I don’t think it was actually marijuana, and the girls clearly had no idea what they were smoking. The one girl saying “I am **so **stoned” immediately after taking one small hit made it obvious to me that the girls were not familiar with marijuana and were just pretending to so they would seem cool for the cop.
Could it also be possible that Holder was indeed just standing around and actually getting high for a moment of personal leisure? He may have not been doing it with the intention of letting the girls “take a hit.” Remember, it was the girls who approached HIM and they asked “are you smoking pot?” That itself would seem to show that the girls knew what Holder was smoking, perhaps because of the distinctive odor. Again, he may have decided as a quick, unplanned, last minute move, to use these girls for information. One of the girl’s reactions saying that “she’s so stoned” could be that she’s inexperienced in smoking pot but that doesn’t mean they don’t know what it is, how it smells, etc. And I’m sorry, but Holder comes across as a total rogue. The first two hours of the show revealed his roguishness quite effectively. Getting these girls high does not seem beneath him at all.
Twin Peaks?
Before my time.
Given his conversation with Linden preceding the incident, his leading of the conversation with the two girls, and his sudden and immediate disinterest in them once they told him where the local kids hung out to get high, I find it really difficult to believe that his primary motive for being there was anything else than juicing a couple of young, gullible teenagers for information. He put himself directly in the path of the two girls – it seemed to me like they *had *to walk by him to get where they were going, which I presumed was a storage locker or whatever. I mean, he was in narcotics before this, wasn’t he? Manipulating the two girls for information by leveraging his rebellious status as a drug-user is exactly the kind of thing he’d have done a hundred times before during his tenure in a narcotics unit.
Like AMC’s own Rubicon. Which I actually liked, but man was it slow-paced.
This show isn’t for viewers who can’t remember a plot that goes on for more than two episodes. People who watch these types of shows don’t do it for the mystery. They do it because they like the characters and want to see what happens to them.
It’s no coincidence that AMC keeps developing shows that don’t have plots contained in one episode. They’ve had success with Mad Men and The Walking Dead, which both put up good cable ratings and both aren’t accessible to casual viewers.
I must be watching a different show than some of you. I thought it was very well acted and extremely well edited. I’m not sure exactly what you guys think would be a new twist on a cop show; maybe it just doesn’t have enough car crashes and gratuitous violence to hold your attention.
I agree completely. I thought it was a little slow-paced, but very good and miles better than any other police show currently on TV. I wish they’d show two episodes a week like they did last week: that would help keep the pace up without sacrificing the careful and methodical way they’re building this.
I can’t think of any police procedural show on TV right now that doesn’t have a Mystery of the Week. That’s what they have to do to keep it going 22 episodes a year. Thank god cable is here to give us shorter, tighter story lines.
No, I just expected something good.
Can you give us an example of a “good” cop show or are you just going to keep harping on the fact that it’s bad and that the female detective appears to be female? That’s the only salient criticism I could glean from your post–all the characters are cliche except Holder, Rosie’s mom, and Rosie’s dad, which leaves just the female detective. Who you allege is a copy of every female detective ever. However, the female detective struggling to balance kids and work may be a cliche in Scandinavian crime fiction, but it certainly isn’t a cliche in US cop dramas. Does any female detective on U.S. TV right now even have a kid? No.
We disagree as to the merits of the show, but unless you just want to keep saying “It’s bad!” I don’t know if we have a lot more to discuss.
The Wire, of course.* Homicide: Life on the Street*. NYPD Blue. Those are the top three. I could give you a couple more examples, but the quality drops off precipitously after these three.
I never said I had a problem with the lead detective being female. This strawman is almost as laughable as** Chefguy’s** “gratuitous violence and car crashes” remark.
Look, it’s not my problem that you’re projecting something into my posts that isn’t there. Nor is it my problem when Chefguy does it. But I still reserve the right to roll my eyes when you do. First of all, I said with the* possibility* of Rosie’s mother and father. I’m giving the show a little credit here. The writers haven’t pigeon-holed them into the same narrow space like they’ve done with Linden, making her a ruggedly handsome person with an almost preternatural understanding of crime. She’s strong. She’s competent. She’s working one last case! From what I can tell, she’s been hobbled together from the average sum of every detective in every bad cop show ever made, been given a change of scenery and a kid, and now the writers are expecting us to believe that she’s somehow fresh and unique because of it. She’s not. I’ve given you a list of my favorite cop shows. Each one of them has at least one, if not two or three, female detectives who are a hundred times more compelling, more multi-faceted than Linden appears in the first episode. Maybe this will change. It could.
