True Detective: Night Country is slowly starting to thaw its icy mystery
The central mystery in True Detective: Night Country seems easy when the credits roll on episode 1. It’s not that viewers already have the answer, but it at least feels like we can see all the puzzle pieces in front of us. That is, until episode 2. The second, even better episode of Night Country deepens the season’s central mystery with clever world-building and the most disgusting and disturbing ice sculpture on television.
If True Detective: Night Country is about anything so far, it’s about Ennis. More than a little town in Alaska with the nighttime that lasts days, Ennis is a place that’s simultaneously peaceful and terrifying. Rose’s (Fiona Shaw) description of the town to Navarro (Kali Reis) seems close to perfect: a place where the universe comes apart at the seams. It’s a description that takes the strangeness of this world head-on but hints at the softer side of the town, too: The dead find their way back in Ennis (sometimes because they want you to join them). But Ennis is also the kind of town that feels careful and handmade; the seams are wearing like a well-loved toy, not tearing like cheap stitching from a factory.
It’s a beautiful and layered description, but it’s also one that clues us in to what the show is doing. Things here are supernatural, sure; something’s clearly afoot. But that doesn’t mean that zombies roam Ennis or that a quick seance will clear this whole mess up. The dead in Ennis are like the ice: It’s always there, but sometimes it shifts a little, so you’ll notice it. And neither one is giving up its secrets easily.
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Episode 2 opens by unveiling the season’s central mystery: a frozen pile of the corpses of the Tsalal scientists, an introduction that comes with some pitch-black comedy involving a grisly hand-breaking that you have to laugh at just to break the tension. True Detective has a grand history of gruesome crime scenes that are gorgeous in their own dark-hearted way, but this is easily the series’ masterpiece so
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