Main cast: Kyle Howard (Ted), Angela Sarafyan (Tatum), Dustin Milligan (Gavin), Natalie Hall (Missy), Molly Hagan (Kiwi), and Julian Sands (Steven Essex)
Director: Charles Hood
You know, so far the second season of Into the Dark is delivering some out of norm episodes, although with Blumhouse Productions being what it is, these episodes feel like watered-down wannabes of better films than trailblazers in their own right.
A Nasty Piece of Work on the surface is something different from what I’ve said above. It seems fresh and different, a rare two for two in a single episode. While it is a crazy boss affair, this episode is more of a dark comedy populated by crazy, likely homicidal people acting in a most over the top manner.
In this, there is no better than Julian Sands when it comes to playing the spectacularly nasty cartoon villain boss Steven Essex. He invites two bitter rivals in his company, the cynical nerdy Ted and the cartoon oaf Gavin, along with these men’s wives, to an evening for dinner with him and his wife Kiwi.
The catch. as he will reveal, is that this dinner is actually his idea of an unorthodox interview of the two men to see which one will fill a new executive post in the company. As the evening continues, he and his equally over the top, likely equally insane wife will drive these men over the wall, probably destroy their relationships with their wives, and maybe even coax the men into jolly murderous after-dinner games.
This episode may seem like some delicious satire on corporate culture, but the reality is, this episode has no logical plot. Don’t bother even thinking about it, because characters will say and do one thing in this scene, and then completely act differently in the following scene—as if the prior scene never happened. Scenes seemed to be edited out of sequence just to make the audience laugh or go “Woah!” with the Essexes’ increasingly cruel and nonsensical tricks, and their victims’ increasingly incredulous reasons not to just walk away ASAP. In fact, when it comes to the latter, the episode soon stops trying to justify the victims’ willingness to stay on and endure the Essexes’ games. It’s all about creating manic scenes of scenery chewing.
Kyle Howard is actually very nice to look at here, as he looks the right amount of hot nerdy realness and borderline crazy psycho all in one nicely-groomed bundle. Dustin Milligan, on the other hand, is stuck in the thankless role of an idiot asshole, while Natalie Hall has to play a bewilderingly stupid bimbo. Angela Sarafyan has the best role of those that play the Essexes’ victims, perhaps, as Tatum is the sole sane person of the bunch…. or so it seems, heh.
In the end, though, they are all just orbiting around Julian Sands and Molly Hagan, as they chomp, clown around, and chew scenery harder than a herd of ravenous cattle.
To give these two credit, this episode is a lot of fun for the first 30 minutes or so because of all the entertaining scenery chewing. Also, I am intrigued enough to want to find out how the evening will turn out for these morons.
Unfortunately, the episode begins to drag, as it throws gags and twists and turns non-stop in an increasingly repetitive manner. The first 30 minutes and the last 15 minutes of this episode are the most entertaining part—everything else feels like filler included just to draw out the running time.
In the end, if this one had been more judiciously edited to excise more of the filler scenes in the middle parts of the movie, A Nasty Piece of Work would have been the best episode of Into the Dark to date. As it is, well, it’s the best episode to date in this second season. It’s still early in the season, though, so perhaps eventually a better episode will come along… but yeah, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that episode. I have seen the past episodes of this show, and I know better than to expect much from it!
