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

Mad Men has fewer plot problems than The Killing/Walking Dead/Breaking Bad/Rubicon, but i don't find the plots compelling (though i know i'm in the minority on that)

i like 'mad men' v much but don't care about the plot tbh

Mad Men is a character study and plot is absolutely peripheral to the show, like Sopranos. Breaking Bad is much more of a mix of plot and character. Killing is all plot and could really use some more character.

point is AMC's whole "story matters here" marketing angle is kinda funny considering the storytelling problems their shows have almost across the board

Think Breaking Bad and Mad Men are pretty solid storytelling-wise, at least for their needs. I've got 5 episodes of The Killing left, and the storytelling is woeful (though it really is just as bad as the original).

A blog post by Myles McNutt about the The Killing's threat to AMC's brand.

haha that blog post points out this ridiculous NYT article 'about' the finale that went online before it aired and is clearly based only on last week's episode's "reveal" of the murderer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/arts/television/the-killing-on-amc-solves-murder-in-season-finale.html?_r=2

not really sure what these massive Breaking Bad plot problems are supposed to be tbh

i griped about my numerous issues with season 2 on a BB thread, won't rehash them (also the show's creator has been pretty open about 'making it up as they go along,' which regardless of how you feel about the results kind of says something about the narrative vision of the show)

plz could one of you has also seen the original Forbrydelsen series simply let me know if The Killing follows the same plotline note for note? I have seen the first four or five eps, over the course of which it seemed esp. dutiful to Forb., but stopped & have not gotten back to it. I was thinking about catching up, but will prob not bother doing so if it is just basically hitting ALL the same plot points (suspects etc.) as the original. i have purposefully avoided web chatter on it in case it does go off on its own path & I might end up spoiling it for myself..

― Heady Snobbin (Pillbox), Thursday, June 16, 2011 8:37 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark

guess I know which way to go on this now..

It mostly just switches things around. We'll have to wait for next season to see how much it changes, though the last five minutes there is a pretty dramatic shift.

i think the thing that bugs me most is that some of the actors are so good that it seem skinda unfair to just keep loading them up with bad storytelling and char development.

i dunno if there's any way to communicate this without SPOILERZ or if it matters, but what part of the last 5 minutes is the dramatic change from the original?

yeah the cast is pretty solid -- and as i'm fond of saying, a show that has a good cast (and premise/aesthetic) in place from the jump but weak writing has a better chance of improving later on than vice versa.

i griped about my numerous issues with season 2 on a BB thread, won't rehash them (also the show's creator has been pretty open about 'making it up as they go along,' which regardless of how you feel about the results kind of says something about the narrative vision of the show)

If I recall correctly, S2 was meticulously planned, which actually resulted in some of the show's hokier moments. S3 was approached more loosely but I think they knew the major plot points they wanted to hit - I suspect Gilligan has overstated the degree to which they were improvising because it was such a marked contrast from the previous season.

On a related note, The individual-episode podcasts on the BB site are occasionally fascinating.

fair enough -- maybe the meticulously planned stuff was what felt tediously "edgy" or cornily comedic to me

yeah that season was going for a certain cinematic sweep I guess, but it didn't always click. still, coming off of a strike-shortened season is tricky so I give em props.

The Killing on the other hand I don't think I even made it through the pilot of.

omg lmao at that nyt article. so much RONG.

don't worry about SPOILERZ on my account. I was curious enough about the outrage over the finale that I read the breakdown of it on Vulture and also Sepinwall's take on it.

When the series started, I was intrigued enough to seek out the original series. All told, I'm glad I invested my time in that & not the remake. Sure, it had the unrelenting gloom & routine red herrings (& the build-up to the finale was a bit ridiculous iirc), but the sustained mood and excellent performances & writing made it compelling throughout & ultimately rewarding - tho I may have been more irked by the constant red herrings if I had to wait a week in b/w each episode, admittedly.

nyt is still standing by it too - http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/new_york_times_standing_by_its.html

i dunno if there's any way to communicate this without SPOILERZ or if it matters, but what part of the last 5 minutes is the dramatic change from the original?

SPOILERZZZ

no assassination attempt and the partner isn't setting up the politician.

END SPOILERZZZ

hah the follow-up article is equally as idiotic!

yeah that was an amazingly pathetic ass-covering attempt

NYT's TV coverage continues to be terrible. I guess they're too busy doing real reporting or some b.s.

I just read both NYT pieces. Ginia Bellefante should write for that show -- she has as much a grasp of logic and plotting as the current writers:

"And Richmond seems to have had many female companions in addition to his girlfriend, all of whom look like his ex-wife"

Gwen looks nothing like his dead wife and she was not an ex-wife. They were still married when she was killed.

not to mention that saying belko couldn't have lashed out to attack an innocent man because they'd already done that once... because you know, we haven't established that belko is crazy and does not follow normal person logic at ALL and the show NEVER deploys the same plot points twice!

That Myles McNutt piece linked upthread is a good read on why people are actually angry about The Killing. You can go to pretty much any network and watch a show as bad as The Killing, but AMC has worked so hard on their brand perception that you wouldn't expect to see a show of this quality aired there.

