If you are a Rizzoli and Isles viewer than Frankie may have struck you as familiar, and not just because he does an adorable younger brother to Angie Harmon’s Jane. Frankie Rizzoli is played by Jordan Bridges, son of Beau Bridges (who you might recognize from any one of his 175+ acting credits) and Julie Bridges, grandson of Lloyd Bridges (remember any of his over 200 acting jobs?) and Dorothy Dean Bridges (her 6 acting credits span 7 decades).
In 2002 Us Weekly was taking note of a next generation of Hollywood talent, in the form of the children of those we already knew and loved – -and Jordan Bridges caught their eye.
Jordan Bridges, with his dad Beau, in a 2002 issue of Us Weekly.
On Major Crimes the character of Rusty has been searching for a missing person’s identity. The person may have been “missing, she may now be dead, but does that mean she need only be known, forever, as a Jane Doe?
If you have already been watching Major Crimes, but have not watched the Identity Series of videos the Rusty Beck character has been posting on youtube, we are gathering them here so you can find them in one place, and order, to view.
Fans of The Closer, which starred Kyra Sedgwick, were disappointed when the show was cancelled after seven season on TNT. Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes came Major Crimes. Remarkably similar to The CloserMajor Crimes has a strikingly similar cast, with a new leader, and a new guiding principle. It is no longer enough to close the case — now they want a confession, a conclusion that is so iron clad the D.A. can walk in and cut a deal, not only saving the citizens a costly trial, and meaning the state knows the guilty party will indeed go to jail, instead of pulling some legal wizardry at trial, and getting away with a trial we have just spent an hour being convinced they committed.
After 109 episodes in which cases were closed, week after week, the Major Crimes division has spent 66 episodes making sure the criminals will go away. One of the most interesting aspects of Major Crimes has been the use of Rusty (Graham Patrick Martin) to take a character who we gradually saw more and more of near the end of The Closer, Captain Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell), and take her from a very brusque by-the-book officer on the side of Internal Affairs, to a more sympathetic, maternal team leader.
Rusty, a street kid whose testimony was needed in a trial, started as a rough around the edges boy who had no interest in the members of Major Crimes getting into his life and pressing him to testify. Now, he is a part of Captain Raydor’s life, his adopted son, they have shown one another a definition of family that reminds the audience we can choose who we call family, and that being there for people, no matter what is perhaps the most important thing — mattering infinitely more than the value of physical gifts given at holidays, or shared DNA.
One of the great subplots of this season, that has extended to a series of online videos, has been Rusty’s realization that when he was living on the streets no one was looking for him. But now, he has Sharon… and the team as well, but predominantly Sharon, and that means, above all else, he has someone who would file a Missing Person’s Report should he go missing. It sounds so simple, and yet, to someone who has had no one to rely on, or trust, for so long, it means so much.
Upon seeing a Missing Person who was found dead, and realizing no one filed a report on her, Rusty sets out to identify the girl… the person who, under other circumstances, could have been him.
The tenth episode of the first season of Wayward Pines aired not only as a season finale, but as a series finale, at that may be just as well when you consider the 10 episodes manage to (as best someone who has not yet had a chance to read the books can tell) cover the plot of not 1 but 3 of Blake Crouch‘s novels, Pines, Wayward and The Last Town. (If you are a Kindle Unlimited reader, or an Amazon Prime Member, all three books are currently enrolled in those programs, and can be “Read for Free” as part of your monthly subscription to the service.)
When Wayward Pines was first pitched and promoted to audiences I was beyond unsure about the show, in part because the commercials I was seeing were emphasizing the thriller aspect, the intensity, the almost twilight zone nature and feel of the plot, but I simply did not feel like I was being given enough information to make a solid informed decision about whether or not I, as a viewer, would enjoy this show. (Let me note, Thrillers are not my first choice genre, I do not enjoy horror or shows with a high gore factor at all, and twilight zone is a show I rarely tuned in to no matter how enticing the guest star might be.)
