The final episode of the first season of AMC's The Killing aired Sunday night, and I'm still on the fence about this show--even though it's wrapped up for the year--partly because the ending was so anticlimactic. I mean, really? The second season is going to continue the investigation of the killing of Rosie Larsen from the first season?
I've always been kind of "meh" about this show even while critics extolled its virtues. I've never bought Joel Kinnaman's Detective Holder, a street-smart hustler who has managed to get himself out of vice and into homicide. His jive-talking facade seems like a stretch for a cop and a major annoyance for viewers. Mireille Enos is fine as Detective Linden, who sometimes seems to have some kind of psychic connection to the victim she's investigating, but she's so sad and morose most of the time. And their boss, a cop who makes a brief appearance or two in each episode (so lightweight I don't even feel like looking up his name on IMDb, even though I have the page open), treats them both like they're something he'd like to scrape off the sole of his shoe. All in all, the cops on this show seem like a bunch of bungling boobs.
The Killing had one great moment, and that occured in its penultimate episode last week. Having cracked the screen name of the suspected killer, Holder sent an e-mail to him and then visited someone in an apartment. While there, she talked to a fellow cop and told him to send the e-mail again, and a computer noise beckoned from the next room. "Send it again," she said, and the computer chimed again. It was one of those rare times that the series actually went somewhere that wasn't a dead end. Or was it?
The thirteenth and final episode seemed anticlimactic to say the least. Having figured out who the killer is, they spent the entire episode doing the police work that was necessary to nail him--police work that should have been done in the first few days, like looking at mileage reports for the campaign car in which Rosie Larsen was found drowned and checking local gas stations. (Like I said, bungling boobs.) And after a season marked with false leads, red herrings, suspects who subsequently vanished from the show after being the "suspect of the week", and one episode (day 11) which seemed like the writers woke up and realized that they had THIRTEEN episodes to write, not twelve, I think I'm actually glad The Killing is over.
And angry that it isn't. Because the right thing to do would have been to wrap this up in one season and move onto another killing next time out, not just move on to day fourteen when season two comes on next spring. Rosie Larsen will still be dead a year from now and I don't really care, especially if it takes 13 more episodes to find her killer.
I really enjoyed The Killing, though I did feel cheated by the finale. I also think that Kinnaman & Enos will be big stars, eventually.
The episode that was just basically the two of them talking (whilst looking for Linden's obnoxious son)was terrific, if you ask me.
Enos, in particular, I think, will be around for a long time. She is presently filming "World War Z" with Brad Pitt.
Posted by: Shell | June 22, 2011 at 09:42 AM