Two frustrating dramas that perhaps only I watch returned recently while Game of Thrones came off one of their most shocking episodes to date.
The Killing…I was as frustrated as it gets with this show’s terrible second season. I was so down on it that I was seriously happy when AMC cancelled the show…only to have my heart sink when they changed their minds and brought it back for a third season (why can’t they do this for “Rubicon?”). Still, I’m relieved to admit that the show’s third season is already on much more promising ground than the first two. They’ve deep-sixed the unbearably morose supporting cast (not just Billy Campbell as the world’s most dour politician but also Rosie Larsen’s serially unlikable family) and added fresh life with the always-interesting Peter Sarsgaard as an ambiguous death-row inmate who may know something about the new case and a spiky young runaway named Bullet whose on-the-bubble teen friends are winding up victims. They’ve even got Gregg Henry as Holder’s (Joel Kinnaman) new, relatable partner and indie-darling Amy Seimetz as the mother of a potential victim.
Of course, this is The Killing so we’re still stuck with Mireille Enos’s lead detective, who practically dares you to like her as she keeps everything at an exhausting arm’s length (she’s seen as happy for the first hour of this premiere, shacked up with a nice boyfriend…before ONE visit from Holder sends her spiraling), but if they can downplay her, future episodes could be as good as these first two. It helps that there is a genuinely exciting mystery at the center of this (a serial killer has killed at least a dozen homeless teens) instead of the stale “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” an endless question that had a ridiculously convoluted answer…Grade for the two-hour season premiere: B+…I’m sure I’ll regret that grade as the episodes progress, but, for now, I’m enjoying the new direction and the actual sense of mood instead of just relying on rain machines to do it all.
Longmire…This detective show on A&E is a neo-Western that features Sheriff Walt Longmire being badass in a rural-as-hell Wyoming County. It’s pretty typical (but solid) police procedural stuff enhanced greatly by a location that’s so plain, it’s almost exotic. I said that the wide-open spaces of season 1 made for a stark contrast to the cramped interrogation rooms and back alleys of most cop shows, and the show still used mother nature to gorgeous effect in the second season premiere (which found Walt hunting a fugitive through a snow covered mountain…after a buffalo in the middle of the road set things in motion). Still, if you’re looking for a radical reinvention of the detective serial (and I always am) this just isn’t it, and Katee Sackoff’s fiery deputy is the only supporting character that leaves any real impression. Grade: B-
[Major Spoilers…please don’t keep reading if you haven’t seen last night’s Game of Thrones] Game of Thrones…Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in. This season has had the brisk pace of two snails consummating an epic love affair. Just when the action picks up even slightly (like a sword fight…that ends in a stalemate, or a bit of magic…that goes nowhere, or someone is about to die…but ultimately doesn’t) there’s always an immediate retreat into the show’s overly detailed mythology. Most scenes begin with “Did I ever tell you about [insert something that happened long before we started watching the show]?” and then proceed to cover that through a five minute monologue. Maybe this works in the books, but it violates a key tenant of TV: don’t tell us, show us.
BUT last night finally moved the narrative forward. It was pretty much all about the Stark children (none of the Lannisters were even in it) except for a couple scenes of Daenarys’s top soldiers leading a slave rebellion in another crucial city…clear on the far side of the Earth at least a few oceans away from all the other characters we’re asked to follow. We had Jon Snow almost reconnect with his little half-brother. We had his little half-brother separate from his other brother. We had Arya Stark almost reconnect with her oldest brother and mother. And just when it looked like it would be another mostly uneventful episode that ends in stalemates [spoiler alert] we had back-to-back deaths that are the biggest since they killed off Sean Bean’s Ned Stark in season 1. Only moments after Rob Stark’s gorgeous bride (whom he married instead of his intended…making a mortal enemy out of his supposed-to-be father-in-law) told him that she’s pregnant and wants to name the baby after Rob’s fallen, honorable father, all hell broke loose. Within moments, someone stabbed his wife to death (through the stomach…killing his future), stabbed Rob to death, and even slit his mother Catelyn Stark’s throat. All this on what was supposed to be a happy wedding to bury the hatchet with his treacherous supposed-to-be father-in-law and what should have reunited Arya Stark with her family. It was a real sucker punch on what we thought would be the show’s happiest ending to date…those bastards…those beautiful, expectation-defying bastards. Can the Stark family catch a break? Are there even any of them left to catch it? The oldest members are barely teenagers…Grade for shock value: A+…Grade overall: B