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

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Speaker 1 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joyna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 And we are on our 200 of podcasting together this week, Rob. What a joy.
What a thrill. What a delight for me.

Speaker 2 I was worried you'd be sick of it by now, Joe. No.
If not sick of me, at least sick of being in the void.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so we're here with our hot severance finale takes.

Speaker 1 And this is a different severance reaction episode than what we usually put together because usually the procedure is severance drops Thursday night

Speaker 1 over Thursday night into Friday morning. We're poking.
I mean, at least I, I won't speak for Rob. I'm snooping around the Reddit boards.
I am reading your emails. We're both reading your emails.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 None of that has happened today. We are recording this in advance of the finale dropping.

Speaker 2 So you're just getting raw uncut gems from Rob and me

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We will get to have listened to the official pod. We will get to read other interviews that might have come out after the episode.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Rob went off book and dropped like the best question I thought of the interview. It's very generous of it.
And then we also

Speaker 1 got Dan Erickson's answer to what a pineapple means. And I won't.
spoil that but like what could be more important like what why else are we here what else have we been building towards if not that?

Speaker 2 So, that will be on Monday, so you can still email us where Rob Mahani always at pineapple bobbing at gmail.com, and of course, at prestige TV at spotify.com.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 My own thoughts and opinions. Oh, no, but I, you know, I have them.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 what I will say about the Dan interview without getting into the details of it or spoiling it,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I, you know, we've both, I think, re-watched it since.

Speaker 1 I will say I was like pretty medium on the finale coming off of OneWatch before before our conversation with Dan.

Speaker 1 After our conversations with Dan and upon rewatch, I'm much higher on the finale than I was initially.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We don't usually do letter grades, but sometimes I do for help.

Speaker 2 I think it's more of a freeform, like you get a shape as a grade kind of school here on the Prestige TV podcast.

Speaker 1 Real Montessori shit. I was a Montessori kid, you know?

Speaker 2 Are you real?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was.

Speaker 2 I really was.

Speaker 1 Does that, does that fill in some blanks for you?

Speaker 2 It really does. I think that's a real Rosetta Stone for understanding the Joanna Robinson experience.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Where are you sitting with the severance finale?

Speaker 2 I had a similar kind of experience.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I think it's a really solid finale. It's always going to be hard to measure up to the Severance Season 1 finale, which is so propulsive and such a masterclass in that particular kind of storytelling.

Speaker 2 That said,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And some of them are kind of mystifying to me as far as like what their treatment is of particular core characters on the show.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's just there's some misses or some near misses across the board otherwise.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I don't mind that generally. No.
But among the options, options, which are, you know, we did this live Q ⁇ A yesterday and there were like a lot of Rick and base questions.

Speaker 1 So like among the options being Rickin, Miss Wong, Irving,

Speaker 1 Bert, some combination of the two.

Speaker 1 Who, baby Eleanor, who were you missing most here in the finale?

Speaker 2 I think for me, it's Irving. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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 Ort Bow, 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 like Han Solo moment or anything like that, which I was not expecting.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 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, like the finale I feel better about after reflection and re-watching.

Speaker 2 The Burton Irving stuff, I feel a little,

Speaker 2 a little less great about than we initially podcasted than when we initially podcasted.

Speaker 2 I think because those scenes draw so much on the audience's understanding of the inny 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.

Speaker 2 Like it hit me emotionally in the moment, but I don't know that it quite stood up to scrutiny.

Speaker 1 And as you know, like that train station scene didn't super work for me.

Speaker 1 And someone, I was talking to someone, they really articulated for me in a way that I didn't understand when we podcasted about it, where they were like, we don't know Audi Irving that way.

Speaker 1 Barely at all, yeah. You know, and so, yeah, we are, we are putting our anti-Irving feelings on this Audi Irving character, and it's just like there's a, there's a gap there.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it left me kind of thinking, uh,

Speaker 1 and this may be confirmed by the time you hear this pod. I don't know.
But if this is, we don't know.

Speaker 1 If this is the end of Irving, we still don't know. I'm still kind of convinced that it's like a,

Speaker 1 if we can get Totoro back, we're going to get Totoro back, but we're not sure we're going to get Totoro back.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 That's what it feels like from a screenwriting perspective.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And I think that

Speaker 1 there's a part of me, like if they had known earlier,

Speaker 1 I kind of wish, and I never thought in the world I would ever ask for Les Toturo. I kind of wish the end of the Orpo episode was the end of Irving.
Right. Like

Speaker 1 that was such a beautiful, dramatic, based in a character we know so well, any Irving taking a stand moment.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 I kind of feel like the end of the Orpo episode. That being said, I really hope that Toturo is like, I'll give you an episode next season or something.

Speaker 1 You know, we get to see Irving in a, 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 the last season.

Speaker 2 It could be as much Troturo 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.

Speaker 2 And you do feel his absence in a way where any, as any of the the members of the MDR team would exit, you would feel their absence. But I love Troturo especially.

Speaker 1 Let's start with James and Helena. James Egan giving real, I never cared for Job

Speaker 1 energy and talking about Helena here. Something that's interesting in this exchange, I think this is a brilliant move, actually.

Speaker 1 As

Speaker 1 impenetrable as a lot of the sort of Jame 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?

Speaker 1 There should be,

Speaker 1 you know what I mean? But

Speaker 1 when he talks to Heli

Speaker 1 and talks about how

Speaker 1 he once saw the fire of Kir inside of Helena and he no longer sees it, and he, what does he say?

Speaker 1 Some vampire shit, sired others in the shadows, but they never had the fire of Kir, but he sees it in her, Heli R, not Helena Egan, but in Heli R. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so, given what we know about innies and outies, I was thinking about this idea of like, if the innie is the

Speaker 1 unmasked, untamped down by life

Speaker 1 version of a person,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Is that what you call it? Scrutinized?

