Despite its undeniable quality, The Mosquito Coast might have trouble finding a wide audience, for a couple of reasons. First, this new Apple TV+ saga of a brilliant, resourceful, charming, but borderline megalomaniacal inventor named Allie Fox (Justin Theroux) living off the grid with his family is an antihero-driven production, characteristic of prestige TV from ten or more years ago: Imagine if the Whites on Breaking Bad had to go on the run.The Mosquito Coast Season 1-2 Download.
Second, and perhaps more important, is the PTSD trigger effect: When you watch The Mosquito Coast, you’re watching the improvised misadventures of a charismatic but unhinged patriarch who keeps getting the people he’s sworn to care for into trouble; avoiding exposure, capture, or death through a mix of audacity, low cunning, and dumb luck; then blowing up the family’s equilibrium again. Rinse, repeat. Audiences lived through this TV series for four-plus years in real life, with tragic consequences, including a half-million unnecessary plague deaths. The Mosquito Coast sometimes feels like an analysis-in-metaphor of the most recent era in history, as well as of the emotional mechanics of cults in general, wherein reflexive tribal loyalty trumps skepticism and rational self-interest. It’s about how we got here, and how we always get here.v.
As such, it’s filled with unpleasant wisdom, delivered with the panache of a one-damned-thing-after-another adventure. As he proved on HBO’s The Leftovers, Theroux can play a stoic, instinctive macho hero. With his intense eyes, square jaw, lush head of hair, and washboard abs, he’s a mid-century action toy come to life. But his work as an eccentric indie film personality (and screenwriter-director) makes him believable as an intellectual who lives in a world of ideas, rarely acquiescing to the demands of everyday life unless he has no choice.