I figured she was imagining the humiliation of admitting her affairs with the “monster” at his trial, seeing as he had already humiliated her privately during the drive so much that she puked.

The long ride didn’t seem weird to me since I was sure that Skinner was working as a team with the prison guard. If there is another season, I hope we find out more about that guy. Though it makes sense too if he was just the red herring double for Skinner, with impending divorce for keeping secrets.

I totally agree, I hung in there hoping this season would be better but ….

exactly

Linden killed Skinner because she did care for him in some way….end his suffering… that is what the whole scene with her killing the starving cow was about..

He killed more people than had been realized (since one of the points was how street kids are overlooked), or some murders had not been seen as being committed by the same person. It made sense.

Some of those feelings are legit. However, you have to remember that this show took an absolute beating for not having a “big reveal” in the season 1 finale. As hard as it tried to defy television conventions, the response the show got for doing so has almost required that they have a formulaic season finale. I essentially treated “six minutes” as the season finale and watched last night as a stand alone peice that was necessary to ensure future seasons. However, if you think that this show suffered from bad writing this season you have not been watching close enough. “Reckoning” may have been the best written episode of any show this season and the writing has been consistenly good. Even last night had its monents. The montage with Lyric, Twitch and Kallie’s mom on the bridge was brilliant and devastating. Also, Linden getting in that car was compleely consistent with her character. Linden is smart but unstable and nearly uncontrollably impulsive at times. She is more obsessed with her job than good at it and Skinner was essentially setting her up from the very beginning with this in mind. Look, last night was not an example of The Killing at its best but your analysis is entirely too harsh.

Addendum/correction to #1 (see previous post): The murderer does not have to be one in power, but can be someone damaged by others in power.