Well, we’re back. Against all odds, Sugar has returned. Well, not really against all odds. It does star Colin Farrell, and it feels like a missed opportunity to not at least try to evolve the character and see where John Sugar goes in this second season. One of the major things I remember about the first season was that it was very stylish. It seemed to understand what had come before it in terms of all of those intrepid gumshoes of film noir mysteries past, like somebody spent a great deal of time watching or reading The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and even Chinatown. There’s a not-so-subtle nod to that, not just through the way Colin Farrell as John Sugar talks to the audience through his inner thoughts, breaking the fourth wall with the first thing that comes to his mind, but also through the fact that he is a lover of cinema himself. While Sugar feels heavily inspired by things that came before it, it also seems honest in that homage, which I appreciate. I think it’s one of the elements that makes Sugar strong, that it has such a sense of self about where it’s coming from, what came before it, and how Colin Farrell can best serve the product moving forward.
And then everything kind of went nuts at the end of season one. We dropped that bombshell revelation that completely reshaped what the second season of Sugar would have to be. Now, there’s a chance, gentle reader, that you may stumble into this review not having seen the first season of Sugar. It’s really hard to talk about Sugar at all once you get to season two without spoiling the big twist at the end of season one. So if you have lived in a world where you’re trying to hide from spoilers before you start binge-watching Sugar from the very beginning, run. Run away now. Also, good for you for being able to avoid the spoiler this long.
Now that you’ve been warned, this went from being a simple private-eye mystery to one about aliens. See, it turns out that our hero, Mr. Sugar, is actually an alien. There’s an entire backstory to how his people got here, how they’ve been living here among us, and how Sugar might be a little bit different from the rest of his alien race. There are decisions made right up front in season two, with some like-minded aliens choosing to leave, but Sugar is adamant about his desire to stay. He enjoys being part of the human world, probably most likely isn’t willing to give up his cinema, and he’s got a pretty kick-ass job as a private eye for hire. The second season sees him getting pulled into yet another case, this time involving Danny Moon, played by Jin Ha, a rising boxer whose troubled brother Ji, played by Raymond Lee, has gone missing.
The difference is that season two can finally be open about Sugar’s alien background and weave that into the story, with other characters potentially being aliens or humans who have knowledge of an alien race present on Earth, something the majority of the first season tried to dodge so that its big reveal could come at the end. In some ways, I think that makes the second season less interesting because instead of just being a show about a private eye being hired to solve crimes and relying heavily on Colin Farrell’s personality to sell the show, it becomes this whole other thing. It’s no longer just a straight detective story. It’s also science fiction on top of it. And while Sugar doesn’t rely heavily on the science-fiction element, it does create an interesting take on this perspective.
Normally, when we get these criminal investigation shows and have one of these wacky scenarios where someone like an alien is doing the investigating, they always seem to be paired with a more straight-laced human partner. Resident Alien has Alan Tudyk’s alien slowly accepting help from human counterparts as he starts to appreciate the things Earth has to offer. The short-lived drama Moonlight saw a vampire private investigator working alongside humans. iZombie had its main character getting clues from eating brains while working with a human detective. Sugar mostly seems to be on his own. He doesn’t have a constant partner to remind him to back off, give him warnings, provide backup, or park outside and keep the car running. He’s doing this largely on his own, which makes him both the straight man and the quirky character at the same time.
To their credit, the writers manage that rather well by reeling in his quirkiness and leaving the alien part as just one element defining him while adding more eccentricities to what would otherwise be the human side of the character. His love of film seems to drive a lot of who he is. He’s not just somebody who goes to work, solves crimes, and then goes home at night and kicks back with a glass of whiskey. He actually has his own hobbies and passions, and Farrell remains perfectly suited to that odd combination of classic noir detective and outsider trying to understand humanity. Season two also brings in Laura Donnelly as Charlotte Fischer, Tony Dalton as Ray Vega, and Sasha Calle as Val, along with Shea Whigham in a guest role, giving Farrell a mostly new ensemble to bounce off of.
There are plenty of twists and turns along the way as Sugar tries to figure out how to help the people wrapped up in this case while also battling against crooked cops who seem to have a part in a much larger scheme tied to money and real estate. How does all of that connect back to the case Sugar started with? That’s part of the fun of watching it play out. The show still knows how to build a mystery, slowly connecting seemingly unrelated people and events until Sugar starts getting closer to what’s actually happening. Then the series ends by leaving the door open for a third season. Will Apple give it a third season? I don’t know.
Honestly, I didn’t fully love and appreciate the first season of Sugar. I thought parts of it were interesting, but I was definitely thrown a curveball at the end. When that revelation hit me, I thought, wow, that’s a great twist. But then at the same time I thought, wow, that’s an unnecessary twist. Season two doesn’t really justify it in a way that made me feel like we’re finally reaping the benefits of that decision. I thought maybe we’d learn that Sugar has all these magical alien powers he has yet to tap into, or that introducing this mythology would fundamentally change what the series could do. Instead, he kind of just is a guy who happens to also be an alien, which makes me question why we need the alien subplot at all. If you can remove one of the biggest twists in your entire series and still tell basically the same detective story, then how important was that twist in the first place?
Colin Farrell is good here, and I do think the series has this really cool vibe to it. It’s incredibly stylish, and Farrell understands exactly what kind of show he’s in. So it’s a soft recommend for me, just not a strong one. It’s the kind of show that if it wasn’t picked up for a third season, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. But if somebody asks me whether they should watch Sugar, I would say I think there’s enough here. I’d also say Apple has far stronger product sitting on your watch list waiting to be binged. I definitely couldn’t see Sugar running four, five, six, or seven seasons. I think it’s already struggling to balance an alien plot with a human one, and eventually the show has to decide whether the alien mythology is actually going somewhere or whether John Sugar just happens to be the first extraterrestrial member of the Film Noir Appreciation Society.
The audio description here by Pixelogic does some lovely work. There was one scene where Sugar is inside a house trying to hide from a hit squad of corrupt cops while simultaneously trying to find a way to save someone’s life. He has put someone in a precarious situation, the clock is running out, and the entire sequence has to maintain several different sources of tension at once. I thought the way that entire situation was not only shot but described really sealed the deal. Sugar is such a stylish series that the audio description has to communicate more than simply who walked into which room or who pulled a gun. It has to help carry that noir atmosphere and the tension of sequences like this one, and Pixelogic rises to that challenge.
If you’ve been looking for a successor to Alien Nation, that sci-fi cop drama from many years ago that spun off from a movie, maybe Sugar is your thing. Maybe you’ve been longing for an alien private-eye show. That’s what you’ll get here. But you would already know that because you’re reading a review for the second season, not the first. And if you cheated and jumped over season one to get to season two, you missed a lot of what really set the groundwork for why Sugar could even work in the first place. Make sure to start with season one, even if I’ve just ruined the twist for you, because part of the reason this works at all is that the series took the time to build John Sugar from the very beginning. So much of season two is held up by the sturdy work done in that first season before we ever found out aliens were real. Colin Farrell is the latest, greatest gumshoe, and he has another pretty clever mystery for you if you have Apple TV.
Fresh: 6.7/10
