“The Killing” (8 p.m. Central Sundays on AMC) returned for its third season — and second case — on Sunday looking as good as ever. With its run-down urbanity, misty woods, drizzly docks and messy dwellings, Veena Sud’s murder mystery series still makes the best use of Vancouver since “The X-Files.”
But this case promises to be different than the Rosie Larsen mystery due to more killings, as it delves into the dangerous realm of the homeless, sometimes-homeless and semi-homeless teens and adults of Seattle.
In an opening shot of her leaning over the edge of a high bridge, we meet Kallie, who claims to be just enjoying the view, not suicidal. The two-hour premiere nicely shows how she and a boy, Bullet, look out for each other on the mean streets. The episode gives us the sense that Kallie likes Bullet even though he has eyes for Lyric, who has eyes for Twitch, who has eyes for a Hollywood modeling career. This is no teen soap, though; it’s all nicely understated. And when Kallie goes missing, we feel her absence from the narrative, and Bullet’s need to find her.
Detective Holder, despite his bluster, is willing to go beyond his “eight (hours per day) and hit the gate” and actually put some effort into locating this girl, even though his partner, Reddick, would rather complain that “I’ll have to check my balls for lice” after visiting one of the seedy, cheap motels amid the search. Holder is wearing a suit for some reason, and he “don’t eat meat, bitch!,” but he’s basically the same guy as before — big-hearted, but he knows how to work a case and deal with people.
Linden is also much the same, except that she’s working a minimum-wage river patrol job instead of doing what she’s wired to do — detect crimes. I’m fine with it for now, but at some point, Linden’s gotta look herself in the mirror and say: “I like being a detective, and I’m going to stop beating myself up over it.” For now, she’s mentally berating herself for not being in Chicago with her son, who lives with his formerly deadbeat dad.
There’s a lot of character stuff in these two hours, and “The Killing” works through it in a syncopated style — sometimes choppy, but mostly compelling. Linden has a boyfriend, but she dumps him, citing her tendency to break things. Holder has a girlfriend, and it’s “Firefly’s” Jewel Staite, continuing to alternate between good-girl and bad-girl roles. Since she was kind of a bitch on “The L.A. Complex,” now she gets to play a sweet gal who admires Holder’s “Serenity” tattoo (Shout-out to her former gig, or a relevant plot point? Hard to say.).
“The Killing” puts a nice twist on the “guy on death row who might be innocent.” Ray Seward (Peter Sarsgaard), whom Linden helped capture years ago, is a genuinely nasty guy — he either kills or seriously injures a priest by slamming his head into his cell’s bars. However, in light of a homeless girl turning up with her head missing (Seward’s M.O.), maybe he wasn’t the killer after all; maybe the real killer is still out there.
There’s a lot of plot in these two hours, too, and some of it is confusing. I don’t know what it means that Linden stumbles upon a barn full of emaciated cows while jogging. Is it just to show that Linden can’t abide suffering, and that the greater Seattle area has some dark corners to it? Or is it important to the plot? Does she find a swamp full of bodies, or a swamp full of red garbage bags in that final scene? I’m not sure.
Honestly, though, I would probably continue to watch “The Killing” for its rain, urban decay, swamps and woods even if I didn’t grasp one iota of the story. Count me as fully on board for Season 3.