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Expats Recap: Ashes, in Time
Everyone is on the verge of total eruption.
Halfway through its six-episode season, the Prime limited series has yet to bring the lingering conflicts between its three leading ladies to a head, but instead of charging forward, the chapter titled “Mid-Levels” — after the expatriates’ affluent Hong Kong neighborhood — digs deeper while standing in place, forcing Margaret, Hilary, Mercy, and their tapestry of supporting characters to confront the wreckage of their lives. However, her drive to follow up on any clue, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is nothing if not convincing thanks to Nicole Kidman’s devastating performance as a mother coming undone — which makes it all the more upsetting when the police finally show up near the end of the episode, claiming to have found a body that matches Gus’s description. When the police approach Margaret with the news that Gus’s body may have been found, the edit cuts between a close-up of Kidman that feels unmoored — as though the camera and her sanity are beginning to slip — and her nervous hand shakily holding a postcard she believes is some sort of clue, as though she were being confronted with the impossible choice of continuing down a rabbit hole of denial or being consumed by overwhelming grief.
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