You're Killing Me

Did you watch The Killing on AMC? If not, this probably won't be of any interest. If you did, but you haven't yet watched the season's last episode, be warned that I'm about to get spoilery.

The Killing is an adaptation of a Danish series about a murder investigation in Seattle. Each episode covered one day in the case. I hadn't even planned on writing anything about the show, but the finale provoked such strong reactions from so many people. The season ended in a particularly unsatisfying way, with an apparent answer to the season-long question of who killed Rosie Larsen (the very line used to market the show) that was revealed in the final moments to be a fakeout, or at the least, a solution without a full and adequate explanation accompanying it.

The show set up a pattern of dangling a teasing reveal for us at the end of almost every episode, only to debunk it within the first few minutes of the next. These red herrings grew increasingly tiring, and sapped some of my interest in the show. There were parts of the show that I thought were quite good, but they were interspersed among other parts that were alternately enervating and frustrating. This is an unfortunate side effect of a show with this type of story structure (see also: 24), but I stuck with it because I wanted to find out who had killed Rosie, and then they didn't even really tell us.

They seriously expect us to wait nine months or so, and still care, and still be invested enough to come back to the show. The show's creator has said in numerous interviews that the show is meant to be an anti-mystery, an anti-cop show, and that no one ever said the crime would be solved by the end of the season. Well, that's a gross violation of the audience's trust and patience. They could have given us some hints from the outset that the case might not be solved by the end of the season, or they could have given us a better show, in exchange for which we probably would have been inclined to allow them some slack.

But hey, it could have been worse. Imagine if the show hadn't been renewed.