The Killing -- new series on AMC

[SykoSkotty]

I still think it's that crazy billionaire who threw that party with the underage girls from the escort service. When I saw that he had a pool you could look at from underneath, that did it for me - he's got a crazy "drowning" fetish and the money to make it happen, and he likes underage girls.

[salinqmind]

The crazy billionaire is so obviously the killer that it's going to turn out to be someone else altogether. I predict.

[Zeldar]

I still think it's that crazy billionaire who threw that party with the underage girls from the escort service. When I saw that he had a pool you could look at from underneath, that did it for me - he's got a crazy "drowning" fetish and the money to make it happen, and he likes underage girls.

They surely are trying to throw suspicion his way! And the heat is on for Darren as well.

Have you seen a 21st Century "milking the suspense" sequence as heavy-handed as the last few minutes of last night's episode? Amateurish!

Every scene makes the cops seem even less aware and less skillful than the one before. Wouldn't it be great if the series' final scene would have them stepping in front of a bus?

[newcomer]

First off, yes it is slow but I guess if I would compare this is to something generic, like “Criminal Minds” I’d take The Killing show any time.

In my view, we had pretty solid last 10-15 minutes and, considering the whole pace of the series, pretty thrilling end with both detectives finding out about Darren, albeit in a different way. That whole scene with Darren opening the entrance door and seeing Linden while HE knew and she had yet to find out who Orpheus is… yeah, I’d say that was pretty good, almost movie-worthy.

As for Darren being a suspect and considering the story of Orpheus in his wife, I’d say Darren is just being consumed by the grief. So, I see that incident with Aleena more like a little introspection and guilt than anything else. Creepy, perhaps, but for him that question on how would it feel to drown is mostly related to grief.

Also, there were number of stills on Gwen to make me still hang on to the idea that it is her all along.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

The billionaire isn't the John with the drowning fetish (aka "orpheus"). The reveal at the end was that Richmond is. That doesn't mean he's the killer necessarily, but the current mayor also gave Gwen pictures of Richmond in a car with Rosie.

What this is probably going to mean is that Gwen killed Rosie out of either jealousy or some kind of desire to protect him. That was my theory after watching like ten minutes of the first episode, so I'm going to stick with it.

[AuntiePam]

If Richmond isn't the killer, how are the writers going to explain Richmond receiving emails addressed to Orpheus?

I can't see Gwen as the killer. Is Rosie going to run terrified through the woods from a woman?

[Zeldar]

If Richmond isn't the killer, how are the writers going to explain Richmond receiving emails addressed to Orpheus?

My memory may be bad (I saw this just once late last night) but I believe that Darren (Orpheus) was the guy who took the Beau Soleil gal to the waterfront and quizzed her on her thoughts and feelings about drowning. That's not the same as his killing Rosie, although the clumsy writing might lead us to think that. I see this and the boy-with-ceiling-pool as outright deliberate red herrings.

If you go to the website and check the "suspicious characters" poll, you notice that Jack is not there. He has to be the guilty one! :)

[Sleeps With Butterflies]

First off, yes it is slow but I guess if I would compare this is to something generic, like “Criminal Minds” I’d take The Killing show any time.

Agreed. I have to admit it boggles my mind that people *want* to know who did it by the 2nd episode. This is more of a "keeps you guessing" type show as opposed to a "hey here is the person, watch us catch him!" show. There are eleventy billion of the latter on television and (IMHO) they're fairly routine and boring.

I wasn't thrilled with last weeks episode as far as moving the plot of THIS murder along, but unless this show is going to be a one season and you're done thing, having character building and learning more about each main character seems pretty important to me.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

There wasn't anything interesting about those characters, though. They blew the chance to do something intriguing and differnt with Holder by teasing us with an early appearance of moral ambiguity, then having him turn out to be a standard order baby face after all.
A good whodunnit should also offer the audience clues throught. This show really hasn't. It just lead the audience through one hour filling blind alley after another.

[SykoSkotty]

If Richmond isn't the killer, how are the writers going to explain Richmond receiving emails addressed to Orpheus?

I can't see Gwen as the killer. Is Rosie going to run terrified through the woods from a woman?

My thoughts :

Richmond's being hacked. Just like he's being set up with the campaign car. No one in their right mind would use a car registered to their own campaign, that's just crazy and makes zero sense. This is also why I think the only way Gwen did it is if she found out Richmond and Rosie were having an affair and she killed her out of jealousy and wanted to frame Richmond, with maybe some advice from her father. Remember the shoe company front for the escort service? That was Hacker Central, they still had messages from old message boards that he could access, and since we know that Tom the billionaire uses the escort service alot.........

As far as Gwen chasing Rosie through the woods - the one chasing her through the woods wasn't necessarily her killer. I think it was a team effort (Gwen AND Jaime?) and whomever that was in the woods was simply the one delivering her to the eventual killer.

[Omniscient]

My thoughts :

Richmond's being hacked. Just like he's being set up with the campaign car. No one in their right mind would use a car registered to their own campaign, that's just crazy and makes zero sense. This is also why I think the only way Gwen did it is if she found out Richmond and Rosie were having an affair and she killed her out of jealousy and wanted to frame Richmond, with maybe some advice from her father. Remember the shoe company front for the escort service? That was Hacker Central, they still had messages from old message boards that he could access, and since we know that Tom the billionaire uses the escort service alot.........

As far as Gwen chasing Rosie through the woods - the one chasing her through the woods wasn't necessarily her killer. I think it was a team effort (Gwen AND Jaime?) and whomever that was in the woods was simply the one delivering her to the eventual killer.


Do we know how his wife died? Is it possible that the whole "what would it be like to drown" thing he's asking the escort is just him being morbid about his wife's death and not menacing. I suspect we're going to learn that Richmond wasn't having sex with the girls but using it as some therapy for his grief.

[SykoSkotty]

They haven't openly said how she died but everyone is starting to suspect that she drowned. The questions I've come up with are :

When Stan is talking to the therapist about his dream, they never revealed who the man was sitting at the dinner table......Belko?

When Sarah visits Richmond, he's celebrating with wine, but we see TWO wine glasses. Was Gwen on her way over? Or perhaps someone else?

[Tarwater]

Goods news for fans of television where nothing of consequence happens, The Killing has just been picked up for a second season! (http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/amc-renews-the-killing-for-season-2/)

[Zeldar]

Goods news for fans of television where nothing of consequence happens, The Killing has just been picked up for a second season! (http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/amc-renews-the-killing-for-season-2/)

This is truly distressing. :(

[Tangent]

Goods news for fans of television where nothing of consequence happens, The Killing has just been picked up for a second season! (http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/amc-renews-the-killing-for-season-2/)

I'm done after next week.

[SykoSkotty]

I re-watched the last episode and now I'm even more sold on Tom as the killer, at least in some fashion. I know he's involved. When Jamie goes to meet him at the party, Tom is upset that Richmond isn't there and he says, "guys like me can do whatever we want and get away with it, and why? Because the Richmonds of the world will always be there to clean up after guys like me." He also comments about giving Richmond $5 million, not because he can shoot a basket, but because he intends to collect on that favor.

I think Tom was partying with Rosie and things got outta control - he had Richmond clean up his mess, and Richmond delegated that task to Jamie, with strict orders to keep if from Gwen.

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

It's obvious we're supposed to think the billionaire is the killer at this point. Whether that is just another red herring or not will have to wait until the final episode on Sunday.

[Erdosain]

Well, it obviously CAN'T be Richmond, because they never would have revealed it in the penultimate episode. The billionaire seems too obvious now, too. It has to be the Senator or Gwen.

The incompetence of the police work was again annoying. They can call up a deleted message on Beau Soleil but are incapable of finding out what Rosie did on the site and who she contacted? They can pull up Aleena's real name and college major but can't find ANYTHING that Rosie did on the site? Stupid.

Also, did they ever resolve where Rosie was getting that money? Are we to assume the Councilman was giving it to her, but outside the parameters of the website? And if the Councilman was meeting Rosie regularly, surely there are less conspicuous places than an Indian casino, covered in surveillance cameras.

The pace of this episode was great. If they'd only been able to do this for the length of the season, it would have been a great show. However, I get the feeling this is the writers' idea of balls out crazy fast season finale pacing. Sad.

[Mr. Excellent]

I can't see Gwen as the killer. Is Rosie going to run terrified through the woods from a woman?

I don't think Gwen is the killer, either, but that's just a guess, and not for this reason. I'm an adult male, and I'll certainly run frantically through the woods to evade a woman I believe intends to kill me. If she's armed and I'm not, she could easily pull it off.

[Erdosain]

Speaking of Jasper's dad, we still have to have some resolution to his snub of Mitch's sister at the wake.

