This week’s episode, while a marginal improvement from last week’s (namely because things actually happened that advanced the plot) was still bogged down with the forced family dynamics that have been a hallmark of “Night Country” since the beginning. And with only one episode left to go, it’s unclear as to whether Lopez will be able to wrap all of the plot threads up, or leave viewers with unanswered questions and a bad taste in their mouths.

We open with a shot of Julia, Navarro’s sister, being cremated, after her ill-fated foray out onto the sea ice last episode. Navarro, seemingly uninjured, collects the ashes, and drives away. (Last week, we were left with a cliffhanger in which Navarro was bleeding from both ears and seemingly catatonic in the mining dredge – this episode, she’s perfectly fine. What gives?)

After the credits, Danvers is interviewing Weiss, last episode’s junkie runaway. He doesn’t know where Clarke (the AWOL scientist) is, but he obtained his injuries 30 years ago from a cave-in, and some other unknown incident where all the other members of his party died. He points out the ice caves on a map, and the entrance is apparently north of town, at the edge of Bear Creek. Weiss refuses to take Danvers unless she gets him heroin, and then clams up.

Danvers picks up Navarro, and the two of them head to the entrance (seemingly, they didn’t need Weiss) but it’s been dynamited closed. It’s also, interestingly enough, on Silver Sky Mining property. (Intrigue!) We then are treated to Hank Prior’s performance on an acoustic guitar of an eerie song, counterpointing footage of Leah, Danvers’ daughter and a group of other activists heading towards the mine’s gates, in preparation for a protest. (I’ll give Lopez this – this whole scene was pretty good, and it almost hearkened back to some of the better scenes from season one, like the shootout in the projects. The action is shot well and there’s some good slow burn tension leading up to the actual conflict with the cops. John Hawkes, the actor playing Prior, has a gnarly voice, reminiscent of Townes Van Zandt or Colter Wall, and this was one of the few good music selections of the entire show. T-Bone Burnett would be – well, maybe not proud, but at least pleased.)

Peter Prior, kicked out of his house (while wearing a pristine Alaska Aces jersey, no less) asks to stay with Hank – who acquiesces. Across town, the protest has turned violent, and cops are liberally deploying smacks with riot clubs. Navarro, forced to enforce the law, hallucinates Annie K in the crowd (a noted mine protester) before freeing Danvers’ daughter from an over-zealous trooper.

Danvers gets a call from Connelly, who demands she show up at Kate McKitterick’s office. McKitterick, one of the mine executives, apparently has something that Danvers needs to hear. When Navarro calls and tells her that Leah has been picked up for protesting, Danvers tells Navarro to “book her.” (Actions have consequences, I guess – and Leah’s indignant shriek of “Fucking pigs!” feels, once again, like an AI script of what a teenager would say. Worst-written character of the entire show; you could completely remove her from every episode and nothing would change.)

At the police station, Peter Prior shows Danvers a new piece of information about the connection between Tsalal and the Silver Sky mine. Apparently, Silver Sky bankrolls the lab, indirectly, which was also the organization doing all the quality control testing for the mine – implying that Silver Sky was having their numbers fudged from the inside. (Again, Peter is literally the only cop doing any detecting in this two-bit town. He should get the fucking Medal of Honor for having to deal with all these people. #PeterPriorSweep #JusticeForPete #PeteDetective.)

At the Silver Sky headquarters, Danvers gets some bad news from McKitterick and Connelly. The forensics results on the scientist’s bodies from Anchorage indicates that they were killed by a “slab avalanche.” (It was flat ground! Sea ice! No mountains for miles!) As far as that goes, it means there was no murder – and McKitterick is mad that Navarro and Danvers were trespassing on Silver Sky property to see the entrance to the cave. Danvers, it would seem, is off the case – and Connelly knows about the extrajudicial killing of William Wheeler, the last case Navarro and Danvers responded to. It’s the end of the road for Liz….

Elsewhere, McKitterick and Hank Prior are meeting. Prior, it turns out, is the mine’s man on the inside, and McKitterick wants Weiss taken out before he talks. Promising Prior the chief of police position, she says that she doesn’t want to know anything.

At the town laundromat, Navarro runs into Qavvik and his friend Kenny, who has the weird spiral shaped rock from last episode. Kenny tells her that they used to put the rocks where the ice was thin, above the area’s cave system, as a warning. He says they used to call the caves “the night country.” (Hey, that’s the name of the show!)

