Summary
The Mosquito Coast continues to go around in circles in “Goat Head Taco”, with illogical character decision-making and false tension.
This recap of The Mosquito Coast season 2, episode 6, “Goat Head Taco”, contains spoilers.
Another week, another episode of The Mosquito Coast that really fails to justify its existence. In fact, and this is a bold statement, I think it might be getting even more stupid.
There’s an extremely common myth in fiction that all stories must have “likable” and “relatable” characters for the audience to latch onto. I don’t personally subscribe to this belief, but I can definitely see the argument for not having characters like those in The Mosquito Coast, who seem to behave like absolute morons for no real reason beyond pushing the plot in different directions. Almost everything that happens in this show does so because someone didn’t think a situation through even remotely.
The Mosquito Coast season 2, episode 6 recap
For instance, in Episode 5, Allie was forced to work alongside William Lee at the behest of Guillermo, the Cartel-affiliated gangster who turns out to be the landlord of Casa Roja. They snuck into a swanky investor meeting to dissuade a planned renovation project that would demolish half of the forest near their hideout and turn it into a resort.
None of this makes sense. Isela is obviously showing her hand by revealing she’s working with people like Guillermo. William only works for Guillermo to facilitate the awkward tension between him and Allie when they’re forced to work together. Allie shouldn’t have agreed to take this job, even though he has no real choice, and we’re still expected to believe that he’s some kind of genius master hacker despite having seen virtually no evidence to prove this. He just goes along with everything because there wouldn’t be an episode if he didn’t.
At the very least, this whole subplot is able to build a bit of tension, even though I don’t think anybody thought that Allie and William would get caught. The computer technician doesn’t rat them out, so they’re able to get away. Their getting into and out of the venue doesn’t showcase their particular skill sets. It all just feels rather perfunctory.
But things in the camp are somehow even worse. After reintroducing Richard out of nowhere, “Goat Hand Taco” builds a strange rivalry between him and Charlie. Dina tells the latter about what she overheard regarding Margot accidentally killing someone in an eco-terror attack, and Charlie, presumably as a coping mechanism, just aggressively blames Richard for all of it. He even holds him at gunpoint, though admittedly with an empty gun, and then later “threatens” Richard by leaving a goat’s head impaled on a spike outside his hut.
This is all bizarre because it’s just impossible to take Charlie seriously in any way. The show seems to be reiterating the idea that he’s traumatized from the events of the first season and is becoming increasingly unstable, but it isn’t consistently presented, so he just seems to have wild temper tantrums and constantly act on impulse. You could kind of understand why he wouldn’t want to believe that their current predicament is entirely his mother’s fault, but at the same time, you can’t blame him, say, falling afoul of poachers as a consequence of his grief.
When Allie finally returns to Casa Roja, he emphasizes the need for the family to leave, which is what Margot was trying to do anyway. This show really isn’t going anywhere other than around in circles, and it’s getting extremely frustrating to watch. With Margot’s constant mentioning of immunity deals back in the U.S. and what seems like a burgeoning subplot back Stateside, it seems like we’re heading towards a conflict in which Margot is willing to make a deal with the government whereas Allie isn’t, which will probably split the family even further.
Maybe it’s just me, but that hardly sounds like a promising future.
You can stream The Mosquito Coast season 2, episode 6, “Goat Head Taco”, exclusively on Apple TV+.
