Of all the reviews, blog posts and ALL CAPS ENRAGED PROFANE COMMENTS that were angrily crafted after this past Sunday’s season finale of The Killing, perhaps the most fitting was the one whose anonymous author said he felt like the show’s creator had knocked on his door and (metaphorically) hoofed him in the nuggets.
It’s not just that so many viewers were disappointed by the end to the first season of a series that began with great promise but had long since frittered that promise away, it’s that those viewers felt betrayed. Utterly snookered. Nutpunched, as it were.
The Killing, based on a beloved Danish series, tracked the investigation of the murder of a Seattle teenager over the course of its 13 impossibly rainy episodes. What seemed an intriguing premise at the outset, with its deliberately slow pacing that allowed it to linger and focus on, say, the grief of the Larsen parents when Rosie’s body was discovered, quickly devolved into something far less interesting. Absent such things as character development or compelling subplots, the slow pacing just became boring. And when it wasn’t boring, it was annoying: The implausibilities came one after the other as the detectives repeatedly chased solid leads that would turn out to be unfortunate coincidences. Such rotten luck they had. The expectation was that a 13-episode arc would be expertly plotted and crafted; instead it felt slapdash and half-assed.
People stuck with it, though. It pulled in strong ratings for AMC, quite possibly because many viewers who liked the early episodes kept waiting for it to break out of its lull — and they wanted to find out who killed Rosie.
They still want to find out. Minor spoiler alert: The finale’s big secret was that it was keeping its secret. Thus the online vitriol.
The show’s executive producer has defended the lack of closure by saying that it never explicitly promised a conclusion in Season 1, but viewers can be forgiven for believing otherwise. AMC’s ad campaign — “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” — at least implied it would provide the answer, and the original series wrapped up the case in one season, a fact widely noted when the AMC version launched. Plus, there’s this: How could anyone possibly expect that a murder case that was already crushingly dull be extended into yet another season? Adding to the disappointment: the twist ending also boxed the show’s one breakout character, Detective Holder — Joel Kinnaman, in a performance that felt like what Snoop Dogg would be if he were white, and a homicide cop — into a corner from which he would realistically be unable to continue next season. So long, Single Redeeming Quality! (To be fair, the writers will probably just invent some ridiculous way to keep him around; they really don’t seem bound by the chains of realism.)
It all raises some questions. Was the ending always bound to disappoint after a season-long buildup? How did the producers botch what was by most accounts excellent source material? And do the Danes just have terrible taste in television?
The Killing limped to its close on the same night that Game of Thrones, HBO’s fantasy epic, completed its first season. It was also an adaptation of an acclaimed earlier work, in this case the bestselling book A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin.
But the parallels between the two series end there. Game of Thrones, though it had the difficult task laying out Martin’s intricate Seven Kingdoms of Westeros for newcomers, was still engrossing from start to finish. There was all kinds of good-vs.-evil drama, treachery and backstabbing (also plain old frontstabbling) and just enough dry gallows-humour wit. As someone who was inclined to roll his eyes at anything involving spells and/or elves, I admit that Game of Thrones has converted me. Sorry to have doubted you, Entire Fantasy Genre!
The HBO series also pulled off what The Killing could not: the penultimate episode dropped a shocker of a twist on the audience (those that hadn’t read the books, anyway) that, while completely disorienting, made sense by the finale. But, then, Game of Thrones feinted and dodged its way through 10 episodes. Put it this way: at mid-season it was building toward what looked to be a showdown between the king and the child of the man he deposed, but by season’s end the gathering storm of battle involves entirely different parties. The twists and turns are surprising, but they fit within the larger narrative. The writers are slowly pulling the curtain back on Westeros, not tacking back and forth in search of gotcha moments. It was, simply, a great season of television.
Game of Thrones, it’s worth noting, is not for everyone. Its violence is often sudden and brutal; by the time of the finale I’d lost count of how many characters were beheaded. (And I’d suggest it’s the only series that includes not one, but two, scenes of people being betongued.)
Both Game of Thrones and The Killing have been renewed for second seasons. Reaction to the finale for the former has brought near-unanimity in viewers saying they are excited to see where it goes. But reaction to the latter has included vows from viewers and critics who say they will never watch it again. I wonder, though, if that is true. The negative reaction to The Killing is clearly linked to its 13-week-but-no-closure design. Yet it was that same structure that probably kept a significant chunk of its audience from bailing out weeks ago. Will enough people return to The Killing, like a spurned lover who knows they shouldn’t go back but does anyway?
That’s the real cliffhanger.
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