I guess this week we found out how Jasper's dad and Mitch's sister know each other. You know, if I was a prostitute and I ran into a former john at my niece's wake, I probably would pretend I didn't know him, and not hang around all expectantly for him to say something like, "Yo, how's tricks? This chick is crazy, everybody! You should see what she did for those shoes. Sick!" Just another example of poor writing (or possibly direction) on this show.

Also, and this may just be me, but the scene with the billionaire and the male campaign aide seemed kind of silly since the aide pings my gaydar. He just doesn't seem the type to get tempted by women unless they are wearing a Councilman Richmond mask.

[rikc]

As a big fan of Rubicon, I'm glad to see that its 'successor' is driving people crazy in a similar fashion :)

I'm honestly pretty prepared to be let down when we find out who the killer is this week, mostly because I really hate everyone in the election storyline. I don't even necessarily dislike the storyline itself, I just really hate the cast. Gwen seems like she thinks she's in a different show and Darren is like a caricature in a cast of (imo) pretty human characters. Still, I'm very much enjoying the show and pretty pumped for the finale.

I've rewatched the series with my roommate over the past couple of weeks, and I think The Killing had a bit more direction than people gave it credit for. If anything, the last few episodes have shown that the show knows how to capitalize on what its built up. I think the finale will continue that trend.

[obfusciatrist]

So, I don't know if the original series went any further than a single series.

For a second season I assume we get the same cops but everybody else is different?

[Erdosain]

So, I don't know if the original series went any further than a single series.

For a second season I assume we get the same cops but everybody else is different?

According to Wikipedia article about the Danish show, there have been two series and a third is in production. Americans are lazy, so they'll probably just keep shooting from the Danish scripts.

I wish I could watch the original Danish version and see just whose fault this whole thing is.

[DigitalC]

Also, did they ever resolve where Rosie was getting that money? Are we to assume the Councilman was giving it to her, but outside the parameters of the website? And if the Councilman was meeting Rosie regularly, surely there are less conspicuous places than an Indian casino, covered in surveillance cameras.


She was a hooker.

[A. Gwilliam]

According to Wikipedia article about the Danish show, there have been two series and a third is in production. Americans are lazy, so they'll probably just keep shooting from the Danish scripts.

I wish I could watch the original Danish version and see just whose fault this whole thing is.

Having seen the original, but not the remake, I can only go by what people here are saying about it, but the AMC version does now seem to have diverged quite a bit from the Danish in tone, its characterisation etc. of the two main detectives, the inter-relationship between other characters, and probably also the plot. Obviously some of those plot differences will be because the remake is considerably shorter than the original (20x 60 mins. with no ads).

The original second series only features two characters from the first.

In my view the Danish original is either over-long or the second half was put together too hastily because the last 10 episodes were brought forward so as not to leave the originally intended six-month gap in the middle of its transmission run. As a result there was a run of episodes which descended into false-suspect-of-the-week, and the sorts of cliche that had previously been avoided started to seep in.

How many episodes are left to run on AMC?

[Erdosain]

She was a hooker.

But if she was a hooker, why didn't she have a profile on the Beau Soleil website? I mean, it seems like she was getting money from Richmond or someone, but she doesn't appear to have been a formal Beau Soleil prostitute.

Having seen the original, but not the remake, I can only go by what people here are saying about it, but the AMC version does now seem to have diverged quite a bit from the Danish in tone, its characterisation etc. of the two main detectives, the inter-relationship between other characters, and probably also the plot. Obviously some of those plot differences will be because the remake is considerably shorter than the original (20x 60 mins. with no ads).

The original second series only features two characters from the first.

In my view the Danish original is either over-long or the second half was put together too hastily because the last 10 episodes were brought forward so as not to leave the originally intended six-month gap in the middle of its transmission run. As a result there was a run of episodes which descended into false-suspect-of-the-week, and the sorts of cliche that had previously been avoided started to seep in.

How many episodes are left to run on AMC?

There's just one episode left, so we'll be done with our complaining by this time on Monday. This has got to be a record--a show where the American version is seven episodes shorter than the original. And thank God for that, I shudder to think of these writers stretching this story to fill seven more episodes.

Anyway, from your description, it sounds like the Danish version had its problems, too.

[Lakai]

And the killer is...

[Hentor the Barbarian]

I frankly did not expect the show's producers to be such big assholes.

Two fingers way up for this show.

[DigitalC]

Motherfuckers.

[AuntiePam]

Sepinwall isn't happy either. (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/the-killing-orpheus-descending-reviewing-the-season-finale)

I watched the first 10 minutes or so. When Linden and Holder started checking records that should have been checked long before, I bailed. I won't be back next year.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I don't remember when I've ever seen a show that had as much contempt for the audience as this piece of shit. The showrunner needs to be fired. I will not be watching anymore. I don't give a shit who the killer is, and I'm not going to sit through another season of "herrings of the Week" to find out.

[obfusciatrist]

Oof, I've mostly stayed on board with the show but that's going to be hard to take.

[davidm]

Next season? There's a next season? Was I the only one who didn't know that or was it a total surprise?

[Omniscient]

Dirty fucking cocksuckers.

[Tangent]

Fuck you, AMC.

[Oslo Ostragoth]

What

the

eff.

Are we supposed to tune in next season to watch another X episodes as Linden solves the first season crime?

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

Fuck AMC. I will not be back next year. Piece of shit show with a piece of shit non-ending.

[Elmer J. Fudd]

I've enjoyed the show throughout and I'm not all that let down by the season finale. IMO, the voyage is more important than the destination. I kind of like that the cops are actually pretty incompetent; it's a nice change from the unrealistic super genius cops on other shows.

I'm looking forward to season 2, but they're going to have to expand from the "suspect of the week" ploy to keep it interesting.

[rikc]

Part of me finds it interesting that the show would take such a bold turn and fake out the audience so hard.

The other part of me is embarrassed that I defended this show to so many people. I'll take a look next season, but most of the character arcs have resolved and that's why I liked the show to begin with. Ehhhhhh

[Tarwater]

http://fuckthekilling.com/ <- that about sums it up.

[davidm]

So if it's not Richmond, why did Gwen Eaton (his campaign adviser) say that he was out that night and returned soaking wet? Is she helping to frame him? Did he coincidentally get wet somehow (which would be very contrived)?

Why is Richmond receiving Orpheus' emails?

Is Holder framing a guilty man?

[Zeldar]

To be completely frank, the only reason -- the only one -- that I endured this loser show for 13 weeks has been this thread!

I'm done. Maybe next year we can have a thread about what we all are doing at that hour (those hours) when this thing is on. I'd be up for that.

For those who feel some bit of disappointment for its being away a whole year, or however long it will be, may I suggest another couple hours with: Older Than America (2008)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0932669/) which I saw all the way to the end and kept saying to myself, "Why couldn't The Killing borrow some of this talent and creativity?"

[SykoSkotty]

Didn't someone on this board say they were an extra and we were heading for a big twist?? Was that the twist? That we'd have to continue to wait to find out who the real killer is?

My thoughts : While I am frustrated that we don't know who did it, I do still enjoy the show. I guess you just have to look at it from a different perspective. This isn't CSI, where everything is sloved at the end of each episode, so I guess this show isn't solved at the end of each season. I think most who are angry are the ones who were expecting all the answers to be revealed in the finale. The timeline of the show is only two weeks - some murder cases go on for months or even years.

I'm really curious as to how next season is going to pan out. Another whole season devoted to the same case? Maybe 4 episodes dedicated to Stan/Mitch's divorce? Holder's new agenda? Tom the billionaire wasn't even mentioned in this episode......how can he collect on his 5 million if Richmond is in jail or dead??

[Zeldar]

So as not to hijack this thread, I've started another one to get input for a poll where voters can pick their most disappointing show. Input is definitely needed, since I can't think of many shows or movies that were more of a letdown.

Please direct responses to that concern to that other thread and not to this one.

ETA:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=613170
Help me come up with a list of TV shows (or movies) as disappointing as "The Killing"

[DigitalC]

So if it's not Richmond, why did Gwen Eaton (his campaign adviser) say that he was out that night and returned soaking wet? Is she helping to frame him? Did he coincidentally get wet somehow (which would be very contrived)?

Why is Richmond receiving Orpheus' emails?

Is Holder framing a guilty man?

Gwen might just be extremely pissed at him. And he could easily be a drowning obsessed whore monger without being the murderer, he could be orpheus and not have killed Rosie.

[Scubaqueen]

yep. i'm done.

[Contrapuntal]

I missed the last two episodes. What the heck happened to piss everyone off?

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

I call bullshit on the whole "journey more important than the destination" bit. Not when your tagline and promotional posters are all "Who killed Rosie Larson." In that case you'd expect to actually find out who killed Rosie Larson!

[DigitalC]

I missed the last two episodes. What the heck happened to piss everyone off?

What's the worst possible thing that can happen at the end of a whodunit show?

[Contrapuntal]

What's the worst possible thing that can happen at the end of a whodunit show?They all did it? :)

I guess you're saying that the question will remain unanswered. Did they close the case without finding the murderer, or in some other way declare the investigation over?

