At the center of the story is the office of a small but growing mobile game development company. The startup is led by a twenty-year-old genius from South Korea, Sang, a man who is described to us from the very first minutes as a talented leader with an exorbitant ego. A group of schoolchildren with a technical flair arrive at a meeting, but instead of prearranged questions, gunshots are heard in a closed office. Sang’s assistant Elayne (Brittany O’Grady from White Lotus season 1) is horrified to find her boss dead as the doors slam open – an angelic schoolboy has shot Sang.
As the staff try to cope with the shock and understand the boy’s motives, a mysterious stranger Regus Patoff (Waltz) appears on the threshold of the office – a man without a clear biography and digital footprints on the network. Afraid of glass stairs but not afraid to hurt others’ feelings, this enigmatic counselor calls himself the new boss and takes the reins into his own hands. Along with colleague Craig (Nat Wolfe of Paper Towns), Elayne tries to understand Patoff’s past and present: who is he, where did he come from, and why are his management methods suddenly poisoning the life of the entire office?
The Patoff figure is central throughout the series. And we have to pay our respects to showrunner Tony Basgallop (“Home with Servants”) who made a successful bet on Waltz’s talent. His character combines the demonic charm of Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, the virtuosity of Ralph Fiennes in The Menu, and the quirkiness of Jared Leto in It Didn’t Work. But unlike Leto, who plays the real eccentric millionaire Adam Newman, Patoff’s image is fictional.
However, this explanation is opposed by some viewers who saw a satire on Elon Musk in the hero of Waltz. It’s hard to guess how accurate this version is because author Bentley Little’s original novel came out in 2016—long before Musk started getting massively weird.
But whoever is right, there is ample room for various comments in the Advisor. The half-hour series, consisting of 8 episodes, does not have time to sag under the scale of the plan, but still cracks from time to time.
Instilling inhuman fear into heroes from the very first minutes, the image of Patoff tests them for strength over four hours of screen time. What happens if I fire all remote workers (including the girl in a wheelchair) who can’t come to the office within an hour? What if I start meddling in the private lives of employees? Or am I going to be a partner in kidnapping someone? Will they allow all this and where is the line where their patience will burst?
While we’re unraveling movie theaters with Elayne and Craig, we’ll hear a strange story about a Moscow businessman whose life is drastically reduced after meeting Regus; We will go to the jeweler, who will tell you that hundreds of doctors have ordered an anatomical human skeleton from gold throughout the year at the behest of an sinister advisor, and will also learn about the mysterious archive hidden behind the server room. It is not clear how Regus collects the files on all employees and how the most personal information is obtained.
There will even be a scene in the church where Craig will try to learn from the priest how the exorcism rite goes – in case the nature of Pattof’s evil truly has an extraterrestrial origin.
All these subplots help the story pick up pace and deftly balance genres: mysticism replaces the toxic leader’s satire, and the drama about human frailty turns into a dark comedy about human depravity.
But the same plot turns the series upside down: many messy clues go undisclosed, we won’t hear the answers to some important questions, and the finale has Lost fans totally excited. The glass staircase of the office, constantly flickering in the frame, seems to personify the fragility of the back of history – it’s no coincidence that Patoff was so afraid of it.
However, the show’s controversial ending doesn’t stop viewers from enjoying this hooligan ride along the entire route: it certainly won’t be boring or predictable. When the show’s internal navigator fails, it’s important to just fasten your seat belts and forgive the helmsman.