‘The Bridge’ episode 3 review: The first flaw surfaces

There was some more drama on FX’s “The Bridge” this week, but there was also time for the show to do what has become one of the most-frustrating cliches of all scripted television: The portrayal of most married men as either indifferent or adulterous. Look at the guys that are currently drawing acclaim these days: Don Draper (a serial cheater), Walter White (a noted criminal), Nicholas Brody (a cheater and a terrorist), and many others. Why does there have to be a correlation between married men and cheating, especially when there are so many other ways to show that a person is not entirely perfect.

This is where the issue of Marco seemingly sleeping with Charlotte comes into play: Not only does it drastically change the nature of who was a largely likable character, but it was seemingly unnecessary to the story. The assumption here is that the point of the scene near the end of the episode was to show a foundation of trust there between the two, so that Charlotte would go back to him if there was something like a horse hanging in her stable. But wouldn’t she have done that just if he was a nice, helpful man?

Prior to this scene, the biggest problem with Marco’s character was just that he was almost dead on the inside to the concept of really changing Juarez’s complicated system of justice, and that was fine. He was already imperfect, and there was little need for him to be something else. To us, this one moment complicated the show to the extent that while it is still enjoyable, it dropped slightly from our echelon of the best thing that we’ve seen on TV all year.

The rest of the story, this complaint aside, was fairly strong. We started to see the investigation pick up steam to the point where Sonya and Marco brought in some new suspicious people to question, and that there was a live-stream of a woman dying in the desert placed online. We don’t know if this was as shocking as the water massacre last week, but still horrifying. As random as Sonya’s hook-up was last week, this episode gave us a little more clarity, and we no longer have much of a problem with that at all.

The next few weeks for this show will be imperative; it has to find a way to keep interest in a long-form case in the middle of the summer, which is something that “The Killing” struggled with at times last year, especially.

You can also read our review of last week’s episode, where we were a little quicker to pour on the praise, over at the link here.

Photo: FX