Holder's breakdown after learning he was a patsy for the conspiracy continues, in pretty wild fashion: He lies to his kid, creeping himself out, then ends up beating down one of his old dealers (and his mother) in a trailer park. Not content to let that be the trashily defining moment of his downward spiral, he hooks up with one of his gross junkie friends in the back of a car, and ends up wandering through traffic...
Which is where Linden finds him, after having put together his storyline from the last two episodes solely through, apparently, some expert guesswork and a shitload of squinting. The episode ends with him giving her the backpack, so I guess that's important, but I'm willing to just believe whatever the show tells me without wondering about it too hard. I'm still kind of confused about who killed Rosie Larsen, to be honest.
Linden tries to set up a takedown of the Beau Soleil servers, which -- after getting red-taped to death by the new Lieutenant -- ends up just getting some shoestore arsonated by Cartoon Tattoo Person, who was driving Larsen's van at the time. I know there were cameras involved, somehow this helped her track down some sort of a clue, but honestly I'm not here for the forensic work any more than these two fools are, so who knows if I came away with any clear picture at all:
A comic book antihero was driving a truck that burned down a shoestore that never had computers in it. The new Lieutenant either wanted to keep this a secret or has nothing to do with it; ditto the old Lieutenant, whose association with Sarah Linden has driven him to the sea. Also, the firemen and everybody in the police department. All may be sketchy. One of them may have put a virus on her computer, even.
Meanwhile, have you ever noticed that Sarah Linden is kind of rude to her coworkers? She can be sort of brusque, there's a brusqueness. I don't want to go full Temple Grandin, but I would feel okay saying, like, Zuckerberg. Maybe instead of a social worker she would benefit more from say a Peppermint Patty -- like a helpful bossy friend, perhaps played by Jennifer Esposito -- who could tell her when she's being bitchy. Or is part of the point that she can be like this because she gets results? Like a "Greg House behavior is not acceptable if a woman does it" kind of thing? Because guess what, unlike Greg House -- and Olivia Pope, my new obsession -- Sarah Linden doesn't really get results. Mostly she gets red herrings, which she then retroengineers into weapons of self-sabotage.
That tattoo of the manga character reappears about six times: Turns out it belongs to one of Stan Larsen's guys, so I guess we'll find yet another unsavory teen she had a complicated relationship with week. Jack explains also that, in the comic book whence, the character is known for acting -- you guessed it -- out of grief-fueled rage. You know, on this TV show where all the characters are acting out of a grief-fueled rage the majority of the time.
Stan's mobster friend tells him Rosie wasn't really a hooker for Beau Soleil after all, but I would question the veracity of his information -- especially once we learn that apparently he runs Beau Soleil, in addition to his many other covert concerns. Then, too, we learn that Stan grew up a part of this wiseguy organization, which actually explains a lot, but makes it even more mystifying that he would bring his kids anywhere near them now.
Oh, and we finally check in with Mitch to see what-all her delightful ass has been up to. I don't know where she went but I know it rains there all the time, of course, and everything has fake wood paneling like a Fiona Apple snuff film, and there's a depressing dead leaves swimming pool, they got a shitload of windows you can stare blankly out of, and -- even though this sounds like her concept of heaven -- Mitch might be going crazy because she keeps seeing this familiarly obnoxious goth girl everywhere. Oh, and she fucks a random. My prediction is that he will catch Bummer Syndrome from her and go on to infect the rest of Oregon with her dour old sourpuss disease she has.
On the Richmond front, things take a turn for -- get this -- the morose, when Darren reacts to his paralysis with some delusion, a little denial, and a whole lot of jamming himself in the leg with pointy stuff. On the upside, his hair still looks flawless no matter how crazy he plans on going. Which is very, by the way. What he may not expect, though, is Gwen's sudden (accidental, really) defection to a US Senate campaign, which could put a crimp in any of several of his unlikely (at this point) schemes.
week: More about Stan's History of Violence, Darren gets curious as to what parts of Linden/Holder's criminological expertise and thorough police work got him jailed and paralyzed, and I would presume that Holder either pulls it together ... or finally becomes more meth than man.