[Elmer J. Fudd]

I call bullshit on the whole "journey more important than the destination" bit. Not when your tagline and promotional posters are all "Who killed Rosie Larson." In that case you'd expect to actually find out who killed Rosie Larson!

To each his own. FWIW, I watched the whole thing as a marathon over the weekend flipping through the intermissions. I don't recall seeing that tagline and I had few expectations about how the show was "supposed" to turn out. Frankly, I find shows that match my expectations to be rather boring.

[DigitalC]

They all did it? :)

I guess you're saying that the question will remain unanswered. Did they close the case without finding the murderer, or in some other way declare the investigation over?

They didn't solve anything.

[Billy Baroo]

I enjoyed the twist. Holder's shadiness was hinted, then dispelled, then reintroduced. Kind of a red herring protip.

Very cool watching the emotions play across Linden's face as she sat there on the plane. It's sweet to watch her think, and with this show I get a surfeit of something sweet.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I call bullshit on the whole "journey more important than the destination" bit. Not when your tagline and promotional posters are all "Who killed Rosie Larson." In that case you'd expect to actually find out who killed Rosie Larson!
Yeah, the journey blew ass too. It was a long ride in a hot car with boring people that kept making frivolous stops, them just when you think you're getting to your destination, it turns out to be another rest stop.

Now the showrunner and "creator" (though I don't know how she could be the creator of a show that's an adapation of a European show) is saying they didn't reveal the killer because they idn't want to be "formulaic." The problem with that is that the show is EXTREMELY formulaic, and the formula is Three's Company misunderstandings of the week. You can only yank the audience around so many times with the red herrings and fake leads before you lose all credibilty, and the audience knows that every single "clue" is a lie.

I guess this particular showrunner previously worked on the hack procedural show Cold case, and that hackiness shows in The Killing as well, particularly in the investigation and interrogation scenes. It follows that particular formula of interviewing witnesses and breaking down cardboard suspects with sanctimonious interrogations, but it's supposed to be "original" that none of it ever actually leads anywhere.

Balco won't kill richmond, by the way. The show would never allow anything thatinteresting to happen. He'll get tackled or something, or more likely, give a speech then break down in tears, then put down the gun.

And Holder will have an innocent explanation.

Not that I will bother watching to see if I'm right.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I enjoyed the twist. Holder's shadiness was hinted, then dispelled, then reintroduced. Kind of a red herring protip.

Very cool watching the emotions play across Linden's face as she sat there on the plane. It's sweet to watch her think, and with this show I get a surfeit of something sweet.
She basically only has one facial expression - a scowl. And she never once convinced me she had any ability to think. She's a terrible detective.

[Zeldar]

Balco won't kill richmond, by the way. The show would never allow anything thatinteresting to happen. He'll get tackled or something, or more likely, give a speech then break down in tears, then put down the gun.

And Holder will have an innocent explanation.

Not that I will bother watching to see if I'm right.

You can't help but wonder if the "creative staff" had old kinescopes of Jack Ruby gunning down Lee Harvey Oswald to use for choreography of that scene!

I'll be sharing your absence when the next set of "reveals" plops out.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

They all did it? :)

I guess you're saying that the question will remain unanswered. Did they close the case without finding the murderer, or in some other way declare the investigation over?
They lead you to think they've resolved the case, make an arrest, then jerk the rug out from under with a revelation that some of the evidence was bogus (planted by Holder, who is now back to being shady), and we aren't any closer to finding the killer than we were at the beginning.

[Zeldar]

They all did it? :)


If only that could be true! There's not a single "suspect" that would cause me any grief whatsoever to learn that he/she done it. The more the merrier.

Aren't there several "classic mysteries" where everybody did it? They were at least clever at the time.

My only major letdown is that it does appear that Jack may not have done it. :D

[Mehitabel]

I had a great Father's Day BBQ and played with my adorable little nephews all day and then came home to watch THIS. Arrrrgh! Veena Sud, the most arrogant showrunner in America, said smugly in a recent interview that during the last five minutes, "people will be jumping out of their seats". Well, actually, I was, lunging for the remote and stopping and erasing the show from my DVR for good. It doesn't deserve to have this crap on its innocent hard drive.

[Elmer J. Fudd]

Yeah, the journey blew ass too..

And you watched all 13 episodes?

This is what I don't get about a lot of the complaints about this show. If the show was so bad, why didn't you just stop watching? Is all this hate retrospective because the finale didn't have the pay-off you expected or did you actually think one episode was going to somehow redeem 12 bad ones?

[Billy Baroo]

She basically only has one facial expression - a scowl. And she never once convinced me she had any ability to think. She's a terrible detective.

Ahh, but what a scowl! Mirelle Enos has a marvelous mouth.

When it comes to watching television, I live like Bill Hurt's character in The Big Chill. Sometimes you just have to let art... flow... over you.

[Hentor the Barbarian]

And you watched all 13 episodes?

This is what I don't get about a lot of the complaints about this show. If the show was so bad, why didn't you just stop watching? Is all this hate retrospective because the finale didn't have the pay-off you expected or did you actually think one episode was going to somehow redeem 12 bad ones?Several people here made it quite plain that they grew fatigued of the show midway through the season, but were holding on just to see the resolution. Their reaction is quite understandable.

Perhaps you felt like this was well-written and interesting. Most people did not. I know that I started out very much on board with the premise. I was primed to be a fan. But the show gradually lost me because the writing was really just that bad. Remember, they did a whole show three episodes back on character development, where the plot ground to a halt and ultimately nothing happened.

The "journey" when all was said and done, was on the back of a city bus, where you can't see much out the windows, and what you can see you've seen many times before, and a bunch of people that you don't really care about get on and off along the way, and ultimately the driver misses your stop.

I should have realized that the multiple red-herrings in the very first 10 minutes of the show were a bad omen. Remember when they cut between Rosie being chased and Linden walking up on the thing buried in the sand? It turned out to be a pig in the sand or something like that, IIRC? The next thing is her being summoned to a crime scene, and after a big suspenseful walk in a derelict building, it turns out to be a going away party? Yoinks!

[DigitalC]

I'll admit young Mitch was one extremely hot piece of ass, that sort of explains how anyone would actually end up married to her.

[rikc]

This finale was so bad and people are hating it so much I feel like I've witnessed something historically significant.

[stretch]

Watched the entire season over the weekend*--except the last 2 minutes that my DVR ate. I assume that Belko does not shoot Richmond and that Linden is desperately trying to get off the plane. Thanks for the big Fuck You, AMC.

I wanted to like the show but Mireille Enos distracted me with her face: she looks like she is smelling the shit that is the writing for the show.

Won't be back next season because I don't care about any of the characters.

*Hey, I was sick and had nothing better to do. If I had known it was going to end so stupidly, I would have deleted from the DVR and spent my time with something else.

[Zeldar]

This finale was so bad and people are hating it so much I feel like I've witnessed something historically significant.

I believe you may have. I sense that this is a new benchmark in "fuck the audience" TV and we'll have a new crop of copycats almost immediately. Maybe we'll be able to look back at 2011 as the "year the music died" or some such.

Just for info's sake, did the Danish version traffic in this level of "the audience is stupid, let's yank their chain" shenanigans?

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

http://fuckthekilling.com/ <- that about sums it up.

Did the writer of the NY Times article linked on that page turn off the show before the end? How could she be so utterly wrong about what happened? :confused: :dubious:

[Omniscient]

They all did it? :)

I guess you're saying that the question will remain unanswered. Did they close the case without finding the murderer, or in some other way declare the investigation over?

They couldn't even manage to do that.

Think more along the lines of the The Soprano's ending with a new bad guy introduced in the final seconds.

[obfusciatrist]

This was an even bigger FU than it would otherwise appear. Keep in mind that when they wrote that ending they didn't know for sure there would be a second season.

Imagine the howls if the show hadn't been picked up. At least now I'll be able to read some Wikipedia recaps next year if I still care at all.

[Omniscient]

AMC was idiotic for renewing this show prior to the conclusion. I wonder if they did it to try and soften the blow from what they knew was going to be a hated ending, had there been this level of anger combined with the possibility of there never being a conclusion perhaps AMC felt it would have been even worse.

What happens when the viewership for next season's premiere is 10% of this season's? Will AMC cancel the show prior to the conclusion? Will we be left never knowing whodunit? I think these pricks running the show will refuse to say who the murderer is forever for pure spite if the show get cancelled early.

I'm half tempted to delete my Breaking Bad and Mad Men Season Passes out of rage.

[Zeldar]

The thing that distresses me a lot is that whatever method they use to register viewership (at least the numbers of us) without taking into account the percentage of us who are so angry and anxious for something redeeming to happen, gives them the impression that some percentage of us are clamoring for another season. Surely they're getting some feedback that at least one of them is reading, to suggest they're pissing on their shoes if they think next season will have anything like the same numbers.

