Another episode and another prime suspect comes to the fore in The Killing. Rosie's teacher Bennet has the police circling in on him following Linden's discovery of some rather creepy letters from him in the murdered schoolgirl's bedroom.
If that wasn't enough evidence to be getting on with, Holder has a confirmed sighting of Rosie with Bennet at the end of the 108 bus route, where she had been mysteriously hanging out before she was killed. We may as well bang him up and lock away the key right now. Or perhaps not.
The Killing loves a good quick twist and episode four has them by the bucketload. It turns out that Kris and Jasper, the two snivelling youngsters caught red-handed on video doing naughty things with Rosie last week, are actually in the clear.
The girl in the video is Rosie's best buddy Sterling, who has been doing a dreadful job of keeping it secret by running around in a blind panic and weeping every five minutes. She's now got it all out of her system and all the young kids appear to be out of the frame. For now.
Over in the Richmond campaign, the biggest twist is that Jamie, who we thought had been axed by the Mayoral candidate last week, is in fact working as a double agent... as far as we can tell. Jamie and Richmond have a little secret meeting, where it is revealed that the politician knew all along that it wasn't his aide making the leaks ("If you wanted to screw me, you'd have found a smarter way to do it"). So for now, Jamie and Richmond are in cahoots.
Where this leaves Richmond's bit on the side Gwen remains to be seen. Gwen is her usual shady self, meeting up with her father (the ever reliable - Alan Dale), to arrange some murky deals for the campaign trail. Corrupt politicians and spin doctors doing favours for money - who'd have thought it?
What to Read Next
Elsewhere, Linden's faltering romance and postponed wedding (by far the most tedious element of the show) rumble onwards. Far more interestingly, we see more of the unravelling and spiralling descent of the Larsen clan. Following her bath splashing antics last week, Mitch still looks slightly unhinged and on edge whether it's in church or at her daughter's school.
Stan meanwhile has cash flow problems and is doing an unconvincing job of ignoring some big secrets in his past. With debts racking up, a secret second house and a costly funeral on his hands, he meets up with a dodgy fella from his past - Janek.
Janek helps out his old buddy with a bumper wedge of notes, but not before an exchange that sheds very little actual facts on Stan's dark past, but piles on the intrigue. "Family always comes first," teases Janek. "We were never family," thunders Stan. We don't think Janek is on Stan and Mitch's Christmas card list.
Did you notice...
- "25 years ago, I took a ride on a bus and never got off," said Richmond, explaining how he ended up moving to Seattle. Was his remark a clever signpost from the writers to remind us of the 108 bus that Rosie disappeared on?
- Yes, Bennet was the man in the basketball pictures that Holder found linking him to Rosie. But did you notice the name of the trophy cabinet - Richmond. We're just saying...
- We enjoyed the nice Belle & Sebastian interlude on Sterling's iPod. The twee Scottish indie merchants were the last people we'd expect to hear in an AMC murder thriller.
Favourite quotes
- Richmond: "If you wanted to screw me, you'd have found a smarter way to do it."
- "That junkie in there looks better than you do, so clean yourself up and put on a suit." Someone finally spotted that Holder could do with a wash
- "Your way, is that what you call sleeping with your candidate?" Neighbours/Lost/OC legend Alan Dale steals the episode with his one scene
> 'The Killing': El Diablo - recap
> 'The Killing': Pilot/The Cage - recap
