Missing the Point on "The Killing"

The AV Club looked back the the just-concluded first season of the AMC drama "The Killing" and had some significant problems with the show. Meredith Blake makes some good points here, but also some that are, in my judgment, not so good because I think they misconstrue the intent of the show.

While I liked the ambiguity of the season finale, I will concede that I seized upon a number of things noted in the article myself while watching. But in the end I didn't really see the program as a "police procedural" in the way that CSI or Law & Order are, so the plot holes didn't bother me in the same way. I view The Killing as less about the details and nuance of criminal investigation and more like a soap opera where the unpredictable (and far fetched) twists and turns are the point. I think Blake's comparison of the show to Twin Peaks was valid:

This episode once again invited (negative) comparisons to Twin Peaks which, like The Killing, ended its first episode without revealing the identity of Laura Palmer’s killer. Frustrated viewers abandoned the show in its second season, then ran for the hills once the mystery was solved. What I’m wondering is, will anyone watch The Killing next season?

I certainly will, just as I stuck with Twin Peaks. The same thing is true of both shows: It's not so much about the crime and the march to justice as it is about the adventure of the journey. Twin Peaks, to me, was an absurdist comedy, not a cop show. In a similar way, The Killing is less a cop show than it is a thriller, a program more concerned with surprising the viewer than with the details of police investigation. Given that, my suspension of disbelief was broader, taking it out of the context of a standard "who-done-it" and putting in a different class of entertainment. Viewing "The Killing" through the same lens as Blake would be like watching Psych or Monk as procedurals--that isn't the point of those programs and, I think, neither is that the truest intent of The Killing.