Sugar Recap: Tears in the Rain

Sugar
Cautionary Tale
Season 2 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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Six episodes into its sophomore season, Sugar presents a clearer view of its internal rhythms: humming on a reliable TV frequency throughout its run, punctuated by the occasional episode that dives deeper into the emotional resonance of its genre meditations. With “Cautionary Tale,” the series spins one of its most thematically compelling hard-boiled/sci-fi yarns yet. It starts with an extended flashback to 11 years ago, when John Sugar was brand-new to Earth and witnessed the first of many violent demises.

“Human beings in crisis and needing help from injustice, misfortune.” That’s what appeals to John Sugar most about the prospect of being a policeman, one of a few occupations he’s considering while he’s hiding out and observing this strange planet, its strange people. At least, that’s what he tells Peg, another space alien who Sugar has been assigned to “bring home” for violating one of their Provided Rules of Behavior: Do not “lie, defraud, or manipulate human beings or human institutions for the sole purpose of self-enrichment.” 

This week, we get more of Sugar’s history on Earth, showing just how much being human really costs him. Peg’s story, from the moment Sugar picks her up to the moment she sets herself on fire, plays out like an extended version of Roy Batty’s “tears in the rain” monologue in Blade Runner. Batty, having reached the end of his four-year life cycle (and subsequent run from the law as a fugitive of planet Earth), recalls his journeys through space and mourns these memories being lost more than his own death. Similarly, Peg’s experience as a human was truncated and exaggerated, making her “more human than human” in the process. En route to their pit stop at the diner — Peg’s last meal — she describes the joys of finger painting as a kindergarten teacher with an air of profundity and excitement to match Roy Batty’s visions of fiery ships and attack beams glittering through the darkness of space. Then the life slowly drains from her voice as she recalls catching the financial-trading bug and leaving the kindergarten-teacher life behind, burned out on the sheer extremity of Earth’s financial games.

We know enough about John Sugar by now to know the call to “protect and serve” is certainly one thing about being a police officer that appeals to him, but it’s not the main thing. “The sheer variety of experience kind of excites me,” he adds sheepishly as Peg wolfs down her last cheeseburger. “There’s some violence in that,” she replies, to which Sugar assures her he’ll be careful. Besides, the violence isn’t part of the “variety of experience” that he’s interested in. In Sugar’s universe, Earth is an exceptionally vibrant place — a vast microcosm of conscious exuberance. But, as Peg’s story makes clear, with that exuberance comes a fractal of malice, greed, and destruction that feels more natural, sometimes even good, the deeper you weave yourself into the greater human tapestry. Peg’s initial spark for human life eventually erupted into an all-consuming runaway flame — her story ends as she sets herself on fire inside a gas-drenched car.

When we cut back to the present. John Sugar has snuck into Ray Vega’s home and stands behind his adversary with a gun aimed at his head. Ever since he found out his friend Henry Thorpe had become a serial killer (or serial killer’s assistant, to be precise), our hero has been worried about “assimilation,” which sounds like a woo-woo sci-fi concept when it’s introduced, like a metaphysical side effect of assuming a different physical body. But maybe assimilation is just what happens to anyone — spaceman or otherwise — who really enters the fray of humanity. You learn that the game polite society plays on the surface of its table is a distraction from the real game being played underneath it. Your stated role of protector is just a pretense for your actual role in serving the machinations of power. “Policeman” is just a shadow role for the hired gun. 

That’s how John Sugar goes from conscientious private eye to would-be assassin. It’s not in the first cheeseburger he ate last episode, or the sex he’ll have with Charlotte later on (both violations of the Provided Rules of Behavior that Sugar wouldn’t have even considered not long ago). The true “slippery slope” of which Peg warned is in the naïveté of believing the rules themselves offer sufficient protection from humanity’s snares. Of thinking there was any other path but the slippery slope to begin with. 

The path to Ji Moon’s safety turns slippery just as Vega’s fire-sale plan becomes clearer. Having received confirmation that Vega visited Tyler Ko for information on Ji — to which Tyler claims to have lied like a champ, just as instructed — Sugar knows his adversary is suspicious, and it’s only a matter of time until he tracks down Ji. While checking in on Ji at rehab and getting a better idea of the facility’s minimal-security measures, Sugar comes across a mysterious second cell phone in Ji’s backpack. As fate would have it, the phone is the late Chuy’s, swiped from his hospital room during the run-in with Vega, complete with footage of Vega explaining the fire sale to Chuy until he becomes suspicious of all the questions. 

“You identify the clientele, you stake out the territory, and you flood it,” says Vega. Unfortunately, he stops short of saying why and for whom. As Flybjerg explains later, Vega is being just careful enough with his words for a good lawyer to concoct an alternate explanation down the road. As it stands, the video only gets them close to making an actual case. A corrupt cop should be easier to get than your average citizen, not harder, Sugar argues, still unable to accept that Vega’s scheme shows the L.A. Sheriff’s Department functioning as intended, not corrupted by one bad apple. Flybjerg, on the other hand, understands the field all too well, and suggests taking care of Vega for good, outside the law.

Sugar tries to escape the violent path before him by going on a cute movie date with Charlotte. Roman Holiday on the silver screen of the Vista gives way to the primordial flicker of the stars, and he’s waxing poetically about the Triangulum galaxy 2.9 million light-years away. They kiss, and Sugar even manages to turn down an invitation to take the night further, before a phone call from Tammy, the funeral-home insider, brings him back down to earth. Vega has visited her and intimidated her into divulging Ji’s fake death certificate. No choice but to get Ji back to Korea immediately.

Danny Moon takes the news hard. Even as all his professional boxing dreams are about to be realized, his brother is all he has left. Sugar’s purpose in this earthly life — to reunite lost families in the City of Angels — is crumbling under the maddening impossibility of convicting a policeman of a crime in a world where the crime is the point. 

And boy, what a crime it is. Sugar puts the pieces together in a classic case-review montage: Those federal-grant apartments where Sugar’s unhoused friends now live are mostly empty because Vega’s contact at the morgue is listing the excess fentanyl deaths from the fire sale as living success stories, then billing the government for millions in housing contracts. The only way to keep Ji safe is to stop the whole operation with one extrajudicial shot to the head. 

Hats off to Sugar for ultimately choosing sex over violence, retreating from Vega’s house, bullet still in the chamber, straight to Charlotte’s hotel room. Not against my Provided Rules of Behavior, am I right? But for Sugar, the slippery slope to the heart of the human condition, darkness and all, began the moment he set foot on this strange, vibrant planet of stoned, violent apes. His meeting with Vega at the hotel bar later on confirms he’s only postponed and reshaped the violence on the horizon, not prevented it. Vega has Danny Moon in custody for the robbery he took part in a few episodes back, and implies Danny will meet an unfortunate end if Sugar doesn’t bring him Ji Moon in time. There’s no entering Earth’s arena if you don’t expect to get your hands bloody.