‘Severance’ Season 2 Finale: See You at the Equator

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check out the official H TV podcast feed. I'm Joyner Robinson.
I'm Rob Mahoney. And we are on our 200 of podcasting together this week, Rob.
What a joy. What a thrill.
What a delight for me.

I was worried you'd be sick of it by now, Jo. If not sick of me, at least sick of being in the void.
Maybe the void. Maybe the void has worn out its welcome.
Hello. We're here.
It is Thursday night as you are listening or watching this. And the severance finale has just dropped.
And so We're here with our hot Severance Finale takes.

And this is a different severance finale takes.

And this is a different severance reaction episode than what we usually put together,

because usually the procedure is severance drops Thursday night. Over Thursday night into Friday

morning, we're poking. I mean, at least I won't speak for Rob.
I'm snooping around the Reddit

boards. I am reading your emails.
We're both reading your emails and then I am like cramming the official pod over breakfast so we can get the stiller and the Scott takes and stuff like that none of that has happened today we are recording this in advance of the finale dropping so you're just getting, uncut gems from Rob and me about our severance reaction thoughts and feelings. But Monday, next week, we will be recording our sort of more usual severance reaction, meaning we will get to take a look at your emails.
We will get to have listened to the official pod. We will get to read other interviews that might've come out after the episode.
And then on that episode, we have our own interview with the series creator, Dan Erickson. We talked to Dan yesterday.
So we've already talked to Dan. We have his thoughts and feelings inside of our head.
And I'm going to talk, we're not going to spoil the interview. That's going to drop on Monday.
Really great interview, by the way. Rob went off book and dropped like the best question I thought of the interview.
It's very generous. And then we also got Dan Erickson's answer to what a pineapple means.
And I won't spoil that, but like. What could be more important? Like, why else are we here? What else have we been building towards, if not that? So that will be on Monday.

So you can still email us where, Rob?

Money?

Always at pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.

And of course, at prestigetv at spotify.com.

But I'm so glad that we have this Monday pod, Joe,

because I don't know how you're feeling today,

sans emails.

We're so used to having everyone's feedback,

everyone's thoughts, everyone's theories.

I feel naked.

I feel like we are without our giant marching band today.

And I could really use their support as we try to pick this thing apart.

My own thoughts and opinions.

Oh, no.

But, you know, I have them.

So what I will say about the Dan interview without getting into the details of it or spoiling it.

Rob, you and I had talked a little bit before that interview about our initial finale thoughts and feelings. We had each, I think, only watched it once at that point.
We've both, I think, rewatched it since. I will say I was pretty medium on the finale coming off of one watch before our conversation with Dan.
After our conversations with Dan and upon rewatch, I'm much higher on the finale than I was initially. And like, on the one hand, do I think that a piece of art, whatever it is, should stand on its own without contextual help? Of course.
Yes. Would I like to be able to know the interior thoughts and feelings of the various characters just by watching the thing and thinking about it? Yes.
But I don't think it's disqualifying to change your sort of idea of a piece of art based on added information you got. So I would say with the context that Dan provided, with rewatch, with marinating on a bit more, I am, I think I was at like a B.
We don't usually do letter grades, but sometimes I do for help. I think we're more of a free form.
Like you get a shape as a grade kind of school here on the prestige TV podcast. Real Montessori shit.
I was a Montessori kid, you know? Were you really? Yeah, I was. I really was.
Does that fill in some blanks for you? It really does. I think that's a real Rosetta Stone for understanding the Joanna Robinson experience.
Okay. So I think that I'm at lingering at like definitely B plus, maybe even an A minus the more I think about it, but definitely like higher on it than I was before.
Rob, now here we are Thursday morning. Where are you sitting with the Severance Den finale? I had a similar kind of experience.
I think it's honestly like the talking with Dan was really informative and I enjoyed our chat, but just the rewatch alone, I think helped kind of close some of the loops and make me feel a little more resolved about some of the plot lines overall. I think it's a really solid finale.
It's always going to be hard to measure up to the Severance season one finale, which is so propulsive and such a masterclass in that particular kind of storytelling. That said, this looks amazing.
They give us some answers without giving away the whole game. Some of the plot threads and the character threads, I think, really deliver.
And some of them are kind of mystifying to me as far as what their treatment is of particular core characters on the show. And so I want to get into it over the course of this pod.
But I think on the biggest possible things, they hit. And so that's kind of what's important.
It's just there's some misses or some near misses across the board otherwise. We're going to go sort of roughly chronological, kind of grouping some characters together as we often do.
But I want to start with, you know, you mentioned something's missing. Which characters are you missing? We mentioned in last week's episode that it felt like they were clearing the decks of some characters so that we could focus in on other characters.
And I don't mind that generally. But among the options, which are, you know, we did this live Q&A yesterday, and there were, like, a lot of Rickon-based questions.
So, like, among the options being Rickon, Miss Wong, Irving, Bert, some combination of the two. Who, baby Eleanor, who are you missing most here in the finale? I think for me, it's Irving.
Yeah. Just his overall direction this season, which was so much rooted in this idea of getting ousted from the severed floor after the whole thing that happened at the Ortbo, and then having this ongoing investigation in the outside world into Lumen and everything that's going on there, and potentially exposing what's going on with Gemma or otherwise, and to just drop all of those beats, put him on a train, he leaves, doesn't double back for his Han Solo moment or anything like that, which I was not expecting.
Yeah. But that's where we leave that character.
After everything we've been through with him, and this is another thing too, I will say, the finale I feel better about after Reflection and rewatching. The Burt and Irving stuff, I feel a little less great about than we initially podcasted, than when we initially podcasted.
I think because those scenes draw so much on the audience's understanding of the innie and outie versions of those characters and us kind of projecting our feelings on one version onto the other in a way that I don't know that it ever quite got there. Like it hit me emotionally in the moment, but I don't know that it quite stood up to scrutiny.
And as you know, like that train station scene didn't super work for me. And someone, I was talking to someone, they me in a way that I didn't understand when we podcast about it where they were like, we don't know Audi Irving that way.
Barely at all. You know? And so, yeah, we are putting our Amy Irving feelings on this Audi Irving character.
And it's just like there's a gap there. That being said, Dan did talk about Irving in a really interesting way.
I thought so you guys can hear what he has to say about that on Monday.

But it left me kind of. there's a gap there.
That being said, Dan did talk about Irving in a really interesting way, I thought, so you guys can hear what he has to say about that on

Monday.

But it left me kind

of thinking,

and this may

be confirmed by the time you hear

this pod, I don't know, but if this is,

we don't know.

If this is the end of Irving, we still

don't know. I'm still kind of convinced

that it's like a, if we can

get to Toro back, we're going to get to Toro

back, but we're not sure we're going to get Totoro back.

