The Killing

[Pozer]

also the show turned terrible quick. i'm talking Heroes terrible.

it never got THAT bad.

alright alright youre right. embellishment. perhaps because the show turned to background watching which in turn became episodes piling up in thee ol DVR bank all Heroes-like.

[cinemanarchist]

It seemed like it wanted to be the Wire, but it was just a little too in love with being a mystery...though the kind of mystery where you can't possibly know how it's going to end. Mysteries only work for me when the solution was there all along, the writers were just that much smarter than you. I want to go back and watch the season and go "holy shit that's what was going on there," but instead you just have everyone looking shady here and there and then the season stopped so someone was kind of the culprit. I don't think it is a terrible show, just lazy.

[RegularKarate]

Exactly how I felt.

Here is an interesting comparison between the original Danish show and the American show:

From Badass Digest

Fair warning — this match-up will likely be unfair, because Forbrydelsen (the Danish show that AMC's The Killing is based on) is my favorite cop show since The Wire. Also, I live in Seattle, where The Killing takes place, but wasn't filmed. So I was probably always the wrong audience for The Killing.

But here are some side-by-side comparisons, and some general thoughts:

1 – The ending. This is what most of the outraged US fans might be most interested to learn. What is now known as Forbrydelsen season one, was originally going to be broadcast as two seasons. It began in January of 2007 in Denmark, and quickly became the most popular TV show on the air. It ran for ten weeks, then ended with an enormous game-changing cliff-hanger... and Danish fans were outraged that they'd have to wait ten months for the next
season to solve this mystery. Apparently the network got so much angry email from viewers that they immediately went back into production, and launched what is now considered the "second half" of season one that September.

So... The Danish show got their fans just as angry with a cliffhanger ending instead of a solution.

Side note: Forbrydelson 2, as it next season was called, picks up two years later and follows a completely different case, which is solved in ten episodes.

2 – The murders. In Forbrydelsen, the victim is Nanna Birk Larsen, who becomes Rosie Larsen in the US version. Nanna and Rosie's stories are pretty close — the costume party at school, the sex room in the school basement, the secrets. And the Birk Larsen family is a lot like the Larsen family in the US version. They run a moving business, have two other kids, the wife has a screw-up sister who knows more than she's saying. Rosie and Nanna are both raped, chased through the woods, and drowned in the truck of a car connected to a local political campaign. In fact, the opening scenes of both shows, the girl running through the woods being chased by the unseen figure with the flashlight, are nearly identical.

Really, the first episode of the US version, overall, is about 80 percent the same as the Danish version.

3 – The detectives. Both Sarahs begin the season about to leave their job, to move with their fiancé and son to somewhere else – in Forbrydelsen, it's to Sweden, in The Killing, it's to Sonoma. Both get too wrapped up in the case to ever leave... but Sarah Lund and Sarah Linden are not at all the same character. That was obvious from the first moments of meeting Sarah Linden, in a scene almost exactly like our first meeting of Lund. Linden smiles, cracks jokes, and constantly chews gum. She's pretty and has a personality of some sort. That's not Sarah Lund.

Lund is a homicide cop with every fiber of her being, and you see it in every move and bad decision she makes. She doesn't smile, she doesn't make jokes, and her intensity burns like a roman candle behind her eyes. She doesn't have good hair, and she doesn't wear make-up. She has less dialog than anyone else in the show, and yet she is your hero. Sarah Lund is my favorite TV cop since Jimmy McNulty.

And Sophie Grabol, who plays her, is one of my favorite actresses. She lives and breathes that role, her quiet intensity drives her every move. Lund's problem is she pursues every lead no matter the consequences. She has no fear, just a drive to uncover the truth. There's a great scene where she leaves her mother's wedding reception to go check out a new lead, and her mother actually apologizes for her, knowing that's just what she's like. She can't stay and toast her mother and her new husband when she could be tracking down a killer.

