By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 30, 2024 |
By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 30, 2024 |
Spoilers for the first two episodes of Prime Video’s ‘Expats’
Nicole Kidman is the celebrity draw, but for me, the reason to watch Expats is creator LuLu Wang, the writer/director behind the exceptional 2019 film The Farewell. She is why Expats gets the benefit of the doubt, even after realizing the series is not about a group of Americans adjusting to life in Hong Kong. I’m not even sure why it’s called Expats unless it’s because Prime Video thought The Missing, Maybe Dead Kid Show wouldn’t attract enough viewers, which is the same reason they didn’t call Manchester by the Sea the Harrowing Tale of a Dad Living with the Guilt of Being Responsible for the Death of his Three Children in a House Fire.
Indeed, the longline for Expats — “it follows the vibrant lives of a close-knit expatriate community: where affluence is celebrated, friendships are intense but knowingly temporary, and personal lives, deaths and marriages are played out publicly—then retold with glee” — doesn’t seem to have any connection whatsoever to the series I watched. For one, there is zero “Glee” to be had. Glee has left the building. Someone strangled Glee to death and threw Glee off a skyscraper. Glee has been taken around back and fed to the woodchipper.
Based on the first two episodes, it is indeed about an expatriate community in Hong Kong, but more than that, it’s about how that “close-knit expatriate community” unwound after a tragedy. The first episode introduces the characters dealing with the aftermath of an unknown tragedy, but by the end of the episode, it’s clear the tragedy involves Margaret Woo’s (Kidman) youngest child.
Margaret is a mess, but in an attempt to provide some normalcy for her other kids, she’s moving ahead with a 50th birthday party for her husband, Clarke Woo (Brian Tee). It’s clear from the context that the tragedy has also strained the friendship between Margaret and Hilary Starr (Sarayu Blue), and that Mercy Cho (Ji-young Yoo), a waitress serving hors d’oeuvres at the party, is also involved.
The second episode is a flashback episode, and it is immediately clear that the episode will explain what happened to Margaret’s young child, Gus. There is a scene early on where Gus is near the railing of a yacht, and our immediate thought is, “Oh shit! The kid is going to fall into the ocean and drown.” But it’s a fake out, the first of several.
Let me just say something to all the filmmakers out there: When it involves the potential death of a child, fake-outs are not OK! That is not a good source of suspense or tension. I spent the entire episode waiting for that shoe to drop. It was excruciating. I had to pause and take a break three times because I couldn’t deal. Where the potential death of a child is involved, just rip the band-aid off.
In the meantime, we learn that Mercy, a young woman, met Margaret on that yacht, that the two hit it off, and that Margaret invited Mercy to dinner to essentially audition her as a babysitter because Margaret is feeling uneasy and threatened by the close relationship between her kids and their live-in nanny (it’s worth noting here that all the adults are affluent). Meanwhile, Margaret’s best friend Hilary and Hilary’s husband, David (Jack Huston), who live in the same building, are having marital problems. She wants kids. He doesn’t. David is familiar to us from the first episode because he was having an affair with Mercy, the babysitter. This explains why.
It takes a full hour, but we eventually do find out what happens to Gus. While Margaret’s family is at the outdoor market with Mercy, Gus goes missing while under her supervision. Mercy lost the kid. Based on the opening episode, Gus has been missing for quite some time. Whether he’s found dead or alive, or whether he’s found at all, remains a mystery, except presumably to those who have already read the Janice Y. K. Lee novel upon which the series is based.
I did not like the second episode of the limited series. I didn’t like it because I didn’t know whether Gus was going to fall into the ocean, fall out of a window in their apartment building, or if he was going to fall into a meat grinder. I’m going to continue watching Expats, however, because it’s well done, because I trust Lulu Wang, and because now it’s a mystery. Maybe Gus is found alive. Maybe Gus washes up on shore. I am interested in that, and I am also interested in how these characters deal with that uncertainty because the combination of grief and uncertainty is a special kind of hell. What I am decidedly not interested in is being strung along for an hour by the threat of the tragic death of a child. Hopefully, those who may otherwise be interested in watching the series will not have to suffer that.