“Rakshasa” opens with Eleanor asking Cesar for The Forbidden Vein, the next installment in the erotic vampire series he’s been reading. Cesar says that his wife is reading it currently, and Eleanor primly responds “Then I will wait.” It’s a small scene, but it says so much about Eleanor, and is a great showcase for the life that Franka Potente breathes into such an odd character. There’s the crisp way she enunciates her Ts, the way she only looks at you when she has some fell notion, and the bizarre fashion in which she expresses pleasure or satisfaction. The exchange lasts no more than fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, but it might have been my favorite part of the episode.
This week picks up right where last week’s “Goliath” left off, with Chopper hauling Sonya’s unconscious body into his van. Chopper is a problematic character, and The Bridge builds him up so much that it’s almost impossible to not be let down. When Eleanor sees him, she tells Cesar, “He’s a demon,” but Chopper doesn’t really exhibit any demonic behavior. The closest we get is a shot of him groping Sonya’s breast while she’s bound and unconscious, which is creepy and definitely not okay, but it’s not the kind of stuff that would earn someone the nickname Chopper. I guess “Fondler” wasn’t intimidating enough. This problem is compounded by the fact that the episode is ostensibly named for him. A Rakshasa is an “unrighteous spirit,” found in Hindu mythology and the Pathfinder module of Dungeons & Dragons, but for as much as The Bridge wants us to be scared of him, Chopper doesn’t live up to the episode’s title.
Anyway, Chopper takes Sonya out to the desert and begins digging her grave while she slowly makes an escape. His laissez-faire attitude towards capitivity is his one unique trait, because his hitman-philosopher schtick grows tiresome pretty quickly. Diane Kruger should be applauded for fully committing to such an unglamorous episode for her character, though.
“Rakshasa” is ably helmed by Hannibal vet Guillermo Navarro, and he directs with a keen cinematographer’s eye that won him an Oscar for shooting Pan’s Labyrinth. The vistas of Texas are stark and foreboding, and in the best shots of “Rakshasa” they bring to mind the similarly somber work of Sergio Leone. And it’s a breath of fresh air – no pun intended – to have a good chunk of the action set outdoors, as The Bridge has been so claustrophobic this season.
Anyway, Marco catches up to Chopper through a string of coincidences I won’t bother repeating here. Marco found Chopper and Sonya a little too easily in my opinion, but it’s still nice to see how much he cares for Sonya in the wake of their falling-out last week. Marco quickly dispatches of Chopper and rescues Sonya, who at the end of the day still can’t forgive him for his relationship with Fausto Galvan. “He sent men after me, Adriana, Daniel Frye…but not you. Why is that?” I was glad to see her stick to her guns, and this scene keeps Sonya from becoming the damsel in distress she was never meant to be. Demian Bichir does a great job of showing just how much Sonya’s distrust tortures Marco.
Meanwhile, Eleanor calls Charlotte out to Red Ridge so Charlotte can sign over the deed to the house she owns there. The stakes in this B-plot are pretty low, as Eleanor has no ulterior motive, but Charlotte complicates matters by texting Joe McKenzie, who shows up right as Fausto Galvan’s hit squad does (another coincidence that bothered me). A shootout ensues – it’s mercifully brief, a nicely realistic touch (keep in mind that the famed shootout at the OK Corral lasted all of thirty seconds) – that leaves both DEA agents dead and Hank wounded. Hank manages to escape, but Charlotte fares much worse, as she takes a bullet to the head.
It’s a shame to get rid of Charlotte in such a fashion. It seems almost disrespectful; sure, The Bridge had run out of things for her to do in its second season, but her death felt almost like an afterthought. Annabeth Gish did such good work as Charlotte, and I think she deserved better. Plus now we’re stuck with Ray. FUCKING RAY.
Overall, not a lot happened in “Rakshasa”; characters were stuck in pseudo-bottle episodes, and we saw neither hide nor hair of Linder, Eva, Frye, or Adriana, the four of whom are front and center in The Bridge‘s most interesting plots. The episode wasn’t quite a step back (I won’t go that far), as I’m still interested in the increasingly Byzantine plot. But there’s a good sense of wanting more, and a bad sense of wanting more, and unfortunately “Rakshasa” left me with the latter.
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