Series / The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer is a historical black comedy/drama miniseries based on the historical fiction novel of the same name, adapted by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar for A24 and HBO.

The show is set during the Vietnam War and follows "the Captain" (Hoa Xunde), a biracial North Vietnam spy planted as a police captain serving the South Vietnamese General Trọng (Toan Le) in Saigon. After the fall of Saigon the Captain is forced to flee to the United States along with the general, and continues his espionage for North Vietnam while integrating into American society.

The series also stars Robert Downey Jr. (who also produces) as several American characters; Sandra Oh as Sofia Mori; Fred Nguyen Khan as Bốn; Duy Nguyễn as Mẫn; and Vy Le as Lana.

The show's first episode (of seven) premiered on April 14, 2024.

Tropes:

• Adaptational Early Appearance: In the book, the Captain only meets up again with Lana once he's in Los Angeles. In the show she's present from the get-go and escapes Saigon with her family.
• Age-Gap Romance: While in America, the Captain gets involved with Sofia, who's several decades older than him. The problem of their relationship lies not so much about their age gap, but rather the nature of their relationship, as Sofia wants to keep it strictly sexual while the Captain wants their relationship to be a genuine one after he falls in love with her.
• Affably Evil: Claude is a ruthless CIA agent who commits several unambiguously terrible deeds, but he is a relatively easygoing and friendly person when he's not gleefully trying to torture a captured prisoner or planning on murdering someone, and seems to genuinely care about the Captain, whom he's taken as his protege.
• Ambiguously Bi: When Claude meets the Captain in the third episode, the Captain brings attention to the dog that he's walking. Claude notes that the dog is a good prop since no one pays much heed to a "homosexual walking his foofoo dog". When the Captain asks if he's gay, he doesn't answer and simply says that he's whoever he needs to be. Notably, Claude's the only one who doesn't try to interact with the prostitutes at the club he and his friends go to, instead choosing to sing a song on the piano. To complicate matters further, he mentions in the second episode that he had a female partner in Saigon that he couldn't save from the bombings.
• Batman Gambit: When picking the officers to go on the plane to America, the Captain knows that he can't send the competent ones, as helping them escape would undermine his mission to the North, but can't send the incompetent ones, since that would raise the General's suspicions. Thus, he deliberately chooses the incompetent officers who only seem competent.
• Berserk Button: The Captain takes great offense to his mixed-race heritage being insulted, as it's a very touchy part of his identity, and nearly attacks Niko for making a insulting remark over it when they meet.
• Black Comedy:
  • The Captain and Bon's plan to kill Major Oanh is hindered by them bantering in the car over how exactly to do it, with the Captain deciding to hide the gun inside a "Have a Nice Day" Smile-style takeout bag because he thinks it'll put the Major at ease before he shoots him.
  • In a flashback, a resistance soldier who's been captured by the CIA decides to kill himself by choking on a hard-boiled egg instead of confessing. After the Captain is able to get the egg out of the soldier's throat, Claude nonchalantly peels and eats it, explaining to a dumbfounded Captain that it's perfectly safe to eat since the shell protects the egg, seemingly oblivious to the Captain's obvious horror over everything that's just happened.
• Big Damn Heroes: When Ryan gets a little bit too into a rape scene he's filming with Lana, the Captain uses some quick thinking to cue Jamie before he's supposed to appear in the scene, causing Jamie to intervene right before Ryan can rape Lana and to beat the crap out of him, thus ruining the only take of the scene that Niko can afford.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Given that the story relies on a Framing Device and frequent narration, the Captain will occasionally address the audience while narrating, such as when he brings up an incident involving the General in the second episode, realizes he hasn't shown it to the audience, and helpfully rewinds the scene to show us a flashback of what happened. In the fourth episode, he outright admits in his narration that he's making up some scenes that he didn't witness firsthand.
• Breather Episode: The fourth episode is a one-off Filler episode that takes a break from the main plot to follow the Captain's adventures during the production of a war movie that goes awry. It contains no relation to the rest of the story, features relatively low stakes and much more humor, and, with the exception of Niko and Ryan, the new characters that the Captain meets are fairly nice and likable people.
