‘The Bridge’ episode 12 review: Did the finale just get interesting?
On Wednesday night, FX is going to put a pin in the first season of “The Bridge” with an episode that is hopefully going to answer a good many questions. Are we going to see every story that has been introduced wrapped up, and are we also going to finally understand what some of these other characters are doing on the show right now?
In some ways, we appreciate how the show revels in its strangeness. Take, for example, the move to not have the season end with David Tate’s arrest. There is some emotion in seeing Marco move beyond what transpired to his family and Gus, and try to make amends with Sonya realizing that she is one of the few friends he has left. We learned probably more about who he and Sonya are as people this week than in the rest of the season to this point, and in the process, we may have had the best performance yet from Diane Kruger in an understated way.
As for the issues, we are hoping that suddenly making Stephen relevant, and also keeping Charlotte on the backburner, are plotlines that will carry through to the second season. She may not be as interesting, but the latter is almost a female Walter White; in this case, she is a woman who finds herself in a desperate position who decides to take advantage of a situation, and it is already starting to turn her into something terrible. We’d like to see this build to the point where she is an adversary for the El Paso PD next year, and all of this buildup has been for a distinct purpose rather than just a lengthy tease.
Stephen, meanwhile, had the sudden/ strange decision to marry one of his rescued girls in Eva, and this spawned the investigation that is bleeding into next week’s episode in that she’s missing. The scene with the sticks at the tail end of the episode was simple and powerful, as was the revelation that Marco learned. Could this also be setting up for a season 2 story? What is happening to some of these women is far more complicated a plot to be summed up in one episode, and if what the show is doing here is proving that their universe is much more important than a single case, then we can get behind all of these little choices that have felt confusing at times.
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Photo: FX