As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

 Last Week: The WB’s Supernatural

Warning: spoilers through the season two finale of The Killing are more or less guaranteed.

And so we go from the series with an entirely nomadic sense of place to a series that is very much rooted in place: in this case, a moody, overcast Seattle. That initial, nearly still shot overlooking the calm lake in the pilot does wonders in establishing both the tone and the location before a single word has been uttered, or a single body shown. Unlike Supernatural, The Killing doesn’t bother with prologues. Solving the Rosie Larsen case is the focus here (as it should be) and although our protagonist Sarah Linden has an unlimited supply of skeletons in her closet, we’ll meet them later in the season—all in good time. So much of this show is about secrets, and all of the characters have them in spades: the suspects, the victims, and especially our two leads, Detectives Linden and Holder. Much of the intrigue in watching the show as the episodes unfold is witnessing the lengths they’ll all go to protect those secrets, both from the other characters and from the viewers watching from home. This becomes more and more apparent as the season progresses, but we’ll revisit that later.