Review: The Killing ‘Hope Kills’ – I Have Faith

Apparently the theme of The Killing this season is “No Rain, No Gain”: without any drops falling down on the people of Seattle, there isn’t much headway made in the ‘Pied Piper’ (still an awful, no good, terrible name) case in ‘Hope Kills’. It’s an episode without a very strong theme – and on top of that, no real dramatic moments to hang its hat on, or any kind of tangible character development. That being said, as long as The Killing is avoiding the trite writing and constant misleads of previous seasons, ‘Hope Kills’ is a perfectly competent filler episode, with a few frustrating spots.

With the eyes of the police focused solely on Pastor Mike, ‘Hope Kills’ benefits from having a singular purpose, building suspicion around  him at any corner. Some of this is a little convenient (the makeup wearing black boy returns to drop some vague recount of a cut up girl screaming when Mike drove to pick her up), but it’s mostly effective in building some real doubts on Mike’s godly front. The camera does a lot of this work where the physical evidence doesn’t: shadows and looming shots on his face or his arm tattoos do a great job suggesting that things are not as kosher as they seem, even while Holder and Linden are still circling, looking for a hole to poke in his alibi.

Once they figure out his identity is fake, the hunt is on: and for the last five minutes, The Killing races forward to make up for what didn’t happen in the first 40 minutes. It takes some lame material to get there (The Killing is worst when it tries to do love stories like Skinner/Linden’s lingering moment or the Bullet/Lyric scenes), but those last few minutes show just how engaged this show’s been able to get the audience with its new format and approach. After crawling along for 90% of the episode, we’re suddenly on a manhunt, sitting by as the police arrive and see the open ice cream on Mike’s table (not knowing that Lyric was there eating it, of course), later cutting to a scene of a massive mob of investigators around Pastor Mike’s car and its bloody backseat.

I think ‘Hope Kills’ would’ve been a more effective episode had Mike provided an opportunity for a little friction between Linden and Holder: they’ve agreed on so much this season, it’s hard to remember that these were once two people with different attitudes and approaches that clashed on occasion. Sure, Holder has some unkind words for her in his “angry moment”, but it doesn’t feel like an organic moment of drama: he insults her and quickly moves away from it, pointing out that she’s struggled to control her emotions on cases before, so why can’t he lose his mind for a little bit here and there. He makes a great point: but it seems to be one The Killing is uninterested in addressing, with Linden bouncing back and forth between calm and collected, and borderline obsessed, yelling at superiors and insisting on truths she can’t confirm.

In other words, ‘Hope Kills’ is a bit of a neutered episode, one that’s busy maintaining the season’s cadence without really bringing in any kind of important, revalatory information before heading into its last five episodes. Although it doesn’t really find anything particularly interesting to explore when its biding its time, it doesn’t resort to old tricks to keep us interested, instead having faith in its patient approach to telling its story: it’s that conviction makes ‘Hope Kills’ a thoroughly watchable filler episode.

Grade: B-

Other thoughts/observations:

– I enjoyed Kallie’s mother in this episode quite a bit. The emotional strain is really being understated by Amy Seimetz. We can all see her playing the worst scenarios out over and over in her mind as she talks about being optimistic and whatnot: it’s really fantastic how well Seimetz plays it, moving her away from the bitter trailer trash archetype and giving the character some texture as a regretful failed mother.

– “Do I smell pork?” Holder: “that’s salary and purpose.”

– do all young homeless people have unrealistic dreams that they share out loud all the time? The obligatory “let’s dream about stuff we’d have with money” is getting tired after seven straight weeks of it.

– creepy final moment with Mike popping up in Linden’s car, instructing her to drive away.

– Frank is trying to impress his son by showing him the gallows: what a great dad, right?

– Seward does a lot of nothing this week, suddenly backpedaling on the hanging death he chose for himself. His scenes have really become boring, and we need to move onto revealing his innocence (if he is), and if so, why he’s punishing himself so harshly.

– Linden knows Seward is innocent – and Skinner believes her, because forbidden love and stuff.

– Holder mentions that he’s been clean for two years. Does that mean we’re going to hear about a relapse after the Rosie case?

– Frank’s wife was at a bar with some guy – and everyone in the audience says “who gives a shit?”

– Lyric’s boyfriend shows up and blabs for a minute. He’s just around for arbitrary drama right now, and they’re really struggling to find some purpose for him except to make references to him sucking dick for money.