Review: 'The Killing' - 'Missing': The long detour

A review of tonight's "The Killing" coming up just as soon as my password is "funyuns"...

"Some things you can't fix. Maybe they just stay broke." -Holder

At first glance, "Missing" almost seems like a parody of an episode of this show. Whatever plot advancement there is - and there really isn't any, since the end of the previous episode already all but told us that Rosie had been to the casino - takes place in the opening and closing scenes, while the episode's very long middle section features Holder and Linden going around in circles, not accomplishing anything. (They don't even find Jack; he just comes home.) I'm assuming that, as with most primetime dramas today, the producers didn't have every actor under contract for every episode, and decided to get the entire supporting cast's absence out of the way in one go, and came up with a side story that would provide an excuse for not checking in on Richmond or the Larsens for a week.

So in terms of the larger story this show is telling, "Missing" was absolutely pointless, and yet another reminder that it's very hard to stretch a single mystery out over this many weeks. And yet...

... I enjoyed "Missing" more than most of the last two months' worth of episodes.

Yes, I rolled my eyes when it became clear that the case was going to be put on pause while Linden waited to get a warrant for the ATM footage(*). And I briefly worried that the writers were going to try to tie Jack's disappearance into the investigation, with the real killer improbably abducting the son of the lead investigator to throw her off the non-existent scent. The whole thing could have easily gone the way of Kim Bauer with the cougar, or Teri Bauer's amnesia - ridiculous story ideas designed to fill time on shows that had more hours than plot to fill them with.

(*) I know that the long wait for the warrant was just a byproduct of the writers needing the cops to do something other than chase Rosie's killer for an episode, but at the same time, the whole "one episode equals one day" format hasn't been working for a very long time. A few weeks back, the writers could have easily squeezed an entire episode out of Stan having Bennet Ahmed in his van while the cops tried to find them - and it would have been better than the actual episode in which that was just the opening sequence - but the formula doesn't really allow for something like that. Richmond, meanwhile, has to keep changing personalities after just a good night's sleep, etc. I'm not saying that format can't work - it's borrowed from the Danish show, which everybody loves - but this creative team hasn't figured out how to use it effectively.

But here's the thing: for most of the season, the writers have been falling down on the job both in terms of moving the story forward in interesting ways and in letting us get to know who these people are and why we should care about them. I could deal with a briskly-plotted show with thin characters (that's what "24" was at its best) or a show going nowhere fast where I develop a quick attachment to the people involved ("Treme," "Men of a Certain Age," "Rubicon"), but this wasn't turning out to be either, and atmosphere only gets you so far. (Especially when the atmosphere itself starts to feel like self-parody with the frequent monsoons and utter lack of umbrellas.)

And for at least this hour, I found myself enjoying the company of Linden and Holder, getting to know them better both as individuals and as a partnership. The scene of them at the fast food place, with Holder trying to explain his convoluted moral philosophy, then transitioning into a more sincere discussion of his meth addiction, was a really strong moment for these two characters, who too often have felt like just another pair of chess pieces in this not very exciting game.

If the writers had to spin their wheels earlier in the season, I'd have much rather we got more scenes like that - the two reluctant partners getting to know each other while waiting for a witness to turn up or a piece of evidence to be analyzed - than the campaign nonsense, so much time devoted to Bennet, etc.

In all, "Missing" felt like an episode of an entirely different show, but it was probably a better show - and one I'd be much more likely to watch next season than the version of "The Killing" we've been getting all spring.

This is one where I'm especially curious for everyone else's reaction. Were you glad to spend more time with the cops, or did the search for Jack feel like an even more egregious time-waster than the Bennet stuff?

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

This was the best episode since the first three or four, and also the worst--for all the reasons others have mentioned.

What most annoys me about the character development is that I have already written off this show for next year and beyond. Once this season is over, I'm through with it and will not give a hoot about mopey detective, skeevy detective, inscurtable politician, grieving mother, grieving gangster father, or Jack.

Especially Jack, in fact. Kid out to go live with his dad, or meet Rosie's killer in a dark alley.

Absolutely, 1,000% disagreed. We learned absolutely nothing new about Holder or Linden, got nowhere with the Rosie story, and got the cop-out in the end ("Promise you won't be mad? I was with dad." Gag.). All-in-all, I felt like this was a wasted opportunity to give Linden more depth. Would that take killing her son? Absolutely. He's just a glorified prop, anyways, but it would've given her something interesting, a new wrinkle in her obsession with Rosie's case.

