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Season 2 of Sugar, Apple TV’s neo-noir mystery series starring Colin Farrell, doesn’t even try to outdo the wild twist of Season 1. Two years ago, the show began as a stylish and moody homage to the black-and-white films of the 1940s and ’50s, with which Farrell’s character, private detective John Sugar, is infatuated. Sugar’s exquisitely tailored suits and tidy poise make him resemble a cross between an Edwardian butler and a very expensive lawyer more than the tough-guy PIs in those old movies, clips from which are scattered throughout the show. Nevertheless, the movies, Sugar implies, serve as a sort of manual for Sugar—who needs one given that, as was revealed in the sixth episode, he’s actually an alien.
At the end of Season 1, Sugar stayed behind while fellow members of “the Polyglot Society”—interplanetary visitors sent to research Earth and humanity—headed back to their home planet. Their true identities had been discovered, and shadowy forces had killed some of Sugar’s people and extorted the rest into aiding in nefarious schemes. Sugar chose to remain in order to pursue his onetime friend, Henry (Jason Butler Harner), who seemed to know something about the disappearance of Sugar’s sister, Djen. Season 2, which premiered on Friday, opens with Sugar having tracked Henry down in Thailand, only to find his quarry dying by his own hand before he can tell Sugar what happened to Djen. This leaves the detective at loose ends. “There’s always L.A.,” Sugar tells himself, as so many human beings have, and heads back.
Narrative trickery plays to the cheap seats, so after the big reveal of Season 1, Season 2 is where Sugar needs to find its true theme. Sugar sends messages out into the void, hoping some other alien stragglers will respond. The only human who knows his secret, Melanie (Amy Ryan) from Season 1, is on the road with her band. Sugar is resorting to confiding in a bunch of dogs at the park, when he gets a call from a chauffeur he helped out in Season 1. The man has a friend—up-and-coming young Korean boxer Danny Moon (Jin Ha)—who can’t find his feckless older brother, Ji (Raymond Lee). Sugar identifies with the Moon brothers’ complicated sibling bond and their immigrant status. In classic detective-story style, his search for Ji will take Sugar into a series of L.A. underworlds, from gang-controlled neighborhoods and homeless encampments to pool halls and illicit fight clubs. There, the series’ directors find ample opportunity for moody long shots cut with dramatic shadows, reflecting the characters’ inner conflicts.
Like all fictional private eyes, Sugar has a code, although his is ordained by whatever authority on his home world sends its emissaries off to other planets with the strict directive only to “observe and report.” Flashbacks to Sugar’s dealings with Peg (Laura San Giacomo), a renegade compatriot who was shipped back home, convey how difficult that can be. Sugar’s people find Earth gorgeous and seductive, but also shockingly cruel. “It’s not just the food and the sex and the money,” Peg tells him. She also really enjoyed the time she spent as a kindergarten teacher, especially the finger painting, which she describes to Sugar with the charmed delight of smitten tourist.
Sugar and his colleagues have been warned to avoid “assimilation” at all costs. Yet the detachment of the Polyglot Society has its own moral perils. In Season 1, Henry observed and reported on the activities of a sadistic serial killer, becoming in effect an accomplice to his crimes. How to be on Earth but not of it is Sugar’s most formidable challenge. People, especially women, can tell there’s something unusual about him. He’s kind, empathetic, and nearly egoless, traits the series underscores with a tenderness that shuns flashy heroics. In one particularly touching scene, Sugar visits an abuela sunk in grief over her murdered grandson. Spotting her sink full of a week’s worth of dirty dishes, he shucks his fancy suit jacket and washes them for her.
Sugar’s sweetness is unquestionably a product of his principled disengagement from the mess of human life. He’s under orders not to hurt or become sexually involved with any of his research subjects. The latter dictate becomes especially challenging when he notices Charlotte (Laura Donnelly), a current habitué of the restaurant in the luxe hotel where he lives. She has the hairstyle and voice of Veronica Lake and bears no small resemblance to Jane Greer, who played the femme fatale who destroys Robert Mitchum in the 1947 noir classic Out of the Past. She might have been engineered to capture the fancy of the cosmically lonely Sugar.
In voiceover—because of course there’s voiceover—Sugar compares himself to L.A.’s struggling immigrants, but Danny scolds him for his presumption, demanding to know just how many of those smashing suits he’s got hanging in the closet of his sumptuous cabana. Money just isn’t a problem for Sugar, but it’s not entirely clear why not, now that his handlers have left the planet. Whatever: Sugar isn’t really about the immigrant experience—or not exactly. It’s about Hollywood and the pilgrims who flock to it. The movies Hollywood produces, like the beauty and vitality of Earth, can be sublime, but at what cost in suffering? Is it possible to partake of either without being seduced and corrupted? That’s the real mystery Sugar takes on as it continues past the simple pleasures of plot twists and genre flips. The series remains more neo-noir than science fiction, more at home in Southern California than the far reaches of the universe. Both in style and substance, L.A. is where Sugar and Sugar truly belong.
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