Servant 2.10: A strong yet frustrating conclusion
Aunt “Josephine” brings the uneven Season 2 to an-almost great end
Original Airdate: March 19, 2021
Written and Directed By: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Plot Summary: Leanne’s aunt Josephine arrives to make Dorothy confront “the truth” about Jericho and take Leanne back for good.
Review:
As I watched the second season of Servant, I couldn’t help recall another surreal and stylish series that had aired about a decade previously on NBC - Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. In their respective first seasons, both shows introduced viewers to a dark and serious mystery story that, at its core, revolved around an ambiguous, potentially supernatural main character. And in their second seasons, both shows embraced the tone of dark comedy, expanding the range of stories they could tell in the process, as well considerably increased the pace at which they burned through plot.
Where S1 slowly yet economically unravelled its many enigmas, S2 seemed to just hit the ground running, cramming about 1.5 times as much story as its predecessor into the available time slots. The energy at which it moved could be exhilarating, yet that came at the cost of the atmosphere, subtlety, and narrative/character coherence.
All of this is to say that, while Servant S2 has much brilliance, it is also considerably more uneven and messy than its predecessor, especially on an episode-by-episode basis. That quality is on full display in the finale, “Josephine,” which offers a strong finish yet brings to the fore some of the long-running issues that have been plaguing this year. First, let’s talk about what works.
Even for a series that is already as contained as Servant, “Josephine” feels very much like a bottleship episode or a play. Its focus is limited to almost entirely the four people inside the house: Leanne, the Turners, and the eponymous Josephine herself. Julian, though contacted by phone, never once shows up and none of the characters venture outside the confines of the house. Nor do we have the benefit of a news report informing us on what’s happening in the outside world.
Whether or not this was due to Covid-19 pandemic, this provides everything with a claustrophobic, unsettling feel, which plays into the oppressive horror film-esque atmosphere this episode is aiming for from the outset. It’s safe to say that the S2 finale may very well be the creepiest and scariest episode Servant has pulled off to date.
Key to this is Josephine (Barbara Sukowa), the mysterious “aunt” first mentioned 3 episodes ago by Leanne in a rhyme about a boogeyman-like figure that punishes those that have been “bad” and “mean.” With her face-obscuring black veil and typical-for-the-saints inhuman behavior, Josephine very much feels like an otherworldly monster or a personification of death.
Every scene with her is suffused with dread and the promise of something violent happening at a given moment. (The fact that we don’t know her and haven’t met her before is, in this sense, a plus.) Josephine ultimately proves to be more (relatively) human than she initially seems, which is a tad disappointing - indeed, it’s telling that her defeat comes after Leanne manages to pull off her veil, thereby removing some of her mystique - but she serves her purpose as a terrifying antagonist for Leanne to dispatch and so break her ties to the Church.
Speaking of the Lesser Saints, it’s gratifying that Leanne - and, in turn the audience - finally gets to see the Betamax video. Though this doesn’t quite make up for the weird lack of payoff to the setups of 2.08, it does at least explain and contextualize what went on and why. As we learn here, the saints have a very specific protocol for dealing with members that have gone rogue or been turned “bad.”
Basically, this entails killing/destroying the offending saint’s body in a very specific manner that will allow his/her soul to return to heaven and “be reunited with God”. It seems that the Turners’ fake “reunite them” note convinced George it was time to perform the reunification ritual on Leanne instead of simply showing her the tape.
The instructional video itself allows for a break from the more contained setting of the Turner home but also provides what is simultaneously the funniest and most disturbing sequence in the episode, a potent mixture of horror, comedy, and surrealism that Servant has mostly done quite well this season. It also preps us for the terror that Josephine will have unleashed on Leanne shortly thereafter.
Of course, there would be no show without the titular servant, so the possibility that Leanne would die is pretty much zero. But the show does put Leanne into legitimate danger before resorting to a deus ex machina… which brings us to what doesn’t work in the episode quite as well as the Leanne/Josephine story. Namely, the Turners.
Things start off quite strongly, as Josephine seems to intentionally isolate them from Leanne and each other, and we see Dorothy apparently truly recognize - for real, this time - that Jericho is dead. We see Sean demand Dorothy let him inside her room and beg her not to kill herself and so leave him alone, a scene that is beautiful, emotionally realistic, and completely in line with what we had seen the week before.
But then, the episode somehow goes from that to... Dorothy knocking the seemingly unstoppable Josephine out with a shovel and so “saving” Leanne, an act that leads the (now former) servant to throw her lot in with the Turners, embrace them as her true “family” and bring Jericho back again. It’s a development that, while arguably justifiable on a narrative level, is not truly earned in terms of character.
And though the stumble with Dorothy is a relatively minor issue in the context of the episode itself, it is indicative of the larger problems with the season as a whole. Lest we forget, earlier in the season, Dorothy had Leanne drugged and kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and then buried in the ground. Her actions have indirectly led to the deaths of the Marino family, not to mention all sorts of potential calamities.
