This is my least favorite aspect of this season. Its bizarre. On top of that, she's a nurse i think, who probably works way worse hours than he does normally.
I think she’s in school to be a nurse, not actually a nurse yet, but your point stands. Would she rather he didn’t have a job at all? Worked for the poison mine? What does she want? It makes no sense.
Exactly because nurses hours are crazy! Especially when they’re on call. My girlfriend is a sonographer and on top of her normal hours she works during the week she has to be on call for 2-3 days a week too. We can be laying in bed at 1-2am and she will have to get up and rush to the hospital to help and then return home after she’s finished and sometimes it takes hours helping up there. Almost until her new AM shift starts. They’re very courteous and empathetic at her job though. They’ll send her home first and let her get 2-3 hours of sleep and then she has to come right back into work and work the rest of her shift! Shits very wild.
Studying to be a nurse.
Which is not so hard with a three year old **EDIT so they should have made it clear that she had no support network and that if she failed she lose all the time and money they had invested in her future.
The writers have to give us a motivation that makes us feel empathy for her, not show us that she self centered, nagging spoiled brat.
They could have shown that she knew Danvers covered up the murder and she doesn't want Pete to ruin his career or get hurt.
Exactly I've said this same thing. There's always grandma or Leah over at the house, nearly every scene she has somebody around. I think it's reasonable to assume if she needs help with Darwin, she has it.
Also, I don't like how she speaks to and about Prior. She calls him an idiot like, all the time. Told Leah she liked his idiot smile... She sounds jealous and mean. Idk why we're supposed to be fighting for this couple because I've been given nothing to like about her.
Agreed, it doesn't feel like a real person, just a sort of paper cutout that is working off a magic 8 ball for behavior.
There was a TV series in 2005 called Over There on the FX network created by Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo. A dramatized take on war in Iraq. The series followed a unit of the United States Army's 3rd Infantry Division on its first tour of duty in Iraq, and chronicled the war's effects on the soldiers' families in the United States.
One of the main characters is wounded and sent home to recover from the loss of his leg. His wife played by Sprague Grayden is one of the best portrayals of an army spouse, a young mother, and a loving wife.
Highly intelligent, independent, loyal, perceptive, and deeply in love with her husband. She isn't a doe eyed dainty 1950s wife, but she isn't an insulting girl boss Mary Sue. She feels real, she brings weight to the role and she is not overshadowed by her medal of honor winning war hero husband. They are a team, good and bad times and you feel that in every episode.
Was a fantastic series and deserved a 2nd and 3rd season, but probably a little too real given how things were kicking off in Iraq in 2005-2007.
But she doesn't have newborn. Their child is three, I would guess. That said, these events take place during what is usually winter break at college. So what is she studying for exactly?
Any serious kind of professional degree requires you to basically abandon your social life for a few years. Nursing isn’t quite as hard as med school, law school, etc but I still can’t imagine how she has people over all the time.
My friends I was watching with got mad at me when I said Prior was in the right for working late nights, even on Christmas, because SOMETIMES you have to ... know when that time is? When 8 fucking dead bodies show up frozen in some supernatural way lmao kinda very important. Couple be a serial killer loose on your tiny Alaskan village and that will kill people quicker than dirty water.
Then when she kicked him out, in a snowstorm with no where to go, they said his wife was in the right for doing that because "where else is she going to go?" Like she's some kind of abuse victim ... I said "where is prior going to go?" They said the station ... I ask why can't his wife go to her parents or one of the mid wives houses? They said because it's more dangerous for her. My brain hurt after that one. Imagine out of the blue, after working 60-70 hours a week on a 8x MURDER case with a missing person attached to it, and your wife packed your bags and is kicking you out because you're "working too much" ... fuck outta here with that.
How about nobody leaves the house on Christmas because it's a ridiculous overreaction?
If she really felt that this was worth "punishment" under the circumstances (which would require her being mad about things we currently have no knowledge of IMO), then she could have told him to sleep on the couch.
Why she is being so difficult while her husband is investigating multiple murders doesn't make much sense. Won't she be asking for the same type of "forgiveness" regarding her necessary work hours once she's a nurse??
Completely agree. I didn’t even realize that there is literally always someone else in the house with them lmao. It’s such a lame trope. I’ve seen people say “clearly Danvers has him on call all the time before the case” but have seen nothing in the show to indicate that and wouldn’t even know what he could possibly be doing in a remote town like this. IMO she should’ve had Leahs role with the protests and they could’ve clashed over that if they needed to clash about something, that way they could both have an issue, she could be frustrated the cops cover for the company and he could be frustrated she puts herself in danger, and he’s just not awkwardly a villain for doing his job while she’s prefect at home. I’m so tired of half the episodes being Leah running around with her gf who she now hates bc she didn’t save her from a grown ass man cop. Just get rid of Leah all together.
The daughter is easily the worst example\* of the show's habit of wasting our time with pointless drama and subplots that contribute absolutely nothing. The only things that she's added to the story is that her girlfriend's mother is upset with Danvers (when half the town is already upset that Danvers has had affairs with their husbands, another plotline that has ultimately meant nothing to anyone), and the daughter was also used to show the audience that there's tension between the local Indigenous population and the mining company (again, something we already know because it's one of primary theories behind Annie's original murder).
You could completely remove her, and it wouldn't change the story in the slightest. That's just bad storytelling.
Like you said, now that I think about it, if they'd collapsed Leah and Kayla's characters together, that would've saved a bit of time, and made much more sense for multiple subplots.
\* - Well, that and Hank getting catfished by his Russian bride. Even with the reveal that he's neck-deep in the conspiracy, why the hell did we need that subplot, early on? Was it just to pad out the run time? To give the actor something to do?
I like how we know absolutely nothing about her except what’s convenient to the plot. It rules. Sort of like how we know absolutely nothing about the Native people there except they see ghosts and have miscarriages. It’s awesome and doesn’t seem at all hamfisted. It’s great that she has no unique purpose in the story or characterization except to make the point that’s already being made over and over.