• California Doubling: In-Universe. The Hamlet is set in a rural Vietnamese village, but filmed in Napa Valley, California. The production designer mentions they brought several things over from the Philippines^note where Apocalypse Now, the film whose production is being parodied, was filmed, and where this part of the story was set in the book to make the set look like a Southeast Asian village.
• Chronically Killed Actor: James Yoon is a Korean-American actor who has long been typecast as being the token Asian guy who dies in every movie.
• Childhood Friends: Bốn, Mẫn and the protagonist have been friends since childhood, even calling themselves "blood brothers" and "The Three Musketeers". Unfortunately, Bốn is unaware that Mẫn and the protagonist are secretly spies for North Vietnam.
• Cringe Comedy: Ned Godwin's speech at the longevity party in the third episode is downright painful to get through owing to his social awkwardness, stilted manner of speaking, and committing a major cultural faux pas by gifting Major Oanh's mother a knife, which is considered to be bad luck in Vietnamese culture.
• Culture Equals Costume: Sofia is Japanese-American and grudgingly wears a kimono to her Occidental Otaku boss's function.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The General, developing increasing paranoia after being stripped of his rank and forced to move to America, becomes convinced that he's being monitored by a spy from the North and asks the Captain to find out who the mole is—the Captain, of course, being said mole.
  • In one the many tense conversations they have over The Hamlet, Niko semi-jokingly accuses the Captain of being a spy sent on the studio's behalf and suggests he become a "double agent" working for Niko instead. The Captain actually is a double agent, just not for who Niko thinks.
• Eat the Evidence: After being captured picking up a roll of film containing the general's staff list in the first episode, a female spy chooses to swallow it rather than give it over to her South Vietnamese captors. Later, she's tied up as the cops wait for her to defecate.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Claude is definitely not a good person, given that he enthusiastically participates in the interrogation and torture of a communist-affiliated woman in the first episode. However, he does seem to have some genuine care for the Captain, giving him records he thinks the Captain might appreciate and playfully teasing him around after the meeting with the General. He's also clearly happy to see the Captain when they reunite in America.
• Everyone Has Standards: Niko is a massive Jerkass who has an intense mutual dislike for the Captain and lets him get injured during an on-set explosion, but when the Captain goes over to Niko's house to make amends, he tries to stop the Captain from getting too close to the pool as it contains an alligator that could very easily injure him or worse, though he most likely just wants to avoid a potential lawsuit.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: Professor Hammer, the Captain's Eastern Studies professor from his college days, has a fascination for Asian culture that borders on fetishization, including taking a shine to the Captain for his mixed-race background and trying to get Sofia to embrace her Japanese heritage even though she clearly doesn't want to.
• Framing Device: The story is framed as a confession being given by an incarcerated Captain and presented as flashbacks to the audience.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: The protagonist faces discrimination for being the illegitimate child of a Vietnamese woman and a white Frenchman, and in his narration laments that he doesn't really fit in in either Vietnamese or white communities. He is also subject to fetishization by the orientalist Professor Hammer, who marvels at the combination of "Occidental" and "Oriental" traits in him.
• Hostility on the Set: In-Universe; the production of The Hamlet is derailed significantly when Ryan begins to pick fights with the other actors because he feels they aren't taking their work seriously enough, and he begins to target Jamie especially since he's a first-time actor. Niko and the Captain can also barely see eye-to-eye due to Niko's ego getting in the way of the Captain's valid suggestions.
• Jerkass: Niko introduces himself to the Captain by calling him a racial slur and insulting his mixed-race background, something that understandably offends the Captain and fosters an immediate dislike between the two characters.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The first episode ends with Bon and the Captain making a dramatic run for one of the last American aircrafts out of Saigon, and it's unclear if they make it because Bon is grieving the abrupt death of his wife and child. At the beginning of the next episode, his interrogator comments that the Captain left his confession on a "Hollywood cliffhanger".
• In Medias Res: The first episode begins with the Captain being interrogated before flashing back to the events surrounding the fall of Saigon.