Speaker 1 What would you call it?

Speaker 2 I don't know. The soft moaning, I think, puts it into a different category.

Speaker 2 There's a whole like, I will say, with James overall, and this scene especially, there is a like fetishization of control with him and Helena and their dynamic.

Speaker 2 It's when he's talking about the fire that he sees in Helly. To me, the implication is, and I mean, he basically says this much, that fire has left Helena, right?

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying is like, I feel like he put out the fire in her, and then he's like, where did that fire go?

Speaker 1 I have no idea.

Speaker 2 He's almost invigorated by the idea of kind of putting that fire out again or of seeing it resuscitated in a way.

Speaker 2 I think there is an element of him and Lumen overall that is so rooted in the idea of control. Yes.

Speaker 2 And of taking these wild elements and putting them in a contained space where you can harness their power for whatever your purposes are.

Speaker 2 And so to him, seeing this version of Helena, again, we don't really know what the ultimate plans are for Helena. Like, is his consciousness going to be revolved into her?

Speaker 2 Like, we still have so many questions as far as those kinds of things go.

Speaker 2 But I think clearly to him, there's the spiritual aspect of seeing Kir in a version of his daughter.

Speaker 2 And then there is sort of the control aspect of what it seems like he and Lumen are really all about.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 It's a building full of dudes who like watching a woman in locked in a room on a screen. It's just, it's just what they're about.

Speaker 1 You know, and who among us?

Speaker 1 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 like, is this idea that like maybe in order to get approval, because it feels like a lot of Helena Egan that we met this season is someone who like 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.

Speaker 1 So, this idea that perhaps she

Speaker 1 put out like that fire inside of herself partially like that he that he does you know in his soft moaning oppressive whatever shit but like that she in order to be the perfect daughter squashed the very in pursuit of his respect and admiration yeah squashed the very thing that would earn that respect and admiration from him but i guess the idea is that jam in thinks that if helly r had been at his uh breakfast table she would have um taken the eggs raw you know what i mean?

Speaker 1 She's that kind of person.

Speaker 2 Would she, though? Because it feels like taking the eggs raw is, in a way, the ultimate kind of compliance.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's a sort of...

Speaker 2 Word of advice to everyone on the show, do not take anything raw. No raw happening in any area of the imagination.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, unless you're guest on no raw eggs is what I would recommend. But I think that

Speaker 1 I don't know, there's some like a feral quality to this idea of like, you know, take it. Like, no, never mind.
I don't want to keep repeating the phrase. It's just disgusting.

Speaker 2 Um, anyway, especially in context with Pharaoh, like, we're getting places, Joe. This podcast is moving.

Speaker 1 This is what I'm going to say from a screenwriting perspective.

Speaker 1 And I, 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.

Speaker 1 A sort of situation we never thought that they would be able to accomplish after the rebellion of season one. What this does,

Speaker 1 because I'm like, how are we ever, you know, the only person who wants Helliar around is Mark and the only leverage Mark has is complete you need me to complete cold harbor so I got to have like my my girl Friday around or else I'm not gonna do it um but now that cold harbor is done

Speaker 1 what is what is the excuse to keep helly around and if the excuse is Jay Megan has taken a liking to her true gross and chilling, but also,

Speaker 1 you know, we love that character. And so I love this as an as a way that it would be believable to have her still inside of the plot.

Speaker 2 I think there's also a lumen-oriented reason to want to have a version of Unegan on the floor as Mark does this like landmark accomplishment, right?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 100%. But I mean, even now that Cold Harbor is done, presuming that Heli and Mark can't run around the hallways forever.

Speaker 2 I mean, how is you saw Adam Scott's cardio? Like that guy can go.

Speaker 1 And listen, Helen has been, you know, she's been in her laps in the pool. So she's also got that great lung capacity.
Okay, let's talk about the marks.

Speaker 1 Great, 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.

Speaker 2 Severance in its bag right there.

Speaker 1 We were talking about this before. Basically, Basically, the only

Speaker 1 members of the MDR team that we haven't seen talk to each other are the Irvings, right? Because

Speaker 1 we see Dylan talk to himself a bit in this episode. We've seen Helena and Helie talk to each other a bit in a previous, in season one.

Speaker 1 And so here we have the marks talking to each other.

Speaker 1 This, I guess, is that this is the payoff along with the inny outdoor 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, like what's what's going to happen here.

Speaker 1 Take me through what you liked most about this exchange.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I thought it was a really fun and awesome construction, the whole like step inside and outside the, you know, the top deck.

Speaker 2 Really well conceived. I love that we got there ultimately.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Of course they would be on the same side. I call this the Daenerys Targaryen fallacy.
Of course you would be best pals with all of your favorite characters from Game of Thrones.

Speaker 2 That's clearly not the case.

Speaker 2 And I really appreciate that

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like 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.

Speaker 1 10 on 10, no no's for the Daenerys Sargaryan 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

Speaker 1 Devin and Mark Scout.

Speaker 1 Cobel, we're used to it, but Devin, who we love, and Mark Scout, who

Speaker 1 personally, at the end of the day, I'm like more Team Mark S than Mark Scout.

Speaker 2 One thought I had in this episode is, is the way that Mark thinks about Innies really so different from the way that Helena Egan thinks about Innes? Because

Speaker 2 he is not treating Mark S like a person by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 1 But like to see Devin and Mark Scout be like antagonists was really interesting to me.

