The Killing TV Show - How Grief Protects Itself - The Killing Photos & Videos, The Killing Reviews & The Killing Recaps | TWoP

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 06-10-2012

Linden and Holder, moments after figuring out that the Nicole/Ames meeting that led to Rosie's murder was also attended by somebody from the Richmond campaign, are very nearly arrested before a last-minute "enemy of my enemy" deal puts them in cahoots with the Mayor's people. Turns out those magic bones were part of some kind of escalating prank war that ultimately led to the faked photo from Season One, or something, but whatever: The campaign and its folks are the main target of the investigation once again.

How Linden and Holder do detective work throughout this episode is, they sit around in their car and make up wild theories and then act as if their wild theories are correct, and eventually -- because the show is like this -- they turn out to be correct. So they get Roberta to admit that Chief Nicole is an abusive lover and breaker-of-bones, and eventually twist her around into giving them this elevator footage that supposedly didn't exist, which shows who the person is. (Also, it sounds like Roberta wasn't the one that put up the haunted-tree picture, but whatever. I have a theory about that.*)

But first, there's a lot of hilarious red-herring stuff where first you think it's Jamie, then Gwen, then Jamie, then Gwen, then Holder and Linden split up and one of them thinks it's Jamie, and the other one thinks it's Gwen, but then they decide no, it's Gwen and the other thinks it's Jamie, and then they get back together and it's like, "You got your Gwen theory in my Jamie theory! You got your Jamie theory in my Gwen theory!" Forever.

Meanwhile, Mitch is finally back and spreading her motherfucking cheer all over the place. She and Terry have a competition to see who is more of a bitch. Terry wins. Then Mitch and Stan have a competition to see who is the biggest asshole, and Mitch wins that one by a mile. Which just goes to prove what an asshole she is, because she hasn't even killed any people for no reason, which Stan has done dozens of times at this point. Then she and Tommy have a competition to see who's less worthy of forgiveness, or love. That one is a draw.

But just as we're about to find out who will be the new Mayor, Darren gets a call from this crazy-sounding grizzled old prospector from the Gold Rush, who tells him he has a secret to tell Darren. Who the man is, is Ted Wright: The only subject Darren ever makes a speech about, every day, as he goes around making speeches that are just about this one guy. And what his secret is, besides being a boxcar-riding hobo from the Olden Days, is that his grandson Jamie? Has been lying about some shit. Like how he was on the 10th Floor of the Wapi Casino the night Rosie Larsen died. Oh, Jamie. And you were rockin' that sweater vest tonight, too.

week: Rosie's killer is revealed! I totally bet you it's Jamie. That's probably what's going to happen. Or Rosie will be looking at a blade of grass or a crayon, like in Electric Company and it will zoom and blur and then suddenly *it's all happening in her very fertile imagination, because Rosie never died, she just has autism.

PREVIOUSLY

This is how the posters in the forums explained it to me: A major platform for the incumbent Mayor "Lesley" Adams is developing the Seattle waterfront, because of infrastructure, while Richmond opposes this, because of nature. Michael Ames runs his wife's construction company, which would do the work. Other interested parties included Tom Drexler and Chief Nicole, both of whom wants to do their own stuff on the land and thus offered Richmond their support, even though he technically opposes them because they also want to build on the waterfront.

(And for their part, the Adams Campaign played a good game last year of using Gil's corruption to frame Richmond for Rosie's murder, but that's sort of played out now. Not least because the Polish mobsters are being killed off one by one, due to proximity to Stan Larsen, and Adams-Abani doesn't have a lot of catspaws left -- which is why figuring out Darren's suicide attempt by pressuring Jamie's DA friend was such a coup.)

It's all very compromised and enemy-of-my-enemy, because the election is happening right now. Which, if you think about it, is the best news we've heard yet, because it means that (cross 'em and keep 'em crossed!) the third season will completely redirect all of this shit, because the eventual driving force behind 9 out of 10 twists on this show, if you follow it back, is the Mayoral election, which will be over in week's finale.

