‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 9: Who’s the Secret Eagan?

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So for the love of coffee, go try them now. Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV Podcast feed.
I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney.

We're here to talk to you about the, as Ben Stiller said a hundred different times in the official pod this week, the penultimate episode of Severance.

That's how you know he's a podcaster now.

He loves the word penultimate and he has arrived.

So before we get into this episode, we're here to talk to you about episode nine, The After Hours, written by the creator, Dan Erickson, and directed by Uta Brasovitz, who is – we've already talked about her as an incredible TV director previously in the season. So excited to talk to you about this.
We haven't talked about this at all, Rob, so I actually don't know how you feel about this episode. We're going to do sort of like a big picture look.
Before we do that, some like programming announcements, and they're a little bit more detailed than they usually are. So- But with payoffs.
Don't skip ahead like you usually do. Pay attention, okay? Take notes.
There you go. The Severance finale is next week.
You may have heard. I've also heard it's 76 minutes long.
76 minutes long, correct. Episode 10, 76 minutes long.
So we will be breaking down that next week. And that finale episode is going to drop Thursday night.
So like right after the finale airs, this podcast, we usually do this on a Friday morning. This podcast will be up Thursday night next week.
But we have a bonus episode next week because we just want to like squeeze every last drop of milk out of that goat, I guess. I hated it too.
So Wednesday at noon Pacific, Rob and I are doing like a live Q&A mailbaggy thing on YouTube. So we'll have links up in our socials and stuff like that.
But you can find us on Ringer TV, the YouTube channel. We will be you can email us your questions, Rob, where can they reach us for this podcast? Always at pineapple bobbing at gmail.com.
And of course, at prestige TV at Spotify.com. If you're, I guess, less fun, or you just don't feel like bobbing today.
So you can you can send your your theories, your queries there. Yes, please do.
We're gonna need them. Like we're gonna take questions live from the chat, of course, but we gotta get some fodder to get started.
So please send us in theories, ideas. I think just kind of general questions about the world of the show.
It doesn't have to be guessing at the end game. Like let's have fun with the goats among us that sounds great um so so yeah so live q a on wednesday at noon pacific uh thursday night drop for the finale pod and then we'll have um a follow-up pod for you guys at the beginning of the fall of the next week where we can engage with all of your emails your reactions to the finale all that sort of stuff and we might have something more to do but we will we reveal that as it comes.
So that's all of our severance plans. In addition to the ongoing White Lotus coverage, Rob and I dipped into the pit this week.
Rob, this is our third Prestige episode together this week. Do you have any takes left in you? Or did you reserve some takes for severance? Or are you all taked out? I'm a little take baron at the moment but you know something about these severance pods in particular joe just just brings out the life in us i think you know something about the cold desolate wilderness of seeing cure proper of seeing you know helena in a nice plunge pool i just think there's something about this episode that's really going to keep us alive.
Well, you notoriously love to dissect an egg into uncomfortably small pieces and eat it in front of your dad, question mark. Even the egg cutter.
I don't like it. I don't either.
There are some kitchen implements where I'm just sort of like, we don't need this. And it makes me uncomfortable.
The general rule is if it's a one use implement, you don't need it in your kitchen. And it seems like all this thing does is dice a boiled egg into six identical pieces, which you don't need anything to do.
Okay. I have a follow up question for you on this.
Yes. What about like citrus juicer? I mean, you can, that one, I think have to have, for one, essential to your kitchen.
Also juices multiple kinds of citrus, for the record. That's the loophole I thought you were going to find.
I think it's allowed. Follow-up question, apple corer.
No. Okay.
Cut your apples. Or eat the apple.
You don't need a corer. Do you know that I used to...
I worked in a uh and um i didn't know this yeah just briefly when i was a teenager and um we had this thing that i love that was almost like a pencil sharpener where you basically like stab the apple onto it and you like crank it and it peels the apple and it was just for like mass apple peeling for like various like strudels and pies and stuff like that so um pretty sick hell yeah stuff but no egg cutter um you mentioned the the cold frosty environs that we find um all of our eagans and otherwise in one last note on sort of timing of next week our listener zach wrote in to point out that the season two finale is airing on march 21st which is the spring equinox aka the day in mythology that persephone emerges from hades and begins spring holy shit it's also a full moon this week and uh it's full moon on white lotus this week as well so i don't think they're planning any of this i don't think so either but if they are the northern californian in me loves loves to talk about it yeah so you know um okay so let's let's start with big picture thoughts on the episode um rob last week's episode episode eight was i would say quite controversial uh people felt pretty divided on it a lot of people felt quite negative on it um how are you you know and we we said it wasn our favorite episode, but I thought we found a lot of like good stuff to talk about. Oh, easily, yeah.
How did you feel about episode nine? Where are you sitting with this? I think you're seeing some of the after effects of an episode like that, where we talked about the sort of storytelling momentum in taking this huge diversion into Cobell's storyline. And you need that if you're going to reintroduce Cobell in the story in some way, if're going to bring her back you know with mark and devon and loop her back into the action you need to know what she's been up to but that also means you have to do a lot of just kind of moving the chains on the other characters to get them now in place for the finale and so i will say i did feel a lot of that a lot of kind of positioning the pieces on the board i also thought we just had just had some breathtaking emotional moments in this episode.
And so that to me is a fair enough balance for a penultimate endeavor. I'm really excited to talk to you about like how well those emotional moments hit or not for me as we go through.
But I agree. I had like table setter in my notes here.
I had checking in on plot lines we've been away from for three weeks.

