There's a Brilliant Story at the Center of Under The Bridge - But Hulu Mostly Refuses to Tell It

 

 

Last year when Under The Bridge debuted on Hulu there was a fair amount of critical acclaim for it but I made the decision – a sound one, as it turned out – only to look at it if it was among the nominees for Best Limited Series by the Emmys. That turned out not to be the case; the series received just a single Emmy nomination and I set it aside.

Over the last several months numerous other awards show, from the Golden Globes to the Independent Spirit awards have given it several nominations, the majority of them for Lily Gladstone’s work as Cam. On a whim at the start of the New Year I decided to look at the first episode. On first impressions the story left me cold, I found the writing very heavy-handed and knew without blinking that if I had come across this series of my own volition I would have stopped watching after the first episode. However, I’ve recently decided to try and watch limited series late at night before I go to bed and I figure this would be a decent way to kill time. I also figured that I might do this going forward with some TV shows that I overlooked over the years. Hey, at the very least it might help fall asleep.

And so that’s essentially what I did with Under The Bridge the past few weeks. And having finished the entire series I have to say, by and large, my original opinions still holds: that not every true story deserves to be turned into a limited series and if it is, you’d damn well better make it deserve it.

This may seem callous when it comes to the story at the center of it which I as an America was unaware. Under The Bridge tells the true-life story of the murder of Reena Virk, a fourteen-year old Indian girl who lived in Victoria, Canada. Bullied throughout middle school she fell under the influence of several disenfranchised pre-teen girls at a foster home called Seven Oaks. Reena grew up in a religious household (her mother was a Jehovah’s Witness) and like most teenage girls she was both a victim of bullying as school and she thought her home was stifling. Desperate for something resembling love she fell into the circle of Josephine Bell, a fourteen year old who had been molested by her stepfather and sent into a foster home. Josephine, who was white, treated Reena even worse than the bullying at school but for reasons that are unclear to us, perhaps because they never became clear to anyone else, Reena craved their approval and fell under their sway.

Eventually in order to move into Seven Oaks, she would accuse her father of molestation. This apparently did nothing to earn the affection of Josephine who still treated her offensively. She would end up determined for revenge against Josephine and did so with the kind of childish behavior you expect of a fourteen year old. Josephine reacted in rage and decided to call Reena out to ‘Under the Bridge’ where she was set up, beaten severely and eventually killed. The death of Reena Virk and the trial sent shockwaves first through Victoria, then Canada, and the Virk family eventually began an anti-bullying movement that it has become a national symbol.

Now I was bullied excessively as a pre-teen and was subject to immense harassment well until the end of high school. And I acknowledge that there’s a compelling story at the center of Under The Bridge. The problem I have with it didn’t strike me until the series (which takes eight episodes) was near its end and that is who tells it.

The series is based on the best-selling non-fiction work by Rebecca Godfrey, who spent quite a bit of time developing the story for television and who died in 2022, just as it was about to begin filming. I suspect that the work stoppage in Hollywood helped delay its release as well. And I can’t help but think that this story would have been more interesting – and compelling – had it been told from the perspective of the Virk family. Because that’s where most of the great drama is.

The story is told in large part through flashbacks after the murder of Reena takes place and its from that we learn Reena’s story. Vritika Gupta is excellent as a fourteen-year old who just wants to be a normal teenage girl and who’s ultra-religious mother Suman won’t allow her to do things like shave her legs or wear better clothing. Reena has been bullied for how she looks and when Josephine invites her into her crew she jumps on it for something that resembles affection.

Chloe Guidry is incredible as Josephine, a fourteen year old who wants to seem brash and worldly but keeps coming across as a wannabe. Much of the series is about these mostly white girls and boys wanting to be part of the 1990s rap culture as well as the bloods and crips of LA. Josephine has admiration for John Gotti that’s honestly seems pathetic. When she’s arrested she demands John Gotti’s lawyer as if it’s a possibility. Initially she takes credit for beating Reena to death and she’s been established as so much of a bully we genuinely think it’s here. But when she learns that Reena is dead – and worse that her best friend Kelly actually killed her  - she is floored beyond believe.

We never truly understand why Josephine clings so tightly to Kelly’s approval throughout the series but maybe that’s the point: Josephine is so desperate for affection herself that’s she created an image as queen of Seven Oaks to make her seem big. She talks about dreaming of going to New York throughout the series, and its clear that’s a cry for help. Guidry is outstanding because we know that at her core Josephine is just a scared girl but she won’t admit even to herself.

The sad part is that Reena does have everything but she doesn’t see it. Her mother is played by that magnificent talent Archie Panjabi doing what is her best work since The Good Wife. (She was nominated for quite a few awards herself.) initially we see Suman as someone who is just another born-again person who is something of a fundamentalist. But as the series progresses we realize she does love her daughter with a deepness inside her and can’t understand why Reena so desperately clings to girls who not only don’t have her best interest at heart but who in their one encounter in a family dinner show they have no respect for her. Panjabi’s work is the heart of whatever makes Under The Bridge work so well and had the series focused as much on her and her daughter, I suspect it would be a masterpiece.

The problem with Under The Bridge is why I think it doesn’t work as a show. It is told from the perspective of Rebecca, who seems to be an aspiring writer who returns from New York to write about the children of Victoria. It’s never clear from the series why she’s writing about Seven Oaks but she ends up there, makes the acquaintance of Josephine and eventually gets involved in the investigation of the murder.

And it’s here I find the fundamental weakness of Under the Bridge. This is a story about racism and the fact that so much of centers around a white woman would be enough of an issue. A bigger problem is that she begins to interaction with Warren, who she eventually learns is connected with the crime, almost by accident.

Rebecca is played by Riley Keough, a superb actress but no matter how hard Keough tries she can’t rise above the fact that she Rebecca comes across as self-centered, using these horrific murders through which to see herself. And it becomes increasingly disturbing when we learn Warren’s culpability in both the initial assault and the death of Reena but remains Warren’s biggest defender. There’s something sickening about this: Rebecca increasingly comes across like one of those groupies who writes letters to serial killers hoping they’ll marry her and when she is called out on this repeatedly, her denials are paper-thin. “Why should someone be defined by the worst thing that happens to them?” she says at one point. When that one thing is the beating and murder of someone who is their own age and was basically done out of racist motives,  it absolutely should.

And the fact that Rebecca ultimately ends up writing about Warren in her book and ignoring Reena’s story almost entirely is called out by multiple people including her own father. In a crucial scene in the penultimate episode Suman tells Rebecca the reason this happened was because Warren viewed Reena as disposable and inhuman. The fact at the end of the episode Rebecca embraces Warren after he has been found guilty of murder – and worse says “I’m going to make sure everyone knows your heart,” in full view of the Virk’s is one of the most racially tone-deaf things I’ve seen any character ever do in a television series.

The fact that Rebecca genuinely seems to see Warren a victim is offensive to me. Yes Warren is raised in poverty, was evicted from his home on that day and learned his father was basically abandoning him. So what? He basically beat a fourteen year old girl – who he himself admitted he didn’t really know – and then watched as she was murdered by Kelly and did nothing to stop it. He doesn’t deserve Rebecca’s sympathy, and the fact that she wrote a book about him and sees him as much a victim as Reena shows her own moral compass is badly skewed at best.

And its telling that the other characters who have more compelling stories in this narrative are people of color. I’m not just talking about the Virk family but also Dusty, the African-American who is Reena’s closest friend in Joe’s circle, who is as much excluded by Josephine and the others because of her race and ultimately betrays her because of her fear. Dusty is also the only girl convicted who ever expressed remorse at her action for what she did to the press. That story is the more compelling one.

And I think it’s important to know that the best performance in this is that of Lily Gladstone, who has been nominated for an Emmy and a SAG award for her work as Cam the sheriff’s deputy who is planning to transfer Vancouver when Reena disappears, takes it absolutely seriously from beginning to end and is the most determined to find justice for the victim. Cam was adopted by a white family and has been raised as one of the cops (her father is the sheriff at the time). Cam has a connection both to the law and Rebecca (the two grew up together and were clearly romantically involved at one time) and she is walking a fine line to try and figure out what is going on. She tells everybody, whether it is the suspects, Rebecca, or even her father, how sickened she is by what is happening around her. She tries to use Rebecca to get truth about the murder but when she learns how Rebecca seems more interesting in justice for the suspect than one of the victims she is horrified. Much of this does tie into her and I find her story more compelling than the one Rebecca seems determined to tell.

And the thing is that’s true of every character but Rebecca and Warren in Under The Bridge. There’s a narcissism to so much of Rebecca’s character that makes he glad I never read the book, the way she looks at everything that happens as if were material, not a tragedy that left a fourteen year old girl dead. That she never talks to Warren about what actually happened is telling to me: she has an image of Warren in her head and she doesn’t want to believe he’s a monster capable of this. When he finally confesses to his involvement, the camera focuses on Rebecca storming out of the courtroom in tears which is absolutely the wrong move dramatically but it telling for the series. There’s no evidence at any point in Under The Bridge whether the murder or even Reena matters to Rebecca.

And that leads me to think of something else: how Rebecca views herself. At one point she says to Cam that Truman Capote got material out of Perry Smith that the police never did for In Cold Blood. Rebecca does see herself in Warren and if you see something of yourself in a killer, there’s something wrong with you.

Reena Virk’s story is a compelling one and it deserved to be told. But honestly, I can’t see any part of this series that might not have worked better as even a film or at the very least told entirely from the perspective of either Suman Virk or Cam Betland. They would have perspectives that would be revolutionary. Rebecca Godfrey’s telling is that of a white woman coming back to her old home and seeing what a lousy place its become. The fact that this is the opinion of so many of the cops speaks volumes and it doesn’t make any part of the story work will.

Under The Bridge reminds me not so much of such brilliant sagas of true crime like Love & Death or Black Bird but rather of Fleishman is in Trouble, another streaming series I ultimately found lacking. In that story I eventually learned the author took a real-life trauma and fictionalized and became wealthy from it – and somehow, years later, still can’t get over. Under the Bridge isn’t quite as bad as that but the fact that it takes a horrific killing that happened to someone else and makes it the trauma of the narrator undercuts the very real story at the center. This is a brilliant story with great acting that his dragged down to just mediocrity because of who tells it and who she focuses it on.  It deserved so much better than this.

My score: 2.5 stars.