Each week Terry and Joe review the latest episode of Apple TV’s Servant S3, alternating between our respective sites.
Spoilers follow for Episode 3.04 “Ring”
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- S1 coverage: Episode 1 – 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10
- S2 coverage: Episode 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 9 / 10
- S3 coverage: 1 / 2 / 3
Episode 3.04 “Ring”: Leanne continues to be upset by other people. Bad luck strikes the Turner brownstone.
JOE
Well Terry, we said we were missing the body horror that Julia Ducournau delivered back in the S2 opener, and “Ring” delivered the goods. Of course, in this case the amputation of obnoxious new character Sylvia (Nadia Alexander)’s finger has more of a comedic flair due to its inevitability. You gotta love how director Dylan Holmes Williams lets the camera linger on Sean (Toby Kebbell)’s menacing taffy sword for an extra beat, just to really sell that extra sharp point. We know something bad is going to happen involving this ridiculous kitchen appliance; the only question is what the damage will be.
After last week’s relatively low-key episode, I’m glad that we have more substance to dig into here. Once again, this is the Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) show, but writer Laura Marks is hitting some new beats with the character. While Leanne’s paranoia is still present, it is less all-encompassing than in “Hair” or “Hive”. Characters still venture outside (the front stoop, the side of the house where the garbage is), but Leanne is in full-on protective mode and, most significantly, she’s not afraid to stand up for her beliefs. This is most evident in her relationship with Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Tobe (Tony Revolori).
Let’s tackle the former first.
As we predicted last week, Dorothy sees her professional career slipping away. While she’s content to do ballet/dance classes with Leanne in the attic, the envy on Dorothy’s face when she sees Isabelle taking over her plum gigs is evident. After requesting a meeting, Dorothy negotiates a potentially high profile piece covering an up-and-coming graffiti artist, but Leanne is firmly against Dorothy leaving her, Jericho and the house. This leads to a series of tense encounters over breastfeeding (Dorothy snaps at Leanne) and working late (Leanne aggressively pulls Dorothy back to finish buttoning her blouse).
Leanne is far more empathetic about Tobe, who is repeatedly verbally abused by his new girlfriend Sylvia, who is desperate to make a good impression on Sean as a sous-chef. Leanne is right to encourage Tobe to advocate for himself (Sylvia is legit a monster), but when she confronts him about standing up to his girlfriend, Leanne’s language reads like she’s projecting. “Everyone just takes advantage of you and assumes you’ll always be there. And it’s not fair” she tells him, but the words can just as easily apply to Leanne’s efforts to protect the household (she states unequivocally at two different points here that nothing will happen to Jericho or Sean as long as she’s around).
Which leads me to a wild speculation, Terry: while we agreed back in the season three premiere that Leanne has seemingly lost her powers, “Ring” may suggest that they’re merely being applied in a new way. She can no longer heal or resuscitate the dead; instead she may inadvertently be causing harm to those that don’t follow her advice or threaten the peace of the Turner’s Brownstone. Consider the fate that befalls both Dorothy and Sylvia in this episode: the former is publicly humiliated on live television (Rupert Grint’s Julian doesn’t mince words when he tells Sean “she’s done”), while Sylvia gets the body horror gold star when she slips on Jericho’s spilled sweet potato formula and loses her finger on the taffy sword. These fateful events feel a bit like karma; you cross Leanne or fail to heed her advice, and harm is coming your way!
Terry, I’ll turn it over to you: what do you make of my theory? Did your anxiety rise a million notches as the demands in the kitchen kept escalating? And what are your thoughts on the subplot involving Leanne’s history with dance and the growing crowd gathering outside the house?
TERRY
I’ve watched this episode twice now, Joe. The first time I surprisingly did not see the violence coming and I legitimately gasped-screamed when Sylvia slipped and it was revealed that not only was her finger amputated but basically disintegrated in the sink’s garbage disposal! Talk about Final Destination-levels of small things leading up to a blood-splattered Tobe.
