Get Your Greek On
“He will steal your money and then stab you in the balls,” warns Tom Drexler [Patrick Gilmore], a wealthy, powerful Seattleite. Drexler makes this assessment of Mayor Adams [Tom Butler], the incumbent, but the stab-you-in-the-balls comment calls up Cronos, the ancient Greek god who castrated his father Uranus and took control of the universe. Cronos and Mayor Adams have a number of similarities besides ball stabbing; they both have to worry that younger challengers will grab their place and power. Cronos tried to thwart his own foretold ruin by swallowing each of his children after they were born; Mayor Adams consumes resources/tax dollars in a way that weakens the people who most need help and change.
But the paradigm requires that a young upstart takes down the powerful and corrupt: Cronos's son Zeus, whose mother raised him in secret after feeding her husband a blanket-swaddled stone, usurps his father, just as the handsome and vibrant Councilman Richmond hopes to remove Mayor Adams from office. The details change; the stories never do.
One thought that occurred to me on the first night of the series—one reinforced every episode since—is that my own parents would not react the way the Larsens do. It’s not that my parents don’t love me; my family just doesn’t do such physical and single-minded displays of emotion. My father would never try to barrel his way past a police blockade, nor would he crumple to his knees in tears. My mother would be upset, but her grief would compete with annoyance that my murder had inconvenienced her schedule and embarrassment that I had died in such a public manner.
We love Mitch and Stan because they are idealized depictions of how we would want our own parents to mourn us. Poor Papa Bear, who can’t afford a new dishwasher in the series pilot, now must ensure that his Goldilocks has the just-right casket, for this time her run through the forest did not conclude in a successful return home.
Mitch’s grief follows an even more ancient pattern, that of Demeter suffering the loss of her daughter Persephone, whom Hades kidnapped to the underworld. Like Demeter, she has shut down. If mortal Mitch had Demeter’s power to denude the trees and gray the skies, I believe she would, all the rest of us humans be damned. A nice touch is that The Killing is set in October when the weather has provided the physical consequences of Demeter’s sorrow.
This is the real gift Michelle Forbes brings to a role. Her performance never gives us a filtered or diluted sip from the archetype; it flows straight from the wellspring. Think Maryann of True Blood [chaos personified] or Pen Verrity of Durham County [not an Andrea Yates or Susan Smith, but the intelligent and complicated Medea]. When Rosie's BFF Sterling Fitch [Kasey Rohl] finds Mrs. Larsen in the school hallway, the first embrace shows a prototypical mother nurturing a hurt child, but notice that Sterling does not surrender in the second embrace—"I’ve got to go," she insists. Perhaps she knows more about Rosie’s death than we realize, and her guilt makes her pull away. Or perhaps she hears the unspoken words in Mitch’s head: “Why not you instead of my Rosie?” And if Mitch had the power and divine connections of Demeter, you can imagine her dragging Sterling to Hades as trade for her daughter back. Plenty of precedents for such a negotiation exist in the mythology.
An Aside: That I like Admiral Cain of Battlestar Galactica has always bothered me. To the humans who have survived the Cylon invasion, the Admiral is a bitch boss, not worthy of esteem. But what about the billions of citizens of the Twelve Colonies who died? Statistically, if I had existed in this fictional civilization, the Cylons would have exterminated me along with almost everyone else. I would not be aboard either the Pegasus or the Galactica having to deal with Admiral Cain’s questionable leadership. I would instead be wanting my death avenged. As the Cylons are “children” of humans, what I would need are the Erinnýes, or ancient Greek Furies, creatures who will, for example, chase and punish offspring who have murdered their parents. That is exactly the job Admiral Cain has undertaken in BSG and the reason many fans do not loathe the character. We recognize the vengeance she is providing for the billions who did not survive.
Yet Another Special Message to Mayoral Candidate Darren Richmond
Sorry. I apologize. I underestimated you last week. I'll try not to let that happen again.
Conspiracy at IMDB!
Here's another crazy theory: Rosie's killer will be someone whose episode count is not yet complete at IMDB. As of today [Saturday, April 23], Michelle Forbes as mother Mitch gets credit for all 13 episodes, but Brent Sexton as father Stan gets credit for only 6. The parents are usually together; Stan can't go missing for 7 episodes unless we will have to consider him a suspect for Rosie's death!
Notice that Eric Laden as Jamie Wright is at 13, but Billy Campbell as Councilman Richmond is at 7. We can't have the candidate missing for 6 episodes unless we will have to consider him a suspect for Rosie's death!
That means that Kris [Gharrett Patrick Paon] and Jasper [Richard Harmon] might not have made their final appearances; it's just that their episode count at IMDB is not yet accurate. When Kris dismisses Det. Holder with "That's what you've got?" he implies that more damaging evidence does exist. And when Kris admits that Jasper hated Rosie, you have to wonder if it's because Mr. Ames [who is not even listed on the IMDB page despite that slap he delivers on night 1] stole Rosie away as King Agamemnon does Achilles' slave girl.
Anybody with 13 episodes of credit is now off my suspect list. But anyone with 7 or fewer is on!
I am still wary of tech guy Nathan; Peter Benson's episode count is only 3.
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