PREVIOUSLY
Rosie’s bloodied backpack appeared at Stan Larsen’s door, sending him back to the Wiseguys of his youth, while Lieutenant Oakes’s last act as Linden and Holder’s boss was to keep it from going into evidence. Little did he know that Holder had never turned the backpack in at all — smelling some new and scary conspiracy on the horizon, he kept it to himself. While Linden scrambled — certain her former partner was a deadly enemy — Holder himself was rewarded with abuse from his mentor Gil, after accusing Oakes of evidence hinkiness and mentioning IA. Things ended with a quietly terrified Sarah, a catatonic and paralyzed Councilman Richmond, Mitch still MIA, and Holder realizing he sold the entire show down the road in his enthusiasm for nailing the wrong suspect after all.
UPDATE: MITCH IS
Probably on her way to take grave rubbings upstate or drive off the top edge of America into dragons or throw herself off the Hoover Dam while shouting Emily Dickinson poetry or take pictures of herself cutting little marks into her skin in every state of the Continental US.
Between smoking, bumming out, listening to sad punk and imagining herself driving into every overpass pillar, retaining wall, traffic pylon and fast-food restaurant she passes, Mitch manages to note on the side of the road a particularly snarly-sad girl, all black hair and red jeans and boots made for kicking.
Linden: "Coworker, you will find witnesses from when Rosie Larsen was at that casino during her very busy day where she died."
Coworker: "Say 'please.' Or at least just alter your terrifyingly flat affect."
Linden: "You will also explain this tattoo picture that Holden brought in while I was running around avoiding him."
Coworker: "It is of a manga character named Ogi Jun. You will find out more later, completely by coincidence."
Linden: "I also something warrant something Beau Soleil servers at a shoestore. Or something."
Lt. Carlson: "I have obstructed your justice!"
Linden: "Is that because you are in a conspiracy."
Carlson: "No, it's because I'm new to being your boss and I need to establish the rules. I heard you're a real maverick and really rude all the time, but people respect you for some reason nobody knows. And because you got your last boss fired for your blatant everything."
Linden: "How do I even still work here."
Carlson: "Right? One more mystery you'll probably never solve in this lifetime."
MERRY EX-METH
Junkie Lady: "I am younger than I look, thanks to meth. I used to have kids so I guess I was even worse of a mother than some people on this show. Even though I am going to meetings, I still very much miss my drug of choice."
Holder: "Let me light that cigarette for you so we look even more like addicts."
Junkie Lady: "Have you seen your mentor Gil who usually comes to this meeting?"
Holder: "Funny story, he ruined my life yesterday and I am thinking about killing myself or I don't even know what."
Junkie Lady: "Sobriety is not as fun as doing a bunch of meth. Are you coming to this meeting?"
Holder: "No, I have somewhere to go. It is called Crazy."
LARSEN
Aunt Terry: "Do you want to come to the pumpkin patch with your family? I thought Halloween might provide a change of pace for the boys, since every day for them isn't already pretty much Halloween."
Stan: "No, even though there's no police car like I wanted, I have an alternate posse of murderers watching out for them. So they can go back to school."
Linden: "Mr. Larsen, sorry about how the police keep fucking you over and keep asking you the weirdest shit, but could you tell me what you know about manga samurai?"
Stan: "My best friend is dead, my wife is gone, my eight-year-old found his sister's bloody backpack, and that guy Holder is maybe not a reliable police officer. Oh what, you don't know about the backpack? What, did you spend the last two days running from your partner for no reason until you made him lose his marbles?"
Linden: "Coworker, tell me of a backpack now."
Coworker: "It has vanished. This is like a French farce and you guys keep following each other's leads without knowing it. Only it's not really a funny farce, per se. More like a Keystone Kops kind."
Linden: "Did you say Keystone? That reminds me of limestone, which is a rock found close to the coastline. My intuition tells me that the vanished backpack, therefore, is on a houseboat belonging to Lieutenant Oakes."
HOSPITAL
Richmond: "I can feel the sunlight on my paralysis!"
Doctor: "No, you are making that up. It is phantom pain. It's analogous to your Orpheus metaphor, okay?"
Richmond: "It is not phantom pain! It is a delight!"
Doctor: "Fine, then I'll tell your neurologist. For at least two reasons, the second being that you are too crazy and it's making me tired."
Richmond: "Speaking of that, I don't want any more morphine."
Jamie: "What possible reason could you have for wanting to be in agonizing pain in the parts of your body that are not paralyzed?"
Richmond: "The campaign trail! I must have a clear head!"