It kind of feels that way. But we're not sure we're going to get Totoro back.
But the big swerve in his storyline in the middle of this season kind of feels like we thought we might have him for season three and now we think we might not. Exactly.
That's what it feels like from a screenwriting perspective. Absolutely.
And I think that there's a part of me, like if they had known earlier, I kind of wish, and I never thought in the world I would ever ask for Les Totoro, I kind of wish the end of the Orpo episode was the end of Irving. Right.
Like that was such a beautiful, dramatic, based in a character we know so well, Annie Irving taking a stand moment, that as much as I did love the Burton Fields dinner party and all that sort of stuff, like that was really fun television. But in terms of like a all-timer character exit, I kind of feel like the end of the Orpo episode.
That being said, I really hope that Totoro's like, I'll give you an episode next season or something. We get to see Irving in his own episode or something like that in the future.
That would make me really happy. I hope it's not.
But it could be. It could be.
As much Turturro as we can get, I will welcome. I think that's part of why I'm missing Irving as much as anything.
I just love that character and I love that performance. And you do feel his absence in a way where any, as any of the members of the MDR team would exit, you would feel their absence.
But I love Turturro especially. Let's start with, with Jame and Helena.
Jame Egan giving real, I never cared for Job energy. I'm talking about Helena here.
Something that's interesting in this exchange. I think this is a brilliant move actually.
As impenetrable as a lot lot of these sort of Jane Egan stuff is inside of this episode, first and foremost, I don't know why you give an Egan like a cubicle. Like, shouldn't he have like a viewing suite? It's true.
You know what I mean? But when he talks to Helly and talks about how he once saw the fire of Kier inside of Helena and he no longer sees it. And he, what does he say? Some vampire shit.
Sired others in the shadows, but they never had the fire of Kier. But he sees it in her Heli-R.
Not Helena Egan, but in Heli-R. Yes.
and so given what we know about innies and outies I was thinking about this idea of like

if the innie is the you know unmasked untamped down by life uh version of a person what can we extrapolate about the way in which helena egan living under the oppressive regime of Lumen, of her father, of getting scrutinized while she eats eggs, of like all this other stuff. Is that what you call it? Scrutinized? What would you call it? I don't know.
The soft moaning, I think, puts it into a different category. There's a whole like, I will say with Jame overall, and this scene especially, there is a, like, fetishization of control with him and Helena and their dynamic.
And so when he's talking about the fire that he sees in Heli, to me, the implication is, and I mean, he basically says this much, that fire has left Helena, right? Well, what I'm saying is, like, I feel like he put out the fire in her. Yes, totally.
And then he's like, where did that fire go? I have no idea, you know?

He's almost invigorated

by the idea of

kind of putting that fire out again

or of seeing it resuscitated in a way.

I think there is an element

of him and Lumen overall

that is so rooted

in the idea of control.

Yes.

And of taking these wild elements

and putting them

in a contained space

where you can harness their power

for whatever your purposes are.

And so to him, seeing this version of Helena, again, we don't really know what the ultimate plans are for Helena. Is his consciousness going to be revolved into her? We still have so many questions as far as those kinds of things go.
But I think clearly to him, there's the spiritual aspect of seeing Kier in a version of his daughter. And then there is sort of the

control aspect of what it seems like he and Lumen are really all about.

That's interesting. I mean, I'm certainly not going to argue about that when they literally

have a woman like imprisoned in the basement. So like, obviously, I'm not going to push back on

that. This is a building full of dudes who like watching a woman locked in a room on a screen.

It's just what they're about. You know, and who among us? But like, listen, I think that what struck me as tragic, and I'm extrapolating a bit, and we didn't talk to Dan about this very much, but is this idea that maybe in order to get approval, because it feels like a lot of Helena Egan that we met this season is someone who wants approval, wants to know that her father knows what's going on, wants to be seen as responsible and powerful and high up in the company

and all this sort of stuff like that.

So this idea that perhaps she put out that fire inside of herself partially,

that he does in his soft moaning, oppressive, whatever shit,

but that she, in order to be the perfect daughter,

squashed the very, in pursuit of his respect and admiration, squashed the very thing that would earn that respect and admiration from him. But I guess the idea is that Jamie Egan thinks that if Haley R had been at his breakfast table, she would have taken the eggs raw.
You know what I mean? She's that kind of person. Would she though? Because it feels like taking the eggs raw is in a way the ultimate kind of compliance.
But word of advice to everyone on this show, do not take anything raw. No raw happening in any area of the imagination.
Wow. Yeah.
Unless you're guest on no raw eggs is what I would recommend. But I think that, I don't know, there's some like a feral quality to this idea of like, you know, take it like, nah, never mind.
I don't want to keep repeating the phrase. It's just disgusting.
Anyway. Especially in context with feral.
Like, we're getting places, Joe. This podcast is moving.
This is what I'm going to say from a screenwriting perspective. And I really admired the twists and turns they took at the beginning of this season in order to get the MDR team back onto the severed floor.
Yes. A sort of situation we never thought that they would be able to accomplish after the rebellion of season one.
What this does, because I'm like, how are we ever, the only person who wants Hellyar around is Mark. and the only leverage Mark has is, you need me to complete Cold Harbor, so I gotta have my girl Friday around or else I'm not gonna do it.
But now that Cold Harbor's done, what is the excuse to keep Helly around? And the excuse is Jamie Egan has taken a liking to her. True.
Gross and chilling, but also, you know, we love that character. And so I love this as a way that it would be believable to have her still inside of the plot.
I think there's also a Lumen-oriented reason to want to have a version of Un-Egan on the floor as Mark does this, like, landmark accomplishment, right? Yes. As he completes Cold Harbor, even if it is Helly versus Helena, I think the symbolic nature of having her there is probably of some value to them.
100%, but I mean, now that Cold Harbor is done, presuming that Helly and Mark can't run around the hallways forever, I mean, you saw Adam Scott's cardio. Like, that guy can go.
And listen, Helen has been, you know, she's been doing her laps in the pool. So she's also got that great lung capacity.
Okay, let's talk about the Marks. Great concept.
Great scene. Yes.
Really well shot. Of course, the, like, classic red fire on the inside of the cabin, blue snow on the outside of the cabin stuff, all of that.
Severance in its bag right there. We were talking about this before.
Basically, the only members of the MDR team that we haven't seen talk to each other are the Irvings, right? Because we see Dylan talk to himself a bit in this episode. We've seen Helena and Hallie talk to each other a bit in a previous, in season one.
And so here we have the Marks talking to each other. This, I guess, is that this is the payoff along with the innie-outie heist at the end of the episode, but this is the payoff of all of those images in the opening credits that we've been seeing of like the two Marks together, sort of like together or at odds at odds, like what's going to happen here.
Take me through what you liked most about this exchange. Well, I had my misgivings about the way we got to the birthing cabin and sort of the way that was breadcrumbed.
But now that we're here, I absolutely get it. This feels like we had a destination in mind and we need to get to the birthing cabin to have this incredible camcorder conversation between the two Marks.
I thought it was a really fun and awesome construction, the whole like step inside and outside, you know, the top deck. Really well conceived.
I love that we got there ultimately. And I think one of my favorite things about this finale is Mark meeting Mark and getting to have this exchange and kind of slowly realize over their conversation how diametrically opposed they are.
There's this whole thing that I think happens to people like us when we watch TV where if we have certain point of view characters that we root for, we assume if those people got in the same room or got to meet, of course they would team up. Of course they would be on the same side.
I call this the Daenerys Targaryen fallacy. Of course she would be best pals with all of your favorite characters from Game of Thrones.
That's clearly not the case. And I really appreciate that one of the features of this finale is drawing such a clear divide between these two versions of Mark and what they want because they want totally different things with totally different women that cannot coexist.
No no reintegration can fix what these two men want.

And for them to call it out and have to like tackle that head on in order to even execute the plan,

I think is a really exciting way to start.

10 on 10,

no nose for the Daenerys Targaryen reference there.

But I think that like,

I had a,

I didn't have a pithy name for it,

but I had a similar moment where I was like, how interesting to watch Devin and Mark Scout. Cobel were used to it, but Devin, who we love and Mark Scout, who personally at the end of the day, I'm like more team Mark S than Mark Scout.
One thought I had in this episode is, is the way that Mark thinks about Innes really so different from the the way that Helena Egan thinks about Innie's? Exactly. Because he is not treating Mark as like a person by any stretch of the imagination.
But to see Devin and Mark Scout be antagonists was really interesting to me. All of a sudden, Devin, who I'm like, despite her questionable calling Colbell or whatever, I'm always on her team.
I'm always on her side i was like oh no like i you know she her face falls when he's like what about this and she's like uh um uh devon cobell mark you've been standing on the side of the road all day to just hang out and vibe we couldn't have a better plan not a single comm strategy to pitch this guy on ending his existence and the existence of everyone that he knows. You got nothing for that? To your point about like Mark Scout's point of view on Indies versus Audies is chillingly similar to Helena Egan's.
This is, of course, is like a seed that they planted all season. Yes.
Helena posing as Helly at the very beginning of the season talking about we don't owe them anything.

