For weeks, The Killing, to my mind, has been steadily losing altitude, and while the latest episode wasn’t outstanding, at least the series seems to have leveled off and even powered the engines back up a bit. The detectives got to do some long-overdue investigating and interrogating, and their new suspect, though pretty obviously not guilty simply because he looked completely guilty, was at least discounted within a single episode instead of it being dragged out for several.
So, where are we, with only three episodes left? Bennet is alive and in the hospital (boooo), and Stan has turned himself in for savagely beating an innocent man (and while he’s in jail, Mitch discovers that their bank accounts are empty). Belko is investigated, and while it turns out he’s a violent weirdo creep with mommy issues and pictures of Rosie above his bed (gross), and that he used to hang out in the Larsen’s home when no one was there (yuck), he at least didn’t kill Rosie.
Holder and Linden, meanwhile, finally get around to, like, investigating Rosie’s murder (hooray!). They establish a timeline of Rosie’s activities the day she went missing, something they probably should have done about nine episodes ago. They discover that after dropping off a book at Bennet’s place, she took a cab home. Belko had been masturbating in the Larsen’s kitchen (or whatever he does in there, I just assume it’s masturbating), and after hiding from Rosie, he overheard her having a phone conversation (maybe now is a good time to get the Larsen’s phone records, something else they should have already done.) The conversation involved “Adela”, a name that matched a note that Rosie had: “Adela 11:45.” So, who is Adela?
Linden discovers, while jogging, that “Adela” is the name of a ferry. Ho-kay. First off, I hate the trope of the all-knowing cops, like on CSI or Law & Order, where they’ll find a clue, like, a picture of a suspect wearing some kind of athletic shoe. And one cop is always like, “That’s a high-end special-order custom Nike Air Jordan Basketball Impulse Jumpshot Basketdunk Swishdribble Limited Edition athletic shoe! They only manufactured thirty-three pairs of them, and only one place in the city that orders them, Clemson’s Sporting Goods, on the East Side!” Like, how the fuck would you even know that. Shut up.
On the other hand, Linden or one of the other cops probably should have known the names of the Seattle ferries, since they live in Seattle and should be familiar with the city by now, and failing that, Linden should have at least Googled “Adela Seattle 11:45” at some point, which would have pulled up a ferry schedule. But as we’ve established, Linden is a pretty terrible cop.
Linden takes the ferry and discovers a casino that shares the logo of the keychain found in Rosie’s possession (again, this is surely something someone could have discovered by now — someone in the police department must gamble from time to time, and would have recognized it). So, Rosie had plans to meet someone in a casino hotel room the night she vanished. Finally, we’re getting somewhere, though we really should have gotten here a while ago.
Meanwhile, an intern on Richmond’s campaign discovered videotape of Rosie and Richmond at a rally, finally establishing a connection between the mayor-wannabe and the murder victim. They appear to have known each other, at least casually, and knowing Richmond, probably way more than that. Also, Linden’s stupid kid acts up again so she moves them into a hotel, and her stupid fiancee returns to make her feel guilty about doing her job and to remind us needlessly that Linden tends to get obsessed with her cases (we already know this, you whiny loser, now go away).
What does all of this tell us about the murder? Um, a little? Time to look at the suspects, a list that is rapidly shrinking as we approach the end of the season.
Bennet/Amber/Belko: Innocent/Innocent/Masturbating in the kitchen (but innocent!).
Evil Mayor/Evil Mayor’s Aide: They were no-shows this week. And if they wanted to frame up Richmond, they probably wouldn’t have hidden the campaign car in the lake, now that I think of it. Innocent/Innocent (but both still evil!)
Richmond: For a guy nearing an election, he sure spends a lot of time listening to jazz and drinking hooch. Shouldn’t he be out shaking hands and making bullshit campaign promises? There’s now a link between Richmond and Rosie, so yeah, he was probably boinking her, and who else would she be going to meet in a casino, if not Richmond? 50%
Terry: We know Rosie was going to a casino to meet someone, and that someone wouldn’t be Terry. But did the person she met (Richmond) kill her, or did someone trying to protect Richmond (Jamie) kill her when she got back, or did someone jealous of her and Richmond (Gwen) kill her, or did someone completely uninvolved with the political stuff (Terry) kill her for other reasons? If it was Terry, how does the campaign car figure in? I have no idea.
Still, she told the kids that sometimes you do what you think is right and it ends up being wrong, which could be some sort of admission of guilt. 50%
Jamie/Gwen: Jamie (Richmond’s campaign manager) and Gwen (Richmond’s aide and sex partner) both had a strong reaction to seeing the videotape of Richmond and Rosie. Jamie quickly dispatched the intern who found the tape, and wants to hush the whole thing up, but this could simply be his desire to protect Richmond’s campaign. At the end of the episode, we see Gwen watching the tape alone. This could mean a few things: she’s worried Richmond could be tied to the murder, she’s worried he killed her, she’s worried he was sleeping with Rosie, and sleeping with Richmond is something Gwen likes to do.
The question for both of them is still, if one of them killed her, why dump her in a campaign car? Unless they simply had no choice. Jamie: 50%, Gwen: 50%
With everyone having a fifty-percent chance of having done it, we’re up to 200%! That’s enough suspicion to dig Rosie up and kill her again. While I think it’s good that I’m feeling there’s an equal chance anyone could have done it, it’s not really to the show’s credit. I’m mostly suffering from a lack of information and making wild guesses, rather than having an overload of information and making educated ones.
On the discovery of the “Adela” thing — I have to give the show the benefit of the doubt and assume that, off-camera, Linden Binged or Googled or possibly Webcrawlered the phrase you suggest and found the ferry, for two reasons — (1) she didn’t seem overly surprised to look up from her jog and see it and (2) the other explanation is that this is a show with super-shitty writing, and I don’t watch those shows. For the most part. OK, fine, I watch “Nikita,” you got me.
They really could have covered it a bit better. Maybe Rosie wrote “Adele” instead of “Adela”, or A.F. (Adela, Ferry) or if the ferry name was, for example, “Binkerhoff” and she just wrote “B. Hoff” and they thought it was a name and not a boat. SOMETHING other than they just somehow didn’t know it was a boat and didn’t bother to pick up a search engine or ask around the precinct or do any sort of actual investigation. SOMETHING.
You’re just all uppity because you think you’re a better investigator than Linden after all the L.A. Noire playing.
It seems like Richmond has alot to hide. Tonight’s ep (Beau Soleil) makes it look like it’s him, probably met Rosie through Drexler (god, what a creep). And yeah, the whole Adela thing seemed hokey. Does anyone know who the killer was in the original version? I saw someone Vagn being the killer, but who does that correspond to in the American version?