Each week Joe (@bstolemyremote) and Terry (@gaylydreadful) discuss the most recent episode of Apple TV’s Servant, alternating between our respective sites -- queerhorrormovies.com and gaylydreadful.com.

S1 coverage: 1– 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

S2 coverage: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10
S3 coverage: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10
S4 coverage: 1 / 2 / 3

Episode 1.04 “Bear” — Leanne disobeys an order and discovers why Sean is so protective of baby Jericho.

TERRY

So, Joe. To echo your sentiment last week, oh my gosh, I think we’ve found a winner! Thanks to Apple TV+, we have the episodes in advance to bring you the recap the moment the show goes live and I don’t know about you, Joe, but it’s taking all of my strength to refrain from binging the show. That is definitely an indication that what we have is gold and this week’s episode “Bear” continues to dole out mysteries and answers by looking into the past.

We get a couple flashbacks that show Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean (Toby Kebbell) anxiously excited-slash-nervous about the results of a pregnancy test. They decide to name this baby Harry and use a marker to scribble it on the test stick. There’s a brief mention of naming a baby this early being bad luck. Knowing what we know, it’s very tragic; a fact only heightened by the color scheme and the way it changes as we transition back to the present.

Sean’s still having a rough go of it. He scratches at a cut or something behind his ear. He looks exhausted, but Dorothy sends him to go check on the baby. The baby’s missing, but it turns out that Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) has him in her room and Sean can hear her cooing at it from behind her closed door. The next morning, he’s looked ragged while the women are chipper and radiant (Dorothy almost manically so).

One element that persists in each episode is a focus on food and “Bear” is no different. It’s slightly reminiscent of the way Hannibal used and prepared food, but where that show made human flesh and organs beautiful, Servant focuses on the grotesque in mundane food prep. Last week, we had the disgusting eel degloving; this week, there’s an intimate focus on boiling lobster--like the eel, it might still be alive at this point--followed by the twisting and smashing and ripping. The way the camera captures the juicy and gushing aspects of lobster preparation, complete with squishy sound effects, contrasts beautifully with how adored and desired lobster meat is.

“Bear” was directed by Nimród Antal who also directed the Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson-led thriller Vacancy. It’s a nice touch because, like Vacancy, part of the plot this week is focused on surveillance. We get this nicely paced heist-like sequence where Sean sneaks into Leanne’s room, dismantles a nanny cam bear and hides it in the wall while she prepares her meal. It’s an excellently staged moment that also gives us another look at how organized Leanne likes her things. Everything on her dinner tray has to be posed just so.

But the biggest conflict this week seems to be Sean’s desire to keep the baby hidden from the outside world versus Dorothy’s intent to show him off to her work friends. It’s a battle that seems to be literally tearing Sean apart. But what do you think of this episode, Joe? Do you see a connection between Sean’s continual struggle against the inevitability of accepting the baby as his own and the way he’s constantly getting mysteriously wounded? Did you like the extra insight into Sean and Dorothy’s attempts to have a baby? Can I interest you in some lobster ice cream?

JOE

I’ll confess that I didn’t understand everyone’s apprehension about the lobster ice cream. Sure, it’s an unorthodox flavour, but I would assume that if a top tier chef is making it, it wouldn’t be disgusting. The most unappetizing element to me was actually Sean’s way of presenting it; the idea of eating ice cream out of the hollowed-out lobster carcass was barfy to me.

“Bear” is certainly not the most exciting of the four episodes of Servant that we’ve seen so far, but the inclusion of the flashbacks lends it a different vibe than the previous three. I’ll confess that I occasionally struggled to differentiate the time periods, despite Antal’s use of increased natural light to reinforce happier times when Sean and Dorothy initially discover their pregnancy.

Still, the realization that Dorothy has an “overactive immune system” that (and I quote) “kills them all” lends an extra tragic layer to the Turner family’s struggle. Jericho isn’t their first loss; he’s merely the latest in what looks like a lengthy battle to bring a child into their lives. It provides some key insight into why Dorothy became catatonic following whatever fate befall Jericho Version 1, as well as why Sean is so hesitant to let the outside world in. They’ve been here before and despite the real live baby living in their house, he’s clearly afraid that this is merely the latest in a long string of casualties.

As for his mysterious wounds...I have a suspicion, but I don’t know. Servant has turned me into a hypervigilant viewer: I’m focused on every little thing trying to figure out whether they’re meaningful. His litany of injuries, which now includes the aforementioned neck nick, as well as his loss of taste, could be suggestive of his own psychosomatic response to the stress of what’s happening in the house. Dorothy initially tuned out and now she’s playacting; maybe Sean’s distress is simply presenting in a different way. Let me stew on it for a little bit.

The issue is that Sean is also becoming increasingly paranoid. Not only does he refuse to invite friends over, or let the baby out of the house, he barely leaves the house (consider: when did we last see him outside?). And then there’s the new development with the bear cam in the walls, which elevates his suspicion of Leanne from lower tier dangerous to borderline obsessive. I did love how the iris frame of the bear emphasizes the voyeurism of his actions - he might as well be leering at her through a peep hole a la Black Christmas.

But Terry, we’ve come this far and we haven’t even addressed the episode’s climax, which is that Leanne has a surprising connection to the Turners (revealed to us via an old News 8 videotape from March 2011).

