Advance review of Sunday's Season 2 premiere - some references to plot and character are made...

Corruption. Abuse. Sexual fetishism. A cop with a nihilistic world-view. A theatrically staged corpse. And a city littered with the shattered pieces of men and women who’ve been broken by the daily horror that life has served up for them. This is True Detective . Thematically and tonally the links between the first and second seasons of HBO’s neo-noir with a twist series are present within the first 15-minutes of the sophomore season’s opener. Yet – paradoxically – this is a whole new ball game.

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Other than creator and sole-writer Nic Pizzolatto, the creative slate has been wiped clean. Gone is Emmy-winning director Cary Fukunaga. No longer will we witness the mesmerizing dance between Rustin "Rust" Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Martin "Marty" Hart (Woody Harrelson). What is left is the seed of an idea and a world of pressure on Pizzolatto’s shoulders.In its first season, True Detective became an instant addiction and fodder for some unusual water-cooler conversations. Some speculated on the mystical nature of the series, some focused on the unfolding mystery and hunt for the Yellow King, while others were transfixed by Cohle’s unapologetic world-view. He seemed to give voice to what many secretly thought, and dared not to say.Ultimately, the pulse of the series was the relationship between Rust and Marty, and a wide swath of the audience felt that both the Yellow King’s capture and the mystical payoff left something to be desired. Largely, however, True Detective was lauded by both critics and fans. As we approach the premiere on Sunday, June 21, the question becomes: Can audiences divorce themselves from the on and off-set drama associated with True Detective and the expectation that we’ll be seeing more of what we loved in Season 1? In all likelihood, the answer will be yes and no.In the vein of American Horror Story, the genre carries this anthology series forward. This is a tale of hardboiled detectives, amoral criminals, and lost souls – with some of the characters playing all three roles. “We get the world we deserve,” a character theorizes. The phrase returns to front of mind whenever the show feels just a bit too joyless to be real. This isn’t our world. It belongs to them.The steamy, surreal, and otherworldly landscapes of Louisiana have been replaced by the sharp edges of an imagined California city. Vinci, which one newspaper headline touts as “the most corrupt district in LA County”, is an industrial wasteland "built on a co-dependency of interests". This barren place has 95 residents and is apparently ripe for all manner of nefarious financial dealings. Enter the inciting incident...and a fairly complicated plot.Or, perhaps it’s not as much that the plot is convoluted as is the telling of it. The premiere episode is fat with loose ends, open doors that lead to who knows where, enigmatic/elliptical lines of dialogue, and multiple character introductions. Pizzolatto gives the audience no quarter and for some it may take a second viewing to digest the set up. HBO has released the first three episodes to the press, and I will say that the pace picks up as things move along.The basic conceit is as follows: Former mobster, now casino owner, Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) is looking to secure his legacy with a bid to go legit – well, to a degree – via a buy in to develop a high-speed rail in California. Unfortunately, the city-manager who Frank entrusted with his fortune - the man who was meant to be the face of his piece of the high-speed rail pie - has gone missing.Frank turns to Detective Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) of the Vinci Police Department. Velcoro is a shell of a man who is – as a result of previous tragic events – indebted to Semyon and has since become his lackey and default muscle. Here’s where it gets a bit more involved: Velcoro ends up working alongside California Highway Patrol officer Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) and Detective Antigone “Ani” Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) on a high-stakes case, as a result of complicated jurisdiction issues. It gets even more unwieldy from there, as each of the officers have multiple motivations, which don't necessarily include solving the case… But more on that as the season progresses.It’s easy to theorize that much of this season’s structure is in response to the more frequent critiques of the first. Namely that Rust and Marty were the only richly drawn characters, and that the women in the series were particularly shallowly written. It’s certainly possible that Pizzolatto had those criticisms in mind as he approached his new story, even subconsciously. What is clear is that the increase in central characters creates a less focused feel. By the close of Season 1, the bond between Rust and Marty had been more than earned. It’s certainly possible that that will be the case for this new band of characters as well, but the open suffers some from fragmentation.Part of what worked in Season 1 was that Harrelson’s Marty Hart was there to temper Cohle’s existential ramblings. In part as a result of Harrelson’s natural instincts, Hart brought a necessary humor to the proceedings. It diffused some of the series’ self-seriousness and relentless melancholy. Hart stood in for us, the audience, because as much as we may have loved Cohle and felt there was probably something to what he was saying – we also kind of thought he was nuts. Hart demonstrated that same mix of awe and exasperation for his partner.Perhaps more saliently, Cohle’s philosophizing was singular to him. He was a square peg in a round hole. As such, we were able to see the world through his eyes. He was right, much of the time, but so was Hart as often as not with his far more pragmatic and down home point-of-view. That’s what made it a dynamic relationship. They were two sides of a coin, each with something of value to offer.Though Season 2 is stacked with fine actors, each one seems on a mission to be the next Cohle, with none willing (or able?) to bring forward the deceptively simple (in reality nuanced) portrayal of an everyman that Harrelson did. The series gets bogged down a bit as – seemingly – each character is given a piece of what may have been one long monologue from Rust. They each seem to utter clipped bits of a larger world-view, the meaning of which gets lost because if everyone’s the odd man out, then no one is. There are no “real world” folks to ground the heady pop-psychology and philosophy.Initially the characters read as so broadly drawn that they verge on stereotypes. The lady cop who walks, talks, and f***s like a man, the mobster desperate for legitimacy and progeny, the wreckage of a corrupt cop who just may have a shot at redemption, the war veteran (Kitsch) haunted by a murky past. Each one more damaged by their history than the next.Having said that, there is potential here. Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious franchise) sets the tone for the first two episodes, and though doesn’t bring the grit, realism, and unearthly elegance that Fukunaga did, he does a commendable job of establishing an intricate set of relationships. The final shot of the first episode is fairly heavy-handed, but in total Lin lays the groundwork for what has the potential to unfold as an entertaining potboiler. It’s a dour tale, with little levity, but as mentioned, once it gets going its engaging and may well become addictively engrossing as the season moves forward -- time will tell.The performances are solid throughout. Though it’s McAdams and Farrell who pull to the front of the pack, Farrell in particular. He’s something of a junkyard dog, ragged and rough around the edges, desperate for love, and really f***ing dangerous as a result. It’s compelling stuff. Though they have limited interaction at first, as the episodes move along it's they who have the strongest chemistry, and it’s my hope that as time goes on theirs will become the relationship that takes center stage.