SUMMER TV EXTRAVAGANZA

THE BRIDGE

*** (out of ****)

The Bridge has a pretty good pilot. It sets up a pretty cool premise, one that feels more like it’s going to be a slow-burning novel, as opposed to a shallow well that they will try to draw plotline after plotline out of. It’s got an awesome lead actor in Academy Award nominee Damien Bachir, who’s Juarez cop is just Americanized enough for white people to root for him, but offers us a new perspective on what it’s like to be a cop. And it’s on FX, a station that has earned our respect and patience, making us want to stick with it for a while. The problem? We have another fucking off beat, hard-to-get-close-to protagonist, again in the form of Asperger’s, as played by Diane Kruger. It’s not just that this feels like the millionth show over the last five years that plays this card, but most of those felt like they needed to, as they didn’t have much else to offer. That’s not the case for The Bridge.

While I was distracted by all of this blinding boredom, I might have missed a couple of other things going on here. Instead of wrapping entire scenes around one little detail, so that their one-and-done mystery makes sense, they instead wrapped entire scenes around characters that weren’t our two buddy cops, just to build these characters, build this world. And all of a sudden I’m interested again. I began to write this off as crap, because of the potentially hacky female lead, but this…this is the work of a better than average show. Eventually, all of the plotlines dabble in and out of relevance with the main plot line, never to complete a story in the pilot, but instead setting up stories throughout the season/series. I’m officially handing off The Bridge to co-TV writer Mike, who will give it the four episode treatment. Don’t be surprised if he talks me into getting through the entire first season.

-Ryan Haley