“The Bridge” lived up to its name Wednesday with an hour that served only as a connector between episodes.
We learned right away that Sonya had survived the ramming of her truck by the current main villain and that he kidnapped Gus to further extract pain on Marco, who had had an affair with David Tate’s wife many years earlier.
it was a good episode for the actor playing Marcos, Demian Bichir, who had gone without sleep for so long that he exploded a couple of times in emotional scenes.
The bizarre mystery that began the compelling series — a dead body straddled on the U.S./Mexico border — having long since been solved, now the drama has turned bitterly personal.
“I am a father! This is not a game!” he shouted early in the episode.
Later, when he finally runs into his old friend and current nemesis, he yells the outrage that has occurred to viewers who think maybe the villain had over-reacted to an infidelity that had happened decades earlier.
“You killed all these people because your wife left you?” Marco says. “Other people have had their lives ripped away from them. It doesn’t make them killers!”
As Marcos’ kidnapped son Gus sits in a tank that is slowly filling with water, he has no option but to cooperate with Tate, throwing away his phone but keeping his gun. And that’s where the episode ends.
It wasn’t a great episode for Sonya, who is usually at the center of everything. But Diane Kruger’s character insists on working despite her injury, which includes an interesting pattern of scars on her face. As a result, she is in pain for part of the episode.
The journalist Daniel Fry is back in action after a week off; turns out he’s a pal of the young rich Mexican playboy who actually caused the hit and run that killed Tate’s wife and child. Fry took the rap, and agreed to keep his mouth shut in exchange for a better newspaper job.
So he’s part of the Tate galaxy as well.
And I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Charlotte is. The character, having committed a big crime against a Mexican boss lady last week, is quickly turning into TV’s female Walter White, confronting Ray’s old pal who provided the bugged guns and shooting him dead. How Dan got away from the ATF people for whom he was an informant is unknown; maybe they were watching him anyway.
One character who didn’t appear at all was the marble-mouthed creep Linder. There’s only so much time.
An episode with little resolution on any front served its purpose in distancing itself from the coincidence stuffed episode last week, and whatever climactic action that will come in the upcoming final three episodes.