True Detective: Night Country boss responds after former showrunner calls it "so stupid"

The fourth season of HBO's creepy crime show True Detective, subtitled Night Country this time around, is off and running, and it's pretty decent. It falls short of the magic of the first season, which featured Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson tracking a killer through the moodiest bayou in Louisiana, but to be fair, so did seasons 2 and 3. Night Country is a spooky good time in the forever-night reaches of distant Alaska. What's not to like?

If you ask Nic Pizzolatto, who created the show and served as showrunner on the first three seasons, quite a lot. Pizzolatto has been open with his criticisms of the new season, opining on social media that certain plot elements are "so stupid" and distancing himself from anything fans may not like. "I certainly did not have any input on this story or anything else," he wrote. "Can't blame me."

I remind you at this juncture that Pizzolatto has an executive producer credit on True Detective: Night Country and is therefore getting paid, so it's a weird look for him to be tearing it down publicly. He didn't have to take the credit, either; when Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss were offered executive producer credits on the prequel show House of the Dragon (which essentially meant they'd get free money without having to do any extra work), they said no, reasoning that it didn't seem right to attach their names to a project they weren't involved with.

Now, True Detective: Night Country showrunner Issa López — who pitched the idea for the show —has responded to Pizzolatto in a pretty classy way. “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative,” she told Vulture. “I wrote this with profound love for the work he made and love for the people that loved it. And it is a reinvention, and it is different, and it’s done with the idea of sitting down around the fire, and [let’s] have some fun and have some feelings and have some thoughts. And anybody that wants to join is welcome.”

As the acting showrunner, López has an obligation to put on a good face for the show in public, whereas Pizzolatto hasn't been involved with it for a while (although again, he's still cashing the checks) and might feel more free to share his true feelings, petty or otherwise. It's a tricky spot for López to be in.

Overall, I'm enjoying Night Country, even if it isn't living up to the standard of that wonderful first season. At this point, I doubt anything ever will. New episodes air on Sundays on HBO and Max. There are three left.

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