Yep.

Only to sort of clear the deck of players because there's a version of the finale where we don't see Irving, Burt, Miss Wong, or maybe even Dylan.

I know.

You know, like this is like it's potentially setting up a just sort of like we've put these characters to the side.

In the case of Irving, maybe question mark or or who's to say so I thought that was interesting and then so I don't I liked this episode better than I liked episode eight though to be clear you and I were higher in episode eight than like some of the more critical fan pieces of the fandom but um my frustration points were a little sharper with this episode than they were um with episode eight because episode eight sort of what damon lindelof was talking about when we talked to him early in the season about like sort of where in the season you can get away with certain things yes and in an episode nine of a 10 episode season when you have harmony cabal show up and dramatically say Cold Harbor and then not tell them what Cold Harbor is.

Nope. season when you have harmony cabal show up and dramatically say cold harbor and then not tell them what cold harbor is nope in a way that no human would ever do that only a tv character keeping us in suspense about what cold harbor is would do that that i felt like i felt the sort of the gears behind uh the storytelling you know yes sort of groaning and creaking a little bit.
Even the delivery, just cold harbor. This is not human interaction.
I know Harmony Cobell is on her own wavelength, on her own planet in a lot of senses, but this is just not how any of this part of the story would go. I think overall, the Mark and Harmony stuff continues to mystify me as far as why that is being executed in the way it is.
And we can get into it as we get into that part of the story. But I have no answers as to why almost any of that is happening other than it needs to happen to get the story where it needs to go.
And that's not really satisfactory to me. Thank you so much for sharing with us your incredible incredible harmony cabell impression and that uh reminds me that i should tell listeners uh we here at the ringer at spotify are currently um unable to put clips into our podcast for very boring reasons that we don't need to get into but um you will not hear any clips from the episode unlike last week where we crammed like so many clips and you won't hear we break it was it our fault it might have been um uh you won't hear any clips from the episode and we can't even do the birving drop so we're gonna have to rely on rob's impression is uh to get us through and this week of all weeks to not have the birving drop is heartbreaking it's tough no ring crab rangoon like what We're bereft, honestly, but we'll soldier through.
I want to start. I do want to go sort of like plot line by plot line, but I want to start with this.
Let's check in on the opening credits because this is something that we've been looking at every week. Not every week, but as the season evolves, we're sort of like, oh, that's what that vial of milky goo is is it's the medicine that mark's taking or that's why there's an ice flow or that's why there's this that and the other stuff um and so i'm looking at it i'm like what's still left that i don't feel like has been fulfilled by the plot yeah is it the dozens of cure babies oh we're gonna get there that's my last thing first of all more explicit mark v mark scenarios yeah you know what i mean yes that's such a foundational part of the opening credits and i don't know that i feel like i've felt them in conflict with each other would you say that in the opening credits it is v because it's a lot of like mark yanking the other version of himself around pulling him through various holes and orifices and it's it's it's not what you want it's not what you want to see come out of a human head but i but i always interpreted a little bit more as mark helping mark not necessarily like helping repositioning maybe saving in some instances maybe whipping about but not necessarily being in direct conflict, if you know what I mean.
Okay. So I think I feel like there's some scenarios where it seems conflicted, but you're very right that there are also some scenarios where one is carrying the other, let's say, like under that like elevator curtain part of the opening credits.
Okay. There heli so gemma in the testing floor elevator we've seen yes but that image in the opening credits flashes between helena and gemma and on the one hand that could just be hey these are two women that have captured mark's fancy or are we gonna see as seems to be indicated in this episode, Hallie and or Helena get on that elevator and go down to the testing floor before all is said and done? I mean, despite all of the Mark and Harmony and Devin plans, Hallie's the person who's actually closest to getting to the testing floor, to the extent that when she goes down there, she will still be Hallie, which we don't really know.
She won't that's the one that's the thing i'm okay here's here's a theory i i saw on reddit this morning credit to the redditors they're the best um that really intrigued me and again we're gonna we're gonna save most of our what's gonna happen the finale even though i just started talking about it uh for our q a but if helly and mark both get on that testing floor elevator and go down, it will be their Audis on the testing floor.

