Reddit’s Hot Take: True Detective Season 2 Is Perfect, Especially Compared to Season 4
True Detective’s Season 2 was released at the wrong time, and Season 4 only confirms it.
Night Country was doomed to be compared to previous seasons created by Nic Pizzolatto, and it failed that test miserably, with showrunner Issa Lopez deciding to tease viewers that everything that happened was connected to the events of the first season. Unfortunately, in the end, this turned out to be blatant deception and pure fan service in the worst sense of the word.
For some reason, we see the ghost of Rust Cohle's father, but this false evidence leads nowhere; at the same time, Lopez quotes the famous line about time as a flat circle in the final episode. Unfortunately, the fourth season has few merits, except for the spectacular setting and Jodie Foster's acting.
The bold gender revision only masks a complete lack of original ideas, and Navarro and Danvers seem too similar to McConaughey and Harrelson's characters, even in their story arcs.
Night Country Made Fans Return for Season 2
But Night Country can be credited for one important thing – after the disappointment of the fourth season, viewers who had not watched the second season or had abandoned it midway began to return. And finally, they appreciated it.
“I remember watching TD season 2 when it was released, and […] I for some reason skipped out after a couple of episodes. After the disappointment we had with TD season 4 we decided to revisit season 2. […] I definitely put it above season 4,” Reddit user TriggerHippie77 wrote.
Season 2 Was Overshadowed by Season 1, But Still Holds Up 9 Years Later
It's common to dislike the second season because, according to fans, it was too inferior to the brilliant first season. But in reality, it was a consistent and bold gesture. True Detective was billed as an anthology, and Pizzolatto did not want to borrow the successful and proven ingredients of the first season for the second chapter.
The author's audacity is to be applauded: he offered the viewers not a Southern gothic, but a depressive neo-noir, and a brilliantly executed one at that. Damp Louisiana has been replaced by dusty California, and the mustachioed Colin Farrell is so piercingly silent in the gloomy bar that no words are needed.
At the same time, the detective line of the second season was a success (perhaps for the only time in the series' history). In the end, everything falls into place, and there is no trace of mystical ambiguity.