Episode of the Week: ‘The Bridge’ season 1, episode 1, ‘Pilot’
We’ll start this Episode of the Week feature by pointing out something about FX as a whole when it comes to what they continuously pull off as a network: Letting creative people actually have the freedom to do what they want. No one does it better. They allowed Meredith Stiehm and the team behind “The Bridge” to air a 90-minute premiere episode, and was it ever worth it.
We want to dive straight in to what made this real top quality this week, starting with the idea of having a lead character in Sonya who is excellent at her job, but a failure when it comes to dealing with these people. It would have been so easy to turn this role into an Adrian Monk-type character (especially since Ted Levine was once again playing the captain / watchdog here), but she became someone instead who did not necessarily need or want your sympathy.
The fact that her specific condition (Asperger’s) was never once directly mentioned in the episode was somewhat surprising, and the performance by Diane Kruger in the part was strong. What also made it compelling was how the show introduced this character that would make us be judgmental and wonder what exactly was wrong with her, only for us to figure it out over time.
Probably the best performer of all here was Demian Bichir, playing the officer from Juarez tasked with help trying to solve the strange double-murder at the border. At the end of the day, we are very aware that this is another cop show, but at least it is one that is not bringing us a case of the week, or goes down into cheesiness or stereotypes.
Runner-up – “True Blood” season 6, episode 4, “At Least” (HBO) – “True Blood” still is far from a perfect show these days, but at least this episode brought us some great character moments, and more importantly than that, introduced us to the real Warlow, a man who is much more complicated than any of us expected him to be.
If you want to read even more entries in our Episode of the Week feature, just be sure to visit the link here.
Photo: FX