What do we owe our other selves?

We don't owe them anything.

Yeah.

And I think this feeds into this larger idea. I was talking to CR about this a little bit, and I'm sure that he and Andy will get into it like sort of beautifully on the watch.
But like that part of the thrust of the thrust of this episode is like a, you know, a workers rise up rebellion storyline, which it was, you know, a bit, of course, throughout the whole thing. But this idea of like coalitions and rebellions and sort of like how, you know, can you form a coalition with a marching band? Probably, because you guys can find common cause.
I mean, they have a natural sense of order, right? They're

just waiting for the right drum major to come along,

and if it's you and you give a good speech, then

by all means. If you get up on your desk

and go full Norma Rae, then

you two can get a marching

band on your side. But

forming a coalition

where you see

yourselves at odds

with your best interests at odds with each other. Yeah.
Which is, you know, not to get too political theory when I definitely am not qualified for this. I think you're more qualified for this, Rob.
But like that's the trick of the oppressor, right? Is to make you believe that you have no common cause and that to see someone else succeed is to see yourself fail. Now, in this particular case, of course, in this sci-fi setting that is more literalized, but it's like a larger sort of idea.
And the connective tissue that they make between our guy, Mark Scout, who I am rooting for, just like slightly less than Mark S., but our guy, Mark Scout, making the exact same error that Helena Egan makes in the Chinese restaurant when she gets the wrong name for the object of affection. Like she does not get Gemma's name right.
And he does not get Heli's name right. And it's a little cutesy, but like, you know, at the end of the day, it is, I fundamentally don't care enough about you to get the details right sort of thing.

Yeah.

This is why i love this particular framing because honestly when you put these three people in a room mark and devin and harmony it makes sense that the three of them would not really know how to appeal to mark s in the way that they would need to until it comes time for harmony to say some things that may or may not be true that kind of force his hand a little bit. But ultimately, Mark is so mired in his own pain, in his own perspective, that he cannot fathom that this other version of himself would be in love.
And really, the way he describes it is like, I heard you like somebody. And then he uses that to explain his own pain to say, oh, what you have, I have exponentially more investment in my wife and my life.
It's therefore so much more important than anything that you're going through. Devin has never seen the severed floor.
She's talked to Mark S a couple of times, but doesn't really know what life is like there or the connections that people can make there. And harmony is harmony.
I don't really expect her to really understand the interior lives of these people. But ultimately, when push comes to shove, she knows what to say to Mark S to get the wheels moving, which is, this is going to be your last day either way.
Like, your usefulness to Lumen will run its course once you complete Cold Harbor. And she's sort of implying that something might happen to him, but not outright saying it.
And frankly, I have no idea if any of that is true or not. And I am so glad that multiple times in this episode, characters say, why are we trusting this woman? Why are we believing literally anything that she says? Because we've been going on like four episodes of Devin being like, yes, I believe in Harmony Cobell, the woman who I gave my child to under false pretenses because she wormed her way into our entire life.
There's a moment when Harmony's like, let me speak to him alone. And Devin's like, okay, and just walks out of the room.
I don't know what's going on with Devin. Devin, okay.
To go back to something you said, in terms of like Mark Scout saying to Mark S, now imagine what you have with Hallie, this cute little flirtation, and like multiply it by so much more because that's of course my experience yes it's so infantilizing uh it's so condescending it's so dismissive of the humanity he cannot imagine the interior life of an innie and and to give mark some credit um this is such like an alien concept in terms of like, you know, what if I met a severed version

of myself? Would I be able to immediately grok that they have this whole interior life that I don't have access to if it's happening inside of my own brain and heart, my physical brain and heart, like, and I don't have access to that. But I think, and I think, um, the back and forth learning, like the wonderment of seeing each other on the camcorder was, was really fun.
Um, but then, yeah, the progressive understanding of like, I don't understand you at all. I didn't understand how deep things went for you or you don't understand me at all.
And that's devastating to me. You are like, not just discounting me, but you're actively against my happiness.
Completely. So, yeah.
And not just against it, but thinking about it so flippantly that you're just asking me to throw away my existence for nothing that I know or I understand. This idea of someone else's wife, effectively, to Mark S.
It's like you're asking an awful lot of that character. And I really do enjoy that Mark Scout is so bad at it, that he's so bad at making the plea that he desperately needs to make because he just does not understand this other person because he has not carried to.
I think Mark S has a great point that he could have found out more about Mark S's life in a lot of different

ways, potentially. Now there's some Lumen subterfuge that could happen there, but I think there are ways in which he could have been a little more curious.
We know he hasn't even tried other than trying to reintegrate for his own purposes. He had a day with Harmony to like, at least get Helly's name right.
You know what I mean? But otherwise Lumen has been lying to Mark very true scout this whole time like you have this wound on your head because of this or you came back from the orpo all wet because of this like they've been painting this and like completely false narrative of what the any experience has been and and they also they also painted a false narrative of what the Indy experience was.

Because when Mark Scout talks about, I mean, yeah, he gets it wrong when he's like, I'm sorry I made you a prisoner. You lived in hell.
I'm so sorry. And Mark S is like, I don't know.
We had waffle parties and egg bars and I fucked a lady two different ways. You know, like we made our own fun.
But like what mark scout was told was that if he goes undergoes this procedure this other version of him will feel no pain and so will not feel the pain of the grief right and so i don't think it's completely out of pocket for him to extrapolate like that this will be like a drone version of myself like a zombie version of. So like, yes, in this scenario, I am with Mark S where I'm like, fuck you, buddy.
Like I'm a real person, but I want to give Mark Scout some grace that like he has been absolutely lied to about what this process was the whole time. So yeah.
I do want to give him that grace. I just think overall Mark Scout has been quite incurious about a great many things, including reintegration, a process he had no real questions about, was just like, yep, drill that hole in the back of my head.
Let's get this thing moving. And meanwhile, Mark S hears about reintegration for the first time was like, wait, how does this work? Am I going to get blotted out by the volume of your experience? Am I going to be a mere fraction of who we are together?

Is this going to be a top or bottom situation? Which I would say, if Harmony has anything to say about it, it will indeed be a top and bottom situation for the two Marks. But overall, we're sort of confronting this idea of if reintegration is real and what it actually means for the versions of consciousness that would be reintegrated, which is something that Mark Scout has not been too worried about to this point.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Mark Scout has been self-medicating since before he got severed. You know, he got fired.
He's been drinking all this sort of stuff like that. So like, yeah, that's been part of it.
This episode is brought to you by Max. The Emmy award-winning series Hacks returns this April.
The new season follows Deborah Vance making a move from her Vegas residency to Hollywood showbiz. Tensions rise as Debra and Ava try to get their late night show off the ground and make history while doing it.
Starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder. Hacks season four is streaming Thursday, April 10th, exclusively on Macs.
Don't forget to check out the official Hacks podcast on Spotify. Something I will say for Mark Scout, Mark S.
And I did, I love, I really liked this cut where he's like, you know, if you, if you value this the next time I get here, I better be on the severed floor. And that's what we cut to.
I thought that was like a really cool cut. Shout out to Mark Scout for amidst all of this.
he gives himself a nice, close, clean shave. It's not disheveled, stubbly Mark that shows up.
It is crisp, clean, besuited Mark S who shows up at the severed floor. I want to start with Dylan.
Back at MDR, I want to start with Dylan, even though it's slightly out of chronological order, because I think this idea of if we leave, it's death for us. Is something that they've been seeding in, I think, an interesting way all season.
I mean, all series to a certain degree, but like when you think about Irving. Going back to Burt, but when you think about Irving and this idea of Irving leaves after the Orpo and Dylan's like, so is he dead, dude? And they're like, no, he's on a cruise.
He's fine. Not true, but if I, he's on a cruise, he's fine.
He's on a train cruise. Yeah.
There could be a nice dining car in there. We don't know.
That sounds like real murder on the Orient Express stuff.