Speaker 1 Like all of a sudden, Devin, who I'm like, you know, despite her questionable calling Cobel or whatever, like, I'm always on her team. I'm always on her side.
And I was like, oh no. Like, I, you know,

Speaker 1 she her face falls when he's like, what about this? And she's like, uh, um, uh,

Speaker 2 Devin, Cobel, Mark, you've been standing on the side of the road all day

Speaker 2 to just hang out and vibe.

Speaker 1 We couldn't have a better plan.

Speaker 2 Not a single calm strategy to pitch this guy on ending his existence and the existence of everyone that he knows. You got, you had nothing for that.

Speaker 1 To your point about like Mark Scout's point of view on Innie's versus Audi's is

Speaker 1 chillingly similar to Helena Egan's. This is, of course, is like a seed that they planted all season.
Yes.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think this feeds into this larger idea.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 that part of the thrust of, I mean, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 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, you know, by all means.

Speaker 1 If you get up on your desk and do go full Norma Ray, then like you can, you two can get a marching band on your side. But

Speaker 1 forming a coalition

Speaker 1 where you see yourselves at odds with each other, your best interests at odds with each other. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 not to get to political theory when I definitely am not qualified for this. I think you're more qualified for this, Rob, but like that's that's the trick of the oppressor, right?

Speaker 1 Is to make you believe that you have no common cause and that to see someone else succeed is to see yourself fail.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And the connective tissue that they make between

Speaker 1 our guy, Mark Scout, who I am rooting for, just like slightly less than Marcus, 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.

Speaker 1 Like she does not get Gemma's name right and he does not get Helie's name right.

Speaker 1 And there's, it's a little cutesy, but like, you know, at the end of the day, it is, I fundamentally fundamentally don't care enough about you to get the details right, sort of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, like Mark is so mired in his own pain and his own perspective that he cannot fathom that this other version of himself would be in love.

Speaker 2 And really, he even, the way he describes it is like, I heard you like somebody.

Speaker 2 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 like important.

Speaker 2 So much more important than anything that you're going through. Devin has never seen the severed floor.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like 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

Speaker 2 this is going to be your last day either way. Like your usefulness to Lumen will run its course once you complete Cold Harbor.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Because we've been going on like four episodes of Devin being like, yes, I believe in Harmony Cobel, the woman who I gave my child to under false pretenses because she wormed her way into our entire life.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 I don't know what's going on with Devin. Devin.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yes. It's so infantilizing.
It's so condescending. It's so dismissive of the humanity.
He cannot imagine the interior life of an any. And

Speaker 1 to give Mark some credit,

Speaker 1 this is such like an alien concept in terms of like, you know, what if I met a severed version of myself?

Speaker 1 Would I be able to immediately grok that they have this whole interior life that I don't have access to? Yeah.

Speaker 1 If it's happening inside of my my own brain and heart, my physical brain and heart, like, and I don't have access to that. But I think, and, and I think, um,

Speaker 1 the back and forth learning, like the wonderment of seeing each other on the camcorder was, was

Speaker 1 really fun.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You are

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 not just discounting me, but you're actively like against my happiness. Completely.
So yeah.

Speaker 2 And not just against it, but thinking about it so flippantly that you're just you're just asking me to throw away my existence for nothing that I know or I understand.

Speaker 2 This idea of someone else's wife effectively to Mark S.

Speaker 2 It's like you're asking an awful lot of that character.

Speaker 2 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 cared to.

Speaker 2 Like, 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like, we know he hasn't even tried other than trying to reintegrate for his own purposes.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like, they've been painting this, like, completely false narrative of what the any experience has been.

Speaker 1 And, and they also, they also

Speaker 1 painted a false narrative of what the any experience was. Because when Mark Scout talks about,

Speaker 1 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 so sorry.

Speaker 1 And Mark S is like, I don't know. We had waffle parties and egg bars and I fucked the lady two different ways, you know, like we made our own fun.
But like

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so I don't think it's completely out of pocket for him to extrapolate

Speaker 1 like that this will be like a drone version of myself, like a zombie version of myself. So, like, yes, in this scenario, I am with Mark S where I'm like, fuck you, buddy.
Like, I am a real person.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 So I do want to give him that grace.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Let's get this thing moving. And meanwhile, Mark S hears about reintegration for the first time.
Was like, wait, how, how does this work?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But overall, we're sort of confronting this idea of if reintegration is real and what it actually means for the virgins of consciousness that would be reintegrated, which is something that Mark Scout has not been too worried worried about to this point.

Speaker 1 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.

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Speaker 1 Something I will say for Mark Scout Marquez, and I did, I loved, I really liked this cut where he's like,

Speaker 1 you know, if you, if you value this, the next time I get here, I better be on this Evered floor. And that's what we cut to.
I thought that was like a really cool cut. Shout out to Mark Scout for

Speaker 1 amidst all of this, he gives himself a nice, close, clean shave.

Speaker 1 It's not disheveled, stubbly Mark that shows up. It is crisp, clean, basuited Mark S who shows up at the severed floor.
Um, I want to start with Dylan.

Speaker 1 Back at MDR, I want to start with Dylan, even though it's slightly out of chronological order, because I think this idea

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 If we leave, it's death for us

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 going back to Bert, but when you think about Irving and this idea of like Irving leaves after the Orpo,

Speaker 1 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 he's on a cruise. He's fine.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 He's on a train cruise. Yeah.

Speaker 2 My favorite. There could be a nice dining car in there.
We don't know.

Speaker 1 That sounds like real murder on the Orient Express stuff. I don't want it.
But, like, but Dylan's like, then he's fucking dead. Like, he's, he's dead.
Okay.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 seeping into the story all season, all series, and just made more, much more urgent

Speaker 1 inside of this episode. Because we've been asking this question about Gemma

Speaker 1 for a little while of like when they're like, when Cold Harbor is completed, she'll be dead. And we were like, what does dead mean in, you know, in severance?

