For All Mankind 5.2: Actor Reunions

It's great to see Joel Kinnaman as Admiral Baldwin in For All Mankind Season 5 still flying morally high, still shaking things up, defying authority to do the right thing, still causing good trouble (as John Lewis put it so well down here on Earth in our off-screen reality), in his advanced age.   Kinnaman is especially impressive in the role, given that he's now also playing a character much closer to his real age in Imperfect Women, which I'll review as soon as its first season is over.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

Baldwin in Season 5 of For All Mankind has stage-three cancer, and is not supposed to fly.   All the more the impressive that he risks his life in this condition to save Lee Jung-Gil (played by C. S. Lee -- Vince Masuka from Dexter old and new!).  And episode 5.2 concludes with Baldwin's plan to save Lee on the way to working, though as that happens, Mireille Enos's character Celia Boyd -- Enos starred with Joel Kinnaman in The Killing around the same time the original Dexter was concluding -- finds Baldwin unconscious at the controls.

Now if For All Mankind were made by Taylor Sheridan, this might be the end of Baldwin.  But given that Ronald D. Moore is its creator, I'd be stunned if Baldwin didn't survive until at least the end of this season.  In fact, given that Joel Kinnaman has been reported to return as Baldwin in the final season 6 of the series, and though, again, apropos of Sheridan, this could be in flashbacks, I'm thinking we'll see Baldwin in real current time in the final season.  (And while we're at it, in the alternate history spin-off Star City to debut in May, though probably at a younger age.)

Anyway, Celia Boyd is a great new character, so is Leonid played Costa Ronan (from Homeland and The Americans), and all the continuing characters are good to see in this 5th season of For All Mankind. And I'll see you back next week with my review of the next episode.

See also For All Mankind 5.1: On the Intersection of Alternate and Real Histories

And see also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot ... 4.7: Dev on Mars ... 4.8: Sergei and Margot ... 4.9: Progress ... 4.10: Earth vs. Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

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The Department Q Trilogy on Netflix: Outstanding!

Continuing our binge watching of superb Scandinavian crime drama (aptly known as Nordic Noir) on Netflix, we caught a trilogy of movies, based on the novels of Jussi Adler-Olsen - The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013), The Absent One (2014) and A Conspiracy of Faith (2016). This Department Q Trilogy, as these novels and movies are known, was flat-out superb!

We've seen a fair number of "cold case" television series in the past few years, mostly from England and the U.S.  But these Department Q tales have something more, in terms of intensity and originality of characters, and depth of stories, which range from a woman kidnapped and held in a pressure chamber for several years, to a group of rich kids in school gone very wrong, to a faith-based psycho. The last two themes are also familiar, but there's nothing familiar about the way they're laid out and developed in these three memorable movies.

The cast is completely unknown to me and I suspect most American viewers, with the exception of Fares Fares, who played a small but pivotal role in the late, lamented Tyrant on FX.   He's even better in the Department Q trilogy, playing Assad, the partner of Carl, also well played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas. Carl is on the verge of being burned out, for a variety of reasons.  His boss barely tolerates him, and he has no luck with women.  But he has a heart of a gold and an indomitable spirit, and is exactly the kind of detective you'd want on your side if your case or cause was hopeless.

American series have tried to emulate narratives like these, with new, American productions of The Killing and The Bridge, which were both very successful in their original European productions.  The American productions had their moments - I reviewed both of them in this blog - but also had their flaws, and now I intend to see the originals whenever I can.   You do have to pay attention to the subtitles in the Department Q Trilogy and all the Scandinavian productions but it's worth it - and if you speak a little Yiddish, you'll get some of the words (common roots of German and Scandinavian), not to mention occasional English words like "ok" and some choice expletives thrown in.

The Missing Season 1: Worth Finding

Checking in with a review of The Missing, which I saw over a couple of nights on Starz On Demand earlier this week.   It's much in the new tradition of The Killing, Secrets and Lies,  Broadchurch, and its American remake Gracepoint - which is to say, excellent in its portrayal of the impact of the crime on the victim's family and people in the town, a place with no shortage of plausible suspects - and in some ways The Missing is even better.

