Little Defenseless Animals

S02E09

After a visit from Linden and Holder, Darren Richmond agrees to meet with Chief Nicole to discuss getting her endorsement and/or getting them back into the casino to investigate the Tenth Floor situation. What Chief Nicole wants is tax-exempt status for anything she builds, even outside the rez, and what she doesn't want is to hear any of his mess about Sarah Linden or Rosie Larsen. The meeting goes poorly, so Gwen calls the Mayor to work against his Chief Nicole alliance from the other end, revealing that he was one of the guys that raped her back when her dad was selling her out for political favors as a kid.

Mitch finally makes it to David Rainer's house, played by the awesome Jonathan Cake, but after a long conversation about her tells Mitch that Rosie was planning to run away that night she died. It's immediately apparent he doesn't know Rosie's dead, but takes much longer before it becomes clear he still doesn't knows she's his daughter. Mitch lets him stay ignorant on both counts, and thinks about coming home, but Stan's got stuff of his own to deal with and doesn't really feel like chatting with her about this stuff.

What's going on with Stan is that Tommy -- the older shitty one, with the eyebrows -- has been stomping baby birds to death. Stan takes the measured approach of slapping the hell out of Tommy, I guess in the hopes of provoking a psychotic break right there, but in the end their family only grows closer. Stan Larsen's Father of the Year record continues unchallenged.

The Lieutenant tells Holder that, after Linden was fired, all their evidence has been sent to County -- who somehow can't find it either -- so good ol' Stephen tosses Gil's apartment and then gets in his face in a truly menacing manner. After some sweet emotional interfacing (and the heartbreaking reveal that Sarah's just living in her car now) Linden and Holder locate the tenth floor key in an old storage locker of Gil's and arrange a sort of Ocean's Eleven heist that, predictably enough, is fucked from go.

While Holder makes a fabulous ass of himself on the casino floor, Sarah sneaks up to the construction site, and uses her intuitive ghost-whispering powers to figure out almost the whole thing: Rosie went up to the tenth-floor balcony to see Seattle for the last time and say goodbye before running away, and ended up witness to a secret meeting between -- Ames? Chief Nicole? Tom Drexler? The Mayor? -- which is why and how she ended up dead. But just as Sarah's about to retrieve evidence about who was actually involved, she ends up knocked out, and once again finds herself kidnapped by savage Indians.

Week: Sarah gets to lose her shit in a whole new location, the Waterfront Projects and Mayoral Race storylines "heat" "up," and Terry Marek the Crystal Goblet Prostitute gives Stan Larsen some advice on making good choices.

PREVIOUSLY

While Mitch was off wandering, presumably to tell David Rainer that his daughter was the victim of a Killing, her son was turning into a maniac. Gwen got Darren Richmond a meeting with Chief Nicole, and Sarah Linden got fired. I mean, she finally sent her kid off to Chicago, but that didn't bother her as much as getting fired -- or Holder becoming a savage human sacrifice! -- because she knows that at one time she had a casino key which can get her into the tenth-floor crime scene, which is much more important than being always homeless or losing your children to your obsession. Of their bosses and former allies, Lieutenant Carlson was even more of a hassle -- but less of a sumbitch -- than Holder's corrupt old buddy Gil at County, which could make retrieving the key difficult.

THE FORMER OFFICES OF HOLDER & LINDEN, DETS AT LARGE

Nobody: "Glad to see you're miraculously okay, Holder! And that they barely touched your face."

Everything is gone from their office, of course, due to Linden fucking everything up for everybody all the time, and when the still- (for now) employed Holder calls her up to report, they are none too surprised.

Carlson: "Who is surprised is me! Why are you in your former office?"
Holder: "Because while I was being a savage human sacrifice to the unnamed gods of our aboriginal peoples, you guys went through my whole apartment and I am missing some stuff."
Carlson: "Bullshit! You are looking for a tenth-floor key or some such Linden nonsense. Besides, all of your things from both places are now at County."
Holder: "County! But that's where they call me Lowlife Tweaker!"
Carlson: "You have caused so much trouble by getting human sacrificed, I can't even tell you. But trust me that I mostly blame Linden."
Holder: "Sarah Linden is -- and trust me, I know how this sounds -- pretty fantastic."

