Why Season 3 of The Killing was disappointing

I've really enjoyed the AMC series TheKilling though let's face it Season 3 was a big dropoff in quality. Not only because I figured out the killer by half-way through the season, or sooner (I won't give it away - but will note that any attentive viewer will recognize the pattern from Seasons 1 and 2 and systematically cross every character about whom "suspicions are raise" from the list of likely suspects - no series indulges more in red herrings than this one). I continue to really like the two lead characters, Linden and Holder (played so well by Enos and Kinneman) - but have to say that I probably would not get the characters so well had I not seen the first 2 seasons - season 3 does not stand well on its own in that regard, as Enos's opaque qualities become even darker and more obscuring - and most of all we don't have a complex relation between the two). The relative weakness of Season 3 touches on something Enos said in her NYTmag interview recently: what makes the series special is its particular concern for the lives and the plight and the feelings of the victim, and her family. That was a huge element in Seasons 1 and 2 - Rosie Larsen's family were as deep and significant to the plot as the cops (and the politicians - completely eliminated from 3); in season 3 we barely know the victim(s) - after all there are 21of them, a real mayhem, with no clear motive - unlike the killing in seasons 1 and 2 which were all about figuring out the motive - let alone the victims' families, thought there are some half-hearted attempts to highlight the mom of one of the missing girls, esp. in the last 2 episodes. So, you get right down to it, and The Killing becomes a pretty good cop drama, but it's lost most of the unique qualities that made the first two seasons a real drama about a city, and a family, and a couple of cops, in various forms of crisis. I wouldn't mind seeing the series continue - there's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of 3 - but I hope it can regain its mo-jo.