HOLDER
Rolls up on that little boy he's always following around, that I forgot was his kid. Poor kid.
Holder: "[Extremely gross wigger nonsense.]"
Child: "I think probably my mom would be mad if you kidnapped me today."
Holder: "No, she said -- your 'Moms,' I mean -- that it's fine."
Child: "Really?"
Holder: "No, I was just telling gross lies. I am losing it for sure."
Child: "Okay, well, it's been characteristically desperate and depressing. Bye."
LARSEN
Aunt Terry walks the boys to school, past a hulking monster of a mobster with a baseball bat studded with nails and some brass knuckles and one mangled foot hanging out the trunk of his auto-auction LeSabre. The littler one (Denny?) holds up his two palms to her, and she gives him a double-high five, but then the snottier one (Tommy?) tells her that's not the way. Turns out Mitch used to kiss them both. That's sweet. Terry awkwardly does that, then turns to leave with a locked-eyes look at the mobster, who is now doing a yo-yo one-handed while striking sparks off his metal teeth with an icepick.
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OAKES BOAT
Linden: "Do you have any evidence you stole on your last day of work."
Oakes: "Yeah, here it is without further ado. Sorry I didn't jump in front of even more buses for you."
Linden: "I do not need your help. Especially not now. Because you have been fired."
Oakes: "Later. Try to remember that we worked well together."
Linden: "Will this grunt suffice."
HOSPITAL
Jamie: "Darren, I brought you flowers! Just kidding, they're for that nurse you keep ogling. They have a huge campaign button too, because our lives have become a macabre charade of pretending you're hale enough, in body or spirit, to run for public office of any kind."
Richmond: "Just please don't change the channel from my obsessive campaign-watching. It helps me cope with the constant pain from my poor decision to go off morphine."
Jamie: "Look at Ben Abani on there, with that minimal amount of damage I did to his face. I daresay I'm slightly less attracted to him than usual."
Mayor, on TV: "I 'really don't' feel like talking about this, but since you're 'making' me: Darren Richmond is a 'good' man and I'm 'glad' that he was 'exonerated' of the murder of that girl he certainly 'didn't' kill."
LARSEN
Terry: "Mitch, this is my 3,674th voicemail. I hope you're not in some horrible haunted motel hallucinating your dead daughter and considering fucking some random textbook salesman who sees your transparently deep grief as some kind of sex signal."
Mitch: "If you only knew that I am doing those things. Ignore."
Stan: "What, why are you looking at me like my wife is a useless shade?"
Terry: "That's what is up. How could she leave the boys? Even after nearly murdering them herself in the depths of her sheer, selfish oblivion?"
Stan: "I guess she wasn't happy. I guess I put those clues together somehow."
Terry, verbatim: "Happy? Who the hell's happy? Are you happy? Because I'm sure as hell not happy."
...The Killing, ladies and gents, in a nutshell. AMC Sundays, after an all-new Mad Men.
Stan: "If you want to take a minute to yourself after being here for two episodes, you go right ahead. I've got the Mob to keep me happy."
Terry: "Are you kidding me? Proving I'm a better wife and mother than my sister has been a lifelong dream. Frankly I hope this kills her."
LINDEN
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Seeing Holder's backpack in the evidence bag reminds her of how that is not Rosie's backpack, so she figures out somehow that he's not a threat?
Linden: "I have the factual information and have inferred why you assaulted my hotel room door without using your words. You will call me back."
After some time spent clicking back and forth between apparently indiscernable frames on Rosie's Super-8 film, Linden finds herself at the scene of a fire: That shoe store housing the Beau Soleil servers has been torched, and there are no indications that computers ever lived there.
Fireman: "It's not a computer kind of shoe store, but the regular shoe kind."
Linden: "Are you on the take."
Fireman: "I am clearly on the take. Everybody is. That is how a conspiracy works."
Linden: "I have noticed about a hundred closed-circuit cameras in the vicinity. First I shall pop some gum -- done -- and now I shall demand footage from them all."
LARSEN
Aunt Terry: "Denny, if that is your name, where did you get that box of a dessert?"
Denny (?): "From a strange man! It is delicious."
Stan: "Old Mob Boss, I told you to look at my children only, and not give them desserts!"
Yanik: "I just miss when you were little and running errands for us like a hirsute little Ray Liotta."
