Welcome to True Detective, where everybody has a dark past, is full of white hot rage and feels like punching someone several times. There are no clean cut square characters in creator Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO landscape of broken souls, messy personalities and anger management blues. Everybody is guilty. It just matters how far they have plunged down the rabbit hole of regret.

Pizzolatto staked himself to a career of cool guy nods and free seats at any restaurant in Hollywood when he crawled up inside Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle last year in the debut season of the HBO drama. Ever since he threw that batting practice fastball to the actor who couldn’t miss at the moment, everything is different. Nic changed things. The expectations raised. The main cast members doubled and the plot thickened.

Season 2 takes place in LA, the city of seriously deranged angels. Three different law officers(Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Taylor Kitsch) come together on a dead body on a piece of land that may cause a stir for a career criminal(Vince Vaughn) trying to go businessman legit. Nothing goes as planned. A premium cable drama doesn’t walk a straight line. Think of a storyteller going over all the daily vitamins for success. Darkness, bad deeds, corruption, extortion and more murder follow the next seven episodes.

Let’s go down the main characters one by one, like a viewer sitting down with each person at an interrogation table with two 60 watt bulbs flashing in their face. (more…)