The Bridge 1.01 Review “Pilot”

If people remember anything about the year 2013 in TV, they’ll remember the surplus of quality first season programs. Well, actually they’ll probably remember Breaking Bad’s final half season, but after that we’ll be talking about the numerous amount of stellar freshman dramas including BBC’s sci-fi thriller “Orphan Black,” Netflix’s political drama “House of Cards,” NBC’s horror thriller “Hannibal,” and of course the one-two punch of Sundance Channel’s game changers in “Top of the Lake” and “Rectify.” As we past what most people consider TV’s ‘Golden Age’ and enter for lack of a better word TV’s ‘Silver Age’ (or just a continuation of said Golden Age), we as viewers expect a lot from our TV shows. We live in a time where complex shows like “Breaking Bad” and Mad Men” have swept up the cultural zeitgeist, and like Tony Stark telling the world “I’m Iron Man,” the TV landscape will never be the same. All of this hardcore TV rambling and Stark-isms may seem obvious to most, but the reason I bring them up is that whether we consciously know or don’t know our critical eye for what passes through the idiot box has been raised up to eleven. So with the bar of TV measure now so high, the new shows I mentioned above entered the ring and put up a strong fight. Does FX’s new summer flagship “The Bridge” follow suit?

Created by Meredith Stiehm and Demián Bichir, who worked together previously on Season 1 of “Homeland,” “The Bridge” is the story of two detectives and their joint effort to investigate a serial killer menacing both nations along the Texas- Mexico border. Based loosely on the Danish/Swedish TV series of the same name, “The Bridge” opens this first season fairly strong with the pilot if altogether a little jumbled and/or clunky on what exactly it’s trying to focus it’s attention on. It certainly is in intriguing drama, especially in the dead heat of summer with little to none programs of interest, but it doesn’t have a pilot like FX’s other freshman drama “The Americans” had earlier this year where within this 60 minutes of television we establish a unique (yet still familiar) world, an engaging central conflict, and characters who we are immediately invested in. That’s not to stay “The Bridge” won’t fulfill those in time, just that by the end of the pilot I wasn’t jonesing for the next episode like “The Americans” and so many of these first year dramas I keep mentioning.

One of my biggest concerns going into the show was it’s casting of Diane Kruger Det. Sonya Cross, a member of the El Paso police department. I’m a fan of Kruger’s previous work, especially her role as Bridget von Hammersmark in “Inglorious Basterds,” but I was concerned how her accent and dialect would come off considering she’s supposed to be playing an American. While my fears about her accent were mostly alleviated (I’m still guessing she’s not from Texas and they’ll mention that later in the show), I was actually more drawn to her character than I had anticipated (And it’s not because she looks and acts like a character from an aborted David Fincher film). Even though it’s not mentioned in the first episode so technically spoilers, her character has Asperger’s and is aloof to both those she knows and newcomers alike. From watching the first episode I’ll be intrigued as to how subtle they’ll draw the line between her strengths and weaknesses as a detective with Asperger’s.

Speaking of subtlety, the real draw for me and I’m guessing many people is the heated political setting “The Bridge” takes place in: the border between the Texas and Mexico. I really enjoy TV shows with social commentary on it’s mind, but walking that line can be like walking on a tightrope: If you succeed the crowd will cheer and you’ll be showered with awards, if you fail you’ll become “The Newsroom.” That is to say that for every great show with social commentary like “The Wire” and “South Park,” there are 10 others that just can’t straddle the line of subtlety. In “The Bridge,” were given two scenes that show where this show could go in regards to what it’s trying to say. The first involved Det. Sonya talking to the husband of the judge that was found dead in the beginning of the show. Apparently the judge was passing a bill to forbid the allowance of Mexican workers to look for work in Texas El Paso by waiting on the side of a street. In a moment uncharacteristic of what we’ve seen Det. Sonya’s character to be (work minded/job focused) she becomes the speaker for the writers and is upset with this idea and doesn’t see the point in it. It’s not that I disagree with her (I agree with her), it’s that it’s out of character and pulls me out of the moment. It’s very unsubtle, unlike a scene later in the pilot where Det. Marco Ruiz (played well by the understated Demián Bichir), a homicide detective for the Mexican state of Chihuahua is talking to Det Sonya about the disappearances of girls from Juarez in Mexico. It’s a chilling scene because the delivery by Bichir is completely in character, Ruiz is a man who understands that where he is from the badge is subservient to the dollar. It’s this scene where Ruiz speaks to Sonya about the missing girls where I felt that this show had something to say and it hooked me completely because of it’s execution.

Speaking of execution, I couldn’t help but notice how cinematic “The Bridge” looks and feels. The pilot was directed by Gerardo Naranjo who directed the incredibly unnerving and intense 2011 thriller “Miss Bala.” That film flowed through Naranjo’s use of long absorbing single shot sequences not unlike fellow Mexican director Alfonso Curaron. I don’t think he excels at the wealth of information he needed to piece out to the viewer in the pilot, but it’s still solid direction that sets up a pretty unique sense of place for this over arching mystery and gives the show a good template for it’s future look.

I didn’t mention the storyline of a recently made widow which while I’m sure important didn’t mean anything as of yet emotionally or just on a pure intrigue level and really just left me cold, but the story with alcoholic newspaper reporter Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard aka Shaggy) was very engaging and within a quick amount of time set up his character albeit with a plot device that kind of came out of nowhere (Which I guess was the point, but eh). Overall, the pilot of “The Bridge” may not have given me the gut punch that I wanted, but it did succeed in getting me to watch the next episode, which really is what any TV show can ask for. While it has it’s fair share of problems, this episode is hopefully the first piece in a puzzle that’s well worth putting together.