This just came off as a wasted opportunity to do something daring. That, more than anything else, is my biggest frustration with this series so far.

Zs, I agree, and there will be a 2nd season. AMC needs a 4th series, but I don't believe this is it. MadMen, Breaking Bad, and the Zombie show are their premiere series. I'm looking forward to Jon Hamm's directorial debut in season 5--the first episode.

I think, dramatically, this would have been better much earlier. Why let us get to know the characters only when the show is nearly over. Plot-wise, I think it would be harder to justify doing this earlier, when there was slightly more pressure to chase down leads. Now it sort of feels like no one cares if they solve the case. Shouldn't there be candlelight vigils for Rosie by this point, that the cops attend to see if the killer shows?

I liked this episode, but remain frustrated with the lack of any urgency to find Rosie's killer, and the way in which the serial killer possibility was just dropped.

I think, dramatically, this would have been better much earlier. Why let us get to know the characters only when the show is nearly over. Plot-wise, I think it would be harder to justify doing this earlier, when there was slightly more pressure to chase down leads. Now it sort of feels like no one cares if they solve the case. Shouldn't there be candlelight vigils for Rosie by this point, that the cops attend to see if the killer shows?

I liked this episode, but remain frustrated with the lack of any urgency to find Rosie's killer, and the way in which the serial killer possibility was just dropped.

Agreed, the timing of the episode would have been better if it were earlier. I would have happuly taken this over the Ahmed blind alley. Generally, the episode struck as good (B+) territory. No, the ending with the son didn't make sense, but the run-away son seemed to just be a plot device to (1) bring Linden and Holder together and to give us more Linden backstory, which I've wanted for a while.

I think that's it. Too little, too late. I've already decided at this point I don't care that much about anyone but Holder. After the interminable Bennett storyline, last week gets a little interesting (where is all the money in the Larsen's bank account? What's the deal with Mitch's sister? What will they do now that Stan's in jail? Is Bennett going to live?), the precarious momentum stalls for a story about Linden's missing kid. I really don't care about Linden's kid, Linden's fiance and I'm losing interest fast in Linden. This episode should have aired weeks ago.

I agree with most of the commenters here - good single episode and wished that it had happened a few weeks earlier, perhaps during the 3-4 week stretch when Bennett was the lead suspect. It is somewhat frustrating because this has had the potential to be a very good show (I still generally think it's good and have stuck with it) but this episode certainly made the last few weeks feel a bit disjointed. Was glad to finally learn something about the backgrounds of the two detectives, but wish it had been explored earlier. If the show does return for a second season, you can expect they'll flush out the Jack-visiting-his-dad storyline even more.

How could someone say the fly was unwatchable ... We hadnt gotten to see walt and Jesse like that throughout all 3 seasons of BB. On that note, the Fly was in BB's 3rd season, this is the killing's first season- too early for an episode like this

I'm talking about a single bad episode in what has been a brilliant series, so far. Mad Men has had stinkers, too. While it may be true that we hadn't seen Walt and Jesse "like that," whatever that means; I'll argue that we didn't need to see then chasing a fly for 42 minutes. I am not alone in my assessment. I've talked with lots of people who fast forwarded through that one, in the vain hope that it would improve.

The Fly was a classic episode of Breaking Bad. Bryan Cranston was incredible. Breaking Bad is the most exciting show on television, and the writers have come through with stunning plots every season. Which is why I don't understand people's impatience when they have one slow episode. Breaking Bad has earned the right to have one of those episodes. (The Killing has arguably not) There was still plenty of payoff with the last few episodes of Season of Breaking Bad. If you are fast forwarding through any part of Breaking Bad, you must not be a fan of the show.

Turns out the character I found most annoying at the outset of the season is now the one person I was happy to spend an hour with tonight. Holder's second voicemail to his sister and his return to the car was a terrific moment. Definitely the best episode in a while.

Holder seemed like an obnoxious twit at first, but is now probably the only character that I'd like to learn more about, as I just quietly wait to see what murderer they pull out of, well, you know where, at the end.

