Should You Watch Sugar? (Reviewing Season 1 of the Apple TV Show)
It’s hard for me to explain most of my opinions on Sugar’s 8-episode first season without delving into spoiler territory, but I’ll attempt to briefly do just that before going more in-depth on my thoughts on the show in a clearly marked spoilers section.
Some Spoiler-Free Thoughts
If you’re thinking about watching Sugar, which is billed as a mystery drama program, you could definitely do a lot worse. It’s a good show that’s never great, but that’s also never awful. I know that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but in a world where most TV shows of this sort are extremely uninspired (Jack Ryan, Reacher, etc.), at least Sugar is superior to those titles.
Quality-wise, Sugar is on par with a show like Tokyo Vice in terms of its acting and production value, which is also to say that it’s a very polished show that feels well put together. At the same time, it doesn’t blow me away. The ingredients are there for an even better show with Sugar. It’s got the look and the cast, but there’s definitely something missing that prevents Sugar from being considered amongst the upper tier of TV shows.
So, yeah, if you’re thinking of giving Sugar a try, sure, go for it. Colin Farrell is good as the titular lead, and when you’ve finished the eight episodes there’s a good chance you’ll feel pretty strongly one way or the other about a few ways in which the series decided to take its story.
“Turn back now if you don’t want spoilers.”
**Spoilers for Sugar Below**
So, not to brag or anything, but I guessed the big twist for Sugar after Episode 3. And, once I was pretty sure what was going on, having guessed the big reveal actually made watching the show more enjoyable for me than I think it would have been had I not guessed the twist.
If you haven’t already watched Sugar and don’t want to have a major plot point spoiled for you, this is your final warning.
Thoughts on the Big Reveal
Okay, here it goes: They’re all aliens. In the third episode, we see Sugar attend a party with other members of what’s supposed to be a mysterious polyglot society, but which I think we (as viewers) are supposed to assume is some sort of super-secret spy group.
The way in which everyone in the group was recording thoughts in these small notebooks and the typewriter that Sugar’s handler lady was using screamed out “aliens” to me though. Once the thought occurred, everything else in the show really fell into place in terms of making sense.
Watching the show with him being secretly an alien in mind, lots of unexplainable things, like Sugar recovering ridiculously quickly from injuries or dogs just obeying him, didn’t bother me in the way I think they would’ve if I thought he was supposed to be a super spy or something like that. You can explain away a lot if the answer is, “Well, he’s an alien. He can just do that.”
As a whole, I actually don’t mind this twist. I think it could be divisive, but at least it’s unique. Until the end of Episode 6, when we see Sugar transform into an alien, Sugar definitely feels firmly rooted in at least something resembling normal reality. The fact that Sugar feels so much like not a sci fi show makes the alien twist all the more surprising. (For most viewers at least — not me since I’m special and guess things.)
Watching the series while thinking for most of it that he is an alien, I can affirm that it does definitely work. I didn’t even mind the constant cuts to classic movies (which I didn’t enjoy in Episodes 1 and 2), once I realized that Sugar was just an alien and that cinema was how he connected to people. I think that if I liked neo noir/mystery-type shows but did not like science fiction at all, I might not have liked the twist. Since I like sci fi though (since sci fi is great!), I can’t really comment to that perspective.
What Sugar Gets Wrong
We’ve already gone over that I think the big reveal of Sugar being an alien works well. So where does the show go wrong?
Well, basically the entire story we’re following needs a lot of work. The entire case that Sugar is on, investigating the disappearance of a wealthy heiress, is sloppy and cliché in the worst ways. I think on a show like Sugar, where the big reveal is actually not really related to this particular case (Aliens!), it would’ve been fine for it to be a more straightforward mystery we’re following.
Instead, we get a convoluted mess. Davey, an ex-child star, and the brother of our missing girl was unable to get a woman he assaulted to sign an NDA. So, when he finds out his sister knows about this, he decides to go after his sister for helping the woman instead of the woman herself when she’s the direct, actual threat to him.
Also, the missing girl Sugar is looking for was helping other battered women, too, and killed a man in self-defense (so she has a body in her trunk). Also again, this leads to over-the-top evil human traffickers being involved. Also (a third time), the missing girl is actually being held by a sadistic serial killer we meet in the second to last episode that feels out of left field.
Despite being kidnapped by a serial killer for several weeks, who has clearly gruesomely murdered loads of people, when Sugar finds her, the missing girl is seemingly totally fine. She doesn’t have any obvious outward injuries and seems more mildly inconvenienced by being kidnapped than severely emotionally traumatized. Yes, this main mystery we’re following, though it has a few interesting characters, just isn’t as well mapped out as it needed to be.
Final Thoughts
I think that the creators of Sugar had an idea for an interesting twist on popular noir investigator stories by having the protagonist actually be an alien. This idea is a good one. The look of the show is on point, as is the acting. It’s really this main detective storyline that needs work.
I still think that Sugar is an enjoyable ride. The alien twist, at the very least, makes Sugar at least memorable and differentiates it from a lot of otherwise very similar shows.
Grade: 6.5/10