The Bridge - Recap: La Bella y La Bestia

Credit: Byron Cohen/FX Network

The episode largely centers on the difficulties of the job, and the ways in which morality is compromised in furtherance of one's own ends. Marco (Demian Bichir) slowly unravels from the stresses he's facing in his life. Though he's responsible for making his own bed, many of the troubles wouldn't have come to light if not for Sonya (Diane Kruger), which has Marco questioning her state of mind as his partner. While visiting him to go over the case, Sonya joins Marco's family for dinner. It's a cringe-inducingly awkward scene, as Sonya's complete lack of social graces prompt her to remark to Alma (Catalina Sandino Moreno) that her cooking "doesn't taste good." She then blows up Marco's spot by handing him the wallet he left behind at Charlotte Millwright's house. Alma immediately puts two-and-two together, realizing that her husband has slept with another woman, and kicks him out of the house despite being pregnant with Marco's child. And so Marco invests all his angry, weary energy into the case, interviewing the woman they rescued from the desert and learning that the car she was trapped in had a cage -- like a police car. While Sonya investigates the matter, Marco goes a bit rogue: not only does he tell the woman not to say anything until she can be promised political asylum in the United States, in order to be with her baby in Houston, he also steals Daniel Frye's (Matthew Lillard) cell phone in order to give Sonya a direct line of access to the killer. Sonya is suspicious of Marco's methods, but the case is too vital at the moment to be handled any other way.

Credit: Byron Cohen/FX Network

As the investigation continues, Marco and Sonya grow closer, with Sonya offering him her couch. That night, we get one of the best scenes of the series so far, as Marco asks Sonya about some drawings on her refrigerator which appear to be by a child. However, Sonya reveals that they're actually the work of a mentally-damaged man -- the same man responsible for killing her sister so many years ago. Sonya goes over the entire story, explaining that she was fifteen at the time, and her sister was eighteen. Sonya's sister had been working at a truck stop diner when she was killed, with Sonya rationalizing that a lot of violence tended to happen in those areas. But Marco can tell that the wound is still raw, even with the passage of time. Marco shows understanding, if not empathy, while Sonya struggles with her past and how it's affected her, perhaps turning her into the doggedly determined investigator she is today. If nothing else, she makes a significant dent in the investigation by communicating with the killer, first by answering Frye's phone, and then speaking directly with the killer once he/she calls the police precinct after earlier hanging up on her. Sonya gradually becomes convinced that the killer just might be one of their own, as the killer insinuates that the cops already knew about Agent Gedman's dalliance with the late Christina Fuentes.

Credit: Byron Cohen/FX Network

Things only get more complicated with the introduction of Gina (Cole Bernstein), a young teenager from rich, white parents who don't seem to care about her all that much, as they never seem to be around. Gina is bailed out of prison for shoplifting, and decides to hike it down to Juarez for a good time. She's taken in by a man who, unbeknownst to Gina, plans to ransom her to her parents. However, the man's girlfriend helps Gina escape, rationalizing that nobody deserves that kind of fate. Her own sister had been one of the victims of the ransoming, and had become a "pink cross" on the side of the road. She advises Gina not to come back, because these sorts of abductions are simply the kind of thing that happens in Juarez. Worse, "La Bestia" (The Beast) is on the loose. They have no other term for the serial killer, but their fear of him is palpable. So Gina leaves, but her story doesn't end there. It fittingly connects to the overarching investigation by episode's end when Marco and Sonya bust in on a gruesome crime scene to discover Gina hiding in the closet of the room. She reveals that she saw The Beast, but more than that, she saw his face. The look on Marco and Sonya's faces suggest what we all know: this could be the break that cracks the entire case wide open. It's a fascinating development that justifies Gina's involvement in the episode, as her story didn't seem to have an immediately apparent connection other than her father having been Agent Gedman's psychiatrist. This kind of tight plotting serves the series unmistakably well.

Yet there are other noteworthy developments. Linder (Thomas W. Wright) ends up in a fight for his life against the Galvan cartel footman searching for Eva, whom Linder helped cross the border last week. He's nearly killed, but Linder is able to save himself from being garrotted by smacking the killer in the head with a hot iron. He then batters the man to death with repeated blows to the head. What follows is an episode-long attempt by Linder to dispose of the man's body, and it's a story that, while interesting at first, quickly grows tedious as the episode feels it necessary to keep checking back in on the process Linder is making toward being rid of this body, once and for all. Yet it all comes full circle when Fausto Galvan (Ramon Franco) tracks Linder down and corners him just as he's finished digging a grave in the desert for the man. We don't see what Fausto does with Linder, but he does threaten him by saying that the man he killed belonged to him. He takes Linder away to an unknown fate. Will he kill him? Make him one of their own? I still struggle to get into the Linder storyline, but its relevance is at least becoming a bit more apparent. I can't say the same for Charlotte (Annabeth Gish), who tries to tell Marco about how she's being blackmailed into reopening the tunnel, but as a law enforcement officer, Marco refuses to hear more of it, since he'd have to take action otherwise. Dejected by Marco's response, Charlotte buries her trouble in the comforts of a former beau (Brian Van Holt), and I struggle to see what this has to do with anything. Hopefully, the series is able to tie this into the main narrative more fluidly than this week, which is admittedly only the first week of the story with this ex of Charlotte's.

Credit: Byron Cohen/FX Network

"The Beast" isn't the best episode of the series so far, but it's up there. The plotting continues to be taut, and the characters well-scripted, with the performers imbuing each line with a certain pathos that might not otherwise have been there. As the summer nears its end, The Bridge remains one of the best things to come out of it, at least on the TV side of things.