The Bridge - Recap: A Son for a Son

Has there been an opening scene to an episode of any series in recent memory as emotionally harrowing as the opening to "The Beetle"? Even though David Tate (Eric Lange) is the villain of the series, it was virtually impossible not to feel for the man. The scene is a flashback depicting the night that Tate lost his family in a hit-and-run accident. We see the firemen taking Tate's dead, blood-soaked wife from the crushed vehicle, her pearls scattering across the highway. Then, the real gut punch: Tate discovers an arm protruding from the window of the impacted vehicle -- the body of his son. Lange's performance is utterly devastating, as Tate releases a cry of horror, anguish and grief that's still ringing in my head, nearly two hours later. It's a scene that provides context, though not necessarily justification, for Tate's actions. But beyond this function, it's a scene that sets the tone for the episode to come, as every emotion (the fear, the urgency and the anger) are ratcheted up to 11.

Credit: FX

The episode plays a bit like a cat-and-mouse game, as Tate, under his guise as Kenneth Hastings, continues his gradual seduction of Alma (Catalina Sandino Moreno), further gaining her trust. As it turns out, he hasn't abducted her at all. She's willingly gone with him, even taking her and Marco's two daughters along to a local playground. She's also the one who decides not to call Marco (Demian Bichir) to let him know where she is, since she's still freezing him out of their marriage. Of course, her trust in Tate/Hastings is entirely based on the fact that she doesn't know who he really is. However, the genius of Tate is in how he employs several truths from his actual past to better relate to Alma. He discusses his late son, Caleb, and talks about the accident that took his life, along with that of his ex-wife. Tate explains how he was angry with the world in the aftermath, and it's this simple, truthful story from his background that keeps Alma on his side. Tate makes a bold show of his control, calling Marco to let him know that he has Alma and the girls, all the while crushing a beetle under his finger, a representation of the crushing hold he has over both Alma (who doesn't suspect a thing) and Marco (who is powerless, in that moment, to stop him).

Credit: FX

It isn't long until Tate has spirited Alma and the girls away to an abandoned cabin in the middle of the desert, promising a surprise -- and, true to form, Tate delivers. He reveals his true nature to Alma, placing an unpinned grenade in her hand and forcing her to place her finger on the lever. If she lets go, she'll only have five seconds "to say goodbye" to her daughters before the device explodes. He leaves her locked in the cabin without explaining who he really is, or why he's doing all this. It's an agonizing predicament for Alma, and it's just as excruciating for Marco, who has no idea what to do or how to find Tate. It also brings him back into conflict with Sonya (Diane Kruger), who lacks the socialization skills to recognize that what Marco needs to hear from her is reassurance that his family will be okay. Yet she's incapable of providing anything more than an observation about how good Tate is at what he does, and how unlikely it is that he'll make any mistakes with whatever he's planning for Marco's family. It's obnoxious how the show occasionally feels the need to flash a neon sign about Sonya's (potentially undiagnosed) Asperger's, as the show benefits from scenes that take a much more subtle approach. Here, it's as if Sonya has never interacted with another human being before in her life, and I take issue with that because it's an inconsistent portrayal of a character who's much deeper than the one-note depiction the material the writers occasionally saddles her with. That said, Kruger does a good job with the material, and she continues to be one of the most compelling, if not one of the most divisive, aspects of the show. As Marco panics about the well-being of his family, he learns that one of his family members just might be the key to cracking the case.

Credit: FX

Marco's son, Gus (Carlos Pratts), reveals that he's been texting with a person who he thought was an old friend of his. However, upon running into his friend on the street, Gus learns that she hasn't been texting him at all, meaning Gus has been talking with a complete stranger all these weeks, and it doesn't take a detective to surmise that this person is Tate. Worse, Gus has been telling Tate details about Marco's case in an attempt to seem interesting. This is how the killer discovered that Gina was in custody, and Gus immediately puts all the blame on himself for the girl's murder. However, Marco won't hear of it and, with the help of Lt. Wade (Ted Levine), sets up a meeting with Tate at a local eatery. But Tate quickly catches on to the sting operation and has the waiter deliver the GPS coordinates of Alma's location to the agent sitting on a nearby bench. Marco and his men get moving, but Tate has already gotten away. However, they now know where the cabin is, and are able to get there just in time to free Alma and the girls. This leads to a tense scene in which Marco leads Alma through the grenade situation, asking her to trust in him and to give him the grenade on the count of three. They move into a safe spot, away from Lt. Wade and the girls, and Marco quickly disposes of the grenade, which explodes behind the cabin. Marco has saved Alma and his girls, but as we later learn, he's unwittingly played right into Tate's plan...

