Darkest demons on the inside
ISUPPOSE ‘‘Six Minutes’’, the penultimate stunning anti-death penalty episode of The Killing (SoHo) was too hard an act to follow. Wednesday night’s final ended in a glorified road trip, with a killer ex-cop at the wheel and his lover holding a gun to his bald head.
After the slaying of macho homeless girl Bullet, fans guessed the Pied Piper killer of homeless kids had to be a cop – either Detective Carl Reddick or Lt James Skinner. The ‘‘twigging-to’’ moment for Detective Sarah Linden happened after she spotted a murder victim’s missing ring adorning the finger of Skinner’s daughter.
Outside Skinner’s suburban house, a kid on a bike casually rode past, an icecream van played creepy music, and lawn sprinklers spun crazily round and round, providing a suitable soundtrack and visual backdrop to the uncovering of a sicko Pied Piper.
Nothing for it then but for Linden to go once more unto the breach, dear friends, and into the cop car-cum-confession box for yet another showdown between the perp and the plod.
Having already used this setting earlier in the series – with Pastor Mike holding a gun to Linden’s head – the roles were reversed here as Linden demanded answers to a few questions and viewers groaned at the sleeping-with-the enemy cliche.
After what seemed like hours of tedious Q&A in which Skinner slung off at his prey, discounting them as nothing but drug addicts and whores and praising himself for moonlighting as a street cleaner of scum, Linden was struggling to keep it together.
Skinner professed to have the missing child, Adrian Seward, secreted at the lake house location, when in fact the boy had run away to his mother’s grave and been found by Reddick – who
Season 4 is set up for a 180 degree character turn for Linden
phoned Holder, who rang Linden, who failed to answer on account of having her hands full.
But not too full to ask the killer to stop the car while she bent over and indulged in a spot of visceral vomiting, giving Skinner the advantage – which he failed to act on, apparently having done the crime math and realising the game was up.
He decided he needed to goad Linden into killing him, which she did, shooting him once on the shaky grounds that he’d killed Adrian.
When Holder burst on to the scene like the proverbial Kramer, telling Linden Adrian was alive and well, and begging her not to raise the bullet count to two, she was too far gone in disappointment and degradation at having not only slept with, but loved a serial killer.
She couldn’t stop herself from firing again, making herself as bad as him.
Maybe not in fanland, where we were all cheering her on even though she has now implicated Holder, who would die in a ditch for Linden and may have to if they ride together again in a fourth season, if there is one. It’s a hell of a way to end it: Linden’s stricken but noble face and Holder crying ‘‘no, no, no, no’’, followed by a very abrupt fade to credits.
Season 4 is set up brilliantly for a 180-degree character turn for Linden as she descends into a stinking, thinking hell, as seen on the very brilliant two episodes of Thorne (Prime, 8.45pm, Sunday), which featured David Morrissey as Detective Inspector Thorne, who nurses the terrible secret that he had drilled a very nasty piece of serial killing knitting plumb centre, and it had been covered up with the help of his pathologist mate.
In last Sunday’s ‘‘Scaredy Cat’’ episode, Thorne – having survived a review of the case by an infuriated cohort – continued to operate in a maverick way with the assistance of a cocainesnorting subordinate, played with great twitch and out-of-control adrenaline by Sandra Oh.
In both these dark, high-end crime dramas, the demons on the inside of the main characters are just as cruel and slithery as the ones lurking the streets outside.