The special power of The Missing in contrast to those other crime shows no doubt stems from the fact that the crime at hand is a kidnapping not a murder - or, a missing boy who we learn pretty early on survived his being taken - which makes the parents much more active in pursuit of their child and hence the kidnapper than the parents of the murder victim in the other series.  Indeed, whereas the police are the central characters in the other series, the father - Tony Hughes - takes that role in The Missing, and is given a riveting performance by James Nesbitt.   Tony is most assisted by Julien Baptiste - a retired French detective brought back to the case after he retired from it and the police when the initial investigation in 2006 turned up nothing, and now believes there's a chance of finding the missing boy, Ollie.  Julien is a class act and a memorable detective - wonderfully played by Tchéky Karyo - who more than anyone other than Tony (including Tony's wife Emily, well played by Francis O'Connor last seen as Mr. Selfridge's wife) believes Ollie may be still alive and can be found. But even he comes to believe that Ollie was killed, which leaves Tony alone in his belief, pursuing his son in the face of all reason, except he turns out to be right.

The press are portrayed as villains in just about all of the other series - not the killers or kidnappers, but getting in the way of the police at every turn - and in The Missing, the free lance reporter, looking for a lift in his career, is almost as despicable as the kidnapper.   But he's fortunately as vulnerable to blackmail as the people he's been threatening and manipulating for information, and near the end provides some crucial clues.

I guessed who the kidnapper was - a combination of being around and not being brought in for any questioning always raises my suspicions - but the ultimate question is not who was responsible for Ollie's kidnapping, but will Tony, now totally alone again in his pursuit of his son, ever find him. The ending is ambiguous, but, I think, hopeful.  If I'm interpreting what's on the screen correctly, Tony has tracked Ollie down to the Eastern European place where he now lives.   We know that the boy is Ollie, because he has drawn the same picture that Ollie drew before he was kidnapped.   When Tony shows the boy, now almost a teenager, the picture, the boy doesn't respond.   But I think the most likely explanation is that Ollie needs some time to process this.   Or, even if this boy is not Ollie, someone drew the picture in the snow, so Tony can't be too far off.  Why he and we are deprived of seeing him reunited with his boy is a good question.  Probably the creators of the show thought an outright happy ending would be too easy or trite.

But in any case, even without an unambiguously happy ending, The Missing concludes its first season on a more positive note than the other series, and that's a plus in my book.  It's coming back for a second season - with a new case - and I'll definitely be watching.



different kinds of crimes

The Killing Season 4: Masterpiece Finale

I just saw the final season of The Killing on Netflix - all six episodes of Season 4 - and it is a masterpiece.

Not because of the new murder story, which was excellent in its own right, with all kinds of brutal twists and turns.   With a much shorter arc than the earlier murders in this series, this one - about a family execution with only the son surviving - had to be tighter, and it was.

But the part of season 4 of The Killing which will make it, and the whole series, something which will be watched and remembered through the ages was the Linden and Holder story.  Part of that is the continuation of the Skinner story from Season 3.  But the even more important part is the toll that takes on Linden and Holder, and the aftermath.  Don't worry, I won't give anything specific away.  But if you'd rather not get any inkling that even a generality can give, don't read any further.

First and foremost, the ending was something I often want to see in a television series, but never do, because most television is afraid to deal with the realities of human nature, ugly, beautiful, destructive, redeeming, and all together. The final season shows Linden and Holder at their best and worst.  They support each other magnificently when one or the other is down, and they turn on each other like nearly rabid dogs when the going gets impossibly tough.   They're both deeply flawed but brilliant.   And the kicker is they're brilliant not only as detectives, but in their understanding of human relationships, often occluded but always on the verge of breaking through.

The last 10 minutes of the very last episode are like nothing I've ever seen on television - hell, that's true of the last 50 or more minutes, but the last ten are something else.  If you think you'll know how this is going to end, I promise that you don't, unless you have even more sensitivity than Linden and Holder in their best moments.

And, by the way, all six episodes are superbly acted. Joel Kinnaman is better than ever, and Mireille Enos is never anything short of fabulous (hey, she was even the best part of that big bad Schwarzenegger movie earlier this year).  Joan Allen puts in a strong performance, and Gregg Henry is excellent.  And there are nods to events from the first three seasons - just what you'd want in a final season - including a crucial appearance from Richmond.

But most of all, as I already said, it's just great and uniquely satisfying to finally see a finale to a television series that in its very last seconds its right where you always wanted it to be.

