Betrayal is in the air on The Mosquito Coast [Apple TV+ recap]

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The Mosquito Coast recap Apple TV+: Charlie (played by Gabriel Bateman) is warming up to his environs on The Mosquito Coast.★★★
Charlie (played by Gabriel Bateman) is warming up to his environs on The Mosquito Coast.
Photo: Apple TV+

TV+ ReviewApple TV+’s Mosquito Coast, about a family uneasily fleeing terrorism charges by hiding in the jungle, is all about betrayal this week. Dina comes clean with Allie — and he almost ruins their relationship in return. Margot starts trying to get her family back to the states, but she’s going to need Richard to do it.

Meanwhile, Allie and William are back on a job. And every minute Charlie spends in the jungle makes him like the idea of returning to America a little less. It’s going to be a long Good Friday.

Mosquito Coast recap: The Burning of Judas

Season 2, episode 7: In the episode, entitled “The Burning of Judas,” Margot (played by Melissa George) is woken in the middle of the night by a drum announcing the arrival of Good Friday. Since the Fox kids weren’t raised with religion, she has to explain to their son Charlie (Gabriel Bateman), in a very on-the-nose scene, that the locals are having a vigil because Judas betrayed Christ. Then she tells her husband Allie (Justin Theroux) that she’ll be starting her long con to betray Richard (Ariyon Bakare) by gaining his trust and then selling him out to the U.S. government.

Allie’s about to have his own appointment with Judas. He’s pretty sure Isela (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) and Bautista (Daniel Raymont) are going to ask him for access to Sandpiper, the software he created and then sabotaged before/as he and Margot became fugitives. He illegally accessed its database to get information on Richard as their bombing plan was going forward. And that helped him locate Margot and Richard in order to get there in time to see her kill an innocent bystander with the bomb by mistake.

Dina (Logan Polish) finally tells Allie that she knows all this. She comes clean that she doesn’t respect him anymore. He tries to talk his way out of it, but realizes his teenage daughter is in no mood to be reasoned with. Dina gives him an ultimatum: She wants to leave now.

He then describes the life she’s trying to go back to (Snapchat, ordering food online, getting drunk with classmates, learning nothing and getting a useless degree). She calls him a “bully” for doing so, but she knows somewhere he’s right. The normal life she’s trying to go back to isn’t anything special. (We ought to know. We’re living it, eh?)

There’s no trouble like family trouble

Bautista’s got his own family woes. Turns out the real estate event he had Allie and William Lee (Ian Hart) ruin the other night was hosting Bautista’s sister (Cosima Cabrera) and father (Fernando Larrañaga). Now Andrea is furious with her brother. She’s trying to make the family name something revered in their home country, but he keeps messing it up for them. She gives him a warning that if he keeps up his disgraceful behavior, and continues messing up her attempts to go legit, she’s going to undo his whole operation and kill whoever stands in the way.

Dina tries to commiserate with Charlie about hating their dad and feeling trapped. But she discovers her brother in a better-than-average mood. Charlie’s really getting used to being here. He has friends, and he’s getting into their customs. He’s actually enjoying himself.

That’s the last thing Dina wants to hear, of course, but she isn’t about to ruin someone else’s day over it. She goes to sulk and Adolfo (Alejandro Akara) goes after her. He tries to give her perspective. He came from a troubled home, but he’s made a little life for himself. They start talking about their dream lives, which cheers her up a little.

Sandpiper is the key

The Mosquito Coast recap Apple TV+: Just how low will Allie Fox (played by Justin Theroux) go?
Just how low will Allie Fox (played by Justin Theroux) go?
Photo: Apple TV+

As Allie predicted, Bautista wants access to Sandpiper so he can start stealing a march on the local police before they can get close to his operations and ruin things for him. He’s even located an M.I.T. grad named Caleb (Will Price) to come down and work it for him so Allie doesn’t have to always be on call to run the computer program.

Allie refuses. If anyone’s going to use his creation, it’s going to be him. Allie won’t just put his software in the hands of some kid. Unfortunately, he’s got just 72 hours to enter years of Bautista’s data into Sandpiper and prove his worth. If he can’t pull it off, his family will be hurt.

Richard comes to talk to Margot about Charlie threatening him with a gun the other day. She apologizes for that brusquely and tries to stop talking to him, but Richard can’t leave well enough alone. He wants to show her why he’s been brought down to the jungle.

Richard hatches a destructive plan

Richard takes her to a construction site being toured by Andrea Bautista and Carter Albrecht (Reed Diamond), another developer. He’s going to destroy it. She says she wants in. But on the way back, they stop at a gas station and she trades her wedding ring for the cashier’s cellphone. Margot shows it to Allie and tells him that Charlie threatened to kill Richard and she will be getting their kids out of here.

Cowed, Allie realizes he doesn’t have much choice but to help Margot now. Nobody’s safe anymore, not even in the commune, which is intruded upon that afternoon by drug runners who help themselves to all the food and drink they want. That’s another of Bautista’s conditions. Everyone gets to live there so long as they don’t mind heavily armed drug mules coming through unannounced.

And finally: A glimpse of the Mosquito Coast

Well, it took almost two seasons but we get our first look at the titular Mosquito Coast this week. Allie’s entering data into Sandpiper and finds an old land deal sitting around for La Costa de los Mosquitos, a beachfront property that went undeveloped.

This is exciting, because now we know where season three is headed — and the horrible things Allie and Margot are about to do to get there, and how much lower Allie’s going to sink in the eyes of his children.

With Dina’s talk about moving to New York or Oregon ringing in our ears, Allie unveils (to us) that he has no intention of letting her go back to the states and live the normal life she wants. That’s about to get a hell of a deferral. And a lot of people are going to die or suffer before the Foxes get to their next destination.

★★★

Watch The Mosquito Coast on Apple TV+

New episodes of the second season of The Mosquito Coast arrive on Apple TV+ every Friday.

Rated: TV-MA

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.

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