Stan: "Speaking of the favors you're doing me, that I'm being so ungrateful about, could you add to the list an escort service named Beau Soleil? I think my teenage daughter was hooking for them. Before her brutal murder."
Yanik: "Your life is such a pile of crap all the time!"
Stan: "Makes me sadder than my History of Violence."
HOLDER
Gross Trailer Park Lady: "Are you here to see my gross son Tyler?"
Holder: "I always knew 'Logic' wasn't his Christian name."
Logic: "Let me smoke some of this meth before our chat, and yell at my obese mom to get her oxygen-machine ass out of here."
Holder: "This is not even the worst thing that's happened to me today."
Logic: "You owe me a thousand dollars and you banged my girlfriend. Are we even friends?"
Holder: "No, I was only doing an uncanny impression of being a meth addict. Really I am a cop and our whole friendship was pretend."
Logic: "Okay, cool. Do you want to smoke a bunch of meth?"
Holder thinks about it for a second and then decides to beat the shit out of Logic instead, so he does that. Then he beats up Logic's mom. Then he steals what seems to my untrained eye like a shitload of Logic's meth.
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Logic: "Though it was quite diverting when you assaulted my mother, the rest of your behavior was simply unconscionable! Be on the lookout for the kind of repercussions one might expect!"
NEURO CONSULT
Neurologist: "Can you feel anything in your legs?"
Richmond: "No."
Neurologist: "See, that's because you're paralyzed. Now take your drugs and stop wasting everybody's time."
Richmond: "Jamie, pull the bus around. It's time to kiss some babies."
Jamie: "Take your drugs."
Richmond: "Jamie, do you see the face I'm making? Jamie?"
Jamie: "Okay, fine. I'll play along."
CAMPAIGN HQ
Gwen's Dad, Caleb Nichol: "So you're thinking about jumping ship? How about to my friend's Senate campaign?"
Gwen: "That might be kinda coo..."
Gwen's Dad, Charles Widmore: "-- Senator? I'm sending you my daughter Gwen to work for you. She'll be on a plane tonight."
Gwen: "...Hold up."
So I guess Gwen just accidentally got a much better job without even really meaning to. I love it when things just work out like that, especially for gorgeous, educated white people of privilege.
MOTEL
Textbook Guy: "You're so beautiful I didn't even notice your suicidal depression."
Mitch: "I'm so drunk I can barely see your face. But that ghost of my daughter is coming in crystal clear still."
Textbook: "Why, Anna, do you resist my advances? Shall I go?"
"Anna": "No, you can stay and I will fuck you in my sad-sackin' manner. I just want to make sure that decoupaged box of bummer items is clearly visible so I am squeezing every last drop of self-loathing out of this I can."
HOLDER
Back at the Meeting, where Junkie Lady still is, Holder thinks about doing some meth and then hides it in his console instead. He sure is getting jumpy.
LINDEN
Linden: "Coworker, do not notify our supervisor that I have a warrant for those cameras."
Coworker: "Okay, whatever."
Linden: "And Holder will call me. You will cause this to happen."
Coworker: "Anything for you."
Linden: "Do you want me to cook food for you."
Jack: "Frankly, no. Today was too shitty to walk you through doing that for the first time. How is Holder?"
Linden: "He does not know it yet, but we are back to being friends."
Jack: "Hey, why do you have a picture of Ogi Jun?"
Linden: "Download all of your information into my mind apparatus."
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Jack: "To revenge his father..."
Linden: "-- Avenge. When you're talking about blood debt it's 'avenge.' Revenge is a noun, you're looking for a gerund. Hey, look at me being a mom and teaching you things. I said look at me."
Jack: "To avenge his father, Ogi Jun goes up against this huge army, and then it turns out their leader was Ogi Jun's sensei. But it doesn't matter, because he already taught him everything."
Hmm. Sounds like half-thematic, half-foreshadow. You got grief (shocking, on this show) but you've also got action/movement (legitimately shocking on this show), leading toward a secret agenda among superiors. Nothing new there either. But it serves two purposes -- the tattoo of Ogi Jun and the story of Ogi Jun -- because we're not just watching a show about a police investigation (we're barely watching a show about a police investigation), we're (mostly) watching a story about people who have been broken by mourning: One's a clue for Sarah, the other is a clue for us.
Whoever wears this tattoo is up against a power structure, has daddy ambivalence, and considers him- or herself righteous. That's the person(s), at least; the fictional character(s) she's tracking, Ogi Jun the physical tattoo.
