TV Review: The Killing (2011- )

By T-Rav

The Killing is an interesting show, though not a great one. It started strong and I give it credit for breaking with the typical format of today’s crime procedurals. But it does have serious flaws, which can be attributed partly to sloppy writing and partly to the limitations of reflecting reality too closely in TV programming.

The Killing’s debut was promising. Rather than being a crime-of-the-week show, its first season focused on a single homicide—the murder of Rosie Larsen, a Seattle teen—and how it affects the people caught up in her death. This was an effective choice as it made the show stand out from other crime dramas, such as CIS, which I think have grown tired.

I actually liked CSI for a long time; it had interesting stories and a good cast. But there were always a few things that troubled me, such as the tendency to elevate these glorified lab rats to detective status, or the increasingly predictable murder-of-the-week plots. My main problem, though, is how glib the CSIs are about their line of work. Now I realize that given the line of work, you might need some gallows humor to avoid a mental breakdown, but the characters exude too much hip trendiness for the subject matter of these shows -- especially when the show is heartrending. I surely don’t need to reference David Caruso’s witticisms-while-playing-with-his-sunglasses to make this point. It just seems like they treat murder and suffering too lightly sometimes. The Killing doesn’t do that and, in many ways, seem to offer itself as the anti-CSI.

The Killing gave us the chance to meet characters you normally don’t meet. The central characters are still the law enforcement people, such as lead investigator Detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos), who is simultaneously training her new partner, Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman), so she can hand the case off to him and leave for a new life in California. But we also meet the girl’s grieving parents, Stan (Brent Sexton) and Mitch (Michelle Forbes), and a candidate for Seattle mayor, Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell), who gets sucked into the case after Rosie’s body is discovered in one of his campaign’s vehicles. This worked really well.

The show works in other ways too. First, there is some really great acting by pretty much everybody. Enos does a good job of portraying how Detective Linden begins to lose control of her life and her future as she becomes obsessed with the case. Kinnaman is excellent as a cop with a question mark over his morality. Sexton and Forbes wonderfully convey not only the shattering sense of loss that comes from having a child murdered but also the feeling of being lost, of not knowing how — or even whether — to move on. Secondly, the story is much broader than just the investigation. We see the Larsens struggling to break the news to their other children, the Richmond campaign running for cover from the political fallout of the discovery, and several other threads from the event. I like how these subplots are constructed, and the fact they receive their fair share of attention. It’s actually very fitting this show is called “The Killing,” and not something like “Seattle P.D.” as it goes far beyond being just another tiresome crime-of-the-week story.

That said, there are several aspects of this show which are problematic. One is the writing. It may not be fair to describe the writing as “sloppy,” but “overextended” would be a good way to describe it. The Killing has too many unexplored avenues, especially where its characters’ backstories are concerned. For example, we learn that Linden has had problems obsessing over past cases; she even did time in a psych ward once. But we’re never given the full story — we don’t know why this matters, or what bearing it has on the present case. In fact, we mostly learn about her past in a single episode that ignores the current investigation entirely. Similarly, we find out that Stan Larsen, Rosie’s father, used to work for the mob. Does this have anything to do with her death? Don’t know that either. Once the information is thrown out, it’s ignored for several episodes and thereafter brought up only briefly. This is true of several other subplots, and it makes the overall story feel uneven. In fact, this may be partly a function of not having a clear central character(s). The downside of looking at all aspects of the murder is that attention gets dispersed among too many people. We don’t have a main character we feel we can or should root for.

In the same way, The Killing’s attempt to maintain a strictly realistic portrayal of crime and law enforcement has its weaknesses as well as its strengths. When reviewing The Walking Dead, I argued that one of its key strengths was its ability to tell a realistic story more accurately and convincingly than most members of the zombie genre had been able to do. AMC has really stood out in this respect with its foray into TV programming; Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and TWD have all earned reputations for gritty, no-frills storylines and multi-dimensional characters, things the networks have regularly failed to deliver. As much as I like this approach, though, when telling a story, you have to strike a balance between plausible material and necessary artistic license, and this series has occasionally neglected the latter for the sake of the former.

There are a few examples of this, but one which was frequently commented on by critics was the position of the Larsen parents. The Killing moves at roughly one day per episode, so that the season finale is set about two weeks after the murder. During this two-week period, Stan and Mitch Larsen are generally in shock over their daughter’s death: especially the mother, who shows the classic stages of grief, such as undirected anger, social withdrawal, suicidal thoughts, etc. Now, if I had a daughter who’d just been murdered, this is probably what I’d be going through, so you can’t say there’s anything really wrong with this depiction. But the truth is, her character’s not really interesting while she’s going through this; she’s too withdrawn and bitter for the audience to feel invested in her. It’s not pretty, but there you go. Viewers get bored when they see you in the same grieving mood all season.

Now I certainly won’t tell the show’s writers how to do their job, but it seems to me that when you’re trying to revolutionize the crime drama genre as The Killing is doing, you have a delicate balancing act on your hands. Providing an extensive look at one murder is daring, but you also need to provide the audience with some central characters if you have long-term plans in mind. So is conveying the acute sense of loss, but the characters must show some emotional or character development to keep viewers interested in them. Balancing these tensions properly can result in a truly great television series. But this one hasn’t figured the trick out yet, and they’ve only got so much time to pull it off.

So what to make of The Killing? Personally, I like it in spite of its problems; I watched every episode this season, and I’ll at least start the second season whenever it premieres. But I don’t think this show knows exactly what kind of drama it wants to be yet. I would recommend watching it, but you might find it frustrating.