Day Eleven gave us a thoroughly satisfying hour of television. This is exactly the show I thought I was watching at the time of the pilot: Surprising, emotionally raw, visually stunning, and intricate.
Now, you could argue that it’s another episode in which the investigation barely moved forward, but I’ve been saying for weeks that this show will succeed when it ceases to be a one-note “solve the mystery” procedural. I wish we’d had this kind of focus on character much earlier. I’m sure the writers thought it wasn’t yet “earned,” but in this case, they had it exactly backwards. What wasn’t earned was our close attention to the slow build that offered us nothing. Now that we’ve spent some time with Sarah and Stephen, I feel more inclined to pay attention to what comes next.
It was all very well done; the acting, the pieces of reveal, the sly humor, the emergence of trust. There was even a little bit of Rosie Larsen.
The one annoyance was the “hold on, go back” at the very end: Not because I didn’t think it was appropriate for the ATM tapes to reveal Rosie, but “hold on, go back?” Really? I could see it was Rosie from the couch, a much smaller image, and without going back. I’d have been much more impressed if Holder had spotted her in the background, walking past some rando getting money.
Come to think of it, if Rosie got money out of an ATM on the night she died, shouldn’t the cops already know that? Why weren’t bank records investigated immediately?
But never mind that, because next week is soon enough. This week, we had a careful, focused two-player episode. No Larsen family. No Richmond campaign. Just Linden and Holder pretending they’re in The Suitcase. I’m sure Basketcases noticed the similarity.
It wasn’t as good as The Suitcase for two reasons: 1) Nothing is, and 2) The Killing is not as good a show as Mad Men. But it had many of the assets of The Suitcase, and I wonder if Veena Sud hadn’t studied that episode. There was the reduction of the show to two characters; a platonic man and woman, revealing themselves, and discovering the depths of their friendship. The stronger, colder character (in this case, the woman), is willing to go it alone, but the younger one finds he can’t abandon her. There’s even a food scene. In The Suitcase, Peggy and Don talk about their fathers’ deaths, in Missing, Stephen and Sarah talk about their mothers’ absence. It’s quite striking, and it absolutely works.
One thing The Killing is very good with is visual parallels of characters. We’ve seen this in every previous episode, and it’s always beautifully done, even in otherwise bad episodes. Stan stares out his window, and then Richmond stares out his. Linden and Holder look at the cage in the school basement, then Bennet walks past fencing on school property that’s in the shape of a cage. Here, with no other regular characters, we are brought fully into the enormity of Rosie’s death, as Sarah runs to the body she fears is her child and is held back by Holder, then sinks to the ground and weeps when she learns it is not Jack. This brings us directly back to Stan in the pilot, held back by the police from seeing his daughter’s body, and then weeping on the ground. This is remarkable visual imagery and, whatever flaws the show has (and there are many), it’s a worthy achievement and beautiful to watch.
14 Responses to “The Killing: Missing”
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Has it even aired yet?
It was up for a few minutes too early, then I realized my mistake and pulled it. Tom, you’re just lucky.
Ahhhhh, character development, they finally find the way! Excellent post Ms. Lipp.
My thought, at the casino, was to tell the lovely runners of the establishment that I was going to post uniformed police officers on the ferries and at all entrances to the island in order to question all patrons about the murder. I would also have told mgt that I was going to leak to the press of their refusal to help with the case. In your opinions, would this be too heavy handed, would it not work or would it endanger the investigation.
Deb, nice idea about finding Rosie in the back ground, but what about all the possibilities of the different roads the money in Rosie’s account could take? Does she have a gambling habit, so she took Stan and Mitch’s money? Is she involved in some kind of prostitution thing? Is this how she gets her drug money? Is she selling Girl Scout Cookies door to door in the casino hotel? I am sure there are many others, but this is going darker and what better place to meet a vulnerable young woman than the casino, if you are a serial killer?
fatphil, very good thoughts. I love posting officers. You’ve really got a good head for the procedural. My ideas are less sophisticated, but I watch Castle every week, and they always look at financials; I’m accustomed to it.
This post went up as soon as the east coast airing was complete.
Didn’t the preview for next week mention that she made a deposit (possibly not into her account, thus the reason for no Larsen bank evidence of the transaction) and then some comment about where is she getting all the money? Maybe I misheard it, but I don’t believe she made a withdrawal at the ATM.
