A quick review of tonight's “The Bridge” coming up just as soon as a horse steps on my foot in summer camp…
“It is vast, and we are not.” -Hank
With one week to go in the second season – and, I fear (especially after last week's surprise “Tyrant” renewal), the series – “Quetzalcoatl” starts pointing us towards various signs of closure, even as it's making clear that the story of the border, and the relationship between the two countries that share it, is so much bigger than could be contained in a season of television, or even a long-running series with healthier ratings than this one has.
As Sonya and Hank, and Frye and Adriana, continue their separate and occasionally overlapping investigations into the cartel's business practices, we get more signs of huge and complex all this business is, and how little will likely be changed should one or both of Fausto and Eleanor go to prison. Even after Captain Robles learns that he is to be charged with rape, conspiracy and corruption, he still has the freedom to go visit the cartel's new man in Juarez, who seems more at peace with being a cog in a machine than Fausto was.
That Robles may be on his way to prison is unfortunately news that Linder isn't privy to, which leads to his tragic but inexorable decision to keep pursuing revenge rather than taking Eva up on her offer to walk away and attempt to live happily ever after. I don't know for sure that he's going to die in that alley, but it certainly seems like “The Bridge” ran out of road with Linder, who may ultimately be the show's most memorable character, but had long since become tangential at best to the larger story. (And this is one of the few ways in which a cancellation would have a silver lining: it's easier to make peace with Linder getting killed off if the show only has one more episode to go, anyway.)
The finale still has a lot to deal with, including Sonya's pursuit of Eleanor, Marco's attempt to survive captivity with Fausto, the end result (if anything) of Frye and Adriana's reporting, whether Obregon can successfully make the shift into clinical psychiatry (hey, he does know there's a genetic component to depression), and if Monte's leather guy can get the blood out of his boots.
When I spoke with Elwood Reid a few weeks ago, he said the finale would offer closure to the season's stories, even while setting up some potential things he could do in the event of renewal. So no matter what, it doesn't sound like we'll wind up like Sonya's poor fish, which Alex Buckley leaves flopping on the counter, drowning in the air we breathe.
Still, I'll hold out hope that the vast TV business has more room for a show like this, even if its ratings are not vast at all.
What did everybody else think?