“You pulled out some wizardry. You little mama’s full on magnetizing your skinny ass.”
That’s the Holder quote of the week. Holder and Bullet remain the best part of The Killing. I am constantly imagining a show that would feature them as a crime-solving team. I’ve even got a name—Bugs & Bullet. (AMC, you can send me a royalty check for that idea whenever it’s good for you.)
Without the standout performances, The Killing continues to play out like one drawn-out episode of Law & Order. He did it. No, she did it. No, he is TOTALLY the killer. I would like to believe that The Killing is changing its structure and that Pastor Mike is the serial killer and the rest of the season will be spent bringing him to justice, finding Kallie, and getting Ray off death row. Think of when Homeland upended our expectations by arresting Brody early in the second season. I would love for The Killing to pull a move like that.
Pastor Mike certainly looks guilty. One of the girls who stays at his shelter tells Holder and Linden that she saw Angie in the shelter’s alleyway and called Pastor Mike and that Pastor Mike chased Angie in his car. He’s lying about not seeing her that night. After Bullet begs him, Pastor Mike invites Lyric and Bullet to stay at his house. The last we see of Lyric is her eating ice cream as Pastor Mike makes some creepy speech about being misunderstood. And then there’s the revelation that Pastor Mike assumed the identity of a dead man because six years ago he was arrested for kidnapping a 16-year-old girl. Oh, and by the end of the episode, he’s got Linden at knifepoint. So, you know, things aren’t looking good for Pastor Mike. But I’m fairly confident by next week’s episode we’ll learn that Pastor Mike isn’t the killer. You know the saying—fool me once, shame on The Killing. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Linden is busy being Lindenesque. Her boytoy from the season premiere returns. He wants to know why Linden is ignoring him and not returning his calls. “I was pretending to be something I wasn’t when I was with you,” she tells him. I feel like Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake” should have started playing at that precise moment.
Danette is increasingly realizing what a neglectful, awful mother she has been. She’s shocked to find out that her daughter stayed at Pastor Mike’s shelter. Where did she think her daughter was staying when she kicked Kallie out of the house so she could be with her skeevy boyfriend?
Ray has to weigh himself so the contraption the state of Washington is building to hang him will work. It’s this moment that makes Ray realize that he is going to die and his stoic appearance is for naught. Suddenly he wants his lawyer. The scene with Ray shaking as he stood on the scale was powerful. I’ve wondered this season why Peter Sarsgaard took this role, and it’s probably scenes like that one. It screams “give this man an Emmy.”
Other thoughts on “Hope Kills”:
• We need to have a Kickstarter campaign to buy Holder and Linden smartphones. I seriously cannot take it anymore with their flip phones. Even my technology-challenged parents have iPhones.
• Here’s my familiar face public service announcement of the week: That’s Nicholas Lea, Alex Krycek on The X-Files, as Dale Daniel Shannon, the inmate telling Ray it is up to him how he exits this world.
• Becker is one creepy dude. I don’t think showing your son how someone is put to death is going to win you any parenting awards. I don’t know what exactly, but Becker is guilty of something.
• Despite the nuzzling, I’m not feeling the sexual tension between Linden and Skinner.