The Appeal of The Killing

Bambino and I love, love, love our Law and Order. It's kind of like Sex and the City in that one of the main characters of the TV crime drama is New York itself. Nearly half the fun is identifying where they're shooting and whether or not they're being true to the location (I recall an episode where they actually had to spruce up a spot I used to hang out in to make it a convincing "dive bar").

But in watching the two-hour premier of AMC's The Killing the other night, I began to better understand what's wrong with Law and Order (besides the bad acting) and other popular dramas in the US and, to a larger extent, our expectations in all our diversions (art included).

Based on the wildly successful Danish television series Forbrydelsen, The Killing takes things really, really slow. Exploring a crime that would not only have been solved and brought to court, but had three or four plot twists thrown in for good measure on Law & Order in 1/20th of the time, The Killing barely moved at all in its first two hours. There's a murder revealed and a host of suspects introduced, but you know you're very far away from learning who did it. Still, what grips you in this series (and it's insanely gripping) is that they slow down long enough (and have good enough actors) to let you feel the agony of the family, almost smell the fear of the suspects, really understand the torn allegiances of the cops (to their families vs to their jobs) in a much more convincing way than they do in all the other films and TV shows that seem to have long ago traded in good storytelling for a bag of quick tricks.

Just one gorgeous example was the scene in which the parents of the murder victim tell her young brothers that she's dead. It was devastating, because it was so true to that moment and it took all the time you really would in real life to share such horrific news. Rather than setting up the next bad one-liner pun for the lead cops, The Killing is busy setting your hairs on end by placing you in that position...showing you (rather than glibly telling you) how it feels to be that person.

So how do I connect this to art? Essentially, it's made me more seriously wonder if we're too accepting of punny one-liners and/or simply rushed-through explorations, when what would really knock our socks off is some slower, more carefully considered, more conceptually rich and engaging efforts. This ties in, in my opinion, to how we've let expectations develop that a recent MFA grad should be able to live off their art shortly after graduation. How can you possibly offer up slowly considered, deep work if you've barely lived outside your parent's home and you've barely had time to let the varnish dry on the new series you've rushed to market? Perhaps if you're a phenom you can, but how many of those are there really?

The problem with expecting consistently high quality (in both the art and TV realm), I know, is how much time and space there is to fill up. If there were fewer galleries, fewer museums, and/or fewer channels, would we see better work in them?

Arguably yes.

Also complicating this is how freaking expensive it is to produce and/or present any such efforts, leading to the lowest common denominator winning the day as just common sense in recouping one's investment.

And yet, there it is...The Killing...stealing rave reviews from nearly every quarter...let's hope it sets a trend.