The Bridge - S1E8 - Vendetta
Previously, on The Bridge: “Destino”
This week’s The Bridge starts off with a 6 year old trip down memory lane that includes a strip club, an obvious high rolling drug dealer and a tweaked out Daniel Frye doing coke off everything but a stripper’s ass. Sans his pantalones! Well, they run out of coke, typical Tuesday…so the high roller speeds out of the strip club parking lot to score some more on a quick run over the border. Hold on to that thought. Not the one about Frye in his tighty whities; does any man on network TV know how to buy underwear?
Jack Childress
Wade and Sonya are interrogating Childress as an obvious suspect; after all, he did have a bone saw in his car. He insists he’s innocent, and his one word answer of “Dialectics” isn’t convincing Wade. Sonya can’t compute why Childress didn’t just kill Ruiz when he had the chance. Childress is claiming the Feds harassed him, cleared out his property of his personal notebooks, etc and never returned them.
Sonya starts digging in the F.B.I files and suddenly all roads are leading to an exFed named David Tate. He was partners with Geldman, a patient of Dr. “Colombian Necktie” Meadows, AND he was in charge of seizing the notebooks from Childress that went missing. Too good to be true? Maybe. Ruiz shows up just in time to squash Sonya’s headway by revealing he knew David Tate, past tense, because David Tate is dead.
Invitation Only
Fresh off his withdrawal seizure, Daniel extends the invitation to a party to Adriana. Seems the party is being thrown by a man named Santi, Jr., who we can only assume is the coke dealing playboy from the earlier strip club flashback. Frye knows if he goes its bye bye recent sobriety, and tells Adriana to wear a nice dress to show off her great lesbian ass. Somewhere in Juarez, her sister’s weep that Frye didn’t catch all the pussy they were throwing at him. Always the lesbian’s sister, never the lesbian.
David Tate: Dead or Alive
Not convinced David Tate is actually dead and buried, Marco heads out with Sonya to confirm. We learn that before Tate’s death, his wife and child were killed in Juarez in a car accident. After that, the man went off the rails drinking and drugging until the Feds had to let him go. Tate then drove to Juarez and blew his face off, but was identified by his driver’s license before cremated – which was approved by his sister-in-law. Easy peasy suicidy. Right Sonya?
Oh, not on this show.
Sonya meets up with the sister-in-law and discovers the reason David Tate’s wife was even on the road in Juarez before her and her son were killed was because she had been having an affair with a man across the bridge. The sister assumes that night, the husband and wife got into a fight, she grabbed her son, and they made a break for it.
White Trash Ray
As promised, Tampa Ray’s partner in crime Tim, who is partnering with the crime unit, has shown up with an ice cream truck filled with weapons. A not too thrilled Charlotte catches Tim relaxing by her pool with a cold one, but Ray is nowhere to be found.
Off to make his first deliver to La Jeffa, Ray drags the weapons through Charlotte’s tunnel (Charlotte’s dirty, dirty, web infested tunnel) into La Jeffa’s office for his first duffle bag full of money. He seems a little too eager to “seal the deal” south of La Jeffa’s border – seewhatIdidthere – but there’s no time for hanky panky. Upon Ray’s return through the tunnel, he finds Charlotte waiting for him and she is insisting he shuts that shit down immediately. I’m sure Ray will listen. Although, he may have no choice because after La Jeffa’s men examine the guns they find them loaded with transmitters. Ray better hope Charlotte sends his ass on the next flight back to Florida swampland.
Kenneth Hasting
Cooper has drawn Wade back out to Jack Childress’ property after discovering a body buried under the cement. The body has been identified as Kenneth Hasting, a rival of Childress. Still not adding up in Sonya’s brain, Cooper, Wade and Marco continue to try and convince her how ridiculous and far fetched her theory about David Tate is turning out to be. Cooper even goes as far as to call her “village idiot” and ooooohhh…dude, not cool. Not.even.cool.by.me.
A Secret Admirer
Gus shows up at EL Paso P.D. to see a distressed Sonya, and asks her if she received the chocolates he sent. It’s a sweet scene, albeit incredibly awkward for everyone. I think it’s worth mentioning because even though Sonya has to draw a boundary, something she’s terrible at, she manages to do it delicately without crushing Gus’ feelings. It’s brief, but one of her finer human moments in the season, thus far.
The Big Reveal
In another attempt at linking Kenneth Hasting to the murders, Sonya pulls up a file complete with photograph. Marco peeking over her shoulder tells her to let the whole David Tate thing go. Sonya didn’t pull up a Tate file, but a file on Kenneth Hasting, who Marco argues, no – that’s Tate. In fact, it is an active drivers license for a man going by Kenneth Hasting who is the same man Alma, Ruiz’s wife has been having an affair with. Duhn, dun DUHN!
We’ve since discovered that the party Daniel gave Adriana an invite to is also being attended by none other than Alma and Kenneth Hasting. Adriana has a brief encounter with our strip club playboy Santi Jr., confirming Daniel’s previous warnings about his attempts to turn her straight ass onto his pants. She refuses of course and he seems to saunter off for his next victim.
Alma and Hasting are dancing and enjoying the evening when Alma reveals to him she is pregnant with her husband’s child. He doesn’t seem swayed however, such is love, and tells her to meet him outside so he can take her home for some dysfunctional family lovin’; not before we see Hastings’ eyes follow Santi Jr. out of the room and up a flight of stairs.
Vendetta, Indeed
In a secluded bathroom, Hasting asks Santi Jr. if he recognizes him from the papers after what he did. Santi Jr. starts to shrug it off and Hasting quickly attacks him from behind with a switchblade. Hastings slits his throat, and as Santi Jr. bleeds out, Hasting explains he killed his wife and child in that car accident years ago (upon leaving the strip club to score coke), and leaves Santi Jr. on the bathroom floor. In a pretty defiant move, Hasting slams his bloody handprint on the mirror. Someone has come out of hiding.
Marco Comes Clean
While Sonya and Marco are examining Santi Jr’s body at the crime scene, they discover another large bead left behind. Marco begins to have a flashback of that very bead swaying back and forth on the necklace of David Tate’s wife while they were having sex. Marco, is the man across the bridge; the man Jill Tate was going to see the night her and her son were killed in Juarez.
In a final moment, we see Hasting/David Tate driving home with Alma in his car, off into the blurred lights of what’s to come.
