Review – The Killing Season 3 Premiere – We’ll Always Have the Rain

Watching the third season premiere of The Killing is a bit like visiting an alternate universe; one where Netflix had not literally revived the corpse of the series after AMC had quite definitively cancelled it, but one where the series was simply moving along as it naturally would have if it had been renewed. Well, for the most part.

Holder and Linden are back, each having moved down mostly expected causeways in their lives. Holder has established himself as a star Homicide Detective, even mastering department politics of case switching, and moving toward his Sergeant exam. Linden, having left the force behind now has a minimum wage job working a ferry, and has hooked up with an attractive young man.

The Killing‘s power as a drama was never really fully rooted in the persona of the leads as much as how ‘the case’ reflected against their worn and weary souls. At that, The Killing seemed to rev its story engine the loudest when this strange reflective narrative extended to all corners of what would otherwise be a fairly typical murder mystery; the victim, the victim’s family, the suspects.

In fact, it might be in the story itself where the fact that The Killing was plucked from the embrace of the cancellation reaper is the most evident, because that is where we find the most desperate attempts to elevate this third outing from the formula that, ultimately, couldn’t sustain The Killing to series.

The basics of “The Case” are this: a young runaway is found raped and murdered. It is the kind of case that would be blasé in the darker corners of urban decay, but Holder sees something different and familiar. The case has similarities to one of Linden’s, for which Ray Seward (Peter Sarsgaard) is currently sitting on death row. Linden is initially reluctant to acknowledge any connection, but eventually … well, you should watch and see.

In terms of the ancillary world, Sud and her writers have decided to play loosely with the concept of ‘family’ this time around, opting to focus on the kind of ‘family’ bond that emerges on the street among desperately tough and self-sacrificing homeless kids.

Several things are pleasingly consistent for fans of the first two seasons. Holder still wears his street smart heart on his sleeve, and Linden is still unpredictably mad — like a Hummingbird on cocaine. The atmosphere is bleak with the locations shifting between foggy, saturated forests and glistening and steamy city streets littered with trash and despair.

In the terms of storytelling, there is still—thankfully—the level of craft that made The Killing such a transcendent piece for its genre to begin with; sometimes even paying homage to its own more successful ploys. For instance, there is a very effective sequence in the original pilot where Linden is on a run through the forest, pouring everything she’s got into it, legs pumping like pistons, eyes locked on the path ahead, her body moving through the same perfect sequence of movements for the task over and over again, ultimately bringing her to a beach where she finds a dead animal half submerged in the wet sand. It was character defining, but also seemed prophetic in a strange way.

Late in the first half of the third season premiere of The Killing we get treated to a similar scene. Linden running, this time maybe a little more aimlessly, ponderous, then untimely ran forces her to an abandoned set of stalls. Again, we find Linden’s run has brought her to something dead, but this time it is a lot of dead things. A dead and decaying cow in every stall, and one hanging on for its life. Later, she returns to the stall and ends its suffering, and the act somehow acts as a threshold back into her detective mode.  Unofficially, of course.  For now.

Again, the scene is both character defining in subtle ways, but also prophetic. Where The Killing season one and two were about ‘a killing’, this season will deal with many killings—something made obvious by the end of the first part’s third act. But the question is, what did killing that suffering cow represent?

The Killing‘s unlikely third season has begun with a light seasoning of metaphor, dark and dreary locals, and a ‘toughness’ that makes even its own earlier seasons look pedestrian in comparison. The performances are spot on, and it is obvious from a production standpoint that AMC and Netflix have spared no expense in bringing The Killing back to form. I rate this an A+ and will be watching live all season long. I suggest you do the same.

After tonight, The Killing will air at 9PM Sundays on AMC.