The episode began at dawn in Vinci, a smog-choked, freeway-threaded industrial backwater (motto: "Towards tomorrow") within spitting distance of both the ocean and downtown Los Angeles, yet lacking the glitter of either. "Is this the most corrupt district in LA County?" screamed a headline in the local paper. One look at Vinci's mayor – the drunken, moustachioed personification of seediness – seemed to answer that question. If this is where the City of Angels does its dirty laundry, somebody forgot to bring the soap. It is also, as one character puts it, a place "built on a co-dependency of interests", which is to say that if any character remains entirely free of the taint of corruption, we haven't yet made their acquaintance.