"Each episode of “The Killing” will depict 24 hours in the life of the investigation. That’s drawing comparisons to “24” from some critics, including NPR’s David Bianculli, who thinks the investigators, played by Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman, also interact a lot like Mulder and Scully from “The X-Files.” Other critics think the intertwined storylines about politics of the town are reminiscent of “The Wire” and “Murder One.”
Still, those are all awesome shows to draw from, and everyone who’s seen “The Killing” seems to like it. And just to be clear, “The Killing” is based on an acclaimed, addictive Danish TV series titled “The Crime.”"
It’s being filmed in Seattle, which was home for 25 years.
Sounds good – what do you think? I’m hoping it’ll hold me for drama until Breaking Bad comes back.
I missed most of the first hour – thought it started at 9 p.m. – but I really liked what I saw (the second hour).
My favorite part was when Holder (the detective) faked out the girls to find the cage. That had me going for awhile – not long though. You don’t get this old and watch as much TV as I have without spotting a fakeout.
I hope they don’t have it raining all the time though. Most of Seattle’s “rain” is a gentle mist. I spent most of my time there without owning an umbrella.
Yeah, TV never does Seattle (or Portland) rain right, but it is late October/early November so constant reasonably heavy rain isn’t unreasonable. And I grew up there and never owned an umbrella (just got wet, later was dry).
Quite enjoyed it so far.
The part that got to me a bit was
the four level deep “discovery” of the body. The police finding the body, dad seeing the police find the body, mom hearing his reaction on the phone, and her kids watching her with no idea what is going on but it scares them.
It seems like it’s going to be a fairly mediocre show. It’s one step above other cop procedurals, but it’s operating in a genre that’s really become threadbare and tedious, and I think you can see that in a lot of the characters here, many of whom are arch-types straight out of How to Write a Cop Show 101. The only character worth watching is Holder, played brilliantly by Joel Kinnaman. He really steals every scene he’s in. There’s nothing original or likeable about any of the other supporting characters, with the possible exception of Rosie’s mother, and maybe her father, who’s been struck from the same lower middle class, blue collar proud hard-working loveable father mold they use for every other episodic cop procedural where they need a caring parent. And Linden is basically every female copy in every television show ever made, with the added bonus of being the Competent Detective Working One Last Case Before She Leaves. Hopefully they’ll start to subvert some of the expectations and standards of the genre, otherwise I can’t see it accomplishing a whole lot, in terms of being a good and worthwhile show.
I really liked it. I originally felt I didn’t have a place in my life for another cop/crime drama but I decided to give it a shot when AMC force fed me the commercials for the past two days (earned your paycheck that time, didn’t you Mr. Marketing Guy?)
The family is the typical blue collar, don’t need money because we’ve got love, tough mom/loveable dad type. Part of the problem with them on things like Law and Order is that you only see them for 5 minutes and get to watch them Kubler-Ross in about half that time so you never really give a crap about them. The discovery mentioned by obfusciatrist was pretty damn good. The comment by the aunt at the end made me think that we aren’t going to do the “10 minutes and everyone pulls together out of strength and love” bit. I found it just heartbreaking on the beach when the dad looks at the youngest kid and says, “We’re gonna be ok. Right?” I like that there is some stuff that you just don’t think about - what do you do with your kids when the cops are going through your house? You have to find something to do, it doesn’t just magically happen during commercial.
When Linden picked that picture up and kissed it with the sweet little 6 year old boy I thought “oh shit, apple of her eye blah blah blah” and was pleasantly surprised to see that she had a pain in the ass teenager that is messed up with his move to a new city and stepfather, and that she keeps finding places for him to stay when she works overtime - because that’s more like what really happens (to other moms, I don’t know any detectives).
And I love the new partner, Holder. I honestly thought he was a creeper for a minute there - you don’t know the characters. I also liked the body ID. The music and the way it was handled reminded me of the killing scene (maybe the body finding scene, been a while) of Dead Man Walking.
Unless it takes a nose dive, I’m going to keep watching. The Apprentice has been shifted to hulu status.
liked about 90%, but I did roll my eyes a few times with some of the more melodramatic scenes (like the one of the father looking at the picture his daughter drew…there were a few others). Also, those two boys (brothers of the victim) aren’t great actors, but what can you expect from a kid.
