The Killing Season 2, Episode 11 Review – “Bulldog”

So we’re down to two suspects. Or one. Or forty…. on The Killing, you never take anything at face value, because there’s a good chance its still three or four twists away from a conclusion. But even if we’re not talking about the last five minutes of the episode, “Bulldog” is a mess of an episode, jumping aimlessly from plot to plot with no narrative thread, ignoring much of what’s important to get back into the more pointless story arcs from both this season and the last.

Now that we’re getting down to the nitty gritty, ‘Bulldog’ jerks the narrative from the protagonists, spending the entire hour on external events with the different evil entities on the show. The problem is that every antagonist on the show is written in such a cardboard manner, speaking in such ambigious-but-still-ominous dialogue, that they have no foundation and no clear motivations. Every look from Chief Jackson, every angrily spit line from the Mayor, anything Janek says… they’re all empty blobs with angry eyes talking to the screen. The writers are so concerned with painting the bad guys as nothing but purely evil beings it leaves them without nuance, and nothing for a normal human to connect to.

This means that for all intents and purposes, we know nothing about most of the major players on the show, outside of typical ‘evil’ personas. The Mayor sneers, Gwen’s father doesn’t care about child rape (or lack thereof? little confused there), and Gwen and Jamie seem to change their loyalties on a weekly basis. Even the characters that are given motivation – the pretty boy who offs Janek – are treated like badly written soap opera characters, who yell out things like “This is for my dad!” before committing murders and such.

But realism is never The Killing’s strong suit, unless its showing how much it rains in Seattle. First of all, there’s no FBI office in the world working that quickly, and no way they come into something allowing suspended cops as ‘observers’ and not wanting to take any of the credit of the investigation themselves. Ok, we’ll help you open this floor, but then we’ll leave because there’s really no room for us in the plot right now, and we have no questions of our own or help to offer. But that’s not even the worst: Linden catching the cops on the police radio was beyond groanworthy, and so obviously unrealistic it should be a crime they consider themselves anything but an elementary-level dramatic production.

The topping on the shit cake that was ‘Bulldog’ is that once again, the writers of the show have made an entire season another pointless red herring – or at least alluding to it, so they can flip flop a few more times through the last two episodes. All the while painting the Mayor’s office as evil, but somehow it’s Richmond’s crew that is apparently helping the investigation that’s pointing right at them. So now the people Linden’s been chasing all season are going to be the people that are going to help her?

I could continue harping on the garbage politics of the show (Richmond’s speech to the public = puke in my own mouth), but then I’d have no time to talk about Stan! With the title of the episode being “Bulldog”, you’d think something important was going to happen with Stan and the family. Nope, just Janek  showing up, making some vague, threatening-like statements to Stan, lest he decide not to randomly kill someone in a job he hasn’t worked for 15 years. But this is just to show us that Stan is a nice person who doesn’t kill people anymore, just threatens them by beating them in front of their infant child and sticking a gun in their mouths. Doesn’t matter, because Janek’s dead…. and for some reason, we’re supposed to care about that whole story, although it’s not connected to anything else on the show.

So the keycard we’ve been waiting to see for two weeks has no name on it, just works to get into Darren’s office. The shot that follows plainly places the finger in the direction of Jamie and/or Gwen… although there’s been no real hint to this for the last 23 episodes. If these are the people involved, couldn’t we have gotten to this in season one? So we could introduce some shady, one-dimensional, self-preserving and greedy Native Americans? So we could show a grisly and totally implausible prison suicide? Or just to walk us in circles for 13 weeks, until we get so dizzy that we accept any answer that’s put in front of us?

Whatever the answer may be, it’s obvious that the twists and turns are nowhere near from being finished, even though we’re being told that the answer we want will be revealed in two hours time? Things are lining up for the case to be solved and the election to end at the same instant at the end of the season, the results of both guaranteed to clash with each other so this nonsense can continue for a possible third season.

Other thoughts/observations:

• so… when is Mitch going to be important this season? Was she really just on a selfish trip for the sake of having one less character to write about this season? if that’s the case, it might be the laziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
• “They gotta pay.” Go get em, Sarah Linden. Don’t worry about being a mother or basic hygiene, you go solve that case you’re legally prohibited from working on.
• only an IDIOT shows the evidence they pretended not to find in the security camera. Terrible, terrible writing there.
• did anyone catch the Jamie line “Prematurely is my middle name?” WOW.
• who the fuck still sends faxes, and hides pictures of their murdered daughter underneath the printing paper?
• About a week ago (TV time), Gwen was in DC being all submissive to Daddy’s whims. Now, she’s ballsy and standing up to him. Why now?
• seriously, does anybody give a shit about the Polish mobsters – Janek’s death was one of the dumbest scenes this show’s had. Mob bosses are never alone, even in the worst fictional universes.

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