Somebody's cooking their books, as I see it.

Does anybody know of a fansite or positive-toned blog where there's a preponderance of worshippers? That ought to be some high comedy!

[Morbo]

I equate it with somehow agreeing to go on a tour bus of San Francisco, where I lived for 15 years.

I know everything the tour guide is going to say, only I'm waiting for an interesting factoid I didn't know, but I'm not getting it. Then near the end of the tour I'm promised something fascinating about the escape from Alcatraz, and I get "nobody knows if they escaped or not. Thanks, exit to the right."

[Omniscient]

One additional detail that pisses me off: when Holder cooked up the faked photo to get an arrest warrant what the hell was his gameplan? Now, I can see that some shabby photoshop would be good enough to trick the Chief of Police and a Judge long enough to get a warrant for his arrest, but he has to know that at trail it's all going to blow up in their faces. There's no way a fake would past the defense's experts and regardless of any other evidence he's going to get off when that frame job comes to light.

What the fuck is Holder doing? I can't imagine he's pulling some sort of triple cross where he's actually trying to get Richmond off by sabotaging the investigation. If he's working for the former mayor or the billionaire or someone else who wanted to undermine Richmond in he final hour of the election I suppose that would work but the end result is still going to blow up at trial. This would be particularly bad for the mayor who's already taking heat from the public about an incompetent police force. Is Holder just so incredibly naive to think that he'd later just swap the real toll booth photo with the fake one when it was inevitably found, to do this he'd need to be 100% sure that that photo would turn up and it still might not match up well enough to replace the fake.

Incidentally, does anyone else think it was aggressively stupid and disdainful that they didn't show who the conspirator with Holder in the car was? If you're going to fuck over the audience you might as well go all out and show us another suspect to stew on all winter. That would have at least been a reveal worthy of a finale as opposed to the wishy-washy reveal that Holder is up to "something", which may or may not be entirely bad.

[Dewey Finn]

This was an even bigger FU than it would otherwise appear. Keep in mind that when they wrote that ending they didn't know for sure there would be a second season.

Imagine the howls if the show hadn't been picked up. At least now I'll be able to read some Wikipedia recaps next year if I still care at all.
One write-up of the finale (the one at the Onion AV Club) suggested that the show might have been renewed just to avoid the complaints of a lack of closure. (Although that seems a silly reason. If I were in charge at AMC, I would have insisted on an alternate ending that definitively wraps up everything. That way, they could have run that if they chose not to renew the show.)

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

One additional detail that pisses me off: when Holder cooked up the faked photo to get an arrest warrant what the hell was his gameplan?

Yup. Not only was the "reveal" a Fuck You to the audience, it didn't even make sense! Holder knew Linden was trying to get the footage from the tollbooth and that it would only be a matter of days/hours until the real photos (or as it turns out, lack thereof) would be revealed and then what? Good way to get the case against Richmond dismissed and bye bye to Holder's career. Unless the billionaire is paying him a few million dollars or something I don't know why he'd tank his own career with such a dumb move.

[Contrapuntal]

They couldn't even manage to do that.

Think more along the lines of the The Soprano's ending with a new bad guy introduced in the final seconds.Full shameful disclosure : I never saw the Sopranos.

[Elmer J. Fudd]

Does anybody know of a fansite or positive-toned blog where there's a preponderance of worshippers? That ought to be some high comedy!

That's kind of why I'm following this thread. The idea that a mere TV show can invoke such outrage is really quite entertaining. I figure that any show that can get such a strong reaction must be doing something right.

BTW, I'd have been just as satisfied with the finale if there wasn't going to be a season 2. That would have let the viewer try to make sense of what happened without a "right" answer being spoon fed to him.

[Morbo]

Bill Simmons' take (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6680958/hackery-first-degree) on it.

[Contrapuntal]

Bill Simmons' take (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6680958/hackery-first-degree) on it.What do you click on to get his take?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It isn't the kind of show where the audience has been given hints and clues to chew on. Every single lead or clue had been a blind ally. It has not given the viewer anything to make sense of. It's not subtle or layered, or challenging. It isn't trying make the audience work. Everything is right up front. It's not a puzzle with pieces for the audience to put together. I's a puzzle where every piece is revealed as not belonging to the puzzle. The whole show is like that game where you mime throwing a ball for a dog, but the show never lets go of the ball. it doesn't give the audience a chance figure anything out. That would be fine, but it doesn't want us to do that. It's trying to make the audience dance, like they'll keep falling for the same feints and fakes forever.

[Tarwater]

Yeah, the journey blew ass too. It was a long ride in a hot car with boring people that kept making frivolous stops, them just when you think you're getting to your destination, it turns out to be another rest stop.



If you look at the writers involved with the show, it's pretty clear that nothing good could have happened. Two of the writers cut their teeth working on Melrose Place. Veena Sud brought some of them from Cold Case following its cancellation -- which you think would have been a big red flag for AMC, the showrunner stocking her creative team with writers from one of the most execrable, un-original police procedurals in television history. Most of the other writers came from television shows like Law and Order, Criminal Minds, and Damages. It's just, what the fuck? I don't know what the executives at AMC were thinking.

One of the editors at the AV Club (http://www.avclub.com/) commented that the show was like a single episode of Cold Case, stretched out to thirteen episodes. That's the best assessment of the show I've seen, I think.


Yup. Not only was the "reveal" a Fuck You to the audience, it didn't even make sense!

It didn't make sense on multiple levels. I mean, what bothers me most is that the writers gave no indication that Holder was anything but forthright with the investigation. He may have been a little skeevy, but for the entire series, it was plain to the audience that he was working in earnest to solve the case. There's just no indication that he was a duplicitous person, at all.

For me, the most glaring mistake the writers made with Holder happened in the penultimate episode. One of the Beau Soleil women asked to meet him down by the dock, where presumably she was going to reveal something damning about the still-mysterious Orpheus. Holder is standing in a phonebooth when he looks over and notices a campaign poster for Richmond. You can see him put two and two together. If he was planning on casting suspicion on Richmond anyway, why the hell does he seem surprised?

Not only that, by why the fuck is he enthusiastically following all of the red herrings? Like The Cage? The butcher shop? Rosie was found in Richmond's campaign car, so it shouldn't have been difficult to nudge the investigation in that direction, if setting up Richmond was his goal all along. It's almost as if the writers decided at the very last moment to make him a double-agent, ignoring everything they had previously written about him.

[kapri]

I had a great Father's Day BBQ and played with my adorable little nephews all day and then came home to watch THIS. Arrrrgh! Veena Sud, the most arrogant showrunner in America, said smugly in a recent interview that during the last five minutes, "people will be jumping out of their seats". Well, actually, I was, lunging for the remote and stopping and erasing the show from my DVR for good. It doesn't deserve to have this crap on its innocent hard drive.


I've been watching The Killing since it started, and while I don't have any comments on last night's episode (I think because I have learned not to expect much), I do want to go a bit O/T here and ask who is this "Veena Sud" person and what is a showrunner? I've watched every episode, sometimes twice, and I've never seen or heard of her.


(Yes, I googled her name, and that didn't help a bit.)

[Dewey Finn]

One of the editors at the AV Club (http://www.avclub.com/) commented that the show was like a single episode of Cold Case, stretched out to thirteen episodes. That's the best assessment of the show I've seen, I think.
That makes sense, as Veena Sud worked on Cold Case before taking this show.

[Zeldar]

To save having to backtrack earlier pages again, here are my posts in this thread, and I think I was neutral up until the "<===" point. My "outrage" grew by episode, and I feel I have been fair and attentive to other people's opinions and views:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13683551&postcount=81
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13701502&postcount=102
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13701575&postcount=105
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13703916&postcount=115
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13728094&postcount=129

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13783678&postcount=143 <===
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13833083&postcount=173
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13836881&postcount=185
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13883384&postcount=222
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13883821&postcount=226

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13884294&postcount=232
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13909498&postcount=250
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13909748&postcount=253
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13910300&postcount=257
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13912714&postcount=264

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13935236&postcount=292
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13935366&postcount=294

But you can put me down as "not a fan."

[Diogenes the Cynic]

It didn't make sense on multiple levels. I mean, what bothers me most is that the writers gave no indication that Holder was anything but forthright with the investigation. He may have been a little skeevy, but for the entire series, it was plain to the audience that he was working in earnest to solve the case. There's just no indication that he was a duplicitous person, at all.

For me, the most glaring mistake the writers made with Holder happened in the penultimate episode. One of the Beau Soleil women asked to meet him down by the dock, where presumably she was going to reveal something damning about the still-mysterious Orpheus. Holder is standing in a phonebooth when he looks over and notices a campaign poster for Richmond. You can see him put two and two together. If he was planning on casting suspicion on Richmond anyway, why the hell does he seem surprised?

