I have no idea how the geniuses behind the Showtime drama Homeland are going to possibly top their first brilliant season. And this trailer for their sophomore season raises expectations sky high.
This show is like the anti-The Killing, which I've stopped watching because I got so fed up with the series and because of the botched season one conclusion. Homeland scribes have deftly figured out how to combine suspense and tension without leading viewers on or patronizing them with insulting red herrings.
My fingers are crossed that when they've got good stuff in store for us when the second season starts on September 30 and we again see Claire Danes' spectacularly complex Carrie Mathison and Damian Lewis' eerie Nicholas Brody. Mandy Patinkin as the curmudgeonly Saul Berenson is pretty awesome as well.
The season finale of the once promising AMC show The Killing seriously ticked me off. I can’t decide which was worse, the fact that we didn’t really find out who killed Rosie Larsen during the season finale, or that they incongruously had Holder appear as though he’s been bought off or corrupted (or manipulated) by someone in order to obtain dummied up photos to use in order to arrest Darren Richmond, the upstart, good government mayoral candidate/sad sack widower/serial lover boy/escort service patron.
In my CliqueClack TV review I said I found the last second twisteroo which turned Richmond's apparent guilt on its head annoying, “not at all clever or intriguing.” I’m certainly not the only TV critic who feels this way:
Of the people who were left “cross-eyed and panting with rage,” the Los Angeles Times said: “Their words all but quivering in cancel-my-subscription frustration, critics, fan bloggers and tweeters could not believe that after all the show had demanded of them (13 whole episodes), after all the ‘red herrings’ and shots of Seattle looking like a rain-soaked ghetto instead of the hipster birthplace of Starbucks and Nirvana, we didn’t even get to find out who the real bad guy was.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Goodman wrote, “. . . [A]s someone who has defended The Killing, if for no other reason than a story like this needs to be fully told before the final judgment is passed, there really is no defending the show after the finale . . . But ultimately a series comes down to its storytelling and, given the conclusion (or lack thereof) in the season finale, it’s just impossible to prop up the weaknesses if there was no final saving grace. And there wasn’t.”
The Boston Globe’s Matthew Gilbert, invoking a Saturday Night Live/Seth Meyers’ bit, wrote: “Really, The Killing? REALLY? . . . I have been a solid defender of The Killing, despite its flaws. But the finale was almost indefensible . . . [W]e really should know who killed Rosie.”
The show’s executive producer, Veena Sud, told Entertainment Weekly: “We wanted to do what we think is right and surprising. Maybe some people will be disappointed in it, just as some were disappointed in the series finales of Sopranos and Lost, and other people were absolutely thrilled.”
But when a critic said to her (before the finale aired) that many fans were expecting closure on the Larsen case and might not like the last few minutes of what turned out to be a three-card-Monte of a finale, Sud got defensive telling HitFix: “We never said you’ll get closure at the end of season one. We said from the very beginning this is the anti-cop cop show. It’s a show where nothing is what it seems, so throw out expectations. We will not tie up this show in a bow.”
I’m not asking for a shiny bow in the finale for the show that was aggressively promoted with the question, “Who killed Rosie Larsen?,” just something that doesn’t insult my intelligence and doesn't resort to yet another in a long line of fake-outs.
My resident Twilight fan – my 12-year-old daughter – was thrilled to watch this brand, spankin’ new promo for the first part of Breaking Dawn. Wonder how graphic the brutal pregnancy and birth will be . . . Wonder if she can handle watching this movie . . .
The Killing Confounds
Did ya catch the recent episode of The Killing? The one that spent the entire time focused on Sarah Linden looking for her temporarily missing 13-year-old/wanna-be delinquent son while being carted around Seattle by her partner Stephen Holder? Strange and out of the norm for this series, eh?
Well let me tell you, I wasn’t a big fan of this installment. I wanted more in the way of clues to the murder’s identity, seeing as though there are now only two more episodes left, not an episode on a tangent. I reviewed it for CliqueClack TV.
Weiner-Gate
I hardly know what to say about this pathetic, ridiculous story about the married, fortysomething New York Congressman who was stupid enough to take and send lewd photos of himself to various women, then lied about it only to have to face the press and issue a mea culpa in front of a bank of news cameras just like the many horny male politicians who were caught with their pants down before him, like (just to name a few) Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford and John Edwards. Have none of these men learned anything?
