The Consultant is a dark comedy series produced by Ann Kindberg, created and written by Tony Basgallop and is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Bentley Little. The series has 8 episodes, each with a runtime of around 30 minutes and stars Christoph Waltz, Nat Wolff, Brittany O’Grady, Aimee Carrero and Brian Yoon, alongside other cast members.
Amazon Prime Video describes the series as: “After an unspeakable tragedy at compware, a games studio based in downtown los angeles, a mysterious consultant, regus patoff, blows into town and takes charge.”
The Consultant Recap
After leading game development company CompWare’s famed head Ahn Sang-woo is brutally murdered by a middle schooler in his cabin while on a tour of the company, the grieving employees are left astonished at the entry of Regus Patoff, a seemingly unknown and mysterious entity who just appears out of thin air right after the tragic incident.
What was once a chill workspace turns into a place for competition and brutality when Patoff takes over the company and introduces unnecessary authoritarian rules that result in several people getting fired for absolutely no reason, and those who are left must fight amonst themselves to survive.
Cuaght in this crossfire are Elaine and Craig, two employees of CompWare, who realise from the moment that they meet Patoff that something is very wrong with him. They go through CCTV footage of the day that Patoff met Sang-woo and realise that the man seemingly won their leader over in a matter of minutes and then made him give him a blowjob! Although they are not able to figure out what exactly was said, they realise that Patoff isn’t someone to be taken lightly.
In a bid to finding out more about him, Craig follows a lead given by Milani, a woman he helped free from Patoff’s kidnapping attempt, to a jeweller called Frank Florez, who tells him that he once gave up his all to create 206 pieces of bones out of solid gold for different doctors (or people pretending to be doctors) and he suspects that these people used these gold bones and it might be linked to Regus Patoff in some way.
Meanwhile, a flashback tells the audience what happened that fateful day at Sang-woo’s office – Patoff, having prior knowledge that the company is in a severe financial crisis, meets Sang-woo and tells him that he knows about his suicidal thoughts as well. Thus, he offers him an opportunity to take his legacy forward after his death, and without having anything to lose, Sang-woo signs his forms and gives him consent to take care of the company after his death.
It is then revealed that Patoff was the one who probably manipulated the kid in some way to carry out the murder as he tells Sang-woo that he will start within in two weeks. We see that Patoff does have a way of manipulating others, as seen with him seemingly making Patti work for hours locked in a basement without a care in the world.
The Consultant Ending Explained
In the end, Craig, remembering the game that they created, defeats Patoff in a similar way – by breaking the glass and letting him fall below on the ground. The impact results in Patoff losing a toe which Craig late dissects to find a gold bone instead. The revelation proves the consultant was probably a robot and was made of golden bones. It’s a satire on corporate moguls who have no empathy or consideration for their employees and only think about the ways in which they can manipulate others into doing their bidding.
Either way, maybe that is why Patoff displayed such odd characteristics, including never sleeping at night and not being able to go up the stairs. He also, quite mechanically, repeats the same question over and over again to people, proving that he has no thought or feeling of any sort. The bathroom on the top of the hill might be a curious little nugget for many – I think that, as a robot, he didn’t need for, but in order not to look suspicious, he partook in this habit to blend in.
But then again, he could’ve just gone to a bathroom in a hotel room or the office. Of course, I don’t know how he is supposed to be disposing of the food he is eating. Maybe he has some valve that stores the food, and he has to open his body up to take indisgested food out.
Anyway, Patoff leaves CompWare in the end and moves on to the robotics company, whose leader dies a few days after he visits her. This is seemingly because his needs are met in CompWare, and he is simply trying to do the same in the next company – pulling the company out of financial ruin and introducing competitiveness and dissent. The idea is to make the employees work the most so that the company makes the maximum profit instead of looking at the employees’ wellbeing.
But what’s with the blowjob? If he’s really a robot, it clearly wasn’t for pleasure. Maybe it was just a power move of some kind.
Does Elaine Become the Next Boss?
I think Patoff was considering both Craig and Elaine for the position, and he thus went out with Craig for that beer. However, he wanted someone just like him – calculative and without compassion. Craig, fortunately, refuses to change himself and give up his humanity for him, as he proves by letting Milani go.
Meanwhile, Elaine does as Patoff asks; although she raises her voice at first and helps others out, she slowly starts to mirror the new boss. She takes Ian’s cabin, lets a wild elephant out on the street, which results in the animal dying and shows no guilt whatsoever about it. It’s these changes that helps her become the next boss, as is proved when her name is on the door of Patoff’s and Sang-woo’s former office.
Have more questions? Let us know in the comments below or share your theories with us!
The Consultant is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Also Read: The Consultant (2023) Review: Christoph Waltz is Chilling in This Comedy-Thriller
Check your work. Geez.
???
You sound like an idiot. I don’t even know how to indulge such incompetence. If you get paid for this… it is sad.
I was under the impression that the show was more hinting at Patoff being Satan rather than a robot. Since that one guy was going to church and reciting bible verses. Then there’s that scene where Patoff walks into the confession booth all weirdly while tempting the guy’s girlfriend. When Patoff loses his toe at the end, there is blood which implies he is made of flesh not machine. Patoff has knowledge of things it would be nearly impossible for him to know without supernatural powers. Lasty, he tempts people with sin, he gets people to do bad things.
What he was doing was not about efficiency if you ask me, it was more like book of Job where he is Satan and he is seeing if he can get good people to do bad things. I don’t know why Flores made gold bones for him. If he was a robot then who made him and how? I know Flores was being commissioned by random doctors, but you need much more than doctors to create a robot like that. Maybe he is a robot, I don’t know, maybe a satanic robot. The ending just doesn’t really make sense.
The confessional scene was a dream. We saw her wake up. But she was not the only one. He invaded Craig’s dreams too.
So, if all these doctors, or pseudo-doctors were creating his gold skeletons, what the heck were they getting out of it, and how did they have the money to pay Juarez? And what was it, hypnosis that had Patti under his thrall? Housekeeping notes about that. Why lock her in? And as in many similar plot situations, what if she had to go to the bathroom?
Did he invade the dreams or those two just dreamed? If he’s capable of invading dreams, it’s even easier with hypnosis. You have a good point with the need for bathroom. You can’t push that way indeterminately. It shows that the show creators took the book which is about something else and they got tangled in the web of loose threads they laid out, not knowing how to tie them together. It’s a very compelling mystery show that got me interested but nothing makes sense. In terms of premises and what conclusions it draws from there it could have been just a single 30 min Black Mirror episode and explain make as much sense. The rest it’s all fo the show.
Also, if he can invade dreams, why call Elaine at 3 am and ask her to come to the work?