Last week’s episode of The Bridge felt so right. It opened the doors to new storylines and a new focus, and had just the right amounts of pain and redemption to make for satisfying “to be continued.” In comparison, this week’s finale felt rather sluggish and anti-climactic.
The episode opens with a car speeding down a desert road. Inside another waiting car is the crooked cop and an injured Eva. When the car pulls over, a mystery man gets out and approaches. The crooked cop asks for help, insisting that the girl needs medical attention. The mystery man in turn hands him a gun, instructs the cop to get rid of her, then speeds back off into the open desert. He may be crooked, but the cop hesitates, and does not follow orders. On Lt. Wade’s ranch, he’s wrangling cattle like a man half his age. Through the clouds of kicked up dust, Sonya watches him. Wade suggests that Sonya give his prize horse a good brushing, which feels like a familiar ritual for them. It made me imagine Wade working with a young Sonya, trying to help her get in touch with the world outside of herself. Wade begins to tell Sonya that he plans to sell the horse, but she interrupts him with questions about his possible retirement.
He’s not ready yet, much to his wife Carmen’s displeasure. The papers sit on his desk, which comforts Sonya. She lets him know that she wants to work on the Dead Girls of Juárez. He warns her that the case is not in their jurisdiction, but she’s done her homework. Wade tells his protégée that for fifteen years, law enforcement on both sides of the border have been working to solve the crimes to no avail. Sonya is not swayed, and knows if she and Marco team up, they could make a difference. Marco for his part has gotten himself dressed and ready to go back to work. He holsters his gun, and says a silent goodbye to Gus’s prayer card. Outside the Juárez police station, women stand holding up pictures of their missing loved ones. Linder is there too, clutching a picture of Eva as the Captain breezes by. When he gets in, he snarls at Celia to have the women removed. Greed makes for strange bedfellows. Charlotte, Ray and Cesar meet up with shady lawyer Monte in the prep kitchen of a restaurant. He will be pulling a Saul Goodman, helping launder Charlotte’s cut of the tunnel money into a fake business. She asks his advice about having dinner with Fausto Galvan, and he encourages her to keep him happy. Ray, he of the occupational “muff diving,” raises objections when he hears about Monte’s cut. Charlotte tells him that if he doesn’t like it, he can get the hell out. He smacks her ass like he’s probably done a thousand times before, but this time Charlotte drops the gauntlet. “Show me respect,” she demands with eyes cold as steel. The kind of steel you stab someone in the heart with. “You work for me now.” She is nearly unrecognizable now from the woman rushing her dying husband across the bridge in the first episode. At the El Paso station, Sonya is doing what she does best. Sleuthing. Marco walks in and Sonya’s face lights up. She may not always be able to communicate or empathize with others the way they would like, but her skills of intuition are incredible. We all shine in our own ways. Marco has news about Eva. He tells Sonya about his conversation with Celia, and how she spotted Eva at the station. There are many layers to this, Marco cautions. Dangerous layers.
Frye has recovered enough to go back to work, and he sits in his car working up the nerve to go inside. The shot is reminiscent of the scene in the pilot when Frye was trapped inside his car with a bomb. This time, nothing holds him back but himself. Adriana knocks on his window, and she’s bearing cupcakes! She tells him that it’s a big deal that he’s back to work and they should celebrate. Frye just wants to dive right into some juicy investigating. His boss however has other ideas and assigns him a puff piece on an old resident of El Paso. He nearly dry heaves with frustration. When they arrive at the interviewee’s home, they notice an older woman lying on the floor. Adriana busts into the house like bulldozer, and runs to the woman. She takes her pulse, and declares that she’s dead. Frye, still wheelchair bound, investigates the house. He opens a door to find it stacked to the ceiling with money. Like, Walter White amounts of cash.
In Juárez, Sonya and Celia are pouring over the surveillance video looking for Eva. Marco stands guard outside. They finally find footage of Eva being dragged into the station, but Celia doesn’t recognize the cop. Just then the Captain comes in, sending Celia and Sonya scrambling. Marco manages to distract him buy bringing up another case and it does the trick. Police are bagging and tagging the copious amounts of cash at the old woman’s house. Adriana overhears that some of the money is in Euros, a fact the piques Frye’s interest. They get confirmation once they return to the office, that there was over forty million in USD, and another twenty million in Euros. Frye declares it weird, and he likes him some weird. An envelope is delivered to Adriana’s desk. Inside is a hundred dollar bill with a message written on it. “Forget about the money. Who is Millie Quintana?” Marco finds the cop who abducted Eva sitting in his car. He gets in and demands to know where she is. The cop warns Marco not to get involved. Tossing warnings at a man with nothing left to lose doesn’t usually end well. Marco proceeds to beat the hell out of the guy until he spills on Eva’s whereabouts. Sonya watches from street, her concern for Marco growing. After some very masculine montaging to a cover of Bon Jovi‘s “Living on a Prayer,” Ray and Cesar set out for a long drive into the night. On the way, Ray regales a disinterested Cesar in his tales of past traffickings. Cesar feels uneasy about the route, and he has every reason to. Someone in the distance watches them through a pair of binoculars.
