The Bridge - Recap: The Lost Boys
Recap and review of The Bridge - Season 1 Episode 10 - Old Friends:
While The Bridge still gets a lot of its elements right, there were parts of "Old Friends" that really rubbed me the wrong way. As always, the series offers some of the best-acted TV of the year, with Demian Bichir, Diane Kruger, and, in particular, Matthew Lillard knocking it out of the ballpark this week. But the show, which had started as a gritty, forensic look into the messed-up politics of crime and law enforcement in the respective El Paso and Juarez jurisdictions, has now devolved into a by-the-numbers revenge thriller. "Old Friends" is exciting as a cat-and-mouse game, to be sure, but it also indulges in some of the most tired cliches of that genre, and those narrative choices make this a lesser episode, even while it was pretty compelling all the way through.
So David Tate/Kenneth Hastings (Eric Lange) has abducted Gus (Carlos Pratts), and Marco (Demian Bichir) is giving chase along with an injured Sonya (Diane Kruger), who pops Vicodin to avoid surgery on her injured arm until she can crack this case. In one of the more touching scenes of the season, Sonya breaks down and apologizes to Marco for failing to protect Gus like she'd promised, and though Marco insists there was nothing she could have done, his heart isn't really in the reassurance. Perhaps he's simply too worried about Gus, or perhaps some part of him does blame Sonya for what happened. Either way, time is of the essence, and the investigation leads to some peculiar places. Tate's car is discovered at a cemetery, and inside is a parking ticket that leads the detectives to a nursing home, where they discover that Tate has held on to one piece of his former life: an uncle whom he visits fairly regularly. I liked this, if for no other reason than it provides a further dimension to Tate, who needed further characterization to avoid becoming too straightforward a villain. Of course, with the good comes the bad...
Credit: FX
My biggest issue with Tate is the problem I have with a lot of villains in thrillers these days: he's an all-knowing, all-seeing force who's everywhere and nowhere at once. For instance, how could he possibly have known Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard) would be at the AA meeting? How could he have known that by abducting Alma (Catalina Sandino Moreno) he would be given the opportunity to abduct Gus? Why not just abduct Gus from the start if that was always the plan? To make Marco suffer more? It's not as if we need Tate to further explain his motives in this case, yet the show has him do that anyway, calling Marco and rubbing everything in his face, from sleeping with Alma to reflecting on how old his son, Caleb, would be had he lived. After a while, it just became tiresome. That said, it's all excellently acted, and the pacing of the episode keeps things moving at such a rate that it's hardly noticeable that Tate is frequently repeating himself. Even when the episode reaches the inevitable confrontation between Marco and Tate, and Tate once again launches into his bitter tirade about how Marco slept with his wife and then never called to check up on him after her death, it still feels like something new. When episodes are structured this well, and focused on actors with this level of talent, the hour not only flies by, it often makes up for certain deficiencies in the story. I could really do without this becoming another "Race Against Time" thriller (Gus is locked away in a tank that's slowly filling with water; as for Frye, we're given no indication of where he is or what Tate plans to do with him just yet). That said, if that's what it's going to be, the show could certainly do a lot worse than the make it about Demian Bichir.
Credit: FX
As for Frye, prior to getting abducted by Tate, he faces a bit of an epiphany thanks to his partner, Adriana (Emily Rios). She gives him a stern-talking to about how he was actually a damn good reporter once, but states that he's allowed his demons to take control of his life. "I hate talking to you when you're drunk," she tells him, but we eventually learn that he has his reasons for his addiction. Apparently, the reason he's been targeted by Tate is because Frye helped publicly cover up Santi Jr.'s role in the death of Tate's family, as Frye had been partying with Santi Jr. on the night of the tragedy. What follows is an outstanding scene at an AA meeting that stands as Lillard's best work to date. It begins with Frye making cracks at the other people in the meeting, a classic bit illustrating his glib, unlikable tendencies: “Thank you for telling me that deeply depressing story, Sean. You actually make me feel really good about myself,” Frye says. “I had my last drink about 90 minutes ago and it was delicious.” But once he sees that Adriana isn't amused, he breaks down and admits that he's honestly tried to give up drugs and alcohol in the past, but it just never took, claiming that life is just better when you're hammered. However, he declares that he's going to give sobriety another shot. Lillard does an outstanding job communicating the depths of Frye's pain and anguish, as it's clear to see that he wants to do better, and to be better, yet he just doesn't have the willpower for it. Who knows, he might have even lacked support from friends and colleagues, making it harder for him to really keep sober. Either way, between the initial scene with Adriana in the empty newsroom and this scene in the support group, this has been Lillard's best episode, even if it wasn't Frye's best -- he doesn't so much as get to his car before Tate sneaks up behind him, injects him with a sedative, and stuffs him in his own car, speeding off in broad daylight. Adriana only sees the car as it leaves, but she knows something is wrong, and tells Hank (Ted Levine) that she thinks Frye has been abducted.
Credit: FX
Ultimately, we come to the showdown between Marco and Tate, as Marco tells Sonya to lie for him as he goes to meet with the killer. Sonya is clearly conflicted, but Marco isn't really thinking about Sonya's feelings in that moment. He's already caught hell from Alma, who is (understandably) furious that all of this is happening simply because Marco couldn't keep it in his pants six years ago. Marco squares off with Tate and tells him that he's not the only person who's lost everything. There are thousands of stories just like his across the border, and he tells Tate that his circumstances don't make him special. Marco declares that it's not fair to terrorize people simply because Tate's wife chose him. However, Tate disagrees, saying his wife was stolen from him. He orders Marco into his car, and it looks like we're headed for the endgame of whatever master plan Tate has in store. It's a powerhouse confrontation, and Bichir and Lange have great adversarial chemistry. It's two bruised, wounded men with frayed psyches coming to a head. Marco simply wants his family back -- not unlike Tate. But that goal is only possible for one of them.
But the Tate business isn't the only dark story of the episode, as we have Charlotte (Annabeth Gish) and Ray (Brian Van Holt) dealing with the Graciela fallout. It's a storyline that feels woefully out of place in the larger context of the episode, yet it holds interest for how it moves Charlotte closer to an almost Walter White-esque criminal transformation. Ray and Charlotte go to meet with their contact Tim (not Tim Cooper, the mullet cop), and she interrogates him about the transmitters that were in the guns that Ray shipped to Graciela. When Tim reveals that they were ATF transmitters, confirming that he's an informant, she shoots him dead over Ray's mortified protestations. With Tim dead, the ATF will know their informant has been murdered, and it won't be too far of a logical leap to surmise that Charlotte had something to do with it, depending on what Tim has told law enforcement. It's still not really all that compelling, but at least the Charlotte storyline is slowly getting closer to whatever it needs to be in order for it to fit in with the rest of the show. And that's encouraging.
Credit: FX
"Old Friends" is an uneven episode, but it still mostly works as a straight-up thriller, in addition to being extraordinarily well-acted and well-shot. With three episodes left, the series could easily take a nosedive, but one has to assume that the different story threads will be brought into orbit with one another sooner rather than later for any of them to have any real meaning in the larger framework of the series. This isn't a story about individuals, but about a world (El Paso/Juarez), and how the politics of that world inform the lives of the people trapped within it. The Bridge is at its best when it's engaging that theme, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything worthwhile to explore in the thriller elements, as it becomes a peculiar study of psychological torment. So even middling episodes like these manage to find something trenchant about the show's central premise, and that's definitely something worth lauding.