This story arc would have been better served if it transpired over a tighter six episodes. In so many episodes, the story is allowed to wander. The side roads are interesting (and contain some of the very best acting, especially from Regina King and Russell Hornsby), but they distract from the main story line.
I found that I could not draw a parallel between a real life white police officer shooting an unarmed young black man in the back with a fictional white police officer driving in a bad snowstorm, while taking a frantic call his wife is going into early labor, accidentally hitting and killing a black teen on a bike. The real-life event, murder; the fictional event that drives the series, an unfortunate accident. This was the wrong plot device if the show meant to make a really strong statement about police killings of young black males.
I like Veena Sud's flawed heroines, both in The Killing and here. Personally, I'm all done with the male antiheros littering TV. I now find them boring and unwatchable. I only wish the KJ character here didn't clean up so good between her bouts of binge drinking. She seemed too clean and healthy when she was sober. I've known a couple of alcoholic women and they never could quite pull themselves together when sober. Even at their best, you could see them desperately trying to hold on. But not KJ. She seems at times like two different characters. I don't know if the flaw is in the writing or the acting. But honestly, I think a stronger actress could have been cast in the role.
For what it's worth, I never watched The Killing when it was broadcast (had no TV at the time), so I later stream binged it. I had no problems with the end of the first season, probably because I immediately went from watching the last show of the first season to watching the first show of the second. It likely played much better that way. So animosity about that show was absent from my viewing of this one.
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