Carlson: "Did you know she was institutionalized for a month after getting obsessed with a dead girl case before this show started?"
Holder: "No, but if you've spent any time in her company at all it's not a huge shock."
Carlson: "Well, if you have any care for your career at all..."
Holder: "Look at my appearance. Look at the way I present myself. Do you really think ambition is my Achilles Heel?"

MEANWHILE

Sarah Linden stares at Gil for approximately seventeen years, doing nothing, while the music goes Skrillex orgasm on itself for no reason because it's just a lady in a car staring at a dude get into another car, a thing that happens all the time. Can you believe it's raining?

By Jacob Clifton

MEANWHILE

DAY TWENTY-TWO

Linden: "Former Partner, I am sorry that your things are missing. I too prefer to have a place to put my things. Such as a hole I have dug myself, or infinite suitcases."
Holder: "So the Mayor called Gil, and Gil got the boys at County to play keepaway with my stuff."
Linden: "The most important thing of your things is a key. Where is it?"
Holder: "Why don't you call one of your many buddies you're always pulling out your ass out of nowhere."
Linden: "Do not question my skills of networking or social interaction in a professional context. Do not question these things simply because you have never seen evidence of them on this show, in any fashion."

RICHMOND CAMPAIGN

Darren: "Jamie, as I must at this point in every episode, I will remind you that the election is going to be the season finale. And that means we have a month, or four days in Killing Standard Time, to make people like me and forget how I murdered that little girl or committed suicide, whichever one. I don't want to waste these last four episodes hanging out at an old folks' home. Bumping into their wheelchairs with my own wheelchair. Staring them in their old eyes."

Linden: "Councilman, you will be of use now. What is your relationship with Chief Nicole."
Richmond: "Our relationship is that she is a bitch."
Linden: "Then our business is concluded. But know this, Councilman. If we do not solve this murder before the season finale, two things will happen. One, you will lose your election because of a ghost girl. And two, the writers of the show The Killing will be forced off the grid and into hiding."

TENDER EMOTION TIME

Holder: "I'll go home and try to figure out where our shit is without tipping off Gil."
Linden: "Former Partner, I apologize for becoming enraged when you pointed out my poor parenting skills, resulting directly in your near-murder."
Holder: "You are still my best friend."
Linden: "And I thank you for that. And also for being the sole person on whom my Progeny could rely."
Holder: "Where are you even going right now? Why don't you just continue to stay with me?"
Linden: "Please exit the vehicle."

DAY TWENTY-TWO

KBLN, Blaine Washington's Only 24-Hour News Team, with Weather On The Eights:

"A black stormcloud of sadness moved into Blaine airspace today, turning day to night and bringing with it an icy stinging rain. Witnesses say Mitch Marek Larsen has finally pulled it together -- after being tortured and abandoned by a hideous runaway -- and has come to visit her one-time babydaddy, David Rainer, and to tell him in person about their daughter's complex, unsolved, unsavory demise. Stay tuned for more of this breathtakingly depressing story as it develops."

Julianne Nicholson's Crazy-Hot Husband Jonathan Cake: "Mitch, hi. I guess you're here to talk about our daughter."
Mitch: "Perhaps I should have called first."
Rainer: "It's what people do, but maybe you shouldn't always do what people generally do. Like if you're you, for example, it's probably best to spring yourself on people without warning, so they don't have time to scatter like so many frenzied ants upon your approach."

Mitch: "So about our child..."
Rainer: "Speaking of people showing up without warning."
Mitch: "Oh, man. She came to see you?"

