This show should have been a two hour movie.
The fifth episode of True Detective: Night Country is bookended by death. The cremation of Navarro’s sister, Julia in the beginning. The shocking death of Hank Prior at the end. Between these moments, we get lots and lots of filler. I think Night Country would have worked better as a property not associated with True Detective, but also as a movie rather than a show. There’s not enough plot here to fill six episodes.
On the other hand, we’re treated to John Hawkes singing a very Johnny Cash-like song that is now my favorite scene in the entire show. Peter has shown up at his dad’s house when he hears him playing. He’s looking for a place to crash after his wife Kayla kicked him out—apparently for the grave sin of doing his job and investigating a possible mass murder. I sure do despise this entire subplot, but at least we get a good song out of it!
The song plays as protesters at the mine begin to clash with riot police. I’m a little confused by the scale of everything here. How big is Ennis exactly? How many people live here? Are riot police being shipped in from somewhere more populated? I’m also a little surprised at the speed at which the protest escalate into violence, which boils over when a riot cop starts to viciously beat Danvers’ daughter, Leah. Once again, Leah gets herself in trouble and makes life harder for her stepmom, only this time she drags Navarro into the mix.
Navarro, who is part of the brute squad herself, ends up fighting the cop off—not that Leah thanks her for it. The wretchedly ungrateful teenager is now a full-blown caricature of teenage angst. “Bleeping pigs!” she hollers, after once again asking the adult who saved her whose side she’s really on. Danvers books her in the jail. She should honestly leave her there until the investigation is over. All she does is find every excuse to get in trouble. I’ve really grown to dislike Leah at this point.
My dislike of her only grows once she’s in the cell and Peter brings her Pepsi and chips. Not only does she not thank him—telling him she doesn’t like Pepsi—she tells him that Kayla can’t stop crying after he left and calls him an A-hole. Why? Why does this show try so hard to make everyone crap on Peter all the time? He’s doing his job! He’s one of the only characters doing any actual police work on the entire show but somehow it’s his fault for being a cop during a major murder investigation? It’s driving me crazy. I hate this trope so much.
I’m also bored to death of scenes like this one. Why are we focusing on this stuff? Do I need to hear Leah tell Peter about Kayla telling her about the day she fell in love with him? We’re one episode from the end and I’m bored to tears. “She just misses that guy, Prior,” she tells him, but why? Peter hasn’t changed. He’s just busy!
Danvers is summoned to the Silver Sky mine offices to meet with her boss Ted and the mine boss Kate, whose husband Danvers has also slept with. I guess this scene is supposed to show us how the mine is pulling the strings and has compromised the police, but I’m still pretty confused why Ted would meet with Danvers at the mine offices to tell her that the investigation is off. That’s police business, not mine business, and if the mine wants to cover up their involvement they surely wouldn’t make it so obvious that they’re running the show. Ted would just do all of this back at the police station. (The footage of them at the abandoned mine entrance struck me as pretty preposterous also. They really have cameras just filming nothing and their security already found this footage? Really?)
In any case, the forensics came back from Anchorage and it turns out that there wasn’t foul play and the scientists actually froze to death. Of course, the vet last week said this isn’t how people freeze to death, so we’re left to wonder whether the forensics guys are in the mine’s pocket also or if the vet was just wrong. Danvers confronts the mine lady about their involvement with Tsalal, which Peter discovered are both owned by the Tuttle corporation, which is apparently now some cosmically powerful global corporate entity.
Ted, we learn, has discovered the truth about Danvers and Navarro’s Troubling Backstory™—that the killer didn’t kill himself—and later we’ll discover that Hank almost certainly discovered this information and gave it to Ted by searching his son’s laptop. All of this seems to be happening so quickly it’s hards to keep track of it all.
Hank’s involvement with the mine is also confirmed, when he meets with Kate and she basically orders him to go kill the junky, Otis, and she’ll make sure he gets the police chief job she promised him. He was paid by the mine previously to “do something for them” which we learn later was to move Annie’s body.
