I can’t really figure out if the endgame being presented in ‘The Killing’ makes any sense, but I find myself not really caring at this point. As long as the killer is revealed and I don’t have to see Mitch anymore, I’m good.

And so we begin the two-part season finale, where we’re promised that Rosie Larsen’s killer will be revealed, all wrongs will be righted, and maybe, just maybe, Linden will buy a couple new turtlenecks to celebrate.

Day 25

Can you believe it’s been 25 days since someone (Jamie and Gwen?) stuffed Rosie Larsen into a trunk and sunk it to the bottom of a lake? This case would’ve been labeled “cold” in any other reality, but detectives Holder and Linden pressed on. They took on faceless conspiracies (another red herring), by-the-book bureaucrats and unwilling Larsen family members who were much more belligerent to the police than they really should’ve been. Now it’s all about to pay off. The story has come full circle and it looks as if Jamie and Gwen are in the detectives’ sights.

My favorite part of this episode is the writing loophole that’s created so that Linden and Holder can work furiously, unencumbered by pesky rules, up until the last episode. This whole time they’d been mired down in bureaucratic nonsense, yet now, with one visit to the mayor, Linden is able to extricate herself from the past, what, ten episodes of slogging through this investigation with Carlson nipping at her heels. Now she’s free to scowl at as many people as she wants until she finds out the truth. Even Jack is gone, so he won’t be mucking up the investigation either. It’s just Linden, Holder, and a whole bunch of cigarettes now.

I’m still trying to understand if any of the overall picture that’s being painted about Jamie being the killer makes much sense. I’m sure it does in a roundabout way, but I’m not sure I want to go back and watch everything from the beginning to see if it all connects. That’s how I felt with ‘Lost’ too. I just went with it as the story progressed. Going back to check out facts and details about the story seemed like too much work. I’m going to take the writers’ word for it that Jamie being the killer actually makes some kind of sense. I guess it will probably all be revealed during the inevitable monologue in the next episode, as Jamie spills the self-righteous beans about always being there for Richmond and about how he killed that girl for his own good. I’ll bet you anything the phrase, “Everything I’ve done, I did for you!” comes out of Jamie’s mouth at some point in the next episode.

Mitch is back home, but man is she late to the party. Then she has the gall to start pushing her weight around like she totally didn’t walk out on her husband and two kids. I wonder if she’ll ever tell Stan, “Hey, I almost adopted this runaway girl because she reminded me of Rosie. For a moment there, I cared more about some weirdo stranger than my own boys. Oh, and I slept with some random dude at a sleazy motel. So, what did you do while I was gone?”

In this week’s random side note that may or may not lead to anything, we learn that Chief Jackson is a really mean lesbian. Oh, and why do people always leave incriminating photographs of themselves and other people on the wall in such conspicuous places? The old, “Hey, I recognize that person!” photograph routine really shouldn’t be a major plot-turning device anymore.

The network should’ve played the two-part finale back-to-back. How can it be called a two-part finale if it still airs in separate weeks? Anyway, I look forward to seeing this mystery draw to its final conclusion.