“Sugar” defies initial expectations. At first glance, it follows John Sugar, a gentle and kind-hearted private investigator in Los Angeles, who dedicates his life to solving missing persons cases after the mysterious disappearance of his own sister, Djen. However, there’s a unique twist to this narrative—John is not your typical detective; he is, in fact, an alien with striking blue eyes and skin.
The first season concluded with a dramatic revelation: Henry, portrayed by Jason Butler Harner, is John’s closest ally among the alien community mingling with humans. However, Henry succumbs to the chaos of human violence, losing his sanity. He mentors an emerging serial killer, whom John ultimately kills, breaking his own species’ strict rule against violence. Before vanishing, Henry hints at his involvement in Djen’s disappearance. Despite their people’s forced departure from Earth due to being discovered by human authorities, Henry chooses to remain, intent on killing once more, while John stays to thwart him.
As the new season begins, the storyline takes an unexpected turn right from the opening credits. This is not the show you might have anticipated.
With Mark Protosevich and Simon Kinberg stepping down, new showrunner Sam Catlin reinvents the narrative direction that seemed pre-determined. In a surprising twist, Henry reappears in the first scene, only to be found dying by suicide, overwhelmed by his assimilation into human misdeeds. He expresses remorse for his actions and for his role in Djen’s fate, yet dies before divulging any details. This leaves John stranded on Earth with no leads on his sister’s whereabouts, stripping the show of its original driving force.
Nonetheless, “Sugar” pivots to explore new mysteries, particularly how John’s alien community was exposed. John suspects that the father of the young serial killer from the first season, a senator, is linked to the revelation. Quietly, John acquires a luxurious home in the Hills, strategically overlooking the senator’s residence to continue his investigation, a motive unveiled only at the episode’s conclusion.
Mostly, John just loves being in Los Angeles, which he returns to immediately after the debacle with Henry. (All he takes back with him is a hidden communicator unit he briefly uses to see if any other aliens stayed behind.) His bitchin’ vintage convertible, his posh hotel-suite digs, his endless collection of perfect suits, his sad-eyed love of Hollywood’s Golden Age — they’re all waiting for him upon his return. (He gave his dog to Amy Ryan’s character at the end of Season 1.)
As he reacclimates himself to the hotel, Sugar keeps making eye contact with a beautiful brunette who eventually introduces herself to him. Her name is Charlotte, “like the spider’s web.” I’m hoping we’ve got a femme fatale here, but on this show, looks can be deceiving.
Which is not to say no one is honest in Sugar’s Los Angeles. One of the episode’s funniest gags involves a young woman (Sasha Calle) who helps steal Sugar’s car, then charges him $300 bucks to get it back. (She’s got a credit card reader and everything.) Fortunately for Sugar, she turns out to be one of those trustworthy car thieves, and brings his wheels right back to him as agreed.
Sugar winds up taking his first new case on behalf of a human buddy, who’s concerned for a kid from the neighborhood, Ji Moon (Raymond Lee). Ji and his brother Danny (Jin Ha) are boxers, but Danny’s on the rise while Ji is struggling. After stealing some meds from a hospital, Ji disappears, and John spends time trying to retrace his steps through the hospital stairwell and out to the street based on the voicemail Ji left Danny while it was happening, saying something about how his pursuer “looked down on me with those fucking eyes, and I ran.” Glowing blue eyes are a hallmark of Sugar’s people, leading me to wonder if he’s already more involved in this case than he knows.
Other than the dramatic shift in the storyline away a Fugitive-style hunt for a killer, the big news here is simple: John Sugar’s Los Angeles is back. It’s a fantasy LA, a frictionless LA, an LA where you can cruise around in your perfect car in your perfect suits. It’s a place where clips from old movies help you wax philosophical about the human condition and your own place in it, as the the buildings and the neon glow in your windshield. It’s colorful place, with heavily saturated reds and blues in particular, an unusual color palette for a streaming show. (You do see it in Michael Mann films.)
It’s a place where nurses willingly incriminate themselves to help you after knowing you for all of two minutes, like you’re Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet. It’s a place where a middle-aged Irish guy like Colin Farrell can meet cute with a different beautiful middle-aged Irish (or Irish-American) lady every season and get a whole cool stylish sci-fi mystery out of it. It’s a city of immigrants, like Ji Moon, like John Sugar.
It is, in short, very much my kind of place. And if both the Season 1 twist and this Season 2 reshuffle are any indication, there’s no way to get a sense of its boundaries until you’ve been there. I’m ready to hop in.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.