The Bridge 2.1: What Motivates Sonya?

The Bridge was back for its second season last night, replete with that just perfect song under the opening credits (by Ryan Bingham, who sounds just like Demian Bichir), and as moody and compelling and nearly weird throughout as it was last time.

What interested me most in this second season debut is Sonya - and, in her particular, her sleeping with the brother of her sister's killer.   The brother understandably feels increasingly uncomfortable in this situation, but Sonya's charms are unsurprisingly more than enough to win him over.   Still, he leaves as soon as he can after the act.

But what is ultimately motivating Sonya?  Her Aspergers always makes her sexual encounters awkward - which translates to interesting, funny, moving, heart-rending, even profound at some points - but this was something different and more.   As by-the-book as she is, I couldn't help feeling that at some point she might produce a knife or a gun and kill her lover, in retribution for what his brother did to her sister. But, ironically, that's what a more normal person might do in a fit of illogical rage in this situation, and Sonya is if nothing else refreshingly not normal.   Indeed, in the scenes last night with Sonya and the guy, the most normal aspect of Sonya's behavior is her beautiful smile (thanks to Diane Kruger) - which more than anything else is what ultimately gets him in bed.

Marco, on the other hand, is normal from head to toe, which makes him more predictable, but therefore far more dangerous that Sonya, since Marco is out to settle scores without Sonya's complex overlay.   In a series peopled with some of the most serious nut cases to come down the road - headed by Linder, whom I still can't figure out, including his connection to the main plot lines - Marco, along with Hank (who, as I mentioned last year, has ample cross-series experience working with good police with troubled mentalities, given actor Tad Levine's work on Monk), serve as the necessary bedrocks of sanity in this dark and darker but realistic world.

Good to be back on The Bridge!

See also The Bridge Opens Brooding and Valent ... The Bridge 1.2: A Tale of Two Beds ... The Bridge 1.6: Revelations ... The Bridge 1.7: A Killer and a Reluctant Professor ... The Bridge 1.8: Some Dark Poetic Justice ... The Bridge 1.9: Trade-Off ... The Bridge 1.10: Charlotte's Evolution ... The Bridge 1.11: Put to the Test ... The Bridge Season 1 Finale: Marco Joins Mackey and Agnew

 
another kind of crime story

#SFWApro

get The Bridge season 2 on

The Bridge Season 1 Finale: Marco Joins Mackey and Agnew

Hey, The Bridge has been renewed for another season and I'm glad - not only because I like the series but because the last few minutes of the season 1 finale opened up a whole new can of dark possibilities.

That can would be Marco asking Mexican mob boss Fausto - well played by both Demian Bichir and Ramon Franco - if Fausto would take care of a little something for Marco: killing Hastings/Tate in prison. Marco is of course entirely justified in doing this, seeing as how the sociopath Tate killed Marco's boy Gus - but the request and Fausto's agreement still make Marco an entirely different character for next season.

Marco has now joined the ranks of iconic anti-hero cop Vic Mackey of The Shield and, more recently, Frank Agnew of Low Winter Sun.  Mackey is one of the most compelling characters ever to have been seen on the television screen - right up there with Walter White and Tony Soprano - and though Agnew is a long way from that, the territory of a cop killing another cop is rich with dramatic possibilities.

Marco, of course, is asking Fausto to kill a special kind of cop.   Not someone investigating his corruption, as was the case with Mackey, or someone who might have killed the woman that he loves, as is the case with Agnew.   Neither of those two motivations are as powerful and justified as the grievance Marco has against Tate - his former partner, who goes on to kill Marco's son.

Further, what's noteworthy about this turn of events in The Bridge is that we've come to know Marco as an honest cop - we've seen him working honestly and courageously at his job all season.  In contrast, Mackey and Agnew killed their respective cop in the very first episodes of their series.  This means we never got to know them as honest cops, before they went over to the dark side, and we can only guess what they were like before they took their plunge into the abyss.

Marco has been a great character to watch all season - as has Sonya and Hank - and I'm looking forward to more in 2014.

See also The Bridge Opens Brooding and Valent ... The Bridge 1.2: A Tale of Two Beds ... The Bridge 1.6: Revelations ... The Bridge 1.7: A Killer and a Reluctant Professor ... The Bridge 1.8: Some Dark Poetic Justice ... The Bridge 1.9: Trade-Off ... The Bridge 1.10: Charlotte's Evolution ... The Bridge 1.11: Put to the Test

#SFWApro

download The Bridge season 1 on

The Bridge Opens Brooding and Valent

A good opening of The Bridge on FX tonight, with its story of a body stretched out dead across the Juarez - El Paso border on the bridge between Mexico and the US, making it a case in the jurisdiction of both countries and their police, except it turns out to be two bodies - the upper torso of one woman and the lower torso of another - which makes the murder case even more interesting.

Demian Bichir - of Esteban fame on Weeds - plays the Mexican detective Marco Ruiz, and he does it with customary style.  When an El Paso detective wishes him "buenos dias," he responds with "howdy partner" in a perfect Texan accent.   He has hands full not only with his lethargic boss in Juarez but his Amercian counterpart Sonya North, played by Diane Kruger.

Sonya's a strange piece of work for a detective - by the book, wound tight, but with the same kind of irrepressible energy as Barbara Havers on the British Inspector Linley Mysteries (how's that for a stretch).   I'm not sure if I like her, but based on the first episode she may be the most memorably peculiar female detective to come along on television since Sarah Linden in The Killing.

Speaking of which, The Bridge feels to some extent like a southern version of The Killing, which takes place in Seattle.   But what The Bridge also has going for it is its Mexican component, and the obvious relevance of this series to the immigration issues that currently beset our country (because of Republican intransigence, but I'll try to keep politics out of this).

Ted Levine of the late great Monk is back as police lieutenant (ok, he was a captain on Monk), and Annabeth Gish from Brotherhood lends her appeal and intensity as someone whose husband drops dead after he tells her he wants out of their marriage and who must have something to do with the murders.

Brooding, smoky, philosophic, politically valent - The Bridge may be just the thing for a hot summer's evening.

#SFWApro

download The Bridge season 1 on