Summary
The plot thickens, as more of Kaya’s history is revealed, new relationships are formed, and things only seem to be getting worse.
This recap of The Nest Season 1 Episode 2 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
You can say something of The Nest that you can rarely say about TV thrillers — nobody really has any idea where this is going. Tonight’s episode revealed more of Kaya’s (Mirren Mack) background, which we’ll get to in a moment, but didn’t give much of a suggestion about how the revelation redefines her current predicament as the surrogate for Dan (Martin Compston) and Emily (Sophie Rundle). We know she’s dangerous, but who is she a danger to? Herself? Dan and Emily? The baby? Or Dan’s naive head-over-heels nephew, Jack (Samuel Paul Small)?
Questions, questions. Many more were raised by The Nest Episode 2, but at least we got some answers. Picking up three months after the conclusion of the premiere, with Kaya living in the swanky loch-side pad of the Dochertys, we rejoin the family and their teenage surrogate in an uneasy status quo, with Emily aggressively mothering Kaya and Dan still well-aware that she’s hiding something sinister. He tries turning to his sister Hilary (Fiona Bell) for info, assuming she can find out the details from work, but she wants no part in his deeply unethical scheme.
Kaya is struggling too, both with the pressure put on her by Emily and the discovery of her neighbor’s body at the bottom of the Clyde. We still don’t know if she killed him, and how she handles his death throughout the episode doesn’t make things clearer. Then again, she’s far from consistent in how she handles anything; sneaking out for a tee-total night on the tiles, ostensibly to blow off some steam, she’s made to feel guilty by another young mother who equates surrogacy to giving up her baby and promptly gets blotto. When Dan confronts her at the house, she threatens him with a knife.
This all begins to make sense later when we meet journalist Eleanor (Katie Leung), who’s looking into the body in the Clyde and has the thankless task of shunting the plot along by digging up crucial information. Despite being shooed away by her editor, she persists, eventually going looking for Dan directly at the restaurant where he has given Kaya a job. Her bag is swiped by Dan’s security, which is bad news for Kaya, since it contains a fair amount of background on her, including the news reports from when she, at 11 years old, stabbed a pregnant woman to death.
So that’s why she was in prison. It explains why she’s so keen to keep her background a secret, but it doesn’t explain why she has her victim’s name tattooed on her foot, or why she was so eager to act as a surrogate in the first place. Nor does it explain her connection to Jack, who also works at Dan’s restaurant — is this just typical teenage lust, or is she playing a long game that involves him somehow? Either way, Dan now knows who she is, even if Emily is content to cozy up with her on the couch and watch trash TV. Nobody seems to be safe in this increasingly claustrophobic thriller.
