Time for a Sugar Rush

The champion portion of Sugar is the infinitesimal erstwhile each the things that look incorrect astir it abruptly drawback into place. Photo: Apple TV+

Apple TV+’s Sugar is not the champion TV amusement I’ve seen this year, but it did springiness maine my favourite TV infinitesimal truthful acold this year. It was determination successful the mediate of episode three erstwhile it abruptly deed me: Wait. That can’t be what this amusement is about. Unless …

That was it. I, overmuch similar Colin Farrell’s backstage researcher John Sugar, had been drawn hopelessly into a byzantine enigma with twists I couldn’t perchance person predicted erstwhile I took up the case. I was connected a Sugar high, and I wanted the full satellite to articulation me. I was besides cursed with a dilemma: How tin I get different radical to ticker this amusement without ruining what’s amusive astir watching this show? The reply I settled connected was puns. For the past fewer weeks, my (very patient) friends person tolerated my texts astir getting Sugar-pilled oregon letting Apple TV+ determination immoderate Sugar on them.

But present Sugar is this adjacent to sifting done your hands. Tomorrow’s episode, the sixth of eight, is poised to uncover the large twist that reviewers — astatine Apple’s petition — person been truthful cagey astir (even arsenic the selling has hammered the enactment that a large twist is coming). As Vulture recapper Andy Anderson wrote past week, “The real breathtaking twists and turns are conscionable opening to materialize.”

If the imaginable of figuring retired the large twist is what gets you to deed play connected Sugar, I tin nudge you successful the close direction. (Take it from this Sugar fiend: Pay extra-close attraction anytime Kirby is onscreen oregon John Sugar has an anxiousness attack.) But honestly, my transportation is simpler than that: Right present — yes, today — is the clip for a Sugar binge. Waiting immoderate longer dramatically increases your chances of getting spoiled by idiosyncratic goofing connected the large uncover erstwhile it goes public. You’ve lone missed 5 episodes, and astir of them hover close astir 30 minutes. To drawback up successful clip for occurrence six volition instrumentality you astir 3 hours.

But you’ll astir apt get it earlier then. If your acquisition of Sugar is thing similar mine, you’ll beryllium grooving on to this pleasantly by-the-numbers California neo-noir, clocking (but mostly shrugging at) the occasional off-kilter detail, until it abruptly hits you. To my mind, the large occurrence of Sugar is that the twist is simultaneously far, acold beyond what anyone could reasonably person predicted and the lone reply that makes any consciousness erstwhile you adhd up the clues.

I americium alert that telling you to ticker Sugar without worrying excessively overmuch astir the twist is similar telling you not to deliberation astir a pinkish elephant. It’s a small similar the paradox presented by Takashi Miike’s 1999 splatter classical Audition — a movie champion enjoyed if you don’t cognize it has a gnarly 3rd act, doomed to lone beryllium seen by those who person been tipped disconnected that it has a gnarly 3rd act. But if you tin enactment the large uncover retired of your caput until your caput starts putting the pieces unneurotic connected its own, Sugar offers plentifulness of sumptuous pleasures connected purely superficial terms. A baby-blue Corvette. An adorable canine sidekick. Colin Farrell’s eyebrows. The noir plot, which swirls astir the missing granddaughter of a Hollywood bigwig, is perfectly serviceable. And little clips from a murderer’s enactment of classical film-noir movies similar Kiss Me Deadly and Dead Reckoning — which are spliced into each occurrence — volition springiness you worldly to adhd to your Criterion Channel queue. All of that makes for a perfectly agreeable clip watching television. But what you’re truly waiting for is your Usual Suspects moment, erstwhile each the things that seemed incorrect astir Sugar abruptly drawback into place.

At the hazard of burning disconnected immoderate remaining credibility I person aft those puns, the closest spiritual relative I tin travel up with for Sugar is John Patrick Shanley’s romanticist dramedy Wild Mountain Thyme. If you cognize thing astir that movie, you cognize astir the ending, successful which Jamie Dornan yet tells his long-suffering emotion involvement Emily Blunt wherefore helium won’t conscionable buss her already: He believes he’s a honeybee. This twist came successful for a batch of derision online, and understandably so. Reduced to what’s virtually happening, it sounds ridiculous and asinine — similar a last mediate digit to the assemblage successful a movie that already tested their patience by allowing Christopher Walken to bash a horrible faux-Irish accent.

I saw Wild Mountain Thyme earlier “Jamie Dornan is simply a honeybee” was a Twitter joke, and honestly: It deed different. I’m not going to support that movie arsenic a misunderstood classic, but there’s thing to beryllium said for engaging with an audacious enactment of creation without somebody’s meme clanging astir successful your head. Don’t worry: The twist successful Sugar is not that Colin Farrell believes he’s a honeybee. But it is the benignant of happening that anyone who cares astir TV should acquisition for themselves, if lone to admit the boldness of the swerve.