By the end of 2.04, Dorothy had seemingly crossed the line into outright villainy, a development that was rushed but nonetheless powerful and believable. But the season began to almost immediately backtrack from this, while also steadfastly refusing to actually hold Dorothy accountable for her actions. Much of the writing for her in the middle of S2 has consequently been muddled and inconsistent.
2.09 for the most part righted the ship in terms of Dorothy’s motives, but it didn’t really address the gaps in her relationship with Leanne. And those gaps become ever more apparent as the season reaches its end. I really have no idea why Dorothy would bother to help Leanne at all, given everything that’s happened previously in both the episode and the season, nor am I convinced that Leanne would choose to help Dorothy given all that she’s put her through.*
*I initially wondered if this Dorothy was an illusion or doppelgänger conjured by the Devil or maybe an instance of Dorothy again losing control of her body and memory, a plot point seemingly forgotten. Perhaps, one could justify Leanne’s reactions as that of a traumatized girl suffering from Stockholm Syndrome but that doesn’t appear to be quite how the show has been portraying this throughout the season. In any case, if anybody would’ve rescued Leanne in that moment, then it would’ve been Sean.
We needed to see a scene after Dorothy lets Sean in that defines exactly what state she’s in, one that establishes what she knows or doesn’t after Josephine gave her “the truth.” The fact that she let Sean in indicates that she knows at the very least in that moment that her son is dead and chooses to live nonetheless. This suggests an interesting new dynamic for the show, wherein Dorothy recognizes that Jericho is dead, yet apparently doesn’t remember exactly how he’d died.
But while the finale gestures towards this, it again chooses to irritatingly obfuscate what Dorothy does and doesn’t know by the time we see her in that basement. And on top of that, whatever realization she’d had is almost immediately undone by Leanne’s re-animation of the child.*
This effectively allows the show to maintain its fundamental status quo, wherein everyone but Dorothy knows Jericho had died. And while this is not yet that big an issue, it could very easily turn into a huge problem down the line.
*Servant even plays into the trope of having someone walk up to the edge of revealing some crucial narrative information only to get interrupted at the last possible moment, as Sean doesn’t get to finish his confession before Jericho (presumably again the doll animated with the boy’s soul) is returned.
All this might sound like I’m disappointed by the finale but I’m not. “Josephine” remains a strong and taut installment overall that features a very promising setup for next season, which is bound to tip ever further into the supernatural.
I can’t wait to see what Servant does next. But at the same time, I believe the show really needs to break out of its holding patterns to remain a great series. Here’s hoping Season 3 has its characters actually reckon with the consequences of their actions.
Grade: A-
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Notes and Annotations:
It is difficult to not see Aunt Josephine, a brand new character only hinted at twice before in the past three episodes, as a stand-in for Aunt May, whose return was very clearly being set up at the start of this season. One can easily imagine a version of this episode where everything we see plays out with May in Josephine’s role, and the plot of “Josephine” very much feels like a dark reflection of “Balloon.” Once again, Leanne is prompted by the arrival of her mysterious “aunt” to leave the Turners, only this time she willingly chooses to stay and break the rules by returning Jericho to them.
If I had to guess, I’d say that May was originally intended to arrive in the flesh at the end of this season and that her conspicuous absence here was very much a side effect of the Covid-mandated production shutdown. Guest star Alison Elliot probably became unavailable due to the new production schedule and so the writers had to consequently invent a new aunt-agonist for Leanne to face in the finale. This is backed up by the fact that the series didn’t mention Josephine until 2.07, which was the first episode filmed after production resumed post-Covid.
A May-centric version of the episode perhaps would’ve been less ambiguous and creepy, yet it would’ve provided the central conflict between Leanne and her “aunt” with greater emotional resonance. Now, though, May is written off in one line of dialogue, though this does leave the door open for her to reappear in Seasons 3-4.
The video never explicitly defines the “Adversary” but the images and context make it pretty obvious. It’s the Devil, aka Satan, aka Lucifer. The saints are engaged in a battle with the Devil and if a saint goes rogue, then it’s a sign that the Devil is winning.
As I’ve mentioned before, Servant has gestured to the idea of the Devil being at work this season. The fact that the door to Sean’s room inexplicably opens, allowing him to reach Dorothy, which in turn leads to her disrupting Josephine’s ritual strongly suggests that Lucifer is trying his best to corrupt Leanne and turn her against God.
When it comes to balancing the various tones of Servant, Ishana Night Shyamalan’s script here is a marked improvement over 2.07.
If anything really bothered me about this season is that the sort of emotionally-charged confrontations that should’ve logically occurred between Sean/Dorothy (after 2.06) and Dorothy/Leanne never really happened. I hope this doesn’t continue into Season 3.