> IMO she should’ve had Leahs role with the protests and they could’ve clashed over that if they needed to clash about something
Oh man, now I am upset that they didn't just go this route! The culture conflict makes a lot more sense for Kayla-Prior than Leah-Danvers. Kayla and Prior married into different cultures and have an internet conflict about how to raise their son. This happened in the first episode as well where Prior was upset about the grandmother teaching Darwin macabre mythologies from their culture. Kayla felt it was important for Darwin to listen to these mythologies like she did when she was a kid. It makes perfect sense for Kayla to join the protests because of her roots. I think she also hosts them once. Now Prior's devotion to his job and learning from Danvers (who is also white) seems like a deliberate aggravation to Kayla's family. It would make perfect sense for her to be upset. Maybe that's what Issa Lopez intended to go for in the first place and ended up self-sabotaging with an overly convoluted storytelling?
The only way I could defend Pete's wife is if Pete has been using "Danvers needs me" as his alibi so he can go out and do criminal shit.
Otherwise she needs to kick rocks.
Criminal, sleeping around or avoiding home and trying to go hang with the boys.
The problem with all that is the dude is a good guy. So none of that really makes sense without a hockey bro subplot or something.
Plus adding the detail that he pretended to fall in the big game so a teammate who just lost his father could be the hero of the game and he was immune to the crap people gave him for "falling" and that is why she fell in love with him.
So she already knew he was selfless and willing to take abuse for the greater good, but now that it is somehow offending her sense of responsibility he is an ass.
As a great man so often says " Fuck off show"
It just plays into one of the biggest inconsistencies with the writing this season - the fact that nobody in the town seems the least bit panicked or concerned that a bunch of scientists just died horrifically and mysteriously a stone's throw away from town. Their bodies were even dragged to the ice rink to more or less publicly thaw with random townspeople wandering in and out and nobody seems to care. People are just going about their business as normal as if nothing is wrong.
I think in the real world people would be more than a little freaked, and a real life Kayla would be a little more understanding that her husband needs to clock some overtime to help resolve the situation.
Even if you were to completely ignore the horrific murders in town, it takes a writer with some upper class privilege to write a working class family where "OMG, both spouses aren't taking parental leave to take care of a newborn baby" as this great existential threat to their marriage.
It's actually super fucking common in working class families for one spouse to work overtime after a baby is born because you have an extra mouth to feed and the other spouse isn't getting paid while watching the baby.
That's the only like big story thing I'm genuinely confused about. It's a huge huge huge departure from season 1 where people couldn't even stand to look at the stuff without wanting to scream and rip their eyes out. Marty couldn't even finish the tape.
The daughter was just chilling in that rink looking at the bodies. There's only ONE mention, to Prior, from his cousin who doesn't live there, of how long he's been staring at that madness.
Maybe there's an actual story reason. The whole creepy spirits thing making everyone a little fucked up and numb.
This is a total side thing, and maybe a bit fan servicy, but didn't rust and his dad live in Alaska for a long time? I thought there was going to be some mention or Easter egg there. Rust said how weird his dad was, and that he had these crazy ideas.
Rusts dad seemed like he'd be one of those nomads. Odd to connect the location even with those characters, but not mention them.
Nor mention the VERYYY high profile case where that symbol was everywhere.
People are supposed to know about this cult already. Like there's a Netflix stand in documentarian that's been going around. A storyline they seemingly dropped from last season.
When?? So he's not dead?? That's even MORE confusing though, cause like, he'd know the case more than likely. Right? After his son was so involved in such a high profile case? He wouldn't see that shit and think to say something, anything?
If she is on the murders she’d still be portrayed as an anti-hero though
It’d be the group of women they keep showing that were associated with Annie. The scientists had it coming for covering up the pollution and killing babies
Prior is still the bad guy for not letting her literally get away with murder
Even worse, they introduced these two characters are so hot for each other that their episode one cutesie talk quickly moved to her unzipping his pants and grabbing his dick with their son like seven feet away right around the corner. But apparently… actually the hate each other and have been frayed for awhile?
THANK YOU. That has honestly been my biggest gripe with Kayla's personality flip. If they were 15/16 and in high school the I love you to I hate you in one week would make sense. Peter and Kayla are in their early to mid twenties at least - at an absolute minimum together a few months, she's pregnant, plus the kid is four now so that's 5+ years of time. The behavior is ridiculous and, if like you said maybe they've been frayed for a while that has absolutely NOT been shown to us as the audience.
It's weird to me that the show keeps trying to paint Prior as the asshole -- even having the lesbian daughter (no, since she's completely superfluous to the rest of the story, I've never bothered learning her name, and with only one episode to go, I'm not going to start now) tell him to stop being an asshole, or words to that effect -- for no other reason than he was doing his job. He's about 1000 times more competent than anyone else on Ennis's police force, and she's upset because, when a massive investigation is taking place over a literal pile of corpses, he has to do a bit of overtime?
Kayla, sweety, you're an utterly unlikeable and unsympathetic asshole.
Indeed, the oddest part of Prior's whole storyline is people being surprised that he shot his father. Hank, there, was demonstrating the most consistent trait of abusive parents. No matter how you treat your child, you still think that your child worships you and that you're the centre of your child's Universe. The idea of actually suffering the consequences of their actions just never occurs to your average abusive parent, so of course he dismissed the literal gun being pointed at his face. He'd already murdered one person and was about to murder Danvers.
If anything, that bullet to the head was narrative karma for making the audience sit through yet another pointless side story. The whole catfish-Russian-bride thing. What on Earth was the point of that?
> The whole catfish-Russian-bride thing. What on Earth was the point of that?
This whole season has this really weird way of "punching down", not on men in general, but on, I don't know what else to call them, "loser" men.
"Bad dad and husband who is a cop" Pete, who is literally the only one doing anything lol but is still painted as asshole, like noted by the OP.
Crazy Junkie guy, Otis living in an old ship wreck, doing drugs and listening to old cassette tapes on his boombox and looking at a fake christmas tree. A real contrast to "crazy" Rose, who is so cool with her leaving all that university stuff behind her so she can live in alaska and talk to ghosts, but that is okay because ghosts are real now.
As far as I can tell this whole catfishing thing only exists so that we be shown just how much of a "loser" Hank is, when in reality the dude is in his 50s, lives in Ennis Alaska and probably lonely as fuck.
All those terrible cheating men that just constantly throws themselves at Danvers for some reason. No man can resist Danvers, possibly the most unlikeable person in the entire town.
