A quick review of tonight's “The Bridge” coming up just as soon as I end up being transferred to Sierra Leone…
I was on vacation last week, and therefore didn't review “The Acorn.” This is probably for the best, because the majority of the review might have just been expletives and emoji as I grappled with my feelings about both the final scene with Eleanor and her mysterious imprisoned friend/relative/lover/pet/acorn-eater, and with Sonya trying too hard to connect with her late sister by inviting Jack Dobbs' brother to choke her in bed. The show tends to be at its best when it's at its strangest, but this might have been a weird “Bridge” too far.
“Eye of the Deep” doesn't offer a ton of clarity on the Eleanor front, instead adding another quirk in her enjoyment of romance novels. Its primary concern, unfortunately, is to revisit Marco's desire for revenge on David Tate. My hope is that the revenge plot was a decision made so late in the process of season 1 that neither Elwood Reid nor the since-departed Meredith Stiehm had time to think it through, and that Reid recognizes it's a bad fit for the show but also something that can't be ignored, given what we've seen so far. And in having Marco decline his opportunity for murder (if not for a bit of sadism) for now, we can at least table this business and get back to the rest of what's happening this season.
And the rest of “Eye of the Deep” is very busy indeed, with the death of Jim Dobbs, the revelation of CIA involvement with the cartel (and of Joe from the DEA as Frye's government source), Eva reluctantly (and, I fear, suicidally) signing an affidavit against the cops who abducted and raped her, Galvan's troops executing most of the kids who hijacked Ray and Cesar's shipment, and Charlotte and Ray being placed in charge of the housing development where Eleanor committed the massacre in the season premiere.
That is a lot to deal with, and it's good to see some of the season's many pieces beginning to intersect, even as we're adding more story like the Clio Groupo CEO dealing with an addiction in the family. This level of narrative sprawl is a difficult thing to maintain control of, even over a 13-episode season, so it's good to see Frye and Adriana, for instance, moving between different parts of the story, even as other characters remain largely isolated for now.
This is the last episode I saw before I wrote my advance review of the season, so I don't have a lot new to say here. But I'll be curious to see how the story moves from here, and whether my feeling that the show is simultaneously improved from season 1 and yet not as exciting will go away the deeper we get into things. I may also take the next couple of episodes off from writing just to get a better sense of where things stand before I weigh in again.
But after these five weeks, what does everybody else think?