I don't want it.

But Dylan's like, then he's fucking dead.

He's dead.

Okay.

And then in the Dylan storyline, it's the same thing where it's just sort of like, I'll just quit and essentially kill myself. You know what I mean? So this idea of the end of the workday at Lumen means death for the innies is something that they've just been sort of seeping into the story all season, all series, and just made much more urgent inside of this episode.
Because we've been asking this question about Gemma for a little while of like, when Cold Harbor is completed, she'll be dead. And we were like, what does dead mean in, you know, in severance? Does that mean you don't, the body doesn't have a pulse anymore? Does it mean something fundamentally about you is gone? And so how do you feel about that specific question? Having seen the finale, because we don't get a lot of concrete information about what it is that

would kill Gemma at the conclusion of Cold Harbor, but we do get Mark and Helly sort of talking around this idea of removing the chip, which I would assume that is kind of the mechanism by like something in the chip is completed in her brain. They remove the chip for whatever purpose, and presumably she would die from that removal.
So if you're listening to this and you're like, So yeah, Rob, you're a reasonable journalist. Did you not ask Dan Erickson what the fuck Cold Harbor is? Because we get some information, but not all the information.
And the answer is no, because we were given to understand based on like me talking to some other people who interviewed him that like he would not answer that. He would just give us like a slippery, evasive answer, which is his job to do.

So full respect to that, but we decided to waste no one's time asking that question. Not that it didn't occur to us to ask, but we knew we weren't going to get an answer, so we didn't ask it.
It didn't make it out of committee, unfortunately. It was struck down.
Yeah. But it's possible that in another interview or on the official pod, they explain it a bit more, But we're sitting here on Thursday morning without all of the information about what it would mean for Gemma to, quote unquote, die at the end of this procedure.
I mean, I do think we understand a bit about what Cold Harbor is.

And is this the moment, Rob, when we want to express our regrets over not reading certain emails from our listeners? It's unfortunately so because it's been there for us for weeks now. It's been in the notes for weeks.
They're like, oh, if we have time to get to it, we should talk about the fact that Mark in episode seven brings home this crib that has Cold Harbor printed on the side of it with some weird accenting in particular to make it look slightly more foreign. But ultimately, it's been there.
The screenshots have been there for weeks. Our salute to the freeze framers out there who eagle-eyed this shit weeks and weeks ago as far as what Cold Harbor could ultimately be.
Because once it's finally delivered, Joe, it is as advertised, here's the crib. No drowning, no water, no reliving Gemma's car crash or death in any way.
Just a kind of death. The model is, it's like very French.
And it's like, col d'albert, like is what it says. I mean like, and this is tiny print on the box.
So like genuinely. And I believe sideways because the box itself is sideways.
Genuinely great job from the freeze framers on this one.

But yeah, a lot of our listeners wrote it about this one.

And I was like, it's not like I didn't think it was true.

Obviously, I can see the image, but I was just like, oh, that's a cute little thing that won't mean anything.

And I was wrong.

So in practical world building terms, does this mean Dr. Maurer was like, I see this box.

Let's call this room

Cold Harbor

because that sounds

kind of like

the model of Crib.

Or is it just a little

wink at the audience?

I think it's a wink

at the audience.

I hope so.

Yeah.

But Maurer...

I also don't burden Maurer

with a lot of creativity.

But he's also like

a weird little sicko.

So like, you know,

who's to say

what he might get up to?

Yeah, so the idea

that Cold Harbor is,

as far as we understand it,

Thank you. But he's also like a weird little sicko.
So like, you know, who's to say what he might get up to? Yeah. So the idea that Cold Harbor is, as far as we understand it, the ultimate test for the walls of the chip.
Yes. Let's create an innie version of Gemma in her own clothes.
So it's like the closest to actual Gemma. Yep.
That we can create. No wig required, like all this sort of stuff like this.
Let's have her do a task that would push on the most painful trigger point inside of her heart and mind. Let's fucking pipe that triggering music.
Let's get that Billie Holiday in there. Let's just do all that.
And if the walls hold,

then we will have perfected

something about

the severance procedure.

This is the toughest

test we could think of

to ensure that

the severance walls will hold.

Yes.

Does this fulfill the prompt

that we've been getting

in other episodes of like, this will be sort of like an innovation that will change the world? Yes. Gemma, how that will quote unquote kill her, whether physically or mentally or emotionally, I don't know.
And I don't think the show wants us to know yet. Definitely not.
I do think overall the deconstruction of the crib being the ultimate test is in itself like quite a devastating concept and idea. Oh, I think really brilliant.
Even like her walking in and seeing it, I found to be quite effective and her having to go through the paces of this being quite effective. I have a literalized detail question for you, Joe, which is, as you said, we see Gemma put on this, like more or less the same clothes.
She's dressed exactly the same as the night she disappeared. Yeah.
If those are literally the same clothes and maybe they are, maybe they just like bought, you know, the same articles of clothing. But if they are literally the same clothes, And maybe they are.
Maybe they just like bought the same articles of clothing.

But if they are literally

the same clothes,

would that indicate us

that there probably was

no car crash of any kind?

Oh, I don't think that.

I never thought

there was a car crash.

Yeah.

I mean, not never,

but like I didn't.

Yeah.

The jury's kind of still out though

as far as if there was,

if there could have been

some kind of accident.

I could see them

driving her off the road,

but I don't think they like dumped her, then they later dumped a different body into her or something like that. Oh, sure.
Yes. Okay, so anything else you want to say about the Dylan conversation with himself? This wasn't like...
I thought this was quite sweet. This is, of course, similar to, though not exactly the sort of like erotic thruple outcome that I was rooting sweet.
This is of course similar to though,

not exactly the sort of like erotic thruple outcome that I was rooting for,

but like Audi Dylan being vulnerable and saying,

you know,

like hearing that you were a badass at work was tough for me,

but I'm also being,

but him saying like,

I get it.

Gretchen's perfect.

So I get why you would be into her.

I'm like,

this is very endearing. I like all of this.
Anything else you want to say about this exchange between the two of them? I would say it hit me the same way. I think ultimately him finding, Audi Dillon finding a kind of peace and understanding in this idea was so great to see, especially juxtaposed, Mark.
We have these Innie and Audi in clear, direct conflict. And in Innie and Audi and Dillon, they want the same thing versus they want opposed things.
They both want Gretchen. They both kind of understand why the other would want him.
And I think for Audi Dylan to reach the point where not only does he grasp that and why a version of himself would want it, but he himself is comforted by the idea of this self-assured, quote-unquote, badass version of himself even existing. I love that as a means for us to get to know Audi Dillon a little better because we've really only seen him sitting on the couch reading a magazine, not really paying attention to his kids, failing out of job interviews.
We've never gotten to see him in touch with his failings in a different kind of way other than self-pity. And so to finally get that, I thought was a really rewarding part of his story.

I agree.

Okay, then we have Hallie and Mark.

