Off 15
Season 2
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Sugar and Vega race across Los Angeles in search of Ji, with Sugar trying to reach him before the rogue sheriff can.
Photo: Jason LaVeris/Apple TV+
Sugar meets its season-two halfway mark with a taut mini-thriller of an episode that not only affords John Sugar the chance to save Ji Moon in entertaining fashion, but to get acquainted with his newly revealed adversary, Sheriff Ray Vega (Tony Dalton). After a swift flashback opening to the night of the hospital drug heist, confirming it was Vega who killed Chuy, and happened upon Ji cowering in the closet, we find Sugar in custody with Vega and his deputy toadies. Vega plays “good cop” at first with a story about bringing Jude Law on a dangerous ride-along.
“I like Jude Law,” Sugar comments, letting his opponent know he sees through the shit-eating grin of intimidation while treating us, the viewers, to a nifty bit of meta humor (surely Jude Law, one of Farrell’s main competitors in the field of mid-2000s U.K. leading man, would’ve come up in conversation when casting the inimitably handsome John Sugar). Once Vega clears the room and hits pause on the laptop recording their conversation, our guys set the parameters for the race they’ll be running for the remainder of the episode.
Sugar’s all business and moral posturing here, guessing Vega’s military background by the way he looks at his watch while emphasizing the meaning behind Semper Fi with a tone of condemnation: “Always faithful.” Sugar knows this is all about the Fire Sale, and now he’s seen the corrupt cop behind the operation.
Vega’s all smiles and underhanded reassurance when he tells Sugar that some mysterious higher-up called him and told him to leave Sugar alone. “You have a guardian angel,” he says. “Congratulations.” No congrats for Ji, though. After all, he’s a junkie. Finding him is just a matter of time. Dalton’s casting starts to feel on the nose here, though there’s an undeniable utility to the characterization shorthand you get the second he starts in on the same menacing charm that made Lalo such a ground-shifting presence on Better Call Saul.
Thanks to that phone call from on high, John Sugar is free to go, and the race to find Ji Moon begins. “You take an oath, you put on a badge,” he says in voiceover as he walks out of the police station. “You start out one thing, but somewhere along the way, you become something else. Sometimes I worry that’s me already.” The threat of losing his mind to the most violent impulses of his human form, like his friend Henry Thorpe did, continues to hang over Sugar. It checks out that in Vega, he’d see a shadowy reflection of himself. Someone who lost their way despite their initial, honorable intentions. But is this a miscalculation by John narratively or by the show ideologically? Once again, Sugar the series sets a stage of systemic corruption native to our institutions of law and order, only to punt on the subject by giving the viewer a “bad apple” version of the story to fall back on — should the notion of sweeping police corruption in their own community be too much to consider on a Friday night.
For John Sugar, Los Angeles is certainly starting to feel like a city of Guardian Angels — all with malicious intent. Back in his hotel room, he catches sight of Charlotte sneaking into his room. Tipping my hat to whoever’s responsible for the shot of Sugar checking behind his back, into the darkness as the greenish-white glow of the computer screen reflects in his eyes, giving the impression of those turquoise alien eyes flashing in fear. Our man is exposed.
Charlotte is having drinks at the hotel bar with a couple of colleagues when Sugar confronts her. What was she doing in his room? Her excuse seems legit. For now. The housekeeper let her in to leave a “dirty little note” on his nightstand. The note is there when Sugar gets back, placating his suspicions (for now) and deflating his ego. Is Charlotte still something to worry about? Hard to say at this juncture, but regardless, the confrontation tips Sugar off to his own emotional discombobulation enough to refocus on the task at hand: finding Ji before Vega does.
The next day, Vega pays a visit to Hannah McDaniels and works his not-so-subtly threatening “good cop” charm on her. This dirty sheriff’s a little rattled, having been properly sized up by a private investigator he’s been told to leave alone (as evidenced by the quiet turning of his watch to the fore of his wrist). So he’s kicking his own “private investigation” into high gear, cutting to the chase with Hanna pretty quickly. She’s under his thumb now, but he’s not interested in arresting her for a petty drug deal. All she has to do is lead him to Ji, and she’ll be in the clear.
Meanwhile, Sugar stops by the home of Tyler Ko, Ji’s accomplice from the night of the club confrontation. Feeling doubly abandoned after his brother ran away from him and Sugar, Danny is on the verge of giving up on Ji. To the point of passively withholding that he knows Ko from the illegitimate side of his work life. Sugar bolts to Ko’s apartment as soon as he finds out. He’s not going to let Danny take his sibling for granted, however complicated their relationship may be. Neither is the other up-and-coming boxer at Danny’s lunch meeting with the big Vegas promoter. I’m not sure I totally buy Danny taking the bait and blowing up the second someone mentions his “junkie brother,” though there is an air of truth to the type of self-sabotage one can get up to at the precipice of a golden opportunity, especially when you’re not happy with yourself when the moment comes.
Back to Tyler Ko’s apartment: Sugar is waiting for Ko to return (hopefully with Ji) when a line from the movie on the TV in front of him — a 1950 noir called Quicksand — tips him off to the operation Vega is surely running elsewhere: “He’s just fishing around. Putting the pressure on everybody, hoping something would turn up.” Vega will know that Hannah McDaniels is the quickest way to get to Ji.
Fortunately, Sugar has had Val tailing Hannah for a minute now. Also, a little convenient, but economical TV-making, to put all the main players at the scene of Vega’s mall sting operation. Sugar makes it to the mall, but Hannah’s already lost Val, and she and Ji play into Vega’s hand before Sugar can get there to intervene. While Hannah and Ji make the tradeoff, Vega’s guys put a tracker on Ji and Tyler’s vehicle, all orchestrated from Vega’s business date at the driving range. Leaving Sugar to track Ji via good old-fashioned analog detective work. A wall-size ad of a Joshua tree triggers Sugar’s memory of a photograph from Danny’s apartment: Danny and Ji are at a ranch out in the desert — “Off 15” per the episode’s title — where the brothers would go to train.
Sugar gets the coordinates from Danny and arrives minutes before Vega and his gang, just in time to catch Ji in the throes of an overdose. Ending his life this way, in a desert tomb of family memories, would be tragically fitting, but John Sugar’s in town to facilitate a redemption arc. To that end, he stages a nonambiguous overdose scenario like a low-rent Mission: Impossible setup so Vega will think Ji is dead and the loose thread in his drug-trafficking operation has sewn itself up. A convenient solution, maybe a little too convenient, but ultimately too advantageous to pass up. Once Vega is satisfied and the LASD crew departs, Sugar emerges from his hiding place and revives Ji in the nick of time. With Mission: Rescue accomplished and an entire back half of a TV season left, the fates have given John Sugar little else to tug on but the deadly thread of institutional conspiracy.
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