Gettin' My Eps In: Constellation S1E6, The Sympathizer E6
Two shows show us that everyone has multiple faces
Constellation
Season 1, Episode 6: “Paul Is Dead”
Written by Peter Harness
Directed by Joseph Cedar
Streaming on Apple TV+
These days, it seems like most TV series are produced by the season rather than the episode. That is, a season is a single unit, with each episode fitting within the whole. We don’t get filler episodes as much as we used to in the past, although some shows may have a stray episode here and there that decides to take a break from the ongoing plot and follow a side character or limit characters to a single location or something. Those episodes may or may not advance the show, and when they break from format, they may sometimes be seen as a surprising and welcome change, or they may be an annoying cul de sac on the way to the ultimate destination.
With this episode of Constellation, I’m leaning more toward the latter. It’s a break from the regular plot of the series, checking in on what’s been happening in the other universe. It does answer a few questions, explaining some of the weirdness that has been going on throughout the series (basically, any time a character saw something inexplicable, they were actually interacting with their parallel universe counterpart). But aside from a look at how some characters have been affected by the multiversal tragedy that happened on the International Space Station, it mostly seems unnecessary.
Our focus here is on Paul (Will Catlett), the guy who died in the first episode when an object struck the space station. In this reality, he survived, and Jo (Noomi Rapace) was killed. Her death is the most striking moment in the episode; her head smashes into a window and breaks it, causing her to be sucked against the hole due to decompression, with blood pouring out of the opening. But aside from that, the episode mostly revisits the types of scenes we’ve experienced previously, with Paul filling the same role as Jo as he gets creeped out being alone in space with a dead body, encounters inconsistencies as he interacts with his loved ones, gets questioned about his experiences by officials, sees things that he can’t explain, encounters troubling differences between this world and his version of reality, and has his mental health questioned.
The problem is, we’ve already seen all of this, so having another character experience the same thing from the other side of the multiversal divide doesn’t give us any new information. It’s just another series of unfortunate circumstances, with an ending that turns out to be more tragic since Paul isn’t our main character. I suppose this could have served as a revelation for anyone who hadn’t figured out what was going on in the series. Perhaps the showrunners thought this would be the “ah ha!” moment where everything fell into place, not realizing that their clues were too obvious, and they gave away the answers to the mystery too early. Or maybe getting a nearly-complete explanation for everything just isn’t very interesting.
While Paul’s story isn’t especially compelling, being something we’ve seen before, the episode’s subplot following Jo’s daughter Alice (played by Rosie and Davina Coleman) works much better. In this universe, she’s struggling to come to terms with the loss of her mother, and her father (James D’Arcy) isn’t helping her too much, since he’s also in mourning. She’s angry at Paul, who decided to leave Jo’s body behind on the ISS, and she can’t figure out how to deal with her feelings, leading her to destroy things she views as childish like toys and decorations. And while she also shares her counterpart’s proclivity for hiding in closets, her dad isn’t so supportive of this habit, and he’s angry that she seems to be pushing her away. It’s sad stuff, and it’s mostly played as straight drama, although the inter-universal shenanigans she experiences certainly don’t make things any better. We also get some continuing hints that the Alices have psychic abilities or something, which may explain why this Alice insists that her dad drive her up to the family’s cabin so that she can be in place for the flash-forwards we’ve seen.
So, as we get closer to the end of the season, we might be building up to some climactic revelations and plot developments, but this episode mostly seemed like wheel-spinning rather than anything in the way of advancement. There is at least one mystery remaining, since just like Jo, Paul saw what seemed to be a mysterious figure on the space station as he was heading back to Earth. We’ll see if that gets explained, if it’s part of a season finale cliffhanger, or if it gets left open-ended in hopes that we’ll be wondering about it for the foreseeable future. Whatever the case, I’m ready to get back to the primary action, and I’m hoping for more affecting moments that evoke a sense of mental illness that causes a person to question their reality. But I’ll settle for something approaching a satisfying conclusion to the various season-long plots. That can’t be too much to expect, right?
The Sympathizer
Episode 6: “The Oriental Mode of Destruction”
Written by Park Chan-Wook, Don McKellar, and Anchuli Felicia King
Directed by Marc Munden
Streaming on Max
Man, being a spy must be exhausting. You not only need to fit in with the group you’re infiltrating, but you need to make sure your superiors understand you’re still loyal to them. You’re putting on a false face so that you’ll be able to get access to important people and information, but you can’t get too deep into the persona, because pretty soon you won’t be able to distinguish between your real thoughts and the beliefs you’ve professed. Plus, you never know who to trust, whether you’re being suspected, and whether you might make the wrong move and end up on the wrong end of a gun or knife.