So the plan That Night was about sending Janek's mobster Nowack to plant Indian Bones on Ames's development site, sinking it and interrupting the Mayor's major platform issue, just before today's election. That was the subject of the meeting on the 10th Floor, where it's presumed Rosie was killed for seeing/hearing too much. It was attended by Ames (who we'll see wants to sink his own deal so that he can develop the land without being under his wife's thumb) and by a mysterious third person, the owner of the keycard, whom we'll find out about tonight but would seem to be either Gwen or Jamie -- both of whom have reason to ally with any old bastard in order to sink the Mayor's platform, and the means to make it happen.

So thank you, forum posters sadie e a, SlipperyPete and especially Cardie, for clearing up a two-year mystery that I have found even more mysterious than the Killing itself. Mostly because when you start talking about development and land deals and contracts and things of this nature, my brain completely turns off. Just like trying to remember which Baby Boomer Authority Figure Judge is which, or who owns Bass Industries, or whether Rhaghraraear Tragrayeanraean raped Lyanna Stark or how many people the Stark kids are supposed to be marrying at any given time and what their flags look like or which of the identical very old men is the father of that guy who looks like the singer from The National.

It's not that I don't want to find it interesting, or that I don't realize it's important, or that I am so very special, or anything like that: You're just asking a color-blind dog to discern the difference in shades of red in a Rothko painting. Not gonna happen. I'm here to watch Mitch and Sarah go crazy, be sad about Belko Royce and deliciously terrified of Nicole Jackson, and occasionally see Stephen Holder cooking meals in a tank top. That's it. It's not a tall order.

ALSO

Holder managed to get Sarah out of the institution, they snagged the key-card, and stole their way past cop barricades and Carlson himself, and into City Hall, so they could figure out who the Third Man was, leading them to Richmond HQ; Darren keeps giving this one speech about an inspiring man named Ted Wright and/or his own serious mental issues; and it's about to be Election Day.

CITY HALL BY NIGHT

Holder: "So there they are on the TV screen, looking like the Midwich Cuckoos. Donnie or Marie? Which one had the keycard?"
Linden: "They are the only people that could have brokered this... Oh."

An entire SWAT team armed with guns and bombs and teargas and those zipline rappelling things appears in every direction, like the Vampire Authority, so our guys go running through the city halls of City Hall, eventually ending up outside the Mayor's office, where Adams and Abani and Evil Gil are just chilling and hoping the election goes well, in a democratic fashion.

Team Adams: "I really hope Darren Richmond doesn't win this election!"
Abani: "Me too. But if he does, I shall murder him."
Adams: "Oh man, who's this? Cop dudes, I told you to get rid of those guys!"
Gil: "I know! But they're so tricky!"

Linden: "We are good at everything. Except our jobs."
Adams: "Pretty sure you don't have one of those. Or a home. Or a single non-crazy face you know how to make."
Linden: "Rude. Now. Instead of arresting us again, you will let us go."
Adams: "Is that right?"
Linden: "Or I will show everyone the fake picture of Richmond from last season. Which I could have done at any time, but did not."

Seems the sequence of events was, enemies of the Adams campaign -- which is everybody, really, but which we all think is Richmond himself -- planted the Indian Bones, and the photograph was in retaliation. Sort of like the escalating prank situation that you might find onset with George Clooney, or in the lab of noted physicist Richard Feynman, but involving every psychotic person on this show full of psychotic people.

By Jacob Clifton

Linden: "You doctored the photo to win the election, not to cover up Rosie's murder. We know you weren't involved in her death. But the Richmond camp was."
Adams: "Oh my God are you still talking about Rosie Larsen?"

LARSEN

Mitch: "Did you get a dog? And move Auntie Hooker into the house?"
Stan: "Yeah, I did all kinds of shit. Because you disappeared for two weeks."
Mitch: "Let's table that. I'm going to hug my children in a maudlin way, as they've just come home from Halloweening."
Denny: "I am a normal little kid, so I will hug you."
Tommy: "I am, of course, merely waiting to become the human vessel of the Sons of Urizen, as prophesied by William Blake."
Mitch: "Give your mommy a hug, Tommy!"
Tommy: "In chains of the mind locked up/ Like fetters of ice shrinking together/ Disorganiz'd, rent from Eternity..."
Mitch: "Whoa, okay. We can table that shit too."

