The Mosquito Coast Season 2 Episode 5 Review: Positive, Front-Facing Optics
The Fox family’s dysfunctional past catches up with them on The Mosquito Coast Season 2, “Positive, Front-Facing Optics,” another hour that almost completely fails to justify this series’ ten-episode second season arc.
Yes, there are some things that happen to (finally) shake the status quo, but there’s still almost no sense of where this series is going, or what its larger point actually is. Two of the biggest “twists” happen for seemingly no reason at all, and if The Mosquito Coast doesn’t start connecting some of its dots really soon, I can’t imagine anyone is going to keep caring about what happens to these people.
“Positive, Front Facing Optics” opens with Isela confronting Allie about Charlie’s idiotic quest to stop poachers last week, which saw him get caught on surveillance footage and break Casa Roja’s cardinal rule of secrecy. Predictably, Allie plays it like it’s not big deal, an attitude that sees him get dragged in front of “The Landlord” and threatened with eviction from their jungle camp
(Oh, that we should be so lucky, right?!)
Instead, Allie is told he’s going to have to use his elite hacking skills that the show keeps insisting he has but has provided no evidence for to help Guillermo the Landlord disrupt a meeting of investors who want to turn the jungle near their camp into a swanky resort. (Their grand plan involves playing a threatening video, so this isn’t a sophisticated setup.)
Because part of Guillermo’s nebulous “Landlord” title means he’s working with the local cartels, Allie gets partnered with wannabe Walter White contract killer William Lee on this mission, who is now working for Guillermo because this show is nothing if not lazy and predictable. To his credit, Ian Hart is more entertaining than he has any right to be, and at least his back-and-forth, vaguely threatening banner with Justin Theroux is something new and different.
Meanwhile, back at Camp Rojas, a visitor arrives—surprise, it’s Richard, Margot’s ex-boyfriend and partner in environmental activism/crime who is…there, for some reason! Why? Shrug. Apparently, he somehow knows Isela and is also working and/or plotting with her because there are only five eco-terrorists in the world or something!
There are a couple of new flashbacks to the aftermath of the bomb Margot set, but mostly Richard’s appearance is meant to serve as a reason for Dina To Find Out About Her Mom’s Past, which doesn’t happen in a normal, constructive conversational way because literally zero things on this show do. Instead, she eavesdrops on the ex-es having an argument and flees when her mother discovers her presence.
To be fair, Dina really makes some valid points bout her mom. Before she ever finds out Margot’s at the very least an accessory to murder, she points out that her mother is all over the place mentally and emotionally—suddenly ready to run, suddenly ready to make the best of it, and all around nowhere. Dina’s ready to run while Allie’s out of the picture, but Margot’s a lot more reluctant with no boat or supplies. What does she want? What sort of person does she think she can become? No idea.
It’s not a secret that Margot’s arc is the show’s most interesting one, but it’s endlessly frustrating that even though that’s the case, The Mosquito Coast still doesn’t seem to know what it’s ultimately doing with her character. Is she the show’s stealth heroine? A cautionary tale for her daughter? A victim of Allie’s manipulation? And where are we meant to see her going?
Because as much as the series’ most recent episodes have basically recast Margot as the heroine of a domestic thriller, “Positive, Front Facing Optics” puts her firmly back in villain territory. Because at the end of the day, Dina is right.
Margot has been more than happy to lie to her children, to let Allie take the blame for their family’s exile, to pretend that she’s been a victim of circumstance rather than admit she’s the reason they ran in the first place. And she’s only sorry about it now because her daughter’s found out the truth.
For Dina, it’s just another blow in a long series of family-based betrayals—but it’s easy to see she thought she and her mother were on the same side, united in their desire to escape a prison they’d never asked for, and no longer wanted. But Margot’s not only robbed her kids of their future (as Dina rightly points out), she likely permanently damaged their relationship with their father, whom Dina at least has held responsible for all the ways her life has disappointed her for years.
How does any family come back from that, let alone one as dysfunctional as the Foxes?
Stray Thoughts and Observations
- This is like the third episode where Isela has made dark and vaguely ominous comments about her future plans for their commune and Allie and all the things she (and now Guillermo, I guess?) expect him to do for them
- Part of the problem with this episode is that we absolutely know that Allie’s under no real threat here. Yes, there’s a cliffhanger ending, but no one believes he’s going to die, or even get caught, next week. C’mon, there are still (somehow!!) four more episodes to go in this season, and despite the fact that the show would probably be better if Allie were somehow gone from it, we are just not that lucky.
- One of the most annoying things about The Mosquito Coast is that the show makes no effort at all to explain big twists like William Lee now suddenly working for Guillermo the Landlord, or Margot’s ex-boyfriend somehow showing up in the same jungle camp she and her family are hiding in, or why he is also somehow connected to the same people. I mean, the world of eco-terrorism cannot possibly be this small. It’s such lazy writing.
- I mean, I guess it’s something that at last Charlie is finally having nightmares about murdering a man and everything but since he’s been pretty much completely fine with it up until this point, one has to wonder why the show is bothering with it now.
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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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.