Oh, where do I start with The Killing? This AMC series ended its first season last night with a finale that has, for the most part, landed with a resounding thud, inciting vitriol most places on the Internet. Add to that an interview with the show's head writer that quickly topples into surreal humor, two strange defenses of the show from The New York Times TV critic, and a disturbing profile of AMC itself over the weekend, and you have plenty of grist for the mill. I'll begin with the show itself, which gradually presented viewers with a disquieting problem. Which is worse, dear reader: a crime drama about two detectives who aren't good at their job, or a crime drama about two detectives who aren't good at their job, but written by people who think said detectives are unquestionably the best?
There were myriad problems with the first season of The Killing, but this is the worst of all. The show's protagonist, Sarah Linden, is offered to us, from the get-go, as the cop who can't let the case go. While I appreciated that, from the outset, Detective Linden wasn't made from the current mold of TV detectives (I have a photographic memory! I'm obsessive-compulsive! I pretend to be a psychic!), she still fit into a pretty basic stereotype of the crime procedural: the cop who doesn't know when to quit, even if it gets results, dammit! Linden, portrayed by Mireille Enos, is a dour, sometimes pouty character who thinks highly of herself, yet is presented at almost every turn as being strangely bad at what she does. The case that took place over a 13-day period chronicled in the season's 13 episodes was a murder of a teenage girl named Rosie Larsen. Rosie was found, drowned, in a car owned by the Darren Richmond for Mayor of Seattle campaign, and for whatever vague reasons, Linden immediately identifies with the girl and the case so much that she drops her plans to fly to Sonoma, California to get married for a second time.
That impending marriage and her sullen teenage son were albatrosses on the series from the beginning. Even though the conceit of the show--that each episode took place, roughly, over one day, back to back to back--didn't cause it to be too unrealistic that she might push back her wedding a couple of weeks, we all knew nothing would come of it. No one assumed that we'd see Linden get betrothed during one of the episodes, so each time we dipped our toes back into the waters of that subplot, you get antsy. We all know she's staying, Leoben from Battlestar Galactica, so stop asking her to run away from this case! Linden's son, Jack, was as much of a rough sketch, not a character, as was Linden's fiance. The character's never really given anything remotely close to a personality, so when he starts drinking to act out, or runs away for an episode, we're not truly invested in his safety and survival. I might care about Jack if I knew anything about him.
Another major problem is that characters' motivations would change from day to day. As an example, we're introduced to Linden's ex-husband and Jack's father in the penultimate episode (played by another Battlestar vet, Tahmoh Penikett). From the beginning, we've known little about this guy except the obvious: Linden's no fan. She gets in his face when he appears at the local precinct, trying to reach out, but then, in the season finale, when she hears that her son's just hanging out with the guy, she barely raises an eyebrow. What did I miss in the two episodes, readers? This is but one example of the sloppy, 24-at-its-worst writing that plagued each hour. But the biggest problem in terms of characterization were with the main characters: Linden, her apparently evil partner Holder, Richmond, and the Larsen parents. The show's head writer, Veena Sud, decided to play things so cool that personalities were almost beaten out of each actor, from Enos to Billy Campbell to Michelle Forbes. Don't get me wrong, the performances on the show were rarely the problem (though during one particularly prickly moment where Linden shouts at her son, I wondered if I had a problem with the character or Enos' squinty, do-I-smell-something-stinky style of acting; I'm still not sure which it is), but they can only do so much.
The writing was always the problem, from the get-go. As critics such as HitFix's Alan Sepinwall pointed out when they reviewed the premiere episode, a whole third of the show was devoted to Richmond's mayoral campaign and how the Rosie Larsen investigation affected it. But here's the problem: why spend time on a political campaign that is pretty much entirely separate from the murder investigation and from the grieving parents of the deceased, unless someone on the campaign is involved implicitly or explicitly in the murder? No amount of charm that Campbell, Kristin Lehman, or Eric Ladin possess as performers could save this storyline, which never moved past being inert. From the first episode, there was one of two outcomes: either someone on the campaign was involved in the murder and, thus, everyone is automatically suspicious, or the writers had no idea what they were doing.
