Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
“I don’t like hurting people.”
John Sugar means it, too. His job isn’t hurting folks: It’s finding them. No matter where they are, no matter what condition they’re in. He finds them.
Thing about finding people, though: Sometimes they don’t want to be found. Sometimes other people don’t want you to find them. And then the hurt comes. Like a train through a tunnel, it comes.
Take Sugar’s latest case. Assistant Ruby begged him not to take it. You need a break, she said. You need to deal with your—
But he took the case anyway. You don’t say no to a Hollywood heavyweight like Jon Siegel. Plus, Olivia reminded Sugar of someone.
Olivia. That’s Siegel’s granddaughter. Wild child, they say. Strung out on drugs for years. But the 25-year-old changed her ways, Jonathan said. Got sober. Got strong. And now, got missing. She’s been gone two weeks.
Olivia’s father, Bernie, swears she’ll be back; she’s just stoned or strung out. She’ll slink back in a day or two, ready to go back to rehab one more time. But Jonathan, he believes that Olivia’s in real trouble. He wants Sugar to find her quickly, quietly. No press. No mess.
But the threads of this case are thick and tangled. It seems that some of Olivia’s own family don’t want her found.
And if that wasn’t enough, Sugar’s own issues are squeezing him like a monkey wrench. His hand keeps shaking. He’s having hallucinations. And as Sugar unlocks many a skeleton-filled closet, what if one of his enemies pries open his?
Sugar doesn’t like to hurt people. But in his business, people get hurt. Maybe Sugar himself.
Apple TV+’s Sugar gives viewers a modern spin on the hardboiled detective story. You don’t have to squint to see a bit of Humphry Bogart’s Sam Spade in Colin Farrell’s John Sugar. You hear echoes of Chinatown and Sunset Boulevard in this contemporary City of Angels. Sugar’s obsession with black-and-white classics (second-long snippets of which find their way onto our high-def screens), his running narration and the clever play of the camera mark this as film noir all the way.
But even back in the day—when R-rated content was all-but-forbidden from screens both big and small—film noir movies could be pretty rough. In an entertainment landscape filled with technicolor adventures and light musicals, these movies stood out for their cynical, sensual nature—where shadows emphasized the darker elements of humanity. These were films where the good guys could be kinda bad, and they didn’t always win.
And film noir today? It can be bleak indeed.
Apple TV+’s Sugar, at least early on, shows a modicum of restraint. It’s sultry, but not yet salacious. It’s unsettling without being graphically unhinged. Sugar presents himself as a decent, if flawed, man. He treats women with respect. He offers a helping hand to the homeless. He even encourages his quarry to make better decisions than they otherwise might.
“I don’t like hurting people,” he reminds them, and us. “I really don’t.”
But while this may (or may not) be true, the violence can still be extreme and graphic. Dialogue is littered with vulgarity. And as the story goes on, it will likely grow yet darker. Sugar’s name may be sweet. But this story? It comes with an acrid bite.
After rescuing a boy from ransom-minded kidnappers in Tokyo, Sugar returns to Los Angeles to take on a case that his assistant, Ruby, begs him to turn down: the disappearance of 25-year-old Olivia Siegel, granddaughter of legendary film producer Jonathan Siegel. But the case quickly takes some unexpected turns—including a dead man found in Olivia’s car.
One of Sugar’s first stops is to interview Olivia’s former stepmother, Melanie, who spends her days swilling top-shelf bourbon at a local dive. She and Sugar spend what appears to be several hours drinking at the bar, during which Sugar reveals that his metabolism won’t allow him to get drunk. Melanie can and does, though—convincing Sugar to take her home and practically begs him to sleep with her. Virgos like Sugar, she says, are “very compatible with Taurus women, especially when it comes to sex.” Sugar does take Melanie home, but he gently lays her on the couch, tucks her under a blanket and quietly leaves.
Sugar drinks elsewhere, too, clearly enjoying the taste of alcohol even though it doesn’t affect him. (He tells Melanie he likely drinks for “the romance of it,” inspired by the movies he loves.) He does take another substance, though—injecting something straight into his neck that apparently counteracts his twitching hands and hallucinations. “I have to,” he repeats in narrative mode, suggesting that the substance is an illicit one, and that perhaps Sugar is countering symptoms of withdrawal. We also learn that Olivia was a longtime addict. (“Once a junkie, always a junkie,” her half-brother, David, says.)
Sugar uncovers some Polaroid pictures of Olivia’s mother (a famous actress), where she appears topless and where her hands barely cover her breasts. Sugar is sometimes seen without a shirt. Olivia’s apartment includes a flier for a performance of the feminist band Vanilla Whore; the group is apparently playing at an establishment called the Zipper Club.
In Tokyo, a man slices open Sugar’s arm with a knife, and in turn Sugar breaks his attacker’s arm and renders him unconscious. Sugar later seals the grotesque cut with glue, but the wound seems to open up later—dribbling blood on some photos and soaking through Sugar’s suit. Sugar rushes to a bathroom shower and apparently passes out before reviving and discovering the whole scene was a hallucination.
Sugar finds a dead, bloodied body in the trunk of a car. A Japanese gangster confronts the kidnappers of the gangster’s son, and he advises Sugar to leave the room before things progress. A chauffer asks about his sick, vomiting son over the phone. (Sugar gives the man his doctor’s number, suggesting that he give the doctor a call.)
We hear several f-words, most of which occur during an obscene closing song. The s-word, “b–ch” and “d–n” are also heard. God’s name is misused three times, once with “d–n.”
Sugar interviews Olivia’s father, Bernie, and again attempts to talk with her ex-stepmother. He suspects that both are hiding something important and that neither want Olivia found. Meanwhile, Bernie orders his son, David, along with another man, to spy on Sugar. And while Sugar finds their efforts pretty amateurish, he clearly has something to hide himself. “I can’t have him digging into my past,” he muses in narrative mode. “No, that won’t do at all.”
A man and woman kiss beside a pool. Sugar shows some near-pornographic photos of Bernie’s ex-wife (and Olivia’s mother) to Bernie, asking him if he took them. Bernie says he didn’t and storms off, uttering a cloud of profanities. We learn that David has been accused of harassing or assaulting several women (though seven of eight of the victims were paid to sign nondisclosure agreements).
Melanie invites Sugar to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where she confesses that she started “drinking like a fish” two weeks ago. She was so drunk that she “brought a total stranger in my house and that’s something I haven’t done since I was in my 20s.” But that man, Sugar, didn’t take advantage of the situation; and she admits that he might’ve been “sent to me by my higher power,” or that he was possibly gay. “What matters is how he made me feel,” she adds. “And he made me feel like I deserved a second chance.” In flashback, we see her pour her liquor down the drain.
Sugar discovers a homeless man, whom he tried to help last episode, dead of an overdose in a hotel room. (He and another guy, perhaps the dead man’s dealer, get into a tussle.) A bad guy threatens to punch a woman in the face. Sugar discovers the identity of the dead man he found in Olivia’s trunk: “a man wanted for “assault, rape and human trafficking.”
We see news stories about how a woman was recently raped and killed. Sugar recites a litany of misdemeanors that Bernie and Melanie committed shortly after they were married. “H— of a honeymoon,” Bernie quips. David breaks into Sugar’s hotel suite. Clips of old movies include one where a man floats, dead, in a pool.
Characters say the f-word 15 times and the s-word another six. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “g-dd–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused once.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
