The best installment of the Hong Kong–based drama connects the privileged protagonists with a society they inhabit at a distance.
Expats, Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Janice Y. K. Lee’s best-selling novel The Expatriates, is a slow-burn drama following the lives of three American women in Hong Kong in the aftermath of a tragedy. Each protagonist deals with complicated feelings of grief as their lives overlap, with the affluent Margaret (played by Nicole Kidman) serving as the story’s anchor.
Yet in the series’ splendid fifth and latest episode, titled “Central,” Margaret doesn’t appear until nearly 40 minutes in, and the women’s troubles fade into the background. Instead, the show brings into focus the people who have been hovering around the margins of the main characters’ lives: their live-in domestic helpers, non-expat friends, the church pastor. Taking a narrative departure several hours into a TV show’s run is not a new technique. But “Central” is unusually expansive in scope as well as in structure, conveying an inverted, impressionistic take on everything viewers have seen so far. By spending significant time away from its protagonists, the show reveals truths about them that they themselves never could.
I first watched the episode in September, when it screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. While introducing her work, Lulu Wang, the writer-director best known for the sensitive semi-autobiographical film The Farewell, explained that she wanted to “create two doors” into the show: One was, of course, the show’s pilot. The other was “Central,” which I have found hard to forget since my initial viewing, and even harder to shake after watching the gorgeous but often uneven Expats in order. Across its four previous episodes, the show has examined its protagonists’ confusion, self-destruction, and despair, creating an intimate portrait of how geographic rootlessness can yield paralyzing melancholy. Margaret is reeling from the disappearance of her youngest child, Gus; Hilary (Sarayu Blue) is struggling to repair her marriage amid fertility issues; and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a wayward 20-something, is having an affair with a married man. “Central,” however, complicates the show’s core preoccupation: Set over the course of one evening as a typhoon hits Hong Kong, causing blackouts and stranding visitors, it’s a feature-length exploration of how the expat women’s misery is not so special.
Read: When a lie becomes your breakout film
Perhaps that sounds cruel. For someone like Margaret—who now struggles to parent her other children—how could the world not seem to revolve around her loss? But Expats gently interrogates how private anguish can be blinding. The episode foregrounds figures who have spent most of their screen time so far providing support to the protagonists; here, they’re shown to have their own lives and worries. Essie (Ruby Ruiz), Margaret’s housekeeper and de facto nanny, contends with her guilt for not being there the night Gus went missing. At the same time, she yearns to return to her own family in the Philippines. Wang delicately shows how Essie pours herself into both her own family and her employer’s, caring for them all with the same devotion: In an early scene, she kisses her iPhone screen at the end of a FaceTime call with her son. Later in the episode, she does the same with her framed photo of Gus.
Much of Expats, given the wealthy lifestyle of two of its main characters, has taken place in sleek high-rise apartment buildings and at glamorous dinner parties, but “Central” immerses the viewer in cacophony and crowds. Essie and Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla), Hilary’s housekeeper, chat in a Western Union line that snakes through a shopping center, extending onto its many winding escalators. Charly (Bonde Sham), a local student whom Mercy befriends, gets caught in the throngs of people lining the streets as part of the 2014 prodemocracy Umbrella Movement. Puri gossips with other housekeepers huddled beneath overpasses. These images portray the city less as a backdrop to a collection of isolated stories and more as a tapestry of intersecting joys and woes.
If the perspective shift from the protagonists to the supporting players were the only difference between Expats’ other episodes and “Central,” the installment could feel like a detour—or even an indictment of Margaret, Hilary, and Mercy’s behavior as myopic self-pity. However, Wang’s direction makes clear that the American women, despite class differences and cultural backgrounds, can seek the same kind of comfort, especially when scared and alone. She compiles moments in service of this idea, regardless of whether they further the plot: The camera lingers on a shot of the food that Charly’s protester friend leaves untouched, too stressed to eat his entire dinner; the shot repeats, subtly, in a separate scene when Margaret fails to finish her plate. Mercy looks trapped at one point as she gazes out of the window of a restaurant waiting to see if Charly will brave the downpour to meet her, sheets of rain almost obscuring her face. Essie does the same from Margaret’s kitchen later on, as if she’s considering making her way through the storm to find Gus herself.
It may seem like a stretch to say that a single episode of a TV series deserves to be watched on the big screen, but “Central” does feel cinematic (and especially undeserving of being chopped up with ads). Watching “Central” is like discovering a rare gem: a sumptuously crafted, deeply empathetic story that treats an array of characters with grace and generosity. The episode doesn’t try to depict all of Hong Kong, let alone the specifics behind the city’s politics and unrest a decade ago. Instead, it captures a sense of being swept up in a changing metropolis that forces visitors and locals alike to seek shelter.
Read: The tight bonds among expats
I wish the rest of Expats were just like it. The show is beautiful to take in, although many of the other episodes struggle to make full use of the setting; the story, although harrowing in its emotional depth, can be languorous. Still, “Central” is powerful television whether you’ve been tuning in to Expats or not. In the morning, after the storm has subsided, the characters settle back into their lives. Puri cleans up after Hilary. Essie politely listens to Margaret. Charly heads back to her neighborhood. On one level, nothing has changed—but “Central,” by carefully recontextualizing these characters and their influence on the show’s protagonists, hints that all of them are evolving. The show doesn’t grant neat resolutions, because the acute pain it explores isn’t the kind that disappears overnight. Yet it can be shared—and, little by little, eased.
When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
The Expats Episode That’s Practically a Stand-Alone Film
10
0
16.02.2024
The best installment of the Hong Kong–based drama connects the privileged protagonists with a society they inhabit at a distance.
Expats, Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Janice Y. K. Lee’s best-selling novel The Expatriates, is a slow-burn drama following the lives of three American women in Hong Kong in the aftermath of a tragedy. Each protagonist deals with complicated feelings of grief as their lives overlap, with the affluent Margaret (played by Nicole Kidman) serving as the story’s anchor.
Yet in the series’ splendid fifth and latest episode, titled “Central,” Margaret doesn’t appear until nearly 40 minutes in, and the women’s troubles fade into the background. Instead, the show brings into focus the people who have been hovering around the margins of the main characters’ lives: their live-in domestic helpers, non-expat friends, the church pastor. Taking a narrative departure several hours into a TV show’s run is not a new technique. But “Central” is unusually expansive in scope as well as in structure, conveying an inverted, impressionistic take on everything viewers have seen so far. By spending significant time away from its protagonists, the show reveals truths about them that they themselves never could.
I first watched the episode in September, when it screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. While introducing her work, Lulu Wang, the writer-director best known for the sensitive semi-autobiographical film The Farewell, explained that she wanted to “create two doors” into the show: One was, of course, the show’s pilot. The other was “Central,” which I have found hard to forget since my initial viewing, and even harder to shake after........
© The Atlantic
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
