TV Review: Lost childhood and cycles of violence in Hulu’s ‘Under the Bridge’

Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough) squints out at the ethereal beauty of British Columbia, looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows of her childhood home. With its rolling pine-covered hills, deepened by the pale blue of surrounding water, the image is picturesque. Though she’s not glad to be back, Rebecca has returned to research and write a book on the town where she grew up. With its idyllic beauty, who wouldn’t?

“No one is forcing you to write about Victoria,” her mother tells her.

“Well, I can’t seem to think about anything else,” she replies, staring back out through the glass and seeing none of it.

It’s not the scenery that compels Rebecca to tell her story. She’s here for the troubled girls of Victoria: the underage ones keeping residence in a group home called Seven Oaks and unlovingly referred to by the adults around them as “Bic girls” — a reminder of how easily replaceable they are.

Hulu’s “Under the Bridge,” based on a true story, premiered in April and will continue to release new episodes weekly through May 29. The drama, rated TV-MA largely for its violence and language, stars Keough (of Prime Video’s “Daisy Jones and the Six”) and Golden Globe winner Lily Gladstone.

As Rebecca begins poking around for sordid details, detective Cam Bentland (played by Gladstone, whose talent steadies a show full of emotionally volatile characters) opens an investigation into the disappearance of Reena Virk (played by a heartbreaking Vritika Gupt). Her vanishing sets a crisis of conscience into motion for multiple characters, forcing them to grapple with the knowledge that repentance would demand a truth they may not be prepared to speak aloud.

Reena is not a Bic girl. She has two parents at home, loud younger siblings and hot food waiting for her at a kitchen table. She has people who would notice if she was gone. But when those advocates notify the authorities, Cam still has to wade through a sea of skepticism in order to take a thorough look at Reena’s case. Left in the wake of decisions adults have made for them, the girls remain surrounded by people who don’t have eyes to see their inherent dignity. To the people in charge, the troubled girls of Victoria are just that: trouble.

With barely a chance to garner viewers’ sympathy, the teenage clique holding court at Seven Oaks and terrorizing the town quickly digs into the worst of what everyone seems to think they are. Mean, exclusionary, drug-seeking and downright vicious, the girls only make it harder to catch the moments of humanity hidden in them, rare sparks that allow any former angst-riddled teenager to feel a pang of sympathy. But by the end of episode two, Josephine (Chloe Guidry) describes exactly what she and her would-be mafia did to Reena under the bridge.

Overwhelmed by guilt, another girl rushes out of her queen bee’s line of sight before collapsing into a panic. She’s been calling Reena’s family home, hoping that her old friend might pick up and absolve her. Instead, Josephine just reminded her of the “nasty right hook” she dealt Reena under the bridge.

“Under the Bridge” isn’t only concerned with the series of events that took place that one terrible evening. It takes care to spend time with Reena and her would-be friends, capturing expressions of traumatic childhoods in disproportionate reactions to ordinary adolescent happenings. Scenes that precede Reena’s disappearance might have fit into 2004’s “Mean Girls,” right between the burn book and three-way phone call — but what follows is pure crime and suspense thriller, dramatized all the more by the young age of its suspects.

After all, it matters deeply that they are children. Episode one opens with Keough’s narrative commentary on fairy tales, describing them as tales of “horror and wonder.” They are unfortunate lost girls, stuck somewhere between the rising tide of nature and tragic consequences of nurture. At every opportunity, the system, parents and law enforcement have failed them. They’ve learned to perpetuate the carelessness with which they’ve been treated.

In its first episodes, “Under the Bridge” does little to appeal to the idea that any of the girls can escape the one-way track they’re on. Josephine attempts to negotiate with Rebecca, hoping to trade a juicy story for a one-way ticket and lodging in New York. Cam, who spent time at Seven Oaks during childhood, hopes to transfer away from Victoria’s police station at the first opportunity. Even as an adult, she’s still looking for a way out.

Amid the chaos, there’s hope for redemption, like a pinprick of light at the end of a dark tunnel. For Reena, it might have looked like rejecting the toxic influence of girls who, in her efforts to break free under her mother’s suffocating thumb, she sought to fit in with at all costs. For the Bic girls, it’s more unclear. Their humanity shines through in their childish way of navigating the world, though it’s haunted by moments of startling cruelty.

Those windows of light will mean little if the characters are never given a real opportunity to rise beyond their vices and conflicts to decide if they will strive for virtue anyway. Before Josephine and her merry band of delinquents find themselves at the end of the season, “Under the Bridge” ought to give its teenagers a chance to be more than the sum of their shock value.

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