • i think a lot of s1 dealt with struggling with the loss of christian faith, and i’m not sure they’d want to retread that?
    • It was weird that the cross was so important to her / associated with a core memory but she just found it on the floor of her car? I was like where did that come from lol
      • also you shouldn’t text and drive
      • that feels very true detective to me. like “how did that get there? was it even actually really there at all?”
        • Ahh true, I like that

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• Also lmao, did everyone at the science frathouse know that Clark was just a massive ethereal liability keeping bones in a trailer?

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• love the tsundere ass vibe going on with navarro and danvers. they are antagonistic as shit but then the scene where danvers is helping navarro put away her groceries is this fun peek into their relationship. i don’t think i used tsundere completely right there but i’m keeping it
  • i agree that True Detective Season 4 is an anime
    • truwu detective

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• how do we feel about “shitbowl” as a word? i feel like we all know someone who tried to invent a word and make it their “thing” and it’s always bad. shitbowl is a terrible one. it makes me think of Lahey in Trailer Park Boys or something
  • the charmin ultra soft shit bowl
  • Don’t love it.
  • It’s like the opposite of “cellar door” in donnie darko
  • also, i dont think it’s descriptive of the thing. sure, a shitbowl isnt great, but at least it’s contained. it’s in the bowl!
  • it would have been better if a character interrupted like “i’m sorry did you just say … shitbowl”
    • Yeah but instead the second time someone else said it! It’s catching on!!!
  • Well, shitbowl is apparently her thing. Shitbowl danvers
  • walk me through what you mean when you say “shitbowl”
    • “is it a bowl of shit? or is it like a bread bowl? and there’s, i dunno, soup? inside a bowl made of shit?”
      • it’s not like it’s less vulgar than shitstorm. and it’s not worse. so why would you say shitbowl

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• favorite little detectivey moment was when the Boy Cop used the dead guy’s face to open up his phone
  • but admittedly, i would hate it so much if karaoke was the last thing i did before i died
  • I liked the sequence when the kid was asking questions on the hockey bleachers. Especially when he was like “Well, if they drew the symbol on his forehead before they went outside, it could have just been a prank.” Would be funny if that just ended up being right
    • the whole show is just a prank. it’s a scathing indictment of youtube culture
      • the killer is a fictional version of Mr Beast making a video called like I LEFT THESE 8 SCIENTISTS OUT IN THE COLD WITH NO CLOTHES ON AND SAW HOW LONG IT TOOK THEM TO DIE
        • I would love that

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• the line from Rose about the world getting “old” feels like the center of something here — so far there’s a lot of decay, and a lot of talk about poison, microbes, ice thawing etc.
  • yeah i think that it feels very likely that line is going to summarize the events of the season, which kind of lines up with jeremy’s earlier comment about her actually seeing the dead. i feel like it does kind of frame everything in a way that takes Some of the mystery out of it. i am still on board and enjoying it, though
    • i don’t mind when true detective is really heavy with the theme and imagery instead of trying to have a clever plot, almost more like a western than a crime story
    • i mean, don’t forget that The Thing is listed as a massive inspiration for this season, so there’s definitely that angle of them drilling some Bad Stuff™️ out of the ice that could be causing all of this
      • it makes me think about that movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. beasts coming out of the melting ice
      • also, in clark’s journal, there was that page where he’d drawn two black dots with circles around them (like an ice layer map thingy? or dare i say…..a spiral???) with the words “her eyes are cores” or “the cores are her eyes” so i am prepared for it to be a mix of both! or just yeti shit giving clark brain worms

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• glad we got to see a frozen penis this episode. that’s the power of HBO
  • arctic tomato boys
  • Human Bone Observing
    • Hung Boner On-ice
  • i think you mean the power of Max

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• any comments on performances in particular? i thought everyone was very solid, but i didn’t have any absolute wow moments
  • the kid building the lego house
  • when Hank hit his kid in that one scene, it made me realize how similar they look. very good casting there
  • i feel like there’s a slight hamminess to the whole thing. like everybody is sort of smirky about it
  • i think everyone is pretty solid this season, but no one is really hitting the heights of the main duo in season one. but that’s a very high bar
    • yeah nobody is really “going for it” but i also think that’s kind of true of the writing. the first season had a ton of one actor in a room saying weird abstract shit
      • yeah, i don’t think there’s really been an opportunity to make big moves aside from maybe fiona shaw who has impressed me. again though it’s just really competent work, not so much a “damn VERY nice”
      • it’s always gonna be hard to compete with season one, considering that Pizzolatto spent nearly a decade working on it and trying to get it made and then every other season is like “what else could happen with detectives and culty kinda stuff?” classic sophomore slump stuff, although i’m definitely enjoying this season so far
  • all solid performances, and eccleston is crushing the american accent. had sort of a boston thing going on which was great if on purpose!
  • I thought the work between Leah and Peter at the hockey rink was nice; it felt very easy and lived in
    • true that was very good! and i think it works really well for those two characters as well because they don’t have any of that with danvers despite her being both of their mothers (whether literally or cop momma)

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• I feel like Peter’s dad is going to function like the older boy bully in a Stephen King novel. Not central to the plot, just like, around, causing problems
  • yeah just there when they need a useful idiot to do something

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• it seems like a mistake that the Chris Rock ‘Saw’ movie about spirals isn’t somehow a True Detective. but also i haven’t seen it! so maybe it is!
  • it’s the same universe but everyone has seen a spiral so they don’t care about it. and look what happens then!
    • what a disaster

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• overall this episode had a lot of plot, and that can be cool, but i think true detective is special when it has deliberate pacing and a lot of imagery — which felt more true of episode 1 last week
  • agreed
  • the landscape shots kept getting cut short this week and i felt cheated. let me look at a lone building in a sea of black ice for a few moments please
    • yes because “ice” ….. is half of “police” 🤔

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• so i guess the one-eyed polar bear just was watching some movies or something this episode
  • they were jerking off in their own bathtub offscreen
  • he got stuck somewhere. he has terrible depth perception
  • this is gonna be like The Bear where they give you a little bit of bear and then no more

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• i liked the poster the miner guy had that just said METAL on it. it reminded me of Buscemi’s shirt in the famous “how do you do, fellow kids?” joke from 30 Rock
  • I think the other poster was a k-pop group, I was trying to google it. Great set design all around
  • the other side of the poster said LICA
    • did it actually?? i thought it just said METAL on it lol
      • no im just making a joke. for our comedy website hahaha
        • oh ok lol i thought i was just very dumb. i literally googled “LICA METAL” trying to figure out what u meant before realizing
          • lica deez nuts
            • nooooooo
              • you got got
              • rekt
              • every one of these Discussion Threads is gonna end with me getting owned, huh?

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That’s it! Thank you for hanging out with us while we discussed episode two of True Detective: Night Country. Check in with us next week to read our discussion on episode three. Click here for the rest of our True Detective discussion threads. Feel free to drop a comment below to keep the convo going!

Participants:

• Kevin Flynn, he/him, Writer (Hard Drive, The Onion)
  
• Anica, they/she, Comedian and TTRPG performer
• Christine Nyland, she/her, Filmmaker (Summoners, Distress Signals, An Unquiet Grave)
• Andy Holt, he/him, Writer (Hard Drive)
• Christian Divyne, he/him, Internet personality
• Phil Jamesson, he/him, Writer (Dibs Next Co-Creator)
  
• Jeremy Kaplowitz, he/him, Writer (Dibs Next Co-Creator)