You asked about anxiety and this scene is the most anxious Servant has made me feel this season. Unlike previous episodes where the tension was because of Josephine stalking through the house or awkward dinner parties filled with malice, this was mostly because of introversion. You mentioned that season three is the Leanne show and I’ll second that because “Ring”, in particular, does an excellent job of putting the viewer in her anxious shoes as she deals with external threats (Sylvia), internal threats (Dorothy) and personal threats (the horrible safety guy).
All she wanted to do was make taffy with Sean and instead she’s being verbally threatened, sexually harassed and more. That last part is the worst because this larger man is using his presence to threaten an eighteen year old girl. But it also pushes her back into the shell she’s created because of her previous, domineering family. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, where Dorothy begins the episode trying to help her feel comfortable with her body and ends with Leanne back in her dress, after yelling at the Josephine-by-proxy painting on the wall, “It’s my fault, right? Because I look like a whore? Are you happy?!”
It’s telling that we also start the episode with Leanne telling Dorothy how terrible of a dancer her mother said she was as she described the horror of pageantry and ends with Leanne dancing, self-assured to a song as if she’d danced to it a million times. Her body slowly gets into the movement and it becomes almost an interpretive dance as she struggles to let herself really be in the moment. And it ends with her unselfconsciously presenting her body to the world in the window in a final pose, as the youth stand below. The same youth she began the episode shutting out with the curtains.
I do want to take a pause, though, to appreciate the music because it brought a realization to me as I tried to Shazam it and then google the “artist”, Vivian Dale. It turns out this isn’t the first time we’ve heard Vivian Dale’s music in Servant. Her song “The Sky Cries” showed up in season two, episode 8 when Leanne discovers the vinyl records and Julian says, “Must have been our mother’s.” There, the music was used as a way for Leanne to discover that the music her parents said was evil actually brought her happiness. Here, she discovers her body and the joy of dance through the same singer.
Additionally, although Dorothy lays out Vivian’s torrid history (Died so young. Drugs or maybe an abusive boyfriend, but “when she was on stage she was a goddess”), it turns out that Vivian only exists in the world of Servant. Outside the show, the artist is actually Saleka. Saleka Shyamalan, to be precise. And her music video for “The Sky Cries”(directed by her father, M. Night Shyamalan) is actually shot on the Servant set, as she dances, like a ghost, through the house before ending in the attic where the video picks up with Leanne discovering the vinyls. The idea of the ghost of Vivian, who, in the series, died young and violently, floating throughout the Turner household feels ominous…
Back to your questions, though, I’m absolutely and completely onboard with your theory of Leanne causing the troubles this episode. I’m not sure it’s unintentional, though. When I look back over my notes, the idea of respect keeps popping up, whether that’s Dorothy literally saying, “finally being shown the respect I deserve” in regards to her new story or Leanne yelling at Tobe about being taken for granted. “Ring” seems to contrast Leanne and Dorothy once again, as Dorothy complains at being ignored by her job (“This is so hurtful. It’s like I’m invisible”) and that same thing is visually being shown with Leanne’s situation.
While season three began with Dorothy and Sean talking about “their family” and Leanne’s place in it, they’ve continued to view her worth through the lens of hired help. Meanwhile, the show has also contrasted Sean’s rising star power with Dorothy’s fading glory; both the idea of respect and the question of family comes to a head when both Dorothy and Sean need Leanne’s help for their careers. Sure, Sean passes off needing Leanne’s help in the kitchen as Leanne “really looking forward to it,” but the truth is more selfish…for both of them.
In this moment, it’s obvious that behind the words of “family” both of them still somewhat see Leanne as their…ahem, servant. Maybe a little less in Sean’s corner, as he floats the idea of finding a new sitter for Jericho so Leanne can work in the kitchen. But in the hierarchy of needs, she comes second to the Turners.
