The first two episodes of The Sympathizer are what I might call a slow burn: plenty of world-building, character introductions, and expository dialogue — stylishly shot and compelling but without a clear hook. In the third episode, the last directed by Park Chan-wook, the show finally finds its footing, but not without a few curious stumbles.
The previous episode left us with little doubt about the Major’s fate. The General wants him dead and tasked the Captain with pulling the trigger. But the Captain, with Bon in tow, arrives at his former boss’s front door in the dead of night for a final confirmation. The General refuses to give any direct order, saying: “Do as you see fit. You know what is to be done.†It’s the Lenin quote he praised the Communists for in the premiere, now directed (rather ironically) at the mole under his nose.
Back in the car, Bon is driving, a symbolic switch-up as he’s emerged from his mute depression. When discussing possible assassination tactics, the Captain learns that Bon had served in the top secret F-6 program as a trained assassin for the South Vietnamese army. Their best bet, Bon determines, is to fake an armed robbery in the parking lot of the Major’s apartment complex. So they begin to tail the Major, observing his daily activities and dropping by his house. The Captain struggles with seeing the Major’s family from afar, especially his newborn twins. It pains his conscience, though he knows that his own head is on the General’s platter if the Major’s is spared. At the Major’s house, Bon and the Captain run into his mother (or rather, his mother appears out of the blue, giving the men a mild jump-scare), who’s having a longevity party to celebrate her 80th birthday. She tells them the Major is selling candy to make more money: “He wants to get rich. Like a real American.â€
Later, when the Captain confronts the Major about his business activities, he begs him not to tell the General. The Major makes his plea to the Captain in English before enveloping him in a hug. The code-switching perhaps emphasizes the Major’s newfound commitment to the American Dream. “If you fully commit to this land, you become fully American,†the Major says. “But if you don’t, you’re just a wandering ghost living between two worlds forever.†The scene (and sentiment) is quite maudlin. The North Vietnamese commander reading the Captain’s letter scoffs at the sentimentality, and I’m also tempted to. Another thing that’s increasingly unclear is how much time has passed since the evacuation. You start to wonder: How did the Major’s wife already bear twins? The Major might’ve learned to speak English fluently in Vietnam, but I’d venture that the first few months of uprooting one’s life to a foreign country is not conducive to starting a black-market business. (I suppose the same can be said of the General’s liquor store.) Anyway, enough of my complaints about realism. But remember, the Captain is the narrator here, as both an overt and omniscient figure. He’s as reliable (or unreliable) as we want him to be.
You would think that a murder plot would warrant some tense austerity, but one of the episode’s best developments is the ribbing repartee between Bon and the Captain, which relaxes the scenes with some vital levity. There’s also a lot more cursing (Vietnamese is a casually crude language) and laidback banter that helps to reveal more of the Captain’s “true†personality. The Captain invites Ms. Mori (or Sofia, as she insists) to the longevity party and, to his surprise, encounters Claude in the neighborhood, walking a small white dog. Claude has on a fedora and a silk scarf tied around his neck, “homosexual†accessories that contribute to his apparently disarming guise: “I’m whoever I need to be. Just like you.†Silly, because no one would clock heterosexual Claude as CIA in the wild? Still, the run-in pressures the Captain to act quickly, as he’s anticipating instructions from Man on how to proceed.
The Captain is on edge at the longevity party, although it’s unclear exactly what he’s anxious about. He runs into a dressed-up Lana, who just performed on stage, and fumbles in introducing her to Sofia, initially referring to Ms. Mori as his boss. There’s a smidge of sexual tension and flirtation between the Captain and Lana, which adds to my earlier complaint about temporal uncertainty and inconsistency. Upon the party’s arrival, Sofia also wonders, “Are you sure you guys are refugees?†It’s a valid question! Is it CIA money? Speaking of, Robert Downey Jr. makes another appearance, this time as the gravel-voiced Congressman Ned Goodwin, who presents the Major’s mother with an army sword. The Captain asks the Major to include him as a business partner, and both he and Bon look visibly pained posing for the group picture at the party’s end.
