Rahul Kohli wears a Konstantin Chaykin Joker

In episode four of The Fall of the House of Usher, Mike Flanagan's 2023 Netflix series, Napoleon 'Leo' Usher tears his apartment apart with a hammer, swinging at a black cat that is not there. He is bloodied and screaming, his robe hanging open. Rahul Kohli plays Leo as the flashy, hedonistic son of a pharmaceutical dynasty, a socialite with a drug for every occasion, and the series is killing the Usher heirs off one at a time. Leo goes over a balcony chasing the cat. The cat, it turns out, had been alive the whole time.

On Leo's wrist, the watch publication Worn & Wound identified a Konstantin Chaykin Joker. The dial is built to look like a face: two discs sit where the eyes go, one counting hours and one counting minutes regulator-style, and a moon phase fills the mouth, tracking the age of the moon while the watch grins. Chaykin is a Russian independent and a member of the AHCI, the academy of independent watchmakers, and the Joker arrived at Baselworld in 2017 as the first of his Wristmons line: a 42mm steel case he machines himself, his caliber K07-0 built on a Swiss ETA 2824 under a 61-part module of his own, a run of 99 pieces at 6,990 euros, about 7,550 dollars then. By Worn & Wound's reading, a true independent's watch on a major production is rare, and the choice says things about Leo the script never states out loud.

It is also a watch named Joker, its dial set in a grin, on the Usher who dies swinging a hammer at a cat that was never there.