When was the last time you saw a show that made you miss "Twin Peaks"?
For me, it was last Sunday. The show that did this to me is entitled "The Killing" and it is on everybody who doesn't have HBO's favorite network, American Movie Classics or AMC as it is more widely known.
AMC is a network that goes back and forth between playing John Wayne movies and Scarface, and a few years ago, they decided that they were sick of movies and liked TV shows instead.
They have one show called Mad Men about this guy who lives in the 60's or 40's or whatever and he makes soap ads or some shit, I don't know. But I know there is substance abuse in it.
Then they have a show called Breaking Bad about the guy from Malcolm In The Middle where he is a meth dealer in chemo or something. More substance abuse.
They have another show, The Walking Dead, about a Police Officer and bunch of people on the run from zombies in the South. So you know all the zombies are racist and addicted to Oxycontin.
So you see, all of AMC's shows are about guys dealing with drugs and being in very adult situations. If this is the criteria we should use to judge The Killing, then the show is terrible.
If you compare this show against Twin Peaks, a similar storyline about a detectives solving one murder over the course of the series, then the show is terrible too, because it doesn't have any backwards talking midgets.
BUT, if you put it up against a show like According To Jim it is just fantastic.
The Killing starts with some cops finding a murdered girl named Rosie Larsen. This girl was like 16 years old. So these two detectives, one lady named Linden who has to move at the end of the week (ala Morgan Freeman in Se7en, or any old black man in any cop movie) and this young creep named Holder who was recently reassigned from Narcotics.
This guy Holder uses some tactics that maybe you would use in Narcotics investigation, but are probably uncouth when it comes to Homicide.
For example, he was trying to get some info from Rosie's classmates, so he hangs out at the school and smokes some weed and asks these girls if they wanna "party" with him. (We are all to assume that "party" means "fingerbang" by the way.) So they lead him down to the boiler room of the school, and that's where he finds the crime scene!
Also, there is a political campaign happening. You see, Rosie's body was found in the trunk of this guy, Darren Richmond's campaign car. Richmond is trying to be Mayor, so you know this isn't looking good for him.
Well, there are lots of suspects. There's her teacher (the front runner) named Bennet, Rosie's best friend Sterling (too stupid to do it), Rosie's uncle and dad's best friend Belko Royce (he probably just made out with her), and as we are just finding out now, the dad used to be a hitman for the mafia.
So maybe it was revenge?
Maybe he owed someone his firstborn child.
Anyway, listen. This show is pretty good. It's sort of slow and you can tell the writers didn't know it would get this far, so they are starting to sort of make some shit up to fill time.
The show was originally done in Danish and called Forbrydelsen.
*This show takes place in Seattle and it is always raining, so if you are scared of rain, or feeling a little blue, this will not put you in a better mood, but you can also catch Welcome To Mooseport on AMC and that will make you feel great.
A
-Anderson Lawfer, Eric Roach
