The Mosquito Coast Season 2 Episode 4 Review: A Rag, a Bone, a Hank of Hair

So little of any real consequence actually happens in The Mosquito Coast Season 2 Episode 4, “A Rag, a Bone, a Hank of Hair,” that it’s almost impossible not to wonder what purpose this installment is meant to serve. Sure, Margot’s phone call at the end packs a punch…but it’s also the only thing that actually moves any of this narrative forward?

We’re approaching the halfway point of the season after all, is it really time for a filler episode of this magnitude? When we haven’t really even fully established what the larger arc of Season 2 is really about?

Did we really need an essentially episode-length reminder that Charlie is The Worst? That Allie is a controlling gaslighter? That Margot is 100% Over Everything at this point? Not really! 

On paper, the idea that Charlie is chasing the high of new and/or meaningful experiences–the soccer game last week, trying to save animals from poachers here—because he literally has no idea where to put the big feelings he’s experiencing as a result of all the trauma he’s undergone makes sense. He’s so angry and frustrated and sad and has nowhere to put all these emotions so he channels them into dumb things like literally throwing rocks at people with guns.

But, the problem is that there’s little to no introspection or growth going on here, just Charlie, yet again recklessly putting the family in danger and making them the target of dangerous people….for what? The lack of self-awareness is galling, as is Allie’s blind insistence that everything his messy son does is fine. If only because he says it is.

“A Rag, a Bone, a Hank of Hair” also ramps up the creepiness factor when it comes to Allie, who basically tells his wife he’s figured out her plan to leave with the kids. It’s a dumb plan where they’ll basically all die, he says, and then complains that no one understands how he’s trying to make the family a new home out here in the jungle no one ever asked to live in. 

Margot, who is Extremely Over It, lashes out at him, insisting that essentially holding them all prisoner isn’t going to make them a real family. She’s so furious that, yet again, I have to wonder, how in the world this group has lasted together this long.

If we think about the flashback episode in which Allie and Margot first decide to go on the run, Charlie and Dina aren’t even teenagers yet. They’ve been doing this a long time and only now is she deciding that it’s all a bit too much? What happened in all the intervening years in between? It’s not like they just started living like this! (Granted, the downgrade to the Colombian jungle compound is new, but I have to assume this is about something more than general quality of life issues.)

That said, it’s incredibly satisfying to finally Margot stop pretending that everything’s fine and that the life she’s currently living bears any resemblance to the life she wanted for herself and her children. It’s also generally fun to watch her scheming against her husband, though The Mosquito Coast remains weirdly loath to let anyone get the better of genius Allie for too long. 

Melissa George has long been the stealth MVP of The Mosquito Coast so it’s really satisfying to finally get the chance to see her shine in these recent episodes. Her performance during the phone conversation with the FBI is the best work she’s done on this show to date, and I somehow can’t help rooting for her a bit, even though I know she is, in her own way, as much of a monster as Allie.

But Margot is so clearly desperate, so willing to do anything to get her life back—her decision to send Dina off to flirt with/distract Alfonso so she can break into the boat, her call to the Feds, her promise to betray Allie in return for her freedom are all the sorts of choices you make when you don’t think you have any other choices you can make. 

The show seems weirdly attached to the idea that whatever programming/hacking Allie did is somehow worse than the fact that Margot is a literal terrorist though and I don’t understand it. Does she deserve some kind of freedom more than he does? Maybe, if only because she seems to have come to some realization that the things she’s done are wrong.

But she was also an active participant in the choices that led to their years living off the grid and on the run, and I’m not sure she gets to plead regret now only when it’s come to the point where Allie’s forcing her to live in a place with rats the size of a human forearm.

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• I think Dina and Alfonso are extremely adorable there I said it.
• The fact that absolutely no one seems to want to deal with the whole Charlie killed a guy thing is….wild.
• Is there one single viewer out there who cares about what’s going on with wannabe Walter White hitman William Lee? No??

What did you think of this episode of The Mosquito Coast? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of The Mosquito Coast stream Fridays on Apple TV+. 

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