Under the Bridge Recap: Truth or Consequences
Under the Bridge isn’t just about the murder of Reena Virk. The story of her killing has been examined for almost three decades, and people are still finding things to talk about. As the penultimate episode of the series focuses heavily on Rebecca and Warren’s budding relationship and her insistence on treating him like a human even though he was a party to Reena’s murder, the series seems to be leveling criticism at the entire system for utterly failing the wayward, often abused and abandoned teens who were responsible for creating the circumstances that resulted in this heinous act.
The episode follows Warren, Dusty, Jo, and Kelly as they await trial in a juvenile detention facility. Somehow, this facility is co-ed, and Jo often taunts and verbally abuses Warren as they try to pass the time before trial. All of the kids — save for Kelly — are having horrific nightmares about what happened to Reena. There is obviously something very wrong with Kelly, and throughout the episode, she cuts a terrifying figure as she whines, cajoles, and manipulates her way into freedom from the detention facility. When she meets with her lawyer and her parents, her voice springs into a helpless falsetto as she insists that she’s “just a little girl.” It’s a chilling moment that’s on par with some of the more chilling moments in horror movie history. This girl would make one hell of a Stephen King villain.
Kelly’s continued belief that she’s going to get away with literal murder is incredibly disconcerting, but at times, it looks like she might get her wish. By the end of the episode, she’s not only free, but Warren is on his way to serving a life sentence in jail for the monstrous crime she (mostly) committed. She’s a female, she has family support, and she’s got money to buy the best lawyers in town. Sure, she doesn’t have Succession stacks, but she doesn’t have to; she just has to have more money than Warren.
Rebecca is very aware of this imbalance of power and money as the trial creeps ever closer. One of the low-key reveals of this episode is that Rebecca doesn’t actually think about Warren as her dead brother Gabe — she feels like Warren is a version of herself. Rebecca feels regret about her role in Gabe’s death — we find out that Cam once told her that it was her fault — and this mistake was the turning point that the rest of her life has pivoted upon. Much like Warren, she turned her anger outward and, in her eyes, that misdirection of anger resulted in death. So, in looking for redemption for Warren, she’s actually looking for redemption for herself.
Throughout the episode, we learn more about the state of Warren’s life on the day of Reena’s murder. His deadbeat dad calls him up and tells him that some repo guys are coming to take the trailer at noon. In a short and brutal conversation, Warren’s dad briefly asks him if he wants to join him in Vegas (he met a lady there, so he’s staying on a whim), and Warren says no. The dad almost seems relieved and then quickly hangs up on his son. Dazed by the double whiplash of abandonment and homelessness, Warren cracks open his dad’s liquor cabinet, chugs a bunch of booze to numb his feelings, and grabs the rest of the bottles. Later, Rebecca will write about the situation. Her voiceover narrates, “Warren, like most kids, didn’t know how to describe how he was feeling. Warren did not know there were words like humiliation and shame, so he thought it was maybe anger. This emotion he felt when he did things he would later regret.” Again, Rebecca is basically talking about herself here, but her assessment of how teens and, um, most humans, in general, process emotion is pretty spot on.
In the present-day timeline, Rebecca goes to visit Warren at the detention facility, and the two have a really adorable scene together where they easily chat about weed and donuts and normal teenage things for a few minutes before they have to circle back to reality. Rebecca insists that community support is for him, but Warren knows better: The Virks don’t like him. Why would they?
There’s an interesting push and pull between Rebecca and the Virks throughout this episode, and it’s worth wondering if there was skepticism and pushback from the family in real life when they found out that Godfrey was writing a book about their daughter’s murder. There’s a beat in the episode where Rebecca’s dad offers feedback to her after reading some rough pages. She’s writing a good deal about Warren, the perpetrator, but not Reena, the victim. Rebecca briefly protests, but she knows her dad is right, so she goes to see the Virks. This scene is tense and heartbreaking, in no small part due to the open eagerness that Manjit displays when he asks Rebecca what Reena’s friends shared about her. It’s almost physically painful to think back on the conversations that Rebecca has had with Jo, Dusty, Kelly, and Warren and recall that she never really asked about Reena directly. And, when she did, the kids either didn’t know her or had nothing kind to say.
