Photo: Darko Sikman/Hulu
In its initial iteration, Under the Bridge was a study in character. In the aftermath of Reena Virk’s untimely end, author Rebecca Godfrey accomplished a monumental feat, getting the teen suspects to speak candidly with her when they would talk to no one else. Then, after years of reporting, she was able to weave their individual accounts into a narrative that painted a vivid picture of a moment in time when a nightmare turned into reality.
As I write these recaps, it does not escape me that, in the televised telling of this story, Reena Virk’s murder is being utilized as a springboard for entertainment. In our current pop-culture landscape where true crime has become all the rage, too often the victims are treated as an afterthought in the pursuit of a captivating tale. So, as Under the Bridge progresses, I am most thankful that the creative minds behind the series seem to realize that Reena herself is also worthy of study. In the wake of Reena’s disappearance at the conclusion of episode one, we stay with her in flashback; her death did not render her irrelevant. The show makes the devastating decision to juxtapose her 14th birthday with the discovery of her body in the river, underscoring how very young Reena was when she died, and making the discovery of her body at the conclusion of the episode all the more heartbreaking.
This episode splits its time between March 1997 and November of the same year. Reena wakes up on her birthday, excited to celebrate herself, but she only finds disappointment. Her mother and father are devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and they do not observe the celebration of holidays, including birthdays. Reena is bummed, her day off to an underwhelming start. At school, she finds more frustration as she changes in the locker room and a bunch of nasty girls point and laugh at her hairy legs.
After school, Reena decides to do something about it and heads to the store to buy a razor. There, she has her first encounter with Josephine Bell. Aswirl with manic pixie dream-girl energy, Josephine swoops in and gives Reena the 411 on the best razors: men’s. (This is true and, honestly, I fully wish someone had shared that little fact with me when I was 14.) Josephine also encourages Reena to take advantage of the five-finger discount and brazenly swipes a bottle of blue nail polish right in front of her. Then, she invites her to a party: a wake for the recently murdered Biggie. Reena is instantly smitten with this new force in her life, and Josephine — in pursuit of members for her nascent gang — can tell that she’s got a live one on the hook. Josephine either has a knack for amassing followers or she read a book on cults, because the girl seems to know exactly what she’s doing. In the November timeline, Josephine brags about her shoplifting “gofers” to Rebecca, and one wonders if Reena was ever roped into this particular task. I’m going to bet she was.
As a soul searching for her place in the world, Reena is fully susceptible to Josephine’s attempts to recruit her. She has a difficult relationship with her parents, and, with the exception of her uncle Raj, doesn’t seem to have many safe emotional spaces in her life. Raj seems to totally get what it’s like to be Reena, and he’s trying in his adult way to let her know that there’s someone who wants to listen and understand. He comes home late with a birthday gift for his niece, lets her sneak out of the house, and just generally lets her know that he cares deeply for her and wants her to lead her best life and be happy. But he’s an adult, after all, and Reena is seeking acceptance from her peers, so off she goes to Biggie’s wake.
There, she meets Dusty and Kelly, two of the most devoted Josephine acolytes, who are trying to summon Biggie from the dead with a Ouija board. The exchange between the girls as Reena stands awkwardly outside their circle is funny, sweet, and heartbreaking all at once. They ask Reena if there’s anything she wants to say, to which she responds, “Sorry you died.” Then, Josephine asks if there’s anything else she wants to say. Reena responds by announcing it’s her birthday, and the only one to wish her a happy birthday in response is Dusty.
Dusty gets a few moments in this episode as well, and we get the distinct sense that she actually cared for Reena as a friend. We mostly follow her in the November timeline as the fallout from Reena’s disappearance and death starts to encroach upon her conscience. First, she joins Josephine and Rebecca under the bridge. As they walk around, Josephine seems to take particular glee in showing Rebecca exactly where they beat on Reena, her eyes dancing as she recounts the violence. She put a cigarette out between Reena’s eyes. The girls smashed her teeth. They broke her bones. And then, Josephine says, she stayed until Reena crawled out from under the bridge, waited, and then pushed her into the river. Both Rebecca and Dusty are shocked. They don’t want to believe what Josephine is saying, but they also seem to feel that her story could possibly be true. Could a girl capable of taking such pleasure in remembering violence inflicted upon another also be capable of murder?