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

Linden: "Former Partner, I question whether Chief Jackson will comply fully with the Federal warrant Gwen procured for us."
Holder: "And yet. Oh, in other news, you're not fired. Just suspended pending."
Linden: "Jobs, homes, children. All are ashes. Focus. Gwen and Darren provided mutual alibis. But if she was dropping key-cards dripping with blood into random floorboards, then both of those are back in play."
Holder: "Remember when she told you he came back to the B&B wet, and you were like, 'What do mean wet,' and she goes, 'Uh, like he had been in the water'? That was the funniest shit that ever happened on this show."

By Jacob Clifton

Holder: "Okay, so switch out our Richmond narrative for Gwen. You think she chased that little girl through the woods and beat her almost to death?"
Linden: "No. But on the part about putting her in the trunk, I will continue to perseverate. This episode is very concerned with making the killer a question of gender, cf. the title of the episode, and therefore I will make grand and sweeping statements about that. To wit, it would have to be a man that chased her and what you just said, but it would have to be a woman that locked her in the trunk so she wouldn't have to look in Rosie's eyes."
Holder: "I mean, because it sounds like you're suggesting Jamie is a hermaphr..."
Linden: "Be more sensitive."
Holder: "So we're ruling out a Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls scenario."

She's just smoking now. It kind of makes them bros, both of them smoking like they're outside an AA meeting the entire time, and that's nice. But it's also sad to see her losing thing after thing after thing. Which I guess is the point of the entire show.

Holder: "On here it says Gwen was supposed to have dinner with City Councilmember Ruth Yitanes, a real broad kind of a lady, at the Lake Union Yacht Club."
Linden: "Then we will behave as though we are trained detectives, for once, and endeavor to discover why that dinner was cancelled."
Holder: "Meanwhile, what's Jamie's alibi? Homeboy went home to his grandfather, the inspiring Ted Wright himself, that nobody knew he lived with until just now. Oh, and PS, Jamie tried to get into the City Hall gymnasium at 4:37 AM that night, and he didn't have his keycard."
Linden: "Perhaps this Killing is related to that keycard I have been talking nonstop about since way back when The Grind With Eric Nies was still on the air, after all."

BARBER SHOP

Richmond: "Guess what, I've got a million weird rituals and tics and superstitions related to election days. Probably that's true for everybody in politics, but somehow it seems particularly Darren-esque that this entire day is going to be spent praying to my OCD gods."
Barber: "It was really cool how you committed suicide that time. I hope it helps you win the Sad Old Bastard vote."
Richmond: "A key demographic in the City Without Sun. Or Smiles."

By Jacob Clifton

DIVIDE & CONQUER

Holder: "Well, Ted Wright said Jamie was home all night. Maybe he was lyin', maybe he was truthin'. Oh, and I spoke to that Yitanes broad and she made some off-color jokes and then did a shot of bourbon, so I guess we can go talk to her."
Linden: "After we visit the casino and notice all the random clues scattered around that only my intuition can properly analyze. Right now, I will be scaring the pee out of a temp that works at City Hall."

Linden: "Young man, I am a police. You will tell me about keycards now. I will be mean and rude the entire time, even if you are very nice to me."
(This occurs.)
Young Man: "The two material facts I will eventually tell you are that firstly, my list of keycard owners was deleted the first business day after Rosie's murder. The second one is, that was also the day that Gwen Eaton asked for a new keycard."

Linden: "I know I kept saying I wanted that keycard, universe, but that part is over now. You can stop giving me keycard clues now."
Universe: "I am just fucking with you!"

CASINO

Chief Nicole: "Sup, bitches?"
Linden: "Up on the wall, you mean? A picture of a lady with a broken arm, standing to you and Gwen Eaton, which is the major clue of this episode. I just happened to see it."
Chief Nicole: "How's your head? From when I bonked you on it. And also in the metaphorical sense of how I put you in a mental institution."
Linden: "My head thinks you are a bitch."
Chief Nicole: "And what about you, Keylela? Any lingering effects from the time I crucified you on a bonfire and fed you to the eagles and dogs?"
Holder: "I am doing just great, actually."
Linden: "It is to be assumed that you are still missing the one thing of footage we actually need, from the elevator of people going up to the 10th Floor and Killing little girls all night long."

