Episode five of Servant, “Cricket,” opened the doors of the Turner’s townhome to more people than ever while also shooing the Turners themselves out.
Sean is on the road pitching his recipes to restaurants, so he’s also driving Dorothy to work. When she’s not ready in a timely manner, he sends Leanne to get her moving and she finds Dorothy zoned out sitting on her bed. It’s unclear how often these episodes are affecting her since she “got better,” but the timeframe given was six weeks at one point and viewers have seen at least three of Dorothy’s “episodes” since then.
Once the Turners are out of the house, Leanne and Jericho make their escape as well. The camera lingers on a man parked outside in an SUV, but quickly follows Leanne on her walk past a bustling neighborhood and back to the house — where the door was left ajar. In the cellar, she finds Tobe preparing food for Sean, but he claims to have used a side door. He shows her a styrofoam box full of crickets for Sean and she has an appropriately depressing anecdote of home to go with the sounds.
Some of the neighborhood spills into the Turners’ home when Wanda and Olivia, two girls Leanne saw earlier sitting on a stoop, burst in and begin to make themselves at home. Wanda takes pictures of the home and asks invasive questions, like how much is the old furniture worth, where is Leanne from? It’s overbearing, but Leanne seems to cling to the friendship being offered.
Just as quickly as she breezed in, Wanda has to leave to run an errand, though she leaves Olivia behind. While playing hide and seek with her, Leanne discovers a onesy in the basement, but quickly puts it aside when she finds out someone ran from the house with Olivia as a witness. It’s unnerving even when viewers have a good idea of who is creeping around… but the real question is why?
Later that evening, Dorothy finds an excuse to get Leanne out of the house so that she and Sean can have sex. Leanne overhears them when she gets back and rushes to her room to read her bible. She writes Dorothy’s name in the margins and begins praying. This episode focused on Leanne and how she’s processing her time with the Turners is refreshing after having so many episodes lean into Sean’s point of view.
The next day, Leanne again notices the man in the SUV, but ignores him in favor of going to ask about Wanda and Olivia. The woman who answers is confused and tells Leanne that they don’t have any children. Whoever they were, they lied to her. This time, when she returns home, Leanne has to hide from the man in the SUV leaving the house. It’s a tense moment that was broken by me wondering if he saw the again abandoned stroller outside.
When she’s dressing Jericho in the mysterious yellow onesy later, Sean snatches it away from her and hides it before Dorothy can see it. Later that evening, she finds a cricket in her room and when she goes downstairs she overhears Julian and Sean talking about her. It’s upsetting that Julian feels so strongly about driving her out, but she merely acts like she didn’t overhear them in favor of writing Sean’s name in her bible as well.
When she wakes up, Leanne finds crickets all over her room and bed before taking them to the box in the cellar, leaving one in a glass cup in her room. It’s a disturbing visual, though she handles it like a champion and makes no comment to anyone else in the home.
Leanne goes to make her soup for lunch, but something else comes out of the can. Julian listened to Sean and played a prank on her, rather than the more cruel options he’d been originally suggesting. Before she can get upset but is interrupted by Wanda and Olivia visiting again. Wanda is friendly and tries to tell her about different, better opportunities for a nanny, but Leanne insists she can’t leave Jericho.
She serves Olivia the leftover lobster ice cream, knowing that Wanda warned her about allergies the other day. As Olivia starts to cough, Leanne stares out the window and beings to vent about everything that has gone wrong for her this episode. In her panic to find the EpiPen for Olivia, Wanda easily confesses to having been hired by Julian. It’s another crushing blow to Leanne, who thought she was making a friend.
In the evening, Sean asks to borrow Leanne for five minutes. After her breakthrough with the lobster ice cream and the chocolate – and since he can’t taste anything himself – he’s eager to get her opinion on what he’s doing with the crickets. “It’s sticky like caramel popcorn.” will be the reason I don’t eat kettle corn for a very long time.
Even later still, a distressed Leanne returns to her room and begins to flog herself while sobbing. As the camera pans out, a once-dead cricket is seen alive under her glass cup once again.
What does the cricket mean in relation to Leanne? Is she bringing things to life again through her sacrifices? When will she confront Julian about what he’s been doing to drive her away? Does Sean know what Julian is doing? As the tension ratchets up another notch, I can’t wait to see what happens next week on Servant.
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