And so I will say on the first time watching this finale through,

the three highlights for me,

the three tentpoles of the episode for me are like the camcorder conversation,

the Hallie and Mark cubicle conversation yes um and then i love a heist so uh the the mechanics of the anti-outy heist i think was really fun in a puzzle box sort of way and we'll talk about that and like darkly humorous and all that sort of stuff so those were like the three things i'm like i love this i love I love this. The Mark and Helly cubicle scene was giving everything to me that I think they wanted the Burt and Irving scene in the train station to give to me.
Adam Scott as Mark S saying, I want to live with you with that little like sort of crack in his voice, them talking to each other, but not always making eye contact with each other um and then the cute shit with like delaware equator is that a building or a continent all that cute stuff these actors have had such potent chemistry from the start the we love you know rob we love a yearn we love a longing bittersweet, uh, romance. And I think that this was just like really beautiful stuff, really well acted.
And, um, and then I have some questions about what happened after that, which again, Dan talked to us about, but like this worked so well for me, this idea of like, this is what I want. This is what I think is the right thing to do.
Because in doing this, we can take down Lumen and in taking down, like, let's forget with love and respect, Gemma and Mark Scout and their honeymoon ending. Let's forget all that.
If we pull this off, we can expose Lumen and we can bring lumen a company that you know heli accused jame of like your your company created hell and you're gonna burn in it right that's her revolutionary spirit so the idea is like we need to do this in order to like fuck lumen over at the cost of not only our own existence but like this love story that we've created here. And something that when I was covering Lost in the Lost Rewatch podcast that I did, something that Damon Lindelof said really early that like I think about all the time when he was talking about creating a mystery box show, he said, and this has to do with the plot in Lost where there's a hatch, and the question is, what's in the hatch? And the answer, very early in Lost, spoiler alert for Lost, is a person.
And something that Damon Lindelof said is, the greatest answer to a mystery is always a person. And I love that.
And I think about that all the time. And so the greatest answer to a mystery is a person like the greatest MacGuffin inside of this, the heist MacGuffin is Gemma.
It's a person, you know what I mean? And like, and the greatest stakes that we can put on this whole thing is separating forever Mark and Helly characters, you know, that we are desperately rooting for and so to put those like love story stakes stakes on something it's classic linda lafayette storytelling um you executed i think really well here um so too what do you want to say about this cubicle scene love the cubicle scene love the setup love love the stakes as we said of hell of helly talking herself into something that she obviously does not want and i think in particular i i keep getting caught in a good way on this line where she expresses to mark that she's like basically that she is helena egan right like i am her i am in a way that we we know heli does not actually believe but that's the thing that mark kind of needs to hear in order to put hit put this plan in motion and to start taking down Lumen in the way that she believes it should. I think where I have like the gap, and I'm trying to jump that gap and understand and get on this finale's wavelength, is Helly as doomed counterpart for Mark and their relationship and what it means to sacrifice it and what they are to each other.
From there to table revolutionary giving the big speech i understand logically that she wants to take down lumen i don't know that i'm there emotionally as far as like her rousing the marching band to action granted they give us half a life and expect us not to fight for it is a fucking bar like i i'm with you part of the way i just can't that's the part I can't quite get to. Yeah, I agree.
And I think also going from that to what she does at the end of the episode is also like, I just have, I have some connected tissue questions. Again, we did ask Dan about this and some of the things that he said about Hallie's state of mind in this episode, I think was really interesting to me.
But I still feel like there are some just little things that we skipped over in the progression of, of, of that, uh, sort of epiphany, I guess that she has inside of this episode. Um, before we get to the Ine-Ode heist that I loved and the goat stuff, which we will also have to talk about, we get, um fun eerie stuff with uh milchick here we certainly do tramelle tillman doing this like late night talk show stand-up routine sort of thing with a kirk egan animatronic and then actually i mean i will say on the on a comedy front i have have some milkshake questions in this episode.
That's a different story. On a comedy front, him literally, like, hauling ass from the Dylan thing that he has to take care of so that he can be ready for his entrance here.
And then, of course, the just iconic, incredible imagery of him band leading this marching band around the office. Like, this is, this is, I don't care personally why Lumen has a marching band.
Like, I actually don't care about the logistics of that. It's fine.
Yeah, whatever. This is such, like, incredible, perfect severance, dissonance kind of stuff to hear.

You know, the Egan hymn that we've heard before, but marching band style, like all that stuff is amazing.

Before we get to the marching band, Rob, do you want to talk about the music that we hear

that first signals Bill Chick's whole performance that he does here.

Look, Joe, we work

for The Ringer, theringer.com.

We cover sports and pop culture

here. I was somewhat

alarmed to know, even with

you not being a ball knower per se,

that you were not familiar

with the Alan Parsons Project

track series as the

Chicago Bulls opening lineup

theme, which it has been for, at this point,

literal decades. I think since

Thank you. with the Alan Parsons Project track series as the Chicago Bulls opening lineup theme,

which it has been for, at this point, literal decades.

I think since the 80s.

Did you say you don't know a ball knower?

Yeah, you're not a ball knower.

Is that something we say?

Is that a thing that one would say? It is a thing that we say somewhat unfortunately.

And in this case, especially unfortunately,

because there's levels of ball knowing.

And to not know

this particular track

being linked to Michael Jordan

and the Chicago Bulls specifically

from now until the end of time.

I am honestly baffled

that this has escaped you.

Well, now I know.

I did know,

we talked about this

before we started recording.

I got astonished reactions from everyone on this current call. Listen, I knew the track was familiar.
And I knew that once I Shazammed it, it would be something that like, it's definitely something I'd heard before. And it was definitely something that had been used and other things that I know, including the incredibly underrated comedy blockers, which I'm a big fan of.
I did not know of its Chicago Bulls association. What do you make of using the Chicago Bulls sort of intro music here? Is it any deeper meaning to that for you? I mean, it's the most famous slash infamous intro music in all of sports.
This feels like a Ben Stiller touch to me.

It really does.

No Knicks fan Ben Stiller.

It feels like maybe one of his polls.

I appreciated the shout.

How do I feel about the overall talk show construction?

It's fine.

Yeah.

I have, you know, Milchick-based questions about it, to be sure.

Overall, I will say I enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of this very important day. You know, we get the animatronic here.
We get this whole presentation with it, with Milchick. We also get this, you know, a brand new painting, fresh out of the elevator, Joe, as Mark Lumen Jesus himself, blessed be his typing fingers, flanked by basically every character in the show.
Is that, yeah, Rickon's in there, right? Like we get some Rickon. That's the most Rickon we get in this episode.
Unfortunately so. Yeah, if you did not like take your time with this painting, it really is a beautiful work of art.
And please forgive me because this is the part of the podcast where I just list some stuff that is happening in this painting. Okay.
Yeah, Mark in the middle, as we said. On top of the waterfall, you get all of the eight Egan CEOs, including Helena in the middle.
They are from left to right, if you care. Ambrose, Myrtle, Philip, James, Helena, Gerhardt, Leonora, Baird, and Keir.
We've seen all of their replicas before in the perpetuity ring. On Mark's left and right are literally, I would say, basically every character who has appeared in the show.
The full MDR team, Cobell, Petey, Devin and Rickon, Bert, Felicia and Elizabeth from O&D, the three members of the replacement MDR team. A few people in the back that I can't quite make out and I would love to hear and see kind of the Reddit theorizing as far as who on Mark's right is in the very back of the procession here.
Then you also have Miss Casey, Milchick, Miss Wong, Natalie, Grainer, Gwendolyn, Christie's character, Lauren, who unfortunately we're going to talk to about soon. The Goatman, the Four Tempers, the MDR doppelgangers from the Ortbo that we've been talking about on and off for weeks.
And I will say the one that is catching me is what appears to be the ghost of the Bride of Woe. And that, I think, is easily the weirdest of the inclusions.
I have no idea what to make of it because Mark did not see the Bride of Woe. No, it was Irving's dream.
We thought it was Irving's dream. That's what the show led us to believe.
If that were true, how would Lumen possibly know to include it in the painting? It's fascinating. It's baffling.
It's severance in a nutshell. I don't know what to do with that information, if that is indeed the Bride of Woe.
Round of applause for the work that you just did there, Freeze Frame Mahoney. We always love when he comes to the pod.
Listen, so the Bride of Woe is one thing. The Audi Mark stuff is interesting.
Yep. You know? And it begs the question of like, how much are we being surveilled at all times in every single moment? Even moments that we thought were private.
Is Ruggabi in the painting? So I would say Ruggabi is by far the most notable omission. No Ruggabi, no Drummond, no doula that Mark went on a date with whose name I will not mention because it activates the AI.
And then there's like the people who don't have a direct connection to Mark. Gretchen, Dr.
Maurer, Sandra Bernhardt's character, Rebecca, like those people are not pictured at all. Okay.
Well, I'm desperate to hook up with Rebecca again. Thank you for that.
Yeah, the painting's amazing. The marching band stuff is really fun.
Visually amazing because, you know, they've got a camera just like in the mix there. Sidebar really quickly.
I, a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine, his dad, I forget, he like either worked for like the CIA

