The Western Book of the Dead

Clearly Vince Vaughn must have a great agent. That can be the only explaination for his addition to this cast. A graduate of the 'adam's apple' school of actors (like Bruce Willis), his signature move in dramatic scenes is to stare off into the distance and swallow hard. Perhaps someone thought being in over his head was conducive to his portrayal of a character in the same situation. No matter the reason, his dinner theater acting was the weak link than torpedoed the whole second season. What a shame, the rest of the cast and the story were very good.

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!!

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.

It's going to be hard to top last years brilliant season of True Detective. Not only was it a fascinating crime drama, but it was a haunting look into two deteriorating detectives' lives. It's one of the great detective tales we have in any form of cinema, but I still had high hopes for this new season of True Detective. And I have to say, I like the season premiere.

We're now focused on 3 different police officers, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch, and Colin Farrell. This episode was much more focused on setting up each of our characters than giving us a jaw dropping case to begin with. But I think the fact that these 3 police officers are all from different places is going to create an interesting dynamic throughout the season. Throw in Vince Vaughn, a criminal rising in his own business, and we will likely have a unique crime drama. But even with the new approach and aesthetic, it still feels like True Detective. The opening credits, besides the song, are quite similar. And even the score is surprisingly similar to last year's. We spent most of the first episode focused on 4 different stories. I found McAdams and Farrell's stories to be the most interesting. I figure the former's family dynamic to be something to keep an eye on this season. Farrell's tendency to take it one step too far is a weakness that will no doubt come to be important for the case. So I like where the story is potentially heading.

I don't think we should expect anything special from this season, I just want to be entertained. And I think that's a reasonable expectation from a season with a cast and crew this impressive. I would just hope they don't try to do too much with the story and stick to what made the first season so impressive, great character drama.

+New approach

+Music and feel

+Sets up characters

-Kitsch's story

-Vaughn hasn't won me over just yet

8.1/10

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.