Reasons To Watch Sugar, Ranked
Yes, I am going to talk about the twist, but I promise you it's better this way.
The time has come to discuss the Apple TV series Sugar, a show that had an absolutely wild twist in its first season. The second season is running now and I’m digging it, although I can’t quite figure out if that’s “because of” or “in spite of” that really just very outrageous reveal in season one. I’m going to tell you what the twist is in here. It’s fine. I promise. I’ll explain what I mean when we get there. I need you to trust me on this one.
Okay, here are some reasons I think you, like me, should dive into Sugar, ranked.
TEN: The plot of Sugar, broadly, goes something like this, per Apple TV…
“Colin Farrell is John Sugar, a dashing private eye navigating the dark corners of sunny LA. Though he sees only the good in humanity, Sugar is haunted by a secret too dangerous to expose.”
And it is exactly that, about 95-97 percent of the time. He cruises around in a convertible and wears suits and has tough conversations with tough guys as he tries to find missing people. He loves the movies and appears to be basing his style on, like, Humphrey Bogart, even though he’s very much in present-day Los Angeles. He does have that secret, too. But again, we’ll get there.
NINE: The first season featured a case about the missing daughter of a Hollywood producer. There were some twists and turns and it was a pretty solid entry in the “hard-nosed LA private eye works a case” genre that you've seen before. The second season features the troubled missing brother of a low-level boxer dealing with the LA underworld. Here‘s the trailer.
I wasn’t kidding about the suits and the car.
EIGHT: Let‘s go right ahead and say that Colin Farrell rules in this. He rules in a lot of stuff he does. It is kind of funny that he — one of the most charismatic people alive, blessed with a charming Irish accent — has now taken two consecutive TV roles where he buries all of that under either a figurative or literal mask. Here, he’s doing the soft-spoken, man-of-few-words thing with a standard American accent. In The Penguin, he caked on about 80 pounds of makeup and adopted one of the more abrasive New Jersey accents you’ll ever hear. I can’t decide if this is an actor taking on exciting challenges or the kind of thing a psychologist could have a field day with. Maybe it’s both.
SEVEN: The cast whips ass. In addition to Farrell, the first season featured Amy Ryan as a recovering alcoholic at the center of the case and James Cromwell as the Hollywood producer and like a dozen other people you’ll recognize from shows you’ve watched. Season two adds Shea Wigham as a coroner and Laura Donnelly as a mysterious woman and freakin Tony Dalton as a crooked cop. Sugar also recruits a young conwoman to help him. She’s played by an actress named Sasha Calle, who, from some angles, resembles a young Carla Gugino juuuuust enough that you might pause to look up if they’re related. (Nope.)
SIX: Okay, about this twist. Pretty early in season one, it becomes clear that there’s something… off about Sugar. He says a few things about not understanding people well, and he has these weird moments where he very literally seems to be basing his behavior in a situation on something he saw in an old PI movie, sometimes calling up the exact moment in his brain for inspiration. He’s a little weird, just in general. And then, one day, a decent chunk into the first season…
FIVE: Well, guess what. He is a blue alien from outer space.
The show goes on to explain all of this: there are more of them, they’re on earth to observe humans, their mission is becoming compromised, etc. It’s a whole thing. I imagine if you were watching along live as the episodes dropped and didn’t have any clue this was coming (like, if you thought his awkwardness and photographic recall were related to a more human condition), you might have tossed your phone across the room in rage. It’s the kind of thing an exasperated “Oh, come on” was made for.
But here’s the thing about that…
FOUR: If you know the twist going in the series, as I did before I started a few weeks ago, it actually works better. Kathryn VanArendonk wrote about this at the time, and I couldn’t agree more. The little quirks and odd details play out like explanations of his differences as opposed to confusing little nods at... something. I recommend not looking up which episode the reveal happens. That way, you still get some layer of suspense. “Is THIS where we find out he’s a glowing blue alien?”
It’s surprisingly fun.
THREE: It‘s even more fun so far in the second season because they are straight-up barely reminding the audience he’s an alien. There was one time he had to give himself a blood transfusion with sparkly alien blood and another time he made the ice cubes in his drink swirl using the power of his deep blue eyes. Other than that, almost nothing, which is fine, because this show is absolutely enough just doing that, putting Colin Farrell in a suit and giving him the keys to a classic car and having him solve some mysteries. They did not have to make him an alien at all. But they did. Everything about this decision is fascinating to me.
TWO: Hey, remember way back in Number Seven when I mentioned that the show added freakin Tony Dalton? I worry you did not grasp the importance of that. Tony Dalton played Lalo Salamanca in Better Call Saul, one of the best villains I’ve ever seen on television, a cocktail of charm and menace that made for an irresistible character. He plays a corrupt cop named Vega in season two. He’s only really popped up a little so far as we approach the halfway point, but he’s already doing some great Tony Dalton stuff. Here’s a GIF I made from a scene in the fourth episode where he and Colin have a chat in an interrogation room.
See what I mean? That little sway and swagger with the icy eyes? That is some primo villain business right there. Putting him and Colin Farrell in the same scene was dangerous. That much charisma in one location might have caused a chemical reaction that wiped out a couple city blocks. I’m glad it didn’t, both for the people who live nearby and for the people (like me) (and maybe you) who get to watch these twinkly-eyed sorcerers circle each other.
ONE: I really can’t stress in strong enough terms how much fun it is to watch Colin Farrell do cool hard-boiled detective stuff for like 30 minutes and then suddenly have “OH WAIT. RIGHT. HE’S A GLOWING BLUE ALIEN IN DISGUISE” come zooming into your brain at 500 miles per hour. It happens to me every episode. It’s one of my favorite things going right now. I want you to experience this joy for yourself.
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STUFF I CLICKED ON
— my House of the Dragon Scorecard for this week’s episode, which introduces a villain whose Achilles Heel might be his sensitive sniffer
— Muppet Treasure Island 30th anniversary oral history, yes, I will link to that
— two of my favorite former coworkers, Mike Ryan and Keith Phipps, started a podcast based on Harrison Ford’s movies and gave it an extremely good title
— speaking of Mike, great blog from him about Sam Neill, who passed away this week
— yeah we'll post a Jurassic Park clip
— David Chase interview
— Sepinwall with some good stuff in here about the problem with Netflix shows
— here’s an old interview with the cast of Jurassic Park that’s recirculating this week because it contains an awesome Sam Neill story
— Christopher Nolan is not afraid of history nerds because he already dealt with comics nerds
— “Hollywood’s big online bet: Inside the industry’s race to acquire internet stories”
— Diana Moskovitz (correctly) posits that Telemundo has been the biggest winner of the World Cup
— really cool thing about the food funhouse that cranks out the wild concoctions you see at baseball stadiums
— “Inside the secret operation to move the world’s most famous tapestry”
— “99-year-old Victorian mechanic Ray Gloster might be on the verge of a world record”
— I love the goat firefighter
— a man in a wheelchair (not me) robbed a bank
— let's watch some wild Zlatan goals
Okay, that's it for this week. Please share and subscribe and tell me if you are secretly a blue alien from outer space.
