It’s also why he’s the one to stumble over Caspere’s body, posed at a scenic set of picnic tables. That’s why his suspension from duty is so ironic: As if he’d ever risk losing his job over a stoned starlet’s desperate request to find some other way to settle a ticket. Instead, he rides his motorcycle at reckless speeds down dark, empty highways, seeking the comfort of adrenaline-or oblivion. He’s unable to be intimate with his girlfriend without first secretly popping a Viagra, and sneaks off in the middle of the night not to spend time with another woman, but because he can’t comfortably share a bed with anyone. This is most apparent, perhaps, with California Highway Patrolman Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch), a former military contractor in Iraq-though his scars apparently predate the war-who leads an unhappily dispassionate life. It’s interesting, too, that all three of the other central characters have moments in the episodes in which they, for all intents and purposes, might well be dead.

His wife, Jordan (Kelly Reilly), means to be supportive when she tells him that he doesn’t need to fake anything (he’s struggling to don an unfamiliarly fancy set of cufflinks), but it also speaks to the way in which our true selves are fluid, almost entirely dependent on an outsider’s gaze. Murphy), threatens to crush his dreams and kill him, at least on the inside. Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) might do his best to stay upbeat as he attempts to use his mob roots to buy up a bunch of the territory needed by the Californian government for their high-speed rail system, but the slightest hint of disapproval from his boss, Osip (Timothy V. It’s no accident that the first episode ends by panning out from a roadside crime scene shrouded in darkness, only to show that the sun’s already up just a few twisty miles down the road: This is how close (or cyclical) life and death are. That’s an admittedly bleak viewpoint, but such is the somber tone of True Detective-realism, or in philosophical terms, pessimism. The only difference, implies writer and series creator Nic Pizzolatto, is in an outsider’s perceptions and expectations the living have obligations, whereas the dead are free.

There’s also only one actual dead man, Ben Caspere, and because he’s wearing sunglasses and being chauffeured around the first few times viewers catch sight of him, it’s easy to mistake him for one of the living.

There’s no talk of Egypt in True Detective’s season-two premiere, “The Western Book of the Dead.” Beyond a little bit of New Age sentimentality during a brief visit to a religious institute, there’s nothing even close to a discussion about gods.

True detective season 1 synopsis