or the FBI.

Like one of these,

he's like a...

Are you allowed to say?

A spooker,

a retired spooker spy,

whatever.

Are you going to get

somebody black bagged

over the course

of this podcast?

What is happening, Joe?

And he's like a,

he was like a,

you know,

60 year old,

maybe now 70 year old

white man.

And his favorite movie

was Drumline. And I think about that all the time.
He just loved Drumline. Incredible pull by him, I've got to say.
It's like one of my, the most fun facts that I think about all the time. But anyway, the camera in the mix with the band, the disorientating swirl, Tramiel Tillman's, we already knew that he was an incredible dancer, but just like incredible, you know, showmanship.
Like put him on Broadway as Harold Hill. Like I would go see it, like all this sort of stuff.
Really, really fun. I have some questions for Mark in terms of his sense of urgency.
Now, I understand him wanting to linger because lingering means he gets to be with Helly for longer. But as soon as he completes Cold Harbor, he's got to go.
And he lingers for a while. And he's just sort of like, well, I got to go.
And I'm like, yeah, you've been got to go for a while. Let me make it through the first number at least.
And then when they go into the second number,

then I'll make the run for it. Now is a time where we have to talk about goats.
And I will say this. We were out on goats from the beginning of the season.
And when I saw the goat cart, the goat in the cart, I was like, not the fucking goats. And what it feels to me, having listened to Ben Stiller and Adam Scott fawn with reason over Gwendolyn Christie and how much they love Brienne of Tarth.
They talked about Brienne of Tarth a lot in the official podcast interview of her. What it seems like to me, in not only the casting of Gwendolyn Christie, but in the casting of the actor who plays Drummond, that all they've been trying to do is reverse engineer a Lumen brand, the Hound versus Brienne of Tarth fight in their season two finale.
I think they were trying to get her to fight a bear again. I think that's what it was all about.
Oh, you think it was the bear and the maiden fair. I think it was the

house. I was expecting her to bite

his ear off. I was

just waiting for it.

I didn't like

any of this. None of

this worked for me.

That being said,

Chekhov's... Is that a bolt gun?

It is a bolt gun. Okay.
Chekhov's

bolt gun and then the execution of that in the elevator? Very funny. Generally one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.
Very funny idea that the transition point would just make him like clinch his finger and pull the trigger on the bolt gun. Very good.
Really good. And then the gurgling and the, you know, all of that, really good.
This is the thing is like, as far as the stepping stones, right? You have this puzzle that you need to figure out. How do we get Mark to Gemma on the testing floor? What kind of security bypasses does he need to have? So many of these are so good.
The bolt gun, holding Drummond hostage, accidentally killing him, the blood-soaked tie, like all this stuff I really, really like. Very, very fun.
Yeah. But you're right that it does seem like, okay, they have to reverse engineer this, and then they have to figure out, okay, how does Mark, an Adam Scott-shaped man, take down Drummond? And the answer simply has to be he watches as Gwendolyn Christie beats the ever-loving shit out of this guy and kicks him repeatedly in the nuts, and then maybe holds him down, helps to hold him down briefly.
Because otherwise, there's just no way that he's getting Drummond to go down

there without any kind of weapon whatsoever.

Correct. And the other thing that you need in order

to execute this heist is the

fact that Lumen, despite being a massive

corporation, has always

been and perhaps will always be

remarkably understaffed.

There's just like

one Drummond and one

Milchik and one Mauer

and one Sandra Bernhardt. And that's

like all, we don't have like

Thank you. There's just like one Drummond and one Milchick and one Maurer and one Sandra Bernhardt.
And that's like all we don't have like stormtroopers that we can call. Like, you know, I don't know what your experience with this has been, Joe.
I will say having having covered at least the NBA and corporations of a certain size, these institutions are always smaller on the inside than you think. Like you get behind the veil of of prestige on something, and you're like, there's only 26 people working here? Like, this is the entirety of this company? And apparently, Lumen is no exception to that.
I will just advise this. Once they have removed Drummond's blood-soaked corpse from the elevator, maybe invest in some goons.
They could use some two, you know, like the budget. You can, you can print all this stuff.
You can stock the vending machine. You can have a full ass marching band, but you can't have a couple of hench around.
You can commission an entire masterpiece, a work of art. Truly.
It seems 24 hours. You can get Keanu on the horn to voice your claymation video.
And you have no henchmen at Lumen? None whatsoever. Can I say one thing about the goats that I did enjoy? Please.
Earlier this season, when we visit Mammalian's Nutrible, not my favorite part of the season. But during that, and this is the point in the story where Helena is undercover as Helly.
She's going around with Mark, presumably to tell the other departments about Miss Casey, to try to find Miss Casey. Yeah.
And we get this plea from Helena as Helly to Lorne about like, basically think of what if it were one of your goats? And so to get the payoff that Lorne cares so deeply about these goats and apparently has sacrificed a great many of them, it seems like, for what end, we have no idea. Maybe some other failed testing floor subjects that we don't know yet.
I like that callback, and I like it specifically as the idea of Helena Egan knowing what's going on on the severed floor enough to know that this is the button to push with this particular person, that this is a woman who cares about her flock, who cares about what is the goat's name? Emile. Emile, sorry.
I'll do apologies to Emile, who is a sweet, very good goat. Yeah.
She knows that this is the thing to say to this person. And I appreciate it kind of getting the loop closed on that.
I think, I suspect it will be quite an unpopular opinion for us to be out on goats. People seem to not like us being out, having been out on goats earlier this season.
If this is for people, if you loved the Brianna Tarth fight, I support you in all your endeavors. Power to you.
I, however, love a heist. And I have to say that, again, and we've praised Severance in the past for this, the big brain concept of, like, how fun can we make this heist in terms of, like, who's in charge when? And I loved this as sort of, like, now Miss Casey's here.
Now Gemma's here. Gemma's leading the way when Gemma's here.
You know, like, Miss Casey, you know, any Mark has to sort of lead the way when Miss Casey shows up.

Like all this sort of stuff like that.

Like I thought all of that stuff,

the brief reunion between the two of them

when they're like, you know, together.

And then...

Then Mark S and Miss Casey making out unwittingly.

All of that stuff I loved.

