Tiger
Episode 5 of Servant Season 3 starts with Leanne waking up and noticing hustle and bustle outside. The street is setting up a Block Party in the street right outside their house, with food trucks fronted by Sean. His stall even reads “End Homeless Hunger”. Of course, Leanne’s paranoia is at fever pitch, given how many people are outside. Dorothy notices her rival reporter over the other side of the street, believing this “amateur”, Isabelle, is encroaching on her space. While Dorothy continues to butt heads with her, Leanne ends up getting a face painting of a tiger. However, while her eyes are closed and her painter steps outside, someone appears with a gnarly, dirty finger and rubs it across her forehead. But who? Well, it unsettles Leanne completely as she skips out and tries to catch a breath. There, she overhears Isabelle badmouthing Dorothy. In the midst of this, there’s a nice nugget of information about Leanne’s past, and specifically how she used to love tigers as a child. As the day continues, she lets herself indulge in the street events, even bouncing on the bouncy castle (bounce house for those in America!) and letting herself smile and laugh. That’s of course all a façade as the night’s events take a turn for the worst. Leanne shows up at one of the food trucks where a couple are huddled over a grill. And what’s on the grill? A silver dagger. As they chase after Leanne, it becomes clear that this man is the one responsible for touching her head. The cult have arrived, and as Leanne hurries away, she walks right into all the homeless kids outside, who charge at her location. We don’t actually see what happens between that and Leanne returning home, but she’s quick to hide everything that’s happened. She washes her clothes, tries to steady her breathing and pretends like nothing is awry. Only, she’s broken. As Leanne heads up to the bathroom, she touches the back of her head, which is blood-stained, and wipes it down her face. As a single tear drops down her cheek, the episode comes to a close.
The Episode Review
Finally we get some movement on the plot this week, with the focus squarely on Leanne. With the block party underway, Leanne allows herself to actually let loose and have some fun. It’s interesting to see how that tiger plays into her past, and the ominous finger unfortunately belongs to one of Aunt Josephine’s followers, which causes a lot of issues at the end during that tense chase sequence. It’s still unknown at this point exactly what happened with the homeless kids in the park but it’s clear that Aunt Josephine’s people are here an they’re not going down without a fight. Hopefully next week’s chapter expands and improves on what we’ve seen here, and with the halfway point of this season, there’s been very little movement with the plot, which is a shame. Still, this is a much-improved episode and hopefully a sign of things to come.
