S01.E05: Central

[AnimeMania]

CENTRAL, the feature-length penultimate episode of limited series EXPATS, shifts the narrative away from the entangled lives of expats to spend one fateful Sunday with two Filipina domestic workers and a disparate ensemble of Hong Kong locals as a massive typhoon descends upon the city and the 2014 political movement reaches a point of no return.

Premiere Date: February 16, 2024   Prime Video     

[Haleth]

What the heck was that?  Tony and his grandma?  The lady with the leaky roof?  Who are they and why (in this penultimate episode) do I need to spend nearly 2 hours with them?  They are only tangentially related to the main characters/storyline.  I did find the POV stories of Essie and Puri interesting and heart breaking, but tick, tick, people.  None of it served the main mystery.  (Was anyone else waiting to see Gus pop up in the background of one of these people?  For a while I was wondering if there was a flash forward and Tony was actually teenage Gus.)

I did chuckle at David grabbing his espresso machine and trying to find a place to put it in his hotel room.  I bet he doesn't have the first clue how to use it.

[NeenerNeener]

This was a waste of an episode. Outside of Margaret finally throwing in the towel and deciding to leave Hong Kong, nothing of any importance happened. When you have a 22 episode season you can do the occasional filler episode, but when you only have 6 episodes all of them should advance the story.

I wonder if Gus was snatched by a white guy with a long brown beard, since his siblings seem to think he's literally "with Jesus". Chances are we'll never find out since there's only one episode to go. 

[Snazzy Daisy]

Obviously Lulu Wang makes this one-off episode for preview at film festivals. 🙄

100 minutes of messiness, uncertainties, heartaches and heavy rains are a bit too much for me. It’s too f-king depressing.

This episode shifts the series’ POV where Essie and Puri take a center stage, supported by some new characters. The stories of the 3 main expats are told through these side characters.

Do we really need another character like Olivia who is similar to Margaret and Hilary - a rich (local) woman in an unhappy marriage with a distant husband and misbehaved children?

The plot involving Wen/Tony/Charly feels like an afterthought. It’s shoehorned as an excuse to feature Umbrella Movement in the background.

Another cameo from the mops. And I have no idea why. 😂 

Margaret being an asshole to Pastor Alan is uncalled for. Lonely Hilary isn’t being nice and friendly to Puri. You can feel her patronizing vibe in her words and demeanour.

Where’s Sam in all of these? Why is his story not worth telling?

The expats will always be expats. They can be friendly, approachable and forgiving to the helpers but only on their OWN terms. Puri has to learn about this in a hard way. Essie may not be able to come home yet. The choices aren’t really theirs to make. 💔

 

Edited February 16 by Snazzy Daisy

[Straycat80]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who was confused by this very long filler episode. The only thing I felt strongly about was hoping Essie would go home to her family. And I still want to know what happened to Gus. Something tells me I’m going to be disappointed. 

[aghst]

I kind of like this episode the most out of the ones released so far.

First the mood wasn’t dour as the rest of them.  The Filipino helpers seemed to lean on each other for their underappreciated work.  They were gossiping and supportive of each other, singing and dancing.  Probably the highlight of their week which is drudgery working for emotionally exhausting people.

Essie feels guilty that she wasn’t there at the night market.  Truth was Margaret was eager to loosen the emotional bond between her children and Essie so she impulsively introduced Mercy into the situation.  But Essie thinks she was at fault.

If she does follow the family to the US, rather than return to her own family back in the Philippines, it will be out of some misguided sense of obligation.

It does feel like they shoehorned Tony and his mother into this episode.  Charly, whom Mercy befriended, knows them and they wanted to show that HK was changing, as China started to exert control.  Policewoman was heartless as Tony’s mother was desperate to get any information about him.

Olivia was one of the HK women who trash talked Hilary’s marriage at her dinner party.  Turns out her husband was also treating her like shit and her bratty daughters were abusive of the help.

I liked pastor Alan’s story about his friend returning to Afghanistan, to save wounded soldiers and how he wanted to do the same for members of his congregation.

David was befuddled and seemed to grab the first thing in sight.  Telling your wife that your mistress was pregnant might get you kicked out of the house.  He didn’t anticipate that response and didn’t think beforehand of what he might grab?

[Haleth]

4 hours ago, aghst said:

David was befuddled and seemed to grab the first thing in sight.

