“They need a reason to believe in you again.” – Gwen
Have you ever got really high, rummaged around in your fridge for something to eat, found a week-old slice of pizza, started eating said pizza, only to discover that the cheese is moldy but, since you had eaten pretty much up to the crust already, decided to finish it off? What? No? Me either.
That moldy slice of pizza is The Killing. And if we weren’t already nine episodes in, I would drop this show in a heartbeat. Much like The Walking Dead, The Killing has gone straight downhill since an extremely promising pilot episode. (I recognize that The Walking Dead has its apologists, I’m just not one of them). What initially seemed like a creepy character study examining the impact of violence on a family and a community has revealed itself to be an exercise in tedious repetition.
The Killing is one of those shows that LOOKS like a QUALITY show, so we treated it as such. It’s dark, it’s mysterious, it’s moody, it’s slow, it’s on AMC, it must be good, right? Wrong.
Here, in no particular order, are some of the reasons why I’ve soured on the show:
- Linden (Mireille Enos) has turned out to be a pretty terrible detective.
- She leaves crime scene photos on her computer where her pain-in-the-ass son can get his hands on them and fire them off to all of the dorks on his Facebook friends list.
- She jeopardizes her entire case by stealing evidence from an FBI storage van, then gets all lippy with her boss when he chastises her for it.
- She assures a victim’s mentally unstable mother that a suspect — a man whom she has yet to receive an arrest warrant for — will be in custody immediately. And then fails to deliver. This is especially egregious given the fact that a few episodes ago Liden scolded Holder (Joel Kinnaman) for merely telling the parents, “We’ll find him.”
The show has no balls, whatsoever. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that The Killing is produced by a bunch of Euros (okay, okay, that might be a little below the belt). As soon as Bennett’s (Brandon Jay McLaren) religion became a major point, I knew instantly that he wasn’t the killer. The Killing doesn’t have the stones to allow the killer to be a Muslim and risk being accused of Islamophobia. The scene at the mosque in “Undertow” echos this point. Of course the building is covered is swastikas – only neo-Nazis are capable of expressing anti-Muslim sentiment. Furthermore, the show seems terrified of gray areas. Everyone is either GOOD or BAD. This is why they had to make Bennett some noble foot-soldier in the fight to save Somali clitorises instead of a guy who was perhaps innocent of murder but guilty of statutory rape. The latter guy, while morally ambiguous, is a more interesting character.
This is the same reason why Holder goes out of his way to explain to Linden that the joint he used to pry information from a teenaged source was filled with fake weed. Wouldn’t it have been more intriguing if we were asked to deal with the idea that Holder is the type of cop who would give drugs to kids?
People do things that simply don’t make sense, all in the name of maintaining suspense and an air of mystery. Things, and often stupid things, happen on this show specifically to serve whatever plot point the writers happen to be hammering home at the moment:
- Why would Bennett stonewall the cops instead of just coming clean about what he and Muhammad were up to? Furthermore, why wouldn’t he have told Stan (Brent Sexton) the truth on their initial car ride when he was in fear for his life? It certainly seems preferable to be known as a hero of women’s rights rather than a child-killer.
- How could two cops, who seem more and more incompetent with each episode, in the span of 2 days uncover a plot that eluded an entire FBI field office?
- Why would Linden not ask Muhammad any follow up questions when he admits seeing Rosie (Katie Findlay) at Bennett’s house on the night of the murder? Hell, I know this was weeks ago, but why would the cops fail to ask Tweaker Kris (Gharrett Patrick Paon) any more questions when it was clear he knew more than he was letting on?
Each episode features multiple groan-inducing scenes. Here are some from this week:
- Stan helps a little girl fix her bike chain.
- Bennett’s entire class walks out on him and the camera pans to reveal the word “KILLER” written on the blackboard.
- Darren (Bill Campbell) sits in a bar talking about his dead wife’s favorite song.
- Drexler’s (Patrick Gilmore) basketball bet, especially the cut to commercial as the ball nears the rim. “I don’t care about the hajjis in Ranier Valley. I want my stadium!” Yuck.
Other things I don’t like about The Killing:
- The political storyline.
- Watching the Larsen’s grieve.
- Bill Campbell’s acting after about episode three or four when I realized that he doesn’t have nearly enough charisma to pull off the Richmond character.
- The fact that the show was filmed in Vancouver, not Seattle.
- The constant rain.
- The utter lack of comic relief, or even the hint of a sense of humor.
- Mitch Larsen (Michelle Forbes).
Things I like about The Killing:
- Holder.
- The fact that there are only four more episodes in this season.
So here goes my Probably-Going-To-Happen-Even-Though-It’s-Stupid Theory of The Week:
- When Stan was beating the daylights out of Bennett, Belko was acting very strangely. He was pounding his fist on a boulder. I had to watch the scene a second time just to make sure I was seeing things correctly. But yep, he’s beating up a massive rock. Why, you ask? To ensure that his hands are damaged enough for the cops to believe that he, and not Stan, was the one that pulverized Bennett.
Some stats and info about The Killing, “Undertow”
TV SHOW – The Killing
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1 Episode 9
AIRED ON – May 22nd, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – AMC
GENRE – Drama, Crime Dramas
CREATED BY – Veena Sud
CAST – Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman, Billy Campbell, Liam James, Michelle Forbes, Brent Sexton, Kristin Lehman, Eric Laden, Jamie Anne Allman
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.