It seems like most people have given up on The Killing by now. Jon Talton, Seattle Times economics columnist, tweeted his top 5 reasons for doing so last weekend. Maureen Ryan didn’t bother to write a recap of the last episode, and Alan Sepinwall is even more checked out than he was last week: “We’re at the point in the season where I’m just repeating the same complaints over and over again, and that’s a waste of my time as much as it is yours.” But never you worry. I’m still watching. Besides, after Sunday’s episode (“Undertow”), there’s only four hours to go. So we soldier on.
In this week’s episode, it actually stopped raining for a bit. That does happen from time to time! (And anyways, as previously discussed, it is always raining too hard in this version of Seattle. An even more glaring error: two episodes have included the crackle of thunder overhead.) Linden continued to be a terrible cop, mother, and fiancee, as delineated by Gabe at Videogum. Even after revealing that Mayor Adams has a pregnant mistress, Richmond’s campaign is still tanking, because Adams countered by holding a press conference to lie about having had a vasectomy and to call Richmond out for releasing such sordid rumors. Also because Richmond is a gutless mayoral candidate with a candidate run by bickering yahoos Gwen and Jamie. Lucky for him, Richmond is a good shot. He went back to see Tom Drexler, libertarian megalomaniac/Mark Cubanesque basketball owner of local team The Seabirds, who need a new stadium, of course, though they could always just move to Oklahoma and choke in the playoffs. He won another $5M to keep his campaign afloat with one high-stakes basket. Meanwhile, at the request of his wife, Stan kidnapped Bennet Ahmed again. Stan beat up Bennet, while Belko beat up a rock. Who does that? That behavior alone makes Belko a top suspect for being Rosie’s killer.
To get back to the headline: So how does The Killing finally have something in common with the Woodland Park Zoo? Because there was recently a death at the zoo, and even terrible detectives like Linden and Holder could crack the case. A female Steller’s sea eagle, estimated to be fourteen years old and on loan from the San Diego Zoo, had to be euthanized a couple weekends ago, due to a reinjury to her fractured wing. The only other option would have been amputation, which is not much of a life for a bird, so no, this was not murder. Case closed.
In other zoo news, in the poll to name the zoo’s new reticulated python, “Kaa” (like the Jungle Book character) was the winner with 44% of the vote. In happier zoo bird news, the zoo blog has the story (and cute photos) of one-year-old penguin Diego, who is recovering from having a bobby pin removed from his stomach, after it was found by a metal detector. And while it’s not one of our zoo’s humboldt penguins, on a happy-sad-but-definitely-cute note, Lucky the penguin has a bum foot, but lives life to the fullest thanks to his friends at Teva: