Fx
So halfway through The Bridge‘s first season and The Bridge Butcher as his LinkedIn profile insists you call him is chalking up a pretty high body count. You have to give it to him – he’s mixing up his styles well. There was the ‘saw the lady in half’ trick of his first murders, the poisoned water bottles that did for the 9 Mexicunts, the decapitated body in the dumpster for Gedman (with the head in a holdall Jack Bauer style), and now the old tongue pulled through the neck trope of Doctor Policeshrink. Marco may well feel that he got off lightly with just a bump on the head and a kick in the balls even if they were recently vasectomied. But now you addition to a pair of achey breaky nads the case has given him his first eyewitness. Doctor Policeshrink’s daughter Gina saw her father’s murderer. “I saw the beast” she says and she’s not talking about Christian Benteke.
Trouble is she’s not in much of a talking mood. Once again El Paso PD put Aspie the Wonder Horse on a highly sensitive interview and she manages to make a big fuck up of everything. While Sonya gets on with that Marco digs around in Policeshrink’s case files and discovers Hank Wade had a few sessions with him. Hank explains that having found an 18-year-old girl raped and murdered he shot the suspect Jim Dobbs right in the head. He didn’t die, just got catastrophically monged and now has the brain of a Libertines fan. Hank doesn’t give a rat’s ass about crippling Rim Blobbs but he did care about the murdered girl’s sister and how he denied her the answers she sought. The sister in question? Only freaking SONYA. Yeah, figures.
Hank explains that having found an 18-year-old girl raped and murdered he shot the suspect Jim Dobbs right in the head. He didn’t die, just got catastrophically monged and now has the brain of a Libertines fan.
Over in the dull tunnel subplot Charlotte presents Ray to Graciela Rivera as the new criminal frontman she’d like Graciela to deal with. Lyle Lovett the Lawyer says he’ll check him out and see if his criminal bona fides are bonerfied. While he’s certainly criminal, his delegation skills are lousy. Unbeknownst to Ray the first guy he rings to help with his operation is snitching to the FBI. Jesus Ray you’re a clueless piece of shit.
Back in the pigsty Aspie Sonya isn’t making much progress with Gina so Hank decides to take the pair of them to some filthy disgusting Tex-Mex burger and chilli shitbox for lunch. “If we can’t beat the truth out of this bitch at least we’ll give her botulism” his kind avuncular smile seems to say. All in all it goes pretty well, if by “well” you mean Gina pretends to go for a piss, escapes out the khazi window, runs into a car park, gets knifed by the butcher then bleeds out like a stuck pig until she dies. But if you mean anything else by well then nah it goes pretty badly.
Aspie Sonya isn’t making much progress with Gina so Hank decides to take the pair of them to some filthy disgusting Tex-Mex burger and chilli shitbox for lunch. “If we can’t beat the truth out of this bitch at least we’ll give her botulism” his kind avuncular smile seems to say.
Only Gina, her mom and the cops knew that they had her so it looks very much like the butcher has a law-enforcement connection. It all makes Sonya very sad and as we close she sits opposite Rim Blobbs as he scrawls his shitty childlike crayon drawings. “Fucking tarded rapist” she thinks “Not so fucking clever now eh?”
As we close Sonya sits opposite Rim Blobbs as he scrawls his shitty childlike crayon drawings. “Fucking tarded rapist” she thinks “Not so fucking clever now eh?”
It’s steady as she goes for The Bridge so far. Those of us who watched the original have had the element of surprise taken away from its broad adherence to the plot points of the Danish show. We can also see where it’s going so for us at least it’s going to take a second season before we can really judge exactly how much gas is in the tank. It’s a billion times better than Veena Pseud‘s remake of The Killing and it’s definitely got an authentic feel of its own. Sonya is no Saga to be sure but I think there’s something there.
The verdict: Gringo stars.
Marks out of 10: 7.5