If Season 2 of The Killing is a weekly experiment in ‘diving off the deep end,’ it’s a beaming success, becoming more and more of a rainy, melodramatic soap opera with each twist and turn. The balance between realism and complex drama on this show continues to be a joke, something ‘Keylela’ manages to reinforce in every single scene.
The murder investigation is somehow turning into a manhunt against two police. Just when we though this show couldn’t delve any deeper into its own madness, it pulls its latest ace from the deck in Nicole Jackson and the rest of the reservation population, every single member of which is somehow in on the conspiracy of Rosie Larsen’s death. From the moment Holder and Linden executed their ill-thought out plan, which, in a nutshell was “I’ve been wicked paranoid, so Holder, why don’t you go off by yourself in an unknown place, and I’ll root around in the woods alone with no cell service”.
All police idiocy aside, the clear orchestration of everything Holder did from the moment he walked into the casino was way overdone, from the knowing glances of everybody in the hotel, all the way down to the conspiracy within a conspiracy within a conspiracy opened when Holder gets an ominous pack of matches from some hotel maid that recognized him out of the blue. It all leads to Holder being set up by the reservation cops, who proceed to beat the shit out of him in the woods, right in front of the totem poles Linden was poking around just hours before.
(just a question: who abandons development, replants every plant, and cleans everything up except some totem poles? oh wait, it’s a sacred burial ground, so they left those up and one small-sized open hole in the ground as a reminder. What the fuck?)
But Linden couldn’t stay at the casino, because she was thrown off by Jackson’s henchman, and thrust into her own orchestrated conundrum when Child Services show up after an ‘anonymous’ (OF COURSE) call alleging neglect of the most annoying character ever on a network drama, good old whiny Jack Linden. Of course, a detective with a checkered past isn’t going to deal with such things as due process and judicial responsibility, so her and Jack use their well-practiced plan (it must be, right?) of running from police in strange hotels. This allows her to finish the episode bathed in red light, talking about “something is going on here” and listening to Holder get the shit kicked out of him over the phone – because of course, you can’t give two people warnings if you are a gangster. One gets a pardon, the other gets fucked up. This shit is REAL, PEOPLE!!!
So now everything is pulling away from Seattle’s politicians and Eastern European mobsters (who all but disappear in this episode) and dragging us into some messy sub-plot about the casino, which is clearly going to tie into the mayor’s master plan (or Alan Alda’s, we know Gwen didn’t come back for no reason, or they wouldn’t have had lunch together to exchange vague dialogue and suggestive looks).
But with all the time spent over in the Sacred, Lawless Land of Gamblers, the Richmond campaign (and stories around it) continue to suck the life out of everything character it comes in contact with. Gwen is back in charge, so Jamie’s back to his sniveling, half-assed side remarks he was left to in season 1. Richmond continues to scrunch up his face and look listless in EVERY single scene, and Stan Larsen manipulates the manipulating Gwen so he can offer up a measly $12,000 on Rosie’s killer at a press conference. What pissed me off the most about those scenes is the aforementioned conversation between Gwen and Darren, which just reveals something we already knew: Darren was banging Gwen in Tacoma, and tried to jump off a bridge the night when Rosie was killed.
Let’s remember something: that one lie led to his paralyzation, the suicide of another character, and tons of snythesizer-heavy shots with Richmond looking like the most evil man on the planet. All those scenes, all the weird sexual stuff and mourning the death of his wife (who he has forgot about this season, not even mentioned or thought about ONCE, although previously a major piece of his character) and suicidal behavior… it’s all forgotten this season while the show tries to pave Richmond’s road to redemption, and gives us a bunch of empty scenes with blank looks from Richmond and the painful reminder that this election is lined up perfectly with the season finale, the success of which will clearly hinge on whatever advancements (true or not), are made in the case.
‘Keylela’ is yet another reminder of why this show is so hated: it continues to be all over the place, inconsistently throwing together conspiracy story lines and character arcs for the sake of extending an overwrought mystery most people no longer even care about. The more this case gets buried underneath its true overarching story – that is, the massive political conspiracy out to kill teenage girls and ruin female detective’s career – the less The Killing feels real, and more like the result of a failed ‘100 monkeys trying to write Shakespeare’ experiment.
Grade: D-
Other thoughts/observations:
– Original Grilla. If there’s anything I like about this show, it’s Holder’s goofiness.
– everything around Nicole Jackson is so shady, and so ridiculous, it’s probably safe to say there’s no way she’s really involved in anything that has to do with Rosie being tied up and left in the trunk of a car.
– so…. whatcha up to now that you’ve been ripped off, Mitch? Having another tryst with a random business man, or just sitting in the hotel room, chain smoking and staring at the wall? I wait with bated breath to find out.
– can we get back to that crayon drawing… why is Linden hopping around hotel rooms with evidence?
– was Rosie happy when she died? Obviously not, but does it really matter? Talk about melodramatic.
– Terry, nobody cares about you and your rich escort ‘boyfriend’…. either commit suicide/murder (which the show could easily be building her character towards if you note her growing unhinged mannerisms) or tell us what minute piece of the puzzle his character is a part of, besides being Rosie’s father.
– nothing says “realistic” like grainy audio from cell phone calls. Work on that service plan, Linden.
what did you think of ‘Keylela’? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below!
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Uh, do you pay attention to the plot at all? It was revealed that during the key times the night Rosie was killed, Richmond had attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge. He was rescued by a fisherman who told Linden all about it. Explained why he showed up at Gwen’s apartment soaking wet.
Essentially a moot point… Linden has no viable reason to give that information up to the media. The only other reason he’s got left not to tell the press is to protect Gwen’s career from being known as a boss banger, but who gives a shit about that?
Richmond’s attempted suicide was just another in a long line of quickly abandoned plot twists that – like the rest of the show – have absolutely no logic to them, except to provide us lots of false leads to eat up episode time (or in this case, to provide some “revealing” piece of information that totally nullifies something we previously believed to be fact).
My point about the whole conversation between Richmond and Gwen is this: how awful is a show when it willfully admits its entire 13-hour first season was pointless -in one line? Not a good sign.
Richmond told the cops he was with Gwen in Tacoma – what he left out was that he left her alone in the hotel to go jump in a river to try to kill himself. Gwen confessed to Linden that Richmond had left the room, which led, in part, to Linden arresting Richmond for Rosie’s murder.
So, what Richmond was hiding was the suicide attempt, not the fact that he was sleeping with Gwen. They went over this in extremely excruciating detail a couple of episodes ago. So, I don’t understand your point about the show “admitting” that its first season was pointless.
The attempted suicide is not a moot point. It is the point. He doesn’t want the media to know about it and that’s why he’ll continue to insist he spent the night with Gwen. Linden’s knowledge of the suicide has nothing to do with it. The premise of your review is significantly flawed.
I did a shitty job trying to make my point… so here’s a more coherent attempt:
In short, the suicide attempt doesn’t matter because it was never believable to keep it a huge secret in the first place. Would Richmond really put his life in danger, risking public shame and life in jail, all to protect the secret of an attempted suicide? He tells the police in episode 1, and the entire rest of Richmond’s arc becomes pointless (including everything this season). There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have spoken up back then (Linden clearly has no political friends or connections), something that I was reminded of in the conversation between Gwen and Darren in this episode. That was my point.
The investigation is no longer concerned with Darren, thanks to this background conspiracy machine framing him (and now threatening Linden and Holder), and now it’s just a major piece of Darren’s character (his depression over his wife’s death) buried underneath this pathetic, melodramatic crippled politician rising from the ashes story line.