The Western Book of the Dead

In this episode True Detective returns for a second season but honestly it only returns in name while everything else is not only different but worse as well. They took a great show, destroyed everything that made it a great show, added a bunch of nonsense garbage that you see in all terrible shows and packaged it together hoping that people won't notice but that turned out to be a terrible idea.

This episode was a confusing and boring start of a second season. First, they introduce 50-60 different people in one episode where even god himself can't keep track of who is who let alone what the story is. The whole thing is impossible to follow, impossible to even have the slightest idea about what's going on because viewers can't even tell who the heck these 50 new faces are and what they are doing.

Second, the editing is so terrible that it must have been done by a high school kid who aspires to become a video editor some day. The editing is all over the place and nothing ties together and nothing connects together. It feels like they randomly filmed a bunch of sketches and edited them together without thinking of a story to tell or a narrative at all. They just filmed bunch of random scenes and hope that something will stick.

Third, acting is really really bad. I could have acted better than 90% of the cast here. Heck, you can randomly pick 10 people from the street and 9 of them could act better than anyone who appeared in this episode.

They just took a great show and killed it in season 2 with all this nonsense and now they wonder why people don't watch TV anymore.

Well, a lot of cry babies out here! we know the first season is the best, we know that, can't we just move past comparing those two!

The four characters' acting is tremendous. I was very skeptical whether Collin Farell could pull it off but man how he surprised me. He did great.

Rachel McAdams acting was amazing. She is very gifted. Again, I thought that she gonna struggle a little bit with this depressed tough detective role but guess what none of that met the reality.

Great directing, ambiance, script, suspense, story line...

You have a solid series right here folks, don't be fooled by fools' reviews, I mean what would you expect from Glee fans!!

Every now and then a series comes along that breaks the mould. Breaking Bad. Buffy. Utopia (the UK version). Deadwood.

This is one for the record books.

Police procedurals are old. Really old. They pre-date TV. Sherlock Holmes was a police procedural. For all I know Roman and Greek writers did them as well. They are old.

Even the CSI series (brilliant BTW) often hailed as a breakthrough moment for the genre was merely a twist on the old formula.

I think TRUE DETECTIVE has broken new ground.

The producers have somehow melded a police story with a horror story. I base this conclusion not merely on the astonishing evolution of the story arcs in Season 1, but on the background music in this first episode of Season 2. Drum beats. Suspense.

Almost counter-intuitive. We know that not much is going to happen because this is the first episode and there are pieces on the chess board to set up, but the writers are telegraphing by the camera angles (massive and unusual wide angle shots, subliminally suggesting that the scope of the story is more than it seems) and also by the sound track, what is yet to come.

The hallmark of this series is that the pace can change -- and often does -- at a moment's notice. This is is a police tale with a pulse. Anything can happen.

The horror of course comes not from traditional monsters but rather the hidden, invisible ones. The ones you walk with on the street. The ones you greet at work. The ones that look normal on the surface but are monsters deep inside.

Historical. Great series.

I'm not going to be one of those people that rate it based on Season 1. This is a new season so expect it to not be the same as before!

Excellent soundtrack again, dark, atmospheric. Colin Ferrel is off to a good start, his performance so far looks well invested. Vaugn seems to be out of his league here but hopefully throughout the remainder of the season he proves me wrong.

Bit of a slow start for the devil is in the details and this ride is just getting started! Hang on! The writer likes to leave clues and sometimes they are intangible. With only 1 episode watched it's hard to know where the story is headed so far but I'm looking forward to the tension being turned up.

Overall, I enjoyed the episode and I'm looking for to next week already!

I believe first we should all agree, living up to the legendary first season is not an easy task. Season 1 was a completely original form of TV with exceptional acting and over the top screen writing. It is still very early to compare the two seasons, specially since this is an entirely new setting and story.

We were introduced to a few strong characters in this episodes that need time to grow on us and replace the two beloved detectives from season 1. The creators' unique approach to film making is back for another season. Strong acting from top class actors is most definitely back as well. Same as the first season, these actors are not TV starts but veteran Hollywood movie starts with a lot of potential for the episodes to come.

The story hasn't completely formed yet but the climactic ending promises very interesting interactions between the main characters which are mostly anti-heroes (another resemblance to the first season). We needed to see character development before diving into the mystery and I believe the writers used the first episode to do just that.

Again, it's too early to judge the show but we must keep in mind that unlike other TV series which need to prolong the same old story over and over again to sign for another season, True Detective's format allows the writers to end a story when they should and develop a fresh story for the new season.

I think with this brilliant casting and the creators' vision, we will experience an above average season worst case scenario. But I sincerely hope they can live up to the expectations and the hype and deliver us another true masterpiece.