The Captain gets the idea of planning the murder on Independence Day from the Major himself. The Major is excited to celebrate. It’s their first Independence Day in America and one year before the bicentennial, according to the Major, so we can assume that it’s summer 1975, a few months since their arrival stateside. On the holiday, the Captain wears a blonde wig that makes him look like an anime cosplayer and carries his gun disguised in a Happy Burger bag. “Did you pick that on purpose?†Bon asks of the bag. “I thought it might put him at ease,†the Captain responded. There’s a slapstick-like quality to the murder plot before it’s usurped by the menace of the Captain’s task. The original plan goes horribly. The Captain had handed the Major a durian (a roughly five-pound fruit with a spiky exterior) as a gift, which the Major employed as a weapon. Bon intervenes, setting off fireworks to cover up the sound of the Captain killing the Major. They run off, and the Captain slaps on one of the Major’s “America, Love it or Leave it†stickers to frame the murder as a racially motivated crime.
But that’s not enough death for one episode. The imprisoned Captain is interrupted by the Northern commander, who asks whether he’s ready to talk at length about a certain incident. It contains boiled eggs, as briefly foreshadowed in the second episode. The CIA and Southern army had captured a Northern agent responsible for crafting bombs from wristwatches. His code name is the Watchman (Phong Le), and Claude commands the Captain to try and “crack†him. In the Watchman’s cell, the Captain successfully implies to the prisoner that he is a Communist spy before derisively threatening him of torture: “Why wait until the Americans have electrocuted your balls with a thousand bolts? You know the CIA’s nickname for a penis that’s been through that process? The electric eel.†The Watchman agrees to confess and asks for three hard boiled eggs for breakfast. He eats the first two before swallowing the third whole, lodging the unpeeled egg in his windpipe and suffocating to death. Here, the Captain is complicit in the Watchman’s suicide as an aide. Meanwhile, Claude is framed as the insensitive villain who peels and pops the Watchman’s third egg into his mouth.
Without the novel’s densely detailed accounts of the Captain’s innermost thoughts, revealing to us the nuances and contradictions of his personality, the script compresses his complexity into heroic pathos. The novel’s Captain was more cut-throat and harsh, willing to take risks to crumple his comrade just to get on Claude’s good side. He had no idea of the Watchman’s suicide plan and felt guilty that his actions had pushed his comrade to the brink. It’s a frustrating deviation that re-characterizes the Captain as the protagonist in the scene rather than an antagonist less deserving of our sympathy.
After the flashback to the Watchman, the Captain returns to the Major’s funeral, where Claude shows up and praises the Captain for his work. Claude has a new job for him … in Hollywood. They drive to a steakhouse (“the natural habitat of the most dangerous creature on Earth, a white man with a suit and tie,†Claude clucks) and sit down for a meal with Professor Hammer, Ned Goodwin, and a white Hollywood director who’s making a movie about Vietnam. To be honest, I was a fan of RDJ in drag until this scene, which purposely tries to smash the metafictional barrier. It made for a distracting, unnecessary gimmick to have all his characters seated in conversation with one another, with the Captain there as an accessory to the drama. Technically, though, he is. The episode ends at a jazz club, with Claude playing the piano while all the other white men snort drugs and flirt with women. The off-kilter atmosphere feels a lot like a bad acid trip. Bright lights, vacant eyes, a woman with whipped cream on her private parts. Out of place, the Captain extricates himself from the crowd and sits in a quiet booth to flip through the Director’s script. It briefly takes him back to Vietnam before his homeland reverie is interrupted by the ghost of the Major. “Love it or leave it,†the Major says. His face is disguised behind the Happy Burger bag before the Captain rips it off to look his demon in the eye. The Major is dead, but it’s the Captain who has to contend with his wandering ghosts.