Nicole rides off on some kind of dragon and they are left in the hallway to consider the picture with Gwen Eaton in it, and the broken-arm lady they haven't noticed yet.

YITANES

Ruth: "I'm a real broad, you guys. No shitting around. I tell the facts and I tell 'em straight. Now I ain't saying I ain't corrupt, everybody turns their head now and again, but by the flask of carnival moonshine I keep in my purse, I swear these are the facts. Gwen canceled on me, not the other way around like she told you. Here's another fact, she is a whore."
Linden: "Be more sensitive."
Ruth: "Gwen Eaton sleeps with politicians. Been doin' it ever since she could walk. It's the only thing she's got on that little Jamie, or he'd have no competition for Darren's heart."
Linden: "This sounds like gossip. I will not stand for gossip, only red herrings."

Yitanes: "So, the Ames are all tied up in this keycard thing?"
Linden: "Goodbye, Councilmember Ruth Yitanes."
Yitanes: "I got stripper pilates anyway. Catch you guys on the flip!"

THE POLLS

Darren, being his dorky self, wheelchairs out of the voting booth joking about how he just peed in there. He starts to give a speech, and then Mayor Adams shows up and pretends it's a photo op and makes some cripple jokes in his ear. It's kind of sad. It's kind of sad for everybody.

Darren: "That guy is such a dick, man."
Gwen: "I have a trapdoor with a slide down to a getaway car."
Darren: "Let's go, then."

Outside, they hang awkwardly, just the two of them, until the car shows up. Gwen -- either sincerely or else chillingly, The Killingly -- starts expressing salt water from her tear ducts about how she tried so, so hard to make this happen for him, because she is so, so very much in love with him. Hmm. I wonder what Ruth Yitanes would say about that.

Yitanes: "Expletives, certainly."
Gwen: "Here's your car now. I have killed everybody I can think of to help you win this election. Let me know if I can do anything else. Like have sex with your paralyzed and insensate body. Or even just stick forks in your leg instead. Or let you pretend to drown me. Whatever you're into these days. I am prepared to go the distance."

LARSEN

Mitch: "In terms of my need for validation as a mother, would you care for a sandwich?"
Denny: "I would prefer Aunt Terry make me a grilled cheese, now that you ask. Firstly because she didn't abandon me at the worst and most confusing time in my entire young life, and -- in a distant second -- because she cuts the crusts off."
Mitch: "I hope you fucking choke on it. How dare you people hold me accountable for my actions."

Terry: "So I'm moving out, of course, now that you're back and I'm no longer necessary to provide the parental comfort you've been withholding from your children. Oh, and your husband sold the house."
Mitch: "Do what?"
Terry: "Did he not tell you that? My bad. I guess he was too busy trying to recover from his daughter's and his best friend's death all by himself."
Mitch: "Are these your whore underwear in my laundry?"
Terry: "Uh, yeah. Because I've been living here? Since you abandoned your family? Does that not make sense, that I would do laundry in my own house?"

Mitch: "Stop judging me!"

So you can see how that's gonna go. Basically, nobody wants her to feel judged, but also nobody wants her to feel entitled to not feel judged, because she took the coward's way out and is now so sensitive to being judged that she's being judged by her own imagination, and yelling at whoever is around, in her shadow-choked hellhouse of a nightmare. Surprise, Mitch is the fuckin' worst:

Mitch: "You are judging me! But you don't know what it's like! You don't have a family, you don't have children, you don't have anybody that loves you like I have. Your one emotional connection is a married man that kills little girls and buries their bones in his own projects. How could you possibly understand how incredibly and especially sad I am?"

Terry: "I am too worn out to explain this shit to you. Especially since it would just be verbatim what I told Stan, like, last week. So I'll just keep it simple. Go fuck yourself, you are the worst, I have held your gross family together with my hands and teeth this whole time you were off on some gaywad walkabout visionquest feeling sorry for yourself. I am horrible in a lot of ways, but you are taking the cake right now as usual."

Mitch: "Yeah, well, don't do me any favors."
Terry: "IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU."
Mitch: "When you say that, it's like I literally can't... You're speaking gibberish. Say it again?"
Terry: "It is not about you."
Mitch: "Yeah, no, nothing. Sorry. It's like putting a seashell to your ear, you know? Just like whoooosh."

