Gettin' My Eps In: Constellation S1E5, The Sympathizer E5
Problems understanding what is real are the theme of this week's set of episodes
Constellation
Season 1, Episode 5: “Five Miles Out, the Sound Is Clearest”
Written by Peter Harness
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Streaming on Apple TV+
With some TV series, the level of engagement can vary from week to week. After I found so much to talk about in the previous episode, this one didn’t seem as compelling. It’s still interesting, but it mostly seems to move the plot along, introducing a few new wrinkles to its ongoing mysteries, but not exactly revealing anything or adding much to the developing lore.
So, let’s see if I can put together some coherent thoughts to try to examine what happened, what we know so far, and what this show may or may not be trying to say. Based on what I’ve been able to discern, the show is throwing a lot of ideas related to quantum physics together and trying to extrapolate them out to create an intentionally confusing story (kind of like the infamous “Schrodinger’s cat” thought experiment that was meant to illustrate the absurdity of taking quantum concepts and trying to apply them to the non-quantum realm).
Previous episodes have examined the idea of quantum superposition, in which a particle can exist in multiple states until it’s observed. This episode introduces the idea of quantum entanglement, in which two particles that are entangled will affect each other, even when they are very far apart. Amusingly, it’s a concept that one physicist mentions to another when discussing a recent Nobel prize, as if it’s a great discovery rather than something that scientists have known about for years. Screenwriters have to fit exposition in somewhere, I guess.
So, the idea here seems to be that versions of the same person in different universes or levels of reality can affect each other. That’s what seems to be happening to Henry (Jonathan Banks), who is having strange things happen that are being caused by Bud, his parallel universe “twin.” Bud has gone off the meds he had been taking for years to prevent psychotic episodes, and now he seems to be out for vengeance, or maybe he’s just lashing out at anyone he can reach, since he seems to have driven his loved ones away with his increasingly antisocial behavior.
That’s a glimpse at a potential sad future for our main character, Jo (Noomi Rapace), who has also stopped taking the medication she was given after returning from space. She was told that the medicine was vitamins, but after being prescribed some drugs to treat PTSD, she realized that the two medications were the same, and upon testing, she found that it was lithium (which is usually used to treat bipolar disorder or help regulate their moods rather than preventing psychotic episodes, but it’s probably recognizable as one of the drugs that people take to address mental illness). She’s feeling like there’s a conspiracy against her, and after a confrontation with her husband in the previous episode, she decides to take her daughter Alice and leave, seeking out some answers about what might be happening.
The connection between mental health and experiences that seem to be impossible continues as Jo seeks out someone who sent her some tapes of audio recordings of her when she was in space, even though they were from 1967. While the person who sent the tapes claimed to be from a marine observatory in Denmark, when Jo shows up at their house, it turns out to be an elderly brother and sister who are part of a group of worldwide hobbyists who use electronic equipment to intercept transmissions from space. They’ve been capturing inexplicable audio that doesn’t make any sense, such as the decades-old recording of Jo or other tapes with voices of people who had already died. But it turns out they’ve also been convicted of trying to use these recordings to blackmail astronauts, and while the woman is friendly enough, the man gets angry, claiming that Jo is a “crisis actor” who is there to try to investigate them for further crimes. To make matters weirder, the woman insists on taking Jo and her daughter out on their boat and into the open ocean, since the recordings are best interpreted when a person is in a “liminal space.”
It’s starting to seem more and more like all of the confusing plot elements are a bunch of increasingly paranoid rantings from multiple people who have lost touch with reality. And perhaps that’s part of the feel that the show is going for. Since we’ve also seen a lot of what Jo (and other characters, such as Henry and Alice) has experienced, it seems like it is all really happening. But even Henry, who seems to be the most put-together of these characters, is questioning his own perceptions. He seems to be aware that he has an alternate-universe counterpart who he can sometimes see and talk to in mirrors, but in a moment of confrontation where he wants to stop Bud from messing with him, he takes a beat to wonder if it’s all in his head.
That feeling is what the show captures really well, better than many of the other paranoid conspiracy thrillers I’ve seen. There’s something really compelling about everything that is happening, as well as a sense that maybe it will all be explained if the characters try hard enough. And weird revelations, such as Alice telling Jo that she sometimes sees and talks to a version of the dead female cosmonaut that struck the International Space Station, seem to confirm some suspicions or at least validate that these are not just delusions. But that’s how mental illnesses can work; they can make absolutely impossible things seem 100% real, and it can be incredibly difficult to let them go.
I don’t know if any of this is intended by the show at all, but it’s what I’m taking away from it. For all I know, we’ll get solid, concrete answers about everything that is happening, and it will all make perfect sense. But whether or not that happens, these episodes have managed to provide an especially disorienting example of what it’s like to have a slippery grasp on reality and how hard that can be on both the person experiencing it and their loved ones. Mental illness is tough, and maybe experiencing some semblance of it in this form can help provide some compassion for people who have to struggle with it on a regular basis.
The Sympathizer
Episode 5: “All for One”
Written by Park Chan-Wook, Don McKellar, and Megan Houang
Directed by Marc Munden
Streaming on Max
While it’s great to have a TV show that lasts for multiple seasons, providing long-form storytelling that can develop and change over time, there’s also something to be said for miniseries that have a definite ending. The Sympathizer is adapted from a novel, and it definitely seems to be crafted with a beginning and ending in mind, with each episode functioning as a chapter (although probably not lining up with the actual chapters in the book). With this episode, we seem to be heading toward a conclusion, as the various schemes and plots head toward a climax of sorts.
