The Killing creator Veena Sud and her writing staff couldn't have avoided this one. Since the show's third season takes place in the same city (Seattle) as its first two, there's no way to act like those disappointing first two seasons never happened, especially because Seattle's governmental goings-on played such a key role. But, damn—being reminded of The Killing's previous, ultimately underwhelming storyline with an overt namedrop during last night's episode, "Eminent Domain," had a negative, definitely undesired aftereffect.
While Adrian's adoptive parents, along with Skinner (Elias Koteas), chastise Linden (Mirielle Enos) for visiting the youngster at school, unadvised, Linden latches on to an intriguing piece of information: Her chat with the kid has made him digress back into sleeping in his closet. Which goes against everything that Linden previously thought about Ray Seward's (Peter Sarsgaard) murder case—having studied the case file, conveniently hidden in her car's trunk, Linden knows that Adrian's old room didn't have a closet. Thus, he must've been sleeping in his parents' room, in their closet, when Papa Ray allegedly killed his mother, or someone offed her.
To confirm this for herself, Linden heads back to the Sewards' old apartment with good old Holder (Joel Kinnaman), whose attempt to rationalize the case using Copernicus and Galileo is so charmingly bizarre that even the usually stone-faced Linden can't help but laugh. Inside the now-empty, graffiti-laden apartment, it's Holder who sticks the dagger in the hearts of all The Killing viewers trying to forget about the show's past crimes against storytelling. If only he'd kept on about long-dead mathematicians.
Commenting on why the apartment hasn't been occupied during the three years since Trisha Seward's death, Holder says, "Mayor Richmond's water permit…eminent domain." He's referring to, of course, the insufferable Darren Richmond, the pivotal player in the Rosie Larsen murder mystery. And, as has been said before in these The Killing recaps, the show's uneven first two years repeatedly lost whatever good will had been earned by insisting on making the mayor's team of annoyingly banal characters a recurring focal point.
Hearing Holder say the name "Richmond" in an otherwise strong episode triggered a bit of PTSD, like Ja Rule hearing 50 Cent's "Back Down" on the radio. Here's to Holder learning about Archimedes before inspecting another crime scene.
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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)