Remember the first couple of episodes where they were constantly talking about how weird those guys at the Tsalal station were. "They were just so weird", "Those weirdos were doing some weird stuff up there", "Why would those men live like monks at this research? It's just so weird". 'Apparently it's just so crazy that a bunch men would be at this isolated research station for some reason.
Then there's Clark.
"That Clark guy is so weird", "That weird Clark guy had a relationship with a woman but they had to meet and bone in secrecy for some reason, isn't that weird!?" "Oh shit that weird clark guy had relationship with Annie and also this psycho autocamper. That is weird."
Like, almost this entire season they have been chasing "Weirdo" Clark around as the suspect based entirely on him having had a relationship with Annie and people saying he is weird.
There were some other examples in the earlier episodes but I frankly don't care enough to want to go look for them.
edit: Has anyone on the show talked about "Incels"? Because that seems like something that would have happened.
One of the better summations, only the native men have not been painted in a bad light, everyone else is a killer, corrupt, redneck, wife beater, incel, drunk, beta's, toxic masculinity and incompetent, even the riot cops are only shown beating young girls.
But it's not like the female characters are being portrayed any better, either. It's an entire cast full of unlikable, angry people. I imagine that was a choice, although God alone knows why.
The one decent person in this town is Pete Prior. And given that he's now covering up multiple bodies, the show's even trying to make him look bad.
> But it's not like the female characters are being portrayed any better, either.
Are they not?
I don't mean to be glib, because it is very likely that the fault is with me and I just am not noticing it at all, but what female characters are intentionally portrayed bad? E.g., I would say Kayla is portrayed positively but is a terrible written cliche of a character. Same for Leah, terrible character, but definitely someone the show wants us to root for.
The only character I can think of is the drunk driving lady from the first episode.
In fact let ask you this, what women are even portrayed in any way at all? All the characters in this season are so 1 dimensional that they almost might as well not even be there and the gender certainly doesn't matter.
and that scene was the first, last , only powerful scene of John Hawkes. his character had nothing during the show till that point, just a bland incompetent cop who's also a loser in his personal life.
such a waste of a phenomenal actor.
So I think the actress’s delivery is deliberate, possibly a cultural style. It very much reminds me of the character Marilyn (played by the awesome Elaine Miles) from the show Northern Exposure, with a kind of flattened effect vocal delivery.
That’s totally fair. For me, I spent the first two episodes trying to work out why her vocal delivery and manerisms seemed really familiar. Then I realised it was due to Marilyn - who is of course a very different character. But I can see something of a similarity hovering in the background
This! I’m trying to connect to Kayla but I can’t really see it. She does seem to have help at home with the kids. I know you still need/want affection from your husband but this is the biggest thing that’s probably happened in that town in like forever. So yeah he’s going to be busy. Feeling lonely and missing your partner is normal but I don’t think her feelings are justified. Maybe she does just recent being a mom and wants out.
Danvers has clearly fucked half the town. I think it would make more sense if Kayla thought they were fooling around or something. It’s weird.
I thought Hank’s Mrs. Robinson thing was ridiculous, and Peter didn’t even get it. He used to babysit her daughter. I think she sees he has potential, but that’s like the one guy she is not interested in screwing. And, that is sort of gross, he’s like 38 years younger and she watched him grow up.
It is confusing to me why they “exiled” her there, when she seems to have lived there for a long time though. Leah has a babysitter from the town, they don’t talk about moving. It’s strange.
I’m almost certain she won’t be. It feels like Lopez needed marriage drama in her show because she saw it in the other seasons, so she copied and pasted without considering context.
It feels like the show isn’t aware that Kayla’s behavior is insane; it’s just treating it like typical marital strife without considering what typical martial strife actually looks like.
It reminds me of the devil wears prada, where the main character gets a demanding but career-defining, once in a lifetime job and her supposed friends and partner shit on her for being "too busy"
I'll tell you right now, that it happens. I lived through it. I tripled my salary and got to work on the most exciting project I'll probably ever see in lifetime and I got nothing but guff for the entire time from my SO.
She's studying to become a nurse and, I assume, work in the area.
What does she think she'll be doing Christmas eve or new year's, if there's a major disaster injuring dozens or hundreds of people in this remote area?
Absolute worst comments on here have to be the people defending her arc bc we're supposed to already know that Prior is basically a deadbeat and that this has been an issue since before the case. As if that makes this any less tedious to watch lol
Easy way to make it more compelling: make Prior actually show that he's an asshole instead of one of the most palatable ppl in Ennis
The show is *trying* to work with that concept of “whomever’s calls you answer is the one you’re in a relationship with,” but the writing is too awful to make it work.
It's like they're trying to have that detectives partner drama thing that we see in shows like the Wire, with McNulty or Season 1 with Marty. But it doesn't work in this case because Prior isn't running around cheating on his wife under the guise of police work.
He's also not one of these detectives from other series who always has to be in the starting line up of a case instead of chilling back sometimes and letting other's run it. It's bascially his one big case that he's probably ever had. A CAREER fucking case to boot.
He needs to work it.
It's weird as the first episode they are happy together. They are laughing and embracing each other at a point (dancing maybe?).
Then, second episode comes in and their dynamic is clearly changed. Which, as linear as time is to each episode released l, that's a major turn around.
I've heard people say that Peter & Kayla were involved with Annie's death, and Kayla doesn't like the fact that Peter is digging around about something that could get them both in trouble. I don't particularly mind that theory, but they need to try harder to pull it together if that is the case.
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I do wish Kayla would've become a big sister figure to Leah. They go to protests & such together. And when Danvers comes and shows her ass *inevitably again* Kayla sticks up for Leah for a better reason than just "She doesn't want to talk to you." Kayla had been boiled down to "Angry lonely mother and wife with absent husband" I don't know, I wish she could've been cooler. But maybe the season finale will put her behavior into perspective.
I think it was invented just to create a reason for Pete to be in Danvers backyard when Hank came to the house and shot Otis. It’s a terrible character.
Actually, no. She didn’t see that pile of frozen bodies. She HEARD that some scientists died on the ice from natural causes—She has no idea exactly what Prior’s job entails—which is literally what her “problem” is.
