The Bridge - S1E9 - The Beetle
Previously, on The Bridge: “Vendetta”
Charlotte’s Web…of Deceit
Charlotte’s ovaries finally drop and she stands up to Graciela. Stand-up as in ran her through with a pitchfork. Her trusty sidekick Cesar blew a hole in the chest of Graciela’s henchman for good measure. However, Charlotte does not get her hands too dirty, she lets Cesar dig the hole to bury Graciela, and they decide it is best to keep this from Ray. I am still not sure why Cesar is so loyal to Charlotte, whatever the reason, she is lucky to have him on her side.
Love Struck Gus
A few episodes ago the show made a point to display a short text exchange between Gus and a female friend. I have been suspicious of his top-secret texting since the show’s start, but I assumed it was drug related. Maybe he was ditching school and getting caught up in drug running for the cartel. I was wrong about the drug running but correct in my suspicions. We meet up with Gus walking down the streets of El Paso. A young woman tackles him on the street. They have an exchange; he asks her whether they are still going to meet up later today. She is confused. He shows her a text message from her number. She informs him that is her old number and she hopes he has not been telling another girl all his secrets. Gus runs off.
Stephen is Lusty
Stephen has been having some masturbatory fantasies about Eva. He visits the Christ Ranch as he feels the need to confess to her that he killed her boyfriend in self-defense. She seems a bit numb by the news but not surprised. They awkwardly embrace.
Marco “Don Juan” Ruiz
Raise your hands if you have not slept with Det. Marco Ruiz. If you are under 20 and you raised your hand, Marco might be your father.
At the end of last week’s episode, we find out that Marco had an affair with a woman killed in an accident on the Bridge. A body was found in the trailer park. The body of Kenneth Hastings and for Sonya, it doesn’t add up. The body of a white supremacist buried in the desert does not fall in line with The Killer’s M.O. Sonya trusts her gut and looks up Kenneth Hastings in the database. Whose photo shows up? David Tate aka Ken aka Alma Ruiz’s co-worker no-tell motel lover.
Sonya and Marco are connecting the dots as to who their killer is and who he is not. He is David Tate former FBI Agent and husband to Marco’s previous mistress. He is not going to be taken down without a fight.
Not only was Tate an FBI agent, he excelled at his job and had a keen interest in the missing girls of Juarez. Marco and Tate were working together on the case, which was eventually shut down by the FBI. Tate suffered a breakdown after the death of his wife and child. He also fell off the grid shortly after his dismissal from the FBI. Marco is insistent that Tate did not know about the affair. Sonya asks well, what if he knows now. Marco’s face goes white and the rush off to Alma’s home. The house is empty. Marco is agitated.
He receives a call from “Alma.” It is Tate and he is at a park with Alma playing new daddy to Marco’s girls. Marco is furious and threatens to kill him; Tate laughs and hangs up the phone.
A few moments later Gus returns home. He reveals that Tate is one of Alma’s co-workers and has been to the house. Several. Times. Marco is not pleased.
Ken gives Alma the opportunity to call Marco. She declines and sneaks a smooch, before they pack up the kids and head to a surprise location. Ken takes them to a ramshackle shanty in the middle of the desert. Alma’s creep-meter should have gone off, but no she and the kids follow him into the shanty. Ken has Alma close her eyes and he places something in her hand; a grenade, without the pin. Alma is freaking out. Ken runs out of the shanty and padlocks her and the kids inside.
Back at the precinct, Gus shows Wade the text messages he has been receiving from Goth Girl. They realize it is Tate, but he does not know that Gus bumped into Goth Girl and they confirm the meeting with Tate. They proceed with a sting operation to nab Tate. A kidnapper van parked in a very hipster looking part of town. Worst surveillance team ever. Tate catches on and gets a waiter to pass a note to “Gus”. Wade and Marco rush the waiter and read the note.
It’s coordinates to shanty. Marco and Wade arrive at the shanty bust down the door. Marco makes a grenade exchange with Alma, and throws it behind the building…
That is some bullshit. But, whatever.