CITY PLANNING DEPT

Holder: "At some point earlier today I made this connection to the different Ames family companies and the two mayoral campaigns, so I wanted to show you this paperwork."
("I'm swamped! Look at all this paper!")
Linden: "This would be a lot easier to take if there were people fucking in the background. Our show should be on HBO."

(In slightly more interesting news, Coworker Ray calls to say that the tape shows Nicole and Roberta on the casino floor at 1:20, meaning they didn't personally beat Rosie bloody, and Michael was already on the ferry by that time, which I guess means the blood on the keycard was caused by Donnie Or Marie.)

(Boobs.) Michael Ames personally has five companies, all of which are eligible to bid on city contracts. (Sex.) Only one of them is missing Sally's name on the board, explaining why Ames would hook up with everybody else, including possibly Team Richmond, to sink the CDF deal. (A butt.) This one is called NCP, Nereus* Capital Properties. (A sad flaccid penis of normal size.) It was formed a month ago, and fast-tracked for city contract eligibility immediately, like within the week, which is atypical. (Girl on girl.) This was done at the request of one Jamie Wright from upstairs, tying him to the Ames double-cross indubitably. (Peter Dinklage getting a blowjob.) Wait, that part was kinda funny:

By Jacob Clifton

CITY PLANNING DEPT

Holder: "That seems pretty fast. Is that standard?"
Functionary: "IT'S NOT ILLEGAL."
Holder: "Okay then."
Functionary: "I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL TECHNICALLY."
Holder: "It's cool, baby. We're just gonna go."

* (Nereus is the Old Gentleman of the Sea in mythology, like a less-rapey Poseidon, which is a nice patriarchal image for a company that specifically wants to do waterfront properties for the old white man Mayor. But anyway, wasn't there another sea god at some point late last season, tied up with the Orpheus shit? What am I not remembering? All I remember is the Orpheus stuff but I swear at some point there was another sea god in this vein. Ah well. Maybe I'm just mashing up Richmond talking about mythology and Richmond being wet -- as if he'd been in water -- into some sort of overarching patriarchal divine oceanic figure. That's so something I would do, too, which makes me think it only pinged because I, personally, glitched on it.

By Jacob Clifton

(Like, "You've been Water this whole time -- dead Rosie, dead wife, hooker-drowning, and all this water in your house -- and suddenly you're talking about Orpheus? Which has nothing to do with water? Shouldn't we just be talking about the Alkyonides instead, because that's about water and grief?" You think I just blab everything but I don't, you guys. Every now and then you are spared.)

RICHMOND HQ

Jamie: "The Mayor has been reduced to defacing our posters in key districts. Rarr!"
Holder: "Jamie, tell us about NCP."
Jamie: "All these acronyms... Wait, isn't that a construction company owned by somebody I don't know who they are?"
Holder: "No. It is a company whose nascent RFP eligibility you personally fast-tracked."
Jamie: "IT WASN'T ILLEGAL."
Holder: "Girl, I didn't say it was. Just tell us the deal."

Jamie: "Um, I was pitching woo to a competitor's supporter? Like happens constantly? Listen, do you tell Lieutenant Carlson every crazy hunch you have or what? You're always here doing weird shit to us."
Linden: "I have begun eliminating that step in the process, Campaigner Osmond. Since I was fired and became homeless, it has proven more efficient to proceed immediately to the weird shit."
Holder: "Was Gwen part of this too?"
Jamie: "I don't talk behind people's backs. That's fake."
Holder: "Where's your keycard right now?"
Jamie: "In my wee wallet, in my wee little pants. You jackholes."

OUTSIDE

Holder: "Linden, you can't be doing the 'I don't really smoke, let me bum off you forever' thing anymore. I know you're homeless and jobless, but that doesn't mean you're a college freshman. Buy your own."
Linden: "The Osmonds are not necessarily a hermaphrodite. They could have killed her together, which would explain why the endless keycard discussion is going nowhere."
Holder: "That suits your made-up gendered murder theory."
Linden: "It is possible I heard somewhere that suicide methods are gendered in that way, which they overwhelmingly are, and then decided that murder must work the same way."
Holder: "More likely this is just your intuition doing the job that the show can't manage to do, and as usual we'd be better off just assuming you're right about everything all the time."
Linden: "Irrespective of our gender essentialism, perhaps Ames's canceled trip to Vegas and Gwen's canceled dinner with Councilbroad Yitanes are linked by the anthill-scattering foul-up of Operation Dem Bones, when Nowack was arrested and everybody had to run around dealing with that, while also murdering Rosie Larsen."

