More than a year has passed since the release of the 'True Detective'. Now the second season has finally arrived. In the first episode of the second season, Detective Ray Velcoro emerges from a small cottage located in a metal jungle.

This setting, perhaps more than anything else, is what's promising about the second outing of HBO's super-hyped noir miniseries. Early in the episode, a character voiced the essential truth about corruption and the lightly fictionalized city of Vinci, with its refineries abutting homes abutting freeways, already embodies that idea. Nic Pizzolatto, creator and showrunner of the True Detective wants to surpass the first season in every way.

The first True Detective featured ravishing filmmaking and a pointless plot, filled with amazingly rendered characters, storylines, and settings that did not fit together in a coherent way. It seems as though the first season wanted to be about each of the characters personal struggles.

So far, Season 2 is as deliciously moody as its predecessor, but also seems faster-paced and more deliberate. Interconnection between home and work, sex and ambition, family and society isn't just a theme, it's a plot engine: Farrell's character moonlights for the city's crooked business interests and lives on the doorstep of his daytime employer; Rachel McAdams busts her sister's webcam business and investigates her dad's spiritual center; Taylor Kitsch stumbles into a murder scene while fleeing his girlfriend; Vince Vaughn and Kelly Reilly conspire in their shared bathroom. Which doesn't exactly mean that the plot will be easy to follow.

With so many principle characters and interlinking plotlines, viewers will have to take notes as they watch and hope they add up to something more significant than they did last season. Like it or not, True Detective is filled with drama and action at the same time. We are sure to expect more to come from this great show.