‘The Bridge’ season 2 premiere review: Sonya Cross and a pile of strange fiction

The season 2 premiere of “The Bridge” definitely was not at all a carbon copy of the show the first time around, and for the most part, we feel like that is a good thing. Elwood Reid, in his first stint as solo showrunner, decided to take the show away from the typical season-long crime that has become a staple of cable TV these days, and brought us something that was strange, psychological, and also compelling.

The most controversial moment of the episode is almost surely going to be Sonya Cross sleeping with Jack Dobbs, the brother of the man who murdered her sister. Given that she doesn’t quite understand intimacy, it’s not a surprise … especially since nobody was around to tell her that this wasn’t a good idea. No amount of digging is going to lead to her getting answers, and she’ll have to learn that over time.

Sonya continues to balance her complicated personal life with her job, which took her to a very strange place at the end of the episode with an electric car, blood, and the beginnings of a much deeper mystery. The show is clearly exercising great patience here. We firmly expected them to fully reveal everything about the big new case that we’re set to encounter this season, but they really didn’t. It was just a tiny tease of what is to come, and her boss Hank spent most of his time this week trying to help Ava.

As for Sonya’s old partner Marco, his story was almost a reflection. He was another broken person handling tragedy, but in his case he pushed almost everyone away, including the side of him that at least tried to be a good cop. He is getting himself messed up in a bad organization just out of rage and vengeance, with his mind this cloudy, there is likely only going to be one ending to this unless someone steps in.

So far, the most interesting inclusion of the show so far is Famke Janssen (“X-Men”) as Eleanor, a very mysterious woman with mysterious, deadly motives. She reminds us already of Javier Bardem from “No Country for Old Men,” but since her screen time was fairly limited, it’s a little too early to know where we’re going with this. The “help me” moment at the end, though? Chilling, and possibly vulnerable in a way that Anton from the movie never was.

For now, the best adjective we can use to describe this was “pretty good.” Unfortunately, it’s not fantastic yet. This episode had way too much going on, and a lot of it required a good memory of season 1, or just a strong attention span in general. The show had a problem connecting things in season 1, and that is currently persisting. We love suspense as much as they next guy, but sooner or later we need to understand where things are going. this goes for whatever Daniel Frye is working on right now in the conspiracy department; we love Matthew Lillard, but we still need further reasons to get pumped for this story.

In the end, this premiere was very entertaining in spite of its confusing qualities, but we are probably only going to be able to handle this for a couple more weeks without answers. Grade: b.

What did you think about the show’s first episode back? Let us know in the comments.