S1E5: The Killing does a lot of stuff right. For starters, it executes a fairly basic premise in a very tight, yet somehow always expanding, way. With a few exceptions, the characters are all pretty interesting. The cliffhangers work — most of the time — and on top of that, the show is capable of finding humor to lighten the gloomy, rainy Seattle mood. But c’mon. We all know that nothing is perfect — not even television. And unfortunately, last night’s “Super 8” wasn’t The Killing at its best. Instead, it offered us an hour of pretty much everything that’s wrong with the show.
“It gets better.” – Darren Richmond
Meanwhile, over in the political part of the show, we had some important developments this week. The mole has been smoked out (by Jamie’s fine, undercover drunk work with the mayor), and turns out, it’s Nathan, the same dude who Darren asked to spy on his own staff. Can’t say that was too surprising, considering until that point, the show had pretty much set it up perfectly to be Gwen. If there’s anything we’ve learned since the shows inception, it’s that if the show presents someone as the probable suspect, they probably aren’t guilty. However, I still don’t trust Gwen. Something about that girl just seems off, you know? Like she’s going to backstab Darren at any moment. Maybe that’s an unfair assumption (or perhaps it’s just because I may have intimacy issues and difficulty trusting women; seriously, as my exes), but she just seems like she’s going to screw Darren over. Badly.
In other campaign stuff: Darren finds the grieving Mitch Larsen at the grocery store and tries to offer some kind words. Mitch, on the other hand, is not really in her right mind and can’t really accept anything from anyone. It’s not too surprising. If you were like me and found yourself curious as to why Mitch was still in such a bad state, it’s important to remember that The Killing operates in real-time, and last night’s episode still was only five days after Rosie’s murder. That said, though, Mitch’s freak-out toward the end of the episode was really, really sad. She’s a broken woman, and I don’t blame her for not being able to take any comfort in, what seems like, empty words from a politician. (As a side note: what’s with people shunning the Larsens? Stan’s losing business and friends are glaring at Mitch at the grocery store. What kind of people do that? Is that realistic? Sure, it’s awkward because someone’s daughter was brutally murdered, but I find it hard to believe that everybody the family knows would cower away like that.)
In the end though, there really isn’t much else to talk about because, well, nothing else really happened (except for maybe Holder’s sketchy looking manilla envelope of cash: where do you think he got it? I feel like it’s illegal, but why would he count it in the police station, in his office, with the door wide open?). We know pretty much the same stuff that we did last week; and it’s frustrating. However, I will give The Killing some credit because they didn’t follow the exact same plot formula as they had in every previous episode up to this point. That said, though, “Super 8” was weak. Here’s to hoping that we actually get some type of plot or character development next week.
