The Killing - Season 1 Review

“The Killing” wrapped up its first season on AMC recently and unfortunately it did not end on a good note. When “The Killing” premiered the premise was simple. Here is a murder mystery and here are the characters that we will learn about over the course of the season. It was an attempt to take the formulaic crime dramas and merge them with shows that have a season long mystery. The premiere setup a world and a mystery that I thought would be something that could handle those nicely. Unfortunately as the season progressed the show failed at doing both of these things.

If the show was going to have one mystery that was going to continue throughout the first season then it needed to rely on heavy character development to engage the audience enough to not realize that they have been throwing out red herrings all season long. There are several characters that they attempted to do that with. First the two main characters, Linden and Holder. Linden was the true lead character and we were given the chance to build a relationship with her. Unfortunately, part of her arc had the character leaving for California every other episode, when, due to the nature of television, we knew that she wouldn’t be leaving, with half of her development coming from this all of her interactions with other characters felt temporary. Her partner, Holder, had a much more interesting storyline but the finale takes the character and twists him into a villain, this made me not trust the show. The only other characters that we stuck with throughout the show were the Larsons, who were so stuck in grief I found myself wanting to fast forward any time they were on screen because they were so depressing, and the political candidates and the only likable one of those was turned into a villain in the end as well.

With little to hold onto character wise it was up to the mystery to hold my attention. The mystery focused around the death of Rosie Larson. What the show failed to do here was make us care about the character. Looking back at the season the only thing I really know about her is that she was a prostitute on the side. Not enough to make me care about her. The actual mystery took place over three distinct arcs, one for each suspect. At the end of each arc the character that had been suspected was exonerated and the detectives found a new clue to the murder mystery leading them to another suspect. What this means is that with Richardson being thrown out as a potential suspect during this season finale, most of the first season now means nothing as we will start season 2 with a new suspect and a new set of clues.

The writers for this show seem to have audience contempt. They don’t want to like their audience. This can be a good thing as the audience can be surprised by something the writer will do, but it only works if there is something for the viewer to hold on to. After the twists presented by the season finale I don’t have anything left to hold onto for this show and that click you hear is me deleting it from my TiVo forever.