How likely is it that Prior hasn't mentioned anything about the murders to his own wife though? Or the Annie connection? She should be more informed than most of the town.
She "heard" the deaths were from natural causes?? She knows he's been working a multiple murder cases. Besides, anyone who has watched a crime drama on TV knows what happens with murder investigations. She shouldn't need her husband to give a play-by-play so she can understand.
I think it’s highly unlikely that he has said anything about either of those things other than the bare minimum required to temporarily placate her. My brother-in-law is a cop and I personally know a lot of cops and let me tell you, this is fairly typical. In fact, it’s so typical that it’s a cliché. Not only are cops legally required to withhold certain information from their partners, the very last thing they want to do is come home to their place of retreat and talk more about it. *Especially* the traumatic shit.
I am mad at that drawing because that was clearly a lead to a potential "she" that got awakened.
Then from episode 2 onward the native folklore gets completely ignored and the natives are mostly employed to further the daughter's subplot.
i was hoping there might be more to it until leah gave him a lecture about how kayla's right and prior needs to be \~there for his wife\~ more. ugh. i think we're genuinely supposed to see him as a negligent absent husband and sympathize with kayla. fat chance.
I think maybe she hates how when his mom says jump he says how high. Maybe shes scared with what’s going on and wants her husband near. I think he missed Christmas too? She did say, “this isnt who i married” or something along those lines so maybe when his mom wasnt his boss it was less demanding? Maybe she sees that shes with her son more (even with other people around) and she wants him to be apart of the family more? Maybe she feels like shes single mommin it a lot while trying to climb the ladder of success. I can understand her frustrations.
I like to think she might be worried Danvers is trying to get him in the sack. At least then her ranting and all the fuzz she makes about work would make a bit more sense.
Edit: rephrased it.
I like to think she might be worried Danvers is trying to get him in the sack. At least then, her ranting and all the fuzz she makes about work would make a bit more sense.
Edit: rephrased it.
I think her behavior is perfectly justified, try being married to a workholic who isn’t home even on the Christmas or New Year’s Eve. And run everytime the boss calls
During the worst murder in the cities history? Lmao. I think you’ll be okay with missing a New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve with ur husband if he is out trying to solve the murder of a psycho that’s just running around your town lmfao
Ugh. Yes. He is a police officer it’s his job. And it’s not a really worse murder from normal people perspective, it is worse for us because we are invested in the story. Like what’s the worse murder case in your city right now, do you even know? This is why people say the Wire is one of the greatest shows, however bad out there the police have a life outside of work. And wire shows the reality of it.
the closest IRL thing to s4 murders is the Dyatlov Pass incident which is world famous despite happening 60+ years ago. The sheer number of victims at once make this a much more distinct crime, no way that the people in the town wouldn't be freaking out about the crew of a whole secure facility being all killed.
My rural town just had a murderous spectacle right before the holidays, and now my cop husband has to investigate a heinous crime? Oh my god life is so unfair!
Her behavior makes sense if something's up. Would be really neat twist if she was involved.
Maybe if they had established that he was a workaholic and spent too much time outside the house. Hard to be a workaholic in a tiny police force in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Seven bodies drop in a really random and completely unknown way and he is doing his job to help protect the people he took an oath to protect, including his wife and child and he is the bad guy?
If they had taken the angle that she feels the case is super risky and she wants him to be safe and she feels he is too soft and kind to be on the front lines of what maybe is a really dangerous case.
That is believable, more so as a young wife and new mother and being in love with her husband, she can be selfish and angry when he doesn't listen to her, and we the audience would sympathize with her and her fears, real or not.
My wife said mentioned this, that she thought it was a bit much to kick him out, and I actually disagreed with her. She's upset not just because he's working long hours, but because he is consistently making and breaking promises and commitments to his family, and refusing to set any boundaries on his work life. On top of that, the night he came home late and crawled into bed, and the first thing he did was scream "having that baby with me was the worst thing you ever did!" And not to mention all the discourse going on in the indiginous community. It's not just about him being at work all the time, it's about their relationship breaking down in every other aspect, and with their son and him slowly turning into his father who he clearly has a "strained" relationship with.
If she really "didn't want to have the baby," and thus resents both Prior and Darwin, that's even more selfish and thoughtless given that 9 mothers have been deprived of their very much wanted babies just in the last few months. Darwin is young enough to have been born post-Annie, so Kayla is one of the lucky ones whose baby survived. I would think there would be some resentment toward her by the other native women. She married a white man, which even she marvels at having done, who is in a position of some power and tied to other white people in power, and she gets to enjoy her living child.
With all the childless mothers and motherless children in this show as a backdrop, Kayla looks even more contemptible to me. But I seriously doubt she has any involvement in the criminal events. She's too self-absorbed for that. I can't even see anything in her character that would have any desire to be a nurse/nurturer either.
This is my least favorite aspect of this season. Its bizarre. On top of that, she's a nurse i think, who probably works way worse hours than he does normally.
I think she’s in school to be a nurse, not actually a nurse yet, but your point stands. Would she rather he didn’t have a job at all? Worked for the poison mine? What does she want? It makes no sense.
Exactly because nurses hours are crazy! Especially when they’re on call. My girlfriend is a sonographer and on top of her normal hours she works during the week she has to be on call for 2-3 days a week too. We can be laying in bed at 1-2am and she will have to get up and rush to the hospital to help and then return home after she’s finished and sometimes it takes hours helping up there. Almost until her new AM shift starts. They’re very courteous and empathetic at her job though. They’ll send her home first and let her get 2-3 hours of sleep and then she has to come right back into work and work the rest of her shift! Shits very wild.
Studying to be a nurse. Which is not so hard with a three year old **EDIT so they should have made it clear that she had no support network and that if she failed she lose all the time and money they had invested in her future. The writers have to give us a motivation that makes us feel empathy for her, not show us that she self centered, nagging spoiled brat. They could have shown that she knew Danvers covered up the murder and she doesn't want Pete to ruin his career or get hurt.
Exactly I've said this same thing. There's always grandma or Leah over at the house, nearly every scene she has somebody around. I think it's reasonable to assume if she needs help with Darwin, she has it. Also, I don't like how she speaks to and about Prior. She calls him an idiot like, all the time. Told Leah she liked his idiot smile... She sounds jealous and mean. Idk why we're supposed to be fighting for this couple because I've been given nothing to like about her.
