Apple TV+ series ‘Sugar’ shocks with late-in-the-season surprise
This item contains spoilers from last week’s episode.
So: “Sugar.” If you want to avoid a spoiler about the Colin Farrell series currently running on Apple TV+, stop reading now. NOW. It’s a major twist that changes the very premise of the crime series, and it was revealed in last week’s episode, the sixth of eight.
It’s such a strange turn of events, and it comes so late in the season, that I wouldn’t blame viewers who were tempted to throw something at their TV set when the truth was revealed. Yes folks, John Sugar, well-dressed freelance finder of missing people, is an alien. What started as the stylized story of a Raymond Chandler-esque PI solving the case of a woman who disappeared in Los Angeles is now about a visiting ET who looks like Colin Farrell and who shapes his behavior after what he’s seen in classic noirs — thus the movie clips that pepper the action. In a TV era packed with quirky detectives, he may win the prize.
I just don’t know about this one [loud sigh]. I want to cheer on any series that tries to break away from formula, that takes big risks to push TV genres forward and sideways. “Sugar” blends two very different types of shows in an effort to defy expectations and surprise viewers, and that’s not a bad thing. But the twist arrives later than it needs to, so that the real story line — the alien story line — is only just beginning as the season begins to wrap up. It feels as if we’ve invested in a show that, for no good reason except coyness, has kept its true identity hidden, sucking us in under false pretenses. The big reveal feels less like a twist and more like a bait-and-switch.
As Sugar, Farrell is good, and Sugar has the potential to be an entertaining character. He’s a nice guy in a world of Hollywood creeps, he’s kind to homeless people, he’s a clever investigator, and he has a sense of honor (wait; maybe that’s why he’s an alien?!). Sugar is, you guessed it, sweet. Maybe, if there is a second season, the show, created by Mark Protosevich (“I Am Legend”), will have a more solid identity from the get-go. The alien detective, out and proud.