Season 3 of AMC’s The Killing continued last night with, ‘Try,’ a tension-filled episode that brought Linden (Mireille Enos) and Seward (Peter Sarsgaard) to their knees.

The episode began with Linden, who is being held at knifepoint by Pastor Mike (Ben Cotton) – a man who is doing very little to convince everybody of his innocence. After grabbing Linden’s gun and asking to make sure she doesn’t have a radio (she lies and tells him she doesn’t), Pastor Mike tells her to drive. Pastor Mike, sitting in the backseat, recreates the Piper’s killings, with Linden as the Piper (the driver) and Pastor Mike as the victim (in the backseat).

Linden tries to bond with Pastor Mike, telling him that she was raised as a foster kid, but he doesn’t seem too impressed. However, Pastor Mike continues to profess his innocence, and insists that he is not the Pied Piper, but that he had abducted at risk-females and tried to get them into detox (by locking them in a room alone for three days).

While Linden is driving with Pastor Mike, Holder (Joel Kinnaman) is back at the station, busy dealing with Bullet (Bex Taylor-Klaus), who says she received a phone call from Lyric (Julia Sarah Stone) who had told her that she feared for her life. Hoping to find Pastor Mike (currently suspect number one), Holder sends a team of police to search the woods for Lyric. They come up empty, but things take a turn when Holder finds Linden’s radio transmissions. Suddenly, Holder has someone else to search for.

Linden’s radio is dying, but she manages to communicate hints to her location during her conversation with Pastor Mike. After admitting that she had not ‘lost’ her son, Jack, but, instead, had simply let him go, Linden mentions a time her ‘friend’ (Holder) was going through a hard time and met her at a bridge they happen to be driving by. Bingo. Holder hears everything over the radio and rushes to said bridge.

It’s a good thing Holder is on his way because Pastor Mike suddenly catches sight of Linden’s supposedly absent radio and leads her out of the car and onto a pier, where he points her gun at her. Linden pleads with him to let her live, and, in the end, he doesn’t have it in him to kill her. He drops to his knees, letting the gun fall into the water, as Holder arrives.

Pastor Mike surrenders himself, and Linden, overcome with emotion, crumbles to the ground.

Seward is also having an emotionally draining day: he meets with his lawyer to go over his will and burial wishes. Still holding on to the hope that Linden will find evidence to stay his execution, Seward has a difficult time making a shopping list for his death (last meal, burial options, etc) and has a panic attack.

At the end of the episode, a desperate Seward calls Linden and tells her that he can arrange for her to talk to Adrian, his son, if she helps him delay his execution.

Back at the station, Pastor Mike is ruled out as the Pied Piper and Holder gets in trouble for following up on Bullet’s faulty intel. Holder yells at Bullet, and threatens to ruin her life, leaving her so devastated after Lyric dumps her that she goes in search of heroin. As luck would have it, the drug dealer tells Bullet that Angie had been by earlier, and Bullet goes to find her at the bus station. Bullet gives Angie heroin, Angie gives Bullet information.

Bullet calls Holder to tell him that she knows who the killer is, but, alas, still upset with Bullet for lying earlier, Holder doesn’t pick up. He’s busy commiserating with Linden over takeout, and, eventually, takes Seward’s file from Linden, offering to go over it himself.

Finally, the episode set up prison guard, Becker (Hugh Dillon) as a possible Pied Piper suspect. Becker’s wife appeared at the station with her teenage son, and lamented to Henderson (Aaron Douglas) the fact that her husband would disappear for days at a time. Could he be disappearing to kill young girls?

The Killing airs Sundays at 8 P.M. on AMC.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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