Reactions to The Killing

Some thoughts on last night's two-hour season premiere of the standout crime drama, The Killing:

*Within minutes of viewing the first episode of Season 3, I had a lead suspect in mind: Holder's hard-boiled, perennially wise-cracking partner Carl.  Of course, my hunch is bound to be wrong, but maybe an early clue was provided when Holder jokes with Carl about speaking from experience about sex acts with prostitutes (as the pair of policemen loom over the corpse of a murdered teen
hooker).

*Also quickly apparent: the character Bullet promises to be as annoying as she is androgynous.  But with her street-tough attitude, she will undoubtedly trade plenty of verbal fireworks with Holder.

*Was it coincidental that Linden's beau resembles Holder?  Even the man's name--Cody--seems to echo Holder's.

*Peter Sargaard is going to kill in the role of death-row inmate Ray Seward.  He might look here like a latter-day John Malkovich, but with his menacing aura and manipulative skill, he is quite reminiscent of Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lector.

*It was a bit disorienting to see Norman's shrink on Bates Motel here playing Mr. Kwon, the father of the murder victim.  How many macabre cable-TV series is this guy going to appear on at once?

*I was soon reminded what makes The Killing so addicting: not just its sense of mystery, but its depth of characterization.  Linden and Holden form the most interesting pair of investigator characters since Mulder and Scully (the show also seemed to be tipping its hand to The X-Files in last night's episode by naming Linden's ex-partner "Skinner").

*Another hallmark of The Killing has been its grim and eerie Seattle-area setting, and the Season 3 premiere established this wonderfully
on several occasions.  The scene where Linden stumbles upon the cow carcasses was downright creepy, and her discovery in the swampy grove at the end of the second-hour represented Pacific Northwest Gothic at its finest.