True Detective Season 2: 10 Big Questions From Episode 1

8. Who's Corrupted And Who's Clean?

The other main facet of Ray's backstory is his heavy involvement with Vince Vaughn's Frank Semyon, a career criminal making an unconvincing transition into a legitimate businessman. Ten years previously, Frank used his underworld connections to supply Ray with the name of his partner's rapist - a man he is heavily implied to have killed. Now, indefinitely in Frank's debt, Ray meets with him several more times throughout the episode. Semyon uses him to intimidate a journalist out of publishing an extensive story on the city's corruption, of which there is a lot; Vinci appears to be rotten to the core, all the way up to the mayor's office. Ray's relationship with Frank isn't the only example of his corrupt behaviour. He casually bribes a family lawyer when attempting to secure better visitation rights regarding his son, and breaks into the murder victim's apartment without the word "warrant" appearing anywhere in the script. As his fellow officer explains when extracting the property's address from a wide-eyed secretary, "It's okay. We're the cops." QuestionsRaised: Are Ray and Frank the only corrupt main characters? Surely not.