Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Sugar S2E6, “Cautionary Tale” (written by Megan Ritchie and directed by Adam Bernstein)
“Cautionary Tale” opens with a flashback to 11 years ago, when John Sugar (Colin Farrell) had only been on Earth for a few weeks and was, for some reason, tasked with gathering Peg (Laura San Giacomo) so that she could be sent back to their home planet. Peg had broken the rules. John mentions something about lying and fraud, but she cuts him off, saying she knows what she’s done.
She adds to the list as they stop for a meal. She notes that she’s breaking the rule against eating animal meat—which we saw John breaking in last week’s episode—and that she’s been having sex, but also calls it a slippery slope. By the end, she’d done worse, unspecified things.
It’s interesting to think about why these aliens, who apparently go to other planets incognito (for research?), hold themselves to such rules. In the voiceover, Sugar keeps talking about it as a matter of not losing oneself, but there seems to be more to it. Drinking alcohol is not against the rules, for example, though that could be because it doesn’t have an intoxicating effect on the species. But surely eating a hamburger doesn’t either? I’d guess it has to be something more like an ethical commitment about not harming any animals on the planet they’re visiting—an extension of their first rule to not kill.
Regardless, Peg ends up killing herself by dousing John’s car with gasoline and lighting it on fire while he’s buying her some Kleenex. Clearly this is what he had in mind when he told us in voiceover that he’d seen what happened with Henry (Jason Butler Harner) before, and the fear that he’s going down the same path explains why Peg has been haunting him this season.
I don’t know if we’ll get more flashbacks in Sugar as the series proceeds, but I hope so. It’s worth noting that John takes a call from his sister, Djen, which interrupts his meal with Peg. What happened to Djen remains a mystery for us as viewers in a way that extends beyond the mystery it remains for John Sugar, so if the show takes more dips into the past to deepen that story, I’m all for it.
A lot of narrative threads come together in Sugar S2E6. When John visits Ji (Raymond Lee) in rehab, he discovers that Ji has Chuy’s (Edgar de Santiago) phone, which contains a recording of Ray Vega (Tony Dalton) talking about the fire sale in Downer Town. Sugar takes the video to Tom (Shea Whigham), who runs it up the chain to Deb (Andrea Salloum), but the authorities still don’t feel like that’s enough to pursue charges.
Sugar thinks it should be easier to bring a deputy to justice than an ordinary citizen, not harder (and I’m prone to agree), but it isn’t.
Still, he puts together the actual plan behind the fire sale, which ties in the scenes in the morgue from last week’s episode, and the story of the destitute couple we’ve met a few times over the course of the season. They have an apartment now, thanks to a government program, but they don’t really have neighbors.
That’s because the fire sale of fentanyl exists for the purpose of causing overdoses. The dead are incinerated and marked as “unknowns,” but their identities are stolen in order to defraud the government and claim them as success stories.
Meanwhile, Vega suspects that Ji isn’t really dead, and confirms it when Tammy (Emma Bridges) cracks and admits she forged the death certificate. She calls Sugar to apologize.
John wants to send Ji to Korea, but Danny (Jin Ha) isn’t having it. That’s not Ji’s home anymore (which is fair to say since they came to the US as children), and Ji is the only family Danny has (which is maybe a bit more selfish, but relatable, especially for John Sugar).
All of this is enough for John to seriously consider killing Ray. He sneaks into Vega’s home and points a gun at the back of his head, but before he can go further, the microwave beeps. Maybe it’s something about Ray’s dog that keeps John from pulling the trigger.
He returns to the hotel and meets up with Charlotte (Laura Donnelly). Maybe John’s not ready to break the first rule of his species, but he’s ready to break whatever number the sex thing is. I’ve been suspicious of Charlotte throughout the season, but perhaps this is all there is to it. Sugar’s doing something he isn’t supposed to be doing. It’s a step down that slippery slope of potentially losing himself.
In the closing scene of “Cautionary Tale,” Vega visits Sugar at his hotel, insisting they have a drink together. John lays out how there isn’t enough evidence against Ray and encourages him to let Ji live, but Vega says he just can’t do it. John’s going to have to tell him where Ji is, and Ray’s confident that, despite his PI code or whatever, Sugar will do so within a couple of days.
You see, he has Danny in custody over that grab-and-go he took part in, and it’s Friday night so Danny will be in jail all weekend. I think that would mean he’d miss his boxing match in Las Vegas, but beyond that Vega implies that something bad might happen to Danny while he’s in there.
He tells Sugar to pick a place for them to meet on Sunday—somewhere with coffee—certain that John will be ready to give up Ji by then.
As Vega turns to leave, Sugar tells him how he was in his home earlier that evening and almost killed him. “Aw, man,” Ray replies, “You should’ve.”
As a viewer, I’m glad he didn’t, as we get some of Tony Dalton’s best stuff in this episode. And, in narrative terms, we still need to learn who is above Vega in the pecking order. I’m guessing the answer is Tyson Pavich (John D’Aquino), but Sugar doesn’t seem to be guessing that yet. Of course, I’m not sure how figuring it out will help the Moon brothers.
See you next week.
