Last night I watched Frontline on PBS: “The Killer at Thurston High.” The show attempted to explain why Kip Kinkel killed his parents and then went to his high school, killing two of his classmates, and injuring dozens of others. It was a frightening show that left me emotionally drained. I could only think back to my high school experience when one of my high school classmates shot and killed his parents — and his two siblings — at home, then came to school the next morning, flaunting hundreds of dollars, before disappearing for weeks. He was eventually apprehended. These things do happen where we study, work, live. Frontline’s storytelling techniques, once again, left me in awe. For the first hour of the show, I didn’t understand why the cameras only showed the Kinkel family home from the outside — eerie camera angles forcing our imaginations to conjure what was happening behind closed doors. Then, the home video of the police force entering the home the morning after the killings. Scenes of his parents’ bodies, lying under bloody sheets. Shocking television, at its most effective.
I did not sleep well last night.
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