TV Review: "Sugar" and the Perils of the Plot Twist
The Apple TV+ neo-noir shows that there's a good, and a very bad, way to handle a narrative twist.
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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a somewhat credulous viewer. Perhaps it’s because I so completely immerse myself in fictions–whether on the screen or on the page–or perhaps I’m just a simple soul, but I’m usually willing to go along with whatever the narrative likes to throw at me. It’s for this reason that I often find myself surprised by plot twists, even when others have seen them coming from a mile away. Along the same lines, I tend to be quite forgiving when it comes to being a cultural critic, and I tend to be less scathing in my response to perceived failings in texts, and I’m often willing to leap to the defense of things that other people don’t like.
Every so often, however, a fiction comes along that just jars me so completely that I end up not being sure whether I’ll be able to come back from it. Sometimes this is the death of a beloved character (have I mentioned that I tend to overinvest in fictional characters?) and sometimes, as is currently the case with the neo-noir series Sugar, which stars my beloved Colin Farrell as the title character, a private detective working in Los Angeles.
At first I was quite smitten with Sugar. It had all of the things that I love about neo-noirs, with some interesting twists and turns in the story, some obviously nefarious and corrupt and decadent power players (many of them connected to Hollywood) and, of course, a protagonist who was as lovable as he was flawed Farrell has long excelled at playing sadbois with hearts of gold (see, for example, The Banshees of Inisherin) and he, and his eyebrows, are at their best in roles like this one. John Sugar is someone who is quite capable of inflicting violence on vile perpetrators, though he would much rather go for the peaceful resolution. The insertion of scenes from classic noir films from the genre’s golden age were neat, though I did find this particular gimmick to be a bit overdone and distracting at times (particularly since there is so little diegetic explanation for it.
It was clear from the beginning that there was more to Sugar than met the eye, particularly since he seemed to be a member of some sort of secret cabal of private investigators of some sort. And, of course, there were all of those reviews for the series that tiptoed around the fact that there was going to be a major twist somewhere in the season, a twist which was as divisive among the critics as it was among the audience. For, you see, it turns out that John Sugar isn’t a human at all. He’s actually a blue-skinned alien.
Yes, you read that right. This series that, up until now, has been billing and presenting itself as a typical neo-noir, is instead a story about aliens living among us. Upon finishing the most recent episode, my partner and I literally looked at one another, neither of us quite able to believe what we’d just seen. Even though I’d been predicting that something like this was in the offing, it’s one thing to think that a show is going to pull the rug out from under you, and it’s quite another to find out that the show you’ve already invested a couple of hours is not at all what you thought but is instead something quite different.
Look, I’m not at all averse to a plot twist, not even one that reshapes everything that we think has come before. In fact, I quite like those kinds of narrative turns, because they show what good screenwriting can achieve. A good plot twist, in my view, is one that forces us as viewers to rethink the entire film (or TV show) that we’ve already seen, with the caveat that the twist itself must both feel justified and suitably explained by what we’ve seen before and have some sort of Take, for example, the Red Wedding of Game of Thrones, which not only shocked viewers but also radically reshaped the entire political game then playing out in the Seven Kingdoms. More importantly, it made sense, because we’d already seen what a bastard Walder Frey and we also knew that no one was safe in this series and that honor means a great deal…until it doesn’t. There were stakes and a pay-off and it was coherent and it felt like a natural part of the story.
This, unfortunately, is not that. I know I’m not the only critic who thinks that the series erred in not including this particular twist either during the pilot or at some point before the sixth episode, when the basic contours of the show have been well-established. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s playing fair to suddenly turn our generic (and basic universe) understandings on their head, at least not without some indication that there’s going to be some major pay-off. Given the way this twist was handled, I doubt that that is going to be the case (though, as always, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong).
The question now is whether I’ll continue investing in a show that has already shown how little respect it has for its viewers. My partner, for one, has already decided that he’s seen enough, but I must admit that I’m more than a little tempted to watch the next two episodes just to see how all of this plays out. I can’t help thinking that this whole thing is a rather weak gimmick designed to help distinguish what is otherwise a pretty standard and unexceptional neo-noir thriller. Once again, though, I’m happy to be proven wrong because, at the end of the day, I really am a viewer who wants a series to give me a reason to love it rather than the opposite. Will I forgive Sugar its transgressions or will this go down as one of the few series I unequivocally dislike?
Watch this space.