Mirielle Enos does a great job with what she's given, but Linden isn't yet as deep as Lund, and she's too young to be a case-hardened homicide cop.

4 – The partner. In Forbrydelsen, Lund is forced to partner with Jan Meyer, the guy being transferred in to take her place. They don't get along, because Meyer is a jock asshole, and Lund doesn't give a shit about anyone but dead people. Over the course of the season, one day at a time, they develop a grudging friendship, when Meyer realizes Lund is the best cop he's ever worked with. And Meyer, while you don't like him much at first, grows on you, too.

But Detective Holder, Linden's partner, is probably the least realistic homicide cop I've ever seen on TV (at least on a show that claims to be a realistic police procedural). It's like they wanted to cast Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad or something.

And the turns Holder's character takes are not the same as the turns Meyer took in the original show.

5 – The murderer. Early on, the writers of The Killing said their show would move further and further from the original as it went on. They also said the murderer wouldn't be the same person in the US version as it was in the Danish show, and from what I can tell so far, that's true.

6 – The location. From what my wife tells me (she lived in Denmark for a while) the original was pretty dead on with its representation of Copenhagen. But The Killing never feels like Seattle.

Here's an example from the finale episode (spoiler alert). At the climax of the show, the last piece of evidence they need to make an arrest is a toll booth photo from Desolation Bridge. Unless they put in that booth in the last year, there's no toll on that bridge. And while beautiful, Desolation Bridge is not a highly-travelled bridge, so there wouldn't be.

And where is Discovery Park supposed to be in this version of Seattle? To get to the non- existent country gas station where Rosie leaps from the car and runs into the park, she'd have been driven directly through Ballard, where she lived. Why didn't she leap out then and run home? You don't have to be that familiar with Seattle to put this together, you just have to look at a map.

You expect this kind of stuff on TV, and I know I sound like a local who's just nit-picking. But why set your show in Seattle if you don't want to pay any attention to the city's details? Why not just call it Rain City if you're going to make it all up?

***

Now, I don't want to give you the idea that Forbrydelsen doesn't have its own problems. But it was a riveting series — at times a procedural, at times a political mystery, and at times a scary as hell crime thriller. Every two or three episodes there was a major twist or some rug-yanking incident. It kept you on the edge.

But there were too many suspects, and all of them felt like "the one" until they suddenly weren't and maybe it was one of the previous suspects after all. There were probably a few too many plot twists over the 20 episodes. But you didn't care because Sarah Lund was your hero. She was the glue that held all the plot threads together.

Make no mistake, there was a lot of smart writing and great performances on The Killing, and friends of mine who never saw the original loved the US version. And I will most likely be watching again next year, because AMC makes some of the best shows on television right now. Until then, I'd recommend anyone with an all-region DVD player order the original show and sit down for 20 hours of great cop drama.

[polkablues]

I understand the criticisms of this show, but I don't agree with them.  I like that there aren't any truly likeable characters.  I like that the detectives aren't particularly great detectives.  I liked the pace.  I liked (most of) the plot twists.  I liked the goddamn cliffhanger.

There seems to be a lot of criticism based on preconceptions: it wasn't a self-contained season, it's more formulaic than AMC shows are supposed to be, it differs from the Danish original, it's not the Second Coming of the Wire.  I think people are judging it more harshly on these terms than they would otherwise.  If it were just some random show on NBC, I don't think it would take nearly as much shit.

This is spot-on, though:

6 – The location. From what my wife tells me (she lived in Denmark for a while) the original was pretty dead on with its representation of Copenhagen. But The Killing never feels like Seattle.

Here's an example from the finale episode (spoiler alert). At the climax of the show, the last piece of evidence they need to make an arrest is a toll booth photo from Desolation Bridge. Unless they put in that booth in the last year, there's no toll on that bridge. And while beautiful, Desolation Bridge is not a highly-travelled bridge, so there wouldn't be.