Speaker 1 Does that mean you don't, the body doesn't have a pulse anymore? Does it mean something fundamentally about you is gone?

Speaker 2 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 Jim at the conclusion of Cold Harbor.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They remove the chip for whatever purpose and presumably she would die from that removal.

Speaker 1 So if you're listening to this and you're like,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He would just give us like a nice, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 It didn't make it out of committee, unfortunately. It was struck down.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's possible that in another interview or on the official pod, they explained it a bit more. But we're sitting here on Thursday morning without all of the information about what

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 express our regrets over not reading certain emails from our listeners?

Speaker 2 It's unfortunately so, because it's been there for us for weeks now. It's been in the notes for weeks.

Speaker 2 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, you know, some weird accenting in particular to make it look slightly more foreign.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, it's been there. It's been, the screenshots have been there for weeks.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 It's the model is,

Speaker 1 it's like very French and is like Col d'Aubert, like, is what the, is what it says.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, and this is tiny print on the box, so like, genuinely, and I believe sideways because the box itself is sideways.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Obviously, like 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 um so in practical world building terms does this mean dr maurer was like i see this box let's 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

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 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 what he might get up to?

Speaker 1 Um, yeah, so the idea that Cold Harbor is, as far as we understand it,

Speaker 1 the ultimate test for the walls of the chip.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Let's create an any version of Gemma in her own clothes. So it's like the closest to actual Gemma

Speaker 1 that we can create. No wig required, like all the 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.

Speaker 1 Let's fucking pipe that triggering music.

Speaker 2 Let's get that Billy holiday. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's just do all that. And if the walls hold, then we will have perfected something about the severance procedure.

Speaker 1 This is the toughest test we could think of to ensure that the severance walls will hold.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 I don't know because there's more about Cold Harbor that we don't know. So that's what we do know about Cold Harbor.
Yes. But in terms of like what removing the chip

Speaker 1 from Gemma, how and 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.

Speaker 2 I do think overall, the deconstruction of the crib being the ultimate test is in itself like quite a devastating concept and idea. Oh,

Speaker 1 I think really brilliant.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 If those are literally the same clothes, and maybe they are, maybe they just like bought, you know, the same, the same articles of clothing.

Speaker 2 But if they are literally the same clothes, would that indicate us that there probably was no car crash of any kind?

Speaker 1 Oh, I don't think I never thought there was a car crash. Yeah.
I mean, I never, but like, I didn't.

Speaker 2 Yeah. The jury's kind of still out, though, as far as if there was, if there could have been some kind of accident.

Speaker 1 I could see them driving her off the road, but I don't think they like dumped her, dumped, then they later dumped a different body into her or something like that.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay, so anything else you want to say about the Dylan conversation with himself? This wasn't like

Speaker 1 I thought this was quite

Speaker 1 sweet. This is, of course, similar to though not exactly the sort of like erotic thrupple outcome that I was rooting for, but like

Speaker 1 Audi Dylan being vulnerable and saying, you know, hearing that you were a badass at work was tough for me, but him also being, but him saying, like, Gretchen, I get it, Gretchen's perfect, so I get why you would be into her.

Speaker 1 I'm like, this is very endearing. I like all of this.
Um, anything else you want to say about this exchange between the two of them?

Speaker 2 I would say it hit me the same way. I think ultimately, him finding Audi Dylan, finding a kind of peace and understanding in this idea was so great to see, especially juxtaposed Mark, right?

Speaker 2 We have these Indie and Audi in clear, direct conflict, and in Indian Audi and Dylan, that they want the same thing versus they want opposed things, right? They both want Gretchen.

Speaker 2 They both kind of understand why the other would want him.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I loved that as a means for us to get to know Audi Dylan a little better because we've really only seen him like sitting on the couch reading a magazine, not really paying attention to his kids, like failing out of job interviews.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Okay, then

Speaker 1 we have Heli and Mark. And

Speaker 1 so, I will say, on the first time watching this finale through,

Speaker 1 the three highlights for me, the three tent pulls of the episode for me are like the camcorder conversation,

Speaker 1 the Helly and Mark cubicle conversation. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then I love a heist. So

Speaker 1 the mechanics of the anti-audi 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.

Speaker 1 So those were like the three things that I'm like, I love this. I love this.
I love this. The Mark and Halle cubicle scene

Speaker 1 was giving everything to me that I think they wanted the Burt and Irving scene in the train station to give to me.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 the we love

Speaker 1 you know raw we love a yearn we love a longing we love a bittersweet uh romance and i think that this was just like really beautiful stuff, really well acted. And

Speaker 1 then I have some questions about what happened after that, which again, Dan talked to us about, but like, this

Speaker 1 worked so well for me. This idea of like, this is what I want.

Speaker 1 This is what I think is the right thing to do.

Speaker 1 Because in doing this,

Speaker 1 we can take down Lumen. And in taking down, like, let's forget, with love and respect, Gemma and Mark Scout and their,

Speaker 1 you know, honeymoon ending. Let's forget all that.
If we pull this off, we can expose Lumen and we can bring Lumen

Speaker 1 a company that, you know, Helly accused James of like, your company created hell and you're going to burn in it, right? That's her revolutionary spirit.

Speaker 1 So the idea is like, we need to do this in order to like fuck Lumen over

Speaker 1 at the cost of not only our own existence, but like this love story that we've created here. Yeah.
And

Speaker 1 something that when I was when I was covering Lost

Speaker 1 and 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,

Speaker 1 and this is, this has to do with the plot in Lost where there's like 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so like 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?

