AMC’s “The Killing” For Fun & Profit

Any dramatic or comedic series, driven by one sort of tension or another, promises a pay-off of some sort, but not all hang their hat on it.  No one really expected Gilligan to get off the island (though, ancient Spoiler Alert, they ultimately did).  Even mysteries don’t always pivot on the crime’s solution. Columbo identified the killer up front.  The fun was watching Peter Falk figure it out.

But some series do. They set up expectations, beat us over the head with them, and often wind up judged accordingly.

As gleefully indicated by the title, the poster, the ads, and everything else, AMC’s The Killing appears to be of that ilk.

POINTLESS SPOILER ALERT – In this remake of the same-named Danish series (called Forbrydelsen, or The Crime in the UK) someone is… killed. Specifically, teen Rosie Larsen.  In the opening moments, she’s running, someone’s chasing her, and  it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where things are headed.  Thanks to the campaign, I saw this sequence dozens of times. Thanks to the cinematography and sundry Blair Witch puffs of breath visible against the fog, even though I’d no idea who Rosie was (could be a cannibal, right?), I felt bad for her.

So, what sort of pay-off is being promised here?  What ever could it be?  Hmm… The journey?  The acting?  The dialogue?  Maybe, but to go on the hype, the identity of the perp is at least kinda important.  That got me thinking about all those other series that, for good or ill, made similar promises.  For my first column, I thought I’d look at a few.

In the 1960s, TV series were open-ended.  You didn’t expect things to end, or, really, change at all.  The Prisoner was a grand exception.  It told the story of a –ahem- Secret Agent Man, captured and held in what some would call an Orwellian Village, but which I prefer to think of as Kafkaesque.  They’d given him a number and taken way his name.  Every week, viewers were hammered with the question, Who is Number One?

While the arrested toddlers among us may have more scatological thoughts on the subject, the answer given in the series finale was not only bizarre but presented so haphazardly that any effort to ascribe coherence to the proceedings was a stretch worthy of Plastic Man.  Yes, it was the sixties, and if you remember that decade, you really weren’t there, but the sad and inescapable conclusion was that, brilliant though some episodes were, the writers were making this crap up as they went along.

Who is number one?  Well, you are, number six.  Other than that, The Prisoner didn’t seem to know.  (Sidenote:  AMC did a re-tread a while back which was utterly wussy and not worth a mention, other than the vague thematic link to The Killing.)

Not that winging it is always bad.  I use outlines when I write, but I’m not wed to them.  I find they allow me to structure stories in a satisfying way.  On the flip side, other writers like to surprise themselves with where their story heads.  Some speak lovingly of the moment where their characters take over.  While for me that’d be like letting the dog handle the food bills, I recognize it can produce great works.  What I’m talking is different – it’s that promise, which implies the creator already knows the answer.

Sometimes the judgment is unfair.  David Lynch’s Twin Peaks had a lot going for it when it premiered in April, 1990.  Man, it was like everything in that show was a mystery.  As the editors of Wrapped in Plastic proved again and again, there were all sorts of layers, poetic and otherwise, to be uncovered. Yet what’s the promise everyone remembers?  The question The Killing’s poster cagily conjures?  Who Killed Laura Palmer?

Smart money says that Twin Peaks‘ sudden success was what killed it.  Lynch may have planned to solve the Palmer murder early on, and move on to other plots, but was pressured by the belief that their catchphrase was what drew audiences in.  End the mystery, end the series.  As a result, they did the Plastic Man, creating a such a mess that even the film Fire Walk With Me, which attempted to fill in dangling threads, was far from satisfying.

The most plastic of the men would have to be my old paranormal lover, The X-Files.  And what was the promise there?  The Truth is Out There.  Scully and Mulder (S&M, get it?) were gonna give us the truth behind the government conspiracy and the aliens and everything!  Did we get it?  Honestly, I’m not sure.  During its billion-year run, the show twisted the mythos around so much, by the end, I didn’t care anymore.

There were two ways to look at that catch-phrase.  One, that the truth is so totally far out there, it can’t be grasped.  Frankly, that’s a cop-out.  We may not be able to understand life itself, but we can sure as hell understand a TV show.  The other is that the truth is still out there somewhere, because it sure as hell ain’t on The X-Files.

I wanted to believe, I really did.

Speaking of life itself, It may seem odd to include The Sopranos in this list, but hell, it’s my column.  It’s not so much that this series about a conflicted mobster promised an answer to a particular question, but it did something similar by setting up the viewers to expect a resolution.  And no, I don’t mean having Tony whacked.

Originally, everyone’s favorite wiseguy was presented as a man in crisis.  His anxiety attacks were an indication of something deeper going on, implying he was at a spiritual, or at least emotional, crossroads.  He’d have to choose a path, achieve some sort of salvation or damnation.  Only… fuggedaboutit.  He never did.

