Summary
Sugar returns for Season 2 in a gorgeously shot and instantly compelling premiere, introducing a new case but not forgetting about the issues still lingering from Season 1.
Season 2 of Sugar is already a much different proposition from the first outing. Apple TV’s startlingly well-shot neo-noir initially masqueraded as a pretty straight-up crime thriller, albeit one with a passion for classic cinema at the core of its DNA, but midway through it pulled off a major twist — that its title character, Los Angeles PI John Sugar, was secretly an extraterrestrial. With that cat out of the bag, Episode 1 of the second season isn’t playing its cards close to its chest. It’s pretty open and honest about Sugar’s status as, potentially, the last remaining member of his species on planet Earth. And he’s very, very sad about it.
That’s pretty much the thesis of “Home Away From Home”. Sugar is not doing well. Things open by distancing themselves from the first season finale, with Sugar finding Henry, the one person who could potentially give him some answers about his missing sister, Djen, on death’s door. He isn’t able to impart anything of value before he expires, and Sugar is left to sit with the idea that closure died with him. He’ll probably never find out what happened to Djen. He’s going to have to get used to the idea of being on Earth alone. And even that’s a risk, since it’s not entirely unheard of for his people who stay too long on a planet that’s not their own to weaken and forget who they really are. Sugar’s potentially on borrowed time. “Beware Assimilation”, which is written on the wall of the shack Henry was hiding out in, is basically the season’s mandate.
At a loss, Sugar returns to California, his only company a letter from Ruby, now departed, telling him to do his best to stay safe and enjoy his time alone. But how to do that? Showing off his telekinesis for dogs in the park only goes so far. He needs a case, but it was Ruby who tended to handle the business side of his investigations. It’s quite by chance that he gets a call from Munzer, the limo driver with a sick daughter, asking him to meet with someone who needs help.
The beneficiary of Sugar’s attention is Danny Moon, an up-and-coming boxer from Korea whose off-the-rails brother, Ji Moon, is missing. Ji left a couple of noisy but ambiguous voicemail messages, one that sounds like he’s being chased, and another explaining that while he got away, he saw something he shouldn’t have, and someone is chasing him on account of it. Even if he wasn’t desperate for something to do, Sugar would have likely taken the case either way. He just can’t resist the pull of a sibling drama.
Leads are scarce, though. Sugar explores Koreatown at night, which is at least illuminating from a visual perspective, and hustles a lady at pool with skills he picked up from the movies. But he also falls for the most obvious scam in the world when his car is stolen, and a passerby charges him $300 to get it back. Sugar’s naivete is juxtaposed with his efficient pragmatism in the same way that modern technology stands in stark contrast to the show’s old-time aesthetic stylings. Sugar has contradictions baked into its very core, and it’s obvious from Episode 1 that Season 2 isn’t going to be any different.
The woman he beat at pool tells Sugar that Ji was seeing a woman named Hannah McDaniels, a nurse at St. Anthony’s. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw this lady again, and I’m definitely expecting the scam artist — who does return Sugar’s classic car, to be fair — to crop up down the line. It’s the same with the woman giving Sugar the eyes while he dines alone in his hotel restaurant; indeed, she strikes up a conversation with Sugar later in the episode at the hotel bar, revealing her name is Charlotte.
At the hospital, Sugar charms a security guard named Blaine Bosco, largely because he shares a name with Humphrey Bogart’s character in Casablanca, and compels Hannah to reveal what she knows. The last time she saw Ji was days prior, when she helped him sneak in and steal a bunch of pills. They were supposed to meet up after, but he never showed. Sugar’s tour of L.A.’s dodgiest spots only turns up a homeless dude who has just taken an overdose, which functions as a kind of harbinger of what’s possibly to come. If Sugar doesn’t find him, it could be Ji being taken away in an ambulance before long. And if Sugar keeps himself busy, he might lose his mind before he’s able to do anything of worth.
Notably, Sugar is also working on a side project. He has just bought a property in the Hollywood Hills — close to where Bogart used to live, apparently — for the sole reason that it overlooks the mansion of Tyson Pavich, the father of Ryan, from the first season. Sugar’s people were hunted off their own planet, and he’s trying to find out why. That should keep him busy. And for once, burning the candle at both ends doesn’t just seem desirable — it might be the only way Sugar can survive.
