The Killing “Up from Here; The Road to Hamelin” Review: One final Red Herring

 Linden's got a gun on The Killing

Photo Credit: AMC TV

Some thoughts on the season three finale of The Killing as soon as I run to the lake…

So that was an interesting mess. Before the finale aired the third season of The Killing had been a step up on the first two seasons. It was a tighter and more connected show that while had troubles with its plot, had some amazing raw character moments that propelled the series forward. Then there was the finale, which managed to throw a lot of that away all for a big plot twist. I don’t get it, as it seems that the Killing learned nothing from its mistakes in the past and the two hour finale grew more and more frustrating as the hour went on. I don’t have much time to go through it all in great detail so here are some bullet points to describe my thoughts on the finale:

By the way big spoilers ahead!

• So was it not obvious that Linden’s boss was the killer as soon as it was mentioned that the possible that a cop was a murder. Also was it just me or did that just come out of nowhere too, I mean the episode started phenomenally with each of the show’s many parties dealing with the aftermath of the situations. This could have been a beautiful bookend to the show where each of the parties gain bitter closure to their situations. It could have just been a single hour of the characters grappling with the situations they were given and the lives that they are going to live. It could have been a finale that would have looked like a great David Simon written Wire finale. It could have been great without anything case related happening at all.

• But then it did and well it was kind of awful. Not that the Linden dealing with her boss and lover being the murderer wasn’t emotionally devastating for the character but it just was bad plotting wise. The show had already given closure to everyone within the first 20 minutes of the finale and then went onto some strange direction that was frankly unneeded. It’s another case of the show being slow paced and measured throughout its season until the finale where everything just seems rushed and unnecessary. The killer didn’t need to be the lieutenant to keep me interested I liked all the emotional strife that came with these characters and was super disappointed when it dedicated the last hour to him and Linden in the car. It just wasn’t all that great and it felt like the show that seemed to learn things throughout the season had ultimately thrown all of it away because they needed to fill 13 hours. It was just frustrating.

• The other thing is that if there is another season of The Killing (which signs point to there being) that the show is going to have to revisit the events of Linden killing the lieutenant next season, which is very aggravating for a number of different reasons the first and foremost being that we’re not done with this case at all. The show, if it comes back, will most likely not throw all these details out the window and have to pick up its next season with the aftermath of all of it. Which is fine if it could fit within the context of a similar case but it feels like these events have to be the centre of the storyline next season. One of the many reasons The Wire worked so well is that it provided some closure to the storylines of a season while carrying over emotional problems or strife and ultimately allowed for things to move on. The problem with the Killing now is that the show has to address all of this and assumedly for multiple episodes. Sure it’s Linden falling into the trap of the killer in “Seven” like fashion is a good emotionally shocking ending to something finite but to a show that is continuing it leaves more messes than it’s worth.

• On a more positive note Joel Kinnaman and Mereille Enos have been fantastic with what they have been given and if the plot in this episode hadn’t been so kind of awful I would have had the chance to praise their fantastic work for a lot longer.

So in the end the season finale leaves this season of The Killing in the big time mess category. The show managed to have some great moments this season (The Jonathan Demme episode “Reckoning” was fantastic) but ultimately by the end really didn’t seem to learn anything. It had a wildly contrived ending that really has put the creative team in a hole for next season (if there is one but with Breaking Bad and then Mad Men ending I don’t see AMC having much of a choice). I guess it will be interesting to see how the creative team gets out of this one.

That's just me though. What did everyone else think?