I enjoyed the previous two episodes but this one was a mighty waste of time. It's as if whomever wrote this script doesn't know what story to tell. Is this an expat story or a kidnapping story? Or rather a rich expats vs their poorer staff, also expats? A soap about older women and younger mistresses? A social commentary about life in an overcrowded, troubled city?
The POV of the Filipino staff (Essie and Puri) was quite boring for me. It's not because these women are underpaid and probably overworked that they have something interesting to tell. In fact, they have not, they just talk about children and families like their richer employers.
The Hong Kong troubles are just a backdrop and don't add much of a social commentary, or not enough to stir the story in that direction.
As far as the three "main" characters, just like I figured Hilary is getting a divorce to turn into a strong, SINGLE woman, Margaret is annoying as usual and I didn't like the bossy way she tried to force Clarke to give up religion. I guess he should be free to decide if he wants to be a believer. It's good that I never care about what happened to Gus, because that part of the plot derailed.
Don't even get me started with Mercy, she's such a morose unlikeable character, pregnant by David - as I thought - she's enjoying a lesbian relationship, because nowadays you're nobody if you're not at least bisexual.
Then there was a long and tedious part about a rich friend of Hilary, also cheated on by her husband and finally, when Essie gets home to Margaret she doesn't tell her that she just decided to go back home, because Margaret apparently needs her to move to the US with them...I don't buy any of that, if Essie wanted to go home she was free to do so, there's no moral clause that states you have to move to the other part of the world when you just decided you don't want to.