Almost as soon as they found the border crossing serial killer, it started to looked as if the shark had jumped “The Bridge.”
The beautifully composed cross-cultural police caper of the Southwest had the killer in hand (he had, after all, shot Sonya) but one missing thread led them to somebody who had never been mentioned before, an FBI agent and former partner of Marco named David Tate. He was supposed to be dead all these years, but they let it be known in the waning minutes of last week’s episode that he had actually faked his death and he was really the balding, bearded co-worker of Marco’s wife Alma who was reluctantly stepping into an affair with her following her estrangement with her husband.
Small world!
What seemed at first the most benign friendship with possible romantic edges (they didn’t even want to sleep together at first) is suddenly some big, planned scheme to endanger his partner’s wife because Marco, we learn, had had an affair with Tate’s former wife.
And this David Tate really loved that former wife. So much so that he tracked the prominent son of a local richman he is sure caused the hit and run accident that killed her and their child on the bridge some years back.
Turns out that on this very night that they figure out this David Tate connection,he kills the playboy kid, slitting his throat at a society event he takes Alma to and leaving one of her distinctive silver beads from her necklace — which Marco instantly remembers!
And let’s see, how planned was this romancing of Alma? Was the previously unknown David Tate responsible for somehow putting Charlotte character in front of Marco so they’d have an affair, causing the rift that gave him a chance to advance?
Or was it just good luck and timing that this all happened at the same time?
I may sound too much like Sonya for asking so many questions in the midst of what is still pretty gripping mayhem.
But good gravy. Marco’s son Gus, who has a thing for Sonya and has been texting an ex girlfriend for weeks, suddenly runs into that girl on the street only to find she hasn’t been texting him at all. It’s been David Tate texting him and trying to lure him to some danger.
Just as Marco and Sonya realize his family is in danger, Tate has absconded with Alma and their two daughters (Two daughters? I don’t remember seeing them before). They go to a picnic at a playground where Tate calls Marco and taunts him even as he squishes a bug (giving the episode its title, “Beetle,” and supposedly showing what a cold blooded killer he is of insects as well as men).
But really, calling Marco a minute after he’s realized Tate might have his family – what kind of timeliness does this guy have?
And how much money? Enough to buy and trick out his entire apartment building with explosives for anybody who would put two and two together and snoop around to find him for questioning. It’s diffused quickly by the rest of the force, who say “this guy had a lot of time on his hands.”
Enough to know it would all come to a head on this particular day.
There’s a sudden creepiness to what had previously seemed like a kindly rebound guy for Alma, a secondary character who might only be involved in the action if Marco slugged him after seeing him with Alma.
And here they are delivering an old fashioned implied lesson: Look what happens when you go for revenge against your husband when you’re just separated!
And another thing: How is it that Alma never met this David Tate when he was her husband’s partner? She and her family took no time to meet Sonya when they learned she was working with Marco.
But still, his creepiness adds velocity and danger to the episode, especially when it involves the lovely wife and innocent children. He drives them out to an abandoned shack out int he desert where he promises a big surprise.
Despite the elaborate rigging of the quickly dismissed apartment building, this one is empty save for one thing: A live grenade he hands Alma before locking the three of them in the shack.
Crazy with worry, Marco begins to follow the trail of the fake girlfriend texting Gus. They text the person that they should meet. At the assigned place, Tate gets suspicious and sends a note to Gus instead. It has the coordinates of the shack, where Marco gets to in no time.
He has to first gently take the grenade from Alma and throw it and for a moment, the scene of two flawed people holding hands and a grenade is such a perfect metaphor for contemporary marriage I’m almost willing to forgive the rest of the episode’s whoppers.
Tate’s still on the loose, though, and while Sonya drives Gus to a safe house, Tate crashes his truck into theirs – another spectacular turn. Gus is being carried away by Tate as Sonya tries to regain consciousness.
Does she survive? You bet, as next week’s coming attractions asssure us. And she’s certain Gus is alive, she says, since Tate “wants Marco to suffer.”
So it’s timed pretty well to have a big showdown between the two in the next few episodes.
With all of this going on, it’s almost easy to overlook the major developments in the other stories, particularly at the ranch of Charlotte, whose one-nighter with Marco sparked the current main plot, or so we are to believe.
Her ne’er do well ex, Ray, had decided to make some money on the tunnel she’d inherited that he’d been asked to help overlook, sending a shipment of guns to the Mexican madame who has been so striking in her few appearances Graciela Rivera.
Ray’s call to an old gun running pal was unfortunately bugged by the ATF, who also put bugs in the shipments to follow them. They were immediately found, showing the caper to be more flawed than “Fast and Furious.” And she came up and threatened her (instead of her horse this time). Well her hired hand Ceasar shot her bodyguard, then Charlotte stabbed the woman to death with a pitchfork. Later they buried the two bodies in the desert.
And if you don’t think this is going to cause some repercussions, wait until the season’s final four episodes..
Finally, the weird Steven Linder character, he with the halting speech and mouth full of marbles, returns to the religious work camp where he had dropped Eva and tells her (and the guy in charge there) that he had killed her boyfriend. She seems to accept it, but not so much his awkward hug.
As for the newspaper reporters, well we don’t seem them at all. It is only a one hour show. Let’s hope they get on the story before it flies further into fantasy and coincidence next week.