Popularity made creator David do the stretchy thing.  The momentum of the first few seasons was betrayed.  The show seemed to coast, uncertain about the nature of its own main character.  But… here’s where making stuff up may have a bright side.  After flailing a bit, the creators settled in on a brilliant, maybe obvious, variation on the theme.  Tony followed both roads, abandoning any need to reconcile the two – essentially owning his inner (and outer) sociopath.  It’s around this point in the series he’s seen moving from gleeful sadism to kindness with nary a blink.  So much for anxiety.

Still, it all seemed headed somewhere, that is, until the world-famous “HUH?” finale.  There is a wonderful argument online that Tony dies in the finale.  Certain quotes from Chase seem to corroborate as much.  Though I greatly admired the show, frankly, I like it more without the finale.  Even if the analyses are correct, it’s not Joyce.  I don’t feel that I as a viewer should have to dig so deeply to get a major plot point.  You don’t want me to understand, I don’t want to be bothered.  Bada-bing, bada-bang.

On the other side of the world, there’s Lost, which I like to think of as Gilligan’s Island written by Kafka.  I love JJ Abrams.  I think he does fantastic work.  But, whenever he or his writers say they have an overall plan for whatever series they’re working on, I not only don’t believe them, I don’t really care.

Here, the failure to provide a promised answer to the show’s many mysteries (What is the Island?  How do we get out of here?  What the hell is going on?  Why the f*** do I keep trusting people who’ve lied to me?) seems almost beside the point.

For my money, arguments about the depth of the show’s supposed theme of Faith vs Reason are rendered inane by the constant refusal of characters to share what they do know, coupled with their continual decisions to (a) trust known killers or (b) commit some insane act because, “You just have to.”  The first time you trust someone, it’s faith.  The seventh time, it’s stupidity.

But, unlike The Prisoner, Lost is not an intellectual show.  It’s more of a goofy dog.  It just wants to be liked, and it expends an enormous amount of energy trying to be likable, so why not like it?  Really, it never promises anything deep, so why blame it if it doesn’t deliver?  The show succeeds in spite of that because the writers and creators never stop caring about the characters, and neither does the audience.

Nearing the round-up’s edge, the only series arc in recent memory that I found utterly satisfying  was the first season of Damages.  Flawlessly photographed, expertly edited, like The Killing, it sets up its mystery in seconds.  The first thing we see, in grainy photography, is our pretty young lawyer, drenched in blood, fleeing a murder.  Only – here’s the kicker – we then flash back six months, and the rest of the season is devoted to explaining that opening.

That’s a big promise, and there were times when I worried I was wasting my time.  I’ve no idea what later seasons are like, but on the level of promises, by jinkies, Damages delivered.  Not only that; despite scores of plot-twists and time-jumps, the incredible storytelling enabled me to follow the plot convolutions with ease.  The show even gracefully plays back plot points at appropriate moments – letting the audience catch the new significance of old scenes, a la The Conversation.  It’s a lesson The Sopranos could have profited from.

Where will The Killing fit in?  Hard to say.  Maybe not at all.  The ads focus on “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?”, but, having seen the first three episodes, the mystery isn’t what brings me back.

The mood is gripping, the photography stunning, some of the acting superb. Mireille Enos as detective Sarah Linden has a face that drips ambivalence.  Her gruff partner is a more recognizable stock character, but Joel Kinnaman makes him wildly likeable. Watching the parents grieve their daughter’s death is grueling.

I do have one qualm so far, plot-wise – vague spoiler here.  The body was found in a car rented by the mayoral campaign of another main character, Darren Richmond.  That’s fine, but everyone’s suddenly and prematurely convinced that this scandal could cost him the campaign. Why?  He wasn’t driving the car, after all, and no one’s made an unsavory connection.  The concern seemed oddly out of place.

As for promises, so far, the show reminds me less of Twin Peaks and more of Prime Suspect or Fargo – Enos often conjures Marge Gunderson from the latter.  Both of those dramas were character driven.  Neither made big plot promises, so none were broken.  In the end, The Killing may, despite my initial snarky question, be about character.

Or not.  By the third episode, things were coasting a bit, some character notes already felt repetitive – the grieving parents, Linden’s apologies to her fiancé for staying on the case.  Too early to tell, but I’ve been burned before.  There may well be character twists I don’t anticipate, but there’s also a good chance that the central mystery, and its inherent promise, will come more to the fore.

Regardless,  I am along for the ride.  If things do head that way, I hope the final answer, whatever it is, doesn’t turn out to be a Plastic Man stretch.

As Kafka said, “Evil is whatever distracts. “

Pax.