The Killing – An entire Linden-centric episode about her lost boy

There are only two episodes left of The Killing, when (hopefully) viewers will finally learn the identity of Rosie Larsen’s killer, and you’d think that the writers wouldn’t waste precious time on what felt like a filler episode.

But they did. And it was awfully strange.

Every episode of The Killing has simultaneously followed multiple threads: Linden and Holder investigating Rosie’s death while trying to cope with their extremely complicated personal lives and the ghosts of their past, Mitch and Stan mourning their only daughter and the troubled Darren Richmond trying to best a slimy incumbent mayor while his aides try to figure out how to deal with the fact that Rosie’s body was found in a campaign vehicle.

Until this recent episode.

I wasn’t a fan of watching Linden glower in Holden’s car and chain-smoke, driving from here to there, having the duo reveal bits about their lives (foster homes, selective vegetarianism), talking about God and Jesus over a hamburger-less burger and black coffee (reminded me of the Don Draper/Peggy Olson Mad Men episode) and trying to contain difficult, powerful emotions in the driving, relentless Seattle rain. Not that the actors didn’t do a good job — they did wonderfully with their material — but this is not what I’ve come to expect from a giant mystery series, particularly when it didn’t advance the murder case much. (My grave concerns that we’re going to have a hasty conclusion with an out-of-the-blue murderer are escalating.)

Perhaps the writers were attempting to have Linden walk, for a few hours at least, in the footsteps of the Larsens, trying to help her understand the depths of their agony in losing a child. The scene where a boy’s body was found and Holder had to prevent Linden from looking at it as she screamed Jack’s name, was just like the scene when Stan struggled with police to go to see the body of his child as he screamed her name.

Whatever it was that they were trying to accomplish here, I was bitterly complaining about a wasted hour so close to the conclusion of the season. Learning, at the very end of the episode, that Rosie’s image had indeed been captured by the ATM camera at the Indian casino was about as far as the chess pieces were moved forward. And that’s not good enough for this late in the season. Hearing that Jack had been skipping school to hang out with his father — about whom we’ve learned little — wasn’t enough to justify such a laser-like focus on Linden, never mind on  Holder’s furtive calls to his sister.

I’d hate for The Killing to collapse and rush forward in a dizzying blitzkrieg of reveals to unmask the killer because it blew this hour by trying to dramatize that ignoring your kid because you’re obsessed with your work has consequences. They have been building up to something big happening with Jack, after the 13-year-old had been drinking, e-mailing graphic crime scene photos to friends and dissing Regi, but it was one part of the whole context of the Larsen investigation. (Tangentially … Holder was able to blow off the investigation for the whole day to drive Linden around?) However I was left wanting to know what was happening with the Larsens and Richmond.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Jun 06, 2011 @ 08:41 EST5EDT