‘The Consultant’ Review: A Dark Comedy Cynically Designed for Social Media Buzz

Though Amazon’s The Consultant is based on a preexisting novel by horror writer Bentley Little, the series bears the unmistakable fingerprints of Servant creator Tony Basgallop. As in the Apple TV+ series, a stranger appears in the midst of some well-to-do environment, setting all involved to scramble and squirm in discomfort. These darkly comedic hijinks are complemented by the characters’ discreet investigation into the origin of their new (ab)normal.

In The Consultant, that stranger is the enigmatic Regus Patoff, played by Christoph Waltz as outwardly affable yet subtly unsettling and prickly, needling people with eccentricity from behind an earnest grin. Whatever clout Waltz brings to the series, however, is quickly subsumed by the show’s penchant for absurdity and shock tactics. Where those qualities suited Servant well enough, here they feel sloppy, if not cynically calculated to generate social media buzz.

The series opens on one such incident, with the young CEO, Sang (Brian Yoon), of mobile game developer CompWare shot in the head by a young boy, and for reasons that go unexplained. When Patoff sets up shop in Sang’s office the next day, there’s still visible blood stains on the glass window that overlooks the work area below.

We see Patoff’s reign primarily through the lens of Craig (Nat Wolff), a dickish coder, and Elaine (Brittany O’Grady), the studio’s ambitious “creative liaison.” The two have a work-spouse relationship, to the consternation of Craig’s fiancée, Patti (Aimee Carrero). Patoff uses such personal details to worm his way into his employees’ lives, subjecting the whole of CompWare to tests of dedication and loyalty in the name of the late CEO. (Among the milder tests is demanding, in the dead of night, that all remote workers return to the office within the hour.)

If nothing else, The Consultant retains a sense of genuine mystery throughout the season, at least where Patoff is concerned. His actions go far beyond the callous remove of an outsider brought in to make whatever cuts are deemed necessary, with his business and demeanor often so inexplicable that they invite the question of the supernatural. He could be a demon, a robot, or a pod person. He might even be human. His only weakness appears to be using the stairs.

Patoff’s actions are doubtlessly designed to shock the audience, but the series never locates a coherent pace for them. The initial absurdities start huge but quickly taper off, which makes sense on some level: It’s as though after a point, the absurd standards become normalized while Craig and Elaine begin to change into the sort of people who will survive under Patoff’s regime.

But in the rush for buzzy, batshit absurdity, The Consultant neglects to establish any semblance of normalcy to play against. We never see an ordinary workday, and we have so little sense of the characters’ personal lives that any mention of them feels jarring. They seem to exist only as lenses through which to view the ensuing chaos, not least of which because the series fails to drum up a plausible reason for Craig and Elaine to stop shopping their résumés around and stay at CompWare. Viewers, luckily, are under no such obligation.