Mitch: "You're selling our house. Which runs counter to my plan of only wearing one nightgown for the rest of my life and just endlessly wandering our home with a candlestick and this one misery face on my face, forever. I mean, it's why I came home."
Stan: "Cool, except your absence has actually done me one very big favor, in that I was at least quasi-involved in the world because somebody had to be. And that was healthy, because it sped up the time I had to spend feeling awful. So I'm just a little bit further down a particular road than you are, perhaps, and what I'm asking you to join me there. Not too far, just a little farther, where we can contemplate getting over ourselves and attempting to move on with our lives."
Mitch: "You're just saying that because she wasn't your biological daughter."
Stan: "And the better angels of my nature would respond, 'You're just saying that because I am threatening your dismal stasis.' But what I really want to say is, 'The fuck are you to say that to me.'"

Like any particular kind of crazy, grief protects itself. Think about addicts: Nobody will ever turn on a dime and say the nastiest thing they can think of faster than an addict who is questioned about it. Addiction, grief, deep shame, all the really bad things your body can feel, have the extra effect of making you very confused about what parts are you and what are the feeling itself. When you grieve, you are Grieving. When you're an addict, you are Addiction. You are the goddess of this thing that defines you, and the entire world becomes divided into things that are attacking that construct and things that are supporting it. You could go to great lengths to preserve that Thing-defined identity -- from self-immolating peace protestors to poor Marcus Bachman, curing faggots -- and you have to, because it's already the best you can do right now.

Suggesting that Mitch even so much as turn on an overhead light or table lamp isn't just minimizing her grief: You're saying she doesn't exist. You're threatening her life.

YACHT CLUB

Holder: "[Mortifying wigger nonsense.]"
Valet: "Okay, homie. I'm sixteen and a rich kid doing this for college."
Holder: "Yo how about you show me the valet sheet for this one day? And don't go trippin', because despite all appearances we be po-po."

Long story short, Gwen Eaton checked into the Yacht Club valet at 8:37 PM on that very particular night... And she was driving WA plates 563-TB0, which is the campaign car Rosie's body was found in, like twelve hours later. Which Linden instantly knows from just the plates because she is a human Wang.

By Jacob Clifton

Suggesting that Mitch even so much as turn on an overhead light or table lamp isn't just minimizing her grief: You're saying she doesn't exist. You're threatening her life.

YACHT CLUB

By Jacob Clifton

RALLY

Gwen: "I am so excited about how this election day is going!"
Linden: "Campaigner Osmond, I will put a stop to that. Talk to me about keycards."
Gwen: "I lost mine and then got it replaced. Get lost."
Linden: "Campaigner Osmond, if Councilman Richmond was missing for hours that night in Tacoma then what is your alibi."
Gwen: "I was asleep in a bed and breakfast, not anticipating that I was about to have freaky suicide sex with a very wet man."

Linden: "Campaigner Osmond, why did you cancel dinner with Councilmemberperson Ruth Yitanes. She seems droll."
Gwen: "Oh, she's a real broad. She's a handful. But I was too worried about my boyfriend, because of how he was acting nuts. I feel like we've already discussed this."

Linden: "What car did you drive."
Gwen: "My own?"
Holder: "Wrong."
Gwen: "[Backtracks; eats unconvincing shit.]"
Linden: "It would have been nice if you had told us you were driving the Murder Car that day, regardless of what you drove to Tacoma."
Gwen: "[Lies lies lies; Holder keeps pointing out her lies.] Fine! Last time you jerks went down this rabbit hole you got my boss shot and permanently paralyzed, so maybe you should tap the brakes."