Sonya receives word that the girls are safe, loads up her pick-up truck to take Gus to the safe house. En route the truck is t-boned by another vehicle. Dangling upside down in the truck and a bit discombobulated, Sonya sees Tate drag Gus out of the truck. She spies the license plate number on the other vehicle before she passes out.
I have a few issues with this episode:
- The audience is supposed to feel some anxiety, pain, worry about Alma and the kids being trapped in the dusty shack. This only works if you build a connection between the audience and the people being held captive. I can’t even tell you the names of her little girls. Sasha and Malia???
- Marco must not ever pay attention to his wife. Maybe she never talks about work. Even before her affair with Tate started, they were obviously close to one another, moreover, had developed a collegial working relationship. You talk to your partner about your co-workers, unless it is a Hi-and-By situation, you will use their name. Gus spilling the beans seemed like a long way to go for Marco to find out that his wife works with Kenneth Hastings.
- What the hell is the rush? I was perfectly content with them NOT finding the killer or discovering his motivations before the season ended. I appreciate the surprise that it was Hastings/Tate, but why does it feel like the ending is going to be a disappointment?
- Charlotte’s story line just got less interesting. Unless the ATF comes in and starts wrecking shop OR we find out that Cesar is actually the brain behind the cartel.
Excellent summary. Your issues with this episode are my issues as well. And I would add, the entire hand-grenade situation. So Alma plugged the grenade’s pinhole or in some way delayed the explosion? I didn’t think that was possible, once the pin is pulled. But even if she did so, how did she know how to do that? How is it that the grenade didn’t explode by the time she fooled with it? Grenades go off quickly, don’t they? And the exchange of grenade from wife to husband; it explodes at just the right moment. Maybe this was one of those grenade/bombs that terrorists use, where as soon as you try to get rid of it and take your hand off the pressure-trigger, it explodes. If that is the case, those are rigged to explode immediately, hence their effectiveness. Not in just the right amount of time it takes for Ruiz to take it form Alma, and hurl it on the other side of the barn. (Great throwing arm, there, Detective.)
You are completely correct about the two little Ruiz girls. To be honest, I didn’t even remember Marco and Alma had any other children besides Marco’s son Gus from a previous marriage.
Also, the crash at the end. How did Tate know the route Sonya was taking? Did he put a tracker on her truck? How would he know she was the one taking Gus to the safe house? THE BRIDGE has been unusually good until this episode; it seemed that Tate all of a sudden became this comic-book villain who just knows stuff so he can act in villainous ways in order to advance the plot. Did I miss a scene that indicated Tate was monitoring Sonya in some way? He would have to have been able to position his truck just in the right spot at the right time, to cause the collision. Maybe I missed something that indicated he was monitoring conversations in the police station.
And the death of Graciela. Generic bling-laden drug queen-pin taken out by pitchfork after bringing only ONE bodyguard with her. She’s going to confront this gringa who she thinks betrayed her, put tracers on all the weapons that Ray supplied-compare and contrast to Breaking Bad and how many men accompany bad-asses like Gus Fring when he goes in person for a meeting. She should have been alert, enraged, backed-up by a small army. For all she knew, the DEA, FBI, and police could have been at the ranch. It was like old-style television from the 60s and 70s, where the villains are written like dimwits just so the heroes can take them down.
And I’m being picky only because the first few episodes of THE BRIDGE didn’t make these kinds of mistakes.
Like I said, great recap.
As far as Tate knowing that Sonya was taking Gus to the safe house, I am holding firm that he has someone on the inside feeding him information.
How he knew which way she would go: They seem to take the same road everywhere AND he used to be an FBI agent, he knows where the Safe House is and how to get there.
There is so much that happened in this episode that just derailed the show. Maybe they got 3/4 of the way into production and had an A-HA moment that influenced the direction of the last 4 episodes. Someone said we need to wrap this up, so they did. And the audience got an extremely messy episode out of the deal .