The Sympathizer
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The penultimate episode ofThe Sympathizeropens with a series of quick cuts.
Hardly any of the shots linger for longer than a few seconds.
The Captain is descending the hill behind the General to greet the insurgent refugee army.
The camera jerks around to emphasize the Captains growing panic.
Life is a suicide mission, Bon tells the Captain.
The wars over when the General says so.
His position as a spy is no longer justifiable.
The Captains reasoning sounds increasingly ludicrous to the North Vietnamese commander, whos spent the past year interrogating him.
What once struck me as a maudlin now sounds like a dire warning of the Captains fate.
At Madame Pho, the Captain runs into Sonny and tells him to follow the money.
Bon, whos working the cash register, tells the Captain hes enlisting.
The two men eventually arrive at a natural sauna, where the General bemoans his losses to the Captain.
His answer is eerily similar to Mans, which, once again, places the Captains subjectivity into question.
The General claims the Captain will be more helpful in America.
Even after all this time, hes the only one that the General trusts.
He imagines a conversation with Man in his office.
This time, its clearer that Man is a figment of the Captains own conscience.
Hes advising his ego to stay in America: You belong there.
Its a fitting title for the episode, too, as the Captain goes scorched-earth in its second half.
I dont hate you, Sonny, the Captain says, although its clear that he does.
He hates Sonny for being unburdened, for picking a side and living with the consequences.
The murder is swift and coldly executed.
The Captain jams his gun into an empty Coca-Cola can and shoots Sonny in the chest.
The documents, the Captain later confesses, were never published.
Instead, he had gone home with Sonnys documents and proceeded to burn them in his kitchen.
All it says is Request denied, presumably the final two words that the Captain ever received from Man.
It prompts him to insist to the General on accompanying Bon to Thailand.
How did you become this?
she asks the Captain, caressing his cheek.
Go … far away.
But even Sandra Ohs marvelous acting chops could not redeem this impossible scene.
The episode ends with Bon and the Captain on a taxiing plane en route to Thailand.
His attempts to assuage Bon fall flat.
The mission is a death wish, a fait accompli that the Captain knows he has to accept.
