Firewall & Iceberg Podcast, episode 79: 'Game of Thrones' & 'The Killing' finales and more
Dan and Alan also review 'Combat Hospital' and take on episode 3 of 'Twin Peaks'
Time for what may be the first of two episodes of the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast this week. I say "may" only because our technical problems have been so hellacious of late that I'm not sure Dan or I have the heart to try two podcasts in one week. But at the very least, we got in a very long discussion of the finales of "The Killing" and "Game of Thrones," plus more "Twin Peaks" and a review of ABC's "Combat Hospita." The run-down:
ABC's "Combat Hospital" -- 02:00 - 10:10
"Twin Peaks" -- 10:15 - 33:10
The "Game of Thrones" finale -- 33:15 - 53:30
The "Killing" finale -- 53:30 - 01:25:00
As always, you can subscribe to The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast over at the iTunes Store, where you can also rate us and comment on us. Or you can always follow our RSS Feed, download the MP3 file or stream it on Dan's blog.
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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June 20, 2011 at 7:38PM EST Reply to CommentWow. Regarding the "Killing" segment, this is the first podcast where I found Alan absolutely insufferable and Dan to be measured and reasonable instead of the other way around. What a bigger surprise than the finale itself. Relax, Alan. Your dander is clouding your ability to not leap to groundless conclusions.
dan Yay!
June 20, 2011 at 8:15PM ESTWait. That was an insult.
Oh well. Yay, anyway!
-Daniel
snakehole
June 20, 2011 at 8:19PM EST Reply to CommentI'm with Alan. It's not so much that I'm angered because they didn't reveal the killer to us, what made me wanna pull my hair out was how they chose not to do it. They went out of their way to pretty much dedicate the entire finale to yet again making a character look incredibly guilty, only to trow ANOTHER twist at us. This is absolutely insulting and needles to say terrible, terrible writing. If they had focused on creating interesting characters and making us care about them I'm sure there would be no outrage over not revealing the killer. People just feel tricked, because it was the only thing many of us continued to watch the show. There was little of interest left aside from finding about who did the deed.
Mike
June 20, 2011 at 8:26PM EST Reply to CommentI think Dan is kind of missing the point of why people are mad about the Killing finale not revealing who the killer is. The reason it is frustrating is two fold. For one, it's indicative of the formulaic red herrings that were already tedious in every episode prior to the finale, and more importantly, the show around the mystery was not effective. Sud linked the show up with Mad Men and Breaking Bad in her interview with Alan, and if the rest of the show was up to the quality of those shows, I highly doubt people would be as annoyed about not finding out the result. The reason it was so frustrating is that the show's execution was extremely lacking, which made the only reason many people still tuned in was that 'well, we've seen this much, so I suppose we might as well see who did it', and we didn't even get that.
lil d I agree with you Mike. I wasn't frustrated with the lack of resolution because I thought it violated some promise the show made to me. I was frustrated because it highlighted the show's central flaws, which is that the pacing and plotting were terrible and the same story beats repeated over and over. When you sit down and put together a story for your first season and you decide to allocate episodes 4-9 on a poorly written wild goose chase that eventually clears Bennett Ahmed, then the fact that you couldn't wrap up the investigation in the next four episodes is going to frustrate people. I am not mad at the show because I think it promised me that the investigation would only take 13 episodes. I am mad that the creators and writers made a decision to make the investigation longer that relied on making characters act in totally unrealistic ways, was entirely based on laughably bad police work, and relied on the EXACT same plot as the Bennett episodes– the cops think it’s a guy, despite having crummy evidence they just go and arrest him, and as a result Belko incites violence against someone who is likely innocent. You already told that story once, so telling it again is not enough to justify not telling the story that everyone was waiting to hear.