I really loved the blood and the tie. I thought that was just a great payoff.
Very good. all of that stuff i loved i really loved the blood of the tie i thought that was just a great payoff very good all of that um and then we get the final confrontation dylan has shown up to support heli he is um we're holding the vending machine we've stuffed the above the vending machine with some trombones the marching band seems to be be in on the revolution now.
Yep, they're on board. So that's all great.
This is the part of the Dylan story I did not really get, which is why his whole story this season, his arc has been off on his own, trying to understand, trying to grapple with the other version of himself and the life that he has after glimpsing it so briefly in the first season. Yeah.
He

walks back into the room. He just

sees a vending machine

and angrily

decides to shove it in front of the door with

no context and no understanding of what is

happening at all in this room.

I disagree on that

because he sees Heli

trying to... But he doesn't even know

who's in the bathroom. I know, but I feel like he's like, whatever you're doing, I'm with you.
I guess my counterpoint to that would be he hasn't been with them all this season. And if this is his growth is like, now I'm with you.
Yeah. On the one hand, yes.
I would disagree with you on the... I feel like Dylan at this point, if he runs into the room and he sees his teammate, Hallie, who had made a bid to him the way that Irving made a bid to him earlier this season of like camaraderie and he sort of fucked them both over for his own selfish pursuits, has had a change of heart, runs in to help her no matter what is going on.
He's helping. I agree with all of that.

However, where that puts any Dylan is pretty much the same place that we found him at the end of season one, which is like, I'm the heroic self-sacrificing guy who's going to like do the physical thing that needs to be done in order for all of this to happen.

He has since had an emotional growth experience with his affair with Gretchen. There's definitely internal growth that is happening, but fundamentally, that character is kind of where we left him in season one.
It's true. And that's okay, but that's just not as exciting as it could be for him.
Final showdown, Mark, Helly, Gemma.

Me, personally, love a season finale with someone trapped on the side of glass banging on it, whether it's Alias Season 2 or Lost Season 3. No matter what, I'm into it.
A classic for a reason. this the Orpheus and Eurydice sort of

imagery coming back into play

of you know

with some twists and complications, a thruple sort of twist on this, but the idea that like, you know, Mark as Orpheus does look back and in looking back, you know, loses, I don't know, it's more complicated than that. Again, I urge people to listen to our conversation with Dan about sort of what's going on in Hallie's mind right here, but I really bumped on this in the first watch.
And then we get them running towards they don't even know what, and Mel Torme's Windmills of Your Mind starts starts playing this is very visually stunning we've had throughout the series we've had the lights going on upstairs or they talked about in the official pod how they wanted to make it slightly different in the testing floor so we've got the lights on the floor going on but these red lights as sort of this payoff and what it gives us is this like of course very cool 70s uh imagery um not this version but the song when most of my mind uh is famously uh from the thomas crown affair which is one of the most the original i think they actually used it in the in the bras and remake too but in the original thomas crown affair um is one of the most, the original, I think they actually used it in the Brosnan remake too, but in the original Thomas Crown Affair is one of the most visually, we're really doing something 70s movies that exists in terms of the sort of frame and frame kind of cool stuff that most people are imitating the Thomas Crown Affair when they do, like, you know, Soderbergh owes a huge debt and et cetera, et cetera. So all of that, like visually vibe works for me.
The image of them running together, holding hands. It's funny, the freeze from the beginning at the end, and I want to throw to you with like your reference for that, because I thought it was a really good one.
But like, I was so certain this was a movie poster and I spent forever Googling and could not, I was like, I am certain that there is like a 70s paranoia thriller or something that has a man and a woman running towards camera, holding hands with like, you know, that sort of like 70s movie poster, like the rings of color around it. I could not find it.
Google was deeply unhelpful to me. My memory is deeply unhelpful to me.
So Redditors, I am counting on you to tell me like what you think this specific homage might be. And dear listeners, please email us at pineapplebobbing at gmail.com if this is a familiar visual reference to you.
What did it invoke for you, Rob Mahoney? For me, I am conditioned to love this particular kind of ending, which is, as you said, very gorgeously executed, is very Butch and Sundance to me, a doomed freeze frame. Whether it's not as literalized in death, but more figuratively, the ways that we've been talking about death this season and the ways it can manifest.
I thought overall, the music is wonderful. We get yet another callback to the idea of a carousel in the lyrics of A Windmills of Your Mind.
Also, the one visual from the opening Severance theme and the opening credits that I've still been trying to like put my finger on is the idea of the balloons and the balloon heads that is kind of repeated throughout the opening credits. There's a reference to like like a carnival balloon here.
I would love to understand. I hope maybe there'll be some interviews after the season as far as that symbolism and imagery goes.
But overall, I love where this finale and this season leave Mark and Mark S. I really like a lot of where it leaves Helly.
And I will say that's one of the most improved aspects of the finale on rewatch. The first time I was trying to understand where she was coming from and why this character would be going along with this plan.
But Britt Lauer brings so much in terms of the apprehension and like the inner conflict that comes with doing that in a way that I think really pays off. You asked earlier what kind of characters I was feeling the absence of.
I'm feeling the absence of Helena Egan more and more. 100%.
We spent so much time with her this season, and for her to not appear in the finale in any context whatsoever, I did want to kind of know where Helena is in literally anything that's happening. That was my pick as well.
And what I think is interesting is who knows how long these crazy kids, this, you know, I like like the Butch and Sundance reference is so good. And it's funny.
Cause like in my Google image searching, I was like movie poster people running. Like what is it? And at one point I was like, is it the porn identity? Like, what am I thinking of? Um, but, uh, Butch and Sundance come up and it is of course an iconic freeze frame.
And also thinking of thinking of the ending of Butch, Butch and Sundance come up. And it is, of course, an iconic freeze frame.
And also thinking of the ending of Butch and Sundance makes me think about like Bonnie and Clyde as well. This is like a very Bonnie and Clyde coded moment for them.
But what I like about this, like what are they hijacking here? What are they heisting? They're heisting their Audis, you know? Yeah. So thinking about the opening credits and the two marks sort of going in under elevators, out this sort of thing, like that's the innie-outie heist of like the getting Gemma sort of situation.
The down the hallway flashing of Heli and Gemma, that is like, that's our ending here as well. Like all that sort of stuff like that like that but the idea of I don't know how long these two crazy kids can run around and hide inside of the severed floor there are weird departments we've never visited but there also seems to be surveillance but then again they seem to only have Drummond in charge of surveillance so like when he's out look we don't know how big the marching band instrument storage space is.
You know, you can hide in a tuba case for days. Plus their costumes, the costume lockers.
Mauer, by the way, just like sitting there for a long time before he actually like does anything. I'm like, my guy, come on.
But anyway, I don't know how long these two crazy kids can hide on the separate floor.

But as long as they do, they're holding their Audis hostage inside of them. And what's even more interesting, I was annoyed, initially annoyed, and I'm still a little annoyed by the way in which reintegration was like dangled in front of us at the beginning of the season and then never comes to fruition.
Yeah.

But if the circumstance now is any mark is holding Audi market hostage

inside of himself

and... in front of us at the beginning of the season and then never comes to fruition.
But if the circumstance now is any Mark is holding Audi market hostage inside of himself and Audi Mark can sporadically emerge via reintegration. That's interesting.
That's very interesting. That's a fun premise.
Again, I don't know how long that they can like sustain this locale. I don't know how long they can like barricade themselves.
I don't know how many, how long you can survive on like cut beans in the vending machine. But he doesn't have the reintegration goop to drink.
Oh, well, listen, the ways of reintegration are quite, quite confusing, quite opaque to us. So all of that is really, you know, we'll talk about this more in terms of like, look ahead to season three, but that is like a premise concept is interesting to me.
Very much so. I will say, especially in the context of Mark Scout earlier this season has a conversation.
I think it's with Raghabi at that point in time. It could be with Devin.
So forgive me on the details, but he's having this conversation about his stages of processing Gemma's death and talking in particular about this idea of bargaining. Right.
It's like one of the first things you're going through is this idea of like, what would I give up to give this person back? And ultimately, even though Mark Scout is proposing that Mark S give his own life effectively to save Gemma, what's happened is kind of the opposite, where as you say, he himself is being kind of held hostage. Gemma is safe, at least as safe as the stairwell.
We'll see how far she can get on foot. It does not seem very safe to me that she's just in the stairwell still.
She's got to get moving, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah.
But that is an idea I find really poignant, right? Of like, what is the sacrifice that Mark Scout is willing to make? Because so much of kind of, as the two Marks were negotiating their plans and talking through like why they should do this or why they shouldn't do this.

