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“The Killing” recap (3.8): Try

In this episode of The Killing, Detective Linden sits with a knife to her throat mere feet away from her fellow officers, their flashing lights twinkling through the rain on her windshield. Pastor Mike takes her gun and phone and tells her to drive far away from those lights. And she does.

She manages to keep her police radio on, hoping someone will notice she’s gone missing and can track her whereabouts. She attempts to engage Pastor Mike in a conversation and possibly leave some clues to their whereabouts, but he’s burning with frustration and anger. How dare she second-guess his intentions, which up until this point had been good. He tells her that he’s not some pervert, he cares about these kids. He really sees them. Gulp.

Bullet is at the police station, trying to catch up with Holder. She is in a panic, telling him that Lyric is gone. She says Lyric called to tell her that Pastor Mike was trying to kill her and was taking her to the same place the seventeen bodies were found. Holder tells Skinner they need to search the wooded area by the lake, his source can be trusted.

Linden is stressed out. She’s wearing a particularly uncomfortable sweater, a fake pastor has a gun to her head, and the worst part? Now he’s being a total Judgy Janet about her smoking. All she wants is a damn cigarette, fake Pastor Mike. She tries to connect with him, telling him about her past, growing up in the foster care system.

Back at the station, everyone’s looking for Linden. Dispatch lets them know a radio line is in use: Linden’s line. Holder finds the radio and the search is on.

Pastor Mike begins to open up about his kidnapping arrest in Tempe, back when he was Pastor Mark. He wasn’t kidnapping that girl, he was actually helping her detox from heroin. She lied and he lost everything. Linden tries to weave herself into his narrative by telling him that she lost her son. She feeds him a line about a custody battle, and he seems to buy it. He tells her to pull into an underground parking garage, and impending doom be damned, Linden is having a smoke. She confesses to lying about how she lost her son. It’s nobody’s fault but her own, she tells him. She only has so much to give, and it wasn’t enough. Pastor Mike begins to cry and tells Linden to take him to the water.

They drive into the light of day, which seems to give both Pastor Mike and Linden some clarity. Pastor Mike has nothing to lose and Linden senses that this ride to the water will be his last. She is able to convey some info to Holder and the police about her location by telling a story of a friend who hit rock bottom on the bridge they are heading to. Holder knows where they are because he was that friend. The police spring into action. Linden figures out that it was Pastor Mike who took Angie to the vet to get some help. She screamed when she saw him because she feared going to the hospital and ending up in the system. The blood in his car was hers, because he was trying to save her life. Just as it seems that the tension is realizing and Linden has the upper hand, Pastor Mike sees the radio and forces her to pull over. He drags her to the waters edge, forces her to her knees and puts the gun to her head.

“Please,” she simply says, her eyes watering with fear. Pastor Mike can’t go through with it, so he falls to his knees beside her and prays. The police descend upon the scene, drawing their guns at Pastor Mike. Linden physically stands between the police and the pastor, screaming that he is unarmed, protecting the man who nearly ended her life. Once the pastor is in custody, Linden collapses with shock and relief, and is comforted by Holder. The sky is bright blue behind them, and it’s the first time this season I can recall seeing the sun.

Seward is talking to his lawyer who informs him that he has exhausted his appeals and there is nothing more he can do. Seward tells him he doesn’t want to hang, but the lawyer can offer no words of comfort. He instead asks Seward what he wants done with his remains. Seward tells the lawyer, to contact Linden. As Seward is being led back to his cell, he has a full-blown panic attack. In a rare moment of compassion, CO Becker talks Seward through it, much to CO Henderson’s surprise.

At the station, Pastor Mike is ruled out as a suspect in the Pied Piper murders. The blood in his car was Angie’s which was plausible considering her injuries and he was out of the country during the time frame that the other women were murdered. Lyric also turned up, very much alive and hustling. Pastor Mike never hurt her, she left his home on her own accord. Skinner tells Holder that his source was lying and his words cut through Holder like a knife.

He finds Bullet in the hallway and tosses her tiny frame out of her chair. She protests saying that Kallie is still out there, but Holder is so enraged by her betrayal that he tells her that she is “nothing. A nobody punk ass kid.” She runs off.

Bullet finds Lyric hustling on the street, and Lyric is far from happy to see her. She tells Bullet that she isn’t gay, and certainly doesn’t belong to her. She’s with Twitch, and that’s that. Bullet, holding in the pain from this rejection, tries to score some drugs from the local punks. The dealer is confused because Bullet doesn’t partake in the heavy stuff. He asks her about Kallie and mentions that Angie, the surviving victim of the Pied Piper, was recently there and heading out of town.

Holder lets himself into Linden’s place, bearing bags of Chinese takeout. He tries to gage her how she’s coping, and Linden allows herself a rare moment of demonstrative emotion. She’s thinking about the girls who were killed and how they must have felt so alone in their last moments. She’s also thinking about Seward and how in two days, he will hang for a murder he didn’t commit. The detectives start pouring over Seward’s file for some clue to guide them.

At the prison, CO Henderson is getting ready to leave for the day when he is stopped by CO Becker’s wife. Becker hasn’t been home much since he found out she was seeing another man. She tries to explain herself for some reason to Henderson, loneliness and alienation written all across her face. She mentions Becker’s odd hours and erratic behavior. Henderson tells her he can’t help her, and walks away. This scene feels so out of place and yet telling, that I believe it is the Chekov’s gun of this season’s The Killing.

Bullet catches up with Angie at the bus depot as she’s trying to get the hell out of attempted murder dodge. She tries to convince Angie to help, but the traumatized girl just wants to run away. Bullet knows that Angie will be dope sick soon enough and offers her a hit in exchange for the identity of the man who tried to kill her.

Back at Linden’s, Holder gets a call from Bullet, which he ignores. He takes Seward’s case file so Linden can get some rest and attempt to deal with her harrowing experience from earlier. Bullet, sitting in a diner, leaves a voicemail for Holder. She knows who the killer is. Linden gets a call too, this time, from Seward. He finally tells her that he didn’t kill his wife and gives her permission to speak with Adrian. This may be the only chance for Seward to escape execution.

As Bullet tries and fails again to reach Holder, a car pulls up near the diner. Its driver has his eyes drawn on Bullet. She may know who the killer is, but it looks like the killer knows who she is now too.

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