Speaker 1 And like, and the greatest stakes that we can put on this whole thing is separating forever Mark and Helie, characters, you know, that we are desperately rooting for.

Speaker 1 And so to put those like love story stakes on something, it's classic Linda Lofian storytelling. You executed, I think, really well here.

Speaker 1 I think so, too. What do you want to say about this cubicle scene?

Speaker 2 Love the cubicle scene. Love the setup.
Love the stakes, as we said,

Speaker 2 of Helly talking herself into something that she obviously does not want.

Speaker 2 And I think in particular, I keep getting caught in a good way on this line where she expresses to Mark that basically that she is Helena Egan, right? Like, I am her

Speaker 2 in a way that we know Helly does not actually believe, but that's the thing that Mark kind of needs to hear in order to put this plan in motion and to start taking down Lumen in the way that she believes it should.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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 mounting revolutionary, giving the big speech.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Granted, they give us half a life and expect us not to fight for it is a fucking bar. Like I,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 And I think also

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Again, we did ask Anne about this and some of the things that he said about Holly's state of mind in this episode, I think was really interesting to me.

Speaker 1 But I still feel like there are some

Speaker 1 just little things that we skipped over in the progression of

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 sort of epiphany, I guess, that she has inside of this episode.

Speaker 1 Before we get to the Indy Outie Heists I loved and the goat stuff, which we will also have to talk about, we get

Speaker 1 some

Speaker 1 weird, fun, eerie stuff with Milchik here. We certainly do.
Tramel Tillman

Speaker 1 doing this like

Speaker 1 night talk show stand-up routine sort of thing with a Kiri Egan animatronic.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 actually, I mean, I will say on the on a comedy front, I have some milk shake questions in this episode. That's it, that's a different story.
On a comedy front, him literally like hauling ass

Speaker 1 from the Dylan thing that he has to take care of so that he can be ready for his entrance here.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, the just iconic, incredible imagery of him bandleading this marching band around the office. Like, this is, this is,

Speaker 1 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.
Um,

Speaker 1 this is such like incredible, perfect severance dissonance kind of stuff to hear.

Speaker 1 Uh, you know, an 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,

Speaker 1 Rob, do you want to talk about the music that we hear that first signals Bill Chick's

Speaker 1 whole performance that he does here?

Speaker 2 Look, Joe, we work for The Ringer, the Ringer.com.

Speaker 2 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 Allen Parsons Project

Speaker 2 track series as the Chicago Bulls' opening lineup theme, which it has been for at this point, literal decades.

Speaker 1 I think since the 80s.

Speaker 1 Is that wait? Did you say you don't know a ball knower?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're not a ball knower.

Speaker 1 Is that something we say? Is that a thing?

Speaker 2 It is a thing that we say somewhat unfortunately. Okay.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 from now until the end of time, I am honestly baffled that this has escaped you.

Speaker 1 Um, well, now I know. Um, I did know

Speaker 1 we talked about this before we started recording. I got astonished reactions from everyone on this current call.
Um, listen, I

Speaker 1 knew the track was familiar, and I knew that once I shazammed it, it would be something that, like, it's definitely something I had heard before, and it was definitely something that had been used and other things that I know, including the incredible, uh, incredibly underrated comedy blockers, which I'm a big fan of.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 2 I mean, it's the most... famous slash infamous intro music in all of sports.
This feels like a Ben Stiller touch to me.

Speaker 2 No Knicks fan, Ben Stiller. It feels like maybe one of his pulls.
I appreciated the shout.

Speaker 2 How do I feel about the overall talk show construction? It's fine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I have, I have, you know, Milchik-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.

Speaker 2 We get this whole presentation with it, with Milchik.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Is that, yeah, Rickin's in there, right? Like

Speaker 1 we get some Rickin.

Speaker 1 That's the most Rickin' we get in this episode.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, so.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you did not like take your time with this painting, it really is a beautiful work of art.

Speaker 2 And please forgive me because this is the part of the podcast where I just list some stuff that is happening in this painting.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Ambrose, Myrtle, Philip, Jame, Helena, Gerhardt, Leonora, Baird, and Keir. We've seen all of their kind of replicas before in the perpetuity ring.

Speaker 2 On Mark's left and right are literally, I would say, basically every character who has appeared in the show.

Speaker 2 The full MDR team, Cobel, Petey, Devin and Ricken, Bert, Felicia and Elizabeth from OND, the three members of the replacement MDR team, a few people in the back that I can't quite make out.

Speaker 2 And I would love to hear and see kind of the Reddit theorizing as far as who on Mark's Mark's right is in the very back of the procession here.

Speaker 2 Then you also have Miss Casey, Milchik, Miss Swong, Natalie, Grainer, Gwendolyn, Chrissy's character, Lauren, who unfortunately we're going to talk about soon.

Speaker 2 The Goatman, the Four Tempers, the MDR doppelgangers from the Oort Bow that we've been talking about on and off for weeks.

Speaker 2 And I will say the one that is catching me is what appears to be the ghost of the bride of woe.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 No, it was Irving's Irving's dream.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Um, round of applause for the work that you just did there, Freeze Fray and Mahoney. We always love uh when he comes to the pod.
Listen, um,

Speaker 1 so the the the bride of woe

Speaker 1 is one thing,

Speaker 1 The Audi Mark stuff

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 interesting,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 1 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 Regabi in the painting?

Speaker 2 So I would say Rigabi is by far the most notable omission. No Regabi, no Drummond, no

Speaker 2 doula that Mark went on a date with, whose name I will not mention because it activates the AI.

Speaker 2 And then there's like the people who don't have a direct connection to to Mark, Gretchen, Dr. Maurer, Sandra Bernhardt's character, Rebecca like those people are not

Speaker 2 pictured at all.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 visually amazing because you know they've got a camera just like in the mix there. I sidebar really quickly.
I, a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Are you gonna get somebody blacked back blackbagged over the course of this podcast? What is happening, Joe?

Speaker 1 And he's like, he was like a

Speaker 1 60-year-old,

Speaker 1 maybe not seven-year-old white man. And his favorite movie was drumline.
And I think about that all

Speaker 2 the time.

Speaker 1 He just loved drumline.

Speaker 2 Incredible pull by him, I've got to say. I just, I love it.

Speaker 1 It's like one of my most fun facts that I think about all the time. But anyway,

Speaker 1 the camera in the mix with the band, the disorientating swirl, Tramel Tillman's.

Speaker 1 We already knew that he was an incredible dancer, but just like incredible,

Speaker 1 you know, showmanship, like put him on Broadway as Harold Hill. Like, I would go see it, like, all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 Really, really fun.

Speaker 1 I have some questions for Mark

Speaker 1 in in terms of his sense of urgency.

Speaker 1 Now, I understand him wanting to linger because lingering means he gets to be with Helie for longer.

Speaker 1 But, like, as soon as he completes Cold Harbor, he's got to go.

Speaker 2 That's it.

Speaker 1 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, you've been got to go.

Speaker 2 Let me get in the first number at least. And then when they go into the second number, then I'll make the run for it.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 when I saw the goat cart, the goat in the cart, I was like, not the fucking goats.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 what it feels to me, having listened to Ben Siller and Adam Scott fawn with reason over Gwendolyn Christie and how much they love Brianna Tarth.

Speaker 1 They talked about Brianna Tarth a lot in the official podcast interview of her. What it seems like to me,

Speaker 1 in not only the 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

Speaker 1 a lumen brand, the hound versus Brianna Tarth fight.

Speaker 2 See, I think

Speaker 2 I think they were trying to get her to fight a bear again. I think that's what it was all about.

Speaker 1 You think it was, oh, you think it was the bear and the maiden fair. I think it was the hound.
I was like expecting her to bite

Speaker 1 his ear off. Like, I was just like, I was waiting for it.

Speaker 1 I none of, I didn't like any of this.

Speaker 1 None of this worked for me.

Speaker 1 That being said, Chekhov's, is that a bolt gun?

Speaker 2 It is a bolt gun. Okay.

Speaker 1 Checkoff's bolt gun and then the execution of that in the elevator.

Speaker 2 Very funny.

Speaker 1 Generally, one of the funniest things in the state.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Really good. And then the gurgling and the, you know, all of that.
Really good.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 What kind of security bypasses does he need to have? So many of these are so good.

Speaker 2 The bolt gun, holding Drummond hostage, accidentally killing him, the blood-soaked tie, like all this stuff I really, really like. I love very, very fun.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you're right that it does seem like, okay, they, 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Because otherwise, there's just no way that he's getting Drummond to go down there without any kind of weapon whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 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 it will perhaps will always be remarkably understaffed.

Speaker 1 There's just like one Drummond and one Milchik and one Maurer and one Sandra Bernhardt. And that's like all we've, we don't have like stormtroopers that we can call.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, I don't know what your experience with this has been, Joe.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like you, you get behind the veil of prestige on something and you're like, There's only 26 people working here. Like this is, this is the entirety of this company.

Speaker 2 And apparently Lumen is no exception to that.

Speaker 1 I will just advise this. Once they have removed Drummond's blood-soaked corpse from the elevator,

Speaker 1 maybe invest in some goons

Speaker 1 or a hench or two, you know?

Speaker 2 The budget just like 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.

Speaker 1 You can commission an entire masterpiece, a work of art, and it seems 24 hours.

Speaker 1 You can get Keanu on the horn to voice your claymation video and you you have no henchmen at Lumen none whatsoever uh can I say one thing about the goats that I did enjoy please

Speaker 2 earlier this season when we visit mammalian's neutrible

Speaker 2 not my favorite part of the season

Speaker 2 uh but during that and this is this is the point in the story where Helena is undercover as Helie she's going around with Mark presumably to tell the other departments about Miss Casey to try to find Miss Casey.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And we get this plea plea from Helena as Helie to Lorne about like, basically, think of, what if it were one of your goats?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I like that callback, and I like it specifically as the idea of Helena Egan knowing.

Speaker 2 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 who cares about her flock who cares about what what is the goat's name

Speaker 2 emil emil sorry all due apologies to emil who's a sweet very good goat yeah uh she knows that this is the thing to say to this person and i i appreciated kind of getting the the loop closed on that

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If this is for people, if you loved the Brianna Tarth fight, I support you in all your endeavors. Power to you.

Speaker 1 I, however, love a heist. And I have to say that, again, and we've praised Severance in the past for this,

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 anymark has to sort of lead the way when Miss Casey shows up, like all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Like, I thought all of that stuff, the brief reunion between the two of them when they're like, you know, together, and then

Speaker 2 Marcus and Miss Casey making out

Speaker 2 unwittingly.

Speaker 1 All of that stuff I loved. I really loved the blood of the tie.
I thought that was just a great payoff for like all of that.

Speaker 1 And then we get the final confrontation. Dylan has shown up to support Heli.
He is,

Speaker 1 we're holding the vending machine. We've stuffed the, above the vending machine with some trombones.
The marching band seems to be in on the revolution now.

Speaker 2 Yep, they're on board.

Speaker 1 So that's all great.

Speaker 2 This is the part of the Dylan story I did not really get, which is why

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I don't, I disagree on that because he sees Helly trying to.

