'The Killing' recap: It's a shame about Ray

By Blake Hennon

July 29, 2013 12 AM PT

RIP, Ray Seward. You were your own worst enemy.

After killing off Bullet last week and Ray this week, “The Killing” goes into next week’s two-hour season finale without the most interesting characters from this case. The Pied Piper will be revealed. He’ll probably be someone in law enforcement. If it’s done well, well great. If it isn’t – and it’s hard to imagine that revealing the serial killer to be someone close to detectives Sarah Linden and/or Stephen Holder wouldn’t make those two look incompetent – then the boo birds will come out as they did after Season 1.

But before that, there was this week’s “Six Minutes,” which took an hour and felt longer, despite the laudable acting efforts of Mireille Enos, who plays Linden, and Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Seward.

It begins with a practice hanging. It’s teased as being the hanging that’s hung over the whole season by the guard Henderson’s behavior, but the camera pans back to reveal no audience – and the body is a dummy. It feels like cheap tension, especially after the very real tension of last week’s episode.

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Linden visits Seward in prison, 11 hours before he’s to be executed. He’s angry at her lateness and, noting the injuries on her face (inflicted by Joe Mills last episode), asks if her boyfriend has finally had enough. Examining a bag of rings she’s brought, Seward identifies one as the ring he gave his late wife, who he’s been convicted of murdering, and provides details about it, amid continuing to insult the one person who can help prove he didn’t do it.

The detective places a call, and says the ring was among the trophies found in Joe Mills’ storage space (recall that Det. Carl Reddick is the one who apparently discovered the box of rings). She also leaves a message with Holder asking for the Seward case file.

As Seward has breakfast in his cell, guard Francis Becker makes sadistic small talk about the cemetery at the prison – hundreds of men are buried there with no names. “I wonder what that must be like, spending eternity as a nobody,” he tells Ray. “Who’s claiming you, Seward?”

Seward’s son Adrian and his foster mother arrive in the waiting room. When Becker comes in, it’s to retrieve Linden, not the boy. She speaks with Seward– about what she needs to get a stay of execution, about larch trees, about Adrian – for about three minutes, before Becker and other guards roust him out of the visitation room for no apparent reason.

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After a commercial break – apparently an hour in the episode’s time – Linden cites policy chapter and verse to Becker about Seward’s visitation rights and threatens to speak to his captain. It works.

Seward says they weighed him again and that if his neck doesn’t break it’ll take six minutes for him to die. Linden tries to keep hope alive – “The attorney general’s going to call any minute.” The relationship roller coaster continues as he asks her who she’s there to save – him or herself – and recounts his violent past, including beating his wife in front of their son.

When she’s called away, she finds Holder in the waiting room with the case file but still drunk from the day before, when he found Bullet’s body.

Holder steps out for a smoke. And out comes Adrian, playing a handheld video game. His foster mother letting him wander alone seems unlikely. Holder cops to being drunk and refers to himself as a “serial chiller,” and Adrian seems to think he’s cool. O … K …

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Told Adrian is still waiting to see him, Ray says, “You know, I wasn’t even there when he was born. I told Trish to get an abortion. I kind of hated him, actually. I’ll bet you can relate.” Linden, smiling, says she knows what he’s doing, and leaves to speak on the phone with the attorney general.

And there’s Adrian, unattended (again, unlikely). “Can I still see him even if I lied?” he asks, referring to his ID of Joe Mills as the man who killed his mother (Mills was in Alaska at the time). She says that’s not the reason he’s stuck waiting, and that she’s not mad at him. Adrian then says he didn’t want his dad to get in trouble again – that he was the one he saw that night.

Linden tells Seward that the attorney general is considering a stay. After Ray looks forward to saying “Send it back!” to his last meal, she says she knows he was there that night, that he’s not telling her everything. Things get over-dramatic. She heads outside and tells Holder that Seward played her: “He killed his wife. End of story.” She seems to have forgotten that the late Mrs. Seward’s ring was found in Mills’ possession. Holder helpfully says, “What about the ring?” And the kid. She says she’s done.

“It’s like a pattern with you, you know that?” Holder says. “You always leaving. Running. Never stay. Because if you did, then you’d want it. You’d need it. And then you could get hurt.”

The attorney general calls: no stay.

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“It was a nice try,” Seward says when she informs him of the decision, less than two hours before his gallows time. She again presses him to explain the night his wife was killed. He says he came back after leaving and found his wife on the floor, but doesn’t get past that. Instead, Linden, at least somewhat aware of the passing time, is trying to get him to see his son.

“Don’t leave without letting him see you, know you,” she says. “He will carry that with him every time he looks in the mirror – the broken parts of you – because you never let him see the best part.” No word as to what that best part is …

Father and son get ready to see each other – Holder helps Adrian style his hair; Ray straightens his shirt. But Becker takes Ray away before he can see Adrian – visiting hours are up. Linden, who should have known this, pleads for leniency – they’ve been waiting for half an hour; it’s not Ray’s fault. No leniency is forthcoming. Ray is howling that he’ll kill all the guards, and Linden is telling him that his son can hear that.

The moment is robbed of any real drama by the fact that this episode’s writing has contorted itself to keep them apart.

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Becker and Henderson struggle to get Seward toward the gallows. It turns out to be Henderson, who didn’t even want to be on the execution team, who’s the forceful one: “Get up and be a man. Walk!”

Ray looks out the window to see Linden and Adrian. His son waves goodbye, and Ray rights himself and walks forward.

His last words? “Salisbury steak is not steak,” he says of his selected-for-him last meal. “It’s ground beef. Now, let’s get this show on the road, warden.” There’s a half-smile and nod from Linden that’s supposed to be meaningful. It isn’t.

When Becker hesitates in putting the shroud over Ray’s face, Henderson does it instead.

Seward sobs as the noose is placed around his neck. The clock ticks the last 10 seconds to 6 p.m., and he’s dropped. Despite the same-day weighing, his neck doesn’t break. He’s not immediately dead, and Linden watches in anguish. The shot, at least, doesn’t last six minutes.

Ray Seward did himself no favors. Recall that his father mentioned him keeping his mouth shut. It would seem he died knowing things about his wife’s death – and so maybe about the Pied Piper – that he never said.

Suspect Derby

At this point, I figure it’s either Reddick or Skinner.

Lingering questions

What wasn’t Seward saying?

Where’s Kallie?

Last things

Everything I’ve seen that has had Peter Sarsgaard in it has been the better for having him. He was excellent all season long, and in this episode certainly performed above the quality of the material. It was not as much a misuse of him as was “Green Lantern,” which had too little of him (and really, if he was going to be a DC villain, he’d have been better as the Riddler in a Nolan Batman), but it wasn’t an ideal use either.

Oh, and the priest that Seward bloodied in the first episode was never mentioned again.

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