On The Killing

Let us stipulate that last night's season finale of The Killing wasn't good. The episode felt rushed and random, grabbing at plot threads that hadn't been fully explored (Holder's weird phone calls, the death of Richmond's wife) in what felt like a desperate attempt to make us say, "Oh, that's what that meant." The Internet hoo-ha over the last minute twists and the show's gradual slide into what felt like aimlessness has gone beyond bickering over specific plot points, thanks to showrunner Veena Sud's defensive interviews and apparent blinders regarding what's going on around her. Sud's statement that she doesn't pay attention to the Internet's temperature regarding The Killing is actually refreshing; given the sheer numbers of those who review the brush strokes and not the paintings of episodic television. No showrunner who spent their nights scrolling through Twitter feeds could ever hope to please everyone.

What's much weirder and more troubling (as pointed out here) are Sud's blatant attempts to tie certain choices to plot twists on other AMC shows:

I always wanted to do an episode where we would get to know our lead better, and would get to spend time, and in fact be forced to spend time in a situation with both these characters, and the sparing amounts of information we were given with Sarah, finally start to get some answers about who this woman is, why she does what she does, why she's a cop, ultimately. Her inner nature. It was also deeply inspired by the "Mad Men" episode with Don and Peggy in one night and the "Breaking Bad" episode where Jesse and Walter are stuck in the desert and dying. It's very much an AMC tradition, to take this rapid, unexpected detour from what we think might be a linear story, and find ourselves, as Walter and Jesse did, lost and trying to make sense. I loved that, I thought that was such a brilliant episode, and I wanted to do something like that.

I don't know that I think Sud owes us and explanation for choices made in last night's episode, especially since it seems she was always sure she'd have more time to tell her story. But the above quote sounds like a writer determined to keep her show on the air at any cost, even by drawing from other shows on her network. (Imagine an episode of The Sopranos in which Carmela befriends four fashion-conscious friends from the City and goes to bed with a sensitive carpenter.) What I would like from Sud is some sense that she has a grasp on where the overall arc of the show is going and what it's about, even in the vaguest of terms, and I didn't get that. I can understand why AMC renewed the show, even if only because it was generating more buzz than Rubicon, but I'll need convincing that Sud has the talent to save The Killing from all those tweets.