The Killing is compelling
Rain spattering on a windshield at night, huddled figures looming from the shadows of dimly lit alleys, hollow eyed and staggering … The Killing is back with a new mystery, and a pervasive sense of dread once again settles over every rain-soaked hour.
A year has passed since Sarah Linden closed the Rosie Larsen case and she’s no longer a detective. As played by Mireille Enos, Linden is haunted by what she’s seen, perhaps beyond recovery. Enos has a rare, haunted look, and there’s something subtly compelling about her performance: The Killing has some of the most alluring, compelling acting on television. Linden is still quick to anger over injustice. And when her ex-partner Stephen Holder, played with simmering intensity by Joel Kinnaman, catches a case involving another runaway teenage girl, Linden finds herself drawn back into the world she thought she’d left behind.
A string of gruesome murders has the community on edge, and the evidence points to a case Linden worked years earlier, when she was an ambitious, up-and-coming police detective on Seattle’s west side. Holder is getting nowhere canvassing street kids for information about a missing girl, and there’s something heartbreakingly realistic about these early scenes. There are moments when The Killing looks, sounds and feels more like a particularly gritty street documentary than TV drama, but then The Killing never was a simple, easy-to-digest TV cop show. The story may be familiar from countless forensic procedurals but the slow, brooding pace, moody atmosphere and subtle, nuanced acting elevates it into the realm of great drama.
The themes of The Killing — that street kids can be more moral and loyal to their friends than grown men with money and power; that the pursuit of justice comes with a price; that self-sacrifice is one of the noblest human traits — will be familiar to anyone who saw those first two seasons. It takes only a few minutes in a twohour season opener, though, to realize that while The Killing’s overarching themes remain the same, everyone has a personal story, unique to them. Many people might look at street kids and see street kids. The Killing asks us to look at them and see human souls behind those hollow eyes. When Linden finally reunites with Holder, it’s a wonderful moment, quiet and understated, full of nuance. “The clock never stops,” Holder tells her, and there’s something in Linden’s sad smile that says more than an entire speech.
A programing note: viewers annoyed by The Killing’s red-herring first season can rest assured that the new mystery will be solved before the new season ends, in mid August. AMC promises there will be no cliffhanger this time, no loose, dangling threads. (AMC — 9:05 p.m.)