In 2013, actress Geena Davis wrote an editorial for the Hollywood Reporter exploring how filmmakers might tackle the apparent challenge of adding interesting female characters to their projects. One suggestion: simply go through and give several characters women’s names.

Based on the first three episodes of True Detective’s second season, writer Nic Pizzolatto seems to be a member of the Davis school of gender parity. There is little on the surface that differentiates the character of Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) from the other tormented cops of the HBO drama. She’s got troubled family relationships, challenging sexual proclivities, and the same unsmiling, furrowed-brow demeanor as the men. And that’s great.

Plenty of women brood and smolder; plenty of women respond to the prospect of emotional closeness with overt hostility. (When Bezzerides tells a suitor who isn’t getting the message that if he bothers her again he’ll be left carrying his teeth in a baggie, it’s more menacing than when Vince Vaughn’s gangster, Frank Semyon, uses pliers to actually extract someone’s teeth.)