He liked her, their daughter. He said she was direct and unafraid, like her mother. He told their daughter that her mother -- before life happened, he says -- had a love of Free Willy and once jumped into a Soundgarden mosh pit. One amazing thing about Mitch is that she is simultaneously forty, thirty and twenty years of age all at the same time, that she is a medical and temporal miracle, and this has always been true of her. Or at least it was, before life happened. Now she is just one hundred thousand years old. All the time. Full to the top with sadness and misery and ennui.

Rainer: "Yeah, and I gotta say I'm kind of worried about her."
Mitch: "...Aw, shit."

LARSEN

Concerned Citizen Voicemail #1: "I was just calling to say -- I mean I took time out of my day to dial the number of a complete stranger and notify him -- that you are shitty!"
Stan: "I'm aware. Delete."

Concerned Citizen Voicemail #2: "If I saw her alive, would I get double the reward?"
Stan: "No, but Veena Sud would get triple the lynched. Delete."

Concerned Voicemail #3: "Stan Larsen, that ticking timebomb of a future serial killer son of yours has done it again."

By Jacob Clifton

LARSEN

Concerned Citizen Voicemail #2: "If I saw her alive, would I get double the reward?"
Stan: "No, but Veena Sud would get triple the lynched. Delete."

Concerned Voicemail #3: "Stan Larsen, that ticking timebomb of a future serial killer son of yours has done it again."
Stan: "If only that goblet-collecting whore sister-in-law of mine were here to do something about this. Delete and sigh."

HOLDER VS CRY FOR HELP #3,792

Holder: "Oh my God, are you sleeping in your car? What is wrong with you? Do you not remember how delightful and slightly sexy being at my house is?"
Linden: "Linden Unit Activated. Inform me of developments."

(Also, girlfriend literally woke up chewing gum just now. I just want that noted for the record.)

Holder: "Soooo the evidence locker is gone."
Linden, awesomely verbatim: "...What."
Holder: "Can you imagine? It's like somebody's deliberately hurling red herrings and procedural obstructions in our way at every turn. No wonder we play by our own rules!"

GIL'S APT

Is a huge mess! Including a big tall drink of mess over in the corner, cutely slurping down some stolen penne arrabbiata, waiting on Gil to come in and see what a big old mess he made. Waiting for him to interpret the meaning behind the stolen pasta. To see that he is cornered and disarrayed by the Linden-Holder Axis of Power. To notice the gun just kind of chilling on the table to one of Holder's angry paws.

Half the time I think Holder's talking Hopelandic or Cocteau Twins language or something, but at this point from what I can tell he gives Gil a speech including the following concepts: Arrabbiata obviously means "angry," for the spiciness of the pasta. Gil has absconded with evidence necessary to solve the Killing, once again. Holder's feelings have been hurt in several ways by this former mentor, which he catalogs through implication. I think he might call him habib at one point. Also, he menaces him a great deal, quotes the Bible, refers to himself -- oh, dreadful humanity -- as a "lowlife tweaker" -- and then offers to either murder Gil or remove one of his eyeballs, time and date TBA.

By Jacob Clifton

Gil, for his part, does a not-so-great but also kind of heroic job hiding the fact that he is shitting himself through most of this speech. Our Stephen, he is tall all the time -- of course; he is not a shapeshifter, he does not shift his shape -- but sometimes he is, nonetheless, a great deal taller than at other times.

HOME SWEET CAR

Holder: "Well, I didn't find our stuff in his house."
Linden: "While you were doing that, I stole his GPS. It contains addresses of import."
Holder: "[Literally incomprehensible. Just gibberish.]"
Linden: "Then it has been decided."

They set out. For parts known to them, and to those that speak Holdrish. But not, I fear, to me.

RICHMOND/JACKSON

Chief Nicole: "Waterfront property. Indian heritage museum and giftshop. Little teepee coin purses, plastic tomahawks, the usual bullshit. All proceeds going, of course, directly to me so that I can finance myself getting more and more evil all the time. The Mayor would like to do other waterfront projects instead, so I'm willing to stump for you if you want."
Richmond: "And in return for your endorsement, you're asking me to grant you tax-exempt status to anything you build in the city limits, including this museum. Okay, let me ask you a question. Will you let the insane private citizen Sarah Linden into your casino to do pretend police work?"
Chief Nicole: "No, because that is racist or something."
Richmond: "No, I think it's because you're a creepy asshole."
Gwen & Jamie: "What the Councilman means is..."
Richmond: "What I mean is Good Day, Madam."