For some reason I canâ€™t get into Holder. Maybe itâ€™s because if Iâ€™m going to watch an ex(or not so ex) meth addict in baggie close say â€œyoâ€ all the time, I would MUCH rather be watching Breaking Bad. At least Iâ€™ll have the 3rd season DVD tomorrow.

I thought that this was an episode that should have come at episode 5 or 6, it really would have helped develop a depth to the show that is sorely lacking. I thought the phone conversations as Holder tried to reconnect with the people he had betrayed so often as a junkie were powerful and wonderfully underplayed.

It never felt like a time waster, you can't kill a show for no character development and then kill them for a nicely written episode that reminds us of the frailties of our heroes.

The primary problem with the show is the lack of flashbacks with Rosie. You cant build a show where everyone is a cypher.

This show is still better than many procedurals and is well deserving of a renewal. Please AMC, you let me down with Rubicon, this show has solid potential. As long as it sticks the landing...

ps = how was your intro not a reference to your moms kicking you out of her canoe???

I liked the character development of Holder and Linden in this one -- I just think it would have been better to do this earlier on in the season, and not in the home stretch.

I'm kind of glad that they didn't make Jack a victim of the killer, but at the same time the missing son storyline ended up being complete and utter filler. Quite frankly Alan, I was sure that you were going to absolutely TRASH this episode.

Overall my feelings are mixed. Enjoyed the hour but as you mentioned, this felt like an entirely different show and I guess that's why I'm not really sure how to rate what I just watched.

I'm not sure if it was filler. If the concept requires that each season introduce a new supporting cast, than only Linden, her family, and maybe Holder will be constants. If that's the case, it's really a show about them with the cases they work informing their character development. Like on an episode of, say House, we get to know a bit about the Patient of the Week (or, in this case, the Grieving Family of the Season), but the true focus is the cops. That would make this a fairly essential episode.

Funny...I was thinking "I bet Alan Sepinwall is going to really like this episode" when I was watching it. I, for one, prefer this character driven episode. I only wish they had done something like this a little sooner.

I am with Sonia, I had a feeling Sepinwall was going to really like this episode. It has been said a million times, but this episode could have come earlier. However, I am glad it came at all instead of never.

And for that reason I've mostly faulted AMC's PR for badly misrepresenting this show as playtoy with a 'let's find the weekly who-done-it clue' instead of as a character study about the impact of a murder on the lives of any persons even remotely connected. If I'm thinking of it as a kick-em 'whodoneit' to solve, I can get restless. If I just sit back and watch the actors do their jobs, I'm very absorbed.

I agree this was an absorbing episode that I'd have liked to see sooner. But if everyone is already in on the idea the show will go on at least a couple seasons, then this may be the reason for the late placement.

Sure you can blame the PR department, and the network as a whole. The show was definitely mapped out and written before the promo campaign started running on the network. It's a classic example of a network doing what it could to promote the show in a way that would bring viewers at first and praying that enough viewers stuck around to get a decent rating. At this point I find it hard to believe that AMC execs thought this show was good but it was too late to shut things down - it was what it was and they rolled the dice.

The PR dept is suppose to help get people watching the series, no matter what product the development has actually produced.

Do you actually expect a PR dept to promote that the show is going to start out strong, take the easy way out, spin its wheels in a bunch of middle episodes that add zero value, and overally frustrate viewers with its unrealized potential?

I can understand that you feel betrayed that they have promoted the show as something better than what it is, but you can't blame the quality of the show on the PR dept. Blame the writers/showrunner.

The only thing you can take away from this is that you now can't take AMC's PR dept word for what the show is, based on a promo.

I completely agree w/ your assessment that this would've been a more intriguing episode had it occurred earlier in the season.

I completely understand the logistics of waiting until the detectives have a day to kill waiting for the warrant to do an episode w/ these plot lines, but it just felt like too little too late for me. I wanted this kind of character development and interpersonal relationships earlier in the story to invest me more in Linden/Holder's relationship. A better understanding of what makes them tick earlier in the show would've made it easier for me to follow along with them and feel the frustration when they screw up (instead of just thinking "wow you guys are dumb")

It's interesting that people want to dismiss this show as formulaic yet when they screw with the formula, everybody complains about that. Is there a rulebook somewhere that says that two people who are slow to trust and who are essentially competing for the same job can't wait eleven days to get to know each other better? This was an excellent episode in a show that started strong, had a flat period, and started to come back a few episodes ago. The timing is interesting. It makes perfect sense for these characters. The episode is about Linden's life falling apart as a result of the investigation and Holder reaching out to her at a time when she clearly needs help. To me, it would have seemed contrived if they'd done this any earlier.