Speaker 2 But he doesn't even know who's in the, in the back.

Speaker 1 I know, but I feel like he's like, whatever you're doing, I'm with you.

Speaker 2 I guess my counterpoint to that would be, he hasn't been with them all that, all this season. And if

Speaker 2 this is his growth, is like, now I'm with you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 On the one hand,

Speaker 1 I would disagree with you on this.

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like Dylan at this point, if he see, he runs into the room and he sees his teammate, Heli, who had made a bid to him the way that Irving made a bid to him earlier this season of like camaraderie.

Speaker 1 And he, 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.

Speaker 1 However, where that puts any Dylan

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He has since had

Speaker 1 an emotional growth experience with his like affair with Gretchen.

Speaker 1 Like there's definitely internal growth that is happening, but like fundamentally, that character is kind of where we left him in season one.

Speaker 1 It's true, and that's okay, but that's just not as exciting as it could be for him.

Speaker 1 Final Showdown: Mark, Helly,

Speaker 2 Gemma.

Speaker 1 Um, me personally,

Speaker 1 love a season finale with someone trapped on the side of glass banging on it, whether it's alias season two or lost season three, no matter what.

Speaker 2 I'm a classic for a reason.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 this, the Orpheus and Eurydice sort of imagery coming back into play of,

Speaker 1 you know, with some twists and complications, a thrupple sort of twist on this, but the idea that, like, you know, Mark as Orpheus does look back and in looking back,

Speaker 1 you know, loses. I don't know, it's more complicated than that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then we get them running towards

Speaker 1 they don't even know what.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Mel Tormay's Windmills of Your Mind

Speaker 1 start playing,

Speaker 1 starts playing. This is very visually stunning.
We've had

Speaker 1 throughout this 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.

Speaker 1 So we've got the lights on the floor going on, but these red lights as sort of this payoff. And what it gives gives us is this like, of course, very cool 70s imagery.

Speaker 1 Not this version, but the song When Mills Up My Mind is famously from the Thomas Crown Affair, which 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

Speaker 1 is one of the most like visually

Speaker 1 we're really doing something 70s movies that exist in terms of like the sort of frame and frame kind of cool stuff that, like, most people are imitating the Thomas Crown affair when they do, like, you know, Soderberg owes a huge debt and et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 all of that, uh,

Speaker 1 like visually vibe

Speaker 1 works for me. The image of them running together, holding hands.
It's funny.

Speaker 1 The freeze from the beginning at the end, and I, and I want to throw to you with like your reference for that because I thought it was a really good one.

Speaker 1 But, like, I was so certain this was a movie poster.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 And dear listeners, please email us at pineapplebobbing at gmail.com if this is a familiar visual reference to you.

Speaker 1 What did it invoke for you, Rob Mahoney?

Speaker 2 For me,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I thought overall, like the music, the music is wonderful. We get yet another callback to the idea of a carousel in the lyrics of Windmills of Your Mind.

Speaker 2 Also, the one visual from the opening severance theme and the opening credits that I've still been trying to put my finger on is the idea of the balloons and the balloon heads that is kind of repeated throughout the opening credits.

Speaker 2 There's a reference to like being like a carnival balloon here. I would love to understand.
Maybe there'll be some interviews after the season as far as that symbolism and imagery goes. But overall,

Speaker 2 I love where this finale and this season leave Mark and Mark S.

Speaker 2 I really like a lot of where it leaves Heli. And that I will say, that's one of the most improved aspects of the finale on Rewatch.

Speaker 2 The first time I was trying to understand where she was coming from and why this character would be going along with this plan.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You asked earlier what kind of characters I was feeling the absence of.

Speaker 1 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 that was my pick as well and and what i think is interesting is who knows how long these crazy kids this this uh you know i like the butch and son dance reference is so good and it's funny because like In my Google image searching, I was like, movie, poster, people running.

Speaker 1 Like, what am I? And at one point, I was was like, is it the porn identity? Like, what am I thinking of?

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 Butch and Sundance come up. And it is, of course, an iconic phrase frame.

Speaker 1 And also thinking of the ending of Butch and Sundance

Speaker 1 makes me think about like Bonnie and Clyde as well. And this is like a very Bonnie and Clyde

Speaker 1 coded moment for them. But what I like about this, like, what are they, what are they hijacking here? What are they heisting?

Speaker 1 They're heisting their outies, you know, like, so to thinking, thinking about the opening credits and the two marks sort of going in under elevators out this sort of thing like that's that's the inny outie heist of like the the like getting gemma sort of situation um the flat the down the hallway flashing of of uh heli and gemma that is like that's our ending here as well like all that sort of stuff 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.

Speaker 1 There are weird departments we've never visited, but there also seems to be surveillance. But then again, they seem to only have

Speaker 1 Drummond in charge of surveillance. So like when he's out.

Speaker 2 Look, we don't know how big the marching band instrument storage space is. You know,

Speaker 2 you can hide in a tuba case for days.

Speaker 1 Plus their costumes, the costume lockers.

Speaker 1 Maurer, by the way, just like sitting there for a long time before he actually like does anything. I'm like, my guy, come on.

Speaker 1 But anyway, I don't know how long these two crazy kids can hide on the severed floor,

Speaker 1 but as long as they do, they're holding their Audis hostage

Speaker 1 inside of them.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But if the circumstance now is any mark is holding Audi Mark a hostage inside of himself, and Audi Mark can sporadically emerge via reintegration.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't know how many, how long you can survive on like cut beans in the vending machine.

Speaker 2 Well, he doesn't have the reintegration goop to drink.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, listen, the ways of reintegration are quite

Speaker 2 confusing.

Speaker 1 Quite opaque to us. So

Speaker 1 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. So very much so.

