While ‘The Killing’ tends to be a slow-moving show to begin with, we’ve hit the mid-season doldrums where the story takes an even more glacial pace than normal.

My fears about Peter Sarsgaard are coming true. As much as I like him as an actor, and as much as I’m interested in his character’s story, keeping him confined to a cell is really hampering his overall impact. Whatever gravitas the show is trying to create with his cellmates seems to be falling flat as well. The addition of Dale (Nicholas Lea, better known as Krycek from ‘The X-Files’) seemed like something that should’ve struck an emotional chord somewhere, yet didn’t.

Since we don’t have any political asides this time around, producer Veena Sud shoehorns in other stories that have little to no impact. A good example is trying to get us to care about the guards who watch over the Death Row inmates. Does anyone feel like you’re watching a completely different show whenever the focus switches over to the guards and whatever they’re doing? The attempts to create a gulf between Becker and Henderson don’t fit into the storyline as a whole. What was the point of Henderson slowly figuring out that Becker is probably having an affair during last week’s episode?

As for Holder and Linden’s story, I’m still mildly intrigued, though serial killer plots have been played out over the years. I’m more interested to see how Holder and Linden progress as characters rather than seeing them solve another case.

One has to wonder about the incompetence shown in this episode, though. Truthfully, the episode seems to have a very large plot hole that only serves to draw the season out a bit longer. Only a couple weeks ago, the police department saw no problem committing the resources of a 24-hour tail on the pimp Goldie after he was released. Yet they don’t do the same to watch Kallie’s mother? They knew sicko Joe Mills would most likely come back to her house at some point. They were already searching for him, had warrants based on information that he was their guy, but never had police park out front of the house waiting for Mills to appear? This seems like a pretty large oversight to me.

On the “Will they or won’t they?” front: Did anyone else notice Linden’s absolute dejection when she saw the assistant district attorney, Caroline, in Holder’s apartment? She was honestly bummed that he had another woman there. This has got to be the season where they give into their awkward, completely nonsensical sexual chemistry, right?