Which is why I’m not sure that Leanne doesn’t know what she’s doing, at least on some level. She views herself as the lynchpin keeping the family unit together, which you’ve mentioned above. She wants things to stay as they are, and Dorothy’s newfound career goals don’t mesh with the family staying together all the time.
In “Hive,” Leanne tells Sean, “[Dorothy] has us,” as if that’s all she needs. And if you look back over the events that have befallen the family over the last few episodes, from the hive materializing in the chimney (and the insects suspiciously dying immediately and not stinging Sean) to both Sylvia’s dismemberment and Dorothy’s lactation, are used to keep the family together.
So when Dorothy comes home bawling, it’s not Sean or Julian who come to hug her, but Leanne, holding Jericho and staring with determination (and a hint of triumph in her eyes?). That, coupled with the final moments of Leanne putting Sylvia’s ring on her wedding finger–a detail that Sylvia disregarded with a callous “only diamonds for this finger”–make me think that Leanne knows exactly what she’s doing.
Whew. We’ve covered a lot and I didn’t even get to your question about the youths multiplying outside the house. Last week, I floated the idea that maybe they were actually allies and I still firmly think they aren’t what they seem.
But I’m curious if you feel the same way, particularly with the way one of them (Joshua de Jesus) approaches Leanne and the way the episode ends? I’m also curious if you clocked the 9 months/18 months conundrum with baby Jericho’s size and if you have any thoughts about what that might mean in regards to who Jericho is? What do you make of the dialogue between Sean and Dorothy at the very end of the episode, framed magnificently through the bars of Jericho’s cradle? And can we give a shout out to the cinematography that has tied everything together this episode?
JOE
Oh yes, the cinematography is a major contributor to one of my favourite moments in the episode: that great 360 pan around the kitchen as everything reaches a fever pitch. And weirdly enough, I think it works so well in part because you wouldn’t normally use it this way.
The whole point of a slow rotating pan is to create dread and anticipation. Consider the oscillating camera fan in Paranormal Activity 3 or The Blackcoat’s Daughter: both use deliberately paced movement through empty space to generate audience questions (What will we see? When will we see it? Will it happen slowly or as a jump scare? etc).
“Ring” eschews this typical approach by throwing entirely too much at the screen. Blue My Mind cinematographer Gabriel Lobos shoots the action to emphasize how frenzied the action is in this kitchen; there’s so much going on that it can’t even all be captured in a single frame. Characters speak offscreen, pass through the frame or are left behind by the rotation, lending the scene a chaotic vibe. Not only can we not see the entire field of vision, but it’s also uncertain who is present, where they are, or how they’re interacting with the environment. This isn’t about empty space; it’s all about filling it up to create confusion and uncertainty.
This strategic staging is what makes the Rube Goldberg trap so exciting. Just like Paranormal Activity 3 and The Blackcoat’s Daughter, we know *something* is going to happen. We can anticipate it coming, but there’s so much going on that it’s unclear where or how it’ll happen. Then the sweet potato formula falls and the internal countdown begins to count down; it’s only a matter of time until someone slips and tragedy ensues.
It’s a completely different way of setting up dominoes before setting them off and I loved it.
Of course this cacophony is in stark contrast to that sad, intimate conversation between Dorothy and Sean. While we’ve written a lot of digital ink about Leanne’s motivation for keeping the couple imprisoned in their home, there’s something heartbreaking about Dorothy’s confession that being a stay-at-home isn’t quite cutting it for her. “It’s like the Universe is trying to hurt me. Or I’ve lost something.” It’s a similar sentiment to those she confessed to Leanne in “Hive”, and it’s made all the more sad by the fact that we know it’s partially Leanne hurting her, and partially her own repressed trauma about Jericho.
This wasn’t the outcome I expected at the end of last week’s episode when we speculated the show was gearing up to pit Turner vs Turner in a battle for celebrity popularity.
