Summary
Even this close to the end, The Mosquito Coast wastes more time on a pointless subplot, with the finale looming but little in the way of a proper conclusion in sight.
In The Mosquito Coast Season 2 Episode 8, Dina essentially escaped Casa Roja with reluctant help from Adolfo. Interestingly enough, “The Counterfeiters” starts with the young man telling Allie and Charlie that she’s gone and that he gave her everything he had to see her on the way — since Allie encouraged her to leave anyway, it seemed like the right thing to do. Of course, we’re not lucky enough for her to have genuinely disappeared from the show, so we get a bunch of scenes of her wandering around alone, reveling in her newfound freedom.
The Mosquito Coast Season 2, Episode 9 Recap
This might be a moderately controversial opinion, but I just don’t think Dina is an interesting enough character for any of this to work. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really care what happens to her. I don’t think there’s any enjoyment in watching her finesse her way into spas or whatever because she doesn’t have much of a personality. Mileage may vary, of course, but usually, this kind of solo excursion is earned within the narrative and characterization. Here, it just feels like something else to fill the episodes with because there’s nothing else of importance going on.
Allie and Charlie decide to keep this from Margot, who is planning more explosive eco-terrorism with Richard but is secretly feeding information about his activities to the U.S. government in order to secure immunity. Allie, meanwhile, has found a way to get Guillermo off Isela‘s back by exposing his skimming money from the Cartels. When some goons raid Casa Roja and start straight-up hacking into people, it’s the most interesting and urgent thing that has happened all season.
And yet we keep cutting back to Dina! I think the problem I have with this whole thing is that Dina’s idyllic new lifestyle isn’t the normality she has been constantly claiming she wants. This is being a hustler. It’s a fantasy. And when she meets some extraordinarily obnoxious rich teenage girls, that’s supposed to be the start of her realization that she isn’t especially cut out for normal life anyway. So, in other words, it’s kind of a waste of time.
Any potential tension in this episode comes from whether the authorities will intervene in Richard’s plan thanks to Margot’s tip-off, and they do… only for her to discover that she has revealed her hand too early. Richard only told one person about what was happening, her, and now knows she’s a traitor. She won’t be able to sink him in exchange for immunity, which means the fate of the Fox family rests entirely on Allie once again, who is trying to blackmail Guillermo into giving him the Mosquito Coast under threat of revealing his financial mismanagement to the Cartel. This, and the repercussions of the Richard thing, will presumably be of primary concern in the finale.
But it’s just like this show to devote a good chunk of its penultimate episode to a go-nowhere subplot, isn’t it?
You can stream The Mosquito Coast Season 2, Episode 9, “The Counterfeiters” exclusively on Apple TV+.
Additional reading:
- The Mosquito Coast Season 2 Episode 10 release date
- The Mosquito Coast Season 2 ending explained.
- Will there be a Season 3 of The Mosquito Coast?