One of the things that kept occurring to me is like Mark Scout, the Audi, has so much less to lose at this point in his life than Mark S does until he finds out that Gemma is alive.

But like to Mark S, he has this love in his life.

He has Heli.

He has all these friends that he's made on the severed floor.

Mark Scout is a desperate man who is like, yeah, drill a hole in the back of my brain. Let's get this thing going.
I need something to hope for and live for because I am just drinking myself to death. And so the idea that unwittingly or not, he has kind of signed his body up to be held hostage in this way, I think is a great ending for that character for this season.
I agree. All right.
Anything else you want to talk about in this finale that we didn't get to? I have two things. One of them, something I really loved and one of them, something I really did not like.
The thing I really loved when Mark goes to jailbreak Gemma and comes into the Cold Harbor room. First of all, as you alluded to, we do get these kind of dual moments of recognition for them both.
I love that, that you get Mark's moment seeing Gemma in the room and then Gemma's moment seeing Mark when she comes out. Wonderful, wonderful emotional storytelling.
When Mark is trying to plead with her to come with him, he starts to say, your name is Gemma Scott. We were married for four years and we were and he kind of cuts himself off before he can say that they were happy together.
And instead he says, we had a life together. And I think Adam Scott is so fucking terrific in that scene.
He's so great in this episode. You pointed to the quivers of the voice, the kind of modulation he has to have.
He's basically an action star for half of this episode. I think he's really, really wonderful.
And I think also, just sci-fi premise-wise, trying to coax her across a barrier, you know what I mean? Like us, the tension of that, we're like, we got to get going. Yeah.
And we got to get her, and we know that as soon as she crosses that barrier, she's going to be a Gemma who is like eager to go. Yeah.
And so we're just sitting there like, come on, like, just walk two steps forward. It's like.
It's a great promise. All right, what didn't work for you? Unfortunately, it's a lot of the Milchik stuff.
We've talked all throughout this season about how Milchik's story is an avenue to talk about race in the workplace, the way that language is placed differently for a Black man specifically, like the re-canonicalized paintings, all of this stuff. Yeah.
My mileage has varied with it. I thought it was really well done earlier in the season.
I thought some of the way it was handled in the middle of the season, I had questions about. And it feels like this treatment of Milchick, whose role in this episode, is kind of to snip back during the talk show presentation version of what's happening on the MDR floor.
And then ultimately, by the end of the episode, he is a physical, violent instrument trying to knock over a vending machine to pursue without hesitation, really, the Lumen agenda in terms of getting order on the MDR floor. I feel like that is just a really fumbled treatment of that character, given what you have been trying to sell us as his arc for the season that undermines a lot of the ideas that were a part of that process.
I think that's interesting. I had a similar bump on it.
And I will say, we got a lot of emails from people trying to let us know that perhaps we as two white podcasters would not understand the nuances of some of these exchanges. And I admit that that's probably true.
But I do think that we have all season being like, we understand what they're trying to do. Seems like they're trying to do here with microaggressions, with micro rebellions, with like all this sort of stuff like that.
The idea of being uppity, again, all the language policing, conceptually very much understand what they're going for. Absolutely.
I think our question was execution. But again, there might be like nuances of it that are not for us.
But I agree fundamentally with what you're saying here. And I hate to keep doing this, but I will say like, until Dan talked to us about it, and I thought what Dan had to say about it, we asked him this question like directly.
I thought what Dan had to say about it was really, really good. So again, tune in Monday, um, for, I'm sorry if that's annoying, but tune in Monday for, for more information on that front.
But I was really bumping on that until, uh, which is why I asked Dan that question until Dan sort of gave his input. So, but I understand that that was maybe not the full explanation of what you want.
If you guys have thoughts or feelings about Milchik or the absence of Helena or Mark's choice at the end or how we're absolute rubes for not enjoying the goats or whatever it is, pineapplebobbing at gmail.com. PrestigeTV at Spotify.com is where you can reach us.
Thank you for all the feedback. This was from our White Lotus episode earlier this week, but you guys sent in a bunch of great TV monologues that we missed in our little ranking.
Embarrassing on our part, Jen. Yeah, we're a little embarrassed by some of the things that we missed.
The show called The Wire, have you heard of it? Have you heard of it?

Designing Women, my favorite sitcom of all time. Anyway, listen, thanks for all of your emails always at monkeyshootout at gmail.com, pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.
Did you read the email that we got from Connor this morning about his purple eggs? No, what was up with the purple eggs? I think you'll actually,

so we did this live Q&A yesterday and our listener Connor sort of like

wrote in about these purple deviled eggs.

And Rob and I both were like,

he used like beetroot juice to die.

Anyway, his whole egg bar looks amazing.

I think once you read this email,

you're going to be like, I was wrong.

The egg bar looks fantastic.

I think you're going to love it.

As with many things in the culinary arts

and television and otherwise, it's like once you realize that there is an understanding and a plan in place, right? There is a level of authority and a soft touch in the execution. I'm open to a lot of things.
There's visual. He sent photos too.
I think you're going to love it. I can't wait.
All right. So we'll be back next week.
Yes. With more White Lotus

as always

with more

Severn's finale thoughts

including your emails

extra interviews

that we've heard

this Dan Erickson

interview that I keep

teasing but can't

but due to embargo

reasons can't tell you

what he said yet.

Sorry.

That's good tease work

though Joe.

You're bringing people

back to the feed

back to the channel.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

And then also

on this feed Bill Simmons Sean Fennessy and I will be checking in on the first two episodes of the feed. Back to the channel.
We appreciate it. Thank you.
And then also on this feed, Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessy, and I will be checking in on the first two episodes of the studio. So that is also on this feed.
So there's a lot going on as always. We will see you next week.
Rob and I will see you next week. I might see you a little sooner.
One quick note too, Joe, before we get out of here. I know, look, the Severance Sickos are going to be back with us on Monday to talk about what's going on next season.
This is the end of something though, at the end of this run. And I really appreciate the people who've been following along with this season with us who have been emailing in.
It's been an absolute blast to cover this season with you. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on in season three, to speculating wildly about what may or may not be involved.
But this is something worth commemorating, whether it needs a marching band, whether it needs a waffle party, whatever needs to be done. I feel like we need to honor the moment.
I completely, thank you so much for saying that. I completely agree.
Everyone's been like on top of their game for both Severins and White Lotus. It's been a really, really great time on the Prestige TV feed.
We really appreciate it. We understand you have a lot of, what is it? What did they say at like American Airlines? Yeah.
A lot of competitive choices in the marketplace. I will say much more true for podcasts than airlines.
That's for damn sure. Thanks for choosing us.
And your baggage will be at baggage claim too. And we want to thank Kai Grady, Justin Sales.
CT is here with us this morning

John Richter has been here with us for a lot of the season

this has been a lot of like let's set Joanna up in a room with a microphone

which is actually like it's not it's no small feat

it's a thing every every week when we do it

so thanks to everyone and we will see you soon