“I say we act like white people and disappear, and let our lawyers do the talking.”
Oh how I’ve missed Ray. All the chickens (I mean characters) came home to roost in the third episode of The Bridge, which saw the return of Ray, Charlotte and Steven Linder. Interestingly enough, the show just dropped viewers right into the Charlotte and Ray saga. Now they’re fully entrenched in running drugs for Fausto Galvan. And things were going great until Ray and Cesar were hijacked by a bunch of teenagers… and Ray had to reach into a horse’s bottom to retrieve the drugs. Now Ray wants to run (to Alaska because Mexicans don’t like the cold) and Cesar wants to go home to be with his wife and kids and maybe watch a video.
Kyle’s friend Dex comes forward and tells the police about the naked, bloody, tattooed lady he and Kyle saw. Even when Sonya and Marco figure out that Eleanor has most likely killed Kyle, poor Dex isn’t under any kind of police protection (which I found incredibly stressful. I don’t think I could have handled the show killing off another child). So there Eleanor is in Dex’s bedroom, ready to kill Dex when he wets himself. “You’re really just a little boy, aren’t you?” Eleanor marvels, and then leaves Dex without even a scratch on him. So Eleanor has some sort of moral code? She won’t kill children? If only Kyle had known that.
Daniel and Adriana go to see Raul with Daniel muttering under his breath, “Please be alive.” Raul is alive and warns the reporters that he doesn’t know who has been following him but “they’ll be following you now. Have fun with that.” Alas, by the end of the episode, Raul is dead—he begs his murderer not to shoot him in the head but to maintain his beauty by stabbing him instead.
Sonya and Hank are figuring out what viewers knew last week. The DEA knows exactly who Eleanor Nacht is. “Why don’t you tell us how she fits into the cartel,” Sonya asks Agent McKenzie. McKenzie doesn’t want to say but everyone seems to know (because practically every character said it)—that a Caucasian woman as part of the Cartel is a rare occurrence.
I wasn’t a fan of the Steven Linder character or his gravelly mumbling last season and I’m still not. But the show seems to love having him so he’s back, buying Eva a roadside necklace (from a man even stranger than he is) and ready to take on anyone who harms her. Once Steven learns from Ava the atrocities she experienced while being held by the Juarez cops, he beats the cop Bob is holding hostage on the compound
Eleanor tells Dex that Kyle is with the butterflies. Sonya remembers a place that used to be a butterfly sanctuary and Sonya and Marco find Kyle’s body while Eleanor looks on from a distance. Does Eleanor want to be caught? She let Dex live and now is dangerously close to her crime scene.
The multiple stories The Bridge is telling this season still seem a little disjointed. I’m confident that eventually Daniel and Adriana will cross paths with Sonya and Daniel. And with Ray and Charlotte working for Fausto Galvan, they’ll eventually have to merge with the larger story as well. How does this all fit in with the missing girls of Juarez? When Eleanor is found, will Marco report back to Fausto and impede the investigation? I’m curious to find out.
Other thoughts on “Sorrowsworn”:
•Last week at the Television Critics Association press tour, executive producer Elwood Reid said he had planned on killing Daniel in the first season (there were actually two scripts where Daniel was dead) but realized Matthew Lillard was too good an actor and Daniel was too good a character to kill off. I really hope that same sentiment keeps Daniel alive this season.
•Sonya is right. Children do better with curfews.
•I still find Sonya’s relationship with Jack Dobb so disturbing but her announcing “That wasn’t as good as the first time” after they slept together was pretty hilarious.
•What happened to the man Eleanor hired to work for her? He’s dead, isn’t he?
Amy Amatangelo is a Boston-based freelance writer, a member of the Television Critics Association and a regular contributor to Paste. You can follow her on Twitter or her blog.