This - thank you - couldn’t quite get it written out -
It seems they’ve gone out of the way to make every character ‘unlikeable’ to try and throw off the scent of who the killer is - they’re trying too hard.
not sure of his name, but the male assistant to the guy running for office - he’s the killer - he’s the only one they have gone out of the way to make ‘likeable’ - it’s clearly not the opposition polical (too easy) - its not the family (too honestly distraught) - its not eh jerk boyfriend (again, too easy) -
Weird, you thought everybody else was unlikeable and the only one I thought was particularly unlikeable is the one you thought they were trying to make likable.
What part of “here’s how we exploit personal tragedy for political gain” is supposed to make him likable? My thinking was “I hope is isn’t him because they’re trying to make him look a dick, and so that’s too obvious.”
If it were and episode of SVU it would turn out to be the female detectives son and she’s known it all along and is working to cover it up so that her S&M fetishism (the son found the pictures and it scarred him psychosexually) doesn’t come to light.
well, ok ‘likeable’ in the sense that of the entire bunch, he’s less unlikeable than most of the others - he’s clean cut, energetic and appears ‘innocent’ - all political folks try to do what he’s doing, so he was set up to make the candidate seem ‘more honorable’ at that point of the episode - of course, by the time its over it’ll be the detective’s boss - or fiance - since niether got much screen time and were also presented as reasonably nice folks.
I’m not overwhelmed. I was hoping it would be much more entrancing than I found it to be, but I’ll keep watching as I feel it will get much better. Yes, most everyone is unlikeable. That politician? Automatically loathesome, because, duh, he’s a politician, a big phoney like a TV evangelist. The spoiled rich kid and his father, both loathesome. I’m counting on the show to get better. The thing that’s worrying me is, the detective’s wedding is delayed, and though the fiance sounded like an understanding guy, I’m afraid he’s going to go off on her and say “get your ass home right now or we’re through”.
I guess where I get thrown off is I didn’t find any of the characters (except the rich kid) to be presented as particularly unlikeable. Just not standard TV archetypes of “good person” or “bad person.”
Yep, that situation would be annoying. But we don’t know why she’s moving to San Diego (or Sonoma?), wherever. How did they meet? Did they meet in Seattle and he took a job in California? We don’t know yet, I guess. If he’s expecting her to leave her job and take the kid away from his friends, fiance better stay understanding.
Delaying the wedding should be no big deal anyway. Didn’t she say she had three weeks to plan a wedding? Maybe she’s not that interested in getting married.
I managed to catch most of what I missed but still didn’t get the beginning. Why were the detectives so pissed off at the dad? They show up at his house, leave a card with the wife and say dad needs to call them. Then the detective sees the pink bicycle and asks mom “Do you have a daughter?” That was confusing. Why were they there in the first place? Did dad not tell his wife that he’d reported Rosie missing? Why were they mad at the dad?
Are television viewers ever going to be murdered out? Has there ever been a dramatic cop/detective show whose plots weren’t centered around someone being murdered?
It’s Sonoma, wine country. We didn’t really see much about their relationship or why they were moving to California just now. She and he have secrets too, apparently!
The Dad’s credit card was the other thing found at the field, along with the pink sweater. That’s why the cops were looking to talk to the Dad–they didn’t even have a body at that point, nor did they know that there was a daughter in the family, hence the reaction when she realized it was a girl’s bike. The parents didn’t even know/realize that Rosie was missing yet.
I think this is going to be a really good show, or at least it has the opportunity to be that. It’s great too seeing Mirielle Enos, whose work I’m familiar with from Big Love. I just wish it wasn’t going to be so dark! Heh, it will be quite dark in places, I suspect. I have no idea who the murderer is, but I do NOT like that male aide to the candidate. I’m thinking either he or the lady either one has been providing the leaks from the campaign. The councilman has some big secret too, Og only knows what!
I haven’t had a chance to see the Borgias series on SHO yet - that looks to be good as well. I guess I’ll be watching one of these on demand.
I thought it was one of the best things I’ve seen on television. I don’t care for the moving/marriage subplot because it doesn’t seem to go anywhere, but the rest is about people who are like people.