@nancy, Not only is her life falling apart, but the case has also fallen apart, causing irreparable harm to several of the players involved. Dramatically, I agree that its placement makes perfect sense.

I would have preferred it earlier in the season just because I think it was stronger and far more interesting than what occurred in those episodes. It's placement at this point makes sense in terms of the arc of the story. (I'm seeing the missing kid as a plot device, but am Ok with it.) The problem is that many viewers were so turned off by the earlier episodes that they may not have continued watching to be rewarded with a much better episode. So, in terms of story, the placement is fine. In terms of stimulating audience growth or at least holding those early season viewership numbers, it probably isn't. However, being on cable means not really having to sweat the numbers the way the broadcast network shows do.

It was less terrible than the teacher/terrorist/circumcision stuff, but was still pretty terrible. The sudden reveal that the boat lady was a social worker probably should have happened in episode 2. It's hard to feel anything about Holder missing the parade when we know nothing about his family. Linden went from almost no emotion for the first 9 episodes to being an emotional wreck in a few hours.

Hmmm, Echos seems to be calling P&R terrible. Searching dictionary for alternate definitions of "terrible." Not finding any... Why would someone randomly go out of their way to call hilarious comedy terrible in comments sections of review on so-so drama series? Head hurts. Must stop thinking.

It's ok Crum, every single time I say something negative about a show, someone always feels the need to bash Parks and Rec. In fact, I'm pretty sure echoes has done it multiple times. It's just basic trolling and shows that he can't argue with my complaints.

As a separate episode it was solid, but the fact that it took place with 3 left is mind-boggling. Not only did it have nothing to do with the murder of Rosie, but once again there are no suspects and barely any leads other than she was at the casino. I mean comone on, there are 2 left! What were the writers thinking with all the wasted episodes about Bennett when all along he was supposedly a decent guy and he had zero to do with Rosie's murder. Show is about as frustrating as a show can get.

The episode standing alone was the best they've done because they've finally written some dialogue and had some actual character development. But to do it in week 11 of a 13 week murder mystery is beyond moronic. I seriously question whether or not the people involved in this know what they are doing.

And its the little things as well. Like calling it the 11:45 ferry when they show a closeup of the ferry sign and it says it left at 11:30 and arrived at 11:45. Nobody refers to a ferry or train by the arrival time, always the departure time. Like a writer made a mistake before they went to shoot the sign - so silly, so trivial, yet so indicative that Veena Sud trucked over her shitty Cold Case writers for this project - and whomever OK'ed her running the show from AMC may get fired!

These self assured arguments to the effect that the writers must be stupid because they've deviated from some imaginary rulebook are getting old. What you're really saying is that you wouldn't make a note to yourself about the arrival time, but it makes perfect sense to me. Maybe Rosie just jotted down the ferry and the time she was supposed to meet somebody. What does it say about that possibility in your rulebook?

fine - we spend an hour getting to know these two people (and yes I agree something like this should have been done much earlier) but if we're going to do this lets get some true insight into these characters. What drives these people to catch the bad guys? What is it that's in them that despite all their faults, vices, emotional problems make us respect them? There's nothing like this here - the great shows, the NYPD Blues and Homicides and Wires do this- this show was just another utterly wasted opportunity.

That was the most infuriating hour of dramatic television I can ever remember. Three episodes to go and they crank this fecal matter out? They waited entirely too long to try and make their audience care about the characters and then do so at the expense of the main reason most people are still watching.

With a lot shows the journey is more important than the destination so to speak. Not with this show. I imagine most people want resolution. What a waste of time.

Wow, lol even though this was a good episode, I think it might end up up turning people off to The Killing(other than the ones like us that'll probably watch till the Season Finale then give it up). I felt insulted once I realized that they were going to spend the whole hour on this. They wrote themselves into a no-win situation too, if they did kill the kid then they'd definately be clogging the show up, and if they didn't well you have me feeling ripped off.

I heard "Habibi" too, and wondered if the fact that it is an Arabic term of endearment was related to anything or was just random. And what wast the dolphin amulet or coin that Holder fondled at the end?

