Netflix and Christopher Waltz join forces to tell us a story about selfishness and greed. Except they never quite get that far.
Under New Management
The premise is familiar enough: a failing company gets taken over by an evil new boss. He instantly starts firing people for being a minute late or having the wrong body odour.
With the rest, he plays cruel mind games to see how far they will go to keep their jobs or even get a promotion.
And because that’s not evil enough, we find out in the very first episode that he made a man suck his cock in his own office.
The fact that “The Consultant” uses a forced sexual act to drive home its titular character’s villainy is emblematic to the show and its lack of subtlety.
From disfigured Russian beauties to dead elephants, there is no shortage of shocking images. Yet, we never get close enough to any of these characters to develop any real sense of danger.
The man, the mystery
In the case of Regus Patoff, self proclaimed consultant and saviour of business legacies, the feeling of distance is most definitely intentional. He spends all his days and most nights at the office, is always immaculately dressed, always looking for ways to improve the company - the very picture of a successful businessman. But we never find out where he came from, how he knows so much about his clients and their staff, or even where his loyalties lie - or if he has any at all. Fortunately, Christoph Waltz is best when he can be enigmatic, the cruel puppet master, always a little out of reach. There is more than a hint of something supernatural to his character, but it is ultimately left to our imagination to decide what and who to believe. Some questions are better left unanswered, and this uncertainty may well be the best thing about “The Consultant”.
Also Appearing
Unfortunately, the same formula doesn’t work nearly as well for the rest of the team. It is difficult to feel compassion for Craig and Elaine when their reasons for staying at CompWare are so vague and they could simply walk out at any point in the story.
In the same vein, we never see any happiness or affection between Patty and Craig, which makes their break up a mute point.
Former boss Sang is probably the strangest of them all. We learn that he had huge commercial success very early in life, which would explain his apparent lack of passion and financial planning skills. But the picture is inconsistent- he allows his staff to work from home unsupervised, but has surveillance cameras in every room of the (glass) office. To what end? And would he really kill himself before even trying to get help from a proper consultant?
In the end we are left with the question why we should care about any of these characters when they care so little for themselves and each other.
Perhaps turning the source material into a two-hour film instead of an multi-episode series would have been the better choice.
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