Nine Things That Are Wrong With “The Killing” — and How to Fix Them for Next Season
Per Vulture. And I don’t disagree with any of them:
1. We don’t care about the characters
2. If you have thirteen episodes, use thirteen episodes
3. It’s disrespectful of its audience’s innate TV IQ
4. The technology is laughably outdated
5. Linden and Holder are bad detectives
6. It’s just a glorified episode of Law & Order
7. There’s too much chewing
8. There’s too little raingear
9. The killer wasn’t planned from the start of the show
I loved the start of the series. Moody, cinematic, and featuring two — what I thought were — compelling characters in Linden and Holder. But episode after episode, the thing just kept going downhill. And last night’s finale? What was that?!?!
I admit I haven’t written much TV. Never been a show runner. Don’t pretend to be an expert on that front. I’m just reacting as a guy who is constantly on the look-out for an intelligent TV series with compelling characters who make sense. And by all rights, “The Killing” should be a terrific TV series.
But it’s not.
Of all the reasons listed above, two stand out above all others.
“Linden and Holder are bad detectives.” One mistake? Fine. Two. Okay. But time and again making dumb choices, I lose respect for them. Worse, I don’t believe them as characters. No cops would act this way. This is not just me talking, this is actual cops assessing the series.
“The killer wasn’t planned from the start of the show.” Per Vulture:
Showrunner Veena Sud says she “had ideas in my head” at the start of the season, but hadn’t settled on one killer, and “So it was like, ‘I know 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 could all be potential murderer for all these 7 different reasons, but you know…’ And the other writers too. All of us came in saying, ‘Let’s just follow these characters around. Let’s follow the logical progression, the story, the emotional progression and not come to a conclusion and the minute we came to the discovery together, it was like, ‘… Yeah.”
Frankly this shocks me. It’s one thing for a screenwriter or a novelist writing a story on spec to wander around in the narrative woods in search of the character ‘who done it.’ But taking that approach with a TV series? A 13 episode commitment and the writers don’t know the conclusion of the story as they’re working through each show?
Maybe this is some sort of new paradigm. If it is, may it die a quick death. Make a choice and write to that. Fine to have all sort of feints and twists, but then at least the series feels like it’s going somewhere instead of pulling things out of its virtual arse which is — IMHO — what it felt like as the season wore on with “The Killing.”
AMC has picked up “The Killing” for season 2. They left things on a cliffhanger from season 1. So we’re either stuck with the continuation of Rosie Larsen’s murder which I don’t much care about because I have zero emotional connection to her character or we’re off onto another murder case, but then they’ll have to button up the current unresolved state of things.
I hope they figure it out. I’d love for the series to work.
But as it stands, from my tiny corner of the universe, “The Killing” needs a whole lot of fixing.
For more of the Vulture article, go here.
And for the Vulture’s assessment of the series’ season finale, go here. Be forewarned. It ain’t pretty.
Takeaway: I can’t swear this to be true all the time because you know one of my sayings — “There’s no right way to write” — but I think it’s safe to say that in almost all cases when writing a screenplay, you should know the ending before typing FADE IN. An ending is more than just the final few scenes of a story. A good ending defines a story — plot, character arcs, themes. It may be the single most important aspect of your narrative. So my advice: Know your ending before you start your story.
UPDATE: Tim Goodman at THR weighs in on “The Killing”:
And yet, as someone who has defended The Killing, if for no other reason than a story like this needs to be fully told before final judgment is passed, there really is no defending the show after the finale.
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If this was show runner Veena Sud’s attempt to add depth and gravitas to a series that cruised on atmospherics and exceptional acting, I’m not sure this is the right direction. Great acting can’t cover annoyingly thin character development. Red herrings are not, in and of themselves, acceptable plot devices or story accelerants, and asking the audience of a serialized show to commit to another season when they haven’t been given any answers in the first one is foolish.
What’s your take on “The Killing”?