So why did I sit down and invest roughly ten hours of my time watching this show? The cast. As I pointed out to someone recently, when one actor I have enjoyed in a multitude of works is on a project, that catches my eye. When there are two? I begin to wonder just how they will play together. At what point however have so many actors you know you like the work of signed on to something that you begin to wonder “what was in the script or pitch for this project that it gather 6 or 10 people I know from other works to it?” People who rarely pick projects I regret having sat down to watch? (Yes, this last part is something I also consider.)
Terrence Howard, Carla Gugino, Shannyn Sossamon, Teryl Rothery, Reed Diamond, Juliette Lewis and Melissa Leo all found their way to this project, and seeing them in the commercials, seeing hints of… something, made me curious enough to tune in and find out what drew all of them to Wayward Pines.
There was a definite strange factor to the Wayward Pines episodes. An awareness by almost all the characters that their every movement was being monitored by unknown people for unknown reasons, and that the best way to survive life in this strange community was to play along. A seemingly impossible task for those with children they knew were out there, somewhere, waiting for their return, but a task that it seemed might have become easier for our lead character when his wife and son are mysteriously allowed to join him within Wayward Pines, making him one of the very few lucky ones.
Some appeared to be making the best of the situation they found themselves in, while others were carefully part of an underground movement to escape. To destroy an electrified fence that held them within the confines of Wayward Pines with no idea why they were trapped within these walls.
Very early on their was a strange sense of time within the show… Carla Gugino’s Kate Hewson said she had lived there for 12 years, but Matt Dillon’s Ethan Burke knew her to have been missing a much shorter time (a few months?) The questions about this strange place that did not seem to truly exist began to add up, and while there were a LOT of questions for me that went unanswered, right up to the very end, and I do hope are addressed in some manner in the books, there was also a lot of fascinating twists and developments within the show that unfolded.
I do not want to spoil the show, but I will say it turned out to be worth watching, and far more interesting and entertaining than I ever dared imagine. In episode 5, with the introduction of “the abbies” a gore factor also comes into the show, which I could have done without, but that is where the audience also starts getting a much better handle on what is really going on. Finding out that Wayward Pines is not as isolated as we might think, beginning to understand who is watching the residents, and what those phone calls are about.
As the pieces start to fall into place I could not help but wonder how different a place Wayward Pines might have been… if only a different person had been there at a different time. And perhaps that was a part of the point of the show.
I will note that I wish the final two scenes had been held back for a potential second season. I understand where they were going, and what they had in mind… but I liked where it was just before that, with so many doors open, so many possibilities at hand, and honestly, that was, in some ways, still implied if you paid attention to where characters were during the final episode at the climactic moments. Leaving us to wonder which way the wind blew would have been far more interesting to me, but I can understand the writers wanting to give a definitive glimpse of what they had in mind, and one last reminder that their premise and guiding principle was always, “All Roads Lead To Wayward Pines.”
Wayward Pines aired in the US on Fox Network, and is available on Video On Demand. Hulu currently has 5 episodes available for free, and all 10 available as part of Hulu plus.
A quick edit to add the Wayward Pines trailer for those who have not yet seen it:
The tenth episode of the first season of Wayward Pines aired not only as a season finale, but as a series finale, at that may be just as well when you consider the 10 episodes manage to (as best someone who has not yet had a chance to read the books can tell) cover the plot of not 1 but 3 of 
There was a definite strange factor to the Wayward Pines episodes. An awareness by almost all the characters that their every movement was being monitored by unknown people for unknown reasons, and that the best way to survive life in this strange community was to play along. A seemingly impossible task for those with children they knew were out there, somewhere, waiting for their return, but a task that it seemed might have become easier for our lead character when his wife and son are mysteriously allowed to join him within Wayward Pines, making him one of the very few lucky ones.
