The third season of Mr. Mercedes is actually based on the second book, Finders Keepers in King’s trilogy. Not sure why they did the second book as the third season but if I would have to guess they wanted to play out the Brady story first and that they did in season two.

This third season has basically two big storylines. The first one is about Peter Saubers and the John Rothstein books. Peter finds the books after Morris Bellamy has robbed and murdered Rothstein, crashed with his car and hidden the books and money. The rest of the season we see how Morris, with the help of Alma Lane who’s been his lover since high schoo,l tries to get back the money and books.

The other plotline is that trial of Lou Linklatter for the murder of Brady at the end of season two. The public sees her as a hero, but the fact is that she did commit murder.

As for the first storyline I really like Peter and what’s happening to him. I also like Morris but Alma…we’ll let’s just say that she is a bit too much. She becomes a kind of caricature of herself and that is never a good thing. She is too much over the top and therefore not really believable. I’m actually going to go so far as to say that they made a mistake including her in the series. I think Morris could have pulled this of himself and it would have made the show better.

As for the Lou Linklatter storyline I don’t really like that either. It feels very much like padding. It doesn’t really bring anything to the show except a way to keep Brady connected to the show. He is not however; his presence is just hinted, and nothing ever really happens. He seems to be talking to Lou and even telling her things that she could not know without talking to Brady, but that ball is just dropped. I don’t know if it was intentional but if seems like a lot of plotting for nothing.

This leaves us with a season that still has all the characters we do like, Hodges, Holly and Jerome but it’s also a season that feels a bit thin and to compensate for that has been stuffed with padding that really doesn’t bring anything to the table. Season three is OK but not much more.

They do leave an opening for a fourth season, but I hope they stop now. I feel they have taken it as far as they can and based on how poorly they did with the parts that wasn’t based on King’s book here I don’t want a hole season of it.