Review: AMC’s “The Killing” makes another stab at relevancy with the Season 3 Premiere. 

[rating=4]

SPOILER ALERT: I’m discussing key plot reveals in this review.

With declining ratings and a polarized viewership, it seemed like AMC’s The Killing was DOA. So it was a big surprise that it was renewed for a third season, given the whodunit had reached its conclusion of Who Killed Rosie Larsen?

Season 3 starts off with Joel Kinnamon’s Detective Holder, who looks to be playing it straight with his designer suit and healthy diet, but he still retains enough street sleaze that he remains the show’s most compelling character. He’s working with a new partner; one of the stereotypically crass, douchey middle-age white schlub who are di rigueur for cop procedurals.

As for Mireille Enos’s Linden? Well she looks rested and happy with new boyfriend, seemingly rejuvenated and happily retired from police detective work.  Of course we know that won’t last…

Turns out the case that tested her sanity is coming back to haunt her; with the looming execution of Ray Seward (Peter Sarsgaard), a killer she put in three years before the Rosie Larson case (and which inspires her relentless determination).

This brings Holder to reconnect with Linden, and sets up Season 3; he’s investigating a prostitute’s murder, and the case is strikingly similar to the murders pinned on Seward. Problem is he can’t find Seward’s case file. Why? because Linden is keeping it obsessively, staring endlessly at the drawings of Seward’s young son, who remains ignorant of his father’s current state as he’s in foster care.

Linden goes to visit her former partner (played by the always reliable Elias Koteas) and reopens the wound of the investigation. She then visits Seward in prison, trying to gleam if she did indeed send the wrong man to prison and to his looming execution.

Feeling drawn back in to the case that nearly destroyed her, Linden disengages from her current beau, claiming; “I break things” and with that she gets back to her true love, the thrill of the chase.

This is formulaic and trite; the cop who loses their family due to obsession. How much more interesting would it be to have a cop balance their work and family life, and draw strength from that support, whether then shutting down to a shell of one’s former self?

And this tired trope extends to Holder and his nascent relationship with his new girlfriend who tiptoe around “getting serious.” But once she leaves the room, Holder gets a distant disturbed gaze. Looks like Linden has rubbed off on him in many ways, perhaps even romantically.

Sarsgaard shines as Seward; while he may not be the killer in question, he’s clearly sociopathic; bashing a priests skull in when he simply wishes to give solace to a dying man is the epitome of cruelty. Yet his angelic face and fondness for his son make him more than just a one-dimensional psycho. One hopes he breaks the tedium of what is looking like a cut and dried serial killer investigation.

The victims are young gutter punks; girls from broken homes who survive on shelter food and one another. But when one winds up missing, signs point to another murder.

All this leads to the chilling conclusion; Linden recognizes a building from the young Seward boy’s drawings and goes to investigate. There she finds a heap of bodies wrapped in bags; half-submerged from a receding pond.

Has Seward spawned a copycat, have a serial killer buddy, or is he not guilty despite the damning evidence, even more supported by his sons drawing? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Holder and Linden’s relationship still makes a wonderfully dysfunctional alchemy, and the rain washed Seattle vistas and ethereal score give the show a lush beauty.

Now that The Killing has shed the Larsen story (one which widely divided viewers) they have the chance to start anew. While it looks like the mold won’t be broken from other cop dramas, its emotional character attentiveness and laconic pace still give it distinction and a class that outpaces NBC’s Hannibal, which is beautifully shot, but emotionally hollow and far too fast paced to expand.