And so The Bridge wraps up its messy yet engaging sophomore season with a messy yet engaging season finale. The first half of this season was vastly superior to the (admittedly still pretty good) second half, with the focus on Eleanor Nacht and Sebastian Cerisola, as well as Fausto’s fall from power. The introduction of the DEA/CIA storyline threatened to derail the proceedings, but showrunner Elwood Reid managed to stick the landing, more or less.
“Jubilex” – another demon from the Pathfinder module of Dungeons & Dragons; this also marks, after “Lamia” and “Rakshasa,” the third episode this season to be named after some demonic entity – picks up where last week left off, with Hank tailing the semi full of drugs and Sonya following the van. After a quick shootout, Hank finds Linder in the truck, still alive, but just so; Sonya fares worse – after approaching the driver of the van, she’s quickly knocked out by Buckley, but he spares her life because “it’s bad luck to kill a cop.”
Marco isn’t doing much better; he’s still on Fausto’s version of the Bataan Death March. Romina is close to collapse, and manages to convince Fausto to let her inject herself with heroin. She injects Fausto instead, and Marco overpowers Fausto’s henchman; granted, Romina gets gutshot for her troubles, but at least Marco is in charge now. (Also, Fausto pukes all over his man, which was hilarious.)
Frye and Adriana meet with Buckley’s CIA superior, whose name I can’t even pretend to remember because The Bridge introduced about 1,000 new characters this season. What’s important is that A, Buckley is off the deep end, and B, they meet at Frank’s Coffee Shop, which has also been featured on Justified and Sons of Anarchy this year, so maybe FX has some kind of bulk deal. Anyway, it’s a moot point as Buckley ends up shot to death a few minutes later.
Exhausted yet?
Look, I don’t want to bog this down with rote recitation of the plot. “Jubilex” wrapped things up, as season finales are supposed to, but also left some threads dangling, such as Fausto’s incarceration and Marco being offered the Captain position. (Linder and Eva also reunite, and as much as Linder grew on me this season, I kind of hope that The Bridge puts a button on his storyline.)
The most important loose thread to tie up was that of Eleanor Nacht. Franka Potente was amazing in the role, and I will sorely miss the weird menace she brought to the show. Eleanor gets custody of her father, who she calls a demon, because if you haven’t already noticed, Eleanor calls everyone a demon. (It could be argued that in “Lamia,” the demon was Fausto, and in “Rakshasa” it was Chopper, which means in “Jubilex” it’s her father.) She drags him to a tree on a chain leash and secures him to a pipe, where she delivers a chilling monologue about the sexual violence her perpetrated against her. Then she pelts him with acorns. Anyway, he gets loose and attacks her, and to Eleanor’s credit he does look pretty demonic. But Sonya manages to put one in his head and arrest Eleanor. I guess Sebastian Cerisola told Sonya where Eleanor was gonna be? How the hell would he know that?
As I said before, The Bridge‘s narrative kinda got away from it in the season’s second half. It never went completely haywire, as it remained a compulsively watchable, well-acted show. But I prefer the first half because of the claustrophobic weirdness; it takes balls to introduce a character like Eleanor, and in comparison, falling back on thriller tropes like CIA conspiracies feels like it’s beneath what this show could be.
“Jubilex” grade: 4 stars
Season grade: 4/5 stars
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