Unknowns
Season 2
Episode 5
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Apple TV
“Unknowns” is an episode of corpses. Piled up, buried, boxed, tagged, incinerated, and, sooner or later, anonymous. But today, none of them are Ji Moon. Sure, he died in the most literal sense. But John Sugar has revived him just in time to fake another death. “Hitchcock’s Vertigo had a nice ‘faking someone’s death’ angle,” John Sugar says in voice-over. “I’m hoping my version ends with less excitement.” Funny coming from a guy who’s wrapping up an A-case only to dive headfirst into an even bigger B-case, complete with a personal vendetta and government conspiracy.
But I’m putting the impending doom before the fun here. We open with a neat little montage of Sugar faking Ji Moon’s death. A corpse, presumably Ji Moon’s double, goes into the incinerator in a succession of images that’ll recall Sean Penn’s body going down a similar path at the end of One Battle After Another. Sugar drops Ji off at a rehab facility he’s brought clients to before, then procures a falsified death certificate from a friend at a local funeral home. “Heart failure due to fentanyl overdose,” the certificate reads. “The remains shipped back to Korea per the family’s wishes.” Sugar moves along at a brisk pace and never makes any big visual moves, but it does take time to fill its contemporary-L.A. noir world with contemporary versions of detective-story characters. This week, I was rather tickled by the quick interaction with Sugar’s zillennial funeral-home buddy and the hearse she rode in on. “Sorry, boss had my car, so I had to take his,” she says upon arrival, delivered with a subtle mix of contemporary-youth anxiety and 1940s paperboy urgency.
Sugar goes back to the ranch to retrieve the NARCCAN he used on Ji the night before. He finds himself staring down the bobcat trophy head on the wall, the same way Vega did, standing in the same position in the last episode, making for an intriguing parallel image. Our hero and our villain find themselves up against a more ruthless, powerful force than either of them is prepared for. Sugar puts on a big show, crashing a kid’s birthday party in Vega’s backyard, socking him in the eye for good measure. It seems to be enough to make Vega think Sugar is actually distraught over Ji’s alleged death, but it doesn’t seem to throw Vega’s scent off the general strangeness of this whole affair. Later on, one of his deputies will try to assure Vega that the case is closed and their operation can continue unabated, which allows Tony Dalton to deliver a rebuke with a vintage Lalo-style laid-back menace: “Hey, Christopher. I’ll go home when I fucking feel like it. You know what I mean?”
For Ji and Danny Moon, the case is all zipped up like a tarpaulin body bag. Ji is safe and anonymous in rehab, freeing up Danny to take on the world with a renewed confidence in the armored chip on his shoulder. It’s a little neat for my taste, the way everything turns in Danny’s favor this episode. Even after blowing up his previous lunch meeting with the Vegas promoter, the other boxers who’d cracked wise about his “junkie brother” show up at Teddy’s gym to offer him a contract. On the other hand, the turning tides provide emphasis to the listless, lonely state Sugar finds himself in after having saved another surrogate lost sibling. Another case solved means immediate loss of purpose, even as he digs deeper into the Fire Sale conspiracy in Downer Town — the influx of heavily “discounted” fentanyl in impoverished communities — that Ji stumbled into in the first place.
“Fucking embarrassment,” Flyvbjerg says of Vega’s involvement in the Fire Sale from his perch at a hotel stakeout. Sugar is there to see about witness protection for Ji. “Most sheriffs are cool,” Flyvbjerg adds. It’s just the one group of them that become “bangers with badges.” This show’s greatest sin remains its commitment to suggesting there is such a thing as a Good Cop. Sugar even goes on to elaborate how the whole Fire Sale and others like it start in the jails where officers make their contacts and effectively take over drug-smuggling operations, suggesting a scope of corrupt activity that extends beyond just one bunch of bad apples led by an anomalous “dirty cop.” In any case, the central point here is that fentanyl prices are down 90 percent in Downer Town, which would indicate that Vega is trying to help someone buy out the market. That’d mean a major shake-up in Los Angeles drug territories and a loud threat to the powers that run the drug market in the city at large. Flyvbjerg and Sugar agree that something isn’t adding up here.
“Second group, third wave, California. John Sugar. I’m still here if anyone else is.” Sugar speaks the words like a mantra, over and over into his alien communication box. Sugar feels alone and without purpose when he isn’t actively bringing a surrogate lost sibling home, even as the trail of his own sister’s disappearance starts to heat up. While investigating Dr. Stanley Ondaatje, Pavich’s professor of applied engineering, Sugar wades deeper into the waters of his more devious human instincts — breaking into Ondaatje’s house to find an aggressive home collection of succulents, then meeting up with him later on under pretenses to get a better read on the professor’s obsession. Dr. Ondaatje notes that the prickly pear they’re observing is a lot stronger than it looks and exceptional at storing water. Sugar remarks that he admires the plant’s ability to survive on a bare minimum. “Beauty in the face of adversity,” as he puts it.
But Sugar finds himself slowly growing uglier (or perhaps more carnal) while surviving on a bare minimum of genuine human connection. Back at the hotel, he finds himself craving something besides his usual plate of carrots and noodles, overwhelmed with giddiness at his first-ever bite of a cheeseburger all alone in the hotel restaurant. If these are further hints of the opaque “assimilation” syndrome he alluded to at the top of this season, it’s interesting that these symptoms should begin to manifest not only in the throes of loneliness, but just as Sugar is beginning to unravel the bigger mystery of his sister’s open case. Looks like our alien PI’s purpose on Earth has superseded his purpose in the universe.
Awash in restlessness, Sugar thinks of Chuy’s mother, Sandra, someone who could identify other players in the Fire Sale operation. But it’s already too late. Sugar finds Sandra’s body in the empty L.A. river that morning. The toxicology report back at the coroner’s lab indicates an overdose. Sandra is adorned with a red tag, which, as the technicians on hand explain, means next of kin are known and yet to be notified. Blue tag is an “unknown,” which, as the more cynical technician explains, means “they’re dead, and there’s no one to tell.” Back at the hotel, Sugar finally reconnects with Charlotte. She accepts his apology and admits that she came on to him strongly for the same reason that he puts cameras in his room: No matter how much they want to connect with others, their professional lives force them to keep the rest of humanity at arm’s length. The episode ends on the rows of bodies Sugar left behind at the coroner’s, many tagged “unknown” — an overflowing River Styx beneath the pillars of L.A.’s criminal superstructure. With such a shaky sense of purpose, is John Sugar prepared to wade through to the other side of these rancid waters?
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