Yeah.

It will be Chinese diner Zufu energy down on the testing floor.

And that's very exciting to me.

They're not going to make it out of that elevator.

Those two in a confined space, I put nothing past them. I think that could be really fun okay last but not least proliferation of baby cures and that brings me now to a segment i'm calling secret egan um and it's a game i would like to play with you rob mahoney i'm so glad that there's just an endless variety of shows we can apply secret baby logic to.
You know, secret baby for sure. But also this was reminding me of like in the...
Were you a Battlestar Galactica person? Oh, of course. So say we all, Jo.
Yeah. Secret Cylon or the Height of Thrones Mania, Secret Targaryen.
Like this is a game we like to play. Okay, so Secret Egan.

We get in this episode, when they're breaking into the birthing cabins,

she's one of James, right? Like, that fake pregnant Devon is one of James,

which the implication is that Jamie Egan, like Elon Musk,

has decided to just sort of spread his seed all around for He's a busy man. There was an item in the newspaper that mentioned that a woman got pregnant while she was severed.
Yes. That was a whole thing.
I think it was a news report. It was like a TV news report wherealie had to explain how it happened on like cnn effectively one of james is what i would say okay so

let's go down a list and i would just like to hear your input number one rickin

rickin's on my list by far the funniest secret possibility i really hope rickin isn't egan

rickin's on my list okay um rob says yes I'm just gonna take notes Okay Harmony Cabell I think twofold Yeah Is she an Egan And then Has she had a child By an Egan I think no and yes Is what we're being positioned for like the her showing up at the birthing site knowing just what to say sounded a lot to me like she's been on the other side of that situation before where she was the one being smuggled in perhaps plus our listener our listener holly wrote harmony if not an actual lactation consultant, knows enough to assist Devin, maybe from personal experience.

Yeah. So not an actual Egan herself, but perhaps the mother of an Egan.
And we already mentioned this early in the season, but could that Egan in particular be Helena, Helly? We know nothing about Helena's mom. Yeah, I think if Harmony is, in fact, the mother of an Egan, it would almost have to be Helena, just based on the characters on the board.

Unless it's like, oh, there was a mystery baby that is since dead or out of the story for some reason.

Like the narrative knots, I think, would start to tie themselves if it's someone we don't know.

And so, yeah, if there's going to be a connection, it would be to Helena, which i don't love to be honest with you me neither uh mark or devon no i don't think so i agree okay uh drummond yes but like extended family i think he's more of a cousin or something or like just like a egan yeah like an egan bastard i mean i guess they all are i don't like that word um anyway okay a connected distantly connected egan okay um and then i felt a little uneasy in my heart my mind and my soul and my stomach when i googled whether or not the following actors were biracial but i did do that so let's talk about this okay um miss wong possible possible possible uh dylan no okay and then here's my fave personally on the pod on the official pod this week which was like not the most uh i i i think i got the least out of this particular official pod um not out of entertainment but, I think they're just holding all their cards very close to the rest right here before the finale. So I understand why.
But their interview this week was Sydney Cole Alexander, who plays Natalie. And she had this really interesting part where she was talking about early in the season, the two encounters between Natalie and Milchick.
when Milchick is trying to have this sort of like, hey, have you a person of color had this same experience as I a person of color? Can we find fellowship and common cause here? And what Sydney Cole Alexander said is like that she is an actress made this choice to lean into Natalie's what she called light skinnedness to say, no, we are not the same you you and i i am a light-skinned like person of color and you are not and that makes me different slash quote-unquote like better uh like in in the warped imaginations of natalie right so could a natalie be a secret egan i think it's possible i I would say the fact that she was also given the paintings

