Prime Video lists its new show, The Consultant, starring Christoph Waltz, as a dark comedy, but we aren’t finding much funny about it at all, to be honest. Two-time Academy Award winner, Waltz has never been creepier, and the laughs are few and far between in this dark portrait of a mysterious consultant who shows up one day to replace the violently gunned down CEO and founder of Comp Ware, a Los Angeles-based gaming app company. You may have thought Waltz was at his creepiest in his 2009 breakout role as German SS Officer Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. But, in fact, you probably still haven’t seen the actor more bizarrely twisted and sinister than in The Consultant. This Waltz character brings some seriously cringe-worthy moments in a rare foray onto the small screen.
Christoph Waltz Just Waltzes Right In
From all outward appearances, Comp Ware appears to be another successful Gen Z startup gaming company providing downloadable games to be played like Mr. Wang’s Jungle Adventure and other handheld device apps. But underneath the bustling office floor and sleek glass managerial suites is a company that is struggling to keep its head afloat financially. The company’s founder is just 20 years old and while he has all the acumen necessary to develop the next biggest gaming craze, Sang (Brian Yoon) has neglected the other important aspects of creating and maintaining a successful business. His unwillingness or inability to manage the company’s books has left him open to others who may be looking to take the precious gaming commodity and allow it to realize its full potential. So when Sang signs a mysterious contract with an even more mercurial consultant named Regus Patoff (Waltz), he is unwittingly handing the reins of Comp Ware over to a man who has just shown up, unannounced in his office just fifteen minutes prior. And things are about to get really strange at the laid-back startup.
Patoff Has an Unusual Managerial Style
Upon his arrival, Regus Patoff proves that he is going to be running a tight ship. His first order of business is to order everyone who is working remotely to be in the office within one hour or risk being fired. When a physically challenged woman in a wheelchair shows up just five minutes after the deadline, he locks her out of the building and terminates her employment. He then threatens to fire another man because he doesn’t like the way he smells. This could be seen as a strict management style or just flat-out cruel. When a posh office on the managerial suite floor opens up, Patoff initiates an everyone for themselves, cutthroat free for all to see who wants the vacant suite. It leads to a mad scramble whereby one lady ends up being carried out of the office kicking and screaming like a mental patient by a group of co-workers. Patoff definitely is unorthodox and wants to shake things up, but where in the heck is the HR department throughout all of this? Instilling a culture of discrimination and bullying, and doing away with meritocracy is hardly the most effective and efficient way to galvanize morale and streamline efficiency.
Craig (Nat Wolff) wants to find out more about this strange new consultant who has come in literally overnight and turned their easygoing workplace into a hellish environment. So one night he accompanies Patoff on a guy’s night out to an upscale L.A. nightclub. What starts out as an uncomfortable evening turns downright sinister as Craig finds himself in the middle of an abduction. When a person in a tied-off potato sack is dumped into the back of the SUV they’re driving, Craig has a full-blown panic attack. Patoff is very calm and collected and talks Craig through the ordeal and explains the kidnapping as just a ploy to test Craig’s resolve in a crisis. Are you kidding? Later, after a quick and informal brainstorming session with his executives, Elaine (Brittany O’Grady) half-jokingly suggests that they should steal an elephant and turn it loose in the downtown streets of L.A. as a way to drum up business for their new jungle-based app. Naturally, Patoff thinks it’s a terrific idea and tasks her with providing the logistics (which includes her selling sexual favors to a cruel ex-boyfriend) in order to make the marketing ploy happen.
Is Patoff Even Human?
After weeks of being sabotaged by Patoff in both the workplace and in his relationship with his fiancé, Patti (Aimee Carrero), Craig decides to do a little digging into the history of their humanoid, almost robotic new consultant who has made it his mission to ruin his once productive if slightly unmotivated lifestyle. He discovers that over the course of several years, Patoff has been paying a local jeweler large amounts of money to create a human skeleton made entirely out of solid gold. But this only seems to raise more questions than it answers. Is Patoff some type of alien constructed out of gold? Is he some newly designed humanoid creation out of some laboratory and made to assimilate? These are all aspects that fit an actor of Waltz’s caliber perfectly as his flat affect, and tone-deaf attitude only serve to further the mystery behind whom, or what, he really is.
As far as being truly diabolical and demented, it’s hard to imagine any character rising to the level of SS Officer Hans Latfta in Inglourious Basterds, So while Regus Patoff doesn’t get the same type of Tarantino-type script to work with in The Consultant, he manages to bring his uncanny blend of German austerity with a splash of misdirected enthusiasm. It all makes for another beautifully creepy and wildly eccentric leading man that takes an otherwise unexceptional show to a compelling tale. If you plan to check it out, you’ve been warned! There are some extremely uncomfortable scenes that will test your meddle as the viewer.
