'True Detective' Detective: Turn Those Frowns Upside Down, Guys!

Warning: This recap contains storyline and character spoilers for this week’s season premiere of True Detective.

Welcome to True Detective Detective, where each week, we’ll sift through all the clues we spotted in the latest episode of HBO’s crime anthology and theorize about the season’s central mysteries. And after slogging through Sunday’s utterly joyless premiere, we’ll start out with: Why is everyone on this show so damn miserable?

Of course Rust Cohle was a profoundly tortured soul last season, but at least he had Marty to tell him to shut the hell up. This time, the Season 2 cast takes turns one-upping each other in the abject misery sweepstakes. We learn about rape and suicide and disfiguring injury… if any of the four main characters even cracked a smile at any point during the premiere, we must’ve missed it.

Related: ‘True Detective’: What to Watch for in the Season 2 Premiere

Let’s start with grizzled detective Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell), who we meet dropping his son off at school. The kid, roly-poly and redheaded, doesn’t look a thing like Ray, and we soon learn why: In a custody deposition, Ray explains that his wife was beaten and raped, and nine months later, their son was born. He insists the kid could be his, but we can tell he doesn’t really believe that. And as for the rapist?

Yeah, we’re not buying that, either. We see in a flashback a younger, mustache-free Ray going to local crook Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn) for information on the rapist. Frank gives Ray a photo and a name:

Ray wants to know what Frank wants in return. But Frank’s not asking for anything: “Maybe we’ll talk sometime. Maybe not.” We don’t actually see if Ray ever finds the rapist — but based on how he handles a much less dire incident later in the episode, we can guess he wasn’t prone to show any mercy.

Related: Nic Pizzolatto Gets Real About Season 2 of ‘True Detective’

Ray’s kid is being bullied at school, and Ray puts an end to that the only way he knows how: by donning brass knuckles and pummeling the hell out of the bully’s father on his front lawn. C'mon, Ray: The bully’s name is “Aspen Conroy.” Hasn’t he been punished enough?

Then we meet sheriff’s detective Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams), just as she’s kicking a guy out of her house after spending the night with him. We quickly learn: She’s not exactly a hopeless romantic!

Ani leads a raid on a webcam whorehouse, but they seem to have all their pornography permits in order. And one of the girls just happens to be… Ani’s sister! Ani chastises her for getting nude on-camera, but the sister basically calls her uptight and tells her to worry about her own problems.

Later, Ani follows a tip about a missing girl to a New Age spiritual institute run by a beaming, gray-haired guru. (We could’ve sworn we saw Don Draper meditating in the background.) And the guru just happens to be… Ani’s father!

He doesn’t seem to mind her sister doing porn, and he also calls Ani out for being angry all the time. We also learn that Ani’s mother was an actress who took her own life by walking into a river when Ani was younger… which explains at least some of her anger, you’d think.

Local businessman/shady operator Frank Semyon is the least miserable character of the four… but he’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, either. (Which is confusing, since he’s played by professional wiseass Vince Vaughn.) Frank is trying to orchestrate a massive land deal along the path of a new high-speed rail system, even strong-arming a Russian investor to keep him in the fold.

But a newspaper investigation into a local corruption scandal is scaring people off, and Frank wants the reporter silenced. OK, first of all, he’s worried about a story in an actual print newspaper? Doesn’t he know no one reads those anymore? And then, Ray does eventually put on a ski mask and beat up the reporter for Frank… but do they really think that’s going to end the investigation? Ray’s gonna need to “shush” a lot more people before this blows over, we’re betting.

The final passenger on the Misery Express is highway patrolman Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch), who gets suspended after a Lohan-esque starlet accuses him of soliciting a blowjob during an arrest. But we know he’d never do that, because he doesn’t even enjoy it later on when his sexy girlfriend goes down on him. That’s pretty miserable!

We get a hint about where Paul’s sadness started when we see him showering, and his torso and shoulders are covered in what looks like scars or burn marks. Paul is a war veteran; maybe he was injured in battle?

Whatever the reason, Paul might be the most tortured of this lot; he’s driving his motorcycle dangerously fast — almost suicidally fast — at night when he stumbles upon a dead body sitting upright at a roadside park bench.

Oh yeah, did we mention that amid all this wretched suffering, there’s actually a murder to solve? City manager Ben Caspere has gone missing, which leads Ray and his schlubby partner to search Ben’s house, which has been trashed in an apparent kidnapping — and is loaded with sex toys and weird pornographic art. As Ray’s partner puts it: “I had no idea he was so… adventurous.”

But we get some hints about Ben’s fate before they do. We see an old man in sunglasses in the back of this Cadillac:

Here’s the guy, who we learn later is not entirely alive anymore:

We see what looks like a giant bust of a raven’s head (?) in the passenger side of the car. A Maltese Falcon reference, perhaps? (Kids, look it up.)

And we see the car turning onto L.A.’s 101 Freeway — a scene that totally took us out of the show, because the 101 is never this light on traffic.

An unseen person drags the old guy’s body out of the car onto a dark freeway shoulder, which is where Paul finds it. It is Ben Caspere’s body, and it’s in bad shape: He bled out from a severe pelvic wound, and his eyes have been burned out with acid. (Ick.) Ray and Annie are called into investigate, along with Paul.

Hey, these three have a lot in common! Maybe they can commiserate over a bottle of whiskey. Or five. We might need one, too, if Season 2 keeps going this way.

True Detective airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.