In a vacuum, this is the type of show that "The Killing" needed to be to live up to the AMC brand. Like others have said, it would have made much more sense to do this episode earlier, so we finally know what the hell Reggie is, and Holder and Linden finally developing some type of rapport. I really liked this episode...again, in a vacuum. And note how the Richmond storyline didn't arise at all. Time spent on Richmond could have been time building up Holder and Linden as characters throughout the season, instead of derailing the storyline for the sake of characterization.

Instead of it being a "who done it?," The Killing really needs to be like tonight's episode, except instead of searching for Linden's kid, they're tracking the case. Time devoted to Richmond has removed those little moments in between the next lead for Linden and Holder.

Completely agree -- the episode didn't work in the grand scheme of this season's storyline (and timing), but I was totally encouraged by everything else. Should they renew this show, I'd like to see more of the Linden/Holder relationship (and backgrounds) while also moving towards solving a crime.

i agree. most tolerable episode in a while. question: if rosie is using the atm in the casino, wouldn't they have known that by checking the activity on her check card right after she died? unless of course she's using somebody else's card. just an observation.

She certainly could have been using someone else's card. But we're dealing with the same detectives that wanted to sift thru 47 Adelas in the phone book rather than simply re-check phone records after Belko told them about Rosie's phone call, so it might wind up being another "discovery" that should've been known about almost immediately.

OK, so Stan's card, the card they found with Rosie's bloody sweater, which any competent cop would've run transaction history on on the very FIRST day to try to track Rosie's whereabouts, would show a transaction at an Indian casino on the night of Rosie's murder (based on the ATM footage), on a night when Stan was off in the woods camping? And these geniuses had no idea about that until they saw the ATM footage? If it does turn out to be Stan's card, this show will have achieved a whole new level of awfulness. Also, it's amazing that the ATMs at that casino have high-definition, *color* video. I'm sure that's standard with any ATM machine. At this point, I'm actually rooting for the killer.

@ CRUMDAWG97...you've never had credibility in my eyes, so now we're even. You're assuming that Rosie was making an ATM withdrawal with Stan's card and I'm not. I'm just saying that if there were past withdrawals, they would have been attributed to the guy with the gambling problem and not to his daughter. The implication, however, is that the money is coming from someplace else, right? She's making regular deposits and that suggests money laundering or some other illegal activity. If she had an ATM card on her linking her to illegal activity, the killer would probably have taken it. What the ATM image does is establish that she was at the casino. If they analyze it carefully, maybe it could tell them who she was with. It's also information that could speed up that federal warrant giving them access to the surveillance tapes.

An episode like this, coming this late in the game, pretty much lets you that the ending is going to be epically bad. If there's not enough juice in the resolution to begin driving toward it in episode 11 of 13, then you know they're just moving shells around hoping to bamboozle ya' before they bring out the denouement.

On the other hand, I was happy to get through an episode without having to deal with the awful Larson family. So it's got that going for it...which is nice.

Awful. What we needed was more grieving and distraught parents. This helped us really get in touch with the emotional core of the show. Maybe maybe if this was episode 4 it would have worked but this late in the series, no thank you.

No substantial progress on the actual murder, oh no, and no actual effective intelligent detective work from the two main murder police. I mean it's been 8, 9 days and they're still piecing together a timeline.

I'm sticking this out just to see how terribly they wrap up this case but no way would I come back for another season.

I thought this was an excellent episode, if only it had happened on another show, or earlier in the season. We needed an episode like this, or scenes from this to help us understand and like these characters better. Suddenly Linden's excuses to not go to Sonoma make sense. She knows where the windows, doors, light switches are to this life. Sonoma is like a new foster home. Maybe had we known this part of her, we might have been more patient with all the will she or won't she leave crap.

Excellent analysis, but I'm puzzled by the first sentence. The episode did happen on this show. Why would you be happier if it had happened on another show? I really don't understand why people who wanted to know more about the characters are complaining now that they know more about the characters.

@Susan, agreed. It's almost as if the writers didn't want us to identify or root for Linden. That's an OK choice and it's done for dramatic protagonists before. Perhaps, they wanted her to be a prickly pear that we gradually get to know and forgive for all the annoyances and frustrations of previous episodes.

