Meat, sex, murder. As of this episode, John Sugar has partaken in all three. What kind of man — or “man” — does that make him?
For answers, maybe we should look to Breaking Bad, showrunner Sam Catlin’s old stomping grounds and an obvious influence on this season of Sugar, even beyond the presence of Better Call Saul villain Tony Dalton as the evil Lieutenant Vega. This episode starts with a BB/BCS-style cold open, showing us the detritus from a car crash before flashing back two days earlier to show us how that car came to be upside-down in the middle of a desert road.
Breaking Bad’s storyline is so famous by now it hardly constitutes a spoiler warning to discuss it, but the basic idea was that once a mild-mannered but frustrated science teacher started killing people, he’d never stop. The definition of “self-defense” is slowly expanded outward until he’s ordering a dozen simultaneous hits to keep people from snitching. When you break bad, or when you “assimilate” in Sugar’s parlance, there’s no going back.
Just ask Sugar’s assimilated friends Peg and Henry, both dead by their own hands. Is that where Sugar is headed? A life of crime, be it white-collar like Peg or red-handed like Henry, culminating in suicide? Or will he skip the middleman and cut straight to the killing-himself bit? Sugar connects with a cheery scene on his television right at the end of the episode, or else I’d figure self-harm was an immediate possibility.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself: In this episode, John Sugar wins.
I reviewed this week’s fun episode of Sugar for Decider.
Tags: decider, sugar, TV, TV reviews