“I welcome judgement,” says Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) to his attorney while being prepped for a hearing involving visitation rights with his young son in the second season opener of the HBO anthology crime series True Detective.

Vinci, California Detective Velcoro is still struggling with his demons and the deal he made to personally find and take care of the man who beat and raped his wife 12 years ago. A meeting with Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn), a connected gangster, revealed Frank knew the identity of the scumbag and was willing to provide that information to Velcoro. “What do you want from me?” asks Ray. “Nothing. Maybe someday I’ll call you. Maybe I won’t,” answers Frank. Fast forward 12 years and it’s obvious Velcoro is in Semyon’s back pocket. He’s also just been assigned to investigate Vinci’s city manager who has disappeared. It’s not long into his investigation Ray realizes it’s most likely a kidnapping.

Semyon is currently working on a huge land deal involving the bullet train in California. It’s the biggest business deal of his life, and if successful it’s his chance to segue into legitimate business dealings. Unfortunately, the timing of his attempt for legitimacy is off as a reporter is doing an eight-part series on some shady dealings that Semyon might have been involved in. Meanwhile, the city manager who’s key to the land deal going through is missing.

In Ventura, Sheriff’s detective Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) busts up what she believes to be a local prostitution ring but turns out to be an online subscription service providing porn. The real reason for the raid is for Ani to have yet another face-off with her kid sister, Athena (Leven Rambin), who’s had problems with prostitution and going off her medication many times before. After a very unsuccessful attempt to help her sister, Ani finds out about a missing girl while enforcing a warrant and discovers she once worked at a commune which her old hippie, new age father (David Morse) started and still preaches. Instead of focusing on the missing girl, Ani uses her search as an excuse to argue with her estranged father about Athena’s troubles and to ask him to reach out to Athena and try to help.

Patrolling the curvy roads of Hollywood, CHP motorcycle cop and war veteran Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) pulls over a young actress for speeding and ends up getting falsely accused of offering to let her go in exchange for a sexual favor. Suspended with pay, Paul kills time with his lovely girlfriend with the help of the little blue pill. The young cop suffers from PTSD but is trying to hide it from everyone. One night after having enough of his girl’s questions about his wounds and the war, Paul takes off on a high-speed, reckless ride on a one-lane winding road. After nearly killing himself, he pulls to a stop on the side of the road and, as fate would have it, he’s parked mere feet from a dead body seated at a park bench. It turns out to be the missing city manager Ben Casper whose eyes have been burned out with acid. His private parts have also been mutilated.

Ani gets called to the scene because the body was found in Ventura County, and Ray also gets sent to Ventura by his superior officer since he was working on the missing city manager case in Vinci. So the stage is set for these three damaged officers of the law who are all haunted by their pasts to try to work together to solve the case.

Stylish and dark, True Detective season two episode one titled “The Western Book of the Dead” introduces the four main characters, some of their backstories, and the different parts of California that will be involved with the murder investigation. The episode’s pacing is slow and deliberate (and at times even a bit tedious), with characters’ lives being slowly introduced and their inner demons just barely touched upon.

Colin Farrell delivers a strong performance as Detective Ray Velcoro, a once upstanding officer who has allowed his wife’s personal tragedy to twist and corrupt him into the haunted, angry, self-loathing drunk cop who’s owned by Semyon. One scene, in particular, involving Ray beating the father of a kid who’s been bullying his son at school is both disturbing and electric and lays the groundwork for what Ray is capable of.

Vince Vaughn seems to be delivering a sleepwalk of a performance as Frank Semyon, a career mobster who wants to branch out and become a legitimate businessman. The two scenes he has with Farrell giving him the information about his wife’s attacker and paying him for beating a noisy reporter up are his best in the episode. Unfortunately, the rest of his performance comes off as stilted. That said, it could be just Frank’s guarded personality that makes Vaughn’s performance so bland.

By far the best performance in the episode is given by Rachel McAdams as Ani Bezzerides, the detective who misuses her authority and the law to try to help her sister and confront her father. Ani is a multi-layered character who’s both repulsed and drawn to the dark, rough world of sexual satisfaction. She also has major daddy issues and, apparently, a gambling problem. Like Ray, she also turns to the bottle to help bury her emotions but she belongs to no one. Out of the three officers, she seems at this point to be the strongest.

Taylor Kitsch is solid as patrolman Paul Woodrugh who never talks about the fighting he did in the desert serving his country but instead suffers in silence. Right before he comes across the dead body, he almost crashes his speeding motorcycle while riding with the headlight turned off, signaling Paul has a death wish.

The writing and dialogue are curt and direct, with the characters being more about looks and facial expressions to give a glimmer of what each is really feeling or thinking. Some viewers may be put off by the episode’s sluggish pacing, but this is a slow boil as with season one of True Detective. Patience is needed as the story unfolds in lengthy and occasionally unnecessarily long scenes, however, if fans of the first season are willing to stick it out, season two appears to have just as many – if not more – interesting characters to follow. With a strong cast and intriguing premise, True Detective season two could be just as much a must-see summer series as was season one.

GRADE: B-