What do you make of this development? Do you have any opinions on Sean’s weird belief that Leanne smuggled her own baby into the house to avoid religious persecution? And does Julian’s (Rupert Grint) immediate enquiry about seeing Leanne naked on the bear cam footage confirm that he’s a big ol’douche?

TERRY

We’ll have to disagree about lobster ice cream, Joe. But, funny you should bring up serving it in a lobster shell because...have you seen Bon Appétit recently?

With all the mysteries and subtleties Servant has been indulging in, I think we can conclusively say that there is one certainty: yes, Julian is a creepo douche. Each episode, his fascination with Leanne as some kind of sexual fantasy continues to grow.

Ok, I’m glad you brought up the March 2011 News 8 tape. This reveal was a fantastic twist that deepens my curiosity about Leanne. The episode draws to an end with an almost uneasy detente between Sean and Leanne, shared over lobster à la (ice) crème. He asks her why she picked them and after a pregnant pause, she says, “I knew I’d be happy here.” This leads us to Sean and Dorothy in bed, little Jericho snuggled between them for the first time.

Leanne, meanwhile, haunts the house alone and specifically selects the March 2011 tape that showed Dorothy covering a Little Miss Pageant. And there, on the end, is little Leanne, twiddling her thumbs. Those two moments together seem to add significance to why she’s currently in the house...but I’m curious what else might have happened at the pageant to trigger her interest in the Turner family. Do you have any thoughts on that, Joe?

I did love Sean’s idea of Leanne smuggling the baby in her suitcase, but I doubt it’s from religious persecution. There’s something else going on here, between the Blair Witch Cross Effigies, the burnt house in Wisconsin and the gravesite discovery of a Leanne who died in 2007. The puzzle pieces are slowly being laid out, but we’re still missing the connecting tissue.

I do wonder if there’s something more to Leanne. There’s an interesting connection between the idea of the doll becoming human and Leanne’s mimicry of things around her. She’s so vacant...like an automation or doll herself. She’s slowly coming more to life, though, by picking up on social cues and incorporating them. I’m thinking of “Eel” where she witnesses Dorothy groping Sean and then performs the move on Julian. But I’m also thinking of the last shot of “Bear” where, after witnessing the Little Miss Leanne twiddling her thumbs, she smiles and starts twiddling her own. Robot? Possession? A golem? There’s something performative here. I can taste it...even if Sean can’t.

What do you think, Joe? Am I going wild on my conjectures again? We both know how those turned out in AHS: 1984 (i.e., poorly). And can we talk about Dorothy’s news reports? Do you think they have some significance to the overarching story?

JOE

Oh gosh, just seeing you list the mysteries makes me realize how much we simply don’t know about what’s going on (and how enticing that is!)

I’ve been paying a great deal of attention to Dorothy’s news reports because Leanne is so transfixed on them. It’s possible, in hindsight, that she’s simply obsessed with the idea of seeing herself back on screen, which is the other significant development that we see in this episode when Leanne sneaks Jericho out of the house and shows up behind Dorothy during a live segment.

But I do wonder if we’re not also meant to pay attention to the content of these stories. Servant is a half hour show, so dedicating significant screen time to Dorothy’s reporting in nearly every episode (except “Eel” which takes place during Dorothy’s day off) suggests that we should be taking note. Thus far she’s done stories on the murder of Eric Sherman (in “Reborn”), a $100K heroin bust that left children in foster care (in “Wood”) and then two stories in “Bear,” including her fluff piece on the sanitation workers in tunnels and the two part non-guilty verdict for accused murderer Timothy York. It hasn’t quite all coalesced, but my theory (and it’s a big stretch) is that all of these cases, except the sewer stuff, involve a murder or children, which may offer a hint that we’re building to a murder in the Turner household. I could be completely off base, but let’s keep an eye on future News 8 segments.

As for the performativity, I don’t think you’re off the mark, Terry. In our first recap we briefly touched on doubling in the show, but there’s also an undeniable staged performativity to all of these characters’ actions. Dorothy and Sean are putting up a front about how new parents act (and covering up that they’re undergone something traumatic) for the outside world. Even the objects in the house are facsimiles of real/other things: the creepy Jericho baby in the first episode is a stand-in for a real child, and the teddy bear that provides this week’s title is actually a camera.

Leanne is obviously the centerpiece of this. She’s been performing since she arrived at the Turners’ house: pretending that Jericho is a real child, that she doesn’t drink or know anything about sex, and acting like she doesn’t know the family. I definitely hope she’s not a robot, but I’d be lying if I didn’t think that she’s co-opted the identity of the real Leanne (possibly as some kind of religious escape).

Just to up the ante, though, I have a completely separate (possibly contradictory theory), which is that Sean is going crazy. I think that Leanne, her Blair Witch effigies and her preferential treatment of Dorothy are all reflective of her intention to protect Dorothy and Jericho from Sean. I also think that’s why Sean is suffering weird injuries; he’s slowly going crazy and his afflictions are symbolic manifestations of his diminishing grasp on reality.

But, really, who knows?! Terry, Servant continues to offer tantalizing mysteries without a ton of answers, so we’re just hypothesizing in the dark for now. I’m curious to hear from readers, however, if the show’s slow, measured pacing and murky ambience is working for them. I know it certainly is for me!

Next week: we’re back on queerhorrormovies.com for episode 5, “Cricket.”