June 23, 2011 at 12:58PM ESTIn addition, the show and its characters still don't seem to understand the difference between facts that prove someone's guilt and assumptions. The finale gave the best example - all of that math and conjecture and all they managed to learn was that a black sedan was at a gas station near where Rosie was found and the guy heard a girl yelling. Even assuming it was Rosie and the same car, you have only learned something that you essentially knew from day one. Since you found the campaign car with Rosie’s body in the park, the revelation that the car was at a gas station three miles away from that park is not shocking. Not only does that not prove that the hypothetical drive from the casino over the bridge happened (the car could have driven in any direction for those miles before ending up there), it doesn't prove anything about Richmond's involvement in the crime. And then both detectives get mad that their superior officer won’t sign an arrest warrant for Richmond? Nonsense.
Guesser
June 20, 2011 at 8:31PM EST Reply to CommentFrom this podcast and the interview, Sud seems like Simmons' "irrational confidence player." Someone who thinks they can make any shot when in fact their ego entirely exceeds their talent (as Alan mentioned). Probably not a great bet to reward such a player with a max contract (season renewal) and then expect the team to win more games next year (have a vastly improved second season of "The Killing").
Anyway, fun discussion on this podcast. Who says these guys agree on everything?
josh_litten
June 20, 2011 at 9:41PM EST Reply to CommentWow, I don't think I've ever heard Alan more upset about a show than this. It was REALLY fun! And Dan, I appreciated the attempts to play devil's advocate. It was well done. That being said, as a non-viewer of The Killing who missed the boat due to being busy, I do not regret not trying to catch up now.
But onto more important matters:
I am loving the Twin Peaks rewatch. Being an avid Lost viewer, Twin Peaks became like this mysterious monster in the mist for me. Always mentioned, but cleverly obscured. I knew it had a penchant for the truly weird and got the connection to David Lynch, but the only film of Lynch's I have seen is The Elephant Man, so I've missed some of the apparently wondrous weirdness of Blue Velvet among others. Therefore, my initial viewing of Twin Peaks has reveling in the weirdness, the campiness, and the sheer wonder of this odd duck of a series. Dale Cooper is quickly growing to be one of my all-time favorite characters on television, and I may have to watch the rest of the show on Netflix even if you guys only finish the first season.
Lastly, Game of Thrones. I've read the books, so I knew what was coming, but MAN was that a fantastic season of television. Obviously the source material is very strong, but I have complete faith in these people going forward, despite whatever budgetary concerns there may be. The acting is amazing, the directing by Alan Taylor has been top-notch, and that final scene... whoa. It left me breathless when I finished the book, and it still felt like a gut punch (in a good way) last night. So glad to see Alan's enjoying it as much as a newbie. Fascinating reading all your reviews coming from such a different place.
Great podcast as ever, guys. And don't worry about the tech stuff. I never notice it.
Fireflame94
June 20, 2011 at 10:02PM EST Reply to CommentAlan's as mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore.
DB Cooper
June 20, 2011 at 11:19PM EST Reply to CommentVeena Sud gave an interview to Grandland:
"All the people that have been ripping our finale, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my show and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but The Killing not accomplishing its goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point. I can't speak to anything about season two, unfortunately."
MatthewL Is there something about this that I'm not understanding? Because I can find no trace of this Grandland you reference, and searching for this quote on Google only returns me to this comment. Have you got a URL you could provide? Thanks.
June 21, 2011 at 5:19AM ESTsepinwall A)The site is Grantland, not Grantland.
June 21, 2011 at 6:26AM ESTB)It's a joke, paraphrasing a tin-eared speech LeBron James gave after the Heat lost the NBA Finals.
MatthewL Ah, thanks for the explanation. Not being a sports fan, I was unfamiliar with the original quote. I was wondering if it was some kind of joke, if only because I doubted even Veena Sud could be that awful.
June 21, 2011 at 6:52AM ESTDB Cooper Damn typo.
June 21, 2011 at 10:21AM ESTJamesTown Lebron, at least made the Finals.
June 21, 2011 at 12:32PM ESTI bounced The Killing a long time ago.
