Season finale review: The Killing ‘From Up Here’/’The Road to Hamelin’ – Let’s Do Some Work

Oh, The Killing.

Throughout its third season, The Killing‘s gone out of its way to show us how much it changed. Less red herrings tossed all over the place, better character beats, and a sense that the plot is driving somewhere important and/or interesting; and at most of that, it’s done a much improved job than the Rosie Larsen seasons. But in the end, The Killing‘s third season falls into the same bucket as the first two; ‘From Up Here’ and ‘The Road to Hamelin’ essentially give us the same ending as we got last season, save for some darker moments to ratchet up the tension. The rest? A sllooooooooow slog to almost nowhere, pushing all of its pieces into this one corner that ultimately ends in a moment I can’t buy into.

Skinner being the serial killer is a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible ending – even Reddick would’ve been easier to stomach, having proved to be a guy who at least acted shady part of the time. The writing of ‘From Up Here’ feeds right into this, setting up Reddick as the man to be hunted, with tangential connections to the first victim – although he’s got no motivation to kill 21 girls, subsequently wasting our time as the search for evidence against Reddick crawled along, since nobody in the department knew about the mole hunt.

But it’s not Reddick, after all: it’s actually Skinner, who started murdering girls on accident and kept doing it because…. oh, that’s right: because they were “burdens to their families” and “whores that nobody would miss.” That was his entire reason for becoming one of the most gruesome serial killers in modern civilized society? WE DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW MANY GIRLS HE KILLED: he proudly notes to Linden that he’s got bodies strewn all over the place in hidden spots that “nobody can find” – but his plan to escape all went to hell when Linden got “too close too fast” (a line he actually says, and follows up with “I never wanted this to happen.” C’mon, guys.).

The problem with this story line – besides the fact that it’s absolutely ludicrous – is twofold: Skinner was never a real character, just a suit that we knew Linden banged around a few times, ruining a marriage; and because it all hinges on another coincidence. Like Rosie Larsen just “happened” to be in the back of a car that her aunt plunged into the ocean, Adrian just “happened” to be in the tree house, and they both could make out distinct images of each other from dozens of yards away in the middle of night. The coincidences just keep piling up (“I didn’t mean to hit her; it was a reflex” he says about his first victim) and save for the cliche of “I wanted to save these girls”, there’s no real motivation for him to become a legendarily disturbed serial killer who could keep his cool through anything.

Moving past the revelation and implausibility of Skinner being the Pied Piper (ugh… what a terrible, terrible name), the ending doesn’t have quite the impact the show wishes it would. This is The Killing: of course the female cop isn’t going to be able to keep her emotions under control, unable to separate herself from the feelings that arose from her recent sexual experience with Skinner. She kills him as the episode closes, effectively rendering his confession useless and putting herself in a real shitty position with the police department moving forward.

It’s the easiest ending the show could pick; Skinner dies without confessing to anyone but Linden, she’s already got the history of mental instability and will face charges, and it’ll be up to Holder to prove her innocence, and start fighting whatever case of dead teenage girls the writers think up next – if The Killing returns for a fourth season, that is.

I suppose they could also return to the prison – although it doesn’t seem to have much purpose, the prison guards being revealed to have no real importance to the overall narrative at all. Becker quits his job because there’s “too much going on at home” (his son fucking killed someone, which the writers completely walked away from), his co-worker of three weeks shares a sad face, and then that’s the end of the prison scenes. Like Kallie’s mom, it doesn’t seem like The Killing knew what to do with the prison guard characters after introducing them; they all just kind of float around aimlessly, going through dramatic things in the rain like everyone.

I’m so disappointed in how The Killing spent its last half hour – up until that point, I was pretty much on board with any direction they wanted to go, except for Skinner. I just can’t believe that a 20-year police vet would start killing teenage girls viciously, cutting off their wedding fingers for no reason except to do society a favor. They don’t really even try to make a strong connection between what he did and his own daughter – something they could’ve taken many, many notes from Hannibal from; in the end, Skinner is no Garrett Jacob Hobbs, he just kills girls because the show needed someone to kill people.

After the terrific episode two weeks ago, I wondered whether The Killing had ‘shot its load’ too early, and didn’t have enough story beats to stretch out the last three episodes. They certainly didn’t; if you remove the many, many slow motions shots, or images of people staring off at things for a long time (Kallie’s mom staring over the water dragged on for oh so long), there was really only about 30 minutes of plot in the 90 minute episode. And what plot they had was terrible: it tries to make a character out a killer that was never really much of a character, just a mid-life crisis police officer who suddenly turned into a murderous animal because… well, because he felt “alone” and those damn girls were having sex and stuff.

That’s just disappointing – a disappointing end to a season that showed some ability to find real character moments within its complicated web of melodramatic mirrors; when it paused on Holder, Linden or (at times) Seward, the third season of The Killing found an emotional core that the first two seasons didn’t really even attempt at (unless you count Linden’s kid… ugh). It’s sad to see it crash and burn in its final act like this; but hey, it’s more about the journey than the destination – if only The Killing’s finale paid more attention to that.

Grade: C-

Season 3 Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

– one thing The Killing did consistently well all season: the Holder/Linden at-work dynamic. Let’s forget about the almost-kiss scene, and remember the great bits of dialogue they shared ragging on each other. By far the best moments of the season.

– I would’ve been fine had we never found out who the killer was. Just knowing Linden knew she made a mistake with Ray Seward was enough for me.

– Holder announcing a bomb threat doesn’t really excite people like you’d think it would, don’t you think? And don’t you think he’d get arrested after for lying to IA? Odd.

– Lyric’s got a job! She still turns tricks though! Twitch can’t make an omelette; but he’s good at throwing away drugs! Who the hell cares about these two?!?!?!

– Becker felt like a prisoner working in the prison. Yes, he actually said that.

– why would Skinner give the most important piece of missing evidence to the most-publicized case in the city to his daughter? IT MAKES NO SENSE, especially because he thinks of the girls he kills as “human garbage”. Why do you want your daughter wearing the garbage a piece of human garbage wears?

– Holder makes up with his girlfriend in a scene, because the writers really were running out of ideas on how to fill time. Love how Holder’s “relapse” lasts all of 24 hours, then he visits Bullet’s funeral, and he’s ready to rock again.