Sugar's Second Season Finale Addresses the Arc Plot

 So, in The X-Files, there was this idea that was somewhat less common in TV in the early 90s: The Myth Arc. While the show primarily followed a case-of-the-week format, sending Scully and Mulder out to various places in the US investigating paranormal cases that could afford to be wrapped up neatly by the episode's end, on occasion you'd get "Myth Arc" episodes that dealt with the grand conspiracy covering up and working with would-be alien invaders.

In the early seasons, these episodes were amazing and exciting, cranking up the tension as we, along with our heroic FBI agents, wanted to learn more answers. By the later seasons, this plot had gotten so convoluted that it became sort of tiresome, though, and the show's more episodic format, which allowed for really wild creative and formalist swings, came into focus as the show's strong suit.

Sugar is structured very differently, of course: in its two seasons, Sugar investigates a pair of missing persons cases, though while the first season is more traditional in a "just where exactly is she?" kind of search, the question of where Ji Moon is in season two is less important than the question of how do we keep this schmuck from getting murdered?

But Sugar has a running arc story, and one that the show spends far less time focusing on. In two seasons, this is the only episode we've gotten that I think is primarily focused on his individual, personal story, with really more of an epilogue for the season plot.

(As an aside, I'm always shocked that more shows don't use the Buffy the Vampire Slayer format, which has episodic and seasonal plots, the but the series-wide arcs are really only broadly about the lives of its main characters rather than overcoming some specific antagonist.)

Of course, this being a mystery show, we'll do another spoiler cut here.

Wrapping Things Up in Sugar Season 2's Penultimate Episode?

 As I mentioned in an earlier post about this unusual mystery show, I've found some parallels with my favorite Christopher Nolan film (and among my favorite films period,) The Prestige. In that movie, which non-linearly (it's Nolan, naturally) traces the deadly rivalry between two turn-of-the-century magicians (can we still call 1900 the turn of the century if we just say 2000 was the turn of the millennium? As someone born, as the young kids would say now, "in the 1900s," it's easier for me if that terminology remains the same). The movie presents a formula for a magic trick, and then structures the film in a similar way.

I will say that I don't know if this terminology (The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige as the three "acts" of a magic trick) has any basis in the actual craft or was just invented for the novel upon which the film is based (Nolan would similarly present a bunch of internally consistent rules about dream logic in Inception that don't necessarily actually correspond to, you know, my experience of dreaming,) but it's a handy structure, foreshadowing that the film has not one, but two big plot twists, one of which is easier to anticipate than the other, and thus might lull the audience into thinking they'd outwitted the film much as a magician wants their audience to think they've figured out the trick, only to prove their earlier theory wrong.

What kind of show is Sugar?

Let's get into spoiler territory.

Sugar Season Two (First Three Episodes)

 The story of Sugar's first season, in which our strangely anti-Noirish Noir Detective John Sugar investigates the missing scion of a powerful Hollywood family, feels very classically Film Noir. Sugar is a man out of time, seemingly having based his entire persona on old-fashioned Hollywood leading men (a persona that fits quite nicely with Colin Farrel's classic leading-man looks).

Shows of this sort, where the main thrust of an entire season is about one big mystery, have a weird challenge in their second seasons: how different does the mystery get, and how much does it feel like the same show.

We're going to get into spoiler territories pretty quickly here, so I'll do a cut.