Sunday’s episode of The Killing is the one that I found the most satisfactory so far, and yet it was the first episode that just served as a rote police procedural, so yay? Way to be…merely adequate? After the episode, I kept AMC on in the background at home. The Killing aired again, and then an episode from last year’s season of Breaking Bad. Sigh. Now that’s a show.

Anyways, this week’s episode of The Killing, “A Soundless Echo” (stream here), revealed that Holder, the ratface detective, has his own drug problems (like duh) and is good at riding the bus, and it taught me that there is an area in Seattle called Pigeon Point. (Sorry PP, but Jamie the former Richmond campaign worker is from there, and he described the neighborhood as “white trash.”) Sarah Linden’s fiance made a surprise visit WITH CAKE. Rosie Larsen’s parents went coffin-shoppin’, and thems is pricey.

As to the mayoral election, Jamie was not really a mole but was “fired” so that he could go work for the rival Adams re-election campaign. Sneaky sneaky! Especially since Richmond hasn’t told his colleague/girlfriend Gwen about this covert operation. At the same time, Richmond’s numbers are tanking and he needs money, so Gwenno set up a meeting with a rich Ayn Rand fan (read: asshole) who writes him a check, so now he can put up a towering billboard facing his condo. Because every politician wants a huge headshot of himself right across from his residence. Money well spent.

All in all, I’m a little concerned about the number of easily dispelled red herrings we’ve seen in only four episodes. By way of example, see the video shot in The Cage, which was introduced towards the end of the third episode, only to be dismissed in the first fifteen minutes the fourth episode (because it’s good ol’ Sterling, not Rosie, in the footage). Now that Linden found love letters from Rosie’s teacher hidden in Rosie’s room, here’s to hoping that’s a plot point not so easily resolved in the first half of next Sunday’s episode. Don’t make me quit you, The Killing!

Meanwhile, my favorite part of every episode–the part of The Killing that really feels like Seattle–is the opening credits (known in the business as the “opening title sequence”). While it’s always raining a little too hard in the episode itself, in those shots, it’s just right. Driving through the rain and fog on a cloudy gray day, thinking about a dead body, having to wait for the drawbridge to go down is Seattle to a T.

And with good reason. Though it looks like the work of local agency Digital Kitchen (responsible for Six Feet Under’s iconic credits), the opening title sequence for The Killing was in fact created by Chicago-based Sarofsky Corp, with the help of a fancy RED digital camera. There’s some info here, and check what Sarofsky had to say about it on their website:

AMC and Fuse Entertainment came to us looking for an opening title sequence that would capture the essence of their newest series, The Killing. The show covers the murder of a young girl and the police investigation that follows, so pinpointing the tonality of the show was critical in the production of this main title.

In our solution, we introduce The Killing by taking a journey through eerie, wet Seattle from the perspective the main character, Sarah Linden. As she drives from the city to Discovery Park, multiple environments are seen through the foggy, rain saturated windows of her car. However, throughout the drive, we also cut to erratic and fast moving images of a dead body. We introduce the setting of the show, while at the same time, we witness the inner workings of Sarah’s mind, reflecting on the crime and piecing abstract clues together.

We shot this sequence in Seattle on a RED One. Almost all of the lighting effects were done in post, but treated to have a seamlessly integrated feel.