But then as far as our overall plot goes, the actual show that is not even a cop show but the opposite of a cop show, you have this twist where the master betrays the student -- but it ends up Pyrrhic because the student has absorbed everything he or she needs to beat him. If Oakes were a bastard, that would make sense for Sarah...
But wait, no, overthink, stop: That's Gil and Holder already, it's not even a secret. So I bet Ogi Jun the story is about Holder eventually proving himself over the course of the season, which is why he's starting out so dang low. That's my guess.
HOSPITAL
Gah, this part is the worst. Not like Mitch is the worst, but in that it's really well done. Darren's had the most complete journey, in some ways, because he completed a lot of his grief work last year: He was on the tail end when we met him sixteen days ago, and coming out of it. But now he's been handed something even worse to mourn, and this is how:
That nurse he keeps flirting with brings some bandages and pulls the privacy curtains while she works, making professional small-talk about how she voted for him, and how she liked his health care platform, speaking as a nurse, and how she also liked his smile. Katie's being kind.
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Which is what makes it worse, as she's finishing up and he's scrambling for stuff to talk about and asks what she was up to down there, and she easily explains she was just changing his catheter. And if Katie were a lesser nurse, or person, she'd ignore the change on his face -- as he goes from charming rake to pissing invalid in one rapid, sickening move -- but instead she just shrugs.
"I know. First week's the worst!"
Which almost saves him. But Katie's even kinder than that:
"You'll get used to it."
HOLDER
Anne's using pseudonymous sex to run from death, and Richmond flirted with flirting to get out of his head, but good old Holden's parked under an overpass, fucking that Junkie Girl like they're both about to die. Which is why she asks him if he's got any meth.
LARSEN
While Sarah's digging out the tale of Ogi Jun -- mourning at his father's grave, swearing to avenge him -- Yanik appears in Stan's garage to deliver two messages: One, his contact at Beau Soleil says Rosie never worked there. It was all Russian girls. And number two, his contact at the Morgue says she was alive, when she went into the water; she tore her own fingernails out trying to escape. So, he suggests, leaving her file behind, when it's all done maybe Stan should be the one who kills him. Which I guess is how they get you.
LINDEN
Linden: "Why are you bothering me Coworker, I am cooking. Okay, I will open those files I demanded. Wait, I cannot open these files."
Coworker: "Click DOWNLOAD ATTACHMENT."
Linden: "I hope this is not a virus gift from the conspiracy, but instead a weirdly long scene of a person suddenly unable to use a computer's simplest functions."
While she waits, she watches Jack cooking. He is very tall. The file finally opens up: At 2:34 AM, a Larsen van was filmed a block from the shoestore, driven by somebody with an Ogi Jun tattoo. There is an interrupting call from Holder's phone, which Linden finally answers.
Junkie Lady: "You don't know me, but I am a Junkie Lady. I am calling to say that Stephen Holder needs your help. He is high on meth and running around in traffic."
After a glance at Jack, but not really a hint of ambivalence about what she's going to do, Linden takes off.
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FINALLY
Linden: "Coworker, get over here. I know what you did."
Holder's Face: "Yeah, and now you hate me too. That's why I am in traffic."
Linden: "I understand your backpacks trick. I comprehend it."
Holder's Face: "I am not comprehending a lot right now because I am high on crank."
Linden: "I understand drugs, and I am myself often subject to paranoia. Join me outside of traffic. Or I will leave you here."
Holder is so tortured and whatever, so very high on meth and craziness, but finally he comes to her side, and they walk off silently together.
Darren takes the huge "Richmond" campaign button off the bouquet, bends out the long silver pin, and then -- you guessed it -- very carefully drives it into the meat of his leg, watching the blood trickle down. Mitch watches the little ghost at the edge of the pool light a cigarette, and starts to think maybe she has gone fucking crazy. The man deleting all the Beau Soleil information finishes formatting the last drive, and then comes out of his bolthole -- into Yanik's restaurant, where they've been stashed since last night -- and the Ogi Jun tattoo drives away in Larsen's van. And Sarah and Holden open up his trunk, where -- thankfully -- Rosie's backpack is still safe.
week: So much tattoo, and so much backstory on Stan's former mobster career.
Jacob Clifton is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Gossip Girl, The Good Wife, 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, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion and Fringe Science.
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