It’s just preposterous that, in this age of 24/7 media, U.S. Rep. Weiner would even think that these images would never go public.
Among the interesting post-mortems, this one from Jezebel saying things like this from male pols are “rooted in male narcissism.” I think that goes without saying.
Can't wait to see what the late night comedians do with this . . .
I’m still watching each new installment of AMC’s pitch dark drama The Killing with a question mark floating above my head as if it were in a cartoon bubble in a comic strip. Every time I think I have an idea of who was involved in the teenage girl’s murder – which is the central question of the show – that notion is quickly dispatched. It’s gotten to the point that I’ve resolved myself to the fact that I won’t be able to identify the killer until it’s blatantly obvious, like when the person’s in handcuffs and says, “I did it.”
But that’s okay with me. I'm liking the mystery. Unlike with some of the unbelievable hokey twists and turns a show like 24 took, when there were intentional dead ends intended to put viewers on the wrong trail, The Killing is going about unfolding this tale in a pretty smart fashion. And the mother of the teenage murder victim, played by Michelle Forbes . . . if she doesn’t win an armload of statues for best supporting actress it’ll be a shame. She’s been terrific.
I reviewed the most recent episode of the show over on CliqueClack TV.
Image credit: ABC.
Grey’s Adoption?
So will it be as easy as the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy led us to believe, that Meredith and Derek will be able to adopt that adorable little girl just like that? After so much heartache, the miscarriage and the failed infertility treatments the baby will just be theirs? (I devoted a recent column to how many primetime shows, including Grey's, have been featuring infertility and adoption storylines.)
There are two more episodes left in this season of Grey’s and while the last episode (reviewed here) made things appear to be looking up for the show’s central couple -- they got legally married and hope to adopt baby Zola -- I’m assuming that before the season ends the boom will be lowered once more, most likely in the form of the Alzheimer’s clinical trial being invalidated because of Meredith’s actions and Alex’s big mouth. But I really hope I’m wrong about that. It’s been too good of a season to just allow the uncharacteristic, preachy behavior of Alex to undo the study in the waning moments of the season.
Do you think Zola's adoption will go through smoothly? Will Meredith get caught for helping Adele?
Friday Night Lights’ Julie Messes Around
Pity Friday Night Lights’ Tami and Eric Taylor. They’ve poured so much into their first child Julie, tried to do the best they could to put her on the right track. And now Julie’s off at college messing around with a married teaching assistant in her very first semester. Not a very auspicious start to her college career.
Then there’s Buddy Garrity’s kid, Buddy Jr. who broke into his father’s bar, got drunk and passed out, stole his father’s credit card and took off in his father’s truck . . . after his mother had sent the teen to live with his father because he’d become uncontrollable and been taking drugs as well as drinking.
Given those two parental situations, I’d rather be the Taylors.
Image credits: Carole Segal/AMC, Richard Cartwright/ABC.
Normally, when I hear about a TV show or movie that features a woman in peril who winds up dead, I tend not to be all that interested. (The drama Medium was one exception to that rule because I was a huge fan of the depiction of the central DuBois family.) When I saw the promos for AMC’s new drama The Killing which asked, “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” I didn’t lift a finger to set my DVR.
But then I read all of these reviews. Glowing reviews. Heard people raving. Read praise on Twitter feeds. So I decided to take a peek at the pilot.
And the pilot was all it took. I was hooked on this dark, intellectually stimulating conundrum of a mystery that contains layer upon layer of intricacy and intrigue. I wanted more.
But Linden couldn’t bring herself to leave Seattle, the pull of the Larsen case was too strong.
Complicating factors: Larsen was found in a car that belonged to the mayoral campaign of Seattle City Councilor Darren Richmond, played by Billy Campbell whom I loved when he was a downtrodden divorced dad in Once and Again. It’s not clear right now whether Richmond, whose wife was killed in a violent crime years ago, was involved in the case or whether someone from the campaign had something to do with it.
Michelle Forbes, who has appeared in In Treatment and Homicide: Life on the Street, is heart-rending as Mitch Larsen, Rosie’s mother who’s collapsing, disintegrating is a shadow of her former self, whose grief is currently blinding her to the needs of her two young sons.
If you like a Rubik’s Cube of a TV show that doesn’t talk down to you and whose cast is low-keyed but intense, I highly recommend you take a chance on The Killing.
Want to see what the fuss is about? AMC is streaming episodes online for a limited time. Image credit: Carole Segal/AMC.
