The Sympathizer – Episode 4 “Give Us Some Good Lines” Recap & Review

Give Us Some Good Lines

In episode 4 of The Sympathizer, the Captain meets filmmaker Niko Damianos about his film that is based on the Vietnam war. The Captain argues for more agency and representation of the Vietnamese people in the film but these are trivialities in Niko’s grand scheme of things and he is not very concerned about issues.

In the end, however, after he imagines a conversation, with Man encouraging him to represent the Vietnamese people, Captain decides to join the shooting as a Vietnamese consultant to maintain “authenticity”.

It is 17 weeks away in Napa Valley and while he is on his way, he finds Lana, the general’s daughter, hiding in his car trunk. Unable to leave her on the highway, Captain reluctantly takes her along with him.

They reach the shooting location where a pop idol is also a cast member much to Lana’s delight.  After much fanfare of the opening day, the production designer shows Captain the set for the shoot where they have imported plants and animals to make the set look like Vietnam. Captain is pleasantly surprised and nostalgic about the scene.

When they move to the graveyard set, he reveals that his mother passed away while he was in America and requests her name to be put on one of the gravestones.

The shooting finally begins but comes to a standstill when a Chinese extra refuses to speak Vietnamese. Since Niko is big on authenticity, he orders to find Vietnamese extras and Captain calls over some of the Vietnamese refugees.

When the shooting finally begins, Captain cheekily gives the Vietnamese characters anti-American dialogues. At another scene, the extras refuse to play Viet Cong and nobody can understand what they’re speaking. Niko doesn’t care as long as they act right.

Soon, we find that Bon has joined the shooting and is having fun dying in many different ways onscreen. With Bon in the film, Lana also joins for extra scenes. Meanwhile, Lana and Jamie are getting closer.

Later, Captain visits Niko to negotiate some dialogues for the Vietnamese characters for the torture sequence, where the Viet Cong is supposed to torture an Asian-American character, but Niko is indifferent.  

When Captain leaves, he finds the actor playing the Asian-American character starving and getting ready for his role. When they view the torture scene later, Captain is reminded of the woman comrade who was tortured by the CIA and Vietnamese counter intelligence.

Later that night, Niko gains inspiration for another new scene which is later revealed to be a rape scene having the name of Captain’s mother and inspired by real events. Captain approaches Niko, furious about this detail, but Niko is adamant to have the scene. During an argument with Captain, he fires Captain.

Now, Captain’s anxiety about one of the method actors playing Captain Shamus in the film, who is a bit crazy and known to merge reality with acting, flares when the Asian-American actor tells him about when Captain Shamus punched his co-star and broke his nose “to get a real reaction from this scene partner”. Captain is anxious that he will actually rape Lana on-screen.

So, during the rape scene, when things begin to get heated, Captain gives an early signal to the other actor to come in and save Lana’s character. Niko, obviously, is furious at this mishap and the two actors have quite literally smashed each other’s noses and the scene cannot be reshot.

Later, when Captain is paying his respects to his mother’s fake grave, Niko’s changed ending scene begins, and the entire village and set is bombed. Captain recounts these memories sitting in the re-education camp. The Captain finds his time in American disgusting and starts signing their revolutionary songs when he hears an American pop-song playing.

The Episode Review

This episode largely focused on the shooting of Niko’s war film ‘The Hamlet’, highlighting the hilarious and brutal satire and parody of the 70’s Hollywood scene.

The episode mostly evokes humour through the disjunct between what Niko and his American crew assuming a homogenous Asian identity and the reality: where the plants are imported from Philippines, a Chinese extra is cast as a Vietnamese woman who’s requested by the crew to speak the Vietnamese “accent”, the villagers barely have any lines; mostly negotiated by the Captain at times.

Many of the scenes in the episode are symbolic and suggestive of the American imperialist attitude towards the Vietnam war, the most striking being Niko’s decision to end the film in utter chaos where all of the Captain’s nostalgia – the Vietnamese styled huts, gravestones etc, is blown into dust.

We also see specks of Captain’s nostalgia for his homeland and his guilt of murdering the Major that helps to link the episode to the larger plot, otherwise it feels like a standalone episode with now, slightly monotonous themes and sequences.