Reactions to The Killing

Closing thoughts on The Killing and it's two-hour season finale (Episode 11, "From Up Here"; Episode 12, "The Road to Hamelin"):

*It's amazing Linden wasn't wheezing during her opening-scene jog, after all the cigarettes she smoked this season.  Just saying.

*As soon as Linden slept with Skinner, I figured he had to be the killer. (Okay, I'll admit I was wrong about Reddick, but the show did make him look like a prime suspect during the finale.)

*Loved the scene with Holder and the two investigators from Internal Affairs.  His fake bomb threat was ingenious, and prompted one of the best lines of the season from a cranky Reddick: "Holder's an idiot, but he's not al Qaeda."

*The writers should be complimented for not opting for a facile,
optimistic resolution to Kallie Leeds's story (heroic rescue, return to her mom), and instead using her murder as a key part to Linden's cracking of the case.  That last glimpse of Danette, standing on the bridge counting to five (hoping to find her daughter standing there, just like when they used to play hide and seek), was quietly heartbreaking.

*Driving through mist-shrouded woods with a serial killer (a monster whose been wearing the mask of police lieutenant) toward a remote lake house--priceless American Gothicism.

*Perhaps the most harrowing aspect of the finale was when Linden asks Skinner if there are more bodies buried in the lake.  "And other places," he replies with utter nonchalance.  "No one will ever find them."  The "Seventeen and Counting" tagline used to promo Season 3 proves to be fiendishly misleading; Skinner's horrific deeds are ultimately innumerable.

*A kneeling killer goading a detective into shooting him (while a second cop desperately tries to intervene): the dark climax of Seven all over again.

*A terrific season, grim and emotionally grueling.  If I had one complaint, it was that some tangential characters (e.g. Lyric and Twitch) who didn't add all that much to the storyline received too much screen time.  But the show made for compulsive viewing over the past few months, and already has me jonesing like a relapsed Holder for Season 4.