Halfway Through the Second Season, The Killing Muddles Along

Oy vey. This show. Will it ever end? I was out of town when last week’s episode of The Killing aired and couldn’t bring myself to watch it until Saturday night–I got depressed when I realized that it was only the fifth episode (sixth hour) of this season–and then I had to rewatch the episode on Sunday because it didn’t hold my attention the first time around. At this point, slogging through this terrible television show and writing these recaps is truly a labor of hate.

Anyways, in last week’s episode, we found out that Alexi wasn’t involved in Rosie Larsen’s murder, but was with Rosie at the ferry dock the night she died, where Rosie was scared of someone in a town car. Mitch befriended a teenage runaway with terrible piercings at the hotel that she’s been staying at for her family abandonment/sexual walkabout. Linden continued to be a bad mother, leaving her son home alone with a 103F fever until her ex flew all the way from Chicago to take care of him. Richmond stopped pitying himself after finding out that Mayor Adams was somehow involved with the fake photo that framed him for Rosie’s murder. And finally, after we saw Stan kiss his kids’ aunt, in the big reveal, it turns out that Stan Larsen isn’t Rosie’s real father.

That’s actually a lot to occur in one episode, especially compared to last night’s. The mystery man that Terry had been screwing wants to break things off with her. Oh wait, it’s one of her whoring clients, Michael Ames, Rosie’s ex-boyfriend Jasper’s father, a character who I don’t remember at all because he only appeared briefly in a couple early episodes last season. Was Jasper’s father also schtupping Rosie? Was Rosie a virgin or a Beau Soleil whore? I don’t know or care. However, I am thankful for Jasper’s father, if only because he was a part of this great exchange: “What ferry?” “The one that goes to that Indian casino.” Ah yes, Michael Ames’ alibi for the night of Rosie Larsen’s murder is that he took the ferry from Queen Anne’s Cove to the Wapi Indian Casino and then took the 1:30 a.m. employee ferry back to the mainland. Which is a terrible alibi since NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE REAL.

Mitch spends more time with pierced septum girl and ends up getting robbed. That is a real shocker when you’re dealing with a teenage runaway. But oh no, she also went through Mitch’s Dream Box! At least that allows us to see some of the letter that Mitch wrote to Rosie’s real father, David Rainer, who lives in Blaine. (And shouldn’t that last name be “Rainier”?)

Darren Richmond is back on his feet–not literally, he’s still paralyzed–but he is back to actively running his mayoral campaign. Dude, you just got shot a couple days ago. Take time for your gunshot wound to heal, re-evaluate how your life has permanently shifted, or at least learn how change your catheter without getting piss all over yourself. Or, you know, put all that on the backburner and run for political office. Winning the election should be easy now that your justifiably vindictive ex-girlfriend Gwen is back from DC to eat chicken shawarma and help work on the campaign.

Someone breaks into Linden’s hotel room and puts a kid’s crayon drawing on the fridge, which is scary enough for Linden and her son to move in to Holder’s place, so that a cigarette-smoking man can watch them from a parked car. Meanwhile, Duck from Mad Men thwarts the investigation by blocking the warrants on Michael Ames as well as the casino. He says it’s because the SPD can’t handle another high-profile mistake (which is true), but we also know that he’s dirty and in cahoots with Holder’s former NA sponsor, because obviously there is a huge conspiracy involving the Mayor and the Seattle Police Department and Jasper’s dad’s investment firm and Backpage.com a teenage escort service and the Seattle Polish Mafia and a fake-ass Indian tribe over the waterfront development project that somehow hinges upon the murder of a high school girl. But of course.

And this week in The Killing‘s attention to detail, let’s take a closer look at the front page of the Seattle Evening Standard:

First things first: Is the paper’s URL ses.online.com or SeattleEveningStandard.com? And why do they employ such terrible photoshoppers? However, that is small beans compared to the fact that everything but the Mayor Adams-Michael Ames story above the fold–the format, fonts, other stories, etc.–is completely stolen from the New York Times website. See the column on the left that lists the paper by section: World, US, Politics, New York, Business…. And see the editorial section to the top right, which lists a Thomas Friedman piece, “Freedom at 4 Below,” and a Ross Douthat piece, “The Persistence of the Culture War,” both of which appeared in the NYT‘s February 7, 2012 edition. There, I cracked the case of the stolen newspaper! Now can we please cancel this show?