S01.E06: Home

[AnimeMania]

(Season Finale)

Margaret and her family prepare to return to the United States. Hilary travels home to Los Angeles to visit her ailing father. Mercy’s mother visits her in Hong Kong for the first time.

Premiere Date: February 23, 2024   Prime Video     

[Straycat80]

That was anticlimactic. So Margaret is going to walk around HK trying to find Gus and for how long? 
Hilary and her new rug will make a new life. Mercy I guess is keeping her baby with her Moms help. 
Why did they bother having those other stories with the protester student and the other couple with the leaky roof? 
This will go down as a show I hate watched. 

[Auntie Anxiety]

Wow. And not in a good way. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. 

[Mellowyellow]

What happened? What is the deal with the missing kid?

I could not last until the end but I still want to know about the mystery.

Thank you in advance!

[QQQQ]

The mystery is how this dreadful show ever got made. If I cared (and I don't), it would be interesting to know if the principal players knew (in their hearts) it was bad during production, if it was doomed to be bad from the start or if other circumstances (rewrites, pandemic) caused its downfall.

[abbyzenn]

The ending really didn't clear up anything.

I never understood what either Haley or David did for a living.  Does she have a job in Hong Kong?  Why is she staying there?  What was the rug for?

Mercy is only truly messed up person.  How is she going to support a child?  

Margret staying in Hong Kong to do what?  Hasn't Gus been missing for a year? What can she do that hasn't already been done?  She decides at the airport to stay?  Clarke didn't put up much resistence.  

 I thought the table Margret was led to had only 2 chairs.  So who exactly was talking to who?  Sometimes it seemed like Margret to Mercy, sometimes Margret and Haley, sometimes Mercy and Haley.  It was just downright strange.

I will say this was beautifully filmed  I liked the glimpses of Hong Kong.  But otherwise this was a terrible show and as I said in my last review the real mystery is why did I watch it til the end.

 

[NeenerNeener]

I see I'm not the only one disappointed by this show. 

 

ETA: the two things that make me saddest are that they never found any trace of Gus, and that Jack Huston now has a dad bod.

Edited February 23 by NeenerNeener

[Snazzy Daisy]

Well, as expected, we never know what has happened to Gus because this isn’t that kind of story. No resolution comes with the territory.

Charly admonishing Mercy for being ungrateful, ignoring some of her privileges and blaming it all on a curse is the best part of this episode. I hope she will let David be involved in their daughter’s life, for her sake.

Margaret is also being ungrateful to a certain extent. She’d rather chase a ghost than being with her loved ones. It’s the guilt talking.

Hilary and her new colorful carpet can now live happily ever after.

[aghst]

5 hours ago, Snazzy Daisy said:

Well, as expected, we never know what has happened to Gus because this isn’t that kind of story. No resolution comes with the territory.

Charly admonishing Mercy for being ungrateful, ignoring some of her privileges and blaming it all on a curse is the best part of this episode. I hope she will let David be involved in their daughter’s life, for her sake.

Margaret is also being ungrateful to a certain extent. She’d rather chase a ghost than being with her loved ones. It’s the guilt talking.

Hilary and her new colorful carpet can now live happily ever after.

Yeah in life, there isn't always a clear resolution.

Not just for missing kids but how Mercy's narration at the end, where she says she will try to be happy for her daughter.  People don't simply decide whether they're going to be happy or not, though I guess she's been driving and moping since the incident.

David is a very well-paid lawyer who apparently has a lot of time on his hands.

I don't think Margaret or Hilary reached out to Mercy (in Margaret's case) or apologized for getting her fired (Hilary apologized to Mercy) was so much about just trying to make Mercy feel better.

For their own sake, they had to let go of the hate, for the young woman.

Margaret isn't going to chase Gus forever.  A part of her probably suspects that Gus is gone forever.  She isn't going to find him in HK or in China, which has over a billion people and is vast.

She will probably at some point rejoin her children.  I guess Essie followed them to the US, felt some obligation to the family instead of her own back in the Philippines.

Hilary resented both her father and mother, didn't want to be around either.  But she forgives David.  Rug is suppose to make her happy, for the time being?  Throughout the series we've seen her driven around in a chauffeured Mercedes.  But now she carries a run and walks through the streets of HK?

Yes the whole thing about the protests was worth it just for Charly calling Mercy a tourist, pointing out that it's not her struggle, it's theirs and she could just go back to the US, which pointedly many of the young HK protesters can't, go to some Western nation to escape the oncoming Chinese takeover.

At some point, you'd think Mercy would want to go through the professional doors which her Columbia education might open up.  Otherwise, she can't even keep low-level catering or wait staff jobs in HK -- which is surprising that she's allowed to work there at all, since she's a US citizen and shouldn't have a work visa.

 

[Haleth]

16 hours ago, abbyzenn said:

 I thought the table Margret was led to had only 2 chairs.  So who exactly was talking to who?  Sometimes it seemed like Margret to Mercy, sometimes Margret and Haley, sometimes Mercy and Haley.  It was just downright strange.

There were two conversations going on, Mercy and Margaret and Mercy and Hillary.  Different places, different conversations.  

I would have been happy for Hillary and her rug o' freedom except for how shitty she was to Puri last week.  She really was clueless about what an awful person she is.  (Except for killing her father, she gets that.)

