It didn't live up the potential that I saw in the pilot which is not quite the same thing as it didn't do what I thought/wanted it was going to do. Season 3 of Breaking Bad just constantly subverted viewer expectations about the course of the show and it was incredible. The Killing just used misdirection over and over again.

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I see it as a living investigation. Most cop shows don't really do the investigation justice, right? They leap around from event to event and you are just left to assume they figured out the necessary clues. I felt like The Killing took you through the process of actually investigating better than any show I've seen (note: I haven't see Homicide: Life of the Streets, which is supposedly the grand master of police procedurals). I felt like I was part of the investigation, rather than watching some people bully a couple of assailants and solving the crime through some abstract wit.

Had I not seen The Wire and Homicide (and read the book it was based on) I might have been able to take the the police investigation seriously. Having seen them, Linden and Holder were just not good police. Which sure is odd because they are assigned to the red ball to end all red balls. Pretty white teenage girl killed with a connection to a huge political campaign. They then proved their incompetentence by not looking into the car or fully canvassing the murder scene for 2 weeks. Furthermore, the show then insults the intelligence of the audience again by letting them barely have to try to get a wire tap up and running and then bulling some guy at the isp to give them all the information they need about a high class escort service.

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I'm not sure what this means, but sure, it's their story, they can tell it like they want. Just because it didn't proceed they wanted most expected/wanted doesn't mean it was bad, per se.

Deus ex machina plot conviences is not good storytelling. You can get away with it maybe once or twice but when it beoomes a weekly thing it just bad writing.

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The campaign was weak, I do agree there. But I do find Richmond interesting, as well as the mayor, as well as the power donor, and they all play some sort of sordid role in this deal.

I just profoundly do not like Richmond and the way they portrayed the campaign was just shamefully bad. I do not find him to be in anyway a credible politician. He seems to be able to win a campaign for mayor of a major american city by staring out of a window in his rediculusly posh campaign office.

It doesn't help that I recently just finished watching Season 4 of The Wire that has Carcetti's campain for mayor of Baltimore in it.

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See, we reacted entirely differently. Let me be clear: I Do not love this show. In fact, I was rather lukewarm to it most of the season. The finale made me actually like it a lot more. Why? Well, rather than putting a nice bow on it and moving along like all of life is happy and good, they take you down a different, and unexpected path. I found the idea of following a single murder to be retread and tired... but when it's revealed that this is actually a much deeper, layered story about corruption/deceit, it became a lot more compelling to me, personally.

I just don't believe they set up a foundation for a more layered story about deciet and corruption.
This show is no Terriers. They just went that way because it was one more way to pull the rug out from under the audience. Don't get me wrong, I do like shows that surprize and challenge me. But this doesn't as it is just all surface plot that zigs and zags for no discernable reason from the audiences perspective.

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But yes, I do see why people would hate it if they just wanted the typical murder, investigation, solve the crime, happiness type of plot.

It is not about wanting a more typical murder investigation it is just that a more typical murder investigation would have been a better show than that shite that we were provided. I get the desire to want to buck the convention of the police purcedural (of course that was pretty much already done by The Wire but whatever) but what you put it its place has to be interesting as it stands and I don't think the Killing managed that.

I was done with this show going into the season finale. I was sticking it out to find out who kill Rosie Larson because I had already spent 12 hours on it. Not giving me that resolution was just a dick move.

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Regardless of the quality of the police work (and there were a lot of questionable details I agree), to me it put you in the investigation better than other show. Not saying it was necessarily some flawless inside look at police work, but I felt like I was part of an investigation rather than watching a couple of stereotypical cops do the good/cop bad cop interviews, finding a piece of clothing and calling it a day.

I think we just disagree with that. Being better than your run of the mill CBS cop drama is not the same thing as standing up against the best shows in the genre especially one as common as the police procedural.

This post was edited on 6/20/11 at 7:36 pm