LARSEN SCHOOL

Stan: "So wait, Tommy actually stamped three baby starlings to death?"
Teachers: "We're concerned. The serial killer thing started out as a joke but it's becoming real."
Stan: "Well, it's weird because he loves animals, but other than that I don't see the big deal. You know what is a big deal? My dead daughter!"
Teachers: "Oh, here we go."
Stan: "You can't suspend him for two weeks, not with the Marek girls running around being sad and/or hookers, and my backup babysitter shooting himself in the head and all. This is just like that movie Baby Boom. I thought I could have it all!"
Teachers: "Murphy Brown lied to us, sir. Just accept it."

By Jacob Clifton

PRETEND STAKEOUT

Holder: "Back when I was pretending I was Gil's lowlife tweaker son, before I went all Ogi Jun on him, I remember this one time his wife divorced him for being a hoarder and we took all his crazy person junk to this storage locker. Let's go break in there."
Linden: "It is humorous that his insanity is demonstrated by the great number of his things, while mine is demonstrated in the things I leave behind. I could never hope to dig a hole deep enough to contain all these things. Some of the things would be inevitably left to the elements."

AFTERSCHOOL

Stan: "Halloween is canceled! Because I am tired of Tommy's bullshit!"
Children: "We are just kids."
Stan: "If Rosie hadn't gotten murdered I know she would be tired of it too."
Tommy: "Well, she was a whore. And I'm glad she's dead. And my eyebrows are still doing that thing. And I hate you."
Stan: "WELL GUESS WHAT? I HATE YOU TOO!"

I mean, who doesn't hate Tommy. But Jesus, dude. It's like you're going backwards in parenting skills. week Stan'll just be marauding the streets, shaking every baby he sees. By the time they start slapping each other -- this nine-year-old kid and his heavyweight father -- you can actually see over his shoulder as the remaining starlings activate their phone tree.

Helen Starling: "Well, looks like Stan Larsen is doing his part to create a cycle of violence that will end in the deaths of many student nurses."
Gloria Starling: "Girl, no. Well, I'll notify the rest of the moms. You just pack up your nest and get out of there."
Helen: "Should we tell the squirrels? You know he's coming after them ."
Gloria: "What have the squirrels ever done for us?"

Even the birds are a-holes on this show, man.

Denny: "Little do they know I'm actually way closer to cracking than the other one."

RICHMOND HQ

Darren: "No, fuck that Indian Chief. She is the worst."
Jamie: "Is this because you love Sarah Linden so much? What is so wrong with a museum?"
Darren: "It's not about the museum, it's about her evil sick plans!"
Jamie: "Worry about that when you're Mayor, dude. Your promises won't matter when you lose anyway."
Gwen: "Seriously. First you have to win before any of this even matters."
Jamie, storming out: "Stop making us feel like assholes!"

Holder: "You know, Helo's going to have to do better than an iPod."
Linden: "Former Partner, I have five pieces of gum in my mouth right now. You are shooting for six."

But when he tells her that he's there for her, as a friend, and that she can talk to him about anything she needs to talk about, she graces him with the most beautiful smile, throat closing up and eyes welling just a tad, and laughs at herself as she tells him she knows that.

And that's when she finds the key, of course.

RAINER HOUSE

David: "Rosie really is great. It was really neat meeting her, she's a lot like you. And for what it's worth, I told her to wait before she took off. Finish school. She didn't want to hear it, but..."

Rosie planned to take a bus south, follow the Monarchs, see the world after that, and the confusion on Mitch's face sends apologies stumbling out. But the comforting things he says just get worse and worse.

