The Killing: "Beau Soleil"

Season 1, Episode 12

Swinging back around to square one

The Facts of the Case Are These:

·         Rosie worked for a high-end escort service based out of the casino, a service that also employed Terry.

·         Darren used the service many times, and it is heavily implied that he partook of Rosie’s services more than once.

·         Tom Drexler is also implied to have used the service.

I don’t know what’s more infuriating about how all of this played out tonight, the fact that the show decided to once again to swing around to its original Suspect No. 1 (Richmond), or the convoluted path that this episode alone took to get there, but I’ll handle these complaints one at a time.

First, and for the last time, RICHMOND CAN’T BE THE KILLER. Not only does it go against I’ll that I have said over the past three-ish months, but it also stinks like a Last Minute Red Herring, something that I figured the show would probably do, while really hoping that they wouldn’t. It’s such a tired TV trope to do one last fake-out in the penultimate episode of the series, that it has become an entirely transparent move. All we know for sure is that Richmond hired call girls and freaked one out with talks about drowning; there’s still a bit of a leap between soliciting prostitution and murder. (Thought that being said, most of the show’s remaining viewers are eating it up, based on the fact that Richmond currently has the lion’s share of the votes on The Suspect Tracker. I’m sure some sociologist would love to analyze what this tells us about how people view the relative morality of prostitution and murder.)

But even if the episode didn’t resort to such a hack "twist" ending, I would still be frustrated by everything that preceded it. The episode spent a lot of time going through the particulars of how and why Rosie got into the escort business, when I’m pretty sure nobody would have batted an eye if the show just jumped to this conclusion with the space of a scene or two. Now, part of this may have been that the writers felt that they had to offer up two more suspects – Terry and Tom – for whatever reason. But a lot of it felt like wheel-spinning, as if there wasn’t quite enough to fill in the hour and they had to back and convolute the plot just to reach the 45 minute mark. Now, if either one of those two ends up actually being the killer (it’s more likely to be Tom, of course), then maybe those rabbit trails have a point. But as it stands, I spent most of the first half-frustrated, as I had made the leap that Rosie was a escort way before the cops did, and I became very confused/enraged as Linden and Holder went about trying to prove something that I has already deduced.

Meanwhile, on the Campaign Trail Less Traveled:

·         A Native American skeleton found at the future sight of the Waterfront Revitalization Project sinks Adams’ campaign

·         Tom tells Jamie that he is backing Richmond so that the latter would bail him out of any possible future crimes.

·         Gwen finds out about Richmond’s use of calls girls/Rosie.

I do, however, know what’s most infuriating about this plotline: The discovery of that body (and more? I didn’t really catch if it was an actual burial ground or not) is such an easy way for the show to kick Adams out of the picture and put Richmond back on top in the political race that it clearly illustrates how little effort the show has put into this campaign plotline. While I mostly suspect that the elimination of Adams is only meant to help sell Richmond Red Herring – because the higher the stakes for means the harder he would fall, and setting up that kind of arc would help more people buy into the fake-out – this development would still mean little even if Richmond was the killer.

Because regardless of what happens, the entirety of campaign plotline that we’ve sat through has been for naught. It doesn’t matter whether or not Richmond struggled with the morality of leaking information. It doesn’t matter how he feels about his wife’s death. It doesn’t matter that he tried to run a clean campaign. Now that the campaign has become a means to an end – whether that end be fake-out or actual reveal – all of this time with Richmond and his aides, where we were supposed to be learning about them as people, as effectively become worthless, time  wasted. (And if Richmond is the killer? Well then I’ll just have a giant rant ready about how this wrecks his characterization.)

And, in the Land of the Forlorn:

Because I have just spent the past five paragraphs dripping with negativity, let’s start with the one positive thing to come out of tonight’s proceedings: an appearance by Tahmoh Penikett - best known as Helo on Battlestar Galactica and Paul Ballard on Dollhouse – as Jack’s dad. (Seriously, I actually shouted out his first name in triumph when I saw him.) Okay, positivity over. Unless he ends up being the killer, his appearance marks one of the worst casting decisions I have seen on TV in quite a long time. Penikett is a fantastic actor, and he deserves better at this point in his career. Nor were the reminders of Sarah’s personal life really even required here at the eleventh hour, apart from continuity reasons; frankly I found it a bit more distracting that usual.

The other bit of character-based drama tonight of course resolved around the Larsen clan, who are continuing their descent into narrative uselessness. Tonight’s plotline for the Larsen’s was the most convoluted, and the most unmoving, to date. Between Mitch trying to get control of her anger, Stan trying to get control over his emotional problems, and Terry telling Mitch was a shitty mother she was to Rosie, it all felt like a little bit too much, and with all of the Larsens more or less done with the majority of their grieving, none of this stuff really landed for me.

But hey, at least Stan (and by extension, the show) finally called Mitch out on her shit.

Next Week: The killer is revealed. The headaches end. And hopefully it’s the last we’ll ever see of the show.

Quotes, Etc.:

Killer Theory of the week: Since it just can’t be Richmond, I’m swinging back around to my original guess of Jamie. I could buy that he killed Rosie in order to cover up the campaign, even if it would still be an infuriatingly easy way to end the whole thing.

This Week in Twin Peaks Parallels: All this talk about how “nobody really knew Rosie”. Plus, she was certainly a prostitute who worked through a casino.

“Nothing beats dead Indians. Didn’t you see Poltergeist?”

“The tech guy said the server was text…ing….bling…whatever.”

“I paid $190 for mine. But you know, it ain’t hecho en Mexico.”

Apparently Linden isn’t that great of a typist.