June 20, 2011 at 11:52PM EST Reply to CommentHey dan,
One week during the twin peaks run, can we heR julee cruise's "falling" aka the theme with lyrics as the podcadts intro music?
Waiting for the cherry stem. Dont remember what ep that is in, but one of tje scenes i remember from the original airing.
mike
June 21, 2011 at 12:29AM EST Reply to CommentApparently, Linden was emailing Alan's "Orpheus" email account repeatedly during the podcast.
anon.z.moose
June 21, 2011 at 2:22AM EST Reply to CommentKilling redux: Alan- My suggestion is that for next season let Dan watch the first three episodes from AMC while you go back and watch the first three from the Danish series.That might set up an interesting conversation since some of the 'Red Herring' criticism could be leveled at the original show. And yet it didn't annoy viewers as much in that case. Could it be that because it was in a foreign idiom English language viewers tended to suspend their usual expectations or is it that the writing was genuinely better? At any rate watching three episodes should be enough to give you a sense of whether some of the blame you put on the AMC show runner is in fact tied to her adhering closely to the Danish original for too long when she should have broken out of that mold much sooner. I think she could have tightened up the story and gotten to whatever the ultimate conclusion will be in one season. Dragging the same case into a second season would be a bad idea even if the story had been done well. Aristotle is looking at his watch.
-Anon.Z.Moose
thebgt
June 21, 2011 at 4:59AM EST Reply to Commentwow... :O
Alan I would like to thank you for introducing In Treatment and Justified to me. Much appreciated.
You lost me today (not that you care I guess).
Nothing in my mind can justify this outburst/review/vitriol/zeal about a rather indifferent and mediocre tv show.
Shakes head...and I am not even a fan of the d@mn show!
Magda
June 21, 2011 at 6:03AM EST Reply to CommentAlan, I think your work is usually excellent, but I'm finding myself frustrated by the Twin Peaks segments on your podcast. They seem to mostly consist of a) listing things that happened b) exclaming "That's so WEIRD!". Where's the in-depth analysis?
Like I said, I think you're generally awesome and I love your blog, but I just wanted to put this one criticism out there.
sepinwall We've done quite a bit of analysis in the first two discussions, including a long chat last week about how Lynch views women. Sometimes, we just like to sit and marvel at the strangeness.
June 21, 2011 at 6:29AM ESTBeyond that - and I imagine Dan would disagree strongly - Lynch is one of those filmmakers where the more deeply I try to analyze what he's doing, the less I enjoy what he's doing. I'm not saying that most of what he does is weirdness for weirdness' sake - I believe he has legitimate, well-thought-out reasons for all of it - but there are a lot of times where trying to parse the meaning of, say, why the dwarf and the Laura doppleganger speak backwards actually takes the fun out of it for me.
Magda Thanks for your reply, Alan. I guess I'm just greedy for your thoughts ;) In any case, if you haven't read it, David Foster Wallace wrote a great essay about Lynch, where he, among other things, discusses Lynch's take on evil. I found it really fascinating, and if anything, it was the kind of analysis that made me appreciate Lynch's work even more.
June 21, 2011 at 7:23AM ESTHere's a link:
http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/papers/wallace.html
MatthewL
June 21, 2011 at 7:13AM EST Reply to CommentI normally listen to the podcast while going to work the day after each episode is release. If last week you had told me that I would sacrifice evening TV viewing to listen to the podcast, and not only that, that I would skip over the discussion of my favourite episode of Twin Peaks in order to listen to a discussion of The Killing of all things, I would not have believed you. But I did, and it was great.
There seems to be a surprising level of criticism aimed at Alan, and I'm not sure why. Personally, I loved the way his passion was so evident. Perhaps it is an indifferent and mediocre show, as TheBGT put it, but it is also a show on the network that airs Mad Men and Breaking Bad, based on a well-received show from overseas. There were reasons to hope for something potentially great. And instead we get this. And to top it all off, he has to talk to Veena Sud being completely blind to what her show actually did? I'd be angry too.
