REVIEW: ‘The Sympathizer’ Episode 4 — “Give Us Some Good Lines”

Last episode, The Sympathizer threw the Captain (Hoa Xuande) into the middle of Hollywood’s debauchery and racism. Set to be a cultural consultant on an auteur’s (Robert Downey Jr.) film about the Vietnam War, the Captain tries to keep playing both sides. Only this time, in The Sympathizer Episode 4, it’s appeasing the white director and crew and protecting his Vietnamese culture and actors on set. But somehow, this proves to be even harder than working as a Viet Cong double agent in the CIA.

The Sympathizer Episode 4, “Give Us Some Good Lines,” is adapted from the book of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen and written for television by Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar. Unlike the first trio episodes, however, this one is directed by Fernando Meirelles. As a reluctant consultant on a Hollywood film called “The Hamlet,” the Captain navigates the egos and personalities of an increasingly chaotic production that claims to honor Vietnamese people but instead goes the path of nearly all white-made Hollywood projects about war.

A sharp departure from the spycraft and assassination of the last couple of episodes, The Sympathizer Episode 4 is all about shooting a movie. It’s an episode about the act of creating a film that uncovers all of the ugliness that goes into it. A viciously funny takedown of Vietnam War movies (and, well, nearly all war movies at this point, too), this episode is an expert use of dark comedy as the Auteur hires the Captain to make “The Hamlet” authentic. Only, the authenticity that the Auteur is peddling is silent Vietnamese characters who are there to be brutalized by the lionized American soldiers. As you would expect.

In the hour-long runtime, The Sympathizer Episode 4 takes part and shows the audience every racist stereotype that directors and film writers have wielded over the decades. The Captain tries to dismantle them all and is met with a method-acting maniac (David Duchovny) who gets increasingly dangerous.

The spark of joy in The Sympathizer Episode 4 is watching Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) having a spark of life again. However, that spark comes from the Captain watching Bon debase himself and, more importantly, ridicule the Captain’s dead comrades. On the side however, the episode isn’t just about how Bon or the Captain react to the movie, but how the Vietnamese cast do. The weight they carry being cast as a military force that they escaped or lost family to is something that is used to garner laughs—like when an actor refuses to say a line in Vietnamese and insults instead, which the Auteur renders as “perfect”—but also to show how insulting it is as a whole.

The Sympathizer Episode 4 is radically different from the last three. That said, it has a unique edge to critiquing Hollywood, which is some of the best that has been brought to the screen. Smart writing and even smart acting, the vast number of stereotypes on the screen shown in all of their well-meaning malice, both skewer Hollywood and provide the right amount of comedy to balance out how absolutely infuriating everything is.

That said, even with the cuts to the prison, the Captain still feels like he’s continuing a different story. Even noting that now, at this point, he’s narrating things he didn’t see. It’s a choice that brushes up the intimate stream-of-consciousness storytelling that we’ve received up until this point. Add in that director Fernando Meirelles’s directorial perspective is drastically different than director Park’s precise and personal way of filming, and the disjointed nature of this very good episode up against the larger story is disappointing, to say the least.

At one moment, when the Captain breaks, the Auteur responds that everything he has done in the movie is for the Captain. It’s for the Vietnamese people, and that assertion strikes akin to a racial epithet. There is something painful about watching The Sympathizer Episode 4 that resonates beyond the period setting. It’s a time capsule of Hollywood storytelling and also points out all the ways the same intentional racism is replicated now. The way that it breaks the Captain’s resolve, in a way that all of his other experiences didn’t? That speaks volumes.

In some ways, the way that The Sympathizer itself leaned on Downey Jr.’s character acting across multiple roles instead of focusing on Xuande’s the Captain or the fact that the series is based on a book falls into this same category. A disservice was done in order to get eyes on the story, it seems, at least.

Probably one of the hardest episodes of television to critique, The Sympathizer Episode 4 is both a fantastic episode of TV and a frustrating episode of its limited series. As the middle point for the series, I’m reserving judgment for how the final episodes conclude this change in direction (both narratively and behind the camera). With Hoa Xuande keeping your attention every episode, this one critique may end up as something negligible.

The Sympathizer is streaming now on MAX (Formerly HBO MAX) and airs every Sunday.