Not only that, by why the fuck is he enthusiastically following all of the red herrings? Like The Cage? The butcher shop? Rosie was found in Richmond's campaign car, so it shouldn't have been difficult to nudge the investigation in that direction, if setting up Richmond was his goal all along. It's almost as if the writers decided at the very last moment to make him a double-agent, ignoring everything they had previously written about him.
Agreed with everything on Holder. None of it jibes with anything else we've seen of him all season. The frameup doesn't even make sense since he had to have known it would fall apart almost immediately. That whole scene had the look of something that was contrived and tacked on at the last second, then they'll figure out how to fix it later. It might even just be another Mr. Furley misunderstanding.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I've been watching The Killing since it started, and while I don't have any comments on last night's episode (I think because I have learned not to expect much), I do want to go a bit O/T here and ask who is this "Veena Sud" person and what is a showrunner? I've watched every episode, sometimes twice, and I've never seen or heard of her.


(Yes, I googled her name, and that didn't help a bit.)
Showrunner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner)

Basically, a showrunner is the person who is the "boss" of a given TV show, and who manages the creative direction and day to day operations. Sometimes, but not always, this person has the title of "executive producer," and sometimes, but not always, this person is also the creator or head writer of a show. Sud was the showrunner on Cold case, and is nominally the "creator" of The Killing.

[Zeldar]

Showrunner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner)

Basically, a showrunner is the person who is the "boss" of a given TV show, and who manages the creative direction and day to day operations. Sometimes, but not always, this person has the title of "executive producer," and sometimes, but not always, this person is also the creator or head writer of a show. Sud was the showrunner on Cold case, and is nominally the "creator" of The Killing.

Not quite a David Chase, David Milch or David Shore in my book.

[HenryGale]

Huh.


I'm not sure why, exactly, but I didn't have at all the same reaction that just about the entire internet seemed to have about last night's season finale.

I guess it's because I didn't expect the Larson murder to be solved in this episode. Is that what everyone else expected? How, then, would the show solve all of the loose ends regarding the characters around the investigation? Mitch leaving the family, Stan's trial, beardy moving company employee's craziness, the millionaire's deal with the councilman, etc. What reason is there to keep coming back to these characters when we've moved on to a new, presumably unrelated investigation? I thought, after watching the penultimate episode, there clearly was not enough time to wrap up the story in one more sitting. I didn't realize anyone felt differently.

Personally, I dug the episode, but I've enjoyed the whole season. I take it many did not but kept watching anyway... and are now angry that they still don't enjoy it.

Anyway, I, for one, am looking forward to season 2.

[davidm]

Bob did it.

[Morbo]

What do you click on to get his take?

Unless I'm being whooshed, that link takes me straight to his article about the show, which actually sums up how I feel pretty well. Here (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6680958/hackery-first-degree) it is again.

[Omniscient]

It didn't make sense on multiple levels. I mean, what bothers me most is that the writers gave no indication that Holder was anything but forthright with the investigation. He may have been a little skeevy, but for the entire series, it was plain to the audience that he was working in earnest to solve the case. There's just no indication that he was a duplicitous person, at all.

For me, the most glaring mistake the writers made with Holder happened in the penultimate episode. One of the Beau Soleil women asked to meet him down by the dock, where presumably she was going to reveal something damning about the still-mysterious Orpheus. Holder is standing in a phonebooth when he looks over and notices a campaign poster for Richmond. You can see him put two and two together. If he was planning on casting suspicion on Richmond anyway, why the hell does he seem surprised?

Not only that, by why the fuck is he enthusiastically following all of the red herrings? Like The Cage? The butcher shop? Rosie was found in Richmond's campaign car, so it shouldn't have been difficult to nudge the investigation in that direction, if setting up Richmond was his goal all along. It's almost as if the writers decided at the very last moment to make him a double-agent, ignoring everything they had previously written about him.

Well it makes sense from a motivation standpoint if you assume it wasn't some grand conspiracy that had been on-going and that Holder's motivations are simply an ill advised need to wrap up this case at all costs. One would assume that Holder is convinced of the guy's guilt and is worried that he's going to get elected and be able to avoid any prosecution and/or arrest indefinitely once he's in a position of such authority. Therefore, in a quick ill-advised moment of weakness he manufactures evidence that he assumes will be similar to what they'd find in due course. He's not a big baddie, he's just a stupid cop who thinks the ends justify the means.

Of course that someone else is in on the deception throws a monkey wrench in that logical conclusion. Presumably the guy in the car with him is either the techie who faked the photo and therefore no more of a conspirator than Holder is, he's just a guy who was looking for a paycheck or has a grudge against Richmond. The alternative is that he's some big power broker who had been operating against Richmond all along, the mayor, the senator, the billionaire, one of the campaign advisers and he manipulated Holder in his moment of weakness. If this power broker and Holder were in on this together from the get-go then the show REALLY is fucking stupid like you note.

I guess it's because I didn't expect the Larson murder to be solved in this episode. Is that what everyone else expected? How, then, would the show solve all of the loose ends regarding the characters around the investigation? Mitch leaving the family, Stan's trial, beardy moving company employee's craziness, the millionaire's deal with the councilman, etc. What reason is there to keep coming back to these characters when we've moved on to a new, presumably unrelated investigation? I thought, after watching the penultimate episode, there clearly was not enough time to wrap up the story in one more sitting. I didn't realize anyone felt differently.

They didn't need to tie up every loose end to reveal the killer the way the advertising said they would. They could have had a season 2 exploring the fallout from the reveal of the killer and the fallout from the investigation. They could have had a season 2 about a secondary crime that led to Rosie's killing, essentially creating a new case to follow next season that builds on a larger conspiracy.

Here's how the ending should have played out and where the storylines end up.

1) Reveal the killer. It doesn't matter who it is or if they are killed/caught in the finale. That's what Season 2 is for. The reveal of the killer could open up a new line of investigation surrounding a conspiracy or some crazy underground syndicate. Or it could have just been a crime of passion with no additional fallout and the show moves on to another topic. It's not important, but paying off the promise of the marketing is critical.

2) Mitch (I thought her name as Midge all season long!) runs away and is simply gone. No need to wrap that up, that's just one of the many terrible side effects of the murder. Just like the teacher's beating and coma.

3) Stan's trial doesn't need to be wrapped up. He confessed, he'll defend his case and the basis of temporary insanity and they'll argue about how much punishment he gets, but it's incidental. It's another bad thing that happened to this family, the severity of the sentence isn't really important.

4) Beardy's craziness is a fundamental part of the finale and they needed to show it. They could have had him shoot Richmond or get stopped at the last minute, it doesn't really matter. His story line is wrapped up one way or another, the Larsen family is destroyed and he seeks revenge. Either way he goes to jail or dies and that's that.

5) The millionaire's deal is moot if Richmond is dead and/or his campaign is ruined. No need to wrap that up. Yes he's creepy and potentially a killer, but if they reveal who the killer is like they are supposed to there's nothing left of his story to tie up. Either way his $5M is wasted because Richmond is cooked, guilty or innocent and his grand plan of having the mayor under his thumb is moot.

All these things are reasonable ways to end the show and none of them would have precluded them revealing the killer. There's still plenty of meat left on the bones for season 2 if they choose, but there's closure there. We were TOLD to expect a reveal of the killer, therefore we expected it.

[Zeldar]

Unless I'm being whooshed, that link takes me straight to his article about the show, which actually sums up how I feel pretty well. Here (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6680958/hackery-first-degree) it is again.

I don't feel awkward agreeing with 90% of his comments! We ought to invite him here to exchange a few fine points with us and see if we can't come to a consensus that The Killing may not be ready for prime time.

[A. Gwilliam]

Just for info's sake, did the Danish version traffic in this level of "the audience is stupid, let's yank their chain" shenanigans?
You find out who the killer is in the Danish version, if that's what you mean.

I've just found that Wikipedia has a listing of the AMC episodes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Killing_episodes). Unfortunately the summaries given are obviously the incomplete things that get printed in listings magazines, etc. However, it looks to me that in fact Season 1 maybe relates to only the first half of the Danish original?

Wikipedia's article on the US series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_%28U.S._TV_series%29) summarises the plot as a whole as follows:
Set in Seattle, Washington, the series follows the police investigation of Rosie Larsen's murder. Each episode follows one day in the investigation. She was drowned in the trunk of a submerged car that belonged to the mayoral campaign of Darren Richmond. Detective Sarah Linden is assigned the case just before she is to relocate to Sonoma, California. She partners with a new detective Stephen Holder, and as the case becomes more complex, she continually puts off her relocation.
So far, so good.

Richmond is dismissed as a suspect because he has an alibi. The evidence eventually leads the detectives to Rosie's teacher, Bennet Ahmed. When the police are unable to close the case against Ahmed, Rosie's mother goads her husband into exacting revenge. Rosie's father beats Ahmed into a coma. When he discovers that Ahmed is in fact innocent, he turns himself in to the police.
Here we start to get differences, although the only one that may be substantive is that in the original the mother has absolutely no involvement with what happens to the teacher.

