The Killing and Game of Thrones started around the same time, and Sundays became a day of excitement. I started off liking them both the same, but that changed dramatically over time as Game of Thrones went up and up and The Killing went a little bit downward each episode.
The Killing is about a detective trying to solve the murder of a teenage girl in Washington. For this short description, it drew instant comparisons to Twin Peaks, and though embarrassingly, I haven’t seen all that much of Twin Peaks, I think the differences don’t stop there, but they certainly slow. There’s no absurdity or essential weirdness that is at the heart of most David Lynch works. It’s played fairly real, and coupled with a plot about a mayoral candidate that may or may not be somehow involved in the murder, and a plot about the mourning parents and family that can be deeply difficult to watch at times, which is both a tribute to the writers and actors, and something that sometimes I don’t actually want to see. The show’s city of Seattle provides a suitably dreary, ominous, and rainy mood, which fits the show like a glove (and not one of those ill-fitting one-size fits all gloves).
I must say I’m in a particularly sore mood, because, as I write this, I have most recently seen the third to last episode (though I’ll done with the first season by the time you read this) and it was truly one of the worst this-close-to-end-of-season episodes of a serial show I have ever seen. Basically, the whole episode was devoted to the random disappearance of her son, who had never been an important part of the plot, and the other two, albeit less interesting over the course of the series, character sets – the grieving family of dead teen Rosie Larson and the mayoral campaign of high-minded candidate Darren Richmond weren’t even shown. Instead of actually doing their jobs working on the murder case, the two main detectives search around town for her son. Um, there’s a teenage girl’s murder to be solved? One in which the victim, maybe, didn’t do anything to cause it? Oh, and POINTLESS SPOILER ALERT (I’m going to make an effort to use this again – spoilers that are so irrelevant that ruining them is not only pointless but makes your realize how stupid the spoilers were) – her son was with his dad the whole time (the first time I typed dad, I accidentally typed ‘dead” – coincidence? Ominous)! Oh, the same dad who has maybe been mentioned once offhand in passing in the entire fucking show. Wow, that was ridiculous.
But yeah, that’s harsh. The show has probably done more good things than bad, and I enjoy Billy Campbell as the candidate as well as the Swedish guy as the cop with an undecipherable American accent that comes from no real locale.
MEGASPOILER ALERT
I wrote most of this before the last episode of the show – but boy, after watching that finale, what the FUCK? Holder’s evil? So it’s the councilman, but it’s not, it’s a framejob by some mysterious person who we may or may not have ever met? This show just changed entirely what type of show it is, and not for the better I think. It was a slow, plodding, dark, dreary police investigation slowly leading to a hopefully tense and climactic solution. What it is now is hard to say, but at the least, it’s no longer a police investigation – it’s a massive conspiracy that no longer allows us to even believe this could be something real. It’s more into Rubicon territory. I’m not saying that this type of show has to be bad by any means, but I feel lied to and betrayed a bit.
MEGASPOILER OVER
Why it’s this high: The show has a great feel, and when it’s at its best, the same deliberate pace, which I will decry in the next part, feels natural instead of slow
Why it’s not higher: Sense of pacing is awful, the plot sort of got out of hand, and yeah, the last episode kind of changed entirely the type of show it is
Best episode of the most recent season: “Pilot” – it might tell you something about a show when one picks the pilot as the best episode, and if it does say something, it says it here – everything was set up beautifully – a great beginning just to unravel slowly over the course of the season
Television, the Drug of the Nation 
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