Summary
Surface finally injects some jeopardy in Season 2. Episode 7, “What Comes Around”, creates a clearer upstairs/downstairs conflict and setting up a finale that should hopefully provide some catharsis.
Finally! Just like that, a meandering Season 2 of Surface starts to feel a lot more like a proper thriller with Episode 7, and it’s about time. I’ve been a little down on the show since the beginning of this season, and I can’t say the problems have all disappeared. But it’s definitely more interesting and a bit sillier and a lot more involving in “What Comes Around”, so you can’t argue with that.
It’s also, in a holistic sense, just a solid episode of television that sets up a finale wherein something dramatic basically has to happen, and that’s reassuring, too. I’m not sure I necessarily could have predicted this, either. Quinn showing more madcap villainy after seeming like the one who would turn against his father, James coming down more on the hero side of the aisle, Callum and Sophie forming more of a united front, and so on, and so forth. It’s starting to work out well.
Under our noses, Surface has become a kind of wacky upstairs/downstairs story – even though Sophie isn’t exactly broke, but you get the idea – where the flagrantly awful hoity-toity family’s reach is exceeding its grasp, and the “humble” heroes are rallying against them. Those battle lines become clearer here than they have been thus far, with James opening the episode as a captive on Quinn’s party bus after being kidnapped in the previous episode. Despite the fact that he was probably the last person Sophie – and arguably the audience – wanted to see when he returned out of the blue in Episode 2, he’s not the type to let this kind of slight slide.
It’s not enough for James to be an unwilling member of Quinn’s bachelor party; he goes back for seconds. To be fair, Quinn’s accusation about his one-night stand with Grace is correct, even if his theory about James and Sophie planning a complicated heist is not, so it’s a bit rich that James is so annoyed. But whatever. He ends up a guest at the Huntley estate for his troubles, which is mostly an excuse for Henry to lay the law down and prove that he’s still the head of the family and will remain so by force if necessary.
Phil Dunster in Surface Season 2 | Image via Apple TV+
You’ll notice that this depiction of the Huntleys doesn’t exactly jive with some previous depictions, like Quinn seemingly being so conflicted in Episode 3, and the allusions that Henry made to being genuinely regretful about what happened to Sophie’s mother when she confronted him in the previous episode. It’s probably a shame in the grand scheme of things that the ambiguity has gone out the window in favour of snarling rich dude stuff, but it’s still fun, easy to root against, and gives the actors plenty to play with.
And this all helps to create a feeling of genuine jeopardy, which Surface Season 2, Episode 7 finally has. A lot of this comes through via Callum, who is genuinely concerned about Sophie’s safety after what happened to his researcher and how antagonized the Huntleys have been. Callum is also the best avenue for thematic victory in this kind of story, since he’s the humble journalist trying to speak truth to power; you don’t really feel that about Sophie and James, who’re in it for personal reasons but don’t represent the masses who languish beneath the heel of the privileged.
It doesn’t feel like there are going to be very many “twists” remaining, beyond what may or may not happen to certain characters. It’s unambiguous that the Huntleys are responsible for the cover-up of Sophie’s mother’s death, and probably the death itself, even though there’s still a bit of mystery surrounding the precise circumstances of that particular detail. But I’m just not sure I care anymore, if I ever did; the motivations have shifted to wanting to see the Huntleys receive some kind of comeuppance. If Sophie, James, and Callum are going to give them that, then so be it.
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