The relationship between blind ex-cop Tess and her remote guide Sunny deepens in season two of Sight Unseen
A buddy cop drama is a genre that is tried and true. Crockett and Tubbs, Mulder and Scully, and Starsky and Hutch are just some of the crime-fighting duos that have won over viewers’ hearts while making the world a safer place. Now, returning for its second season, Sight Unseen presents a more unique set of buddies on patrol: Tess (Dolly Lewis) and Sunny (Agam Darshi), a blind former homicide detective-turned-police consultant and the remote seeing-eye guide who helps her solve murders from 3,000 miles away.

While initially a relationship built on necessity — as Tess’ fast-onset genetic condition, Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, renders her unable to do her job without the assistance of Sunny, a woman suffering from agoraphobia whose only connection to the outside world is Tess — their professional partnership soon evolved into a true friend-like bond. “It was a gradual process of Sunny sticking with Tess in a way that allowed Tess to slowly start to let down her guard,” says Lewis. “She didn’t have a choice in terms of needing someone to help guide her. But she did have a choice in terms of who she let into her life and how deeply. I think that was one of the most beautiful qualities of season one, that there was a progression of these two people starting to trust each other.”

But sharing a headspace with another person, however much you like them, is not always the easiest thing. In the second season, their dependency starts to grate on the partners. “Later in the season we make a reference to the fact that we’re with each other 24/7,” says Lewis. “It can be paradise, or it can be absolute torture depending on the mood of the person, in the moment. She’s absolutely in my ear all the time. But I think that speaks to the level of connection we have as a crime-solving duo, and also as friends.”
Having started to make peace with her condition, Tess now starts to experience new symptoms that throw her for a loop. Yet confronting this odd phenomenon is not something she is inclined to do. “In typical Tess fashion, she thinks it’ll solve itself on its own,” says Lewis. “That’s a defining quality of who she is, that she tries to muscle her way through things or looks the other way when it requires a little more vulnerability from her. But it does show up very unexpectedly, and it really presents a new challenge to her: Accepting something new, learning to work with something new, learning to see the positives about something fundamental, that really shaped her, from her past.”

For Lewis, who in her own life suffers from slowly progressing retinal detachment, being able to convey her character’s slow and uneasy acceptance of a life-changing condition has been the heart of the series. “I think a lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around that so much of our experience is nonlinear. It’s all over the place,” she says. “We see her play that out onscreen and I hope when people watch it, they’ll connect to it and understand that that’s okay.” In Season two, as Tess is getting more adept at living with her condition, the emotional rollercoaster is far from over. “By season two, she’s found her groove a little bit. She’s gotten back on the force as a consultant in a way that gives her meaning again,” says Lewis. “But I think what happens in season two is a shift in her sight loss that brings her to another level of reckoning with it. She’s dipping her toe into a new zip code, in terms of sight and emotion.”
What the disability has forced Lewis’ character to do is evolve in ways she never thought she would have, especially not in her profession. “The understanding is that before we meet her at the beginning of season one even, she was a great partner to Jake (Daniel Gillies), and she was at the top of her game, but she still did everything her own way. Daniel and I wonder sometimes how much Tess actually needed Jake,” says Lewis. “I think the sight loss hasn’t necessarily changed her in that she still very much does it her way, but I think she’s starting to understand that she has to ask for help and she has to respect other people’s strengths and contributions.”
And, in the process, a different evolution between the partners may follow. “I think we should go back to the theme of non-linear,” laughs Lewis. “There’s similarity between them. Jake is wrestling with something new. Tess is certainly wrestling with something new. How they relate to each other has to change. So, what they need from each other changes and expands.”
Sight Unseen airs Monday, February 3, on CTV