Credit: Byron Cohen/FX Network

As Sonya escorts Gus to a safe house, their car is T-boned by Tate. Sonya is rendered bloody and barely conscious, and she is unable to stop Tate from bending down over the gruesome scene and abducting Gus from her guardianship. It now appears that the Alma situation was merely a distraction that would allow Tate to capture Gus, presumably towards the purpose of further torturing Marco. But this presents a bit of an issue, as Tate's motives suddenly go from plausible to random: for one, Marco had nothing to do with the hit-and-run that killed Tate's wife and son, making any potential eye-for-an-eye/son-for-a-son revenge scheme completely lopsided; secondly, Gus didn't have anything to do with the affair that Marco had with Tate's wife, meaning that torturing the son to get back at the father for an affair he had with the wife is kind of pointless when Tate already had Alma and could have exacted his plan on her directly; lastly, what does anything Tate has done have to do with the bisected body discovered in the pilot, or the immigrants in the desert? I have faith that the show will find a way to make this all make sense, but right now, Tate seems less like an enigma than a lunatic exacting revenge in a random, if not arbitrary, fashion. But then, maybe that's the point. Something clearly snapped in Tate/Hastings upon the death of his wife and son, so it stands to reason that while he's hyper-competent in some matters, he's completely unhinged in others. And really, for all we know, Tate and The Beast are two completely separate entities. If so, it would at least provide context for why Charlotte (Annabeth Gish) and Linder (Thomas M. Wright) remain fixtures in the story, despite near total disconnection from the main story.

Credit: FX

Luckily, Charlotte's story manages to be engrossing this week, as she's approached by Graciela (Alma Martinez), who demands to know where Ray (Brian Van Holt) is. She wants him to answer for the transmitters she found on the guns last week, and tries to intimidate Charlotte into revealing his location. When Charlotte swears she doesn't know where he is, Graciela gets angry and threatens to carve up her face with a box cutter. Enter Cesar (Alejandro Patino), who blows Graciela's bodyguard away with his shotgun while Charlotte gets the drop on the criminal matriarch by stabbing her with a pitchfork. Together, they dispose of the bodies in a six-foot hole Cesar digs, and just like that, Charlotte can no longer pretend she isn't deep into this business. Could she potentially take Graciela's place? Right now, she doesn't seem ready to fill the vacuum Graciela's death might create, but that won't prevent the narrative from drawing parallels between similar characters on opposite ends of the border. Just as Charlotte and Graciela are correlative, Linder is being presented as a shadow of Fausto Galvan. Well, okay, that's a bit of a crazy theory, but Linder's story has been following a pretty dark path. He's clearly involved in the Mexican underworld, though his demeanor suggests he'd rather avoid it altogether and simply ferry the girls he's hired to rescue from one end of the border to the other. He'll get his hands dirty if he has to, but he'd rather it be avoided, which is the polar opposite of Galvan, who kills with impunity. Here, Linder confesses to killing Hector (seen several episodes ago) to his friend, Bob (Jon Gries), and it's something that has taken an emotional toll on him. But what does this mean for Linder in the context of the story? We're at the point in the season where we desperately need more from this Linder storyline if the show is going to continually ask viewers to invest in his stories, particularly when it's a narrative that is taking time away from better characters, such as Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard). Hopefully, his purpose will become apparent sooner rather than later.

"The Beetle" is a fittingly intense episode, given last week's potboiler. While the show occasionally stumbles in places, it's still delivering a product worth following. Demian Bichir and Diane Kruger continue to anchor the show with stellar performances, and Ted Levine is continually an understated highlight in his role as Lt. Hank Wade. In addition, director Keith Gordon elevates the episode with artful touches such as the muted audio of the opening scene, and the darkly-lit, tension-filled scenes with Alma in the cabin, particularly before Tate revealed his sinister plans, as the shadow slowly engulfing the cabin could be said to represent the dread slowly filling Alma as she realizes that this isn't exactly a safe situation for her, or her girls. From top to bottom, the show remains among TV's most well-made dramas. If the show could just work out the kinks in its less effective storylines, it would be a series nearly beyond reproach. As it stands now, The Bridge is simply a very good show.