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures:
  • James is an Korean-American actor who has apparently played every East Asian ethnicity onscreen other than his own, with The Hamlet being the first time he gets to play his actual ethnicity.
  • The Hamlet runs into its first major snag when the extras hired to play the Vietnamese villagers are actually Chinese since the casting director didn't understand the difference between the two.
• Match Cut: A common transition between scenes is for one object to fade into another similarly-shaped/colored one. For example, Bon lighting a cigarette becomes an explosive being fired at the airfield; a rotary phone becomes a tire wheel; a halved boiled egg becomes a white plastic bag with a yellow smiley face logo, and so on.
• Method Acting: In-Universe. Ryan Glenn is a hardcore method actor known for his intense dedication to his roles, to the point where he insists on being referred to by his character's name and adamantly refuses to be addressed otherwise. He also has a reputation for being volatile and difficult to work with as a result, and becomes increasingly erratic during the filming of The Hamlet. This all comes to a head when, during a rape scene he has to film with Lana, he actually tries to rape her.
• Named by the Adaptation: While the narrator is still not given a proper name, the television series script gives him a title by referring to him as the Captain. The General and the Major's last names, Trọng and Oanh, are given here, while The Auteur is named Niko Damianos and the congressman is named Ned Godwin. As for the actors in Niko's film, Ryan Glenn and Jamie Johnson were only ever referred to as The Thespian and The Idol in the book, respectively, while the actual film is called The Hamlet instead of going unnamed.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Niko is a very thinly-veiled version of Francis Ford Coppola, with The Hamlet's production being obviously based on Apocalypse Now, and he has a series of films called The Combination that appear to be this universe's version of The Godfather trilogy. Ryan Glenn serves as a loose analogue to Marlon Brando, as a well-regarded and acclaimed actor who's nonetheless extremely difficult to work with due to his penchant for method acting.
• Occidental Otaku: The white American Professor Hammer is a self-proclaimed 'Orientalist'. He dresses in and decorates his office with Asian things of various origins and asks after the Captain's 'oriental' traits. Of course, he is oblivious to the derision of the Captain (who is Vietnamese) and his Japanese-American secretary Sofia.
• One-Drop Rule: Claude gifts the Captain a record of The Isley Brothers and proudly proclaims that he's "1/16 negro". They are not impressed.
  General: Why do these Ivy League brats always insist they're part black?
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two Oanhs in the general's retinue; when claiming one to be The Mole the Captain has to specify he means the fat Oanh.
• Racial Face Blindness: Parodied. In an inversion of "all Asians look alike", several prominent white characters are played by Robert Downey Jr..
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: After making it to America, the General becomes paranoid that there is a spy in the community of refugees he came with and tasks the Captain with finding out who it is. He is right that there is a mole who's out for him, but is completely wrong about who the mole is or the circumstances behind it (for example, he misconstrues a toilet seat cover nearly falling on him as an assassination attempt).
• Sacrificial Lamb: Bon, despite being South Vietnamese, is a loving Family Man and near and dear to his friends who are secretly North Vietnam spies. They arrange a transport for him and his family out of Saigon, but his wife and young baby are killed at the end of the first episode, solidifying the grimness of the war to the protagonist and the audience.
• Shout-Out: The first episode is titled Death Wish after a movie currently playing in Saigon cinemas.
• Trash the Set: In-Universe. The Hamlet ends with a US airstrike decimating the village. Unfortunately, the Captain is caught in the explosion when they detonate the set.
• Trauma Button: Played for Laughs when the Captain refuses to eat a platter of squid that Sofia is serving, since the presence of cephalopods reminds him of a childhood incident where he once masturbated using a raw piece of squid when he was a teenager.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Gender-inverted; Jamie, who has begun dating Lana on the set of The Hamlet, is supposed into intervene during the rape scene between Ryan and Lana's characters, but he gets so incensed during the filming of the scene that he beats up Ryan for real and ends up accidentally ruining the set. To a lesser extent, this also applies to the Captain, who has started developing feelings for Lana and purposefully cues Jamie in early before Ryan can actually rape her.