The Killing was never a good show

Stick with it. Season 4 is the best season.

After that it's pretty much all downhill.

The Killing was interesting in that it seemed like an experiment to remake Twin Peaks as a serious drama. The cover art is almost the same and so is the tagline, the location, the cause of death, the scene where the parents find out, the mayoral candidate and his assistant being serious versions of Ben & Jerry Horne, and discovering that the dead girl might have been WORKING AS AN ESCORT AT A CASINO ACROSS THE LAKE.

That last one is so specific it's pretty much outright admitting the influence.

John Lithgow really makes season 4 pop.

The "shut up cunt" scene is still near the top of my Best TV Moments list.

Season 1 was good, Season 2 was awesome, Season 3 sucked, Season 4 was awesome again. Seasons 5 through whenever it got cancelled followed a similar waveform pattern, but Dexter never again approached how good it was in 2 and 4.

Hannah was fucking hot, though, so I don't mind.

Season 1 was an excellent, taut thriller with immaculate pacing and a genuinely funny, interesting protagonist.

Season 2 was a strong followup and that pursued many of the questions and ideas established in the first season, yet ultimately its moral cop-out of an ending foretold bad things to come.

Season 3 wasn't as bad as everyone says. I really like Miguel Prado and thought a politically connected antagonist that superficially understood Dexter was a nice twist on the frothing psychopaths we'd seen before.

Season 4 is best watched on Youtube. Yes, Lithgow is terrific, but that's only because your mind protected itself by forgetting all the terrible, pointless, and creepy subplots that killed time in between Trinity killings. Remember Deb fucking her grandpa? Or Angel fucking LaGuerta?

Season 5 was the breaking point. Strong opening, interesting moral ambiguity in the first couple episodes, then Lumen flies off to her home planet after defeating the Eight Rapist Masters and acquiring their powers. Immediately forgotten.

Season 6 was HHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHHAHAHAHA

Season 7 marked the series' last hope for redemption. The first half was as great as the show's ever been, with real character development for the first time in years and perhaps Dexter's most menacing foe yet. Then he dies with four episodes to go and the show starts Dextering it up again.

Season 8. Season Fucking 8. I love this season more than anything else in the universe. Never before has any group of creative professionals bumbled an obvious slam-dunk harder than these people. A lot of viewers were bored, but I never was. There's so many bizarre, surreal, confusing, and otherwise inexplicable narrative choices in virtually every episode it's impossible to stay mad at the show for long. And I don't just mean the last shot, either; there are not two consecutive seconds of it that make any sense.

ARGH!? In Tina!?