Spoiler alert: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 6 of AMC's "The Killing," titled "Eminent Domain."
I'm not really a huge fan of assumptions (because when you assume ... ) but I'm gonna go ahead and say the writers on "The Killing" have some deep-seated parent issues. For the past two weeks, we've been dealing with the fallout of absent and neglectful parents: whether it's winding up in prison, sleeping in a closet, becoming teenage prostitutes or just projecting your feelings about being a crappy parent onto other crappy parents.
However, it also seems to me that the writers might be gearing up for some degree of redemption for our bad parents, especially through the Danette and Seward storylines. But before I continue to get philosophical like Holder, let's get started with this week's recap.
Holder and Linden questioned Angie together at the hospital, but they made very little progress. Unfortunately, Angie never saw the killer's face, despite Linden's insistence that she should be able to identify Joe Mills from the mugshots. The only things that Angie remembered are the killer's eyes and that he insisted on "saving" her. Let's keep that tidbit of information filed away for later.
Our first candidate for parental redemption this week was Kallie's mother Danette, who somehow managed to escape the clutches of Joe Mills and showed up at the police station. Apparently arriving cold, wet and hysterical at a police station makes you look cracked out and/or crazy and not desperate for help, so it wasn't long before Danette was arrested for disorderly conduct (I assume), despite saying that she needed to speak to Detective Linden.
Later, when Linden visited Danette in an interrogation room - probably intent on giving her more crap for her bad parenting - she found that Danette didn't need any reminders. She was obviously feeling guilty for turning out her daughter the night she went missing, and she reminisced about Kallie as a baby and trips to the water they took together. She told Linden that Kallie would always run away but come back, and the heartbreaking unspoken truth between the women is that Kallie may not come back this time. After being released, Danette tracked down Bullet (or Trigger as she renamed her) to help her find her daughter. This led to some awkward bonding between the two, as they silently acknowledge that Kallie may not be alive.
After last week's failed attempt to get Seward to agree to see Adrian, Adrian's foster parents showed up at Skinner's office to rip Linden a new one for contacting Adrian in a semi-stalking manner. They claimed he's regressing and sleeping in the closet again, a fact which Linden wasn't aware of before. She grabbed Holder to visit the scene of the Seward crime, where Holder started wondering aloud if they were approaching the case all wrong. They kept trying to look at the case from the perspective of the victims, but maybe they should start looking at it like the killer and go after what he would, he suggested. Once Linden got them into the apartment, she realized that Adrian would've been able to see the killer from his sleeping nook.
As for Seward, he lost his best friend in prison when Alton decided to hang himself. As Seward continued his quest for redemption, he decided to meet with his father, who's also in prison. We found out that his father sent him the razor blade in the bar of soap a few years back, and the elder Seward told his son that he's proud of him making Seward remark that there's nothing noble about dying in a jumpsuit.
Because she couldn't reach out to Adrian's foster parents anymore (they kinda hate her a little bit), Linden visited Seward in jail again. She told him that she needs his help to see Adrian and she knows he didn't kill his wife, an admission that enraged Seward. He only has 12 days to live and now is when she realizes that she was wrong about him? Understandably, Seward walked away angrily.
With the visit to Seward leading nowhere, Linden joined Holder at the police station, where he was looking at the pictures of the victims. They decided to visit Beacon and Pastor Mike again (or Pastor Mark as I like to call him - oops!) where they realizedthat the pictures he has on his wall looks like their wall of victims. Have Linden and Holder found the serial killer?
Random notes and observations:
The most heartbreaking line of the episode (and there were several) was probably Angie asking if she could still get married with a missing ring finger.
Did Reddick really call Angie a "four-fifths of a handjob"? Yes, yes he did. And now I hope he dies a horrible miserable death. Douchiest character ever!
Yes, I was mad at Holder for laughing at Reddick's joke. But how can you stay mad at a man who bums a cigarette off an elderly patient he calls "vintage playa"?
Although Bullet looked happy after sharing a kiss with Lyric, I see nothing but heartbreak if Bullet gets her hopes up. Lyric will be back with Twitch in a heartbeat if he comes back.
After a two-week break, we're back to mentioning Holderisms. Tonight's nominees include:
"Yo, don't get handsy. I've got a girlfriend, okay?"
"So we've been going at it all Copernicus when we need to be Galileo on this bitch, you feel me?"
"Don't stroke out on me. You know hire-backs ain't in the health plan."
So it looks like Linden and Holder are questioning Pastor Mike next week. Do you think he's still a red herring? Let us know in the comments below!
"The Killing" airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.