No spoilers ahead (read the season 1 review)
Servant on Apple TV+ Season 1 is a Cracked Window with Tentacles Spreading to Where?
After meeting Leanne in Season 1 and attempting to understand the narrative being laid out in this thriller, I realized as the first season closed an unreliable narrator, or in this case screenwriter, can quickly shift the story into uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory. One of the more interesting devices in this show is that you can’t predict based on familiarity with conventional devices. In the past on any other show, if a mother loses a child there is an eventual psychotic break damaging the mother’s life. As Season 2 unfolds Dorothy Turner has become the more aggressive antagonist.
This could be seen as predictable, but the way the initial cracks spread from the shot through the window of Servant, those cracks aren’t radiating out anymore. The window is cracking in a straight line and the fracturing is less about a multiverse and more about bringing the story to an uncomfortable reality that the first bad decision, which created the story, won’t be confronted. What is considered evil isn’t the guest in the home. The evil is in the host, which makes Servant more uncomfortable because we should sympathize with the person experiencing loss.
It’s evident in Season 2 a variety of voices are on display in the writing and directing of the series. In many instances it doesn’t work well and there are times where I pushed through because I’m invested. Shows are difficult to maintain because the natural inclination of the viewer is to attempt to solve the case being analyzed. As a viewer I want to get to the answer and knowing that I don’t know when the answer will come makes me more critical of every aspect of the show. Season 2 is “off”. Whether it’s intentional or a symptom of too many chefs in the kitchen, I struggled in earlier episodes of Season 2. In Season 2 the case hinges on Leanne’s group and how her free will has disrupted servitude. At the end of Season 1 it seemed transference was the culprit and Leanne was an unknowing leader. In Season 2, she is less a leader and more of a catalyst for inaction and action. As Season 2 ends paranoia becomes the driver vs fear and it seems ignorance is no safe harbor as Leanne’s decisions have made her the home and as her mental stability crumbles this house of lies grows more fragile. How can a person (or a being) be in the process of discovering free will, also be a conduit for the action’s others are taking? I’m invested although Season 2 was not as strong as Season 1.