@Nancy, Except for the commenters focused exclusively on the murder mystery, most commenters liked the character development. They aren't complaining about knowing more about them. They're complaining about the sequencing. Most of us want to be interested in the characters and we want to like the presumable "good guys." In many ways Linden as a person was as mysterious as the identity of Larsen's killer. Introducing more of her to the audience earlier would have made her and the show fare more compelling. Obviously, it's better late than never, but it would have been even better a bit earlier.

The character development was okay, but, yeah, they could have doled out such scenes in little pieces earlier in the series instead of all at once -- maybe at the expense of a long take or three of Mitch staring into Rosie's closet.

I missed them investigating the murder of Rosie Larsen, but then I miss that for huge chunks of every episode anyway.

I didn't miss Stan and Mitch at all, and I thought about it during the episode. Richmond didn't even cross my mind, that's how little I missed him.

I'm in for the duration, but I sure hope all this stalling means they're going to cover a lot of real ground from here on out.

Nice that they had an episode that finally gave you a few reasons to care more about Linden and Holder, but it should have come at least 6 episodes earlier. Just as putting together Rosie's timeline should have come much sooner (I can't, for example, imagine anything this incompetent on The Closer, L&O or NYPD Blue, but I really have trouble believing that the Seattle cops are just this bad). Now, an episode like this one, which I enjoyed a lot more than last week's, is just wasting time when they ought to be really zeroing in on the true trail of where Rosie was going when she left the dance, why we saw her running screaming through the park at the start of the first episode, and why she was there in the first place. Other people have already mentioned all the things that should have been noticed earlier, like the keychain, and how Linden and Holder should have spent time this episode figuring out who Rosie was talking to when she mentioned the ferry info that Belko overheard (what, it took 11 days for them to get a download of her call record and trace all the calls??! Unbelievable, completely). The writers have simply worn me out and pissed me off with their complete inability to get the procedural part of this right that this episode failed to get the right amount of sympathy from me (like it might have had it run much earlier).

Even so, we now know a lot more about Linden and her screwed-up kid than we do about the victim. That's just screwed up if the director and writers expect us to suffer through the entire season-long murder mystery. Perhaps they themselves were ambivalent, because they sure seem to have scripted this story that way.

The problem with this format is that to stretch a single case over 13 weeks, the cops almost have to seem incompetent (at least compared to most TV cops). Most procedurals give the cops one episode to solve a complicated case, so those detectives come across as geniuses.

But you're right, after the thousands of hours most of us have spent watch sharp detectives at work, Linden and Holder come across as real slackers. Maybe this show would have seemed better 20 years ago, they could have called it "Grunge Squad" or something.

"Most procedurals give the cops one episode to solve a complicated case, so those detectives come across as geniuses."

Yes, but most TV shows have absolutely nothing to do with reality. I also don't think there's anything wrong with stretching the investigation out over many episodes, if it were done competently. The Wire took entire seasons to play out their investigations. While they weren't mysteries, the writing crew had to struggle with many of the same basic issues and they did it very well.

The showrunners on this series are just completely incompetent, at least to be doing a series like this.

I work very closely with detectives in my job and honestly, the timeline isn't so bad. It actually can take days to get phone records.

If they actually showed what real detectives do to solve murders there would be hours of footage of Linden and Holder at their desk making phone calls, or reaching out to friends/families/neighbors who don't call them back.

I think this show walks a fine line between the completely unbelievable CSI/Castle type shows and the reality of something like, "The First 48."

That being said, I think I agree that they should do away with the "1 episode = 1 day" thing, because it's just an artificial constraint the show doesn't need.

Jay S: " The problem with this format is that to stretch a single case over 13 weeks, the cops almost have to seem incompetent (at least compared to most TV cops)."

In it's first season, Murder One spread a case out over 20-some episodes. Granted there were quite a few "twists" and included the investigation plus the trial (which included more investigation), but it can be done. The problem is that the case as presented so far has been too linear and lacked complexity. It's rare for the detectives to have two or more pots on the fire simultaneously, which would be realistic.

BTW, I also have a problem believing that any responsible school principal was going to hold a school parade in the rain (parade?? not a school assembly??? what, were they refugees from Treme who thought they were celebrating Mardi Gras?!). Or that this great cop Linden would be stupid enough *not* to check whether her kid went to see his dad, especially if the dad is local. Seriously: the writers were very much assuming the viewers are that stupid, too. And I don;t take the insult kindly.