I mean I am one of the maybe five people who watched and enjoyed Rubicon and, for all of its faults, I even liked The Walking Dead and will watch it next season, but I think this may have been too much.

Both this show and Walking Dead are wasting a lot of really good performances on terrible scripts and scenarios, and a lot of nice visuals. It's infuriating.

i dunno about Walking Dead... can't say i thought much of the cast, or that it wasn't dumber than The Killing

I liked the cast a lot! I would almost tune in for Michael Rooker alone.

Walking Dead's aspirations to transcend its genre are much smaller than The Killing's. That and The Killing couldn't even adequately perform its genre requirements.

Funny thing about The Walking Dead is if Darabont had hewed more closely to the comic it could have been better. Bringing in new characters who really serve no purpose (Michael Rooker's character), going in different directions than the source material, but then again it's Darabont so what do you expect?

nothing in The Killing finale pissed me off more than the bad CGI 'splosion end of The Walking Dead

Walking Dead was an A+ pilot followed by several episodes of water-treading, tho mad-scientist episode was pretty ridic. Still, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for a full season.

but then again it's Darabont so what do you expect?

Shawshank is overrated, but still good & The Mist is also flawed, but the things it gets right it does very, very well.

AMC seems produce better series when they stick to original content imo.

man this show turned into such garbage

The way Linden flipped from "stay away from my son or I will have you arrested" to "sure, hang out with your dad as much as you want" was almost as jarring as anything else was.

I haven't really harped on the political angle in this show because I really went to town on it in the Big Love thread, but if the writers had watched Season 3/4 of The Wire rather than L&O: SVU, they would have taken away a lot more about city politics and elections.

i'm not so sure the show's flaws can be easily chalked to too much network procedural not enough highbrow cable drama

Michelle Forbes' acting did a good job of masking the fact that Mitch Larsen is the worst person who ever lived.

i thought she was terrible!

I mean I am one of the maybe five people who watched and enjoyed Rubicon and, for all of its faults, I even liked The Walking Dead and will watch it next season, but I think this may have been too much.

i liked rubicon a lot, although i thought it was terribly slow. this is not nearly as good as rubicon, but i'll still take it over things like harry's law and outsourced that show up on network tv.

xpost Not necessarily one type of drama over the other, but just to have an understanding of the day to day in politics and be able to write about it. For example, one of the truest scenes I seen wrt to politics is when Carcetti is dialing for dollars. Fundraisers really make candidates sit in windowless rooms and eyeball the phone to make sure the candidate is on the line. A true scene is not, "Oh we're two weeks away from the election, better start working on that newspaper endorsement."

I know that's asking a lot for this show.

Sud Speaks

"I'm flattered," says Sud, "and I guess surprised a little bit. But certainly it's a good feeling to know people are watching and talking about the show. I mean, the last time I felt this personally myself, and saw this type of reaction, was when The Sopranos ended its run [with a shockingly abrupt, ambiguous, mostly despised 2007 finale]. If the show can be in that company, it's a deep compliment."
"The fact that people love us or hate us is a beautiful thing. I don't want to be kinda liked. The fact that someone loves my show or hates my show is great." Sud isn't a big Internet reader, but heard that one thread suggests The Killing is gaining more fans than it's losing from the Season 1 finale.

Sud suggests that those who object to the show's red herrings (like the finale's last-minute revelations that a crucial bit of evidence may be fake, a good guy a bad guy and the bad guy actually innocent) may be looking for an old-fashioned procedural, which The Killing emphatically and radically isn't. "They're complaining that there are too many red herrings?" Sud says. "Well, there's two ways to look at it. Either it's a left brain journey where you're just connecting the dots of who the suspects are or it's more of a holistic journey where a young girl is murdered these are the potential suspects and this is why."

Starts in the UK on thursday (21:00 ch4 115min)

Watching the second episode of this remake and, while it's pretty good, I can't imagine anyone who heard me raving about the excellence of the original series sitting down to this and thinking "Oh wow" or even "I'd like to see the Danish version", which is a real shame.

Avoiding most of this thread for fear of spoilers. I have a cold this weekend and started watching this last night. Just finished episode 4, holy crap at this show's long game. Gonna try to watch the rest of the season today (I get to do that-- I have a cold!)

I haven't lived in Seattle since 1996... what part of town is 'the end of the line' where Linden's partner finds the hoops office?

Little Vancouver iirc

this is up on netflix, should i bother watching it or is it shitty?

it's ok but it's annoying at times.

it's awful imo. I quit halfway through.

lols and spoilers to be had in this NYT article

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/veena-sud-the-killing-comeback.html?pagewanted=all

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.”

“This will be the last review I write of ‘The Killing,’ because this will be the last time I watch ‘The Killing.’ ”

“I no longer counsel patience with ‘The Killing’! You may unlock the toolshed and get the pitchforks!”

And those are the professionals. The amateurs were somewhat less kind.

feel like the second season is more taut and more driven than the first season was; at least the opener had about 100 times more things happen in it than last year.

did you guys know that mireille enos is married to alan ruck? this is my new favorite celebrity couple.