Salon.com > The Killing

Hating “The Killing”

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:45:00 +0000

Rarely, if ever, has a show arrived for its second season with as much baggage as AMC’s morose detective drama “The Killing.” The series, which premieres Sunday night on AMC, infamously wrapped up its first season last June without revealing who killed the teenage Rosie Larson, a resolution the series’ press materials had strongly implied would take place. (“Who killed Rosie Larson?” was the season’s tagline.) This unsolved mystery was greeted in some parts of the internet with so much outrage, you might have thought God had abolished Sundays forever. The brouhaha leaves “The Killing” in a singular position: How do you top a television catastrophe?

Under normal circumstances, without the ending heard round Twitter, “The Killing” would be the sort of series — a middling, dull cop show — that would fall out of the critical conversation and DVR lists, leaving only the fans (they exist, as the comment section below should prove). To ward off another disaster, AMC has said that the murderer will not be revealed until the end of the season. 13 more episodes of red herrings, shoddy policework, and bockmail accounts would normally be too much for people who didn’t like the show very much and were only looking for a resolution to stick around. But these aren’t normal circumstances: the show is a curio. How will it rebound?

“The Killing” ends without ending

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 02:20:00 +0000

[Spoiler alert : If you did not watch the Sunday, June 19, finale of "The Killing," stop reading now.]

Of course Councilman Darren Richmond is the killer, I thought, as detective Sarah Linden arrived at a victory rally to slap the cuffs on him. How could it have been anyone else?

Besides the "Murder, She Wrote" rule that holds that the highest-paid guest star in a TV mystery nearly always ends up being ID'd as the murderer, Richmond was the only character on "The Killing" with a tragic aura, and the only one who could seem achingly sincere one minute and utterly self-serving the next. Plus: He was a politician. The psychological explanation tendered by this episode and last week's -- Richmond's womanizing and whoring were attempts to re-create aspects of his relationship with his late wife -- was just coherent and compelling enough to fly as the context for a killing, if not necessarily the trigger for coldblooded murder. You could see Richmond's compulsion leading to some sort of tragic accident, misunderstanding or sudden paroxysm of despair. ("You notice something about Richmond's women?" detective Holder asked Linden, examining a newspaper story about the councilman's sex life. "They all got brown hair, brown eyes, white pale skin.")

“The Killing” settles on an obvious suspect

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:14:00 +0000

Well, whaddaya know? A couple of episodes away from its first season finale, and AMC's "The Killing" is finally shaking off its torpor and rallying to become a show worth watching again. Sunday's episode, "Beau Soleil" -- sharply directed by filmmaker Keith Gordon ("A Midnight Clear," "Waking the Dead") -- was the second strong episode in a row, with tight plotting, entirely relevant scenes, and an elegantly conceived, superbly executed finale. The use of a repeated new email chime as an indicator of impending menace was Hitchcock-worthy. And the image of a certain prime suspect looming in a doorway -- his head and shoulders swallowed in pitch blackness, so that it resembled the "No mugshot available" graphic on an escort website -- was primally creepy. (I won't name said suspect in my opening paragraph, in case you're one of those "Killing" aficionados who's masochistic enough to read a spoiler-filled recap of an episode you haven't watched yet.)

At long last, a great episode of “The Killing”

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:07:00 +0000

No, it wasn't the 98-yard dash to victory that this AMC show so desperately needed, but Sunday's episode of "The Killing" was still surprising, absorbing TV. Written by series executive producer Veena Sud and directed by Nicole Kassell, it was built around the disappearance of one of the lead characters' children and was mostly removed from the show's larger story (or so it seemed). It felt very European -- or very U.S. pay cable -- in the way that it concentrated on minute details of human interaction while putting the main story on the back burner.

At a couple of points it gave me flashbacks to watching late-season episodes of "The Sopranos" -- the kind of installments where five or six potentially explosive plotlines were percolating and there were just a couple of episodes left to go on the season, but the show stubbornly decided to just pause everything and wander down the primrose path and meditate for a while on this or that tangential subplot, prompting viewers to grumble among themselves that they were being abused and mistreated and otherwise taken for granted. (I love it when I expect a show to zig and it zags instead, denying me whatever it was that I wanted when I tuned in that week. Does that make me a masochist?)

The slog of “The Killing” continues

Mon, 30 May 2011 12:31:00 +0000

If AMC is indeed thinking about giving "The Killing" another season, despite the mind-boggling disappointment of this one, it should build the story around an investigation of the detectives' incompetence. That would save a bit of production money by re-using Season 1 footage in flashbacks. It might also provide a tiny bit of catharsis for viewers who took the network at its word when it promoted the show as a more intelligent, serious take on the murder mystery genre. To quote Ricky Ricardo on "I Love Lucy": Seattle PD, you got some 'splainin' to do.

