The Sympathizer – Episode 2 “Good Little Asian” Recap & Review

Good Little Asian

Episode 2 of The Sympathizer begins with the North Vietnamese General calling the nameless Captain from the re-education camp to read the next part of the story. Back in Vietnam, while fleeing from the communist attacks, Bon with the corpse of his wife and Captain carrying his dead child. The two successfully reach the plane and grieve their deaths.

Bon has become a walking corpse; he doesn’t talk and he has lost all of his will to live. So much so, that it is Captain who bathes him or takes him to the loo. They live somewhere around LA. Captain has been sending intelligence to Man, back in Vietnam where Man is now an officer, by using cornstarch. He informs that the General’s authority is losing and he might not pose a threat anymore.

5 weeks earlier we see the General, Captain and other Vietnamese in refugee camps with terrible hygiene and food. The people are unhappy with the General and attack him leading him to believe that a spy is rousing hatred in the people’s heart against him. He order’s Captain to find out the mole.

To create a distance between the General and himself, he asks him college professors who agrees to sponsor him and Bon. Captain meets him and takes him to his office in the Oriental Studies Department where Captain meets a sassy Ms. Mori.

The professor then conveys his woes about being termed as colonisers and imperialists, and the people wanting to change the name of the department to “Asian-American Studies”. He, then, invites Captain to his party and gifts him a collar suit. On top of that, he asks Captain to make a list of his Oriental and Occidental traits.

Captain is called for an interview by a student where Ms. Mori is impressed by his witty answers. Later, at a different home, Bon delivers him a letter from Professor Hammer. Th next day in during the party, the professor asks him to tell everybody about his list of dualities, and Captain does such a great job at it without degrading his Asian side that the professor soon loses interest.

The Captain and Ms. Mori soon establish an intimate relationship, making Bon uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the General’s family find a new home in LA where the General’s irrelevance makes him a drunkard and a smoker.  Moreover, he’s fixated on finding the spy. Later, the General opens a liquor store called ‘Yellow Flag Spirits’ and is even more paranoid in his spy theory when he finds a graffiti on the wall of the store on the opening day, which poor Captain has to scrub off.

Captain later meets a old classmate who emphasises that ‘yellow’ is nothing good in American like urine, commenting on the name of the store. The General gives a passionate speech and reiterates that it is important for them to find and exterminate the spy, amidst cheers of patriotism. Later, everybody is called for interrogation by the General and Claude.

To evade accusations, since the Captain has been suspected, he falsely blames a former officer in the force. He reasons that the officer has contacts in their homeland from where they procure peanut candies. The General and Claude proceed to break the candies and inspect. Later, General calls Captain and pressurises him to inspect the spy issue since the suspect officer’s family is doing well in Vietnam while all the others are in re-education camps.

Captain asks Bon to help him deal with the suspect officer being a spy. The episode ends with Captain writing a letter to Man asking him if Captain should kill the General.

The Episode Review

As with the first episode, this episode is again terrific. This show is a clever adaptation of the original book where the even the narrative are not forgotten but ingeniously adapted for the screen. For instance, as the Captain is recalling events from his memory, he often makes a mistake in the chronology which is represented by the rewind technique.   

Moreover, the hidden symbolism with the colour yellow and the mention of the egg in comparison to Professor Hammer, a racist professor of the Oriental Studies Department: white on the outside, yellow on the inside, is cleverly placed and used.

Ms. Mori’s character depicts the anxiety with being a woman of Asian origin in a hegemonic land when she says, “This is American, if you don’t want to speak English, go back to your own country”. This comment also highlights the hypocrisy and intolerance of the Oriental Studies Department – while it exoticizes the East, represented by the Vietnamese snake wine of Professor Hammer’s, and on the other it also considers them inferior.

This episode also showcased the brilliant speech by Captain highlighting his dualities as a mixed race: a fusion of the east and west, where he highlights how the two are a cohesive part of himself, which of course, doesn’t interest professor Hammer.

All in all, The Sympathiser episode 2, directed by the highly acclaimed Park Chan-wook scores high on our list of great episodes!