I was under the impression (and perhaps it is a mistaken impression) that Jake's father was totally out of the picture, that Linden didn't even have a way to contact him. So, his getting in touch with and spending time with Jake would be a total surprise.

I agree with many people here that this episode needed to be something we got much earlier in the season. The writing and acting were top notch, but lacked any true tension as there was no way they would have killed off Linden's son. At least, maybe she'll ship him off with the father so we can lose this pointless (and annoying) plot thread with the neglected son.

Yet, at this point, the show has given me no reason to care about Linden or even respect her much. She seems more obsessed than skilled, making stupid mistakes such as telling too much to the Larsens. And she seems an ineffectual mother most of the time, so that both of her storylines (I don't even consider the Sonoma fiance a valid thread since there was never any chance she was leaving the case), at least the way they're handled here, make her seem incapable of doing anything right.

The Larsens' storyline can be good and affecting, but with Mitch going from comatose to Lady MacBeth, it makes it hard for us to truly sympathize with her, even though her emotions are understandable. Brent Sexton has been very solid throughout.

This show really needs to stick the landing and even then, if there's a second season, they need to set up a new case with new characters in a new city. I can't imagine what more we would need to get from these characters.

Oddly enough, the campaign arc and Mitch's behavior really don't bother me as much as the botched police procedural. All of Mitch's behavior is comprehensible as it hasn't even been two weeks since she lost her firstborn, and in such an unexpected, horrible way; no parent expects to outlive his or her kids, and certainly not that the kids wouldn't even make it to adulthood, not unless they all live in a very rough neighborhood. As for Councilman Richmond, the campaign intrigue doesn't bug me, either; his own attitude very much resembles the depression of a man who hasn't gotten over his wife's death -- he probably had to be very strong for her while she was suffering and deteriorating, and it's all he can do now to keep his wits for his campaign during working hours, then he lets his moods and grief get the better of him the rest of the time. He's very much like Stan Larsen in that respect: both have done desperate things lately at the prompting of others which predictably blew up, except that Richmond has stayed out of jail (his risks have been different than the ones Stan took). And he has to suspect that his aide Gwen is backing him for reasons of her own that have much less to do with him and more to do with separating herself and her career from her father.

I'm still entertaining the notion that either Gwen or Richmond went to the casino to track down a rumor that the mayor was cutting some kind of unsavory deal with the casino owners, that Rosie happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something, and that maybe even the mayor chased her down trying to contain the damage. I find the mayor completely believable as a murderer who'd take the opportunity to snatch a Richmond campaign car from the valet park if he spotted it at the casino, thus leaving a misleading trail for Rosie's death at Richmond's door.

But I could be wrong ... Still, that's a whole lot more interesting that what I've seen on The Killing so far.

Add me to the chorus of "why didn't this happen 5-6 episodes ago??" The fact that her son goes to visit his father after she intimated a few episodes ago that he ditched them was also an audience cheat. The other incredulous audience cheat was Jack not going to school for 3 days and her being mad that he's been acting up or missing school, or falling Holder around or talking to him about what to cook.

This development could have easily started during a stakeout, if they were actually doing some sort of police work ever. There were nice moments in this episode (Holder's character was spectacularly acted tonight).

But to say that it was nice to take a break tonight, in the real world there would be no break. Because they can't have the warrant for the video footage doesn't mean there aren't other leads. I would have liked this conversation to have taken place during a day of boring police work like interviewing Adela staff, looking for footage from the Adela. Tracking down Rosie's or the Larsen's phone records to find out who she might have been talking to, or if there were any text messages she was sending or receiving on the way to or from the casino. Chasing her son was an unnecessary contrivance. Then to have her get home the same time he does, after she thought his corpse was found? I agree that the writers chose a bad corner to be painted into.

Christ, this was the most infuriated I've been about an episode of television in recent memory. You pull this with with two episodes to go? Really? The show is absolutely worthless and beyond redemption at this stage of the game.

this is so true, especially given how much they've been stalling already.And isn't anybody, anywhere in the universe helpful to a murder investigation? Not school kids, not honorable but troubled Somali teachers, not family friends, not casino operators. Noone.