As the series winds down, the detectives discover that Rosie was working as a prostitute, and they track down a dangerous john who used her escort service and intimidated another girl. Eventually, they discover that the john is actually Richmond. The detectives gather evidence to build the case against him, and the series ends with his arrest and Linden finally getting on the plane to California. As she prepares for takeoff, she gets a call that informs her that Holder had fabricated the key piece of evidence against Richmond. While Richmond is getting into a police car, Belko arrives and pulls a gun and is about to shoot Richmond when the screen goes black, leaving Richmond's final fate unknown.
Here's where things diverge considerably from the original.


Anyway, I would definitely recommend the Danish series 1. The original is much more of a slow-burn thriller than a whodunnit.

[SykoSkotty]

I think Rosie was going to use the money to give to her mother. The scene with Mitch and her father - looking thru the scrapbook of places she wanted to go and never went. I think when Rosie saw that, she felt like Mitch never got a chance at life, so she wanted to get her the money to go to those places.

I don't think Holder was working with anyone to try and frame Richmond. I think Holder was convinced that Richmond was guilty, and did this on his own to make sure Richmond goes down. I knew something was up when Sarah left the police station and the camera focused on Holder's face. His reaction said that he was up to something. He might've been planning this for awhile. While they were tracing Richmond's steps - Holder comes up with the gas station not on their route and says, "Trust me Linden....I got this...."

And we still haven't found out who the other man was in Stan's dream.

[Oslo Ostragoth]

Unless I'm being whooshed, that link takes me straight to his article about the show, which actually sums up how I feel pretty well. Here (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6680958/hackery-first-degree) it is again.

It appears there are issues with the site: his tweets here (http://twitter.com/#!/sportsguy33).

I can't get the page to load properly with Opera, Chrome, Firefox or IE.

[BlackKnight]

Let's see ... "journey not destination", check.
"Don't need to be spoonfed", check.
"If it got such a reaction, it must be doing something right", check.

All I need are "it's really about the characters", and "some people just like to complain" and I'll have an Excuses for Shitty Television Bingo!


(Do we allow "postage stamps"? Because then all I need is, "you just didn't get it".)

[kapri]

Showrunner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner)

Basically, a showrunner is the person who is the "boss" of a given TV show, and who manages the creative direction and day to day operations. Sometimes, but not always, this person has the title of "executive producer," and sometimes, but not always, this person is also the creator or head writer of a show. Sud was the showrunner on Cold case, and is nominally the "creator" of The Killing.

Oh.

I've never heard the phrase "showrunner" before, and I've been watching TV for 50+ years. Huh. Thanks!

[Omniscient]

(Do we allow "postage stamps"? Because then all I need is, "you just didn't get it".)

I think that would be four corners, not postage stamps.

I was listening to Alan Sepinwall's podcast this evening to get his opinions on the two big finales last night and I found myself getting really frustrated with his co-host. His co-host was trying to tepidly defend the finale. He agreed the show sucked donkey dick, but he thought the viewers had an unreasonable expectation of getting an answer to the big question. He argued, stupidly in my opinion, that AMC never claimed that we'd get an answer explicitly. He cited all the press releases and all the reviewers packets they received as never explicitly saying anything one way or another. My problem with this is that no one in the general audience ever sees any of that stuff. All we see are the TV ads, radio ads and print ads. Those pretty much exclusively centered around the message "Who Killed Rosie Larsen?", which strongly implies that by watching you'll get an answer. Press releases and insider interviews/reviews don't mean shit to the general public. Had AMC taken the time to explicitly warn people that we may or may not get an answer, then the reaction might have been different. Instead they chased the dollars and used the slimy, misleading advertising in order suck people in.

[Erdosain]

I don't care that we didn't find out who killed Rosie Larsen. What I care about is that this show is unfailingly stupid in every possible way.

Let's be honest: even if they had played it straight and done a conventional wrap-up, it wouldn't have made the previous twelve episodes suck less. Sure, it was shit frosting, but the cake was already made out of shit.

My theory is that they know the show sucks, the writers moronic, etc. and said, "How can we get people talking about this show that has put most of the audience to sleep? Let's leave 'em hanging and introduce a whole bunch of nonsensical plot points!"

And God bless 'em, it almost worked. Hell, even though it was stupid, it was the only thing remotely interesting that's happened on this show in weeks. If they could have made episodes 1-12 this unconventional, it might not have been such a mediocre snooze-fest.

I will not be back next year unless they fire their entire roster of writers. But I might pop in the thread to silently laugh at those who do.

[Erdosain]

Just continuing my decompressing after watching the finale on my TiVo:

Setting aside the fact that only two detectives have been assigned to the most prominent murder case in a major American city, setting aside that one detective has zero murder experience and is in fact a junkie, and the other detective is close enough to quitting that she's gone to the airport multiple times, have there ever been two less competent or less likable detectives depicted on television? The Stooges don't count; they were a trio.

[Omniscient]

Let's be honest: even if they had played it straight and done a conventional wrap-up, it wouldn't have made the previous twelve episodes suck less. Sure, it was shit frosting, but the cake was already made out of shit.

I disagree. A satisfying finale, even if it had been somewhat predictable, would have at least left viewers feeling like they weren't given the middle finger. There's a lot of garbage on TV and people watch it. They don't kid themselves that it's great, but it kills the time and gives them an excuse to do something on a weeknight. The Killing wasn't ever going to be The Wire, we learned that 2 episodes in. But it could have been inoffensively bland like any of the other 25 police procedurals on TV with better cinematography.

A TV show being shit doesn't make it unwatchable. A TV show that's shit that thinks it's pudding and tells you to go fuck yourself for disagreeing however is inexcusable.

My theory is that they know the show sucks, the writers moronic, etc. and said, "How can we get people talking about this show that has put most of the audience to sleep? Let's leave 'em hanging and introduce a whole bunch of nonsensical plot points!"

No, the show was almost entirely filmed before a single episode was aired. They couldn't and didn't make any adjustments to the show as audience reaction poured in. The showrunner was interviewed often and almost always came across as arrogant and blindingly certain that the product was epic and revolutionary.

[Oslo Ostragoth]

No, the show was almost entirely filmed before a single episode was aired. They couldn't and didn't make any adjustments to the show as audience reaction poured in. The showrunner was interviewed often and almost always came across as arrogant and blindingly certain that the product was epic and revolutionary.

Well, isn't that special?

[Contrapuntal]

Unless I'm being whooshed, that link takes me straight to his article about the show, which actually sums up how I feel pretty well. Here (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6680958/hackery-first-degree) it is again.Well shoot. It works now, but it didn't before. Thanks.

[HenryGale]

They didn't need to tie up every loose end to reveal the killer the way the advertising said they would.

Ahh, ok, this is what I missed, then. I don't really watch any ads or previews. Anyone have a youtube link for one of the misleading commercials?

[Erdosain]

Did the writer of the NY Times article linked on that page turn off the show before the end? How could she be so utterly wrong about what happened? :confused: :dubious:

Hmmm... It seems pretty clear from the NYTimes article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/arts/television/the-killing-on-amc-solves-murder-in-season-finale.html?_r=2) that the producers did in fact shoot a straight-forward Richmond Is The Killer version of the finale and distributed it to some television critics. They must have added the scenes with Holder faking the evidence AFTER the show got picked up for season 2. Either that or the Times critic watched it with the sound off and while also listening to a ball game and having sex (which is really the only way anyone should watch it).

[Omniscient]

Ahh, ok, this is what I missed, then. I don't really watch any ads or previews. Anyone have a youtube link for one of the misleading commercials?

Here's a sample of one of the print ads used in this new article.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/06/the-killings-dead-girl-speaks-the-actress-who-plays-rosie-larsen-talks-her-grisly-murder-and-more.html

[Elmer J. Fudd]

Let's see ... "journey not destination", check.
"Don't need to be spoonfed", check.
"If it got such a reaction, it must be doing something right", check.

All I need are "it's really about the characters", and "some people just like to complain" and I'll have an Excuses for Shitty Television Bingo!


I apologize for intruding on the hatefest with a differing opinion. Silly me for thinking anybody would be interested in knowing why I (and, I'm sure ,at least a few other viewers) enjoyed the show.

[davidm]

Actually, I'm sort of irritated and fascinated by it at the same time. I can't quite put my finger on why.

I think I started watching to see how heavily it would be influenced by Twin Peaks. There are some definite influences. Whether the American authors were influenced by it directly, or indirectly through the Danish authors I can't say.

Beyond that, I think I kept watching because I've been curious every week about what kind of red herrings the authors will throw at us next and how they'll then explain away the evidence the following week.