Here, I'll delve into the finale, "Orpheus Descending." AMC plastered the country with ads for The Killing, most of which were daring because they featured a character played by an unknown actress who would also be dead by the time the first episode began. The posters showed the face of pretty, smiling, enigmatic Rosie Larsen, with the obvious question: "Who Killed Rosie Larsen?" Add to that the obvious title of the show, and you have audience members intrigued. Before the finale aired, I was arguing to someone that the show's amount of dramatic suspense was always going to be muted, because the show's storytelling style posed a serious problem: whatever else happened, we weren't going to find out who killed the girl until the finale. It would have been daring and unexpected for Sud to say, around episode 8, that we'd find out who murdered Rosie Larsen, and there was no reason for us to assume it would happen that way. But we'd find out in the finale. I mean...there was no way that we wouldn't, because who would be stupid enough to drag the storyline even further than it had already gone?
There is, it seems, an answer to that question, and its name is Veena Sud. Yes, if you haven't already read the scathing and incisive reviews from justifiably angry writers like Mo Ryan or Alan Sepinwall, well...read those after you finish reading this. Their screeds are scathing enough, but the point is this: if you, the viewer, want to find out who killed Rosie Larsen, you have to wait for another year, because the season finale ended as a lot of episodes ended this season: with an obvious suspect's guilt being questioned heavily. The penultimate episode ended by making it all but glaring that Richmond, for unknown reasons, drowned Rosie. The final episode ended with Linden finally on the plane to Sonoma, but finding out that her partner had falsified an image pretty much putting Richmond at the scene of the crime. Oh, and the Larsen's creepy friend may have shot Richmond as he was being taken away. See you next spring, everybody!
I don't know how this is reading so far for you, but if the tone is spittle-flying anger, I'm doing something wrong. I'm not angry about the ending of The Killing. I'm not even that disappointed anymore. I was intrigued by the first few episodes of the show, but I wasn't hooked as I was when I finished the first seasons of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or even The Walking Dead, which had a weak first season, but wasn't nearly as flawed as The Killing ever was. Something that had been clear, in many ways, for the last five or six episodes of this show was the following: the writers for this show had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Why AMC picked the show up for a second season is somewhat beyond me. The ratings were OK, but nowhere near as impressive as those for The Walking Dead, and the critical noise surrounding the show hasn't been positive for a while. Maybe the executives realized it was too late to close the first season definitively, and wanted to see what the resolution would look like, as opposed to just hearing Veena Sud's pitch. Whatever the case, it's been clear that the writing staff figured out very early on the dilemma they were faced with. Example: as anyone with a working brain noticed, this show has a lot of actors who would, logically, only be around for the Rosie Larsen case. If it ended after one season, why would Michelle Forbes, Brent Sexton, or Billy Campbell show up once Rosie's case was closed? It may not seem like a very big dilemma--just go figure out a new mystery to solve, right?--but something must have shaken Sud and her writing staff to their very core, because the ending that we all saw is inexplicable, made all the more so by the reaction from Sud herself and a notable publication's critic defending it.
Sud was interviewed by Sepinwall here, and it's scarily illuminating despite being maddeningly vague. When Sepinwall mentioned that plenty of his readers would be disappointed that the season didn't have any closure, Sud responded, "We never said you'd get closure at the end of season 1. We said from the beginning, this is the anti-cop cop show. It's a show where nothing is as it seems, so throw out expectations." I suppose I should applaud Sud. As I said previously, I literally didn't expect the show to not tell me who killed Rosie Larsen at the end of its first season, partly because of those pesky ads that asked..."Who killed Rosie Larsen?" Sepinwall then mentions one of the show's biggest issues: that episodes would end pointing at one suspect and then exonerate them quickly. Her response, in part, is as follows: "It does feel like, initially, there's a bit of juggling between the 'he did it,' 'she did it,' 'he said,' 'she said,' the natural course of an investigation, and then landing on someone who the cops think potentially did it. And then we spent on a while on [Bennett Ahmed], until that twist happened." Yes, until that twist happened. When you read the entire interview--and you really should--you get the idea that Sud is a better executive than a writer, comparing her show to Mad Men and Breaking Bad, not just because they're also AMC dramas. Her comments to Entertainment Weekly make it clear that the finale's divisive nature is comparable to the reactions to the series finales of The Sopranos and Lost. I could spend an entire post explaining why that's wrong, but let's just say the obvious: Veena Sud's lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling.
