The following story contains minor spoilers for Episode 2 of The Sympathizer, “Good Little Asian.” JUST LIKE FX’S Shōgun, HBO’s The Sympathizer is a show that simply demands your attention—even a minute of looking down at your phone or thinking about what’s happening in the NBA playoffs could leave you completely lost. Based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name, The Sympathizer tells the story of a man, known only as “The Captain,” (Hoa Xuande) whose alliances and loyalties are never entirely clear to anyone—except the viewers. He tells us early on in the show that while he’s embedded with the armed forces of the South of Vietnam (and, thus, is aligned with the U.S.A.), he’s actually a spy loyal to the North’s army. Keeping this in mind at all times—as we see him escape Vietnam and, later, operating in the U.S.—is key to understanding what’s going on both with the show’s overarching plot, and internally inside The Captain’s psyche. In the hands of co-creators Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar (Park’s direction of the first three episodes in particular), however, The Sympathizer is unlike any spy thriller you’ve seen before. The show jumps bac… Click below to read the full story from Men’s Health
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