One last point - I don't know if you've seen the interview with Veena Sud on the TV Guide website. There is one quote in the interview that is worrying about season 2.
TV GUIDE: Is the murderer someone we've gotten to know already?
SUD: I can't say.
There we are. She won't commit to whether she's already introduced the killer or not. Given the fact that she was apparently telling the truth at TCA when she refused to commit to providing an answer, one wonders whether we'll eventually meet the killer two episode before he/she is unmasked.
June 21, 2011 at 2:23PM ESTThis Veena Sud person had one creative endeavor to her credit prior to AMC handing her the keys to their project: Cold Case. Cold Case?!!! That show is the absolute antithesis of the "brand" that AMC had built. They tried something different, they hired the wrong people to do it and they failed. Maybe they can salvage something out of season 2 but are we going to be doubly upset if the killer isn't revealed by the third of fourth episode?
"The Killing was what we thought it was!!!! But we let it off the hook!!!"
Clay
June 21, 2011 at 2:06PM EST Reply to CommentWow. I mean The Killing finale sucked hard but I'm really fascinated Alan's level of anger on this one. Between the interview with Sud and this podcast there's a palpable sense of Alan feeling betrayed on some level.
I think a lot of viewers are actually reacting to AMC's track record. They produce a small number of shows and up until now they haven't put out a steaming pile of crap. Now AMC has graduated to full fledged TV network by dropping a flaming turd-bag on our collective doorstep. And is this really that surprising considering that this show comes from the minds of "Cold Case?"
So what's the deal Alan? Was Sud a complete tool during the interview or could you not get past the last two minutes of the episode?
matt_aronowitz
June 21, 2011 at 6:11PM EST Reply to CommentRE: The Killing.Two days later I am shocked that nobody has made this comment anywhere I can think of. Holder framed a guilty man. He concocted the toll booth photo because they would not have been able to arrest him any other way. Richmond was incredibly clever in most of the way he handled the murder.
This is what I got instantly after the finale ended.
Holder saying "he's going down" just meant that the right guy is going down and a lack of evidence won't prevent that.
Am I crazy?
belinda
June 21, 2011 at 6:18PM EST Reply to CommentHow many times is Alan allowed to use the "hey, you watch how many seasons of One Tree Hill?" as a retort to Dan? :D
Just to clarify, I've never watched the show, but am always amazed at the fact that it has a bajillion seasons and is still on (right?).
That being said, I agree with Dan's assessment of The Killing. I was much more pissed about how awful the show is as a whole than pissed at them not revealing the killer (which I already stopped caring about many episodes ago from the suckage of the show).
xina.in.la
June 21, 2011 at 6:57PM EST Reply to CommentDan kept saying, "but at TCA, Sud never said...". I hate to break it to you guys, but most viewers watch television according to how the show teaches them to watch played against the conventions of genre. When a show is good, experimenting with narrative form that tests the boundaries of genre convention can create a bond between the creators and the viewers where there is mutual respect and good faith. Within that ethic, when something "frustrating" (i.e., not adherent to convention) takes place, viewers will often be willing to make the leap of faith and follow a creator into difficult terrain, where narrative desire (i.e., the viewer's expectation) is deliberately frustrated for one reason or another. I'm thinking especially of shows like _The Wire_, _Mad Men_ and _The Sopranos_. But in the case of "The Killing," you get a show playing narratively by the numbers of a very basic form of mystery writing - red herrings and obfuscation - only to frustrate the viewers desire for closure they would expect from any hard boiled dime novel or whodunit with absolutely no ancillary pay-off in having committed to the show. If Sud and Co. wanted to be met half-way by their audience, perhaps they should have given us better character development, more incisive critique of Seattle politics, a deeper philosophy of rain, anything! I was on board with this show in the first two episodes because of the strong art design and camerawork (i.e., primarily aesthetic concerns) with some interest in the characters. After that, I became more and more bored with the formula (red herrring after red herring) and just watched for 1) the "look" of the show, 2) Kinnaman & Sexton, and 3) who killed (boring, dull, butterfly obsessed) Rosie Larsen. The lack of narrative and psychological finesse exhibited by the writers and editors did not merit the inconclusive ending we got, because there was nothing else to invest in. We didn't care enough about the characters to feel connected to them in a case that ends up in a clusterf*ck (again, viz., "The Wire") at season's end. Much less did we feel validated by a probing psychological journey into the mind of any of the characters to merit an end that is realistic, i.e., open and undefined, messy. You don't get to write stock formula the whole time and then suddenly try to be Samuel Beckett in the last act. What exactly about this show was "ground breaking"? I didn't go to TCA, so maybe I missed what Sud said on her own behalf. It sure wasn't apparent to this viewer.