See also The Killing 3.1-2: Poe Poetic Po-po ... The Killing 3.3: Hitchcockian Scene and More ... The Killing 3.7: "Opiate of the Masses" ... Killing 3.8: The Kidnapping, and a Prediction ... The Killing 3.9: Suspect Elimination and Incompatible Components ... The Killing 3.10: Capital Punishment ... The Killing Season 3 Finale: We Need Another Season

See also The Killing Season Two Premiere ... The Killing 2.2: Holder ... The Killing 2.11: Circling Back ... The Killing Season 2 Finale

And see also The Killing on AMC and The Killing 1.3: Early Suspects ... The Killing 1.5: Memorable Moments ... The Killing 1.6: The Teacher ... The Killing 1.8: The Teacher, Again ...The Killing 1.9: The Teacher as Victim, Again ... The Killing 1.10: Running Out of Suspects ... The Killing 1.11: Rosie's Missing - from the Story ... The Killing 1.12: Is Orpheus the Killer? ... The Killing 1.13: Stretching Television

 
another kind of crime story

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Intelligence 1.6: Helix meets Rectify and Justified

Intelligence 1.6 zoomed into Helix territory last night, with a sharp story that had Gabriel, Riley, and Cyber Command on what looks like a bio-terror virus-gone-wild case, but turns out to be our own military up to no good on behalf of what one general sees as a greater good for our country.

But the best part of the plot is the puzzle of the set-up in which Patient Zero turns out to be someone we just saw getting the death sentence in Texas, so how can he be the vector of an epidemic which started after he was dead?   Turns out our military spirited him away after injecting him with something not immediately lethal, to use him as a guinea pig for development of a vaccine for a possible terrorist attack via horrendous virus.

Some nice resonance in this twist on capital punishment to Rectify and last season's The Killing, and the contribution to viral fiction - writ large not only in Helix but of course The Walking Dead and even in National Geographic's Zombie Earth specu-docu-drama, where, believe it or not, I had a brief walk-on appearance as an "expert" - was good, too.

And speaking of welcome interconnections, it was great to see Nick Searcy as the wrong-minded General Carter, whose plan for the vaccine goes awry when the condemned prisoner escapes from the military lab, and becomes Patient Zero as he mixes into the crowd.  It's been a good week for Searcy, who put in one of his best performances on Justify last week, as Chief Deputy U. S. Marshal Mullen makes like the inimitable Givens in a diner.  (I'm glad I finally got a chance to mention Justified and Rectify in the same post.)

Back to Intelligence, we also find out more about how Gabriel came to be embedded with his chip, including that two previous candidates died and another wound up paralyzed in the process.  He did it in the hope it would help him find Amelia, we learn again, but with her gone now, he admits to Riley that he thinks all the time about whether it was all worth it.

Intelligence is shaping up as one of the best new shows on television this season.

See also Intelligence Debuts ... Intelligence 1.2: Lightning Changes ...Intelligence 1.3: Edward Snowden and 24 ... Intelligence 1.4: Social Media Weaponry ... Intelligence 1.5: The Watch

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Like biological science fiction? Try The Silk Code

Helix 1.1-1.3: Zombies with Biology

I saw the first three episodes of Helix last - the first two on SyFy's premiere of the series, the third on Syfy's On Demand (a nice move by Syfy, much appreciated) - and thought it was pretty good.

The series comes highly recommended.  Although Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore isn't the showrunner, he's an executive producer and one of the writers for Helix, in which I thought I even heard one "frackin'" euphemism.  Billy Campbell, who was superb in The Killing, plays the lead scientist from the CDC who comes to the arctic base to investigate the viral outbreak.  Hiroyuki Sanada, who put in a couple of good appearances on Lost, is the lead scientist at the base who knows more than he reveals.

And what about the story?  Well, it's another zombie tale, which, due to the enormous and deserved success of The Walking Dead, is animating all kinds of popular culture including movies with World War Z and even speculative reality TV with Zombie Earth on NatGeo.  Helix, however, differs from all of these in starting at very beginning of the plague, and, at this point, looking as if it will stay there, at least for a while.  There is also excellent genetic and epidemiological science in this series.

And the science, I think, is what will lift and carry the series.  Much of the plot turns on how quickly the scientists can figure out what's really going on, which entails not only getting people who know to tell the truth, but also getting a handle on what's causing the symptoms.  Identifying who has been infected but is not yet showing symptoms is the first step, and there are lots of pitfalls on the road from that to developing a vaccine.