suggests that she's clearly being othered in a way that's similar to Belichick, for sure. I'm going to say no, just because frankly, I don't want too many secret Egan's on the board.
And so if I'm already putting one or two up there, I don't want Natalie to be one as well. Okay.
So to recap, it's Rickon. I hope so.
I really hope hope so and unfortunately perhaps harmony has you know yeah mothered a secret or or a claimed egan um okay so that's that has been the stomach churning game of secret egan if you have nominations for this bleak bleak game uh You can email us at pineapple bobbing at gmail.com or prestige tv at spotify yeah who else could it be like like mark w secret egan ali alia shawcat secret egan yeah yeah um sure uh random was he an italian guy what was the other guy okay thank you secret again like that okay that was a hate crime it's all right you know james has been abroad you know like he's a he is a busy man he's a man about town like i'm not putting any continental travel again i think he's capable of anything that's true okay let's do let's go sort of person by person as we go through this episode because everyone is kind of siloed into their own story by design.

We are meant to say, wow, Milchik's plan of basically decimating the MDR camaraderie has certainly worked.

It certainly has.

And everyone's in their own little side plot.

But let's start not with a member of the MDR team.

Let's start with Milchik.

Okay.

Milchik v. Drummond.

This is an incredible encounter, obviously.

What do you think that the only reason he wasn't fired on the spot is because of this intensive pressure around the completion of cold harbor basically yes no other way he would not be fired on the spot for what he did here right this was the like i'm throwing my badge and gun on the table and storming out of the office speech yeah so yeah it felt like he was quitting even though obviously he is not and i think the nature of this interaction overall and milchik kind of asserting some of his authority and asserting some of what actually is his jurisdiction i think sets up pretty effectively the stuff with mark on the phone in the subsequent scenes like that that almost doesn't happen if he's feeling desperate and under the gun and like drummond is all like on his back trying to

get mark to come back in to finish cold harbor asap uh and so like the idea of giving mark the day i think is dependent on this exchange happening that said joe i i will say this exchange felt very mixed to me and some of it very very flat um the monosyllabically situation i I enjoyed. Him rightly pointing out, not my job, not my circus, not my monkeys out in the outside world.
Devour Feculents, way too cute. Yeah.
Way, way too cute. I kind of agree with you, even though I, you know, my understanding is that it is quite popular um a moment among people um a satisfying thing to say to one's horrible boss but but somehow less satisfying than eat shit yeah um were you fellow buffy head reminded of because our listener vinnie pointed out that when he says to put that monosyllabically he then follows it with monosyllables like it's not my fault what mark scout does when he is not at work it's yours right did it remind you at all of buffy and spike out for a walk bitch bitch i'm always thinking about spike when i can um i kind of agree and there's a few so there's a few like callbacks inside of this episode uh this is this is more of a resolution not a callback but there's a few moments that call back in ways that satisfy me you know like this episode ends with she's alive which was the cliffhanger ending of the season one finale.
One more for the road. If someone who does have access to clips and can put them together in a super cut in a way that we no longer can, can put together every time someone this season has said some variation of She's Alive, I would love to see it.
Nothing tops the season one finale of the slow-mo. Oh, the slow-mo's so good.
But, you know, there's a couple different callbacks and some work and some don't and yeah some feel a little too cute for me and and i i'm inclined to agree with you as for miss wong who is sent to gunnell egan's empathy center in svalbard where she will work to steward global reforms uh this feels to me like uh a milchick call rather than a lumen call definitely milchick being like you hung me out to dry you narked on me i do not like having you here you're at i'm sending you to svalbard which like if you thought it was cold and dreary and cure, wait till you get a load of Svalbard.

That's tough.

Anything you want to say about Miss Wong's departure here or sort of the role, if we don't see her again this season or at all, the role she played this season?

I'm a little confounded by the character.