Which leaves Leanne as the “other” celebrity, attracting all sorts of eyes at episode’s end. The growing numbers of people is alarming, but this is tried and true Servant: we still don’t have any idea what these people want. It’s hard to read de Jesus’ intentions in the street when the point of view is so closely aligned with Leanne’s. Naturally it appears threatening, but there’s a kind of whimsical admiration in that final scene as he watches her in the window.
Perhaps you’re right that these people are a bait and switch, Terry. If this episode is any indicator, maybe Leanne’s actions (well-intentioned or not) are the true S3 threat. For now it doesn’t even seem as though Leanne knows that she’s hurting the Turners with her desperate need to keep them locked inside.
Do you have any other theories about the group amassing in the dark, Terry? And I realize that I didn’t answer your Jericho size-discrepancy prompt, so what’s going on there? And what happens next as we hit the half-way point of the season?
TERRY
One of the things Servant does really well, Joe, is talk around subjects. It’s a case of listening not to what’s being spoken but what isn’t being said. I was thinking about this when you returned the Jericho-sized discrepancy to me. Before I get to that, there were two other moments when the things that weren’t said were more important than what was said.
We’ve been kind of dancing around it in our recap today, but I think we are headed to a Dorothy and Leanne showdown this season.
For as much as “Donkey” felt like a soft reset, it also seems to have reset the relationship between Dorothy and Leanne to season one levels. They got closer together in season two and Dorothy legitimately saved Leanne at the very end of season two. We’ve now seen Leanne (subconsciously or not) lash out at Dorothy a number of times. And bringing this back to the “what wasn’t said” moments, two specific encounters pop to mind. The first is when the creepy security guy is hired to child-proof the Turner household. Leanne tells Sean, “You don’t need this. As long as I’m here nothing will happen to Jericho”, before handing Jericho over to Dorothy to breastfeed. A bit later in the episode, while Leanne is angrily buttoning up Dorothy, Leanne tells her empathetically, “I would never let anything happen to Sean.”
Yet never in the episode does she say the same about Dorothy.
Dorothy isn’t being the mother Leanne thinks she should be. What’s worse, though, is that Sean obviously sees something in Leanne and his attempts to include her in the kitchen come across as a mentor trying to help guide a young person to take their early steps in a career (this is, of course, countered with Sylvia’s more brazen attempts). But Dorothy takes that opportunity away from her and then gives a pithy response about Leanne finishing her high school online, “so you can become the woman you were meant to be.” She says this while at the same time denying her job experience that could actually make her the woman she was meant to be.
All of this, coupled with Leanne’s own troubled relationship with her mother and the maternal figures in the cult, spells bad news for their relationship. I also have gotten the impression that Leanne might have a slight (understatement of the year?) crush on Sean, a man who she has both punished and forgiven over the course of two seasons. Which brings me back to that Jericho-sized issue. I’ll admit that Servant’s timelines are a bit screwy and ambiguous. At first, I wondered if Jericho was the size he should be if he was born and hadn’t died. But the condensed timeline from Jericho’s death to the fake doll to Leanne’s appearance couldn’t have been the missing nine months.
So…is Julian actually onto something?
Sure, Jericho could be “big for his age.” Absolutely. Or maybe time works differently in the afterlife, where he stayed some time…a couple times. Or maybe Julian is right and Jericho is Leanne’s baby. And maybe that baby is actually the antichrist. The show hasn’t shied away from apocalyptical and biblical notions and has, in fact, dipped more than its toes into those ideas. I don’t think we’ll get the answer to Jericho’s lineage, but I do wonder if we will find out that Jericho actually isn’t the Turner’s kid.
Regardless, this episode seems to set the stage for either a metaphorical or literal fight between Dorothy and Leanne. As for next week’s episode, I’m hoping we’ll learn more about the growing horde of youths outside the Turner household. I still think they might be more benign than ominous; that maybe they’re like Leanne, the scattered youth who left the cult. Maybe Leanne has started her own uprising through leaving. And maybe they look at her as a new leader.
Unsure, but hopefully we’ll find out more when we go back to Gayly Dreadful next week.
Servant airs Fridays on Apple TV