David: "I thought you knew that, sorry. I told her to make sure and say goodbye to everyone. It can hurt people, when you just disappear."
Mitch, not exactly mirthfully: "Huh. Ya don't say."
David: "I'm sure she'll tell you, Mitch. She said she would. Trust her."
Mitch: "I have to go now. Without telling you anything that's going on."
David: "I'm sorry if I said anything I shouldn't, or... Oh, and is she maybe my daughter?"
Mitch, after a while: "...No. Stan's. Goodbye."

Gosh. This season has been really kind to old Mitch, in a way, because she's opening up in a direction that nobody else can even see yet, but damn. That was great. That was just great, all that acting and complexity and the ambiguity of her not telling him either of the main factors, because of the face he was presenting. The kindness in her, to look in his eyes and imagine them doing what hers are always doing; the way he would fold into himself until he was just a point, just a black dot like her, and sparing him. Turning it into some fondly remembered quirk of history, that his old girlfriend's daughter came looking for him, to see who her mother was before life happened.

That Rosie spent the afternoon with her father, and did him the exact same kindness.

LARSEN

Stan: "Dinner, Tommy! Dinner and slaps!"
Tommy: "No thank you. I'm just contemplating murder and whatever."
Stan, crying: "Sorry I was so horrible and abusive, and your mom vanished for no real reason. And sorry we screwed you up so bad. And that your whore sister died. But riddle me this, why stomp on baby birds?"

Tommy: "I'll tell you this, it did not cheer me up. Also, when you abandon us like everybody else has, what will we do then?"
Stan: "Just because your sister, mother and aunt disappeared within days of each other, and I just told you that I hate you, doesn't mean you deserve to feel abandonment anxiety."
Tommy: "Or I am just a little kid."
Stan: "Yeah, good point."

They hug and cry and it is a fucking relief, on like every level. Everything is going to be fine! Or Mitch is coming home to ruin everything. One or the other.

CASINO FAKE-STAKEOUT, OR "FAKEOUT"

Linden: "Okay, Mary's inside and she'll [do heist things] at some specific time."
Holder: "And we'll [do other heist things] also at that time. I hope we don't get killed."
Linden: "I think we can safely say that we -- both individually and as a team -- are known for our precision, and ability to follow a plan through to its successful conclusion."
Holder: "I also hope I don't get human-sacrificed again, like happened yesterday."

GWEN'S HOME

Mayor: "Hey, Gwen! Nice to see you."
Gwen: "Mayor, you need to drop Chief Nicole. She's no good. And you aspire to Congress, one day soon, where my dad could really help you out."
Mayor: "This is dumb, I gotta go."
Gwen: "...Hey, remember that time ya raped me?"

Whoa, that's like the fourth joke in this recap that randomly came true in a completely horrible way a few scenes later. I am used to forming this kind of psychic bond with shows after I recap them for a while, but leave it to this show to only have the grodiest ones come true. On the other hand, it means that on some level this show has legitimate storyteller's DNA, which I always knew but I guess it's nice to have proof.

Gwen: "When I was fourteen, remember? Raping me that time? My dad would not have approved, I think..."
Mayor: "Girl, your dad knew. That's already been made clear in the ... what, like three substantive scenes you've had all season, at least one of them was about you accusing your dad of pandering you to pedos in government, and then you moved back here after living in DC for like one day after trying to confront him about it?"
Gwen: "Yeah, it's basically my only storyline this year. But one of them was you, making this conversation also about waterfront construction development projects, Chief Nicole, and the Killing of Rosie Larsen."

Mayor: "I am out of here. Good luck sleeping tonight!"

LARSEN

Cuddled up like a big old bear with his cubs all around him, exactly where they should have been the last twenty-three days, Stan's awakened by a phone call. The fact that the ringtone is the freakiest part of "Moonlight Sonata" alerts you to the fact that, though it's taken almost 70% of the entire season -- plus one truly horrible young lady and a very sexy might-have-been -- it's about time for Mitch to call her husband up and bum him out yet again.

