After Mad Men, one of greatest shows of the medium, put forth one of the finest hours of television ever, it seems almost sacrilege to turn our collective gaze to The Killing. But turn our gaze I must. For here we are. This Sunday, the first of the final three episodes of the season–and hopefully, the series–will air. To mark that, the most recent episode had the title “72 Hours,” which is yet another not-so-subtle nod to what remains of their audience. Yeah, we get it, 72 hours, three more days in this show’s timeline, till you finally reveal who killed Rosie Larsen, and I hate you for it, Veena Sud. But let’s power through. Day 23 of The Killing dawns foggy and rainy like it only is in the TV version of Seattle.
Linden wakes up–just as I previously predicted–in a psych ward. It takes her a while (the episode’s whole opening segment) to figure it out, primarily because she’s a terrible detective. This is a segment that on a better show (like Breaking Bad) would serve as a stand-alone slow-burn, but this is not a good show. This is The Killing. Because when Linden makes her way freely through the clinic hallways only to end up at a locked door, and the camera pulls back to reveal that she’s in the “Psychiatry Acute Ward,” the character is coming to a conclusion that the audience got to two minutes before.
Holder is trying to get Linden out and Linden wants to call Holder, but oh noes, it’s not phone hours for the loony bin! Linden is there on a 72-hour suicide watch–just your standard involuntary psych hold. Holder goes to see Regi at her boat and plead his case, that his partner isn’t crazy and that Linden needs to get out of the nuthouse. But Regi won’t budge: “This is how it started last time.”
But this time it’s different. Because Holder sees a terribly photoshopped version of a billboard touting the site of the mayor’s waterfront project. He goes to the sign and the camera lingers over the information that the project is being funded by Michael Ames’ Columbia Domian Fund. Holder calls up SPD officer Ray, who is somehow a character now, and he finds that there was an arrest but no charges filed for a break-in at the waterfront site, and it just happened to be October 5th, the night Rosie Larsen was murdered.
Holder continues his investigation and talks to the arresting officer that night, who caught Joseph Nowak going under the fence at the waterfront construction site. Project manager Michael Ames vouched for Nowak, that he had been there working for him, and Nowak was turned loose. Of course, this cop had done his homework, and he knew that Nowak actually works for Janek Kovarsky, of the Infamous Seattle Polish Mafia. So some sorta conspiracy at the waterfront must’ve gone awry when the cop nabbed Nowak, and so Ames, Chief Jackson, and someone with an ID badge from City Hall had a meeting in the casino, which Rosie accidentally overheard on her goodbye view of the city, before leaving to follow the monarch butterflies in California. And that’s what got her killed. That’s it. After all that? Sigh.
Holder is easily able to catch Joseph Nowak at his job at the lumber factory, since Nowak is a pudgy Polish motherfucker and can’t run very fast. Holder interrogates him with a gun in his face, and it turns out Nowak was there under orders to plant Indian bones at the site. Whaaaaaa?
Stan Larsen has made amends with his sister-in-law Terry. She encourages him to let go and forgive himself. And he is able to, after taking a few steps: First he visits with Bennet Ahmed’s family; it does not go well. Stan is there to apologize for misunderstanding Bennet’s relationship with Rosie and also for severely beating his ass. But Bennet Ahmed is not having it. He is a family man, a dad now, in a neck brace, and he yells at Stan to stay away. But Stan had already secretly fixed the light above the door of their home.
For the next step, Stan calls Rosie’s cell phone and leaves a sweet and sorry voicemail for his dead daughter. It’s a painful scene. But then it’s on to Phase 3: buy a bulldog, which will immediately pee on everything. Who needs a daughter now? One big happy family! And then finally, literally turn out the light and close the door on Rosie’s room. And that’s how you get over a child’s death.
Whilst in the loony bin, Linden is introduced to Dr. Kerry, the ward’s shrink, and she wants to start the psychological evaluation all the way back with the previous murder case where Linden went crazy, Linden agrees in the hopes that if she’s cooperative she’ll get out sooner than 72 hours. I say, put her in and throw away the key.
But no, they’re going to talk for a bit. Dr. Kerry offers Linden a cigarette. Why the hell not, consider it one of the perks of actually being in the loony bin. The first time Linden found herself committed she was working a murder nonstop. Jack alerted Regi, and Regi brought Linden in and had her admitted, considering she hadn’t been out of her room in days. (I don’t understand how she would have been working a murder case nonstop from her bedroom, but that is neither here nor there.)