Holder: "See, we're not even really coming at you right now. That's just how my partner talks. But on the other hand, you keep lying to us right now."
Linden: "Despite not being a cop and possibly being on the lam from them, I feel confident about threatening you with legal action."
Gwen: "I AM ABOUT TO LOSE IT ON YOU. I am in the middle of the campaign and I don't have time for this. Leave us the fuck alone about Rosie Larsen. Call me tomorrow. Call me never. Just get the hell out of my face! Or I will punish you with shoveling reindeer shit in the Christmas Parade! That is a metaphor!"

Linden: "Well. Gwen Eaton does not seem very forthcoming today."
Holder: "Shit, it's not even real reindeers. It's huskies with antlers strapped on."
Linden: "Comforting to know."

LARSEN

By Jacob Clifton

Mitch: "Goodnight, boys! Give me a kiss."
Denny: "Smooch."
Mitch: "How about you, Tommy?"
Tommy: "In the corner of my mind there is a door."
Mitch: "...What?"

Mitch: "And why do you have parts of birds in your bed?"
Tommy: "In dreams I build a wall of black flame. Tall as mountains."
Mitch: "Okay. Goodnight, sweetie! Really glad to be home."

RICHMOND HQ

Jamie and Darren discuss the election, and "points," and all in all, it smells like math.

Darren: "Maybe I will win!"
Jamie: "Probably you will!"
Darren: "Thanks for being in love with me. You're very loyal these last ten years."
Jamie: "It's either this or go home and make up stories about how Ted Wright is a good man that doesn't hit me even though I am grown up now."
Darren: "I have to go do more weird rituals and take my OCD meds."
Jamie: "I think you are too much of a pussy to watch your own returns, and this is just your way of running away."
Darren: "Just the concept of the word pussy coming out of your mouth, Jamie Wright, makes me wish I could run away."

Darren gets a call from a strange person and, as apparently Washingtonians are wont to do, acts super fucking sketchy about it.

HOLDER'S HOUSE

I like this conversation so much I'm just going to tell you the conversation.

Holder: "We're never gonna get that damn disc from the Indians, Ames lawyered up, Donnie and Marie are done talking..."
Linden: "There's always a way in. Everybody makes mistakes.* Most people make the same ones over and over again."
Holder, immediately in response to that: "You never told me he was your shrink."

* (I like that because of open-handed insurrection, the idea that you take down entrenched power structures by being present and waiting for the entropy of bureaucracy to trip over itself, which wins out because people in those entrenched structures can't even begin to fathom the idea of something like that happening which is both why they're there taking part in it and also why they eventually fuck up, but also because she just literally described her entire MO: She waits for people to fuck up, and then takes advantage of that, because she'll be goddamned if she's gonna do things by the book. Or any other possible way besides random chance.)

By Jacob Clifton

Sarah grins that after everything, this latest unprofessional freakshow is still enough to unnerve him. Yeah, like on this show, is it really that terrible that Rick was her shrink? Regi was like her lesbian mom and lives on a boat and is the childhood social worker of a grown woman. She's been doing freelance police work, which is not even a thing, for most of the season. And you're worried because she was going to marry her therapist?

Let me ask you something: Who the fuck else is Sarah Linden going to marry? I mean really.

Linden: "Former Partner. You think I am going to lose my sanity again."
Holder: "What's left of it. But no, not really. I just have your back. 'Think of me as your sensei in the bloodsport of life.'"
Linden: Loves that one. Oh my God it tickles her so much. It's gorgeous.

And because she smiles, the universe hands her Nicole Jackson's last girlfriend/victim, before Roberta, and the picture where her arm is broken. And somehow the hamsters in there start running on that hamster wheel of Sarah's brain, and boom the episode is solved.

CASINO

Holder: "On a part of this show we didn't show you, we have figured out some things."
Roberta: "I don't care."
Holder: "Think you might."
Linden: "There was a woman named Kallie Wimms who was Nicole's Chief of Security and girlfriend before you became those things. Nicole broke her arm. Now she is in jail."
Roberta: "Probably because she was a lying bitch. I don't know if you have ever been to our casino before, but we are the fucking worst."
Linden: "No doubt this is true. But the truth is that Nicole pinned a Murder II on her, in exchange for full immunity, after breaking her arm. So now she is in jail, and you are the new Kallie Wimms."
Roberta: "This all would have been an interesting thing to have on this show, I think. But this way is faster."

