In its first episodes, The Killing powerfully evoked the anomie that settles over the bereaved—the miasmic sense one has of walking through water. Mitch, about to take her kids to school, runs into the house to get something, leaving the car on, exhaust filling up the garage. She forgets her boys, leaving them dangerously exposed until her sister comes home and finds them. The show’s writers elide any confrontation between the sisters, allowing us to participate by proxy in Mitch’s daze. At other moments we see Mitch in bed as her two young sons make breakfast for themselves, heading out to buy milk on their own; or smoking cigarettes and staring out windows, in a bathrobe, hair messy, scenes that verge on cliché but get at early grief’s claustrophobic exhaustion—the way it rises and subsides; the confused realization that though the world has been utterly changed, chores remain to be done, for the world insists on continuing, to one’s indignation and despair.

In its first episodes, The Killing powerfully evoked the anomie that settles over the bereaved—the miasmic sense one has of walking through water. Mitch, about to take her kids to school, runs into the house to get something, leaving the car on, exhaust filling up the garage. She forgets her boys, leaving them dangerously exposed until her sister comes home and finds them. The show’s writers elide any confrontation between the sisters, allowing us to participate by proxy in Mitch’s daze. At other moments we see Mitch in bed as her two young sons make breakfast for themselves, heading out to buy milk on their own; or smoking cigarettes and staring out windows, in a bathrobe, hair messy, scenes that verge on cliché but get at early grief’s claustrophobic exhaustion—the way it rises and subsides; the confused realization that though the world has been utterly changed, chores remain to be done, for the world insists on continuing, to one’s indignation and despair.

posted : Friday, June 3rd, 2011