Indeed, the best plot twists so far involve the accidents and wrong turns in the science, which makes Helix a candidate for something we don't see much of on television:  good biological science fiction. This may makes Helix more a potentially worthy successor to Fringe than Battlestar Galactica or The Walking Dead.



Like biological science fiction? Try The Silk Code

Note added 25 February 2022: Check out this free Intro to Biology course.

Broadchurch: Powerful Viewing

I caught the first episode of Broadchurch on BBC America last night, and found it outstanding.   If you're a devotee of British detective and cop shows - from Morse to Frost to Lynley to Waking the Dead to Prime Suspect to Luther - you'll recognize Broadchurch as very much belonging in this evolving tradition.   Broadchurch has all the elements - the tension between men and women in various police positions, all that great DI, DS, DC, CS, Guv stuff - plus an upping of the ante with an intense single-investigation plot spans the entire 8-episode season.

BBC America has been comparing Broadchurch to The Killing, and the comparison is apt.  A teenager is murdered (in this case, a boy, Danny), and everyone and their grandmother is a possible suspect, or at least in possession of some information vital to solving the crime.   The detectives themselves are connected to the case far more personally than detectives should be.  DS Ellie Miller lives nearly next door to Danny's family, and indeed Miller's son Tom was not only good friends with Danny, but erases messages on his smartphone from or to Danny as soon as Tom learns that Danny was murdered.  DS Miller was due to be promoted to DI, but the position was given without warning to Alec Hardy, who is fresh off some controversial case from wherever he was previously.

The media also get some cold scrutiny and a good bashing in the first episode of this series, as they invade the privacy of Danny's family in pursuit of the story.  And a prime player in this media part of the narrative is Ollie, eager to make a name for himself, finding it hard to move up in the shrinking traditional media world, and, oh yeah, he's Ellie's nephew.   This makes her doubly involved in the case beyond her detective work.   But as my wife pointed out, Broadchurch is a small town.

The show also has a keener than usual appreciation of social media and their contribution to contemporary journalism.  Ollie tweets some early breaking news about the case - he's the first to identify the family - and Danny's sister Chloe gets information on the case by putting out a Google Alert on Broadchurch and death.   I don't need to put Broadchurch into my Google Calendar, because it's easy enough to remember that show is on Wednesday night, same night as Law & Order UK.

Driven by who knows what, and amplified by traditional and social media, just about everyone in Broadchurch seems to be hiding something, and I'm in for the roller coaster ride of discovery.



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The Killing Season 3 Finale: We Need Another Season

Well, you just know that Linden cannot find any happiness - not in her job, not in her universe.  So when you see her smile like you've never seen her before at the start of  The Killing's Season 3 finale, you know that no good can come of it, and you think it likely that the source of her happiness, the source of her smile, will be the worst thing in her universe this season.   Because it turns out that she's just slept with the killer of the young prostitutes, also the killer of Tricia Seward, whose husband Ray hung for her killing last week, in one of the best anti-capital-punishment episodes ever seen on television or in the movies.

And who is this killer who has just slept with Linden?  Not Reddick, because although a lot of circumstantial evidence is starting to point at him, there's no way that Linden would ever sleep with him.  And, besides, his being the killer would not have been revealed so early in the two-hour Season 3 finale of this fine series.  No, that's not the way The Killing works.

This series continues twisting the knife, turning the screws, until there is no place else to twist or turn.   And so the killer in this season turns out to be Lt. Skinner.   Not the pastor, not Callie's mother's boyfriend, and certainly not Ray Seward.   It's Skinner, Linden's erstwhile lover and partner, who sleeps with Linden again and makes her happier than we've ever seen her at the beginning of this double episode.

And it all fits together.  He was able to nab Ray so well - with Linden's unknowing help - because he was the one who murdered Ray's wife Tricia.  He knew all the details.  He had come over to the Seward home to see what Adrian had seen from the treehouse near the water - the treehouse that we recently discovered Ray had built for his son.   Skinner's a world-class pyscho serial killer - meting out deaths not only to the young prostitutes in this case, and to Tricia Seward, but to many others, he tells Linden, buried who knows where.

