A thread for AMC's The Killing, a remake of much-lauded Danish drama "Forbrydelsen"

I remember thinking the final episode was particularly well-directed, then realized its director was Jonathan Demme!

Fashionably late as always, we just blasted through this whole thing in a couple weeks and finished last night. The further I get from it, the more I feel like this was a lot of good acting and directing in the service of total garbage. The killer reveal at the end of season two was frustratingly stupid and out of left field in the same way as that goddamn first season of Broadchurch (well, we've evoked and ruled out plausible suspect after plausible suspect until just about every credited actor has been exonerated soooo...I guess the guilty party is whoever's left? even if it makes no real sense?). And then the reveal at the end of the third season....hoo boy. I actually called the penultimate suspect very early on as a total goof because there was no reason to suspect him until there was. But the person who actually did it? The first thing that popped into my mind was Merv Griffin being revealed as the serial killer at the end of The Man With Two Brains. 'I've always just loved to kill. I really enjoyed it.' That was roughly the level of depth and rationale that we got.

In all, though, I thought those first three seasons were v. good with the character development even if the whodunnit shtick was completely cockeyed. So leave it to the fourth season to completely spoil the aspect that actually worked. I was not a fan of that final moment of season three (although I'm sure it felt very thematically satisfying for whichever writer came up with the idea), but Linden and Holder's response to that event over the course of the final season was completely ludicrous. I was just like, do you seriously actually want me to come to hate these characters in their final hours? What is that? The very very ending was fine but felt kinda unearned.

Wasn't this thing feted when it was new? Maybe there's a reason I haven't heard a peep about it in the intervening years. At any rate, still thought pretty much all of the central performers were great and I want to see them in other, better things.