Also mind-boggling is this article from the Hollywood Reporter. In it, Tim Appelo posits that AMC is now claiming Emmy glory from HBO, what with shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, which have won some big Emmys over the past few years. The problem is that the article essentially ignores that AMC hasn't done nearly as well since those two dramas. While The Walking Dead is a ratings hit, its Emmy chances are probably slightly less than another genre drama, Game of Thrones, which has similar buzz surrounding its twists and violence. Rubicon, while a compelling thriller, only lasted a season because of its low ratings. The Killing may have had solid ratings, but the reviews fell off a cliff even before the finale, and the ratings for the second season may well fall in a similarly precipitous fashion. What's more, with shows like the aforementioned Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, it's hard to ignore the fact that, if anything, HBO has reclaimed its own mojo as the dominant source for out-of-the-mainstream, high-end drama. While The Killing is only mentioned a couple of times, it's used as a positive example. And, don't forget Sud's choice quote in that article: "Always assume the audience is smarter than you are." I fear for the intelligence levels of the writers of The Killing.
But finally, in the gold medal for baffling insanity, we have the issue of Ginia Bellafante, TV critic of The New York Times. Bellafante got plenty of Internet heat in April when she said that the HBO series Game of Thrones was pandering, through its gratuitous sex and nudity. Pandering to ladies. Ladies who, as you all know, never, ever, ever read fantasy novels. Bellafante came to the latter conclusion because, you know, she's never read or been interested by fantasy novels. Yesterday, around 8 p.m., Eastern time (two hours before The Killing aired its season finale, Bellafante posted this column, meant for publication in today's physical paper. The piece, which has since been slightly updated with...well, wait for it, 'cause it's good, said, in no uncertain terms, that Richmond was the killer. When I read the article, I was surprised, not that Richmond was the killer, but that the Times was essentially spoiling the ending of the show before it aired. Though anyone who only reads the physical paper wouldn't have to worry, anyone with a bit of know-how would've found out before the show even got to anger everyone else. But then the episode aired, and, well, as you've figured out by this point, it's pretty clear that Richmond may not be the killer. He's perhaps the most suspicious of the suspects, but...the evidence was faked. Sud herself said, in that quote, that the show didn't have any closure. Well, Bellafante has, as I said, added to the article, with the following quote, originally a parenthetical paragraph: "As a matter of due process, it should be said that the series satisfies conspiracy theorists with the .0009 percent chance that Richmond is actually not guilty. The sane among us will run, as they say, with the facts on the ground."
There was, I guess, a contest to see if anyone writing about The Killing could be crazier or less self-aware than Veena Sud in her interviews. Ms. Bellafante, congratulations. You've won, and no one else should even compete. I don't know why the Times continues to employ someone who prides herself on watching TV and treating her job as a sport to do whatever the opposite of sanity is, but the proof is in these two articles. The initial review makes you wonder if she even watched the finale, or wrote the article presuming that the penultimate episode's revelations wouldn't be negated. The follow-up blog, found here, makes it clear that Bellafante is blinding herself from the truth that even Sud would argue for: the finale for The Killing does not include a clear answer on who killed Rosie Larsen. That it doesn't is a failure, but not one I'll bemoan past this article. The fact that a person like Bellafante is still employed despite being a bad writer is troubling. I have no idea what person who thought the finale left a bad taste in their mouth would watch season two, though. Even though I stayed with the show through the first-season finale, it was to find out what I thought was obvious: who killed Rosie Larsen? I had originally figured that, barring some wild creative makeover, I'd not watch any more episodes of The Killing. By ending the episode with the very first extended middle finger in the form of a TV show, Ms. Sud did the job for me. Rest in peace, The Killing. Well...maybe, just rest.
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