And where is Discovery Park supposed to be in this version of Seattle? To get to the non- existent country gas station where Rosie leaps from the car and runs into the park, she'd have been driven directly through Ballard, where she lived. Why didn't she leap out then and run home? You don't have to be that familiar with Seattle to put this together, you just have to look at a map.

You expect this kind of stuff on TV, and I know I sound like a local who's just nit-picking. But why set your show in Seattle if you don't want to pay any attention to the city's details? Why not just call it Rain City if you're going to make it all up?

I'm sure people who live in LA or New York deal with this all the time, but when actual places that you know well are totally misrepresented within a show, it's distracting as all hell.

[RegularKarate]

If it were just some random show on NBC, I don't think it would take nearly as much shit.

Of course not, but it's NOT just some random show on NBC.  We've come to expect more from AMC.

I'm sure I'm going to end up watching the second season, but my expectations are lowered.

[Fernando]

spoils

im between polka and rk, meaning I like the show and I didnt see that many flaws like rk or they didnt affect as much, but im not a big fan of the shamaladingdong, mainly because I think there's no way the congressman (a main character) is killed, so it seems a little pointless, I think either the nut will harm him and he lives or the police will prevent that he is even hurt.....although ive been recently wrong about that kind of guess on another show...

ill watch season 2 for sure.

[Tictacbk]

I didn't mind the cliffhanger ending.  In fact I never thought the case was going to be wrapped up in one season, and I'm not sure why people did.  In the world of the show its only been 13 days.  That seems pretty quick as far as wrapping up murder cases go.  My problem with the show was the ridiculous lengths it went to push the plot along.  Episodes started feeling like chapters from 'Goosebumps' books, the way they would throw a twist in at the end that would ultimately be resolved early on in the next episode.

The AV Club did a better job listing ridiculous things in the show than I could, so I'll now quote them:

Spoilers

To get to the bottom of this, I decided to make a list (I was inspired by Holder, I guess) of all the far-fetched occurrences and unlikely coincidences that have taken place across the course of the season and—guess what?—it's pretty damn long. If I have missed (or misrepresented) any, please weigh in, but here's what I came up with. Brace yourselves:

-Rosie's best friend borrows her wig, then has sex with her boyfriend in the school's dank basement, while bleeding profusely from her nose, while another guy wearing a devil mask records it on his phone.
-Also, a pervy janitor named after the late Lyndon Johnson is watching the whole thing happen.
-Said janitor turns out to be pedophile, jumps out of window, ends up in hospital.
-Rosie's parents don't call their daughter all weekend, detectives never find out why.
-Other seemingly basic things Holder and Linden don't do until well after Bennet is cleared: scour Rosie's computer (as in, not just take a quick look at her internet history); check the fuel levels and mileage of the car in which her dead body was found; call cab companies to see if anyone picked up a girl fitting Rosie's description.
-Stan buys house without telling his wife.
-A teacher with a track record of dating his students also has an unusually close relationship with Rosie, but there's nothing untoward going on between them.
Bennet helps a young Somali girl procure a fake passport so she can flee to Canada to avoid ritual circumcision.
-Somali girl hides out in a meat locker that has been converted into a bedroom, which Linden and Holder happen to discover at the exact same moment as an FBI raid.
-Somali girl also just so happens to have the exact same T-shirt as Rosie.
-Mitch waits a week to do laundry, so doesn't find Rosie's T-shirt until after Stan has beat the shit out of Bennet.
-FBI agent leaves truck containing evidence unattended, door wide open.
-Despite the fact that he's facing murder charges, Bennet is unwilling to tell police what he was really doing the night of Rosie's murder.
-Mitch leaves her two surviving children in garage while car is running, forgets about them.
-Between the school dance and her shift at the casino, Rosie felt the need to schlep out to Bennet's house to return a book, even though she would have seen him Monday morning at school.
-Bennet's wife does not recognize the man who has already confessed to beating her husband into a coma, a man who is also the father of the girl Bennet was accused of killing.
-Everything Holder has been doing all along has been part of an elaborate effort to frame Richmond.
-Not 1 but 2 suspects in Rosie's killing fall victim to acts of vigilante justice.
-Creepy stalker Belko basically lives with Larsens and is infatuated with Rosie, but has nothing to do with her's murder.
-Neither does her sadistic ex-boyfriend.
-Neither does Richmond, who is hung up on his dead wife, fixated with brunettes, and often says creepy, threatening things to escorts.