Navarro runs to Danvers’ office, with this new information – all they need to do is find the highest point in the cave system and crack in from above. Danvers, however, is despondent. They’re off the case. It’s over! (You want the job done, I say get Peter on it. The only competent cop in the borough, it seems.) Connelly knows about Wheeler, and that’s enough for Liz. Navarro storms out, frees Leah, and a storm begins to roll in to Ennis.

Later, out on the sea ice, Navarro axes a hole in which to dump her sister’s ashes, accompanied by Rose, the old lady. When the ice cracks, Navarro almost falls in, but is saved by Rose. Danvers has a conversation with her daughter, who still insists that the mine is categorically bad – nine still births in the last year. After driving past the frozen cemetery, and seeing child-sized coffins, this, apparently, is enough to change Danvers’ mind.

She snags some heroin from the evidence room (just like Rust Cohle in season one, to sell to his biker gang contact) and runs into Hank, whom she realizes is a rat. He told Connelly his suspicions about Danvers and Navarro’s handling of the Wheeler case, after he saw a suspicious Peter’s detective work on the case. One of the cops killed Wheeler, we still don’t officially know who, but both Priors know, and one of them snitched. Liz tells Peter that he needs to stay in her shed out back of her house, and leaves to pick up Weiss from the mental hospital. She’ll swap him – heroin for information about the caves, and he agrees.

Back at Danvers’ house, Weiss points to the highest spot in the cave system and then goes to light up in the bathroom. Danvers calls Navarro, tells her that they’re back on the case, and then hangs up. While Weiss is in the bathroom, Hank Prior, the rat, knocks on her door with some story about taking Weiss in for questioning. Danvers is suspicious and refuses, but Prior gets her gun and aims it at her, saying “just give him to me,” and admits to his complicity in Annie’s death, saying that he didn’t kill her, but he did move her body to where it was found. Weiss emerges from the bathroom, makes a run for it, and is shot dead by Prior.

Hearing the commotion, Peter shows up, and engages in some far north version of a Mexican standoff with Hank. In a test of loyalties, Hank tells him that he needs his help, while Danvers pleads for Peter to be on her side. In a split second decision, Peter blows Hank’s head off as Hank points the gun at Liz – putting an end to Ennis’s second favorite Prior. Navarro shows up, and quickly comes up with a plan to help dispose of the body, saying that the incoming storm will help cover their tracks. As Prior stays home to clean up, Liz and Navarro head north into the blizzard to break into the ice caves, and the episode closes out with (I’m not kidding) a downtempo eerie cover of “Save Tonight,” that acoustic 90s ballad by Eagle-Eye Cherry. Good Lord.

This show is a mess – it’s all over the place thematically, and this episode is the only one where we’ve actually seen anyone get closer to solving the mystery. For a show supposedly inspired by tight little economically-paced thrillers without an ounce of fat like “The Thing” and “Silence of the Lambs,” it sure does take a goddamned long time to get to the point – assuming the point itself hasn’t been lost in the shuffle of mine protests, angsty stepdaughters, mentally ill sisters, and geriatric love affairs.

There is one episode left – will Issa Lopez be able to pull it off? So far, my money is on “no.” By this point in season one (the high water mark of the franchise) we had already been introduced to the primary and secondary villains three or four different times. We understood what was going on and what was at stake. In a way, we had become the third, unseen detective, tagging along on a high-stakes mission to finish the case.

In “Night Country,” it feels as though one mystery was substituted for another, with no real reason for us to have a stake in either. Clarke is still out there, Annie is still dead, the scientists are still frozen – who cares? Who cares? At this point, I want to see these fabled ice caves about as much as I want to see how much I’m going to owe on my taxes this year. None of the revelations that we got this episode felt earned – a random guy at the laundromat helped Navarro understand how to get into the ice caves, for crying out loud.

By this time next week, I’ll have hopefully found out who Annie’s killer is, what happened to those frozen scientists, and why no one in Ennis is seemingly capable of solving any kind of crime – but the journey won’t have been worth it. “True Detective” used to be about the violence inherent in men’s souls, the cyclical nature of human suffering, and the occult creepiness baked in to everyday American crime. Now, all it seems to be about is drinking Absolut on the job, punching random passersby and losing, and being on the computer. Truly, a show for our modern age.