Quickly loses its way in S2 (spoilers)

What started as a great crime drama series rapidly goes off the rails in its second season. If you're contemplating watching this show, I would recommend stopping after season 1. It's great and mostly stands on its own.

However, like many of the reviews on IMDB point out, the second season is a huge disappointment. Most of it has to do with the writing. Plot development is erratic and characters are inconsistent.

Examples:

i. The former deputy knows Roth's character killed and burned up the guy in the SUV, but doesn't arrest him or charge him for it.

Related to this, the ex-police chief brutally tortures a man and innocent woman with cue balls and a broken bottle. His deputy disregards it. Even if -- as she suspects -- these men were criminals with evil intentions, she doesn't KNOW this for a fact and, in her position, she would be required to arrest Roth's character.

ii. Roth's character shoots his other deputy in the leg in the middle of town in broad daylight. No arrest, no charges, no surprise by bystanders. The deputy himself seems no more than extremely annoyed at getting shot.

iii. Roth's character steps into the path of a pickup which then get majorly t-boned as a result. No one accosts him, or approaches him with a "WTF are you doing?!"

iv. Roth steals police cruisers, trailers, etc. The deputy chief gets pissed but, again, doesn't arrest him, or rein him in?

v. Whitey's body is still up on the mountain, but it never comes up again in conversation within his family. The daughter and mother seem to have gotten over it in the space of a day or two.

vi. Roth walks around openly waving a handgun, using it to intimidate people and/or periodically shooting it into the air for dramatic effect. Everyone seems good with this. No one calls police to ask for protection, or have him pulled off the street.

vi. Why is Roth acting so weird? In the first season, he was trying to keep his family together and safe. As S2 starts both his wife and daughter want nothing to do with him. He continues to force himself on them -- I sort of get that -- but then he breaks into this weird grin whenever they resist or fight him. It seems like such an inappropriate response. Shouldn't he be angry? Maybe remorseful? Instead, it seems the more s**t they give him, the happier he seems to be, like he's trying to piss them off.

He's coming off more as one of the douchebag bad guys than the character we're supposed to care about.

vii. Ammonites?! What are they? I guess they are supposed to be Hutterites or Amish. The producers couldn't get rights to use their name?

And similar to season 1, there are threads left hanging. In season 1, it was when Whitey opened the propane tank in the garage. Nothing ever comes of that.

In the opener for this season, Christina Hendricks' character picks up some stranger in the hotel bar, takes him back to the room for sex. We see the stranger pull out a handgun and hide behind the door when there is a knock on the door. Why? Who is he? And what was with that random poem he recites to her in the bar?