No, it may have been spontaneous but he had been complaining about the coffee Mercy had been serving him.  He missed his fancy machine.

It seems to me it was implied that Puri skipped the singing competition after being let down by Hillary.  That's so sad.

Essie needs to go home to her family and get as far, far away from Margaret as she can.

4 hours ago, aghst said:

I liked pastor Alan’s story about his friend returning to Afghanistan

That was heart wrenching, after seeing how much he struggled trying to comfort Clarke, knowing there are no words to make a parent feel better.

[Cementhead]

Thanks for telling me that I can skip right over this one and not miss a thing because that is exactly what I did.  Though I did love the choir singing Roar at the very beginning and watched that a couple of times.

[abbyzenn]

I can't really explain why I'm still watching this.  Although I'll admit I did skip over quite a bit.  I liked seeing Hong Kong in the rain - it fit into the episode better than some of the people.  Can't figure out why in the world the storylines with Tony and Olivia (?) were included.  Didn't think we had even seen them before.  Olivia did have quite some house.

I found the scenes with the Phillipino women and there day off interesting (more so than anything else that's been shown in the series.  I can't imagine having to leave my family, especially my own children, to go to a foreign country to work and especially to work for these pampered selfish beings.  

The only other scenes worthwhile was Clarke and the preacher. 

I do have so many questions, such as:

How did Clarke even end up with Margaret?

WIth so much money spend on production values couldn't they have shelled out a bit more for Margaret's wig????

[Snazzy Daisy]

Expats - Roar | Prime Video

 

[QQQQ]

Why am I watching? What am I watching?!

[Pi237]

Every episode has this intense pacing where you are always on the edge expecting the worst to happen and then everyone just kind of gets on with their lives. Like the Mom of the male protestor, she goes out in the wicked storm and she’s followed with lightning crashing etc. I half expected her to get hit by a bus or something, but she just ends up back at her apartment.  The lonely woman with the ceiling leak, the mood was as if someone would break in or the roof would collapse on her, but she just gets through the night and is business as usual in the morning.  
 

I suppose the idea is to keep us feeling constantly tense to translate the mood of a family with a missing child-not knowing, always wondering, always waiting for the worst outcome….so well done if that’s the intention.  However, it’s becoming exhausting. All wind up and no release.

Also, quite predictable-I knew as soon as Hilary got drunk and chatty, Puri (?) wouldn’t make her auditon and Hilary would treat her like the help and not a friend as soon she sobered up. And you can see Mercy being pregnant a mile away. Always a plot point when a woman is unable to get pregnant on a tv show or movie.  
 

They set this series up like a mystery’s and they follow each character’s actions with long lingering shots and moody music, like each plot line has a reveal….but they don’t. So probably on purpose but I’m not a fan of manipulative editing. 
 

I did enjoy the rain and the peek into the workers lives, I just didn’t like the bait and switch in regards to the direction, if that makes sense. 
 

it’s probably why I never liked The White Lotus. Just feels like your watching a whole lot of nothing.

[aghst]

With Olivia, she seemed on a verge of packing her bags and leaving.

I don't recall if she pulled out the suitcases and gathering clothes to pack up before or after she patched up the ceiling.

I also missed what caused her to put her stuff back and decide to endure more of her unhappy marriage.

Maybe the point is that like her friends Margaret and Hilary, it's difficult to make a big change.  The director is a woman so while these are all women of means -- though I'm not sure how Olivia, a HK woman, would fare in a divorce compared to Hilary, an expat whose husband doesn't seem like he'd punish her financially, where as Olivia's husband appears to be a prick.

Of course the bigger challenges for women facing change involve the underclass characters.  Puri doesn't know what will happen if Hilary divorces and Essie also faces similar uncertainty if Margaret and Clarke leave HK.

The mother of the arrested protester is fearful that she will lose her son, so again, a big potential change in her life that she would have little control over.

 

 

[millennium]

This episode was The Ice Storm made in China.

The overbearing music was unbearable.   Just came off another show (True Detective) where the showrunner mistook the series for her personal Spotify.   Is this going to be a thing going forward?

That choir scene in the beginning was OTT.  I was ready to abandon the show on the spot and never regret it.   So fucking pretentious.

I'll watch the final episode, but this show is pretty awful.   The only reason I started watching it in the first place was because I read a glowing review.   That'll learn me.