Neither Dusty or Rebecca say anything to anyone about this confession. Rebecca’s motivation for staying mum seems rooted in skepticism and a desire to continue following Josephine, while Dusty’s motivation seems based in loyalty to and fear of Josephine. After going under the bridge, Rebecca tags along in Josephine’s (likely stolen) car to a party at Connor’s, while Dusty gets a visit from Cam. Partly frustrated by the lack of progress in the case, and partly irked by her father being a total asshole to her, she investigates the source of the anonymous phone calls that the Virks have been receiving. The calls are coming from inside Seven Oaks, which means that either Josephine or Dusty is placing them. In a tense interrogation scene, Dusty confesses to making the calls, but only because she wants to know her friend is okay. During this exchange, Cam gets a call informing her that Reena’s body has been found, and Dusty breaks. It’s implied that she tells Cam about Josephine’s confession, but we don’t actually see that happen.
Ultimately, this episode is structured to give us more exposure to Josephine. Chloe Guidry embodies the role well — she’s giving early JLaw — and her energetic performance lives up to the larger-than-life persona that’s projected upon her by the adults in the community. When Cam presents Manjit and Suman with the CCTV footage of Reena walking away from the bridge, Manjit breaks his usually calm and polite demeanor to reveal his true feelings about his daughter’s frenemy. He says, in no uncertain terms, “I think the devil is working inside Josephine Bell. There is something rotten inside that Josephine.”
Elsewhere, Rebecca receives a warning from Cam about Josephine as well. Cam pays a visit to her old friend, warning her simply to “stay away from Josephine Bell.” From what we know about her so far, the girl is a chronic shoplifter who has an unhealthy obsession with New York mob boss John Gotti, a penchant for pathological manipulation, and a group of minions who do her bidding, but she’s still just 14 years old. It feels unfair for an entire community to have formed such strong opinions of a girl when she’s that young, but girls — especially girls in such small communities — don’t always have it easy.
Perhaps that’s why Rebecca partially falls under her spell. Or maybe Rebecca is trying to fill a hole from the mysterious loss in her past. The push-and-pull dynamic between the two is established earlier in the episode when they stop at a local diner for some munchies. Josephine proceeds to order the entire menu while Rebecca looks on with a smirk in her eyes. However, when the waiter recognizes Rebecca and offers condolences on her brother Gabe’s passing, Rebecca keeps that part of her a secret. Josephine moves on pretty quickly, though, because Josephine’s favorite topic is Josephine. They both want things from each other. Rebecca wants a colorful character for her book, and Josephine desperately wants to be that character. She also wants a ticket out of her current life and to the big city so she can go hunt down Gotti and work for him. Ah, teenage daydreams.
By the end of the episode, Josephine is squarely in the crosshairs of this mess. Reena’s body is found, and the teens at Connor’s party gather around the TV in shocked wonder. The camera picks up on reaction shots from various kids in the crowd, some known to us and some unknown, possibly foreshadowing events to come.
• Cam’s dad is terrible, full stop.
• Reena’s dad, on the other hand, seems pretty sweet. But he has a secret in his past — one that’s been forgiven by the Crown, but still. This plot twist was not in the book, so I’m along for the ride with you on this one, my friends.
• I’ll bet you that Reena’s mom is rethinking that speech she gave her daughter on her birthday about death being the ultimate celebration. What a depressing and horrible thing to tell your daughter when she’s just looking for a little love and recognition.
• Is anyone else feeling a capital-V Vibe between Cam and Rebecca? It feels very weird that there might be a rekindled relationship between the two of them throughout this murder investigation but, also, I would very much like to see it. This is the first time we’ve seen Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone share the screen, and their chemistry is so fantastic that, with just a few minor shifts of their bodies in the same space, I’ve concocted an entire backstory for them in my head. I’m eager to see if what I’ve imagined pans out.
• When Rebecca goes under the bridge with the girls, I frantically typed, “Is this *the* bridge?! It can’t be?!” in my notes. I’m still not sure if it is or it isn’t, but that would be quite a bold storytelling choice on the part of the creative team.
• Book Club Corner: If you’ve read the book, you’ll instantly know that the sweet kid Rebecca meets when she tries to escape into an empty bedroom at the party is Warren Glowatski (Javon Walton). We haven’t seen too much of him yet — his name was on the CMC list the cops found in Josephine’s black book in the previous episode, and he was subsequently rounded up for questioning — but we’ll see more, soon. Even though we’ve only caught a few glimpses of him, I strongly feel that the casting (and styling) is absolute perfection. I’m curious to see more of Walton’s performance as the season progresses.
