The Bridge has largely abandoned its first-season conceit of racial politics, opting instead to structure itself as a creepy, atmospheric thriller. A lot of this is accomplished through Franka Potente’s Eleanor Nacht (who the hell was she feeding an acorn to last week, anyway?), but maybe too much. Eleanor only has one scene in “Eye of the Deep,” and the episode as a whole dragged in places. The problem with a character as good as Eleanor is that she’s sorely misssed when she’s not on screen.
Not that The Bridge‘s ensemble isn’t up to carrying the episode. Marco’s plot in particular was tense and very dark (and I don’t just mean visually, but seriously, this show is so fucking dark it’s like FX is reading my reviews and then darkening every frame in post just to fuck with me). Fausto Galvan wants to secure Marco’s cooperation in getting Sonya off of Eleanor’s trail, and to do this he arranges for Marco to kill season one’s boogeyman David Tate. But first he has one of his men take Tate’s eye out, which is a pretty rough scene to watch (and also gives us the episode’s title, which becomes pretty groan-worthy if you think about it).
Marco is snuck into prison disguised as a prisoner, then given a knife and shown to Tate’s infirmary bed. I like the idea of someone sneaking into prison; it’s very Law Abiding Citizen, and Law Abiding Citizen was awesome. Ultimately Marco decides not to kill Tate, wanting him to suffer more, I guess? I thought this was kind of a cop-out, and I really wanted Marco and The Bridge to take us to that dark place. Marco does put his thumb in Tate’s open eye socket though, so that’s something.
Everyone else kind of gets short shrift, as “Eye of the Deep” wants to check in with three or four other plots in its 42 minutes. Charlotte and Ray are sent to hole up in the Ridge, a complex now owned by Fausto Galvan. What their purpose there will be is unclear, but honestly it seems like The Bridge doesn’t quite know what to do with Charlotte this season, as great as her material was last season. And there’s a bigger question at hand: why does she keep Ray around? He’s demonstrably stupid and steamrolls over all her ideas until he’s proven wrong (which he almost always is), and moreover Monty and Cesar don’t like him. Maybe he’s not long for this world.
I’ll tell you who’s really not long for this world: Abelardo the lawyer, who begins the episode by taking Eva’s deposition at Father Bob’s sanctuary and ends it by getting hassled by Juarez cops until Sonya shows up to save his ass. And as far as Eva goes, I’m more interested in her plot when it involves Father Bob and Steven Linder beating the shit out of a crooked cop that they have tied up in a shed.
“Eye of the Deep” was definitely a wheel-spinning episode, and while it was atmospheric and effective, it didn’t approach the levels of creepiness achieved by last week’s “The Acorn” (sorry for not reviewing that, by the way; 4 1/2 stars, if you were wondering). What The Bridge needs to do is kind of paradoxical: it needs to embrace its destiny and become the dark thriller that it’s flirting with being, and it also needs to turn on some goddamn lights.
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