The Bridge Is Proving You Can Be Too Psychopathic To Work Effectively In Organized Crime

We've now spent three episodes with Eleanor Nacht, The Bridge's new Big-ish Bad. From what we hear, Eleanor has managed to break the glass ceiling of Mexican organized crime and ascend to a fairly senior position within Fausto Galvan's cartel; and from what we see, she got there by having no compunction about ordering or committing some pretty horrific acts of physical violence. But as we arrive at Episode 3, it's starting to seem like Eleanor's appetite for destruction is getting in the way of her efficiency in carrying out her boss's orders in El Paso; in fact, she spends an entire day just cleaning up after the mayhem she caused in the previous episode. Some of this is just sloppiness -- hey, pobody's nerfect, even in a cartel -- but it also seems like her particular brand of psychopathy is leading her to symbolic gestures and moves that are only going to draw more attention to herself, and thus also to those higher up the criminal chain from her, and that's where she's going to end up causing real problems.

I am not a crackpot. I just think criminal organizations need to start screening their prospective hires more carefully to determine whether their thirst for violence comes with the kind of recklessness that defeats the purpose of trying to be organized criminals at all.

Obviously, a capacity for committing grievous bodily harm against one's opponents without suffering any pangs of conscience is a must for those considering a career in crime -- organized or otherwise. And if the enforcer takes some pleasure in dispatching a foe, so be it: a tenet of organized activity is that there is a code and you violate it at your peril, besides which we should all love what we do. But one runs into problems when the person charged with murdering a rat or thief loses sight of his or her place in a larger organization. You can't have a "calling card" that lets the authorities connect different corpses to each other and thence to you. You can't make it so personal that the cops go digging into your victim's backstory and possible (probable) complicity in his or her own demise. You might want to make a point with one of your assassinations, but is that what's best for the whole operation? Probably not! Your heart may cry out to deliver a truly operatic finish for an especially despicable quarry, and that's fine if you're working solo. If not, you should just make it quiet and quick and dump the body someplace it won't be found, because there's no "I" in "team."

Granted, the very methodical, very dispassionate criminal can also find himself undone despite his best efforts. Gus Fring and Stringer Bell brought B-school realness to their respective organizations, but were both defeated by scrappier opponents who were willing to abandon standard notions of decency and/or Robert's Rules Of Order. The most OCD bad-ass can put too much faith in systems, and be insufficiently wary of unpredictable human behaviour and emotions.

The most successful organized crime practitioners are adept at balancing berserker rage with a keen sense of causality. Take Tony Soprano. A crime family scion sufficiently insulated from the grubby day-to-day, he still occasionally took the risk of a hands-on approach to solving HR problems, on boats or college tours, if he felt the situation demanded it. But in the case of both Big Pussy or Febby Petrulio, Tony was dealing with direct threats to his own life and livelihood and those of all his associates: those murders make sense. A guy who, for instance, is going to stomp a stripper to death just for sassing him is not the kind of guy who's probably going to be an asset to the organization long-term.

The Galvan cartel does lots of horrible things, certainly. But from what we see, it does them with ruthless efficiency. It's turned cops who stay turned. It keeps disappearing girls in such a way that no one is finding any sign of them. It's figured out some pretty novel methods of moving drugs -- and yes, using smugglers who are sufficiently creative thinkers that they'll turn a horse into a mule counts: if a company is really working effectively, then everyone, at all levels of the organization, can innovate and make meaningful contributions! But Eleanor's idiosyncrasies are only going to keep pulling the cops' investigation to her. I mean, should she have gone to Dex's house to tie up the last loose end from the car wash? Yes, OF COURSE. But she should have gone there to KILL HIM, not let him pee his pants and then tell the police her story of sending Kyle away with the butterflies! She's not supposed to be laying breadcrumbs for the cops to follow for a fun little quirky mystery; she's supposed to be advancing the cartel's financial interests and untraceably destroying anyone who gets in her way.

All Eleanor's creepy dressing-room self-harm and symbolic trading-card thievery is proof of her divided focus, and who suffers? Not just Fausto Galvan but everyone who reports to him -- and from what we can tell, that's at least dozens and maybe hundreds of people. This all could have been avoided if Galvan had subjected Eleanor to a standard psychological evaluation, which would have show that that she lacks the right mix of aggression and precision, and his organization is the weaker for it. I am not a crackpot.