The Bridge: “Pilot” (Episode 1.01)

TV is currently in the midst of a full-fledged love affair with serial killers.
Detectives are searching for one on AMC’s The Killing. Dr. Lecter is whipping up some very questionable meals on NBC’s Hannibal. Kevin Bacon is laughably tortured by a serial killer on FOX’s The Following. And Showtime has gotten eight seasons out of vigilante serial killer Dexter.
Into this fray, enters the new FX series The Bridge, which once again has detectives in pursuit of a serial killer. But the drama features an intriguing twist. When a body is found on the bridge that connects El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, both El Paso Detective Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger) and Chihuahua State Police Detective Marco Ruiz (Demian Bichir) are called to the scene. Sonya believes the case is theirs until they try to move the body and it splits in two—half in Mexico, half in the United States.
Things become even more interesting when it’s discovered that the victim isn’t one body but two. The top half belongs to an American judge with a strong anti-immigration stance. The bottom is an unidentified Latina woman. A serial killer with an agenda isn’t anything new. But a serial killer with a socio-economic, political agenda is.
Sonya has Asperger’s syndrome, something that is easy to figure out even if the press notes hadn’t told me so. She is more the TV definition of Asperger’s (I’m thinking someone this stunted in communication wouldn’t make the best detective in the real world). Sonya is unable to connect with people and unmoved by human emotion. Everything to her must be orderly and by the rules. When Charlotte (Annabeth Gish) begs her to let them cross the bridge so her husband can get to a hospital, she won’t allow it. In her just-the-facts world, the bridge is a crime scene and the crime scene is closed. When she’s dispatched to tell the judge’s husband about his wife, she is cold and accusing. “I’m sorry if I didn’t exercise empathy,” she tells him.