Or maybe it just seems that way to the main character, The Captain (Hoa Xuande), who spends a good portion of this episode with his mind addled after being injured by some all-too-real special effects explosions on the film set where he spent most of the previous episode. He wakes up in the hospital, and he can barely keep his head straight, leading him to engage in flashbacks and jump around in time as he relates the story to us (or more precisely, to the Communist officials in Vietnam, since we’ve seen in flash-forwards that he’s being held in prison and questioned about his loyalties). This makes for an entertaining story structure, but it also calls The Captain’s mental state into question, potentially explaining why his narrative seems to have been structured so haphazardly.
However, it’s not just confusion that The Captain is experiencing. He’s starting to have a bit of an identity crisis, wondering about the purpose of everything he has been doing. He’s spent months working on a Vietnam War movie at the behest of his CIA contact (Robert Downey, Jr.) who wants to make sure the film isn’t too anti-American, but The Captain did what he could to smuggle Communist messages into the dialogue spoken by the Vietnamese extras. But was that really a worthwhile effort? Has anything he’s been doing made a difference to anyone? The realization that he has lost his way leads him to negotiate a hefty payout with the movie studio executives who come to apologize about his injury. And his ongoing guilt about killing the guy who he identified as a spy to divert suspicion from himself leads him to give most of the money to The Major’s widow (VyVy Nguyen). But then she gives it right back, saying it should go to the campaign that The General (Toan Le) is putting together to take back their homeland.
It turns out that while he’s been away, The General has been making plans for some sort of military operation against the Communist regime in Vietnam, mostly funding this scheme with the profits earned by his wife’s pho restaurant, which has become incredibly popular among Vietnamese expats. So the captain has to figure out whether he should report this back to his CIA handler, send information about the operation back to Vietnam, or take other actions to try to foil the plans.
But that’s not all that has changed. After trying to reconnect with his girlfriend Sofia (Sandra Oh), he finds that she has moved on while he was away filming the movie, and she’s now dating Sonny (Alan Trong), a reporter he knew in college. While Sonny seems to support Communist ideals, he remained in the United States and has integrated into American life. And when The Captain calls him out in front of Sofia for failing to stand up for those ideals, Sonny admits that he’s a coward, and even though he doesn’t agree with The Captain’s politics (or what he professes to believe while actually functioning as a Communist spy), he respects that The Captain went back to Vietnam after college to try to make a difference. This only adds to The Captain’s ongoing confusion about who he is. It doesn’t help that the conversation only seems to strengthen the bond between Sonny and Sofia, who also feels like she’s given up on her ideals and her identity as a Japanese American who was held in an internment camp now that she’s spending her life serving the demands of her white college professor boss.
The Captain also learns that The General’s daughter Lana (Vy Le) has begun performing in a nightclub act called FantAsia, where she alternates between singing songs in Vietnamese while wearing a conical hat and doing her own version of “Lady Marmalade.” This makes him finally start to see her as grown up rather than the kid he knew back in Vietnam, and he tries to reconnect with her, although it’s possible that he’s just horny after being shut down by Sofia. However, Lana also sees him as a spy, believing that he’s reporting her activities to her parents. No matter where he turns, he can’t seem to figure out who he is or where he stands.
Due to the Captain’s increasingly tenuous mental state, he also spends a lot of time flashing back to his childhood in the village where he grew up. As we’ve seen in previous flashbacks, he was bullied for being a “half-breed,” but he ended up connecting with two other boys, with the three of them believing that they would be stronger together. They refer to themselves as blood brothers after cutting their hands and mingling their blood together, and they regularly repeat the Three Musketeers’ motto, “All for one and one for all.” But there are hints that maybe he’s not remembering everything correctly, including a moment when one of the friends says “Two for one and one for two.” Does the third friend, the one who stayed behind in Vietnam as part of the Communist regime, even exist, or is he just a figment of The Captain’s imagination?
This all ends up being a bit of a mind trip, with The Captain struggling to hold on to his identity. He’s seeming more and more like a pawn in games played by other people, which is underscored in a scene where The General’s incredulity about why he would give the money to The Major’s widow is intercut with the Communist Commandant who has been questioning The Captain in the flash-forward scenes being equally angry that he would turn the money over to The General. And The Captain is getting more and more paranoid about being found out, including in a scene where The General complains about an article written by Sonny questioning his plans. The General notes that half of the reporters they dealt with in Vietnam were Communist sympathizers, and when The Captain tries to defend Sonny, The General says that The Captain has always been too sympathetic. Is that a sign that The Captain is going to be found out? Or is it just more fuel on the fire that’s burning down the barriers between his different personas?
What makes this show so enjoyable is that all of this moves at a breakneck pace. We barely get a chance to breathe as one thing happens after another, and we feel as disoriented as The Captain as he struggles to keep up with his shifting loyalties and tries to keep a handle on the moves that different people are making. It’s crazy, exciting stuff, with more and more unexpected developments taking place each episode. Who knows how it’s all going to turn out or whether it can be wrapped up in a satisfying manner in just two more episodes. But it’s sure to be entertaining, while continuing to provide a great examination of the difficulty that immigrants can face when they are torn between multiple loyalties, besieged by racism, and unsure about where they stand in the United States or elsewhere.