"The Killing" Kills Itself

SPOILERS AHEAD

Well, season 1 of "The Killing" concluded last night, and man, I've never seen a show try harder to get no one to watch it.

This season has been less a rollercoaster ride than just a pure downward spiral. There's no worse feeling than realizing the TV show you're watching doesn't know what the hell it is doing.

It goes to show that it is much easier to produce a great first episode, then it is to craft an entire season. And that sucks, because usually we base our viewing habits on that pilot. And after the pilot of "The Killing", I was in. I was invested in the mystery of who killed Rosie Larsen, and this show seemed to be driving towards the answer to that question.

Wrong.

How can you do a show with a premise that is: one murder investigation followed through an entire season, and not have an ending? How can you have an entire marketing campaign that is "who killed Rosie Larson?" and not tell us who killed Rosie Larsen?

The finale was a punch to the audience's balls. But the problems didn't start there. They actually began around episode 6 or 7. That's when you started to get the feeling that they were treading water.

There was no real information being given out because they were so far away from the ending (or so we thought). So you know that everything was just bullshit, because there was so much more time in the season. Granted, it's hard to do a show that just focuses on one case, but that's probably why no one else does it.

The pacing was completely wrong. Instead of planting clues and building towards an ending, they just used red herrings and then every 3 episodes the investigation would basically start from scratch. So really, you could've just watched the last 2 episodes and be pretty much caught up.

The show was sloppy. I tried to ignore the obvious mistakes in the investigation. The use of technology only when it served their purpose. The complete lack of logic. The fact that the detectives were responsible for a man getting beaten with an inch of his life and yet didn't seem to care.

But I kept watching. I thought, I at least want to find out the answers. I want to know who did it, where this is all going, maybe it will all make sense in the end.

Wrong again.

Last night, the show killed itself. And please don't compare it to The Sopranos or Lost, those endings can be debated for completely different reasons. This one, the writers have no defense. They insulted the audience. They told us they were going to give us an arrest at the end, which they easily could have, and they didn't. Why?

Probably because they knew they didn't have the goods. They knew that whoever the killer was, it wouldn't be satisfying, because their show was built on quicksand. They didn't set it up properly, and their payoff wouldn't have been worth the 13 episode commitment.

Plus, everything about the last 10 minutes was stupid. You can't have a main character just completely do a 180 for no reason. And it's the dumbest frame job in the history of frame jobs. He's gonna invent a photo and think that's gonna hold up in court? That's insane. I'm pretty sure that would get figured out by the defense attorney in about 2 seconds, which it actually did.

And another revenge killing for killing Rosie? They really went to that well. JFK only had one, Rosie has two?

And no fiance in the finale episode? At all?

And Stan doesn't tell his wife about the other house?

And all that stuff they figured out about the car, they could've done that in the beginning. They just noticed the gas gauge? Come on, Linden.

And...

Anyway, fuck off, "The Killing". You're dead to me.