The season focuses on Louisiana State Police homicide detectives Rustin "Rust" Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Martin "Marty" Hart (Woody Harrelson), who investigate the murder of sex worker Dora Lange in 1995.
Rust (Matthew McConaughey) tells Gilbough (Michael Potts) and Papania (Tory Kittles) more about his history: his relationships, his daughter's death and his four-year stint as an undercover cop in a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
At the Ranch, they question Beth (Lili Simmons), who gives them Dora's bag, in which they find a diary mentioning "The Yellow King in Carcosa."
At the behest of the influential Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders), a new police task force is created to investigate crimes with possible anti-Christian connotations.
Jim Vejvoda of IGN gave the episode an "amazing" 9 out of 10 and wrote in his verdict, "As we begin to learn more about what makes Marty and Rust tick as people, we also dive deeper into an existential morass.
"[5] Britt Hayes of Screen Crush wrote, "It becomes quite clear in 'Seeing Things' that Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are indeed very much playing to type, but they're so damn good at it.
"[7] Gwilym Mumford of The Guardian wrote, "This episode is preoccupied is masculinity, and the ways in which men seek to control the world around them – but there is still no sign of a suspect.
"[8] Kenny Herzog of Vulture gave the episode a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "Although outside of Cohle's Big Hug Mug at the '12 case interview and his way of half-heartedly demeaning possible sources into Dora's death, along with alluded-to stock office dustups, True Detective has already shed nearly any trace of being blackly comic.
In fact, apart from the napalm-sky visions Cohle encounters en route to leads on the Dora Lange case, 'Seeing Things' is as charred as that torched First Revival Church.
"[9] Tony Sokol of Den of Geek gave the episode a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "At the end, Marty learns that the new detectives, the ones handling it now, in 2014, not the task force investigating animal mutilations, are onto something new.
Whether it's from the drug residue, political circle jerks or satanic scrawlings on abandoned churches, it sometimes feels like he's mainlining the secret truths of the universe.
"[10] Chris O'Hara of TV Fanatic gave the episode a perfect 5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "With the second installment in the book, I can confidently say that I think we have a winner on our hands.
But The Wire is organized and clinical and entirely different, lighting unrelated, landlocked pleasure zones of the superego, so the comparison doesn't make sense.