Last night's episode, ironically but appropriately titled "I'll Let You Know When I Get There", was much stronger than its predecessor, and the direction (by Ed Bianchi, one of the best series TV directors alive) was smashingly atmospheric. But that's hardly a compliment considering how horrible last week's episode was. And at a script level, this one wasn't anywhere close to being the Hail Mary pass that the show needed to make up for its gross violations of common sense, not to mention its borderline cruel deception of an audience that thought it was committing to a semi-plausible portrait of a murder's impact on a community but ended up stuck in a super-slow-motion version of a "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" episode.

How “The Killing” killed itself

Mon, 23 May 2011 08:24:00 +0000

Watching the first season of "The Killing" has been a uniquely weird experience, like watching the first season of "Homicide: Life on the Street" morph into "Scooby Doo." I can't think of another American crime drama that started so strong and imploded so quickly.

Last night's episode, "Undertow," threw the show's flaws into sharp relief. The terrorism subplot has been a waste of time. Ditto the related scenes dealing with the prime suspect in Rosie Larsen's murder, her Somalian-American teacher Bennet Ahmed (Brandon Jay MacLaren). With the conspicuous exceptions of Fox's "24" and Showtime's "Sleeper Cell," post-9/11 American series have rarely dragged Muslims into crime plots except to chide American jingoism. Sure enough, "The Killing" has gone down that road, too. The to-and-fro over ethics in Seattle's mayoral campaign and Detective Sarah Linden's (Mirielle Enos) workaholic tendencies destroying her home life were almost as annoying as the FBI business. (Spoilers ahead.)

Industry scuttlebutt says that "The Killing" is about to be renewed for a second season, but at this point that sounds less like a promise than a threat. Last night's installment contained two of the dumbest twists I've ever seen in a show that prides itself on being smart.

“The Killing’s” real killer

Sun, 22 May 2011 18:01:00 +0000

In a gripping show about grief, murder and our utter inability to know anyone else, Joel Kinnaman provides a much-needed shot of sexual energy. His Detective Stephen Holder has a slithery charm -- all shifty eyes and defiant slouch, a far cry from the barrel-chested, middle-aged men in Burlington Coat Factory suits we usually see in the homicide office. (As his partner Sarah Linden, played by the marvelous Mireille Enos, sniffs at him: "You dress like Justin Bieber.")

It's a sign of just how magnetic Kinnaman's performance is -- and how great and unpredictable "The Killing" is -- that for at least two episodes, I actually thought Detective Holder was the perp. Between his temper flares and the sly evasions native to any former undercover narcotics cop, Holder seemed a likely candidate for Man Leading a Double Life. It turns out I was right on that last count-- recently, we discovered Holder is in the shaky first year of recovery from meth addiction. As his character evolves into someone more complicated and vulnerable, I feel comfortable nixing him from the suspects list. But there's a reason I keyed in to him so powerfully: He may not be the show's killer -- but he is likely its breakout star.

Can “The Killing” sustain its brilliance?

Mon, 09 May 2011 12:10:00 +0000

No, really: Who killed Rosie Larsen?

AMC's "The Killing" is the most engrossing American mystery series since the first season of "Murder One," maybe since "Twin Peaks." But it's starting to seem like less of a solvable puzzle-box whodunit by the week -- assuming, of course, that the recent flurry of new suspects and motives and incriminating histories doesn't end up amounting to a gigantic, swarming school of red herring.

Last night's installment, "Vengeance," was the series' best directed and acted episode to date. The only thing that stopped it from eclipsing the series' pilot were a few clunky moments and lines pertaining to Rosie Larsen's teacher Bennet Ahmed (Brandon Jay McLaren), his mysterious and still unseen Islamic teacher Muhammad, and the issue of anti-Muslim sentiment, which boiled over in Seattle once word leaked out that Bennet was under suspicion. The instant furor seemed credible, especially given how ruthlessly the incumbent mayor has exploited Bennet's arrest to damage his strongest opponent, councilman Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell). But the Rush Limbaugh-like radio rant and Mitch's mom's bigoted lament felt too scripted, and political correctness makes Bennet's guilt highly unlikely (I doubt he'll even turn out to have been an accomplice). And surely "The Killing" is too smart to expand this stuff into a "24"-like terrorism story! I bet this entire thread will turn out to have been a distraction meant to help run out the series' time clock. There were other irritants, too: For instance, from the instant we saw Sarah's lie-detector stare in episode one, we knew damn well she was never going to leave Seattle to join her boyfriend, so why keep dwelling on it?

“The Killing”: A murder mystery with brains and soul

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:32:00 +0000

It's impossible to watch the opening moments of AMC's new series "The Killing" (Sundays at 9 p.m./8 Central, starting April 3) without thinking of David Lynch and Mark Frost's groundbreaking "Twin Peaks." It's not just the Pacific Northwest setting, perpetually overcast skies and rumbling synth chords that spark a trip down memory lane; it's the series' patient way of telling a story. This account of a single murder investigation in Seattle never sprints when it can amble. As adapted, produced and written for the screen by Veena Sud (executive producer of "Cold Case"), it's a subtle piece of work. It's quiet, sometimes hushed, as if the filmmakers were superstitious travelers taking a shortcut through a graveyard and being careful not to step on hallowed ground.