I guess I find it interesting in a sort of meta way - watching the process and wondering what the writers are going to try to get away with next.

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

Here's a sample of one of the print ads used in this new article.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/06/the-killings-dead-girl-speaks-the-actress-who-plays-rosie-larsen-talks-her-grisly-murder-and-more.html

And even in that article they say the killer will be revealed in the finale.

[AuntiePam]

The first season of Damages had some red herrings/fakeouts too, and a structure that made it difficult for anyone who wanted to figure out what really happened. But that show also had some interesting characters, and when you got to the end, you didn't feel like you'd been lied to all along.

[HenryGale]

Here's a sample of one of the print ads used in this new article.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/06/the-killings-dead-girl-speaks-the-actress-who-plays-rosie-larsen-talks-her-grisly-murder-and-more.html

I don't get it. Are you looking at the picture that says "Who killed Rosie Larson?"

And even in that article they say the killer will be revealed in the finale.

Where?

[Omniscient]

I don't get it. Are you looking at the picture that says "Who killed Rosie Larson?"



Where?

It's marketing. Are they going to say "We'll tell you who the killer is in episode 10!", no. Saying "Who killed Rosie Larsen?" in every promotional material strongly implies that that is a question you will get the answer to. Making the answer to that question the central focus of your marketing is a social contract with the public that they betrayed. Some contrarians have been banging the drum following the backlash that they never explicitly said they'd reveal the answer to the question, but it's silly to expect that they would say anything explicit in marketing. The show went as far as you can go logically to promising an answer to the question while still working in the confines of advertising.

Read that interview. The entire tone of that interview is around the cliffhanger of who the killer is. The actress deflects questions about it the entire time without dismissing the interviewers assumption. I would go so far as to think that even the actress thought the answer was coming in the finale, just that she was kept in the dark about it. The show knew full well that EVERYONE who paid any attention to the show expected an answer. Everyone who wrote about the show did so taking for granted that a answer was coming. That the show allowed this to be the case, and even encouraged it is dishonest in the extreme.

Is there a smoking gun where they explicitly say the words "tune into the finale to find out who the killer is!", I don't know. Maybe someone associated with the show said that unofficially, maybe it wasn't said at all. That's not really important, since the entire TV viewing public came to that conclusion together to the degree that there were casino's taking wagers on who the killer would be in the finale.

Fuck this show and fuck AMC, I'll never trust a damn thing they say ever again and I won't waste my time with any of their shows unless I have a damn good reason.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

And remember, they were marketing that "who killed Rosie Larsen" shit before the series had been picked up for a second season. It was supposed to be a one-off, self-contained mini-series, consistently promoted as a whodunnit. For them to now deny they'd ever implied that the mystery would be resolved is disengenuous.

[Chefguy]

There seemed to be a huge logic hole in the final ep: so the guy puts a hundred miles extra on the car, which means (as far as I can tell) the girl was killed 50 miles from Seattle. So why are two Seattle cops involved in any way?

The island they were showing on the map was Whidbey Island, by the way. The bridge is Deception Pass and it's not a toll bridge, but I know this was all done for plot reasons, and is not a reality show.

Color me one of the Pissed Off People who thought this was a one-season plotline, with the reveal in the last episode. I've come to hate all the characters, the staring, the moping, the grimacing, etc. I doubt I'll be back next season, though my wife doesn't seem to mind it.

Oh, and fuck AMC for postponing another Mad Men season until fucking 2012. Assholes.

[Erdosain]

The killer (Gwen) (come on, you know it was Gwen!) put an extra hundred miles on the car taking the long way back to the city, but Rosie escaped into the park within city limits and was drowned in the trunk, so the crime took place inside the pond where they found the car. She was alive when the car went in the water.

Doesn't explain assigning two nitwits to the case, though.

[Zeldar]

Somebody please correct my memory on a glaring detail. When "Euler" (or is it "Fermat"?) was checking the map for mileage the car had run up and had the ferry ride included in the total did he count the ferry ride's distance in the car's mileage? I was thinking that he did and began to wonder if they do some magic on a stationary car (I must assume) to get its odometer to advance while it's sitting still on a ferry.

Surely I must be misremembering that.

[Daedelus]

Somebody please correct my memory on a glaring detail. When "Euler" (or is it "Fermat"?) was checking the map for mileage the car had run up and had the ferry ride included in the total did he count the ferry ride's distance in the car's mileage? I was thinking that he did and began to wonder if they do some magic on a stationary car (I must assume) to get its odometer to advance while it's sitting still on a ferry.

Surely I must be misremembering that.

No, pretty sure you have it right. I'm never going to watch another second of this show, however, so I can't be 100% positive. Yet another writer fail that was both baffling and infuriating (along with the plentiful examples given upthread). Sigh.

[Erdosain]

Somebody please correct my memory on a glaring detail. When "Euler" (or is it "Fermat"?) was checking the map for mileage the car had run up and had the ferry ride included in the total did he count the ferry ride's distance in the car's mileage? I was thinking that he did and began to wonder if they do some magic on a stationary car (I must assume) to get its odometer to advance while it's sitting still on a ferry.

Surely I must be misremembering that.

I'm pretty sure we wasn't counting the mileage from the ferry ride. Even this show is not that dumb.

Rewatching the scene just now, it's clear he's not including it. "From the campaign headquarters to the casino and back is 20 miles."

Why exactly was Linden so hostile to Holder actually doing, you know, detective work? It was the first bit of detecting that either of them did all season.

[DigitalC]

Cause she's a bitch.

[Zeldar]

Cause she's a bitch.

Would we maybe like her better if they let her look like this?
http://www.topnews.in/files/images/Mireille-Enos2.jpg

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Google image shows that she's got some nice cans, but they kept her swaddled up those stupid sweaters all the time so we couldn't see them. Yet another reason to hate this show.

[Morbo]

Google image shows that she's got some nice cans, but they kept her swaddled up those stupid sweaters all the time so we couldn't see them. Yet another reason to hate this show.

According to my link to the Bill Simmons article, they did that b/c she was five months pregnant while they filmed the pilot, so they kept her wearing them for the rest of the episodes. Of course, she could have the greatest cans in the world and it wouldn't help much if she always has that glued on look like someone just farted.

[Elendil's Heir]

Murders, rain, elections, farts. Whatever, dude.

[Zeldar]

According to my link to the Bill Simmons article, they did that b/c she was five months pregnant while they filmed the pilot, so they kept her wearing them for the rest of the episodes. Of course, she could have the greatest cans in the world and it wouldn't help much if she always has that glued on look like someone just farted.

It was your reference to that fine article that gave me the idea to find some less pained looks for her. There are some shots of her that look like she could play Ellen Pompeo's sister if they need another actress for that sometime.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Ellen_Pompeo_LF.JPG

[Erdosain]

Don't forget she's always chomping on gum. The fact that it's nicotine gum doesn't change the fact that it's annoying as hell to watch someone constantly masticating on screen. The writers probably count it as character development.

[Elendil's Heir]

The showrunner continues to bob and weave: http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/21/killing-producer-we-never-said-thered-be-closure/

[DigitalC]

Would we maybe like her better if they let her look like this?
http://www.topnews.in/files/images/Mireille-Enos2.jpg

Certainly a smile tops a permanent scowl.

[Zeldar]

The showrunner continues to bob and weave: http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/21/killing-producer-we-never-said-thered-be-closure/

I was particularly amused to see this last line of that article:"The show itself is a real invitation to try something really new," Sud tells Sepinwall. "And I know that some people may not be so happy that we didn't tie it up in a bow at the end of the season, but we never promised that, and we're trying to do something different here."

As best I can tell there have been shitty shows of all genres since around 1948 and I'm really curious what's so new about pissing of the audience.

[BlackKnight]

and i know that some people may not be so happy that we didn't tie it up in a bow at the end of the season, but we never promised that, and we're trying to do something different here.
Bingo!!

[Diogenes the Cynic]

First of all, she's lying. They did promise that implicitly in their advertising, and secondly, the show is not doing anything different. It's a pretty standard procedural, for the most part. all the leads just turn out to be blind alleys.

[Morbo]

Murders, rain, elections, farts. Whatever, dude.

Yep - you would think there would be a different expression for each of those things. I just tried it myself in front of a mirror and I came up with varying ones, and I'm no Olivier.

[Zeldar]

Please vote in this poll:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=613530
"The Killing": Yea, Meh, or Nay

[Tangent]

Yeah, that's what annoys me most about all this. It really was exactly like a standard police procedural show, just stretched out over 13 episodes with way, way, WAY too much useless filler thrown in, which has the effect of making it a tedious trudge through each episode. Maybe (probably) real detective work is that boring, but that's not what I want in my television entertainment.

I wouldn't have minded the unresolved ending if the journey up to that point had been halfway interesting. Heck, at the end of the first season of LOST when Locke finally busts open the mysterious hatch and the scene fades to black before we find out anything about it, I was thrilled and pleasantly frustrated and looking forward to the next season. Because the show was actually truly intriguing, and they had earned my loyalty at that point.

