When an audience engages with a suspense drama, an unspoken agreement is formed. In exchange for allowing the plot to send us in lots of misleading directions, an experience that requires patience and head-scratching guesswork, we know (or hope) that we will wind up with some unforeseen, yet elegantly crafted, conclusion. That’s the payoff.

In the best possible scenario, Chinatown, say, or The Usual Suspects, this payoff is extremely satisfying, so much so that you want to watch it all over again right away, just to see how they did it. “My sister, my daughter,” “Keyser Söze:” these are words that have a permanent place in our collective imagination because they made our neural pathways fizz with delight. We entered into an agreement, albeit a tacitly understood one, and for our patience and focus we were richly rewarded.

If there were a small lawyer who lived inside my head, he/she would be filing the paperwork to sue The Killing for breach of contract. TV these days is good enough that we have a lot to choose from. (The prosecution presents Treme, Damages, and Game of Thrones. ) And in this current age of small screen excellence, a television season is expected to be a work unto itself, like one book in a series. When your show has one central question, and you blatantly postpone answering that question in order to give yourself something to do with a second season, well, that feels about as sad and dated as Detective Linden’s sweater choices.

That said: Wow. Mitch Larson leaves the family. Holder turns out to be corrupt…maybe? Belko is all set to off the brunette-fetishising Orpheus (a very poor boyfriend candidate, as Gwen knows well, but almost certainly innocent of Rosie’s murder). Linden and Jack actually made it on to an airplane. But then, of course, Linden receives the phone call that will change everything. The evidence that led to Darren Richmond’s "do-we-have-to-do-this-here?" arrest at the rally was almost certainly fabricated, and no way can Linden just let that go. Characters develop slowly on this show, but this much, at least, we know about her.

And so we all know where she’ll be, the moment that 747 lands in Oakland. She’ll be at the ticket booth, buying her way back to Seattle. Putting her life on hold once again for the Rosie Larsen case. And as much as we might try to convince ourselves otherwise, we’ll be right there with her.

Most ridiculous Seattle thing: Desolation Bridge, is that like Deception Pass? How hard would it be to use real geography?

Current murder suspect: I don’t want to talk about it.