The best scripted show on television, Mad Men, will be back in less than a month with the much anticipated third season.  If you haven’t seen the show there is still time to catch up! Season one is on demand through some providers and season two just came out on DVD and Blu-Ray a couple of weeks ago. For those who are just watching the seasons over again to make sure you are tuned into every little subplot involving Don Draper’s mysterious past and your simultaneous love and disdain for Peter Campbell, check out the new Mad Men avatar creator, Mad Men Yourself, on AMC’s web site. Make a character to look like yourself, then place it in a bar with Don, presenting the copy your your client Playtex, or returning home to your wife after a long day of work. Below is my own personal mad man.

This post may contain spoilers for season 1 of AMC’s The Killing, but they will be, like the series itself, as vague as possible.

Let me start out by saying that I was on the fence about The Killing as soon as I began to see the “Who killed Laura Palmer Rosie Larsen?” ads all over the TV and the interwebs. Sure, it seems like a fairly generic, yet provocative, question, but when combined with the plot synopsis (detectives search for the killer of a high school girl,) phrases in the  trailers/TV spots like ”Good girl with no secrets… What was she doing with him?” and the Pacific Northwest setting it was impossible for me to not at least imagine this may be a gritty Twin Peaks rip off. Turns out it kinda was… but more on that in a moment.

I began watching and though it was at least good enough to warrant an 45 minutes of my time each week. Five or six episodes in things seemed to be hitting a good stride. …and then I don’t even know. Around halfway through the season I realized I couldn’t even name many of the characters in the show. I had to describe them by gender or relation to other characters. This is a problem. I guarantee I could remember Don Draper’s name by the end of the first or second episode of Mad Men. And I could even spout off Peggy Olson, Bert Cooper, Paul Kinsey, Harry Crane, etc at least by the end of the first season. But sitting here right now typing I can’t remember the name of the female detective in The Killing. I also can’t tell you much about her as a character. She’s a workaholic with a son and a pissed off fiance in California. I could tell you more about Pete Campbell and he had a lot less screen time than what’s-her-face.

The tagline “the deeper you go, the darker it gets” actually turns out to be referring to the character development. This may be the biggest flaw in the whole series thus far. They accomplished in 13 episodes what should have been accomplished in about 6.  The 11th episode, “Missing,” was a massive waste of time (particularly with just two more left in the season.) At the same time it held maybe the best scene of the season, a quick snack break for detectives ginger-works-a-lot and her partner, Detective Holder. I remember his name because I actively attempted to (as I did with all of the characters when I realized I hadn’t naturally absorbed them) and because he is probably the most interesting and character in the show. They have a short philosophical exchange and you learn a little bit more about Holder.  The only problem is that this conversation came at THE END OF THE SEASON. It should have occurred no more than like five episodes in, especially when taking into consideration how little development the writers did. In retrospect I understand why they would chose to place the conversation so late in the season, but shame on them for not trusting their audience enough to connect the dots with a larger gap of time.

Let’s talk about Twin Peaks for a moment now. Aside from the aforementioned parallels, in no particular order here are the ones I can think of off of the top of my head that seem too obvious to be coincidence.

• The  casino out of police jurisdiction
• The prostitutionish ring thing
• The film of Rosie with the bike (substitution for the motorcycle)/the cell phone video of the kids in the basement shack pad
• The of Rosie in the school
• and more junk I can’t remeber

There is no one as awesome as Agent Dale Cooper and no one as terrifying as Bob. And what’s the deal with stealing the ATM surveillance camera bit from Breaking Bad???

Red herrings cease to be red herrings when they are expected and thus predictable. By the end of the first episode I was already clued in to the nothing-is-what-it-seems-ness of the show which kinda killed some of the suspense. When the audience already knows the lead the officers are tracking down is  a dead end it is a lot harder to care about what they are doing. I found myself getting annoyed instead of thrilled. If they had laid off of the deliberately misleading information the reveal in the last 5 minutes of the finale (while still warranting angry responses) would have been more of a shocker. I get that their whole idea seems to be to throw convention on its head. I assume this is why the didn’t actually conclude the only strong arch established throughout the first season. Instead of presenting a soft and satisfying conclusion the writers threw a mostly undetectable wrench into the spokes last minute causing a brand new mess where everything had just been tidied up. If you have been interested in the series, but haven’t begun to watch yet I would highly recomend waiting until the second season is underway, because the lack of satisfaction or resolution at the end of season one currently feels pointless. A year from now we may be able to look back in retrospect and say how immaculate season two was and how necessary it was to conclude the first season abruptly to lay the tracks for a pace-setting second season.  Though I only focused on negative elements of the series I do not hate it. I’m just a little disappointed.

TLDNR

(To Clarify, I thought it was a great ending.  Especially when following a nearly disasterous penultimate episode.)