And an even more awful person is Margaret.  I get that grief makes you do and think irrational things, but sheesh, lady, you are really screwing up your other two kids and torpedoing your marriage.  Get help.

I cheered when Charly yelled at Mercy for being a brat.  Whiny, self pitying, blaming her poor choices on a supposed "curse."

This was a weird show.  So many pointless sidebars, especially last week with the cleaning lady and her son (grandson?) and the crossed mops.  Did any of that mean anything?  I kept thinking the big X was going to be symbolic of something.  Plus never learning Gus's fate.  While that is not unrealistic, when you are watching a fictional drama you'd kind of like to have closure.  You know?

[Kenz]

15 hours ago, NeenerNeener said:

I see I'm not the only one disappointed by this show. 

 

ETA: the two things that make me saddest are that they never found any trace of Gus, and that Jack Huston now has a dad bod.

I thought the same thing about Jack Huston, but then I read that he gained 30 pounds for this role. Why? He couldn't play the same guy at a lower weight? 

Like most other posters, I was wondering why I watched six episodes of this drawn out, mish mash of a show. I was ready to punch several of the characters, especially Mercy.

[chediavolo]

Everyone was unlikeable except the 2 helper women. 
why couldn’t the nanny/maid (sorry I am bad with names) go back home to her family. I wouldn’t work another day for Margaret & her spoiled daughter. 
Margaret was bound to lose that kid sooner or later. I thought it was going to be when she left him in the hallway alone.

and they should have prayed to every  god there is that that boy in the morgue was theirs. Instead he is either being sex trafficked or tortured or laying dead somewhere else. 

nicole needs to  retire from acting because you can’t even follow her story lines. All you, or at least I, can focus on is her plastic puppet wax figure face. 

[Snazzy Daisy]

1 hour ago, chediavolo said:

nicole needs to  retire from acting because you can’t even follow her story lines. All you, or at least I, can focus on is her plastic puppet wax figure face. 

Nicole needs to stop playing the same character in various projects - a privileged, sad, betrayed, traumatic woman in her 40s with young children. It’s getting repetitive and she’s way past that.

In this show, she has no chemistry with Brian Tee and we’re supposed to believe they’re about the same age? Nicole is one step closer in becoming the Catwoman.

[aghst]

8 minutes ago, Snazzy Daisy said:

Nicole needs to stop playing the same character in various projects - a privileged, sad, betrayed, traumatic woman in her 40s with young children. It’s getting repetitive and she’s way past that.

In this show, she has no chemistry with Brian Tee and we’re supposed to believe they’re about the same age? Nicole is one step closer in becoming the Catwoman.

Big Lies season 3 is coming back right?

Her character was mother of young children on that show as well.

[Snazzy Daisy]

17 minutes ago, aghst said:

Big Lies season 3 is coming back right?

Her character was mother of young children on that show as well.

BLL S03 is still tentative as HBO needs more convincing.

Nine Perfect Strangers S02 is returning as well.

Her characters in BLL, NPS and The Undoing are really similar.

[Roccos Brother]

I wasn't blown away but I enjoyed it, and I'm surprised by some of the complaints here. Did people think this was going to be your typical Hollywood mystery/thriller? Because it was pretty clear from the trailer alone that this wasn't that. Almost none of the characters are particularly likeable and none of them have a satisfying conclusion - because that's not how life works.

I think the most telling and poignant moment that best summed up the themes in the show was when Mercy was feeling sorry for herself and her friend pointed out her relative privilege as an American expat who has the choice to stay or go; while the locals are on the precipice of losing the freedoms that we in the Western world often take for granted. Even the rich local family just sees the protests as a passing inconvenience because of the traffic delays.

I still find Nicole Kidman entertaining to watch, stiff face and all - she can do a better job emoting with the parts of her face that are still mobile than most actors half her age with double the skin elasticity.

[millennium]

My only question is how Nicole Kidman was talked into starring in a first-year film school project.

I didn't know whether Margaret-Hilary-Mercy were speed dating, doing testimonials for Balance Of Nature, or sharing the same dream.

This is probably the only show where a Che Diaz comedy concert would have been a welcome change of pace.

[sadie]

I get that this wasn’t a crime procedural. We were never going to find out what happened to Gus and this was a character study in grief. I like quiet shows like Tiny Beautiful Things, which was done well. This was not. 

Problem was with a very slow script, NK and Brian Tee had zero chemistry and a bunch of unlikable people behaving oddly. NK just wasn’t a fit here, and yes I know it shouldn’t have affected me but her face just looked so odd and like she had trouble moving her mouth and it just distracted the hell out of me. There was no one to root for, I think Clarke might have been the only good guy but we didn’t spend enough time with him to care. Hilary was awful, David was a creep and Mercy was just oddly depressed for reasons I still am not clear , millennial angst? 

[MaggieG]

Yeah I pretty much hated everyone. Even though Daisy was a brat, I kind of loved her telling Margaret that she hated her and was a terrible mother. I get it, she doesn't want to let go of Gus but you have two other children that are here and they need you. Daisy and Philip will need a lot of therapy.

I also liked Charly telling Mercy off. Does Mercy actually think she can raise this baby alone? In that tiny apartment with no job? She's better letting David help her financially or moving back to the US and getting help from her mother.

I guess Hilary had the happiest ending. She got to tell her dad off, she ended her bad marriage and she's skipping through the streets with her new rug.