Why did Bardale kill the Judge, when in an earlier scene he was expressing his admiration for him. Also, Chelan County is a LONG way from Seattle.
"We got a job"
"What kind?"
"The Forever Kind"
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Good answer, and right. He's an excellent actor. In the kitchen with Frank, he really embodied the hardened criminal, convict with the prison tats and all.
Also, there was nothing stopping him from just taking off. It looked like he wanted to go back to prison.
"We got a job"
"What kind?"
"The Forever Kind"
John Hawkes, the actor who played Bardale, also played the understated, sympathetic Sol Star (the Jewish storekeeper, business partner of the sheriff) in "Deadwood", and more recently he channelled Dennis Hopper in the movie "Winter's Bone" in a way that was downright uncanny. An immensely talented and deservedly busy character actor.
shareOther than the "Gehenna" demon, "The Judge" is the first Millennium episode to really play with spirituality and lay on the metaphyiscal wtf's.
Look at Bardale's tattoos when Frank comes in- Jesus! I get the impression that Bardale is supposed to be some sort of twisted avatar of Christ... even his thin, long haired appearance is vaguely Christlike. He refutes the Judge's evil- not the evil of his violence, but his evil in first scorning the mortal legal system but then using it as a shield to hide behind.
Bardale may be a recidivist and a murderer, but there is an integrity with him that the Judge, for all his fine words, could never approach.
The Judge ("Legion," as he called himself) is a demon, the first (but by no means the last!) to approach Frank with a deal.
One could argue that Bardale is indeed Christlike in that he suffers for the sins of a imperfect human legal system that has turned the enforcement of law and the punishment of criminals into a self-perpetuating industry. The courts only care about the law, the Judge only concerned himself with justice. Bardale stands for integrity, for being true to your nature (even if it is a criminal nature).
The Judge's kitchen is Bardale's Garden of Gethsemane and Frank is his disciple. Just as Christ awaited the punishment of the law at Gethsemane so too did Bardale wait for his with Frank.
Only Bardale's communion was beer and a cigarette. Bleak, but what do you expect from Millennium?
Actually, wouldn't Frank be Ciaphas, or one of the Romans? He was there to arrest him.
And BTW, have you thought about writing a "Millennium" book? Something like the "Millennium Companion".
"We got a job"
"What kind?"
"The Forever Kind"
I had the impression that the Judge was just the shell used by the demonic adversary the show had just started hinting existed. (His talk of monitoring the Millennium Group, calling himself Legion, and his parting "If I'm hard to reach, don't make the conventional assumptions" implied who he at least thinks he is, anyway.)
Now that he was caught, he had no further use for that body. Bardale was likely manipulated into murdering him.
Frank confronting Bardale was a great scene. John Hawkes' performance was stellar.
****
How can it be love, John, if all it does is make you lonely and corrupt?