I mostly hated how convenient/ridiculous everything that made it seem like Bennet killed Rosie was, and how quickly they just moved on once they found out about the somali girl.  Didn't he still have an inappropriate relationship with her? Wasn't some sort of flooring stuff he had found on her body or something?  And did he even have an alibi by the end?  Instead they're just like "Welp, we messed that one up, who else can we look at?"

[polkablues]

Okay, so this show legitimately fell apart in season two, but season three has been great so far, better than even the early days of the first season made us think it was. Peter Saarsgaard and Elias Koteas bring an influx of gravitas, and Joel Kinnaman is putting together one of the best performances on television this year. A lot of the stuff with the street kids feels dated and inauthentic (the datedness makes sense, because they based how the kids look and talk on "Streetwise," the 1984 documentary about homeless teens in Seattle), but the show's version of homelessness is still less clumsy than season one and two's version of a political campaign.

All in all, it's good compelling TV. I held off for a bit on posting about it just in case it started to go off the rails, but six episodes in I'm still convinced.

[Brando]

I'm still watching. Season three is a completely new start for the show which it needed. They completely dropped everything from the Rosie case from the show but they also dropped the film noir plot elements while keeping the aesthetic. I'm a huge film noir fan but there is a fine line between a great film noir and just absurdity. It's very difficult to pull off in a two hour film noir let alone over two seasons of a tv show. It makes it even more difficult when you, as the show runner stated, begin writing the show before knowing who actually killed Rosie. It still has a thing for the sensational though. 

I really like Peter Sarsgaard and let hope they can keep his character interesting.

A lot of the stuff with the street kids feels dated and inauthentic (the datedness makes sense, because they based how the kids look and talk on "Streetwise," the 1984 documentary about homeless teens in Seattle), but the show's version of homelessness is still less clumsy than season one and two's version of a political campaign.

I haven't even thought about the political campaign from the previous seasons until I read your post. I forgot how bad it was. I'm glad they did a clean slate and haven't even mentioned anything it.

The Bridge is starting next week on FX. I decided to watch it based on the creepiness of those 15 second teasers I saw during Justified. It looks to have very much the same kind of feeling as the Killing but hopefully it can stand apart.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I actually started watching this. I'm in the first 1/3 of Season 2. I knew that the Rosie Larsen story carried into Season 2, so I was expecting it and it didn't bother me. I'm torn on the endless parade of red herrings. It's kind of fun to watch the havoc that results from people being stupid and making assumptions, but on the other hand I always feel smarter than the show, which usually isn't the case with a mystery. I usually try to make myself at least slightly gullible, but that's hard to do with this one.

Overall I like it, because I'm a fan of Linden's brand of subtle badassery. Also, she and Holder have a good dynamic. It's engaging.

The campaign storyline is a mixed bag for me. Most of it is cheesy, but when the candidates are actually making public speeches and such, it's among the best and most realistic political speech I've heard in a TV show or movie. Contrast this show's political speech content to Homeland's, which is 100% laughable all the time. I think I prefer the campaign storyline to watching the Larsens mourn.

Pretty much right away I started watching the episodes like this:

1. Watch the current episode to the end
2. Start the next episode to resolve the cliffhanger
3. Stop around the 10-15 minute mark when a Larsen family scene begins

I'm looking forward to Season 3.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Definitely liking this season. It's so bleak and grimy, almost too much, but it's quite good.

