The Bridge's Ray Of Sunshine

As each new year adds not just a couple but maybe a dozen new police procedurals, the total number of cop shows any of us could choose to pick up or revisit has to be in the thousands by now. And while last fall's Brooklyn Nine-Nine was a welcome respite for reviving the idea that a show about police officers and police work could actually be funny, it feels like cop dramas are just getting increasingly dour. From Low Winter Sun to The Killing to the pervert-hunters on SVU, moments of comic relief are basically non-existent; though the first season of True Detective has some moments of levity, the viewer really has to wade through some grim shit to get to them. And now that we're about a third of the way into the new season of The Bridge, it doesn't seem like the ponderous mood is going to be lifted very often, what with both of our leads still dealing with the gruesome murders of their dearest loved ones, the dark clouds do sometimes clear -- very rarely, always briefly, and generally because of Ray Burton.

Since he showed up midway through last season to help his old con pal Charlotte with her cartel problems, Ray's brought a fun slithery, swampy energy to what had to that point been a very arid affair. Yes, Florida is a perpetual punchline, and with good reason, but as soon as Ray appeared, he made it really clear that what everyone else needed to do was unwindulax. Charlotte is panicking about her brand-new career as a cross-border smuggling-tunnel operator, and not without cause, but Ray wanders into the situation, shrugs, and figures that as long as one kind of contraband is making its way through, why not two? And when his sideline is discovered and he's told that the cost of doing business is going down on a sixtysomething lady cartel boss while her driver discreetly averts his eyes, Ray just shrugs again and rocks her world for her real quick. I mean, there's chill, and then there's Ray.

This season, Ray has displayed zero character growth, thank God. He gets the idea to mule heroin by sticking it up a horse's butt. And while this doesn't prove to be a spectacular solution in that when he's set upon by bicycle-riding hijackers, they make Ray extract the drugs, AND then they kill the horse, I think we can all agree that this is exactly what any of us would expect a bunch of cyclists to do, those goddamn scofflaws. Reporting the theft to Charlotte, he knows what to do: "I say we act like white people, and disappear, and let our lawyer do the talking." This after he's suggested Alaska as a good place to flee to on the basis that "Mexicans don't like the cold." These are not the sorts of remarks that are going to fly in a sophomore college sociology seminar, but Ray lives in the world, and in his experience Alaska is a place the cartel isn't going to try to visit in search of his heroin-losing ass. (And come on, white people love lawyers. It's a fact.)

The latest episode shows what happens when Charlotte -- for a time -- tries out The Burton Way: while Ray lies in bed with his shirt wide open, eating tacos, she's trapped in this fleabag motel room with the lingering evidence of his past taco shits (and the threat of taco shits yet to come). And yet, when he lays out -- at her request -- his very detailed portrait of what their lives in Alaska could be like, right through their eventual deaths, it's clear to everyone but Ray that this isn't going to work out. No matter what she says in agreement with Ray that what he's mapped out is a good life, Charlotte's never going to go along with a forty-year life plan that starts with her living in a trailer.

That the Alaska plan is apparently abandoned before the episode ends is slightly alarming to me, because I'm pretty sure it means that Ray is about to outlive his usefulness for Charlotte, and I'm pretty sure that means he'll end up more or less like poor old Tampa Tim. Ray's probably inevitable demise -- and please note, this isn't based on spoilers; it's just pure speculation based on having watched TV before -- is going to be a real blow for those of us who have come not just to love Ray for his weird, goofy interjections, but to depend on him to lighten this very heavy show.

Maybe I'm wrong, though, and I certainly hope I am. Ray deserves many more years of fish tacos.