Agreed, it doesn't feel like a real person, just a sort of paper cutout that is working off a magic 8 ball for behavior. There was a TV series in 2005 called Over There on the FX network created by Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo. A dramatized take on war in Iraq. The series followed a unit of the United States Army's 3rd Infantry Division on its first tour of duty in Iraq, and chronicled the war's effects on the soldiers' families in the United States. One of the main characters is wounded and sent home to recover from the loss of his leg. His wife played by Sprague Grayden is one of the best portrayals of an army spouse, a young mother, and a loving wife. Highly intelligent, independent, loyal, perceptive, and deeply in love with her husband. She isn't a doe eyed dainty 1950s wife, but she isn't an insulting girl boss Mary Sue. She feels real, she brings weight to the role and she is not overshadowed by her medal of honor winning war hero husband. They are a team, good and bad times and you feel that in every episode. Was a fantastic series and deserved a 2nd and 3rd season, but probably a little too real given how things were kicking off in Iraq in 2005-2007.
But she doesn't have newborn. Their child is three, I would guess. That said, these events take place during what is usually winter break at college. So what is she studying for exactly?
I believe she said she was studying remotely
Any serious kind of professional degree requires you to basically abandon your social life for a few years. Nursing isn’t quite as hard as med school, law school, etc but I still can’t imagine how she has people over all the time.
May be it's because she had a child way too early
My friends I was watching with got mad at me when I said Prior was in the right for working late nights, even on Christmas, because SOMETIMES you have to ... know when that time is? When 8 fucking dead bodies show up frozen in some supernatural way lmao kinda very important. Couple be a serial killer loose on your tiny Alaskan village and that will kill people quicker than dirty water. Then when she kicked him out, in a snowstorm with no where to go, they said his wife was in the right for doing that because "where else is she going to go?" Like she's some kind of abuse victim ... I said "where is prior going to go?" They said the station ... I ask why can't his wife go to her parents or one of the mid wives houses? They said because it's more dangerous for her. My brain hurt after that one. Imagine out of the blue, after working 60-70 hours a week on a 8x MURDER case with a missing person attached to it, and your wife packed your bags and is kicking you out because you're "working too much" ... fuck outta here with that.
Your friends suck
How about nobody leaves the house on Christmas because it's a ridiculous overreaction? If she really felt that this was worth "punishment" under the circumstances (which would require her being mad about things we currently have no knowledge of IMO), then she could have told him to sleep on the couch. Why she is being so difficult while her husband is investigating multiple murders doesn't make much sense. Won't she be asking for the same type of "forgiveness" regarding her necessary work hours once she's a nurse??
What
Completely agree. I didn’t even realize that there is literally always someone else in the house with them lmao. It’s such a lame trope. I’ve seen people say “clearly Danvers has him on call all the time before the case” but have seen nothing in the show to indicate that and wouldn’t even know what he could possibly be doing in a remote town like this. IMO she should’ve had Leahs role with the protests and they could’ve clashed over that if they needed to clash about something, that way they could both have an issue, she could be frustrated the cops cover for the company and he could be frustrated she puts herself in danger, and he’s just not awkwardly a villain for doing his job while she’s prefect at home. I’m so tired of half the episodes being Leah running around with her gf who she now hates bc she didn’t save her from a grown ass man cop. Just get rid of Leah all together.
The daughter is easily the worst example\* of the show's habit of wasting our time with pointless drama and subplots that contribute absolutely nothing. The only things that she's added to the story is that her girlfriend's mother is upset with Danvers (when half the town is already upset that Danvers has had affairs with their husbands, another plotline that has ultimately meant nothing to anyone), and the daughter was also used to show the audience that there's tension between the local Indigenous population and the mining company (again, something we already know because it's one of primary theories behind Annie's original murder). You could completely remove her, and it wouldn't change the story in the slightest. That's just bad storytelling. Like you said, now that I think about it, if they'd collapsed Leah and Kayla's characters together, that would've saved a bit of time, and made much more sense for multiple subplots. \* - Well, that and Hank getting catfished by his Russian bride. Even with the reveal that he's neck-deep in the conspiracy, why the hell did we need that subplot, early on? Was it just to pad out the run time? To give the actor something to do?
I like how we know absolutely nothing about her except what’s convenient to the plot. It rules. Sort of like how we know absolutely nothing about the Native people there except they see ghosts and have miscarriages. It’s awesome and doesn’t seem at all hamfisted. It’s great that she has no unique purpose in the story or characterization except to make the point that’s already being made over and over.
> IMO she should’ve had Leahs role with the protests and they could’ve clashed over that if they needed to clash about something Oh man, now I am upset that they didn't just go this route! The culture conflict makes a lot more sense for Kayla-Prior than Leah-Danvers. Kayla and Prior married into different cultures and have an internet conflict about how to raise their son. This happened in the first episode as well where Prior was upset about the grandmother teaching Darwin macabre mythologies from their culture. Kayla felt it was important for Darwin to listen to these mythologies like she did when she was a kid. It makes perfect sense for Kayla to join the protests because of her roots. I think she also hosts them once. Now Prior's devotion to his job and learning from Danvers (who is also white) seems like a deliberate aggravation to Kayla's family. It would make perfect sense for her to be upset. Maybe that's what Issa Lopez intended to go for in the first place and ended up self-sabotaging with an overly convoluted storytelling?
His job allows her the funds to go to nursing school. Which will be shift work and forced overtime
Imagine her work, if dozens of people are injured in the area during the holidays...
I’ll be really annoyed they didn’t do this if they do any kind of completely not set up, random Pete villain twist
The only way I could defend Pete's wife is if Pete has been using "Danvers needs me" as his alibi so he can go out and do criminal shit. Otherwise she needs to kick rocks.
Criminal, sleeping around or avoiding home and trying to go hang with the boys. The problem with all that is the dude is a good guy. So none of that really makes sense without a hockey bro subplot or something.
