Diksha Sundriyal
John Sugar returns in the second season of Apple TV’s ‘Sugar,’ picking up yet another missing person’s case, which hits a little too close to home. The previous season revealed that the private investigator is actually an alien sent to the Earth to observe the human race. Things go awry as Sugar chases answers to the mystery of his case, and his friends decide it’s time to leave since their secret is out and their mission is compromised. Sugar and Henry are the only ones left behind, and the second season begins with them meeting each other after a long time. The reunion, however, is not as expected and pushes Sugar in an unexpected direction, defining the next chapter of his life. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Sugar Picks a New Case
Six months after the events of the Season 1 finale, Sugar finally finds Henry on the other side of the world. He had been chasing after his former friend, who knows what happened to his sister, Djen. He finds Henry in a solitary house by the river in a near-dead state. He is wounded and bleeding and is, in a way, happy to see Sugar. Still, even as Sugar pleads with him to tell him what happened to Djen, Henry doesn’t say anything and dies. It turns out that living alone on Earth was not what he expected it to be. He became depressed and eventually killed himself.
After looking around for clues for the Djen mystery, Sugar sets the house on fire, with Henry inside it, and goes back to LA. He reads a letter from Ruby, who tells him to stay safe now that he is all alone on Earth, adding that she renewed his subscription to American Cinematographer. Her absence hits Sugar as he feels increasingly lonely and tetherless. He decides to find a new case to distract himself, but no one really has his number; it was Ruby who always got the cases for him. Now he has nothing to do but show his tricks to dogs, the only ones he can be his authentic self with.
But it only makes him miss his own dog even more. Eventually, his phone rings, and a limo driver he once helped directs him towards someone who is desperately looking for his loved one. Sugar’s new client turns out to be Danny Moon, a rising star in the boxing world. His brother, Ji Moon, has gone missing. He was last heard from three days ago when he sent two voice messages to Danny. In the first, he can be heard running down stairs and almost getting hit by a car.
In the second, he talks about coming across someone or something with “those eyes.” Then he tells his brother not to go to the cops and to keep training well. Sugar can sense that Ji is on drugs, which might explain his erraticness, but he also hears the fear in his voice, which feels pretty real. This means Ji is in real danger. Sugar is not blind to the irony of the case being about a missing sibling. He notes that Ruby would advise him against it, saying it’s a bit on the nose, but he decides to take it anyway.
Sugar’s Investigation Into Ji Moon Leads Him to Interesting People
Sugar starts looking for Danny by visiting his usual hangout spots in Koreatown. He starts with the boxing place, but doesn’t get any answers. Then he goes to a bar, where a girl at the pool table catches his attention. She claims not to know Ji, but Sugar senses she is hiding something. So, he offers to play her for information. If he wins a game of pool, she tells him about Ji. If he loses, she gets to take his car (which everyone at the bar notices) for a spin. His first shot is clumsy, but then his knowledge from the movies comes in handy, and he ends up winning the game.
It’s time to get some answers, but then he is told that his car has been stolen. By the time he reaches the street, his car is gone. A woman says she knows the person who stole it, but she asks for $300, which she promptly increases to $500 when he doesn’t protest. She even has a card reader in case he doesn’t have cash. She leaves after taking the money, and it seems she is not coming back. The girl from the bar comes out and tells Sugar that Danny was seeing a doctor named Hannah MacDaniels. She also mentions that a lot of people have been looking for him, though not all of them are worried for him like his brother.
As the minutes pass, Sugar starts to wonder if he has really lost his car. He starts talking about how he misses his home and his friends. Just then, the girl brings back his car, pleasantly surprising him. Back at the hotel, Sugar opens a box he retrieved from Henry’s place before he burned it down. It is a communication device, which makes him hope that someone might have stayed behind. He sends out a message, hoping someone will reply.
Normally, he would have stayed in and watched a movie, but he decides to break his pattern and goes to the hotel restaurant to have dinner, and people watch, and catches the eye of a woman. Back in the room, he looks at the brothers. He notices the differences between them. Danny is on the rise, while Ji seems to have been on a downward spiral. Their polar opposite directions make Sugar wonder what Ji got himself into and what put such terror in his voice.
Sugar Handles Two Investigations Together
Sugar goes to the hospital to talk to Hannah MacDaniels, who, at first, thinks that he is from HR and is there to fire her, and is relieved to discover he is not. It turns out that four days ago, Ji was at the hospital. Hannah helped him steal drugs by distracting her colleague and shutting off the CCTV. He ran away from the hospital with a cup full of drugs, and the first recording he sent was from the hospital’s stairwell. She clarifies that Ji is not her boyfriend, but Sugar notes that she cares enough to find out what happened to him. She reveals that they were supposed to meet later that night, but when Ji didn’t show up, she assumed that he was already high on those drugs.
After giving her his card, Sugar assesses the stairwell, but doesn’t get much. He spends more time looking around bars and underground clubs and ends up under a bridge, looking at the paramedics trying to revive an overdosed man. He notes that three minutes is all it takes for a person to die of an overdose if they don’t get help on time. He wonders how long it will take Ji to end up like that if he is not found in time. He goes back to the hotel for a drink and meets a woman named Charlotte at the bar. She had crossed paths with him at the hotel lobby earlier and had eyed him when he had dinner at the restaurant.
Their conversation is cut short when he gets a text from S.P.A.C.E. It turns out that he has purchased a property in Hollywood Hills, and not just because a film star used to live nearby. The place is secluded enough for him to carry out another mission. The events of the last season made him wonder how humans found out about him and his people. He wants to know who betrayed their secret, forcing them to leave Earth for fear of being hunted down and killed. He remembers Henry talking about how powerful these humans are.
He also remembers Ryan Pavich from last season, who killed himself in front of Sugar. Now, the alien PI is keeping an eye on his father, Tyson, believing that the older Pavich must have some secrets of his own. Back in the hotel room, he ponders how it might get a bit too much for him to handle two cases at once. Still, he will have to find time to do that. He listens to Ji’s recording again and pictures him coming out of the building and running into the traffic. He thinks about how our actions end up hurting the people we love most, and how he needs to be careful not to dwell on it too much and risk losing his mind, or else he will end up like Henry.
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