Moment of Goodness: Holder Gets Played, The Killing “My Lucky Day” 

I LOVE when a show takes something that I dwelled on for a hiatus and then hands my ass to me about what I thought I knew. Case in point: the closing moments of The Killing‘s season one finale firmly planted the idea in Linden’s mind, and in ours, that Holder was dirty. That he’d framed Richmond.

It was enough to get Linden off a plane, send her to fearfully confront her captain, and leave her son, Jack in his care. When we pick up with Holder, we get limited snippets of conversation between he and his sponsor and former boss, Gil, so that if we’d already decided Holder was guilty, here was more proof. That holds for most of the first hour, and then we get a little tease that maybe Holder’s not on board with whatever he’s involved in.

The Larsens have Rosie’s backpack delivered to their doorstep and Holder arrives to investigate. When his captain gives him a different contact in forensics to hand the bag off to, he’s suspicious. So he swaps it and waits, and the results his captain reports back to him are run of the mill and noninflammatory, but there shouldn’t be anything to report at all.

Holder takes that back to Gil, and Gil annihilates him. He pushes every button in revealing that Holder had been played–Holder implicated Linden in requesting the bridge photo, he cut corners to get something on Richmond, he’s got a rep as a dirty tweaker, and Gil only helped him get his detective’s shield because he’s a patsy.

As Gil’s betrayal jumbles through his mind, Holder finally realizes why Linden’s been skittish and distant and dodging him since she got back (or didn’t leave), and why she was terrified when she found Jack with him. He desperately needs to reach her and when he finds her, she won’t open the door to him. He collapses in the hall, leaving his shield behind on the floor before he finally wanders away. Linden listens on the other side of her door until his steps grow quiet.

Earlier, she’d told the new captain she knew the Richmond pic was a fake and that she wanted to work alone to solve the Larsen case, that she didn’t want to be paired with Holder. He tells her it’s not her call. So, at some point she’s going to have to hear him out.

So. Much. Good. I did not even see that twist coming and I was so glad about it because it meant Holder was still on the right side. It also made the whole first hour need a rewatch. I felt bad for Holder because he’d obviously trusted Gil like family, and I was mad for the void between him and Linden and how it crashed over him when he realized what she must have thought. I don’t know if he was supposed to be off the wagon in that last scene, but I really hope not.

Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos were awesome as ever. I just want them on the screen at the same time. Watching them separately sort of flail made it abundantly clear that Holder and Linden need to get right with each other. They better be talking to each other by next week’s episode’s end.

The Killing two-hour season premiere repeats tonight (Sunday) at 11:05 pm/10:05c and throughout the week on AMC and new episodes resume next Sunday at 9 pm/8c on AMC.