This deep into the miniseries, The Sympathizer is really conveying that aura of confusion, desperation, and paranoia. The Captain (Hoa Xuande) can barely figure out what’s going on around him or who he even is anymore. He’s still trying to stop the plans of The General (Toan Le), who is putting together a military force with the goal of re-invading Vietnam, a venture that is surely destined to fail, given that he has a couple hundred guys at most who would be going up against an entire Viet Cong army. Part of The Captain’s reason for stopping the invasion is personal, since he’s afraid his friend Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), who has joined this paramilitary troupe, is about to head back to Vietnam and get killed. But he’s also opposing any capitalist schemes to retake Vietnam due to his loyalty to the Communist regime.
So, The Captain sets about using his spy skills to throw a monkey wrench in the works. He realizes that The General’s group seems suspiciously well-funded, given that their supposed main source of support is the money earned at The Genera’s wife’s pho restaurant. They have access to military-grade hardware, which indicates that someone in the U.S. government is helping them out. The Captain’s investigation leads him to Congressman Ned Godwin (Robert Downey, Jr.), who has built his reputation on his experience as a military official during the Vietnam War. He decides to insinuate himself into Godwin’s campaign (leading to a gross moment in which Godwin asks him, “Do you have any skills other than being Vietnamese?”), with the goal of uncovering the sources of funds that are being funneled to The General.
While he’s successful in his pursuits due to his ability to gain the confidence of Godwin’s wife (Veronica Della Vedova), he encounters another betrayal when he runs into Professor Hammer (Downey again) at a campaign event and learns that he’s moonlighting as Godwin’s speechwriter, providing insights into Asian culture that he gained as the head of the university’s Department of Oriental Studies. During their conversation, The Captain learns that The Professor is actually the author of The Oriental Mode of Destruction, a book of odious anti-Asian propaganda that he has been using to pass coded messages back to his contact in Vietnam. Yes, this guy who has professed a love of Asian culture is actually the author of a book full of horrific racist sentiments like “life in the Orient is plentiful and cheap.”
While The Captain was well aware that the professor was a racist, it had previously seemed that his racism took the form of fetishization and stereotyping rather than full-on white supremacy. But sometimes these things aren’t just two sides of the same coin; they’re all part of the whole ball of racist wax. If The Captain needed a reason to eliminate any sympathy for the United States, this seems to be it, and it sets him down the path of getting out of the country for good.
But before he can try to join The General’s mission and return to Vietnam, he has one more thing to take care of. The General wants him to do something about Sonny (Alan Trong), the journalist who has been writing exposés fueled by information that The Captain has been sending him. The Captain is considering killing him, although he’s conflicted about whether he’s doing so out of duty (to The General? Or to his superiors, who need him to stay on the General’s good side? It’s unclear) or because Sonny stole his girlfriend Sofia (Sandra Oh). When The Captain goes to meet with Sonny to give him information about the money being funneled through Godwin to The General, he ends up confessing his status as a Communist spy to him, hoping that maybe Sonny’s professed leftist ideals will lead him to lend sympathy to someone who is a secret Communist. Except, of course, Sonny doesn’t believe him, thinking that the confession is part of a scheme in which The General is trying to get information out of him. Thus, The Captain continues to be unable to escape violence or receive any form of solace, and he’s run out of options other than to join what appears to be a suicide mission and hopefully be able to rejoin his Communist comrades.
I may not have much in the way of insight into the particulars of this episode, but it’s another example of the show being highly entertaining and compelling. There are plenty of memorable details, including the method Bon uses to determine whether the enemy is dead or faking it, which The Captain ends up employing in a gruesome moment. There’s also a great scene in which Sofia is smart enough to figure out what’s been going on, but she’s too repulsed by The Captain’s actions to offer any real sympathy, giving him yet another reason to get out of this situation.
As we head into the final episode, with The Captain and Bon on their way to Vietnam, who knows how well his mental state is going to hold up? He’s seeing the ghosts of the people he’s killed, he’s unsure whether he actually has any support from the Communist regime, and he’s probably going to fail at his goal of keeping his best friend alive. Things aren’t going to turn out well, but do they ever for people who live lives of deception? No matter where The Captain lands, he’s going to be haunted by everything he has done, and he’s probably going to be questioning what the point of it all was. Fortunately, I won’t be feeling the same way about watching this series.