The Killing hasn't given me any reason to care about any of the characters. Linden is a robot. Holder is a little bit interesting, but unevenly so. Richmond is a boy scout. The Larsens are just depressing (understandably so, but they are not very sympathetic people). I really have no interest in what happens next. They had all this extra time (13 episodes for one case) to really pull me in and get me invested in what happens. And they utterly failed to do so.

[Contrapuntal]

Yep - you would think there would be a different expression for each of those things. I just tried it myself in front of a mirror and I came up with varying ones, and I'm no Olivier.But are you a Le Petomane?

[HenryGale]

It's marketing. Are they going to say "We'll tell you who the killer is in episode 10!", no. Saying "Who killed Rosie Larsen?" in every promotional material strongly implies that that is a question you will get the answer to.

...

Is there a smoking gun where they explicitly say the words "tune into the finale to find out who the killer is!", I don't know. Maybe someone associated with the show said that unofficially, maybe it wasn't said at all. That's not really important, since the entire TV viewing public came to that conclusion together to the degree that there were casino's taking wagers on who the killer would be in the finale.


Huh. Ok, thanks for clarifying. Not sure what the reason is, but I never made the same assumptions. I saw those ads and I didn't get any promise out of them. "Who killed Rosie Larsen?" is exactly what the show is about. Doesn't seem misleading to me.

Fuck this show and fuck AMC, I'll never trust a damn thing they say ever again and I won't waste my time with any of their shows unless I have a damn good reason.

Your loss. I'm waiting on pins and needles for Mad Man, Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad to return. Hard to deny they're three of the best shows on TV, irregardless of The Killing.

[Zeldar]

Your loss. I'm waiting on pins and needles for Mad Man, Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad to return. Hard to deny they're three of the best shows on TV, irregardless of The Killing.

I'm right there with you on Mad Men and Breaking Bad but Walking Dead didn't interest me at all. I gave Rubicon my attention and interest for the full season, but it wound up not surprising me that it got cancelled (or not renewed, whichever is the case).

However, The Killing has seriously damaged AMC's rep in my view. They have me ready to bail out of their next venture after the first sub-par episode. No more "staying with it because of AMC's track record."

I still feel that FX can keep me around a while with a weak episode or two, even if they did cancel one of the best shows of the season in Terriers.

[Erdosain]

Yeah, Breaking Bad and Mad Men are amazing.

The Walking Dead has amazing visuals. And some really stupid characters and writing. But there's always at least one exploding zombie brain per episode to help you forget that fact.

[Fiveyearlurker]

So, now that we've had some time to cool off. Who is in and who is out on watching season 2 of The Killing?

I have to admit to being on the fence. I really hated the finale last season, and thought that the season as a whole was pretty uneven, but showed some promise at holding my interest. But, the middle finger to the audience at the end of the last season has me at 50/50 as to whether I'll be tuning in for season 2.

[Tangent]

I'm out. I didn't think the show was very good, and after a while I was only watching to find out whodunnit. I'll just read recaps of the first new episode or two to find out.

[AuntiePam]

I'm out. I like to say I won't hold a grudge, but I'm making an exception here.

[Fiveyearlurker]

From the articles I've read over the past two days, they don't intend to resolve the who killed Rosie Larson until the finale of season 2, so one would have to sit through another entire season.

[Chefguy]

We'll watch, at least until it turns stupid or unbearable. When does it start up again?

[salinqmind]

I'll sit through another entire season, being that is how TV series usually come now, in seasons. I enjoyed following it last year, and will watch this year - why not? It's not like there's anything better on Sunday nights.

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

I'm out. It started off well but then got incredibly tedious and I only continued watching to find out who killed Rosie. By this point, I don't even care anymore. I'll read the recap of the finale to finally see who did it, but they lost me with last season's "fuck you" to the audience. I really hope they get terrible ratings for the 2nd season.

[obfusciatrist]

I enjoyed the show, except for how they handled the end of the season. Since I don't think I ever deleted the series recording from my DVR it will eventually show up and I imagine I'll watch it.

If I'm not enjoying it then, I'll stop.

[planetcory]

I always interpreted 'Who Killed Rosie Larsen?' as the premise, not a promise to wrap things up neatly. So I was surprised to see so many people upset. Were people this furious about Twin Peaks?

I liked the show mostly. The political stuff is boring. I'm back for Season 2, though.

[Shark Sandwich]

Can someone recap the middle finger and "fuck you" to the audience? It's been almost a year, and I very possibly could have been drunk that episode.

[Fiveyearlurker]

The tagline of the show was "Who Killed Rosie Larson?"

Half of the season was spent aiming the police at one suspect after another, only to have that suspect finally ruled out. So, when in the last two episodes, it looked like we finally had our killer (who is also one of the last characters who hasn't yet been accused and cleared, leaving us with a pretty small number of people left who could still be suspects) they decided to pull the rug out again, and say that, nope, he didn't do it either.

So, to keep everyone watching for another season, they decided to not tell us who killed her.

[planetcory]

...in the last two episodes, it looked like we finally had our killer (who is also one of the last characters who hasn't yet been accused and cleared, leaving us with a pretty small number of people left who could still be suspects) they decided to pull the rug out again, and say that, nope, he didn't do it either.
The obvious suspect is never the suspect, though. I don't get why this was upsetting or surprising. I was actually disappointed when it seemed like Richmond was the killer. Too obvious. That would've made the whole series pointless to me, because they were hinting at him from the start.

[Zeldar]

I'm out. I like to say I won't hold a grudge, but I'm making an exception here.

I'm so glad you've decided that! As this was your thread I felt bad about shitting all over it for so many posts. But now that you've expressed your lack of interest I don't feel so bad for saying what I did. I have no desire to spend another minute on the show. I have also bailed out on Survivor after threatening to for so long.

What pisses me off most about The Killing is that it continues while Terriers was axed after one season. No justice in TV these days!

[salinqmind]

As the outraged viewers are all swearing they will absolutely not watch one minute of the upcoming second season, and there will be a mere handful of those intersted still left, I DO hope they reveal the name of the killer before the show is shut down, to make more room for CSI Miami reruns.

[SykoSkotty]

Returns with a 2 hour premiere this coming Sunday - April 1st and according to Mirelle Enos' video on the AMC website - we're going to find out who the killer is within the first 5 minutes of the premiere.

I just hope that's not some sick April fools' prank. :dubious:

[obfusciatrist]

Really? I heard they guaranteed that the killer would be definitively revealed by the end of the second season.

[Chefguy]

I just hope they cut short some of the standing and staring scenes. I don't mind a slower pace if there is decent plot development, but some of last season had me reaching for the remote.

[AuntiePam]

Really? I heard they guaranteed that the killer would be definitively revealed by the end of the second season.

This is what Sepinwall says too. He also says it's slightly better (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/review-amcs-the-killing-returns-slightly-improved-for-season-2) but he's still not going to watch. He's just as bitter as the rest of us. :)

[Morbo]

The only way I would start watching again is if someone in the first ten seconds said "I KILLED ROSIE LARSEN!" and then started opening fire on the main detectives while madly cackling, hitting the young guy before Mirielle Enos shot back and killed him/her, then took her shirt off to stanch the bleeding and sat there in her bra.

[soulsurv]

LOVE the show, particularly Enos whose character is so enigmatic. I was hooked from the opening musical theme - how brilliantly eerie is THAT? Most of all I want to find out WHY Holder double-crossed Sarah. What's the point in doing something so rash on a new job?

[Sleeps With Butterflies]

I didn't get all the hate this show got. Yes, I realize the tagline was "Who killed Rosie Larson?" but I never felt like I *had* to know by the end of season one. I liked the progression of learning about the characters and their interactions and think the acting, scenery, and writing were all compelling.

Two hour premiere? Sign me up.

[Sam Lowry]

I didn't get all the hate this show got. Yes, I realize the tagline was "Who killed Rosie Larson?" but I never felt like I *had* to know by the end of season one. I liked the progression of learning about the characters and their interactions and think the acting, scenery, and writing were all compelling.

Two hour premiere? Sign me up.

If it was a good show, then they could wait pretty much as long as they wanted to let us know who the killer was. The problem was that the show started out pretty well and progressively got worse and worse. Tom and Lorenzo's recap (http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2011/06/the-killing-orpheus-descending.html) basically sums up my feelings. It seemed to me on the first episode that the main cop was supposed to be good and that's why she was on the case, but then she kept making stupid mistakes. And it's understandably devastating for a family when a teenager dies, but after awhile the parts of the show dealing with the family turned into misery porn.

The show went downhill, so after about half way through the season a lot of people either stopped watching, or decided to just keep watching to find out who the killer was. So for people who were watching just to find out who the killer was and then the show doesn't even give them that, people will be upset.