Guesser I laughed when I heard Dan trying to defend the Holder turnabout with "we don't know what phone calls went down between episodes," etc. Reason being, I pictured the Sud team listening to this podcast and frantically copying down notes because Dan's ideas seemed much more clever than anything we saw on the actual show.
June 21, 2011 at 11:18PM ESTGotta side with Alan though over Dan's noble attempt to play devil's advocate on the finale - sorry, but supplemental materials such as Sud at TCA or emails from AMC, neither of which 99.999% of the viewing audience has likely ever seen, should not be a crutch to lean on when the entire gist of the show (and advertising campaign), of which 100% of the audience has seen, very strongly implied that we'd get some sort of closure.
threebirdswithonestone
June 21, 2011 at 7:10PM EST Reply to CommentI've solved "The Killing!" I think...
Check it out...
http://threebirdswithonestone.wordpress.com/
Dasein
June 21, 2011 at 7:18PM EST Reply to CommentOn the show not promising an ending... it's a remake of a show that DID!
Matt
June 22, 2011 at 12:13AM EST Reply to CommentJust want to throw in my 2 cents after listening to the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast for the first time:
Content -- Both Alan and Dan made some rather interesting points and observations, and the back-and-forth devil's advocate stuff was effective at times. That said, there seemed to be a lot of needless repetition, especially when discussing The Killing. Dan especially seemed to be talking in circles a lot.
Style & Delivery: I realize that having 2 people constantly agree with each other during a podcast probably doesn't make for very exciting listening, but Dan's particular way of sounding both petulant and arrogant when making his points was a major turn-off to me. I'm not sure if it was his know-it-all air from having read the GoT books, or his way of refusing to concede Alan's point of disappointment in not finding out Rosie's killer, but I almost had to turn it off a few times because it got pretty insufferable.
I'll give the podcast one more shot, because perhaps it was the topics this week that brought this stuff out, but in my opinion, toning down the high-horse whining would definitely be a plus.
In any case, I'm a big fan of Alan's blog, and like his work a lot. He's also been quite good on the BS Report, which is probably why I wasn't ready for the repetitive bickering on this podcast.
sepinwall Welcome, Matt. You had the good/bad timing to tune into our most contentious podcast in a long time, if not ever.
June 22, 2011 at 7:04AM ESTRU Serious
June 22, 2011 at 8:44AM EST Reply to CommentTo quote Jim Halpert, 'congratulations universe, you win.' I actually agreed with the (still insufferably smug and haughty) Feinberg on The Killing, insomuch as the problem with The Killing both as a series and as a finale episode isn't necessarily that we don't find out who the killer is. That's A problem, but not THE problem. The problem is that the show sucked for at least seven weeks, and the finale sucked equally if not more. It never gave us anything interesting about any character, and contrary to Sud's pompous "We're breaking conventions!" delusion, it ABSOLUTELY followed a formula for 13 weeks. After the pilot, it was basically half hour of nothing, seven to ten minutes of set up on a suspect, two minutes of "Nope he didn't do it," then repeat. The problem with red herrings is really on display here, as a narrative crutch: the more you do it, the more ridiculous the red herrings have to become (DID THIS SHOW REALLY INCLUDE A KIDNAPPING TO SAVE A GIRL FROM CIRCUMCISION PLOT?!?), and the less your consumer trusts you as a storyteller, really diminishing the returns by orders of magnitude the more you keep it up. The story just isn't a good one or well told. She said something like "this is the anti-cop cop show." Does that mean she INTENTIONALLY made the police work in this series fucking retarded? NINE DAYS TO CHECK PHONE RECORDS? NO ONE IN THE ENTIRE POLICE FORCE RECOGNIZED THE LOGO FOR THE ONLY CASINO IN SEATTLE? You mean to tell me they don't have commercials or print ads? They never establish a portfolio of ;people of interest'? And don't tell me "this is how most murder investigations are! Frustrating!" That may be the case, but if a murder investigation is boring, then it shouldn't be a tv show. It should be a murder investigation.