Linden: "Yes. I really do not see anyone complaining. In any case, I have discovered psychically that you are holding onto the Elevator Footage as a way of keeping leverage over your girlfriend, in case she decides to sacrifice you for one of the eighteen sketchy things you people are constantly doing."
Roberta: "Your psychic powers are pretty accurate."
Linden: "They also tell me you were not on the 10th Floor that night, which means this is a win/win for you to give us the clue. The show will continue to amble aimlessly toward its season finale, and you will stop collaborating with the psycho that broke your hand."
Roberta: "Again I would have to say that's pretty accurate."

By Jacob Clifton

EDITING BAY/TED WRIGHT

Darren: "I have to go talk to a strange person in this shack. Stay with the car."
Driver Jerry: "It is my job."

Linden: "Death Proof 564-TB0 pulled into the casino parking lot at 12:58 AM. Its driver is obscured."

Ted Wright: "You sure do talk about me a lot."
Darren: "I guess you're the inspiring grandfather?"
Ted Wright: "And I am in a very bad mood."

Holder: "Okay, there's Nicole on the elevator. One. And now Michael Ames. That's Two."

Darren: "Why are you bothering me, old man?"
Ted Wright: "I have things to tell you that are very important. Keep stalling for this episode-ending montage, though, okay?"

They pop in a new tape, revealing the Third Man, just as Jamie comes running into his grandfather's house. Darren stares at him, while Linden and Holder stare also at him. And even though he was there brokering a deal to sabotage a land deal and play Ames and Nicole off each other, and even though there was Rosie blood all over his keycard upstairs from moments ago, and even though he is being captured on this security camera fleeing from like eighty-seven crimes that are all this show is about now that Janek is dead, because it is this show Jamie stares at the camera like a dead-souled monster for about a million years.

Meaning, of course, that he never saw Rosie and had nothing to do with her murder. This ain't our first rodeo.

WEEK

AMC: "Rosie Larsen's killer will be revealed. We mean it! Please don't hate us, baby. It's not like that. We love you. We just get so distracted sometimes. We didn't mean to leave you at that train station or bus stop or airport, in the rain. We just had other shit to do. Not solving a Killing, no, but just other things. Don't worry about it. Just come back and watch this show week, so we can renew it because it is wonderful, and stop sending us death threats on Twitter and saying horrifically sexist and clearly racist shit about Veena Sud's skills as a storyteller or her career in this industry. It's been a goddamn year and you people are still at it. Get a fucking life."

By Jacob Clifton

...Wow, AMC, I mean, I agree that the tenor and flavor of the outcry was nastily different in a lot of ways from the usual backlash, but still, that was really kinda...

AMC: "Not finished. Stop being assholes about Veena Sud, we mean it. It is not her fault that you are dumb, whiny, entitled crybabies who couldn't be bothered -- because you were too high on your own incipient autism and self-righteous nitpicking -- to just watch the show you were watching and see what happened . You asked for a story, you got a great story, which for some reason made you act like you'd been waterboarded and sent to bed without dessert. It was frankly embarrassing. We were embarrassed for you. You drink the sand because you don't know the difference anymore. Please enjoy some more cardboard-cutout zeitgeisty bullshit like The Walking Dead, because we are fucking exhausted by you. You and the pants-shitting Twitter tantrum you rode in on."

Damn, girl! Pretty sassy for somebody whose salary we're paying, man. Not that I don't agree with every word. If it weren't for that tantrum I wouldn't have seen this show in the first place. And for that, I thank every entitled crybaby with a blog or a Twitter account. XOXO.

JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Killing, Bunheads, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, and novelette "The Commonplace Book" will appear on Tor.com in October 2012, and if he really had balls he woulda talked shit about the silly and overhyped Breaking Bad somewhere in there too. But I think that would be a bridge too far, frankly, so I'm glad he didn't.

The Killing TV Show - How Grief Protects Itself - The Killing Photos &amp; Videos, The Killing Reviews &amp; The Killing Recaps | TWoP

The Killing TV Show - How Grief Protects Itself - The Killing Photos & Videos, The Killing Reviews & The Killing Recaps | TWoP