Photo: Hopper Stone/HBO
The first episode of The Sympathizer ended on a cliffhanger — “a real Hollywood cliffhanger,” remarks a North Vietnamese commander at the second episode’s start. Tasked with reading the Captain’s prison letters, the commander’s tone drips with disapproval (the Communists, of course, despise American entertainment while recognizing its ingenuity as soft propaganda). But the comment is a sly metafictional wink from a script that is keen on addressing and ironizing its many tropes and…
