My first thought after watching the finale: I’ll bet the Danes had a better finale than that shit.
Well, it did have a second season, but with a completely new murder & mostly new characters & setting. However it seems like the US decided to break up the Danish first season into two halves…
Well that was a frustrating ending.
Turned out to not be a very good show. I guess that’s the danger of AMC pretending some random staff writer from Cold Case is a genius auteur. It’s a shame they didn’t hire someone who knew what they were doing.
I didn’t hate it. I am somewhat shocked that they overlooked quite as many blatant, obvious avenues of investigation as they did, so that’s a little shaky, and if they’re trying to pitch a politician as a serial murderer who’s just now getting started (because the Larson job was not planned under their current theory, wherein Rosie went screaming off into the woods), it’s kind of a hard sell. I’m having a hard time reconciling some of the descriptive points about the killer (specifically, I remember somebody accusing Orpheus of being “sweet,” which is not an indication I have ever gotten from The Candidate), but I’m still on board. I’m a little bit annoyed that they didn’t completely close up this specific line of investigation in the season, but Veena Sud promises totally for real this time no fingers crossed or nothing that we solve the mystery in the second season, so I’ll give her enough rope to hang herself. At the very least, the largely bottled episode where she and Holder went searching for her kid was spectacular enough for me to give them a little bit of room to range.
However, what the hell is with this woman and people who were on Battlestar? Is she one of those weird nerd groupie types or what?
I hope they solve this murder in episode 1 or 2 of the second season and then move on to something else. I guess they had two episodes cut for the finale and went with the “we got renewed woohoo” one.
Read the interview, so thanks for that link a few posts back, and I agree with a lot of the points the writer makes in his finale review. What annoyed me about it so much was not that she thought of herself as breaking conventions, but that she has no idea how to actually write the conventions she thinks she’s breaking. Kudos for trying to do an anti-cop show, but you still have to get the cop part right. Kudos for trying to allow us the chance to get to know politicians in the race, but you still have to be able to bring some degree of truthful detail to that process so I feel like you actually know something about that. Such a superficial, tin-eared depiction of a political race.
Also from the finale review, I agree 100% that the show was nothing but weak, convoluted red herrings. There’s no actual investigation to follow unless you count the 10 minutes of real police work that occurs in the last few episodes when they actually do something logical.
This show could have been an interesting marriage between Twin Peaks and The Wire and it failed pretty badly on most fronts. I’m really curious to see how many people stick with the show next season if they try to stretch the Larson murder itself across another 13 episodes.
Part of it is just the Vancouver acting community available. There’s a bunch of Stargate people on the show, too, and Linden’s son is played by the young Shawn Spencer from Psych.
The Danish first season was 22 episodes, so perhaps the 2 US seasons together will make a complete story. However, I’m out… I won’t bother watching season 2 until it’s over and people tell me it’s worth it.
Yeah we haven’t bothered watching the finale and I doubt we’ll watch season 2. Too many red herrings, too little actual police work that panned out…I just don’t really care. If they’re hoping that I’ll be shocked when the person they didn’t investigate turns out to have done it…no. It’s just not a fun mystery because it’s so haphazard. This week we investigate this guy! This week these weak clues we have point to this guy! Neither of these guys turns out to have done it! ARE YOU NOT IN SUSPENSE?!
No, I’m just annoyed.
My favorite episode was 3rd to last (IIRC) which had nothing to do with the main plot but was all about Linden looking for her kid.
See - we’re not crazy. That was an absolutely terrific piece of television.
I really do think it’s going to end up on a lot of year best of lists. It’s tight, contained, effective, and by the end I felt kind of like what the character felt, which I assume was the intent. It’s definitely not for everybody, but it’s pretty damn spectacular if you’re into that kind of thing.
It is my belief that people liked that episode because it actually resolved SOMETHING in one episode. Which, to me, points out the huge failing of the rest of the series that doesn’t resolve anything.
I hated that episode, but now I think that’s unfair because it’s not like it was taking away from the central plot. Which goes nowhere. Then again, I thought it was stupidly obvious who he was with from the beginning and I can’t believe she didn’t think of it.
She’s a god damn terrible detective.
I think I’m going to switch over to the Danish version and start again. (Made easier by the fact that I can read and understand spoken Danish.)
watched the final episode last night.
ugh.
just ugh.
I’m going to chime in against the crowd and say . . . meh . . .
It wasn’t a horrible disappointment to the GF and I, just a meh moment.
Arise, O Thread!
So does the Danish series have this last-minute fake-out, and the Jack Ruby moment?
The Danish series had more episodes, which is her (Veena Sud’s) reasoning behind why the first season didn’t wrap up the way they said it would. Which implies that the next season is going to abruptly change cases two thirds of the way through.
So if you thought you were just gonna catch a few episodes, find out who the killer was and drop out, then think again.
“For the record, who killed Rosie Larsen will not be revealed until the end of season two.”
when is season 2 coming? (North Americas)