The latest episode was probably the best of the series. But avoid spoilers if you haven't seen it yet.

SPOILERS

It totally reminded me of Dancer in the Dark. How can it not? (They almost put him on the board, too.) What a soul-crushing story. With this episode and what happened with Bullet, The Killing is obviously not pulling any punches. And that was some truly next-level acting from Peter Sarsgaard. Wow. I never expected something like this out of this series.

Any thoughts about the weight issue and his neck not breaking? Did the chief prison guard do that on purpose?

DEEPER SPOILERS

We all know bald veteran cop guy is the killer, right?

[Brando]

I really liked how they handled Peter Sarsgaard's character. I loved the character from the beginning. I had some worries if they could keep his character interesting. So I really liked the switch his character made mid season from being the cold hard ass to being terrified.

SPOILERS
Any thoughts about the weight issue and his neck not breaking? Did the chief prison guard do that on purpose?

I considered that too but think you have to set that up. They did set up how difficult it is to hang someone properly. I think it was more to show executions aren't as clean and quick as we believe.

DEEPER SPOILERS

We all know bald veteran cop guy is the killer, right?

If you're talking about Holder's partner, then yeah it has to be him.


RECOMMENDATION:
If anyone isn't too tired of murder mysteries and noir television, check out Broadchurch. It's a British show that already aired in Britain and is set to air later this year in the US. I was hesitant because I watch Top of the Lake earlier in the year, I was in the middle of this season of the Killing and had stopped watching The Bridge after two episodes. I'm glad I watched it. It's only 8 episodes and really good.

[bigperm]

Anyone else finish this last night? I thought season 3 was great.

[Brando]

I wasn't expecting much from the finale. When I saw that it was two hours, I was expecting half the episode spent learning it was Holder's partner then the second half setting up another season. It turned out to be an excellent episode. I really enjoyed the small parts like when Holder and Lindon are on their way to the morgue.

There was a lot of suspense in the episode. The car following Adrian was intense although it did give away it wasn't Holder's Partner leaving Skinner as the only other person to be the killer. During the long car ride with Lindon and Skinner, it did make me think of Seven and that was before suicide by cop ending.

While I really liked the episode, I don't think they did enough for me to believe Lindon would have shot Skinner twice and killing him. I keep thinking about when the Priest kidnapped Lindon.  It's too much of the same situation that you have to think it was done purposely. She realized he wasn't the killer and then did everything she could do to keep him from committing suicide by cop. She shoots skinner then Holder arrives telling her that Adrian is alive. Lindon then kills Skinner anyway. I don't think they did enough for me to believe that but it doesn't bother me enough to dislike the episode or season.

[Jeremy Blackman]

SPOILERS

As soon as they had zeroed in on Reddick early in the finale, I knew it was Skinner. (They would not solve it that early.) Skinner was kind of set up as a nice big juicy option if they were to go big, which they obviously did.

When Skinner said "let's keep this between the three of us," that was the confirmation.

It was certainly a bold choice, but it also made complete sense. (I felt the same way about the end of the Rosie Larsen story, actually.)

So what evidence does Linden have to justify the execution? There's nothing at the lake house, and presumably nothing in the trunk. Unless she was recording their conversation, doesn't she have essentially nothing? The ring is the only thing I can think of, and that wouldn't be enough.

Even if she had all the evidence, I think executing unarmed suspects is frowned upon.

I mean really, as far as everyone else is concerned, Linden murdered a police chief in cold blood for no apparent reason. I very much liked this finale, but now I'm sort of angry. Not particularly interested in a season where Linden is on trial. They may have significantly reduced the chance for renewal with that ending, because I can't envision a resolution that's not either boring and dumb (Linden on trial) or expedient and dumb (suddenly finding sufficient evidence on Skinner, or Holder lying about what happened).