The latest season of the hit HBO anthology series “True Detective” has pivoted away from what made its previous seasons so compelling and has introduced an entirely new element: wokeness.
It’s a sad reality, but one that was not unexpected, given the current landscape of entertainment and the fact the show cast two LGBT female leads – Jodie Foster and relative newcomer Kali Reis.
Foster plays a police chief named Liz Danvers in the fictional Alaskan town of Ennis — near the North Pole.
Reis plays Alaskan State Trooper Evangeline Navarro — a Native American cop who appears destined for a tense relationship with Danvers. The final seven episodes will tell us more about that.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead
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Part one starts with a couple of decent hooks.
As residents of Ennis prepare for two weeks of complete winter darkness (due to the Earth’s axial tilt), a hunter looks on as a herd of deer commits collective suicide in the twilight by jumping off a cliff.
It is soon discovered that a team of scientists has gone missing from an area research lab. The only clues to their disappearance are a whiteboard that proclaims they are all dead and a severed tongue on the floor.
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Danvers arrives at the scene and determines the scientists have been missing for at least two days and identifies the tongue as having belonged to a Native American woman.
That is about the point where the episode loses its steam.
Navarro deduces that the tongue belonged to a Native American woman named Annie Kowtok, who was murdered six years earlier. The crime was never solved. During an interaction with Danvers, Navarro at one point utters the words, “My spirit animal eats old f***ing white ladies like you for breakfast.”
Not even Foster’s NFL-obsessed, presumed lesbian character is diverse enough to be freed from the screeds of Reis’ character.
Three additional negative comments about whiteness are made throughout the episode — two of them from Navarro and one from the girlfriend of one of Danvers’ male deputies.
In the final 35 minutes of the episode, viewers see Reis belittle most of the male characters she encounters, and each of them is portrayed as brain-dead.
As the episode comes to a close, Navarro complains that Kowtok became a cold case victim, solely because she was not white.
Additionally, it is discovered Danvers is raising an orphaned lesbian girl who finds herself in hot water for filming a pornographic video with another teen girl who is claimed to be 15 years of age.
In short, this iteration of “True Detective” appears to be a poisoned and unnecessary installment of a once-great HBO series.
Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote and produced the first three seasons, was not involved in any of the writing on this mess, which could explain why it lost identity just minutes into a single episode.
Pizzolatto created the iconic characters Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) in season one — which premiered 10 years ago this week and has proved to be timeless.
The second and third seasons of “True Detective” are not as beloved by fans of the first season, but a case could be made that the third season was riveting, must-see TV.
Additionally, in the three seasons in which Pizzolatto was at the helm of the franchise he created, there were strong female and minority characters. None of them had to resort to girl-bossing their way around cases and making negative comments about whiteness.
Michelle Monaghan’s performance as a strong, feminine character in the first season was brilliant — as was Rachel McAdams’ performance in the forgettable second season.
Meanwhile, the third season cast two black main characters – Mahershala Ali and Carmen Ejogo – and they each nailed their roles without demonizing whiteness. They merely try to solve a mystery.
Ali’s performance was criminally underrated, despite the fact that it was still praised endlessly by critics.
But the cultural diseases that are identity politics and wokeness appear primed to take all the fun out of the current season of the show.
Will Danvers and Navarro solve any crimes? After one episode, it’s difficult to care.