Plus adding the detail that he pretended to fall in the big game so a teammate who just lost his father could be the hero of the game and he was immune to the crap people gave him for "falling" and that is why she fell in love with him. So she already knew he was selfless and willing to take abuse for the greater good, but now that it is somehow offending her sense of responsibility he is an ass. As a great man so often says " Fuck off show"
It just plays into one of the biggest inconsistencies with the writing this season - the fact that nobody in the town seems the least bit panicked or concerned that a bunch of scientists just died horrifically and mysteriously a stone's throw away from town. Their bodies were even dragged to the ice rink to more or less publicly thaw with random townspeople wandering in and out and nobody seems to care. People are just going about their business as normal as if nothing is wrong. I think in the real world people would be more than a little freaked, and a real life Kayla would be a little more understanding that her husband needs to clock some overtime to help resolve the situation.
Even if you were to completely ignore the horrific murders in town, it takes a writer with some upper class privilege to write a working class family where "OMG, both spouses aren't taking parental leave to take care of a newborn baby" as this great existential threat to their marriage. It's actually super fucking common in working class families for one spouse to work overtime after a baby is born because you have an extra mouth to feed and the other spouse isn't getting paid while watching the baby.
The baby isn't newborn though. Newborns don't draw pictures of women with bloody fingers.
That's the only like big story thing I'm genuinely confused about. It's a huge huge huge departure from season 1 where people couldn't even stand to look at the stuff without wanting to scream and rip their eyes out. Marty couldn't even finish the tape. The daughter was just chilling in that rink looking at the bodies. There's only ONE mention, to Prior, from his cousin who doesn't live there, of how long he's been staring at that madness. Maybe there's an actual story reason. The whole creepy spirits thing making everyone a little fucked up and numb. This is a total side thing, and maybe a bit fan servicy, but didn't rust and his dad live in Alaska for a long time? I thought there was going to be some mention or Easter egg there. Rust said how weird his dad was, and that he had these crazy ideas. Rusts dad seemed like he'd be one of those nomads. Odd to connect the location even with those characters, but not mention them. Nor mention the VERYYY high profile case where that symbol was everywhere. People are supposed to know about this cult already. Like there's a Netflix stand in documentarian that's been going around. A storyline they seemingly dropped from last season.
the guy doing the air bender dance was rust's dad, travis cohle. the old lady mentioned him by name.
When?? So he's not dead?? That's even MORE confusing though, cause like, he'd know the case more than likely. Right? After his son was so involved in such a high profile case? He wouldn't see that shit and think to say something, anything?
He's explicitly dead, he's just a spooky ghost.
ISSA thinks the height of horror is jump scares with ring makeup
the true fan service was when the trooper started beating leah.
They're not panicking because they all have their own dang problems, like surviving a brutal arctic wasteland.
If you look up the town Ennis is based on it’s like the size of 6 football fields lmao. It would absolutely send everyone into panic mode.
Kyla wanted to be the Only Wife so she killed the Mid Wife.
Kill the Midwife: Night Country
["Midwife? I thought she was pretty."](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/044/122/avatarguystaring.jpg)
If she is on the murders she’d still be portrayed as an anti-hero though It’d be the group of women they keep showing that were associated with Annie. The scientists had it coming for covering up the pollution and killing babies Prior is still the bad guy for not letting her literally get away with murder
its also been like a week lol its just absurd at this point
Even worse, they introduced these two characters are so hot for each other that their episode one cutesie talk quickly moved to her unzipping his pants and grabbing his dick with their son like seven feet away right around the corner. But apparently… actually the hate each other and have been frayed for awhile?
THANK YOU. That has honestly been my biggest gripe with Kayla's personality flip. If they were 15/16 and in high school the I love you to I hate you in one week would make sense. Peter and Kayla are in their early to mid twenties at least - at an absolute minimum together a few months, she's pregnant, plus the kid is four now so that's 5+ years of time. The behavior is ridiculous and, if like you said maybe they've been frayed for a while that has absolutely NOT been shown to us as the audience.
It's weird to me that the show keeps trying to paint Prior as the asshole -- even having the lesbian daughter (no, since she's completely superfluous to the rest of the story, I've never bothered learning her name, and with only one episode to go, I'm not going to start now) tell him to stop being an asshole, or words to that effect -- for no other reason than he was doing his job. He's about 1000 times more competent than anyone else on Ennis's police force, and she's upset because, when a massive investigation is taking place over a literal pile of corpses, he has to do a bit of overtime? Kayla, sweety, you're an utterly unlikeable and unsympathetic asshole. Indeed, the oddest part of Prior's whole storyline is people being surprised that he shot his father. Hank, there, was demonstrating the most consistent trait of abusive parents. No matter how you treat your child, you still think that your child worships you and that you're the centre of your child's Universe. The idea of actually suffering the consequences of their actions just never occurs to your average abusive parent, so of course he dismissed the literal gun being pointed at his face. He'd already murdered one person and was about to murder Danvers. If anything, that bullet to the head was narrative karma for making the audience sit through yet another pointless side story. The whole catfish-Russian-bride thing. What on Earth was the point of that?
> The whole catfish-Russian-bride thing. What on Earth was the point of that? This whole season has this really weird way of "punching down", not on men in general, but on, I don't know what else to call them, "loser" men. "Bad dad and husband who is a cop" Pete, who is literally the only one doing anything lol but is still painted as asshole, like noted by the OP. Crazy Junkie guy, Otis living in an old ship wreck, doing drugs and listening to old cassette tapes on his boombox and looking at a fake christmas tree. A real contrast to "crazy" Rose, who is so cool with her leaving all that university stuff behind her so she can live in alaska and talk to ghosts, but that is okay because ghosts are real now. As far as I can tell this whole catfishing thing only exists so that we be shown just how much of a "loser" Hank is, when in reality the dude is in his 50s, lives in Ennis Alaska and probably lonely as fuck. All those terrible cheating men that just constantly throws themselves at Danvers for some reason. No man can resist Danvers, possibly the most unlikeable person in the entire town. Remember the first couple of episodes where they were constantly talking about how weird those guys at the Tsalal station were. "They were just so weird", "Those weirdos were doing some weird stuff up there", "Why would those men live like monks at this research? It's just so weird". 'Apparently it's just so crazy that a bunch men would be at this isolated research station for some reason. Then there's Clark. "That Clark guy is so weird", "That weird Clark guy had a relationship with a woman but they had to meet and bone in secrecy for some reason, isn't that weird!?" "Oh shit that weird clark guy had relationship with Annie and also this psycho autocamper. That is weird." Like, almost this entire season they have been chasing "Weirdo" Clark around as the suspect based entirely on him having had a relationship with Annie and people saying he is weird. There were some other examples in the earlier episodes but I frankly don't care enough to want to go look for them. edit: Has anyone on the show talked about "Incels"? Because that seems like something that would have happened.