And Linden's shooting him to death makes perfect moral sense - for her, for her guilt, for the world.  But not much sense for her continuation in the job she loves and lives for - her job as a detective.

It will be left to Holder, who tries in vain to stop Linden, to make things right - do some typical cop magic to make it look like Linden shot Skinner in self-defense.   Just how will Holder do this?

AMC better bring us a Season 4 of this superb series to show us, and more.

See also The Killing 3.1-2: Poe Poetic Po-po ... The Killing 3.3: Hitchcockian Scene and More ... The Killing 3.7: "Opiate of the Masses" ... Killing 3.8: The Kidnapping, and a Prediction ... The Killing 3.9: Suspect Elimination and Incompatible Components ... The Killing 3.10: Capital Punishment

See also The Killing Season Two Premiere ... The Killing 2.2: Holder ... The Killing 2.11: Circling Back ... The Killing Season 2 Finale

And see also The Killing on AMC and The Killing 1.3: Early Suspects ... The Killing 1.5: Memorable Moments ... The Killing 1.6: The Teacher ... The Killing 1.8: The Teacher, Again ...The Killing 1.9: The Teacher as Victim, Again ... The Killing 1.10: Running Out of Suspects ... The Killing 1.11: Rosie's Missing - from the Story ... The Killing 1.12: Is Orpheus the Killer? ... The Killing 1.13: Stretching Television

 

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The Killing 3.10: Capital Punishment

One of the most powerful episodes in the entire three years of The Killing on AMC last night, a gut-wrenching roller-coaster of an hour in which Linden gets the AG to look into new evidence with an eye towards giving Seward a reprieve, then has reason to think that Seward did indeed kill his wife, then believes him that he didn't - as do I and I assume the viewing audience - only to see Seward hung in the end anyway.

Peter Sarsgaard's performance in The Killing 3.10 as Ray Seward was a tour-de-force and worthy of an Emmy in itself.   AMC wisely followed the episode with a showing of The Green Mile - wise because The Killing last night provided as eloquent a brief against capital punishment as you could find in television drama, the movies, and the real news.

We in the United States are one of the only countries in the world with capital punishment.  That and the ubiquity of guns makes a lot of the rest of the world think we're savage and crazy.  Hard to disagree with that.   DNA as evidence has freed many a person wrongly put on death row, but as last night's episode of The Killing brings home with a fearsome power, innocent people are still put to death.  If some Senators and Representatives in our government have their way, the same would happen to Edward Snowden for his patriotic whistle-blowing on NSA spying on Americans.

Meanwhile, the question still remains in The Killing of who killed Seward's wife.  We may never find out.   It looks like my theory that Becker did it is not gaining much traction, but I'll be watching the 2-hour season final with rapt attention next week.

In the meantime, here's a clip of Peter Sarsgaard from just a few days ago talking about the significance of fact-based movies in our culture, followed by a few words from me.





See also The Killing 3.1-2: Poe Poetic Po-po ... The Killing 3.3: Hitchcockian Scene and More ... The Killing 3.7: "Opiate of the Masses" ... Killing 3.8: The Kidnapping, and a Prediction ... The Killing 3.9: Suspect Elimination and Incompatible Components

See also The Killing Season Two Premiere ... The Killing 2.2: Holder ... The Killing 2.11: Circling Back ... The Killing Season 2 Finale

And see also The Killing on AMC and The Killing 1.3: Early Suspects ... The Killing 1.5: Memorable Moments ... The Killing 1.6: The Teacher ... The Killing 1.8: The Teacher, Again ...The Killing 1.9: The Teacher as Victim, Again ... The Killing 1.10: Running Out of Suspects ... The Killing 1.11: Rosie's Missing - from the Story ... The Killing 1.12: Is Orpheus the Killer? ... The Killing 1.13: Stretching Television

 

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The Killing 3.9: Suspect Elimination and Inexplicable Components

The Killing 3.9 continues in its inimitable way of eliminating suspects - suspects, that is, other than Ray Seward, a day away from execution for the murder of his wife - without giving us anything close to a clear line of vision and reason as to who the real killer of Seward's wife is.

Kallie's mother's lowlife boyfriend is not the killer of Seward's wife.  He killed Bullet, confessed to the murder of the 17 young women, and their rings were in his possession.   Seward's son picked out his photo, but Kallie's mother negated that with the bad news that the murderous creep was in Alaska at the time Seward's wife was killed.  Linden realizes that the boy was just trying to save his father - he'd seen Kallie's boyfriend's face in the news.

