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Last week, in a message to critics that was included with a bunch of promotional material, the newly solo showrunner of The Bridge, Elwood Reid, said the following:
In its inaugural season, my partner Meredith Stiehm and I took an existing story and format, the Danish-Swedish drama Bron/Broen, and adapted what became The Bridge for American television.
We loved the characters and story of Bron/Broen and stayed relatively true to the original story, which was centered around the hunt for a serial killer. That said, the serial killer thread was not the most interesting aspect of our adaptation. The most interesting thing to us has always been the shadow world of the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. And that will be the focus of The Bridge, this season and beyond.
This is excellent news.
Let me back up. I thought the first season of The Bridge was pretty good. The only problem I had with it was that there was a potentially great show tucked inside it that was getting drowned out by some of the surrounding noise, the prime example being the whole We Must Find The Serial Killer plot that bogged down the first half to two-thirds of the season. We’ve seen that before, a lot, and while it’s fine for a show to be that if you can find a novel angle from which to approach it (I mean, True Detective and Fargo were both We Must Find The Serial Killer shows at their heart, really), The Bridge never got there for me on that front. There were just too many mysterious phone calls and hidden car bombs and girls left to die in the desert WILL THEY GET TO HER IN TIME TUNE IN NEXT WEEK for it to sit at the grown-up table with its prestige television counterparts.
And it wasn’t just the serial killer thing, either. There was soooooo much happening over the course of the season’s 13 episode run. There was the split-body murder on the bridge, and the drug tunnel, and the thing where a former law enforcement agent faked his death and started having an affair with a guy’s wife as part of a revenge plot that was years in the making, and Matthew Lillard was on drugs, and the guy who looks like Chris Jericho was humping the one lady and performing oral sex on the other lady in the SUV, and the one kid died (the witness), and the other kid died (the son), and the lady cop had Asperger’s, and … you get the idea. A more accurate title for the show might have been The Bridge and Tunnel and Serial Killer Etc. Etc. Etc.
BUT.
Even with all that said, again, I still enjoyed it, thanks mostly to the parts of the show that focused on the relationship between Juarez and El Paso, and the relationship between Marco and Sonya, the cops who were forced to work together because of it. That was a good show, and when all that the other stuff took a backseat to it instead of running around blowing kazoos and holding glowsticks and saying “LOOK AT ME,” everything started to click, especially in the last few episodes. (And just to be clear, this is not meant as a sucker punch directed at busy, flashy, action-filled shows, because I love those, too. Clearly. It’s just a little funny that a show about murky border issues had trouble itself deciding which side of the Prestige TV vs. Scandal, Et Al fence it wanted to be on.)
That’s why the message from Reid is good news. By cutting out some of the loud, extraneous stuff that’s already been done a few dozen times (for better and for worse), the show has a chance to focus on what it’s done best so far and be something different. If it can do that, Season 2 could be must-watch television.
Season 2 of The Bridge returns tonight at 10:00 p.m. on FX
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My biggest disappointment in The Bridge was that instead of delving into the missing girls and all that jazz, the killer’s just some dingus looking for revenge on Detective Rico Suave. Everything else was cool, and I’m looking forward to this season.
Yay The Bridge is back!
Yeah they established this creepy serial killer who’s murdering mexican girls and no one cares because they are mexican, except psyche nope typical seven style super serial killer.
I’ll wait for reviews before I check out season 2.
I agree with this 100%. I’m hoping we see more inner working of the Drug Cartel this time around and watch Marco fall deeper into the abyss.
My problem is they got so many things wrong about the relationship between El Paso and Juarez that I don’t think focusing on it is gonna help. From little things to big things, they didn’t really get anything right. I kind of wish they had just made up fictional towns because it comes off too much like the writers spent a day driving through both cities without talking to anyone or experiencing anything and just drew their own conclusions from there
Mind expanding on this a bit? I would appreciate knowing how the show got things wrong, its kind of like finding out shows that supposedly shoot in new york have people traveling distances in times that are not physically possible.
I know there are articles out there from the beginning of the first season that were very critical of it as it got a lot wrong. Like the relationship between El Paso and Juarez police departments having a better working relationship than is depicted. Ah- google is my friend-
[newspapertree.com]
Also, there was a lot of criticism of Juarez being portrayed as this place that women were not safe, they were all being raped, killed, etc., when in reality the rates are not all that disproportionate from many other metropolitan areas. Google is not my friend on this one…
From what I remember, things like we don’t really have a lot of cowboys here. That’s more San Antonio or Dallas, movies make this mistake all the time with everyone looking like cowboys and when we do they look more like mexican cowboys than american ones which is a big different.
Also it takes at least 30 minutes to cross the bridge into Mexico and at least an hour to come into America. During the morning and at night they increase also.
El Paso is also the safest city in the United States, we have like one murder a year but that I chalk up to being a show.
Hmm but also Juarez is super dangerous for Women, I think like 400 women die or vanish a year so I don’t know where CaptainKirk got that it isn’t dangerous.
Also the cops in Juarez don’t walk around in the city without masks on or confront Drug Dealers head on because they will be terribly murdered. Like head cut off murdered and put on youtube. There are no real hero cops in Juarez as no one will ever talk to them and they really don’t solve cases.
Finally the cartel doesn’t really come to America. This is an important note to make. Because if they did bring the war here, the US could justify getting involved and they don’t want to risk that so they keep things in Juarez.
Those are just from what I remember but it’s those type of things that make the show not entertaining to me because it didn’t take the time to learn these little things
Ah- here we go-
[grantland.com]
I think it’s just in relation to the men being killed. And that’s because they only make up about ten percent. Due to the fact that last year was considered a “safe” year because only about 2000 murders occurred.
Even in high school, we were taught never to leave women alone or told the girls to never go alone at night.
[www.nytimes.com]
The first season of The Bridge was like the last season of The Wire — what could’ve otherwise been a great study of a complicated place became bogged down by a hackneyed serial killer story.
I always felt like the serial killer thing in season 5 was Simon’s way of saying “fuck you” to the serial killer trope, but I probably give The Wire too much credit about pretty much everything.
Any idea where I can find the first season (legally) online? I was into this when it began last year but I fell behind and eventually got an upgraded DVR before I could finish it. Can’t find it on the FX app which is strange. You’d think that they’d make it available to build excitement for Season 2.
HULU was the only one showing it legally before the season started, not sure about now.
Think I’ll finally give this a look-see. I think the first season came at a time when I wasn’t in much of a TV-watching mood. Or maybe its timeslot was inconvenient. But there’s nothing else on tonight, so that’ll work to its advantage.