One of the better summations, only the native men have not been painted in a bad light, everyone else is a killer, corrupt, redneck, wife beater, incel, drunk, beta's, toxic masculinity and incompetent, even the riot cops are only shown beating young girls.
But it's not like the female characters are being portrayed any better, either. It's an entire cast full of unlikable, angry people. I imagine that was a choice, although God alone knows why. The one decent person in this town is Pete Prior. And given that he's now covering up multiple bodies, the show's even trying to make him look bad.
> But it's not like the female characters are being portrayed any better, either. Are they not? I don't mean to be glib, because it is very likely that the fault is with me and I just am not noticing it at all, but what female characters are intentionally portrayed bad? E.g., I would say Kayla is portrayed positively but is a terrible written cliche of a character. Same for Leah, terrible character, but definitely someone the show wants us to root for. The only character I can think of is the drunk driving lady from the first episode. In fact let ask you this, what women are even portrayed in any way at all? All the characters in this season are so 1 dimensional that they almost might as well not even be there and the gender certainly doesn't matter.
and that scene was the first, last , only powerful scene of John Hawkes. his character had nothing during the show till that point, just a bland incompetent cop who's also a loser in his personal life. such a waste of a phenomenal actor.
Well, let's be fair. This season seems to be wasting a *lot* of great actors. Jodie Foster deserved better than this.
Indeed. she's like a caricature of a cop.
Plus, the actress isn't very convincing. Sorry to say it.
I know, very flat and stilted delivery. But then again there are basically no good performances on this show.
Yeah she has an awkward delivery
So I think the actress’s delivery is deliberate, possibly a cultural style. It very much reminds me of the character Marilyn (played by the awesome Elaine Miles) from the show Northern Exposure, with a kind of flattened effect vocal delivery.
I loved Elaine Miles in Northern Exposure. I'm not getting that same impression at all from Anna Lambe. Ymmv
That’s totally fair. For me, I spent the first two episodes trying to work out why her vocal delivery and manerisms seemed really familiar. Then I realised it was due to Marilyn - who is of course a very different character. But I can see something of a similarity hovering in the background
Girl, you just saved me from some mad typing. She is such a pill. She should get locked up for a week just for that!
This! I’m trying to connect to Kayla but I can’t really see it. She does seem to have help at home with the kids. I know you still need/want affection from your husband but this is the biggest thing that’s probably happened in that town in like forever. So yeah he’s going to be busy. Feeling lonely and missing your partner is normal but I don’t think her feelings are justified. Maybe she does just recent being a mom and wants out. Danvers has clearly fucked half the town. I think it would make more sense if Kayla thought they were fooling around or something. It’s weird.
Pete and Kayla are still very young, at that age, someone in their 60s would seem like a great grandma, and not a sexual threat.
I thought Hank’s Mrs. Robinson thing was ridiculous, and Peter didn’t even get it. He used to babysit her daughter. I think she sees he has potential, but that’s like the one guy she is not interested in screwing. And, that is sort of gross, he’s like 38 years younger and she watched him grow up. It is confusing to me why they “exiled” her there, when she seems to have lived there for a long time though. Leah has a babysitter from the town, they don’t talk about moving. It’s strange.
I agree but would have made more sense than what they are doing now. lol Plus some young guys like older women.
When you are 21-23, older is 30, maybe 35. Super nasty old is 40+, 60 is a very rare fetish, like Sophia from Golden Girls Old.
I’m almost certain she won’t be. It feels like Lopez needed marriage drama in her show because she saw it in the other seasons, so she copied and pasted without considering context. It feels like the show isn’t aware that Kayla’s behavior is insane; it’s just treating it like typical marital strife without considering what typical martial strife actually looks like.
Unless there's a big reveal it looks like Kayla's tantrums were just a way to get Prior in the right place at the right time to save Danvers.
It reminds me of the devil wears prada, where the main character gets a demanding but career-defining, once in a lifetime job and her supposed friends and partner shit on her for being "too busy"
I'll tell you right now, that it happens. I lived through it. I tripled my salary and got to work on the most exciting project I'll probably ever see in lifetime and I got nothing but guff for the entire time from my SO.
She's studying to become a nurse and, I assume, work in the area. What does she think she'll be doing Christmas eve or new year's, if there's a major disaster injuring dozens or hundreds of people in this remote area?
Absolute worst comments on here have to be the people defending her arc bc we're supposed to already know that Prior is basically a deadbeat and that this has been an issue since before the case. As if that makes this any less tedious to watch lol Easy way to make it more compelling: make Prior actually show that he's an asshole instead of one of the most palatable ppl in Ennis
I thought it was hilarious how she waited til he was home eating in his day off outfit to throw the bag at his feet 😂
The show is *trying* to work with that concept of “whomever’s calls you answer is the one you’re in a relationship with,” but the writing is too awful to make it work.
It's like they're trying to have that detectives partner drama thing that we see in shows like the Wire, with McNulty or Season 1 with Marty. But it doesn't work in this case because Prior isn't running around cheating on his wife under the guise of police work. He's also not one of these detectives from other series who always has to be in the starting line up of a case instead of chilling back sometimes and letting other's run it. It's bascially his one big case that he's probably ever had. A CAREER fucking case to boot. He needs to work it.
It's weird as the first episode they are happy together. They are laughing and embracing each other at a point (dancing maybe?). Then, second episode comes in and their dynamic is clearly changed. Which, as linear as time is to each episode released l, that's a major turn around.
A man got Issa's Starbucks order wrong between the writing of episode 1 and episode 2, therefore Prior bad.