Also, last week I had a hunch that Jack is at the core of Rosie’s murder somehow. This week, with his dad suddenly in the picture, it’s gnawing at me a little more. Could Jack and/or his dad be involved? Acting out/getting back at Sarah? I don’t know if they’re in AMC’s suspect tracker list. I haven’t checked it out.
This episode comes way too late for me to care. It seemed more like they said to the producers, “this is AMC, so we have to have a bottle episode in there somewhere” rather than something that is appropriate for this show at this point. The difference is, in those other shows (Breaking Bad had a similar ep too) there was already so much the viewer knows about the characters and their relationships with each other that there’s meaning and tension to it. In The Killing, there was really very little that we learned about these characters that wasn’t previously established, and there wasn’t and still isn’t any real relationship between them. Holder only stayed with Linden because it was an excuse to chicken out on making amends to his family, which was for me the only interesting character beat in the whole episode. Then again, Holder is the only character that I find interesting to begin with.
And the final scene where the kid says he was with his dad was mindnumbingly stupid. Would this really come as such a surprise? Would she really just not check, and rather run to the scene of a homicide and have a freakout instead? (Convenient timing on that similar kids’ homicide, wasn’t it?)
Sorry this is such a downer, I’m glad others are still enjoying it.
Donny Brook, I am a bit hesitant to talk about the Sneak Peek for Episode 12 (on AMC’s website) because I don’t know how Deborah feels about that (Deborah, let me know and if you’d rather we didn’t discuss those then I won’t in the future), but for now I’ll say that the Sneak Peek makes it clear that Jack’s father has been an absent dad over the past 10 years. So Sarah wouldn’t have expected Jack to be with his dad, since his dad never made time for him before.
Deborah, I don’t think I consciously noticed the similarity to The Suitcase, but there was something about last night’s episode that seemed familiar to me and I couldn’t quite a finger on it.
I was a little disappointed not to see more of the investigation last night actually, as I was expecting they would show more of Adela than they did. But, it was an interesting episode and certainly a great showcase for Enos and Kinnaman.
D.B., I have taken shots at this series—Mad Men it ain’t! However, character development is essential in series and we got some Sunday night. The fact that Sara was abandoned by her mom at age 5 and had to live in foster homes was big. She called the boy whose mother was killed by his father “Damaged Goods” because he, too, will stay in foster homes, thus she is damaged goods. Everybody abandoned her, so why should she trust anybody? Good info on why she doesn’t get close to people.
Sara had already had a conversation with Reggie telling her that it was “Just me” taking care of Jack, so we knew she had no help from dad.
Holder didn’t chicken out on anything. Holder called, several times, to update his sister, who he knows has heard police work being an excuse to use meth. He was honest. He said he was helping a friend. He didn’t say he was working a murder case. Sara, sometimes, gets caught up in the case and doesn’t spend time with Jack. She doesn’t always know what Jack is up to–he misses school for 3 days. Holder is right, she doesn’t have the blue print for being a good mom. It stung Sara because it was right on the money. Sara is trying to be a good parent, a good detective, a good partner, a good friend. I don’t know how single parents accomplish all of these things. Holder will end up being a positive influence on Jack.
I don’t want sneak peeks discussed, the spoiler policy is pretty clear about that, however, I’ll allow this as it’s been mentioned more than once in the course of the series.
I’m waiting for somebody on the show to remark that the case reminds them of Twin Peaks.
I’m trying to connect the ATM at the casino to the overdrawn bank account. Remember, Mitch seemed oblivious to it when she answered the phone in the office?
Also there was the ATM card that was the first piece found at the crime scene in Rosie’s dad’s name.
Anyone see something I missed?
I thought the bank account was zeroed out because Stan bought the house and Mitch doesn’t know it. But you may be on to something.
Totally forgot about the card. Still don’t think the deposits Rosie was making “every few weeks” was into any account in the Larsen’s names or that definitely would/should have been noticed in the early days of the investigation – especially since the card was how they connected her to Stan. It would have been checked right away for recent use. I think maybe he gave it to her as a “just in case” thing when they left for the weekend and she had it on her that night.
I agree with you, Deborah, that the savings would have been used when Stan bought the house. Mitch definitely doesn’t know about it and wouldn’t have known that the money was used for that purpose.