It's insane to me that Veena Sud and her writers decided to "follow a logical progression" without having the beginning and ending points of said progression.

I mean, it's one thing to let the characters in a character-based story "lead" the writer to the finish. But in a murder mystery, where one of the characters has ostensibly already done something terrible and had some major backstory occur before the onscreen story began? And you, as the writer, don't know it? Yikes.

I've read in several places that Sud intended one of the latter episodes ("Missing") as a detour to develop the detective characters. All I could think was, "Shouldn't you be developing them every episode?"

In related Sunday TV news, I enjoyed Falling Skies.

This ending jibes so well with the recent piece on Grantland Klosterman wrote "Are Spoilers Flipping the Script?"

When you watch the 6th sense a second time, you are getting a new movie. Everything, in every scene, has a new feeling to it and it is like there are two movies in one: one you know the ending and the other you don't. That is what makes that movie work so well.

In contrast, with last night's episode and other movies where they try to have a "twist" ending, when you don't have any clues to this "twist", i.e. if you can't go back and pinpoint specific instances where you realize they were giving you the information but you just didn't realize it, you end up feeling cheated.

Despite reading "What's Alan Watching" each week and disagreeing with him, now I feel like all these weeks were wasted and I feel cheated. Very disappointing. However, I am trying to find the DVDs of the original version to watch that so at least all my viewing wasn't for nothing

Shame to hear this because the Danish original - all 20 hours of it - was outstanding. You're probably thinking "yeah right" but, really, it was. And it was the brilliance of the characters that made it so, not simply the extraordinary plotting. I don't know what happened but in the original the detectives, specifically Sara Lund, were really smart. The show was as revolutionary as The Wire, which made us care about the bad guys, in making us care about the victims. Swries 2 starts in the autumn in the UK - where they show 2 hours back to back, in Danish - and I'm chomping at the bit for it.

I haven't seen the Danish version, but one things you absolutely knew would be the case was the U.S. version would change who the killer was simply because they didn't want to copycat the original. And my hunch is that very early decision is where a lot of what's wrong with the U.S. version started. The writers asked, "Who did it?" Someone said, "Let's not figure that out, let's see if we can play around with a bunch of red herrings, then we'll figure out who did it along the way." I wonder, too, how much of that emphasis came from the network because they pushed the series website heavily and a big selling point on the site is an interactive page where you can research all the characters, then vote on who you think the killer is.

This reads to me as an example of what can go wrong at a network that is so green at developing its own content. AMC picked what they thought would be a winner based on the show's overseas success and figured despite a short timeline the team would deliver a twist to keep America guessing. What AMC ended up with was a bunch of people trying to figure out what to do on the fly.
I barely made it through 2 episodes of this show and I actually liked Rubicon.

You lose so much potential for suspense when even the writer's don't know who the bad guy is.

Been on a kick watching all THE THING documentaries on this blog.

Look at THE THING.

Based on a short story. And is also a remake.

And yet kept everyone in suspense with who was infected -- and they knew from the beginning.

On a side note: The problem with not knowing who your ultimate bad guy is going to be, is that it makes it much more difficult to craft a red herring (Or multiple red herrings, as a thirteen episode version of a single Law and Order hour would require).

Instead, you just end up with everyone being luke warm suspects, or blatant false leads.

One of my favorite red herrings is in ARCHER's Skytanic. They give an obvious bad guy. Archer immediately dismisses him. They find out that Malory just called in a bomb threat as a hoax to get a free trip on the blimp -- and that the guy they originally suspected actually was the bad guy.

Not saying it's the same for The Killing, but show some respect for your audience. You're writing a mystery show. So write a damn mystery that's GOOD over the course of 13 episodes!

Sometimes I get the feeling Americans shoot themselves in the foot by believing localised rewriting of something already working well elsewhere will either somehow improve it, or make it 'more accessible' to local audiences.

There are many examples where the local rewriting has failed because network/movie management types assume their audience is too dumb or not sufficiently versed in the ways of the world elsewhere to understand the context/characters or humour. Frankly, I think this is nonsense. All it does is retain American audiences in confinement, which is a shame because it's a world of writing out there/here.

I couldn't agree more.

The Writers Do Not Know Their Own Characters.

It was preposterous in the season finale when one of Councilman Richmond's former lovers kept talking about how "strong" he was, and how he "compartmentalizes his grief." You would never get that from Billy Campbell's performance. The guy is a walking wound. He can't get through a scene without choking up about his dead wife. I would love it if he compartmentalized -- if any of the characters could -- but at this point it's clear that they have only been written a few inches deep. Holder will always be a screwup, Linden will never put family before work, and Mrs. Larson will never ever ever have a good day.

And is anyone else bothered by those Richmond campaign posters? What campaign would ever use those?

I don't mind the season finale. I enjoyed it. However, I am extremely disappointed to learn that they did not know the killer before writing the first episode.

I was hoping I could rewatch season one once the killer was revealed and pick up on clues as early as Rosie being chased through the woods. Guess not. This has me seriously questioning whether or not I'd watch season two.

Might not even care to know who the killer is if there's no connection to the first episode. Very disappointed.

I was along for the ride from the very beginning of The Killing, but midway through the season it started to feel aimless. I knew it would be a slow burn type of show, which I love, but this type of show needs to be tightly wound so that the twists don't seem like someone flipped a coin from week to week to figure out which direction to take the story.

I loved Rubicon for the simple reason that it was so precise and so tightly plotted. There was a constant amount of tension from episode to episode, and the characters were really great. The ending left everything up in the air leading into a second season that AMC didn't see fit to renew which is a damn shame.

How do you renew The Killing, but shelf Rubicon. If you want to see an intelligent show full of tension watch Rubicon if you can find it, don't waste your time on The Killing, though I am starting to watch the Danish original. I hear it is amazing.