Now midway into its first season, “The Bridge” is a crime drama on FX about a joint investigation between American and Mexican authorities into serial killings that have occurred along the El Paso-Chihuahua border. This is not a review of “The Bridge,” this is a review of main character Sonya Cross’ leather jacket.
Sonya Cross’ leather jacket is the most glorious jacket that has ever been featured on television. Sonya Cross’ leather jacket is at least 10 times cooler than the silver jacket from “Drive.” Sonya Cross’ leather jacket has depth and nuance. There are new and surprising aspects of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket revealed every episode, as our heroine turns and shifts into heretofore unseen positions, thrusting different parts of the jacket into the spotlight to shine luminous beneath the fierce El Paso sun.
Sonya Cross’s leather jacket is made of a cracked, gray material. It’ so worn-in that it has become a transformative entity, sometimes appearing to be tinted with green, other times looking almost as white as the skin tones of the American citizens on the glorified side of the bridge. There are patches of leopard print on the shoulders that may actually be cheetah print; those animals look exactly the same to me. A broad collar shifts into a wide, angular lapel, and also there are a lot of cool zippers. Sonya Cross’s leather jacket looks comfortable only because its wearer has spent so much time inside of it; on Sonya Cross, the treated and tailored dead cow is not a second, but a first skin.
Along the arms of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket are markings rendered in pen and marker. See the red star above, once bright but now faded, and the cryptic yet intricate tribal markings along the underside of the lapel. But were these markings made by Sonya Cross herself? Yes — ostensibly they were — but this truth is never explicitly revealed but rather left to linger, sometimes trailing off and sometimes re-appearing as the central on-screen question. Did Sonya Cross draw that star?
Examine the left shoulder of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket and you’ll find a row of roughly 2-dozen safety pins. Conceivably either functional or fashionable, it’s more likely that the safety pins were actually placed to serve as an extra layer of protection, like the plates along the back of an armadillo, an animal so often seen along the Mexican-American border, sometimes as dead and forgotten roadkill.
Etched into the back of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket is a detailed rendering of a horse, very subtle, a little faded, and all-in-all easy to miss if you aren’t paying proper attention to Sonya Cross’ leather jacket. The drawing is a thematic nod to the rest of the show, as horses are one component of a very, very minor plot point of “The Bridge.” But this is not a review of “The Bridge,” this is a review of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket.
Now, look at the arm of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket. Faintly, there are words written there, but are they names? Does one of them read “daughter”? Or might it read “slaughter”? Does this add or detract from the overall coolness of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket?
See alongside the cuff, where there are two pieces of duct tap the very same color as Sonya Cross’ leather jacket. What a play on identity; from a distance, expensive leather and cheap duct tape appear to be exactly the same substance, You wouldn’t even be able to determine, say, if one were purchased in Mexico and one purchased in America. But which one in which place??!
A marked contrast from the subtle details of the rest of the jacket is the patch displaying a brightly colored tiger, the only part of the garment that appears aspirational. This makes three animals that are referenced on Sonya Cross’ leather jacket: a tiger, a horse, and either a leopard or a cheetah.
My goodness, what a cool fucking leather jacket. It looks good from every angle and even when Sonya Cross is talking to a fellow cop. My friend Ashley recently told me that if you run a leather jacket over with your car, it will instantly appear more weathered and therefore more awesome. A new question to ponder: did Sonya Cross* run her leather jacket over with her car, or did she earn those crevices and soft parts from years of crossing** back and forth over The Bridge.
* and ** I know this a review of Sonya Cross’ leather jacket and not “The Bridge” itself, but I think I just figured out an important pun.