Yeah, and none of them hail from Seattle, either. Are you expecting me to play Spot the Difference with Linden and other female detectives? Does the fact that she has a kid make for good storytelling? No. It hasn’t so far, at least. The show hasn’t said anything insightful about Linden as a working parent, nothing human or relevant, nothing engaging. I haven’t seen the original version, so I can’t speak with any real authority as to whether or not any of that’s going to change, but from what I’ve seen, I kind of doubt it. I’ve been surrounded by hard-working mothers for my entire life. If the show can give me one insight into their experience that’s deeper and more involved than, “Oh, isn’t it so hard on the children and the mother!,” then I’ll change my attitude about Linden. But if they’re just going to use her child as a plot device or an aid for character development, as I suspect they’re going to, than it’s meaningless, at least to me, when you say, “Look, she has a kid! That makes her a totally different character!”
There you go. Does that clarify things for you?
Well, it was miles better than your previous “Nyah, nyah, nyah, the show sucks.” So yes, it did clarify things for me and I appreciate your response.
Look, I liked the show. We’ve only seen two episodes. It could be brilliant or it could veer off into cliche or fantasy. Who knows. I think what we’ve seen so far is promising. Is it the best show on television? Is it The Wire? Of course not. But just because a movie’s not Citizen Kane doesn’t mean it’s crap, either.
Rich kid blasting people on a videogame while a prostitute sleeps in his bed with a daddy who yells at the police? Clichetown. So far. I think I can wait a couple episodes to see where they go with this, though.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about Detective Linden. You reiterate that she’s a cliche and just like every other female detective–and your evidence is that she’s strong and competent. Umm, okay. As far as I can tell, she’s nothing like The Closer, Benson from L&O, or Beckett from Castle, just to name the most popular female detectives on TV right now. Her kid DOES affect the storytelling because it’s always impinging on the investigation, pulling her in five different directions. You may think that it’s just window dressing, but I think it could be interesting.
We’ll also have to agree to disagree on the “ruggedly handsome” part. I think she looks kind of like an alien. Or one of those Eloi from the Time Machine. Holder is definitely a Morlock or maybe if a Morlock and DJ Qualls had a baby.
I gave the show another chance last night, and liked it more the second time, but I have to agree that the lead character is a cliched female cop. She’s got that exact same, humorless, “jaded,” stoic thing going on to show how tough she is.
The kid and the dipshit fiance add basically nothing to the show and should have been cut out of the script unless one of them is the killer (which I don’t think they are, because I think I’ve already figured it out).
Have you known many cops? I used to work as a volunteer cop for a couple of years and can tell you that the ones who have to deal with the seamier side of things are very jaded and humorless on the job. Women in that role can’t show any weakness, as it’s pretty much still a macho world they’re working in. Would you prefer that she be some sort of brainless bimbo? 'cause that would be completely unrealistic.
So I’m assuming (and hoping) that you won’t be watching any future episodes so we won’t have to listen to a rerun of all this? Thanks in advance.
No, I’m going to continue watching it, hoping in vain that subsequent episodes have more car crashes and gratuitous violence.
No comments yet since the third episode?
So it was fake pot. That’s simultaneously a relief and a disppointment. It takes something away from what initially appeared to be an intriguing moral ambiguity with that character. It kind of felt like the show was wimping out with that reveal.
I’m still watchimng the show, so I guess I’m still somewhat interested. I think the red herrings are too obviously red herrings, though. Anyone shown as an obvious suspect is obviously not the killer. I seem to remember an Agatha Christie maxim that a mystery writer should always give the audience one obvious red herring, one person for them to secretly suspect and one person who is the real killer. It’s all about misdirection. The killer will be someone who is present all along, but who never seems like a suspect. I think a drawback of this series is that it will spend most of its time on the herrings before springing the surprise killer in the finale.
If there’s anything original about it, it’s in the amount of time it spends on the family of the victim in the aftermath. That’s an aspect that’s usually given short shrift in procedurals.
Original or not (and not much is these days), I like the pace of the story and the mood. The female cop takes some getting used to, as she spends a lot of time staring into space, but the hour passes very quickly, which means it holds my attention. That apparently would place me into the unimaginative idiot classification according to some.
I’ve read a few Scandinavian novels featuring detectives, and that seems to be a common trait with Nordic cops – moody and brooding and not very talkative. Hell, most of them are clinically depressed.
Haven’t caught all of this week’s episode yet.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as fake marijuana. What would be the point?