The Killing: Stonewalled

Wow.

So here we are at episode 8, which is episode 107 in AMC’s screwy numbering scheme. If you recall, last week I was kind of meh on the episode, and the week before, I unequivocally disliked it, so we (Arthur and I) sat down to watch with some trepidation.

And they knocked it out of the park! Damn, that was good television.

It wasn’t perfect television, for sure. We can complain that a terrorist subplot is cliché, that we saw that 12 Step meeting coming a mile away, and that we still know too little about our characters. Nonetheless, it was a rockin’ hour of TV, frightening, tense, compelling, and moment-by-moment engaging. My attention was driven forward as a I watched by excellent pacing and directorial choices, not just by the actors (whom I continue to adore—Mireille Enos, you have my heart).

I am personally disappointed that the three mysterious absences from the pilot (Lily Richmond, Rosie Larsen, and Jack’s father) turn out to be unconnected. It was a bold theory, but I loved it like a pet.

I love Mireille Enos’s performance in all its particulars this episode. I love the way she smiles, backs away, dives back in. There’s a lightness to her that keeps saying to me, this is a person. Dark people on TV tend to be too dark, and serious people too serious, as if writers forget that everyone has a light side; everyone smiles some of the time. I love that Sarah Linden is a dark character who laughs.

I also love the way she broke into the FBI van. “Rogue cop” is another cliché, but she broke the rules just a little bit, and then said “too bad.” It is much more like how I imagine a cop would behave than the usual bad boy/girl cop we see depicted.

Terrorism may be old hat on TV the past few years, but this is all intriguing. Lots of girls with passports, Rosie’s shirt, a kidnap plot? Girls as mules? What did Rosie walk into? Honestly, I think it’s not going to be terrorism at all, I think it’s a criminal activity with no terrorism connection, and it’s only because the suspects are Somali that the FBI is involved.

Holder had a great episode too, if only for the story of stealing the gold coin, which was devastating.

Jack Linden is not the ongoing leak, for the simple reason that the files were on Linden’s computer for the first time that night. She should have known better, having seen Jack’s games all over her screen, and it’s a sign of her own obsession that she didn’t. I’m glad, though, that this utterly ignored and unstabilized kid is acting horribly, otherwise he’s just a device. He should act horribly the way his mother has upended his life and failed to notice.

I had my heart very badly in my throat when Mitch left the boys in the car. I saw what was coming before the overlong close-up on the exhaust pipe, and I was honestly terrified. Poor Mitch has terrible luck with whatever she happens to see on TV, doesn’t she? I feel like we’re expected to have less sympathy for her, that the writers expect us to blame her, so I’m glad she said “It’s been a week.” Let me assure you, if you’ve never lost someone very close, after a week it’s legitimate to be still wandering around in your pajamas muttering. A week is, “She died this morning.” And that’s if it wasn’t your child. And if she wasn’t murdered. And if pictures of her body weren’t on TV. Stan’s taking apart Rosie’s room is exactly the same kind of grief-addled dysfunction as Mitch lingering in it. Possibly because I felt the audience was being slanted towards Stan and away from Mitch, I didn’t much appreciate the look at the Larsens this week, but as a portrait of acute grieving, I can’t fault its tragic accuracy.

The Richmond campaign became interesting again this week, if only for Billy Campbell’s portrayal of stony anger. The close-up on the bleeding knuckle felt hinty: Is his DNA a part of this? But I loved, loved, loved that this gentle, well-dressed woman begged tearfully for forgiveness and his response was rage. Not cliché. Not overdone. Just human and kind of empowering. I love that he tore into the campaign with his teeth after that, and I love the use of cage-fighting as a visual metaphor.

I do question, though, that Richmond could be notified of the parole hearing, and attend it, and no one in the local media noticed. I know it’s just a mayoral race, but no one noticed? (Wikipedia tells me that the Seattle-metro area is the 15th largest in the US, larger than Minneapolis, San Diego, and St. Louis.)

Oakes, previously Lt. Exposition, has become Lt. Obstruction. Arthur wonders if perhaps he’s the leak, and I wonder if it isn’t deeper than that. He’s kept Linden on for no good reason, and he knows she obsesses over murdered girls, yet he blocks her at every turn. What did he think to accomplish? Is he just a plot device, or will we learn something that changes our view of him?