The Killing is now half over and you still haven't watched it

You should really be watching The Killing. Excuse me, You should be watching AMC's The Killing. Is there anything more obnoxious than on television than how AMC tags all of their shows with the channel's name? (Yes.) The sixth episode of the 13-episode first season aired Sunday night. It was very good! What I love about the show, and what I may have mentioned previously, is how slowly the story crawls along. Is it important that we see an entire phone call between Sarah Linden and her son that doesn't really move the plot forward at all? Yes. Do we need to see Holder smoking at the skate park doing nothing but smoking? Yes. Does it seem like this show is taking forever to make the point? Yep! Each episode is one day. And each new episode is one week after the last week. It seems like Rosie Larson was murdered a month and a half ago, but really it's only been six days. My favorite story line is the one of Rosie's family. Most of it is just long shots of her family members being sad and staring at the milk aisle in the grocery store for prolonged periods of time until they're interrupted by the increasingly uninteresting Councilman who's running for mayor. Yeesh. In the beginning I understood why he was a part of the show. His campaign was linked to the murder, but that's been resolved. Unfortunately for him, the main suspect is now believed to be a good friend of him. Unfortunately for us, the guy playing the politician is one of the worst actors on the show. The story lines for him and his campaign aren't very interesting. They seem like drama for drama's sake. Where as the story of the Larsen's depression and the ongoing search for suspects by the detectives are both very interesting. I like the police side of the story. Looking for clues, interviewing people. What I love most about the show though is, as previously mentioned, the Larsens. Rosie Larsen, the murder victim, had two brothers and her parents, oh and an aunt. They are all dealing with it in different ways. The mom (who is way too hot to be in mourning) stays quiet most of the time, but lashes out on occasion. Stan, the dad and maybe my favorite character, is stoic through most of the tragedy. When his sons want chocolate chip pancakes, he is sure to make them chocolate chip pancakes. But, he obviously can't keep his cool, collective nature up, but he can't also show that he's vulnerable. In Episode 5 he stops at a gas station and breaks down crying in the bathroom. It's amazing. We just have one static shot of Stan Larsen crying and falling to the ground, only to then get back up and drive him and his wife home as if nothing happened. The two younger brothers of Rosie's are very interesting. They don't really know how to feel, so they take t out on each other. They call each other "stupid" and "idiot," which Stan doesn't appreciate. In the latest episode, the family goes to Rosie's funeral. They are all respectful. The younger of the two brothers throws a map to their house in the grave and tells Stan's friend and business partner (who is also a pretty good character) the map is "so Rosie can find us, when she flies over." Everyone at the funeral leaves the grave except the older brother. He sticks around for a bit. He looks in the grass near Rosie's grave and sees a millipede crawling around. He then steps on the millipede. I'm really surprised he killed the millipede. Sure, it was an act of frustration, but I would think he's more sympathetic about death since his sister died. That bug has brothers, and parents, too, probably. I'm no scientist. A child would certainly think so. And I think a child exposed to death at such an early age would be more protective of all living things. But also, he's still pretty pissed about the whole His sister being murdered thing. He may have also been protecting his sister. He seems to be the more mature of the two boys, who I'm guessing are probably about 10 and 8. I can't seem to find anything on their ages, but I'm also not looking that hard. The point of this post is that The Killing is very good if you're willing to sit through very drawn-out episodes. The second point of this is that the characters, for the most part, are great.