So with the pastor and now the pornographer taken out of the running, we're left with what I was talking about last week:  Becker the unbalanced prison guard as the killer of Seward's wife.

But at least two questions need to be cleared up before we can definitely say it's Becker.

First, how did he come to know Seward's wife, or be at her home on the night she was murdered?   We've seen Becker come to know Seward, of course, as Seward spends his time on time on death row. But Seward's there for the murder of his wife, which means Becker had to know Seward before that, and be motivated enough to kill Seward's wife.   Anything less would be too much of a coincidence.   Maybe my recollection is fuzzy, but I don't recall any history between Becker and Seward before Seward got to death row.

Second, how did Seward's boy come to draw the pictures of the place where the 17 bodies were found? If Callie's boyfriend, who presumably killed the 17, was in Alaska when Seward's mother was killed, and therefore had no connection to her killing, why would the boy know anything about the 17?

With The Killing, the plot is so intricate and intense that it's always possible to miss a piece of evidence or logic.   On the other hand, inexplicable components would well mean that a theory is wrong.   I'm  looking forward to more.

See also The Killing 3.1-2: Poe Poetic Po-po ... The Killing 3.3: Hitchcockian Scene and More ... The Killing 3.7: "Opiate of the Masses" ... Killing 3.8: The Kidnapping, and a Prediction

See also The Killing Season Two Premiere ... The Killing 2.2: Holder ... The Killing 2.11: Circling Back ... The Killing Season 2 Finale

And see also The Killing on AMC and The Killing 1.3: Early Suspects ... The Killing 1.5: Memorable Moments ... The Killing 1.6: The Teacher ... The Killing 1.8: The Teacher, Again ...The Killing 1.9: The Teacher as Victim, Again ... The Killing 1.10: Running Out of Suspects ... The Killing 1.11: Rosie's Missing - from the Story ... The Killing 1.12: Is Orpheus the Killer? ... The Killing 1.13: Stretching Television

 

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The Killing 3.8: The Kidnapping, and a Prediction

Last week's Killing 3.7 concluded with Linden kidnapped by the pastor.  That's where tonight's 3.8 begins, and proceeds for a tense most-of-an-episode with Linden driving or otherwise with a gun to a head.

The pastor's a sick a guy, no doubt.  But in true Killing fashion, he's not the killer Linden and Holder and the police are looking for.  He's not the killer who Linden feels in her bones is the killer of the woman, Seward's wife, that Seward is on death row for - which just two days left until his hanging.

So who is the killer?  Bullet will likely find out pretty soon, assuming it's the killer looking at her in the diner as she waits for Holder to listen to his voicemail.

There are only two possible killers that I can see at this point.  One, obvious for a while, is the guy who had Kallie's phone over her mother's house.   But, again, obvious, and The Killing's not about the obvious.

So here's my pick and prediction:  prison guard Becker.   He's also a sick a guy, and we find out tonight from his wife that he goes missing for several nights a time.  We've seen him spending the night in prison, when he's supposed to be home, but who knows exactly where he was earlier in the evening - apparently not at home, and it's unclear if he just spent 24 hours in the prison.

It's a long shot, I know.  And there's the coincidence that the very guard keeping watch on Seward in prison is the real killer of Seward's wife and the girls discovered in the first episode.  But stranger things have happened, and a killing coincidence would work quite well in this high-octane emotionally rending series.

See also The Killing 3.1-2: Poe Poetic Po-po ... The Killing 3.3: Hitchcockian Scene and More ... The Killing 3.7: "Opiate of the Masses"

See also The Killing Season Two Premiere ... The Killing 2.2: Holder ... The Killing 2.11: Circling Back ... The Killing Season 2 Finale

And see also The Killing on AMC and The Killing 1.3: Early Suspects ... The Killing 1.5: Memorable Moments ... The Killing 1.6: The Teacher ... The Killing 1.8: The Teacher, Again ...The Killing 1.9: The Teacher as Victim, Again ... The Killing 1.10: Running Out of Suspects ... The Killing 1.11: Rosie's Missing - from the Story ... The Killing 1.12: Is Orpheus the Killer? ... The Killing 1.13: Stretching Television

 

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