After its winding premiere peeled back a melodic mystery, the second episode of Lulu Wang’s Expats takes us back to the beginning, with a fateful meeting that led to a defining tragedy. Merely two episodes in, the show’s nonlinear structure has already proven powerful, creating heartrending, dramatic irony and palpable tension given what we know, but what the characters do not, as we peer backward through time, unable to reach out to them for warning or comfort.
Wang, again, sets the scene through a distinctive mood, with a shot of birds flying overhead (backed by radiant sunlight) and the sounds of playful children — a warm feeling destined to be short-lived. At a luxurious party aboard a yacht in Mongkok, we’re finally introduced to Gus (Connor James Yuet Hei Gilman), an adorable, impish ball of energy, as he runs through the fancy crowd and toward a ledge. In this moment, it’s hard not to wonder: “Is this where it happens?†Granted, we don’t yet know exactly what “it†is — all we know is what becomes of these characters’ lives several months or years from now — but the mischievous Gus is stopped in his tracks by Mercy, so “it†can’t be far off.
Mercy, once more the oddball poor kid in a sea full of trust-fund brats, doesn’t fit in, but Margaret immediately takes a liking to her, given how playfully she interacts with Gus, and the tact with which she hands his older siblings too. For Mercy, this means a job opportunity, and she drops a few hints, while Margaret’s responses are kind but vague. As Mercy sits with the entire family on deck — Gus, Margaret, Daisy, Philip, and Clarke — a brief wide shot of them all together, as she braids Daisy’s hair, resembles a family postcard.
While this encounter undoubtedly sets the stage for what eventually happens to Gus, it also establishes the episode’s key socioeconomic dynamics. Margaret — who considers herself kinder and more enlightened than her rich expat peers, in matters of dealing with household help — is on a wavelength specific to rich expat parents (and rich families who can afford full-time nannies in general, a dynamic also seen in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma). That she doesn’t pick up on Mercy’s offer to “help†as an employment inquiry represents a blind spot that carries over to the blurred lines that already exist at home with her Filipino maid, Essie (Ruby Ruiz), who’s been living with and working for the family ever since Gus was born and has a particularly close bond with him. Gus even speaks bits of Filipino, and though Margaret never says it out loud, her anxious gaze toward their intimate, loving, mother-son dynamic unlocks a past insecurity of hers (which she puts into words in a later conversation with Hillary). Though she frequently reenforces, to other expats, that Essie is like family, some part of her wishes this wasn’t true. What she perceives as callousness when these other women refer to Margaret as Essie’s employer is, in fact, a truth that makes her uncomfortable.
In the aforementioned chat with Hillary, Margaret admits that she didn’t want another child when she was pregnant with Gus. Her feelings eventually changed, but while the admission of this anxiety would be routine in a chronological telling, it comes laced with a bitter dramatic irony. “Almost like I was wishing him away,†she says. These stray lines of dialogue become troubling and prophetic, given what we know. Coupled with the frequent presence of elderly dog owner Christopher — who we know will eventually be found dead in his apartment — a dark cloud hovers over every scene.
The episode is intricate in the way it threads the needle between its various plots. The apparent normalcy of Margaret’s motherhood and domestic life is constantly mirrored by a looming discontentment whenever the show cuts to Hillary — at first, during a visit to an orphanage with some friends, which brings anxieties of her own to the fore. She and David are supposedly trying for a child, though unbeknownst to him, she’s back on birth control. Their inability to connect and communicate culminates in an uncomfortably lengthy and mechanical sex scene, during which the camera’s focus remains on her contemplative expression.
Like Margaret, David tries to maintain a friendly relationship with his employees. However, the lack of reciprocation, when David gets too personal about family matters with his driver, Sam (Poon Pak Shing), further hammers home this signature wealthy-expat eagerness that ignores how the working class must avoid these complicated entanglements in order to keep their jobs — jobs being the key word. To David (and to Clarke, who weighs staying in Hong Kong longer when he’s offered a new contract), the presence of maids and chauffeurs are lifestyle conveniences first and foremost, rather than transactional relationships.
This (lack of) exchange between David and Sam also speaks to how lonely David is and how he’s desperate for advice, validation, or even simple conversation on the topic of starting a family, a major decision on which he and Hillary not only fail to see eye to eye but fail to communicate about this disconnect. It’s a husk of a marriage, though neither one seems to want to admit it.
The expats’ lack of economic tact (and inadvertent lack of forthrightness) is also the center of the episode’s denouement. When Clarke drops out of a family dinner at the last minute, Margaret asks Essie to stay at home — she tells her to take the evening off, though given her recent jealous streak, the decision may not be altruistic — and she invites Mercy instead. As Mercy helps care for the kids, the question of whether this meeting is friendly, a trial job, or, as Margaret puts it, “a favor,†makes things awkward for Mercy, who texts a friend to find out if she ought to be charging for her time, and if and when to bring up the subject of money, since Margaret seems oblivious to Mercy’s position. Unfortunately, this domino effect leads to Margaret communicating with her friend just long enough to lose track of Gus at a night market.
The “it†— Gus’s disappearance in a Hong Kong crowd, much like Mercy’s own introductory image in the series’ prologue — is shockingly simple and yet completely devastating, given how much he features in the episode. He’s rowdy, troublesome, and entirely innocent in his mischievous behavior, running helter-skelter because he doesn’t know better. A mere handful of moments, and by casting such a wonderfully sweet child actor (and directing him toward a freeing sense of chaos, it would seem), creates a kid performance at once deeply familiar yet seldom seen onscreen, given how hilariously and charmingly disruptive Gus is in every scene. He is, above all, a distinct and palpable presence in the characters’ lives, and the fact that he no longer can be is completely soul-crushing.
As the police try to search for leads, a shocked and guilt-ridden Mercy approaches an angry, despondent Clarke (who comforts Margaret, so consumed by grief that she hides her face), but no words are exchanged. Their silence is more dramatically moving than any line of dialogue could be. What would any of these characters even say?
The episode ends with David arriving to help and taking Mercy home — this is how they met — and with a brief reprise of a scene in the first episode, in which Hillary and Margaret return to the very same night market, a moment in time and space now placed in a painful new context. This time, the streets and buildings no longer shimmer. We see their surfaces being cleaned as a matter of routine, washing away and anonymizing the agony to which we’ve just borne witness. Harsh jump-cuts yank us through different times of day and make the street seem ordinary, as hundreds of other people converge to live their lives. It’s as though Gus, and his story, had simply vanished — or had never existed at all.
Visual Expressions
• When Hillary joins David at dinner, the camera remains fixed on Jack Huston’s desperate, distracted expression rather than cutting to Hillary when she speaks. As it zooms in slowly, David’s entire emotional predicament seems to come into view; he can no longer listen to Hillary, but he no longer feels like he can be heard or seen.
• As Hillary contemplates whether parenthood is for her, the cacophony of Margaret’s life descends upon her; Sarayu Blue remains framed in the center, while Margaret’s children traipse and bicker around her in the foreground, out of focus, almost consuming her.
• David — who shouldn’t be drinking — escapes to an Irish pub, though rather than seeing him head-on, he’s only visible to us in the reflection of a polished wood bar counter, as though his life were obscured by haze.