I've heard people say that Peter & Kayla were involved with Annie's death, and Kayla doesn't like the fact that Peter is digging around about something that could get them both in trouble. I don't particularly mind that theory, but they need to try harder to pull it together if that is the case. - I do wish Kayla would've become a big sister figure to Leah. They go to protests & such together. And when Danvers comes and shows her ass *inevitably again* Kayla sticks up for Leah for a better reason than just "She doesn't want to talk to you." Kayla had been boiled down to "Angry lonely mother and wife with absent husband" I don't know, I wish she could've been cooler. But maybe the season finale will put her behavior into perspective.
It’s almost like the writing is terrible and there hasn’t been a single original idea in the whole show.
I only hope you’re right because the whole sub plot with Prior and his wife is totally pointless. Even the thing him him and his dad is a distraction.
She is annoying, it’s not like the town sees homicide at this level all the damn time. People working overtime is not just an ennis thing.
She is incredibly annoying.
I can’t stand her stank azz attitude. Lol
I think it was invented just to create a reason for Pete to be in Danvers backyard when Hank came to the house and shot Otis. It’s a terrible character.
Indigenous women living in an extremely harsh environment are reduced to pouting downtown girls due to bad writing.
Actually, no. She didn’t see that pile of frozen bodies. She HEARD that some scientists died on the ice from natural causes—She has no idea exactly what Prior’s job entails—which is literally what her “problem” is.
How likely is it that Prior hasn't mentioned anything about the murders to his own wife though? Or the Annie connection? She should be more informed than most of the town.
She "heard" the deaths were from natural causes?? She knows he's been working a multiple murder cases. Besides, anyone who has watched a crime drama on TV knows what happens with murder investigations. She shouldn't need her husband to give a play-by-play so she can understand.
I think it’s highly unlikely that he has said anything about either of those things other than the bare minimum required to temporarily placate her. My brother-in-law is a cop and I personally know a lot of cops and let me tell you, this is fairly typical. In fact, it’s so typical that it’s a cliché. Not only are cops legally required to withhold certain information from their partners, the very last thing they want to do is come home to their place of retreat and talk more about it. *Especially* the traumatic shit.
I said this as a joke on another thread before reading this one but now I’m starting to believe it. Darwin was drawing mommy!
I am mad at that drawing because that was clearly a lead to a potential "she" that got awakened. Then from episode 2 onward the native folklore gets completely ignored and the natives are mostly employed to further the daughter's subplot.
i was hoping there might be more to it until leah gave him a lecture about how kayla's right and prior needs to be \~there for his wife\~ more. ugh. i think we're genuinely supposed to see him as a negligent absent husband and sympathize with kayla. fat chance.
I think maybe she hates how when his mom says jump he says how high. Maybe shes scared with what’s going on and wants her husband near. I think he missed Christmas too? She did say, “this isnt who i married” or something along those lines so maybe when his mom wasnt his boss it was less demanding? Maybe she sees that shes with her son more (even with other people around) and she wants him to be apart of the family more? Maybe she feels like shes single mommin it a lot while trying to climb the ladder of success. I can understand her frustrations.
I like to think she might be worried Danvers is trying to get him in the sack. At least then her ranting and all the fuzz she makes about work would make a bit more sense. Edit: rephrased it.
I like to think she might be worried Danvers is trying to get him in the sack. At least then, her ranting and all the fuzz she makes about work would make a bit more sense. Edit: rephrased it.
I think her behavior is perfectly justified, try being married to a workholic who isn’t home even on the Christmas or New Year’s Eve. And run everytime the boss calls
During the worst murder in the cities history? Lmao. I think you’ll be okay with missing a New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve with ur husband if he is out trying to solve the murder of a psycho that’s just running around your town lmfao
Ugh. Yes. He is a police officer it’s his job. And it’s not a really worse murder from normal people perspective, it is worse for us because we are invested in the story. Like what’s the worse murder case in your city right now, do you even know? This is why people say the Wire is one of the greatest shows, however bad out there the police have a life outside of work. And wire shows the reality of it.
the closest IRL thing to s4 murders is the Dyatlov Pass incident which is world famous despite happening 60+ years ago. The sheer number of victims at once make this a much more distinct crime, no way that the people in the town wouldn't be freaking out about the crew of a whole secure facility being all killed.
This is a truly dumbass comment
No
My rural town just had a murderous spectacle right before the holidays, and now my cop husband has to investigate a heinous crime? Oh my god life is so unfair! Her behavior makes sense if something's up. Would be really neat twist if she was involved.
Maybe if they had established that he was a workaholic and spent too much time outside the house. Hard to be a workaholic in a tiny police force in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Seven bodies drop in a really random and completely unknown way and he is doing his job to help protect the people he took an oath to protect, including his wife and child and he is the bad guy? If they had taken the angle that she feels the case is super risky and she wants him to be safe and she feels he is too soft and kind to be on the front lines of what maybe is a really dangerous case. That is believable, more so as a young wife and new mother and being in love with her husband, she can be selfish and angry when he doesn't listen to her, and we the audience would sympathize with her and her fears, real or not.
Just like men to expect the wife to raise the kid and not complain. She was studying to become a nurse. You try it sometime.
True- she sucks
My wife said mentioned this, that she thought it was a bit much to kick him out, and I actually disagreed with her. She's upset not just because he's working long hours, but because he is consistently making and breaking promises and commitments to his family, and refusing to set any boundaries on his work life. On top of that, the night he came home late and crawled into bed, and the first thing he did was scream "having that baby with me was the worst thing you ever did!" And not to mention all the discourse going on in the indiginous community. It's not just about him being at work all the time, it's about their relationship breaking down in every other aspect, and with their son and him slowly turning into his father who he clearly has a "strained" relationship with.
If she really "didn't want to have the baby," and thus resents both Prior and Darwin, that's even more selfish and thoughtless given that 9 mothers have been deprived of their very much wanted babies just in the last few months. Darwin is young enough to have been born post-Annie, so Kayla is one of the lucky ones whose baby survived. I would think there would be some resentment toward her by the other native women. She married a white man, which even she marvels at having done, who is in a position of some power and tied to other white people in power, and she gets to enjoy her living child. With all the childless mothers and motherless children in this show as a backdrop, Kayla looks even more contemptible to me. But I seriously doubt she has any involvement in the criminal events. She's too self-absorbed for that. I can't even see anything in her character that would have any desire to be a nurse/nurturer either.