Also driving in the dark, are Sonya and Marco. They pull up to an old monastery, which Marco refers to as “House of the Damned.” Marco speaks to the nun in charge who takes them to Eva. She’s barely conscious and needs medical attention. They help her to her feet. And Eva flinches at Marco’s touch. Sonya assures her that he is one of the good guys. While in the car, Marco tells Sonya that Eva was drugged and raped at a “party.”The crooked cop was supposed to kill her and bury her body in the desert but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Marco has a plan to get Eva to safety. It involves lying their way across the border in an ambulance (yet another harken back to the pilot). Sonya reluctantly agrees because she’s still not comfortable with the whole, lying thing. They pull up in front of Lt. Wade’s house, where his wife is on her way back from the hospital to offer Eva some medical care. They put the poor woman in Sonya’s old room at the Wades’ home. When Wade questions how they managed to get Eva into the states, Sonya tells him that Marco called in a favor. She assures him that no one knows that Eva is there. The cops in Juárez are involved, so he tells her to let Marco handle it. Sonya knows that Marco can barely handle himself, and reveals how severely he beat the crooked cop.
All this king-pinning and murdering sure does make a girl hungry, so Charlotte finds herself at the butcher counter at the local grocery. A strange man tries to strikes up a conversation about steaks with her, so she drops the bf-word in the hopes that he pisses off. He happens to know her boyfriend though. In fact, he knows all about Charlotte and the tunnel too. When she asks who he is, he is vague, but she now knows that she is in some serious shit. He advises her to keep her dinner plans with Galvan, and lets her know that he’ll be in touch.
Crooked cop is looking worse for wear as drives through Juárez. He is instructed by his wife to pick up diapers, and no beer. He groans, thinking that this day could not get any worse. Just then a car pulls up beside him and guns him down.
Sonya shows up at Marco’s, as she’s likely to do. He’s been sleeping but she asks for a drink so he invites her in. Over tequila, she scolds him about beating up the cop. She’s worried that Marco has changed, and he has indeed. He’s all alone now. She thinks she knows what Marco is going through. He wants to kill Tate. When her sister was murdered, all she could think about was she wanted the man who did it to die. She takes solace in the fact that Marco is a good man, and he vows not to do anything stupid. She takes him at his word and says goodnight. When she leaves, Marco looks around his empty house, no life or laughter echoing through the halls. He takes out a knife and starts stabbing the tequila bottle nearby, until it crashes to the floor. Sonya climbs into her new car, and pushes her sister’s tape into the deck. Music takes us through the next few tableaus. Frye staring bleary eyed at his computer. Charlotte smoking alone, and staring out into the night. Adriana’s mother, waiting to pick up her little sister from the bus stop. One bus empties and no Daniela. Linder walking up to Wade’s home, and sitting barefoot at Eva’s bedside, gently holding her hand. Adriana’s mother waits as another bus unloads, and does not deliver her youngest child. Adriana arrives to join her mother, and the two hold each other and cry. Sonya was correct to suspect that things weren’t all right with Marco, because the final scene brings us to Fausto Galvan’s compound. Galvan offers his condolences and pours Marco a drink. Then another. Marco works up the nerve to do the one thing he’s never wanted to do. Ask for a favor. He asks Galvan if he has people on the inside, people who could get to David Tate. Galvan offers to have Tate killed, but he misunderstands Marco’s request. Marco wants Galvan’s help so he can murder David Tate himself. This season of The Bridge has been a shocking and compelling look into the life on both sides of the border. Renewed for a second season, the focus seems to be shifting to the lost girls and putting an end to the senseless violence and abuse that becomes them. Will Sonya be able to do what 15 years of police work and investigations couldn’t? Is Marco capable of murder? Will Adriana and Frye become more of a focus as the danger hits home?
What did you think of The Bridge?
