The Bridge (2013)

It moves along with purpose and energy, but it's often at its best when finding colorful details and or allowing small, telling moments to breathe.

Drug cartels, a room of shrink-wrapped bills (worth $60 million), body bags and buckets of blood are just some of the intriguing elements in this uniquely Mexican-American drama, where the layers of corruption on both sides of the border seem impenetrable.

One has to be both in the know, as well as acclimated to the gory violence and corpses that frequently appear on camera in order to follow along. As long as Cross and Ruiz's renewed partnership seems necessary, season one fans should welcome the return of The Bridge.

As before, The Bridge loses its own focus frequently, sliding off into multiple storylines that follow pairs of characters, some less interesting than others, some downright distracting. But for all the time that feels misspent on Charlotte and her idiot boyfriend Ray (Brian Van Holt) or the self-deluding addict reporter Frye (Matthew Lillard) and his long-suffering partner Adriana (Emily Rios), The Bridge offers brief moments that resonate and sometimes, even chill.

In many ways, The Bridge is better in season two than in season one, but for some reason it decided to triple-down on the plot and make the whole thing a complex web of interconnected stories.

The plotting of The Bridge can be dense. That doesn’t undermine my enjoyment of the show, but there are moments in between revelations when I sometimes feel at sea.

Marco Ruiz and Sonya Cross' odd-couple pairing often mirrors the relationship between reporters Adriana Mendez (Emily Rios) and Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard), and I still find all of them interesting, even if I'm a little concerned that their parallel story lines may take The Bridge too far again this season.

Matthew Lillard, Emily Rios, Thomas M. Wright, Ted Levine and Annabeth Gish are well cast and their characters are fully sketched. Having seen two hours of season 2, I’m not ready to give up yet, but I’m starting to prioritize TV’s darkest hours and wonder if The Bridge will make the cut.

That broader scope may prove to be an improvement in terms of how much deeper The Bridge can go in its cross-cultural storytelling. But the first two episodes of Season 2 are a bit all over the map.

Sometimes it’s fun to get utterly lost in a drama like this; sometimes it’s better to turn around and keep driving.

The Bridge still feels like a show caught between two masters. It has a lot of the pieces it needs to actually be a compelling murder mystery--some good performances in key roles; an evocative, sun-blasted look; and an ability (presumably Mr. Reid’s) to concoct creepy, suspenseful scenes. Yet we’re still waiting for it all to come together.