Speaker 2 I will say, especially in the context of Mark Scout earlier this season has a conversation. I think it's with Rigabi at that point in time.
It could be with Devin.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Gemma is safe. At least Elif is at least as safe as the stairwell.
We'll see how far she can get on foot.

Speaker 1 It does not seem very safe to me that she's just in the stairwell still. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so the idea that wittingly 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.

Speaker 1 All right. Anything else you want to talk about in this vanelle that we didn't get to?

Speaker 2 I have two things. One of them, something I really loved, and one of them, something I really did not like.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 When Mark is trying to like plead with her to come with him, he starts to say, like, you know, your name is Gemma Scout.

Speaker 2 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. Yeah.
And he instead, he says we had a life together. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think Adam Scott is so fucking terrific in that scene. He's so great in this episode.
You pointed to, you know, the quivers of the voice, the kind of modulation he has to have.

Speaker 2 He's basically an action star for half of this episode.

Speaker 2 I think he's really, really wonderful.

Speaker 1 And I think also,

Speaker 1 just sci-fi premise-wise,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And we know that as soon as she crosses that barrier,

Speaker 1 she's going to be a Gemma who is like eager to go. And so we're just sitting there like, come on, like just walk two steps forward.
It's like, it's a great premise. All right.

Speaker 1 What, what didn't work for you?

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, it's a lot of the Milchik stuff.

Speaker 2 I,

Speaker 2 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 policed differently for a black man specifically, like the re-canonicalized paintings, all of this stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah. My mileage has varied with it.
I thought it was really well done earlier in the season. I thought

Speaker 2 some of the way it was handled in the middle of the season, I had questions about.

Speaker 2 And it feels like this treatment of Milchik, 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I feel like that is

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I think that's interesting. I had a similar bump on it.
And I will say, we got, you know, we got a lot of emails from people,

Speaker 1 you know, 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.

Speaker 1 But I do think that we have all season been 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.

Speaker 2 The idea of being uppity, again, all the language policing conceptually very much understand what they're going for.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I think our question was execution.
But again, there might be like nuances of it that

Speaker 1 are not for us. But

Speaker 1 I agree fundamentally with what you're saying here.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I thought what Dan had to say about it was really, really good. So again, tune in Monday for, I'm sorry if that's annoying, but tune in Monday for more information on that front.

Speaker 1 But I was really bumping on that until, which is why I asked Dan that question until Dan sort of gave his input. So, but I understand that that was maybe not

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 how we're absolute rubes for not enjoying the goats or whatever it is, pineapplebobbing at gmail.com. Uh, pressctv at spotify.com is where you can reach us.
Thank you for all the feedback.

Speaker 1 Uh, this was uh from our white lotus episode early this week, but you guys sent in a bunch of like great TV monologues that we that we missed in our little like ranking.

Speaker 2 Embarrassing on our part, John.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're a little embarrassed by some of the things that we missed.

Speaker 2 But the show called The Wire, Have you heard of it? Have you heard of it?

Speaker 1 Designing Women, my favorite sitcom of all time. Anyway, listen, thanks for all of your emails always

Speaker 1 at monkeyshoot out of gmail.com, pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 Did you read the email that we got from Connor this morning about his purple eggs?

Speaker 2 No, what was up with the purple eggs?

Speaker 1 I think you'll actually like, so we did this live Q ⁇ A yesterday and our listener, Connor, sort of like wrote in about these purple deviled eggs.

Speaker 1 And Rob and I both were like, hmm, he used like beetroot juice to dye the anyway. His whole egg bar looks amazing.
I think you, once you read this email, you're gonna be like, I was wrong.

Speaker 1 The egg bar looks fantastic. Um, I think you're gonna love it.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 There is a level of authority and a soft touch in the execution. I'm open to a lot of things.

Speaker 1 There's visual, he sent photos too. I think, I think you're gonna love it.

Speaker 1 All right,

Speaker 1 so we'll be back next week. Yes,

Speaker 1 with more White Lotus, as always, with more Severance finale thoughts, including your emails, extra interviews that we've heard, this Dan Erickson interview that I keep teasing that can't, but due to embargo reasons, can't tell you what he said yet.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 2 That's good tease work, though, Joe. You're bringing people back to the feed, back to the channel.
We appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 And then also on this feed, Bill Simmons, Sean Fantasy, and I will be checking in on the first two episodes of the studio.

Speaker 1 So that is also on this feed. So there's a lot going on as always.
We will see you next week. Robin and I will see you next week.
I might see you a little sooner. And

Speaker 2 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.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is the end of something, though, at the end of this run. And I really appreciate the people who have been following along with this season with us, who have been emailing.
And it's been.

Speaker 2 an absolute blast to cover this season with you. And so I am, I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on in season three, to speculating wildly about what may or may not be involved.

Speaker 2 But this, 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.

Speaker 1 I completely thank you so much for saying that. I completely agree.
Everyone's been like on top of their game for both Severns and White Lotus.

Speaker 1 It's been a really, really great time on the Press East TV feed. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 We understand you have a lot of, what is it, what did they say? Like American airplanes.

Speaker 2 A lot of airlines. Yeah.

Speaker 2 A lot of competitive choices in the marketplace. I will say much more true for podcasts than airlines.
That's for damn sure.

Speaker 1 Thanks for choosing us.

Speaker 1 And your baggage will be at Baggage Claim 2. And we want to thank Kai Grady,

Speaker 1 Justin Sales.

Speaker 1 CT is here with us this morning. John Richter has been here with us for a lot of the season.

Speaker 1 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 week when we do it.

Speaker 1 So thanks to everyone. And we will see you soon.

Speaker 2 Bye.