‘Surface’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap – The Shape Is a Little Clearer, But the Surface Remains Glossy

The unexpected return of a familiar face is the gotcha moment of “Speak of the Devil”, but until then Episode 2 feels a little too glossy to be engaging. That’s a problem I alluded to already, and Surface Season 2 seems content to coast far earlier than a show like this should be coasting. Ironically, Callum is becoming a much more interesting figure in a story that is ostensibly about someone else.

Callum and Sophie do continue to work together, though, but this mostly manifests as Sophie giving him a lead and Callum doing all of the heavy lifting. The big mystery is the death certificate of Sophie’s mother, Emma, which lists her cause of death as “unclassified”. Callum has never seen that designation before and so begins a game of phone tennis that bounces Callum off the coroner’s office and sends him careering towards the doctor who determined Emma didn’t need an autopsy but elected not to list any official cause of death. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the doctor turns out to be dead.

I should mention that if nothing else, “Speak of the Devil” does lend a sense of underlying danger to the mystery that is very welcome (but, again, mostly explored through Callum). This relates to the target of Callum and Sophie’s investigation. The Huntley family move in royal circles. They’re wealthy and influential and can’t be touched by anything beyond incontrovertible proof of illicit activities, and they have already proved that they’re willing to ensure that kind of proof never sees the light of day by potentially deadly means, which may explain why Callum’s informant, Phoebe, is missing.

The most compelling way in which this affects the core dynamic is that it makes Callum distrustful of Sophie, which is understandable given her spotty backstory and the fact that she’s seemingly adamant about investigating a very dangerous and well-connected family, albeit primarily using – and endangering – Callum in order to do it. But while Callum suspects she isn’t telling the whole truth, he doesn’t think she’s lying, either. As far as we know, he’s right on both counts.

The problem for the show is that Callum’s story follows a much more straightforward thriller structure. He and his assistant Claire work on leads, dig up evidence and connections and have to look over their shoulders to make sure they’re not being imperiled. But Sophie’s amnesia leaves her stuck in a weird spot where she can’t make much meaningful progress on her own because she’s still trying to cosplay as Tess and tease out fragments of a previous life she can’t remember. Her performance is so unconvincing – by that I mean Sophie’s performance as Tess; Gugu Mbatha-Raw is still great – that I personally found myself switching off a bit during her scenes.

Gavin Drea in Surface | Image via Apple TV+

But anyway, here’s what Callum and Claire dig up. Through some poking around they discover that the dead doctor who signed off on Emma’s death just so happened to be the personal doctor of William Huntley. The obvious implication is that he paid off his personal doctor to rule her death as unsuspicious because it was, indeed, suspicious, and any other doctor would have said so. To support this claim, Emma’s entire existence seems to have been at least partially wiped out. Beyond a student visa, a degree, and that death certificate, she seems to have had no life before or in between her education and demise.

While all this is going on, Sophie attends Quinn’s engagement party, manipulating Eliza to get herself an invite to the secretive soiree. Little does Sophie know, though, that Eliza is manipulating her in turn, having only invited her to keep an eye on her after their sudden and deeply mysterious reunion.

Despite Sophie apparently only having briefly been a stablehand at the vast Huntley estate, every member of the family seems to individually recognize her, some of them with a visible degree of shock. It’s tortuous watching all this because it’s so obvious everyone knows who she is – and that she’s lying now – that Sophie’s fumbling attempts to maintain her cover come across as awkward. Eliza’s aunt, who still lives at the woodland estate, invites her to come visit, which I couldn’t read as anything other than a set-up.

Eliza has had enough of the façade, too. After catching Sophie in a blatant lie she tearfully confronts her about her current personality not exactly matching up to the Tess she remembers. Sophie is thoroughly unconvincing in her retorts, but with a way into the family – and onto the estate, which is clearly important since some coordinates scribbled on a newspaper clipping point there, presumably having been noted down by Sophie prior to her memory loss – she doesn’t really need Eliza anymore. If Sophie cuts her off completely from now, though, I expect Eliza will find her even more suspicious.

The end of Surface Season 2, Episode 2 implies that James has somehow followed Sophie to London – or, perhaps more likely, has headed to London himself and happened to bump into her. There’s a bit of an ambiguous quality to all this which does make one wonder if perhaps Sophie is seeing things again, but I think it’s likelier – and a lot more dramatic – that James has some kind of connection to the Huntleys. It might feel a bit contrived, but it’s the kind of energy that Surface could probably use a jolt of.