Feeling gloomy this Friday the 13th? Well, batten down the hatches—you’re in for more rain and soggy cemetery scenes! If you were aggrieved after the letdown of the first season’s finale of The Killing, you won’t be comforted to learn the central question of WHO KILLED ROSIE LARSEN won’t be answered until the end of its sophomore season. The show, overwhelmed by angry boos at its unsatisfying finale, said it had gotten the message and would solve the whodunit in Season 2. Therefore, many viewers expected a quick wrap-up, leading into a new case by mid-season at latest. Well, in an article employing words like ’disrespect,’ ’disappointed,’ ’misled,’ not to mention ’arrogance,’ Omnimystery News now reports:
In a lengthy profile in the January 2012 issue of Written By (Writers Guild of America, West), Veena Sud, who produces the The Killing, her first television adaptation, says she does not make decisions by committee — i.e. the viewers that watch the show and ultimately determine its success or failure — adding, “Our intent was not to mislead or betray. We talked about the fans, and their passion, and all of the stuff that was being said on the internet. But the bottom line is, we close the door and we’re a bunch of people in the room, and our job was, and continues to be, to tell the story that feels right by us.”
The last sentence of the article is the most chilling … at least to us: “For the record, who killed Rosie Larsen won’t be revealed until the end of season two.”
(Not that it matters one way or the other, but Forbrydelsen identified whodunit at the end of its first season.)
If the showrunners aren’t careful, frustrated viewers may drop the show or simply wait to watch the entire 2nd season on DVD—like skipping to the last chapter of a book—and neither of those will generate for AMC the nightly ratings and ad rates crucial to an ambitious original production. Sorry, Rosie.
But from what I can work out, not having watched the American version of The Killing, the first season only takes you about half way through the first season of the Danish Killing. So I can’t see why everyone is so upset. They just ended it on a cliff hanger so people would come back for the second season. Sounds reasonable to me.