Where I disagree with Feinberg is that somehow it's OUR fault as viewers that this finale is a piece of narrative shit. Because we "expected" too much? Because we aren't on AMC's email list for press releases so we can't dissect the semantics of what they're saying? No. Bullshit. Your entire ad campaign is who killed Rosie Larson. If you don't want to explore that, then change it to WHY ROSIE LARSON?
And I love that this show basically told us nothing about Rosie other than she was a liar, a conspirator to kidnap (good intentions or not), and a prostitute. Sweet move, The Killing! This show's season 2 can absolutely suck it.
And if the guy Holder was talking to in the car WASN'T the the retarded police chief, I'd be very surprised, which is something I never was during season one. Unless, of course, you count Bennet's wife's encounter with Stan at the vending machine. I was floored that she didn't recognize the father of the girl murdered in what was treated like the biggest murder investigation in Washington State history, AND the guy who beat her husband within and inch of his life (mainly because he was stupid enough to NOT try to explain things prior to getting his face bashed in, another Sud trope). I guess the all powerful newspaper didn't cover either story.
RU Serious Also, if that police chief's next sentence is "Are you an idiot? How long do you think it will take the defense attorney to debunk that evidence and completely destroy any case against this suspect?", I actually WON'T be surprised.
June 22, 2011 at 9:20AM ESTAnt
June 23, 2011 at 3:57AM EST Reply to CommentGreat input by Feinberg with this episode. He was spot on about the array of satisfying character arcs in season one of Thrones (SO satisfying). And having heard/read Alan and Ryan + Ryan's eruptions re. The Killing, it was constructive of Dan to try to reframe the discussion and introduce a different perspective.
As someone who hasn't seen the US version of The Killing, but has seen the Danish version, I've found it a strange experience to listen to all the criticisms regarding the AMC adaptation. Not to let AMC/Sudd off the hook, but so many of the problems that you guys identify with the AMC version are present in the Danish version.
Danish version, for example, includes: stupid, stupid police work, REALLY annoying mother of the victim, pathetic red herrings, plus the tedious this-week-this-guy-definitely-did-it-but-next-week-this-different-guy-definitely-did-it ad infinitum.
But I am confused to hear reports about how BORING the US version is. 'Nothing happens', has been a frequent refrain from US critics. Yet while the Danish version is as dumb is tree bark, it IS often pant-wettingly EXCITING (24-style). How the hell did Sudd/AMC boil down a 20-part tightly-coiled season into 12-part meh-athon?! (Other differences: Euro Lund is WAY hotter!)
Keep up the good work, boys.
Alf
July 6, 2011 at 6:36PM EST Reply to CommentOnce upon a time, you could get Michael J. Anderson to record an answering machine greeting for you. http://www.twinpeaks.org/faqprod.htm
Alf
July 6, 2011 at 6:59PM EST Reply to CommentConan O'Brien was in that SNL parody of Twin Peaks. That skit is also notable (I think) because they make a point of how the show doesn't have enough women to play all the female parts. Only two women were on the show at the time, which is absurd. http://www.kylemaclachlan.com/viewer.php?id=4
Also excellent are the Twin Peaks references on The Simpsons.