The Bridge Episode 1

My first Swedish drama. Starring people whose names I can't correctly spell because I don't know how to make that O with the line through it.

 

 

It's night. Someone with tight leather gloves is driving. Driving, driving, driving. Look, Swedish graffiti! Anyway, back to the endless driving. Our unknown driver is approaching the border with Denmark. There's an awfully pretty bridge spanning the water. It's the Oresund Bridge. Sorry, I can't make the O with the two little dots above it, either. Suddenly the lights start to shut down. The bridge is closed. You don't have to go home, folks, but you can't stay here.

 

Our unknown driver, still on the darkened bridge, stops the vehicle long enough to take something out of the trunk. A line is spray painted on the tarmac as well. The driver gets back into the vehicle, giving us another shot of those tight leather gloves, and drives on. By the time the authorities investigate the blackout on the bridge they find:

 

 

Cops from both Sweden and Denmark arrive on the scene. The Denmark cop, Martin Rohde, is a frumpy guy. The Swedish female cop, Saga Noren, wears tight pants. She knows the identity of the dead woman. The victim is Kerstin Ekwall, Chairman of Malmo City Council.

 

A woman with a mole demands to know when the bridge is going to be re-opened. Her husband is needing a heart transplant and she wants to get the ambulance to the other side. Saga says the man will just have to wait for his heart until the investigation is done.

 

Elsewhere, someone named Veronika makes a call to someone named Stefan Lindberg. She wants to meet with him. Is this a booty call?

 

Back on the bridge, Martin allows the ambulance through which angers Saga. We head to the hospital to see the wife with the mole, Charlotte Soringer, greet the heart doctor. He's wearing a tuxedo, standard uniform of Swedish physicians. He breaks the news to Charlotte that he's been drinking tonight so he won't be doing the operation on her husband, Goran. She's not happy with this.

 

Back on the bridge, Saga tells the coroners they can take the body away now. But as they go to pick up the corpse they discover a gruesome fact: she's been neatly cut in two. (Which tells me our two detectives didn't do a very good job in the first place as they had no idea the body was in pieces.)

 

Frumpy Martin returns to his awesome house, leading me to believe Danish detectives are paid very well. Did-did he just scratch his balls? Anyway, Martin has a wife who is worried about his son, August, staying up all night and sleeping all day.

 

Saga stops by the morgue where the medical examiner stuns her with the fact that the lower half does not belong to Kerstin Ekwall. Furthermore, the ME theorizes the legs have been in a deep freeze for perhaps a year or so.

 

Back to Veronika who has brought her two young sons along with her for her booty call. Who are these people and what have they got to do with anything? Won't anyone tell Stefan the 70's are over?

 

 

 

Veronika is afraid she and the kids are going to be evicted from their apartment. This is not how you conduct a booty call, Veronika. Stefan basically tells her she's on her own.

 

We return to the hospital where you're still allowed to smoke inside. Charlotte is told her husband is too weak for surgery so the heart is going to someone else. She offers to buy the hospital a new CT scanner if they go ahead and give the heart to her husband.

 

Saga calls Martin to tell him about the legs. Have they found any bodies recently in Denmark with no lower half? Martin drags himself out of bed to go into the office and check. He has a conversation with a co-worker that at least gives me the idea of why he was scratching his balls earlier. He must have recently had a vasectomy. (Several men at my work have had vasectomies and claim it is the best twenty bucks they've ever spent.)

Martin calls Saga with an update. He suspects the legs belong to a missing Danish prostitute named Monique Brammer. Saga appears disturbed when Martin says he's coming over to join her in Sweden to continue this investigation. She's further perturbed as he paces while she tries to read the file. A-ha, he did recently have a vasectomy. Good Lord, he's got five kids with three different women! Dude, you needed to be snipped years ago!

But enough about Martin's nether regions.

Saga introduces him to the rest of her Swedish team. They're all wondering how long it will take for Martin to realize Saga is Girl With The Dragon Tattoo special. (Sidenote: I couldn't stand The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.) As they're looking over the photos from the crime scene, only now do our none-too-swift detectives realize the body - sorry, bodies - were placed on the spray painted line denoting the exact border between Sweden and Denmark.

The Sun! The Sun makes an appearance! We're back with Stefan. You know, I'm not sure if Stefan is Danish or Swedish. So Stefan gets into a fight with Veronika's ... husband? boy toy? pimp? Some guy named Soren. Stefan and his car don't fare too well in the fight. Again, who the hell are these people?

And now lets catch up with the heart transplant storyline. Goran, the husband who looks like John McCain, was supposed to be getting a heart from a young motorcycle accident victim. Only the father of the young man has now changed his mind and won't let anyone have the heart. (Can you do that? Can you back out of an organ donation?)

Stefan manages to talk Veronika into leaving her abusive husband. He takes her and her two kids out to a nice little country cottage. Why do I get the feeling Veronika is in danger?

Apparently Saga has filed something against Martin for letting the ambulance through on the bridge. Hans has to pull her aside and explain how this will negatively affect (effect?) the two detectives working together. She seems genuinely surprised that Martin wouldn't like her after this.

They've got a lead on a license plate. It belongs to Daniel Farbe, a journalist. Is Daniel the dickweed who was talking to the greasy-haired guy? Dickweed goes down to the parking garage and gets into his Escalade. Why, is that a pair of tight leather gloves I see in his hands. Dickweed only now realizes someone has booby-trapped his vehicle. The doors won't unlock, the car won't start, and there's a bomb in the back. The glass seems to be wired as well so he can't just break a window and climb out. Not that Dickweed would even think of that.

Saga and Martin arrive just as the bomb squad is getting prepared to go into the parking garage. They're not allowed to go down there so instead Saga calls Dickweed on his phone to ask if he was on the Oresund Bridge last night. Did he know Kerstin Ekwall? Does anyone else have a key to his SUV? This isn't a good time, Saga.

The bomb squad, realizing they can't get the bomb defused in time, start easing away from the vehicle and leaving Dickweed behind. Saga, still on the phone, assures the journalist he won't experience much pain when the bomb blows up.

The timer counts down to zero and then... a CD ejects from the player. The doors also unlock and Dickweed is able to exit the SUV. He throws up but you know, I don't blame him a bit.

Saga and Martin get the CD. It's a message from the killer, his voice electronically altered. He warns the police he's just getting started.