I'm guessing the idea was that Vaughan would have so sold that character's exterior in the first episode that opening this one with a look into his interior would feel like a good progression. But he didn't sell that exterior.

Have you seen the clip of him playing Jesse's Girl with Foo Fighters? He seems like an authentically cool guy in that.

It was makeup. Rick looks great IRL.

It was also done to highlight the disparity between the importance people place on having descendants and the fucked up childhood all these characters seem to have had. Which seems to be the big theme of this season.

I'm still thinking Frank is Ray's kid's real father for no other reason than that it fits in a noir way.

Ani and Ponch's backgrounds will both tie in to some child sex cult thing, I'm pretty sure. The mayor is probably involved in it and Rick Springfield definitely is. I'm seeing a really clichéd outcome along the lines of "Wow, all these characters seemed so random and different but THEY ARE ALL FUCKED UP BY THE SAME…

I heard "we" too. And it was awful.

I did too, and thought it should have ended there. The "body image' thing sounded too generic, not tied enough in to the character.

He's always done that lip-licking thing, now that you mention it.

But Shia LeBouef was very good in Holes. Don't kill me! He was.

I was down on McAdams last week but I thought she was very good this week.

It was well-received because people thought it was stylized and meta. It wasn't, though.

Her reaction was something like "Every time you tell me something like this about your past I [can't remember the rest]." So we were supposed to think she had heard stories this bad before, if not this particular story. And it was ostensibly triggered by the water stain. Like, he's the kind of Al Swearingen guy who…

But you are spot on otherwise. That was a big misreading on the reviewer's part of that scene with the mayor and Ani. I thought it was pretty clear the mayor was hiding something, actually.

John From Cincinnati had fabulous opening titles and a great song to go with them. It also had some really good scenes. But there were too many characters and it was unintentionally cute and quirky rather than eccentric. Luck was kind of amazing.

The second the guy shot him in the chest rather than the head I knew he wasn't dead. This is tv; main characters don't die from chest wounds.

I don't know about gender issues since that was the opinion of her dad and I wouldn't buy that creep's opinion on something like that.

It's very amateur-hour, this backstory stuff. The scene with Abigail Spencer and the scene with Paul's girlfriend should both have taken a fraction of the time they took, for instance. So much unnecessary explaining.

NO.

The internets are going to freak out if Paul's gayness turns out to be intertwined with something messed up about his childhood. Pizzolatto better be treading really carefully with that stuff.