Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Expats’ On Prime Video, About Three Expatriate Women In Hong Kong Who Are Torn Apart By A Tragic Event

Reviewing shows based on the first episode, which is what we mainly do in the Stream It Or Skip It column, can be frustrating when the first episode of a show is being purposely obtuse or using a fractured storytelling method. You know that there’s more to the story, things that will be explained in subsequent episodes, but what we’re trying to capture in this column is what the viewing experience of a person streaming this first episode might have. And we know that if it’s frustrating to us, it’ll be frustrating to lots of other people. That’s what we experienced with a new series created by filmmaker Lulu Wang (The Farewell).

EXPATS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Slides of people who caused tragedies. The narrator who describes these incidents says, “I want to know about the people who caused the tragedies. People like me.”

The Gist: In Hong Kong, Margaret (Nicole Kidman) is in a restaurant, talking to a party planner about a 50th birthday party for husband, Clarke Woo (Brian Tee). Her 11-year old son Philip (Bodhi del Rosario) is calmly drawing a picture of his family during the meeting, but his older sister Daisy (Tiana Gowen) is impatiently listening to music at the next table. Margaret seems distracted, but gets upset when she sees that Philip has drawn his little brother Gus in the picture with a beaded man he identifies as Jesus.

When Margaret and her kids get back to the luxury high rise where they live, they run into Margaret’s neighbor and friend Hilary Starr (Sarayu Blue), who has been avoiding them of late. She makes an excuse about Clarke’s birthday party, but Margaret tells her “It would mean a lot if you came.”

Clarke’s parents have come in from the US for the party, and they’re at the apartment when Margaret arrives. Her mother-in-law Jing (Gabrielle Chan) openly criticizes Margaret’s parenting at every turn, especially Daisy’s obsession with news stories about a missing plane. But most of all, her in-laws are wondering why the party is even happening, given it’s been less than a year since Gus went missing.

We then see a Korean-American woman named Mercy (Ji-young Yoo) having rough sex with a stranger she calls Dirk (Jack Huston). She essentially ignores him as he leaves the apartment, having gotten what she wanted.

Then we see Margaret in a market in Kowloon, buying some cheap pitchers and other stuff. She walks through the densely-populated area to an empty apartment that she has the key for. She scrubs the floor on her hands and knees and bathes in a plastic tub, just reveling in being alone.

Hilary changes her mind about the party and goes there with her husband David — who is the “Dirk” that we saw Mercy having violent sex with. She fights with him about what he’s wearing and about how their neighbor stares at him. In the car on the way to the party, they talk about the night that his drinking caused a tragedy, though we’re not sure what it is. He decides to have their driver pull the car over, saying “I’m tired of lying.” He’s not just leaving the car, but might be leaving Hilary for good.

Mercy meets a friend for drinks, and she regales the others who are at the table with tales of Mercy’s drinking. Then she gets a text from “Dirk” and uses it as an excuse to leave, but she’s really going to a cater waiter job, which just happens to be at Clarke’s birthday party.

There’s a bit of a pall at the party, as one might imagine. Margaret is distracted by Jing, distracted by the picture Philip drew of Jesus, and the whole Gus of it all. The other expat wives chatter and gossip about her to Hilary. As soon as Hilary tries to talk to Margaret, though, Margaret gets upset when she sees Mercy in the crowd. For her part, Mercy had no idea whose party she was working, and panics once she realizes where she is.

Hilary leaves, but comes back when she gets a text from a friend about Margaret losing it on a waitress that wasn’t Mercy. The two former friends reconnect at a ramen joint, but then Margaret wants to go to the street where (we think) Gus disappeared.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Lulu Wang (The Farewell) based on the book The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, Expats gives off a similar feel to Big Little Lies and The Undoing.

Our Take: The first episode of Expats made us want to tear out what little hair we have on our heads. It was one of those frustrating watches where it felt that the writer, in this case Wang, was holding information from viewers in a way that just felt artificial. People stop talking before they get to mentioning the actual tragedy that happened, or things are alluded to but never spoken. Our impulse was to yell at the screen, “Just tell me what it is that everyone is so sad about!“, which distracts from actually getting into the story.

We’re not even sure why the tragedy is left unspoken in the first episode. We know that Margaret’s son Gus is not around, though it’s unclear that he’s missing and not dead. We’re not sure how and just who in her circle was involved. Was Mercy involved? And what does it have to do with the sister she mentions in her opening voice over? Is David involved? Is Hilary involved? Or are all three involved in different tragedies?

The hint, of course, is in Mercy’s voice over at the beginning of the episode, where she wants to know the people who caused tragedies, because they were like her. If we had opened on the tragedy, then cut to a year later to see how everyone’s is or isn’t coping, the dramatic effect would be the same to us. But Wang has decided to withhold this information for a period of time, and it leaves us as viewers just as lost and afloat as Margaret feels.

Kidman feels like she’s in the phase of her career when she playing one depressed, wealthy, touched-by-tragedy middle aged wife and mom after another, and while her performances are always terrific, the trope has gotten old. When we see her looking into middle distance, or leaning her head against the window of a car, the only thing we can think of is Big Little Lies or The Undoing, and that it’s the same story in a different locale. Ostensibly that’s not true, given the fact that this story centers around a tight-knit expat community, but the first episode doesn’t at all give us this impression because all we’re seeing is Depressed Nicole Kidman once again.

Sometimes stories are better served by more straightforward storytelling, and Expats is certainly in that category. But it’s also hurt by being the umpteenth show about privilege, about the haves and have-nots, and about how money seems to bring more misery than anything else. Add in a backdrop of a bustling global metropolis where the people who actually live and work there are all just shown in service of the obnoxious expats that inhabit every scene, and you’ve got a show that grates instead of engages.

Sex and Skin: Besides the scene where Mercy and “Dirk” have sex, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: Philip moves through the apartment, finds the crumpled up picture he drew of his family and Gus with Jesus, and puts it up on the refrigerator.

Sleeper Star: Jack Huston is smarmy as hell as Hilary’s estranged husband David, and we really want to see what his role in this whole thing is.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Margaret and Hilary get up in the middle of the ramen restaurant and dance to Heart Of Glass, we wanted the restaurant’s owners to come up and tell them to get the hell out. That was one of those obnoxious scenes where Americans bigfoot themselves into a situation with inpunity.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Expats is a show that should be better than it is, given its cast and Wang’s pedigree. But its storytelling is frustrating and its characters are ones we feel we’ve seen on TV a whole lot over the past few years.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.