‘The Bridge’ episode 8 review: Who is Kenneth Hasting?

If you were to watch “The Bridge” and no other scripted drama out there, then you would probably get a very low opinion of men. When you look at all of these characters, you basically have a murderer, a hired gun, an alcoholic jerk, a serial cheater, some guys with questionable motives, and also someone smuggling guns across the border. This is not exactly the who’s who of nice people in Texas / Mexico. The only genuinely nice guys for the time being seem to be Gus, the son of Marco who is such an innocent soul, and Sonya’s father figure in Hank.

In the end, though, the actions of one man in particular (in cheater Marco) may be the most important this week by a mile, as we found out just what sort of real connection that he has to this case. The #1 suspect for the killer is now Kenneth Hasting, a man with a new life and a new name that used to be an FBI agent … one presumed dead. Of course we also have to mention that Marco was sleeping with his wife.

All of this is a game-changer just in the context of what Marco would mean to this man as a killer, and his continued motivation to try and preach his political agenda. He also meets the mark of everything else that we’ve heard in the context of this case: The killer is clearly organized, and likely has a history of working in law enforcement.

Even though we spent all of this time building to a killer, was this really an impressive reveal? This is what we are still fairly unsure about after watching this. It was a lot to take in over the course of one episode, and it feels a little on the nose that a killer would be so connected to a single detective working on the case.

As for a couple other quick thoughts…

1. We’re thrilled to see that Daniel is still alive after the scary seizure from last week, and we’re hoping to see more of him the rest of the season. He is clearly one of the show’s more-interesting characters.

2. Please say that we are going to have a purpose for this Charlotte storyline soon. Otherwise, we really don’t care.

So we end a fairly strong, but also rather frustrating episode, one where our favorite moment may have actually been a conversation between Sonya and Gus that showed some emotion and common ground.

What did you think about this hour? If you want to take a look at more news related to “The Bridge,” just be sure to click here.

Photo: FX