While it’s not quite as good as the current season of “The Killing” (my favorite show at the moment), “The Bridge” (9 p.m. Central Wednesdays on FX) has a lot of the same elements that make that Seattle-based murder mystery great. In particular, the 90-minute premiere showcased a great sense of place. I’ve never been to the Texas-Mexico border, but this episode brought me there in a lot of ways.
The premise of “The Bridge” is cheesy but intriguing: A woman’s body is dumped directly on the border (literally, a white painted line) in the middle of a bridge linking El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico. But the plot thickens when we learn it’s actually two bodies, the top half being a controversial El Paso judge, the bottom half being one of the hundreds of young Juarez women who have disappeared in the past year — sometimes without a trace, sometimes with body parts showing up here and there.
Marco Ruiz (Demian Bichir), the lead Mexican detective, drifts back and forth between speaking English and Spanish, regardless of who he’s talking to. And in a character touch reminiscent of Mexican indie films, he has trouble sitting down due to his recent vasectomy.
For real character quirks, though, there’s his American counterpart, Sonya North (Diane Kruger). Her Asperger’s is played up to a ridiculous degree in a scene where she informs the judge’s husband of his loss, bluntly explaining “She was dead by then” when he wonders why his wife didn’t answer his phone call. Eventually, understandably, she gets kicked out of the house.
We soon learn that her lieutenant, Hank (the distinctly voiced Ted Levine, playing a role similar to his turn on “Monk,” minus the mustache), has protected Sonya throughout the work problems that have inevitably resulted from her awkward personality.
Even though El Paso and Juarez look like one big city from the sky, and even though characters can pass through checkpoints fairly easily, the differences are striking. When Marco visits the El Paso police station, he talks to the receptionist (of Hispanic descent) in Spanish, but she doesn’t understand a word he says.
And then there are the crime numbers: Five murders a year in El Paso compared to more than 100 in Juarez. El Paso has the full force of its police on every murder — with federal agencies wanting to butt in on the judge’s murder (much to Sonya’s annoyance) — while law enforcement officials and politicians in Juarez are purposely not investigating the spate of murders of young women. It’s easy to say the Mexican police are corrupt, but it’s not so simple. Marco explains the reason for the lack of Juarez crime investigation to Sonya: Officers are given a choice by crime lords — “Take our silver or take our lead.” Understandably, all choose the former.
There’s only one mention of drugs in the premiere — when Marco warns his son to not accept friendly gifts of marijuana, lest he get sucked into the drug trade, unable to escape — but I assume “The Bridge” will eventually deal with the U.S. federal government’s War on Drugs and its devastating effect on the people of northern Mexico (and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. border states). “The Bridge” shows its intelligence in that the dad isn’t so much concerned about his son’s health, he’s concerned about the true dangers of being around pot (gunfire on the Mexican side, imprisonment on the U.S. side).
Illegal immigration is already a theme of the series, as Kenneth (Eric Lange) smuggles a Mexican woman across the border in his trunk, then locks her in his trailer in the middle of the desert. He fluctuates between looking out for her safety and being creepy as hell.
The pilot episode includes a great guest turn by Matthew Lillard (who has turned into a fine character actor) as a slimy reporter whose ethical lapses have knocked him down peg by peg until he landed in El Paso. “The Bridge” doesn’t have a good grasp of the modern newspaper environment, as the El Paso Times newsroom looks like that of a small weekly in the 1950s.
If that’s simply a style choice, I’ll go with it, but it makes me wonder about other aspects of “The Bridge,” in fields and concepts I’m less familiar with: How much is style, and how much is a genuine exploration of the substance of international relations, culture clashes and border politics?
The reality and the fiction can be sifted through later, however. For now, “The Bridge” is off to a good start, securing a spot in my viewing lineup.