The case was a stabbed hooker, and at the scene was her six-year-old son who had been there for days. He was shell-shocked and drew an image of trees and a hill over and over again. That little boy’s name was Adrian, and he ended up in the foster system. If this show was any stupider, Adrian would turn out to be Jamie, because they both have girls’ names. So even I won’t make such a prediction.
The shrink gets all patronizing on Linden, saying that she’s probably seen a lot of horrible things and that “it must get to [her].” Linden turns it right around on Dr. Kerry: “What about you? Spending your days talking to crazy people? Hard for you to not let that in, right?” And then she goes further: “I’d expect more than that clumsy cigarette move from you. But maybe then that’s why you ended up here. In a bottom-of-the-barrel psych unit. It must get to you,” Linden says with a big grin. It’s the happiest she’s been in the last twenty-three days.
Eventually, Linden talks about Rosie’s murder too, and how in the course of a murder investigation, you always find others’ secrets. Dr. Kerry doesn’t pull any punches: “She was drowned in the trunk of a car. And you found Adrian in a dark closet. What does that mean to you, Sarah? Why did those two cases mean so much to you?” And this is where Linden can admit that she also had a similar childhood incident, and that’s why she ended up in the foster care system in the first place. But Linden’s too closed off, so we’ll save that for later this episode.
Instead Linden won’t answer any more questions. And then she gets further agitated when the doctor won’t let her leave after she had been so cooperative. The guards rush in. When Holder is finally able to see her, Linden’s all drugged and says, “please don’t leave me here.” Holder vows to get her out, somehow. He takes all their theories to Lt. Duck Phillips. Unfortunately, Joel Kinnaman has to actually say the words “This goes all the way to the top. This goes all the way to City Hall.”
Why would the mayor sabotage his own project? That’s actually a good question, Duck! It is the cornerstone of his campaign. And why would Ames destroy his biggest project in decades? Unless more money can be made somehow, by the project failing. (Mayor Lesley Adams and Michael Ames had recently seen The Producers, now running at The Village Theatre.)
Linden finally eats something, and then she’s able to admit that her mother abandoned her when she was five years old, left her all alone in their apartment. “The lights had been turned off. She hadn’t paid the bill. That’s all I remember.” Dr. Kerry knows she’s close. “You spent the night in that place alone. In the dark.” And just as Linden’s about to say something, to make a major emotional breakthrough and finally start dealing with some severe childhood trauma, word comes that Linden is being officially released. She just gets up and walks out the doctor’s office door. BOOM, you wheel yourself out, Linden.
Awkward, her ex-fiancee Rick has shown up to help bail Linden out (he’s probably still her official emergency contact number), but he “can’t be involved anymore,” he tells Holder Linden is “your responsibility now.”
Meanwhile, Councilman Darren Richmond is still running his campaign, even though he’s seven points behind in the imaginary polls that no one would be running every day in this little mayoral race, because who cares that “the next three days will determine this election”? Gwen thinks he should finish the way he started, just being himself, genuine. Then Richmond lets out a genuinely feeble squeak of “Yes I can; oh no I can’t” as he misses his first wheelchair basketball attempt. But he perseveres and makes his second shot, and OMG it goes viral. On SceneVid. With 1,232 views. So…not so viral then? Gwen says it’s not her work, but of course she paid off some guy to shoot, edit, and upload the footage onto SceneVid. Hope you didn’t pay him too much, Gwen.
Jamie thinks that the Richmond campaign needs to be blanketing Downtown and Rainier Valley with posters and signs. But Jamie finds a City of Seattle pin, and that means the mayor was there last night and the only person working, closing up the office, was Gwen. So Jamie tattles to his daddy, Darren Richmond: “Any idea why she’d be meeting with the mayor?”
Darren shows Gwen the pin, and asks why they met, what she was using to blackmail Adams, and Gwen starts telling him about how he was her first kiss, and she was fourteen years old. AND OH MY GOD WE ARE NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION AGAIN. Let’s talk about SceneVid instead, Gwen!
In the final scene, Chief Jackson tells someone on a phone that “the room has been taken care of…they won’t find anything,” as the construction is underway on the 10th floor. But the City Hall ID is still there! Linden is out of the psych ward! ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Only three episodes left until Rosie Larsen’s killer is revealed. It could be anyone. But I’m still saying Rosie Larsen’s killer is probably Jamie.