Later, we do get a scene in which Dusty admits to being Reena’s one friend. Much like Warren and Rebecca, Dusty and Cam get paired up as counterparts in shared trauma. Both Dusty and Cam came from broken homes with absent parents. Both of them were in foster care. But Cam was adopted at one point in time, and Dusty was not, so Dusty bristles at being compared to her. Cam comes to Dusty with some terrible news. Due to the written confession that Cam coerced out of Dusty, she’s screwed no matter what she does at Warren’s trial. If she goes on the stand and testifies that the statement she signed, saying that Warren Glowatski killed Reena Virk, is true, then she can be charged with perjury. And, if she refuses to testify, then she can be charged with contempt. As Cam and Dusty talk this maddening situation over, Dusty becomes emotional about her friend’s death. She knows that her participation in everything that happened to Reena was wrong, and she doesn’t really care what happens to her — she just wants to do the right thing. Before the trial, she says as much to Warren, but he wasn’t Reena’s friend, so the advice doesn’t hit the same.
Ultimately, Cam stands up to her bad dad — Is Bad Dad the true villain of Under the Bridge? Discuss! — telling him that she won’t put Dusty on the stand. Warren’s girlfriend Samara is away with her mother and she doesn’t want to return to testify against her boyfriend, so what we see of Warren’s trial pretty much consists of his testimony. And it’s riveting. As Warren is grilled by the prosecution, he flashes back to memories of the incident. Completely wasted after drinking his dad’s booze all day long, his inhibitions are lowered and his penchant for violence has been activated. His eyes light up when he senses a fight in the air, and he greedily follows to get in on the action. As the girls set upon Reena, Warren jumps out from the crowd and delivers two swift kicks to her head. Even Warren’s Crip buddy thinks this is too far, grabbing him out of the fray and yelling at him.
In court, Warren is barraged by the prosecution, with Reena’s underwear becoming a point of contention. Then, Samara’s testimony is invoked. Warren recalled Reena’s “hairy back,” which turned into an argument that he didn’t see Reena as a person. Perhaps he didn’t. In that moment, he just saw rage.
Warren starts to cry as he continues to recall memories from that night. We see him remember Kelly coming to find him after everyone else had gone. With nowhere to go, he’s the only one left. Kelly encourages him to follow her, saying that she wants to see if Reena is “sorry.” His distant and glassy eyes are unmoving as he silently gets up and follows her. The shot of the two of them walking over the bridge to confront Reena is upsetting in its stark simplicity.
As Warren’s testimony wraps up, the prosecution asks Warren to rate his responsibility versus Kelly’s responsibility on a scale of one to ten. And he’s surprisingly honest. He says that he would rate himself a three for kicking her at the first altercation and for just “being around” at the second one. He doesn’t admit to much more, but it feels like he’s leaving stuff out. The judge thinks so too, because he sentences Warren to life in prison, citing that he found Warren’s testimony incomplete and that he was “reckless to whether death ensued” in the altercation with Reena. Any amount of responsibility is too much responsibility when a life has been taken.
Warren is taken out of court, and Rebecca is there to embrace him. She promises him that she’s going to make sure that everyone will know who he truly is. But the Virks are standing there, and the final scene sets up what appears to be some sort of showdown in the finale. But what I’m really looking forward to is Kelly Ellard finally facing some sort of consequence for her actions as she heads to trial.
Random Thoughts
• We do finally see the girls beat Reena, but thankfully, we don’t see her actual body. Instead, the camera looks up at the perpetrators, wild in their violence, as they kick, stomp, and punch as a collective. I am grateful for this choice because I did not want or need to see violence directly inflicted upon Reena.
• The goosebump-inducing scene in which Kelly insists that she’s “just a little girl” immediately reminded me of the scene in Breaking Bad in which Mike tells Walter to watch out for Lydia “especially because she’s a woman.” Women and girls can be savage, too, and Kelly certainly knows how to get what she wants by playing upon societal perceptions.
• Jo is 100 percent in an abusive friendship with Kelly. The way Kelly peaces out by smacking Jo full on the head is evidence enough for me.
• Book Club Corner: When Rebecca promises Manjit that she won’t write about Reena’s accusations against him, that’s a promise that Godfrey kept in real life. There’s absolutely no mention of it anywhere in her book.