“In public, power is best wielded with a gloved hand…not a clenched fist.”
“Whoever says that hasn’t been to my neighborhood.”
The following exchange takes place between Fausto Galvan and Sebastian Cerisola, and it’s a prime example of the way The Bridge handles duality and morality and the way power struggles come about in this environment. Especially with the cartel, death is expediency, and death is a way to assert its influence over both its victims and those involved in its business. And, when you get involved with the cartel and with Fausto Galvan, you dive into treacherous waters.
This is what we see in “Harvest of Souls”. It’s the episode with the most forward momentum thus far this season, and it’s a taut hour that’s not only thrilling within itself, but also thrilling when you consider the implications of these events that will certainly play out over the next seven episodes. The characters are testing the waters, getting closer to their end goals, but by doing so, they place themselves in harm’s way. The episode portrays all our characters’ actions under an overhang of violence, and with each body that drops, everything threatens to come crashing down.
For example, the death of Abelardo Pintado sets the wheels into motion for the remainder of the season; Marco’s been strung up between both sides for a while now, but the death of the prosecutor illustrates a cold, hard truth: sometimes, you don’t get to make the choice. Sometimes, the world you live in will throw things at you with devastating force, and all you can do is attempt to survive, attempt to play by the rules already set; then, when it doesn’t work out, you play by your own rules. This is, after all, what Marco–and, for that matter, Sonya–is forced to do at the end of the episode.
That’s also what Daniel Frye does; after his and Adriana’s story is tabled, he pisses in a cup and pours it all over the floor in front of his boss, and that, of course, gets him fired. Even before that, he’s questioning hit men while he’s wearing a hood over his head, and it’s clear that in order to get closer to the answers, he and Adriana must do so by unconventional means. They’re taking control, but they’re also surrounded on all sides.
As for Eva, her pent up emotions are released when she takes an axe to the Juarez cop who’s been tortured by Linder. It’s an extremely dark moment for her, but it’s been a long time coming, and it’s another instance of someone attempting to take control, to play by her own rules. In the end, whatever ounce of satisfaction our characters may have received–obtaining Eva’s statement, sticking it to a boss, killing one of your rapists–only signifies something dangerous on the horizon. The walls are closing in, and the bridge could snap at any time.
GRADE: A-
OTHER THOUGHTS:
-I’m not entirely sure how to feel about the Dobbs storyline yet, but it does give us a nice moment in which Sonya gives him the key. It’s not a huge moment, but it resonates, especially with regards to her character.
-Jack Dobbs follows his brother’s drawings to a corpse. Let’s see where that’s going.
-Daniel Frye knows how to make a scene.
Photo credit: FX, The Bridge
Polar Bears Watch TV 
My husband made the observation that Sonya threw one brother in the dumpster and and gave the other one a key, closing the door on one and opening the door to the other.
I’ve been following the series closely and have felt stymied by the fact that too many things were going at once. Meaning there was a lot to keep track of, or keep in mind, which is difficult enough, but when there’s no payoff – it becomes even harder.
I saw the show (for the bulk of this season) as if I were scuba diving and the apparatus released my exhalations into the water as bubbles. These bubbles were all separate and independent. despite the fact that I knew that eventually they’d coalesce.
Or said another way, the various plot strands were like circles on the surface of the ice. They intersect here and there, but not deeply,.
However this episode tied so much of the separate strands together. Or the circles now are taking up more more real estate of the circles they intersect. As you put it, now Sonya and Marco are deep in the intersection of Cerisola, Galvan, the DEA, the CIA, the Juarez police, and the goals of the now dead Special Prosecutor.
So I am on board with your comments that the episode had the most forward momentum, and that the key characters were now seriously in harms way. And they did this by leaving Charlotte and Ray on the sidelines this week, as well as reducing the screen time of Robles, Hank, and Eleanor. The also gave Galvan more than enough time for his menace to be seen (and noted) by Cerisola.
I completely agree with your bubbles analogy. I felt that most in the premiere, but it’s been slowly improving; I think that when they focus on Frye and Adriana more, too, it’s a lot more intriguing.