Mitch: "Why do we have so many secrets all the time? It's one land-mine or red herring or secret connection after another with us!"
Stan: "Is this about Rosie?"
Mitch: "Everything always all the time is about Rosie. Here's the update, she visited David Rainer a few weeks ago and told him she was going to leave and go to LA. Isn't that bananas?"

Stan: "Rosie Larsen just keeps finding new ways to fuck us."
America: "Heard that."

I get why Mitch is freaked out by this factoid, and why Stan doesn't want to talk about it -- or really, to Mitch at all -- but it's still so sad because she's bargaining. She's doing it in the weirdest way, but that's what it is: Rosie left, and Rosie keeps leaving, and Rosie never once said goodbye. It's a softer landing to be the mother of the tattooed runaway girl right now, to mourn the fact of her runaway daughter, than it is to be the mother of the dead girl.

You can hate a runaway. You can ask yourself what you did, how you caused it. You can see her there on the horizon, all alone with her questions, out on the rooftop smoking stolen cigarettes. Because a runaway that hates you is still better than a dead girl that doesn't.

CASINO FAKEOUT

Linden: "Mary is not in the appointed place. She is too scared to help us."
Holder: "Then we're screwed."
Linden: "Not yet, we are not. Stay here."

Holder tells her he'll go in her stead, if she's storming the place, but she leaves him behind in the rain. How scared she must be, walking through the slot machines, breaking eye contact with the security guys; how proud she must be when Holder stumbles drunkenly into the middle of everything. Making a fool of himself, most wonderfully: "Ain't no party without no trim!" he shouts at the security guards, begging for a hooker. Speaking nonsense to them all, asking for his stolen phone, giggling in Roberta's face, shouting to the crowd about the beating they gave him, showing off his bruised and broken ribs. He flicks a cigarette in Roberta's face. He is incandescent.

10TH FLOOR

Holder, back out in the car, still hasn't figured out that cell phones don't work in elevators, so he just keeps calling Sarah, over and over, as she climbs higher. And what's at the top? Abandoned construction and darkness and shadows and plastic sheeting. The most terrifying kind of sheeting. She calls him, finally, and describes her search.

Linden: "The construction site. It is large. There is no apparent blood. There is nothing here that a teenage girl typically would enjoy. Only darkness and isolation."
Holder: "What's that generator sound? Like on her voicemail."
Linden: "Rosie didn't take the ferry from her house at 11:45 PM just to come up to this room and smoke cigarettes."
Holder: "She had clothes and a camera in that backpack."
Linden: "That clitorectomy teacher said she was interested in travel. This is not travel. This is depressing and scary. Even for this show."
Holder: "What's that sliding-door sound? Also like her voicemail."

Linden steps out onto a balcony, and sees what Rosie saw.

Sarah: "She was leaving the city. She came here to look out on it. She came here to say goodbye."

And Ames followed, met with someone in that room. Rosie saw, or heard, and that's why she was killed. Sarah keeps telling the story: Why was there so much blood on the backpack, how did they get her downstairs. Did she struggle? Did she fight? She talks, murmurs, hypnotically, playing out the sounds and cries, exactly how it happened and who was there.

Down between the planks, Sarah finally spots some blood. On a keycard, a City lanyard, just beyond her reach: The Mayor, he thinks. She pushes and pushes, and eventually shoves the thing down into the floor... Just as Holder's telling her, again and again, to turn off her flashlight, as he sees it moving from room to room, but she turned her light off long ago. Sarah's still shivering from the story when the guy knocks her out.

WEEK

While Sarah Linden languishes, the captive of Indians, Holder approaches Carlson for an alliance. Terry tries to get Stan to forgive himself for whatever. And I'm guessing things get awfully weird for Gwen.

JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps 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.

By Jacob Clifton

Linden steps out onto a balcony, and sees what Rosie saw.

Sarah: "She was leaving the city. She came here to look out on it. She came here to say goodbye."

WEEK