And some of that is like, was she just here to add to the weirdness of the dynamic and to kind of sop up mystery as we're going along and trying to figure out who she is and what role she plays?

I'm going to go to the weirdness of the dynamic and to kind of sop up mystery as we're going along and trying to figure out who she is and what role she plays? Obviously, there is the element of taking this idea of child labor, which is so critical to the Lumen identity and transposing it into an office setting and calling it a fellowship. All good.
All good here. No problems whatsoever.
It's a classic rebranding. Classic rebing i appreciate the pr work yeah at the end of the day i still have so many questions about miss wong i hope this is not the end of her story like if if the the end of her arc is her as as a little girl with her earmuffs waiting for the bus like i'm i understand what we're doing there but it feels like kind of a missed opportunity given her presence throughout this season and given like how fascinating that character could be and so i'm i am still waiting for something with miss wong and i hope this show continues to pay off her presence in the story i'm just a little worried that she might be out of here let me tell you my inside baseball reason why i think um this is the last we see of miss wong um how soon do you think it's going to be until we get Severn season three? Eight years.
Yeah, this is a classic I sourced this back to the TV show Lost where they had a kid in the first season and then he just got really tall and they had to sort of contort the plot to write him out of the show tall waltz um so this happens all the time on shows when you cast kids you gotta this is why this is why allegedly the harry potter actors for the potentially ill-advised hbo show who's to say hbo show that they're making um i think they're making it like back to back to back to back because those kids are gonna grow yeah and you gotta bank that like outpace them so um miss wong the actress who plays miss wong uh sarah bach i believe has just enrolled in college yeah i want to say northwestern i saw a clip of her it's like a like a little meet and greet clip at northwestern what a delight and she was talking about like was talking about like, was it Brit Lauer? It was like one of the castmates.

I think it was.

Who like recommended her like that she check out Northwestern.

What a rec letter to get, Brit Lauer.

Yeah, Brit Lauer rec letter for Northwestern.

But like, yeah, I mean, you know, anyway,

I feel like that's probably the last we'll see Miss Wong. And I think your idea of her as a mystery sponge is one thing.

But I think mostly it's just a sort of show. And I could be wrong.
They seem to really like her. But, like, I think it's meant to show, yes, the history of child labor at Lumen.
Sure. And then also, yeah, the potential insidious future.
We talked about this in the previous pod, idea uh that's floated in one of the newspaper clippings about uh lumen experimenting with with severing as as young as five yeah so in terms of like that uh degree of child labor grim quite grim okay i think putting us inside that process of a child being indoctrinated being brought up in the system in the way that Harmony was, for example, different timeline, but similar like similar circumstances.

That is helpful to have.

Less ether. Yeah.
A little bit. I would certainly hope.
I just think overall this season what I'm coming to and maybe I'll feel differently on the other side of the finale.

A lot of the backstage stuff we've gotten as to the operations at Lumen hq the milchick storylines i thought initially led with so much promise and so much like potential emotionality and ultimately kind of fizzled out for me the miss wong stuff similarly like i was so eager to get to know this character and understand her more out of the gate this is where we end up potentially with that character like i i just feel little disappointed, for example, if Milchick's story this season is coming into his own by returning to the similar flowery language that he prefers. I feel like we've got more, with the potential clearing out of a number of other characters, Milchick is primed to be in the mix next week.

And so I hope there's something more than plot for him to do.

Yeah, I just feel like Drummond as word police is such a goofy place for this plot line to end up.

And I think that's what undercuts some of the power in.

Like, Tramiel Tillman's given an amazing performance.

And I think ultimately delivers some absolutely phenomenal phone acting with Mark as he's sort of navigating the aftermath of these conversations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh,

Thank you. And I think ultimately delivers some absolutely phenomenal phone acting with Mark as he's sort of navigating the aftermath of these conversations.

I just think it's a weird exchange and it's a weird place for this character. And who knows where it will end up.
But so far, I'm having a little trouble with the Milchick stuff overall. Who among us hasn't stared at a too small iceberg photo on the wall to inspire us to give grace to our colleagues, as they call in? Should we throw one up in the void? Yeah.
For me here, some ambiance here in the void. I think it'd be nice.
I also really like that Mark's like, I just need the day. I'm not sick.
I just need the fucking day. Yeah.
That's, I support it. Okay.
So let's, let's turn from those plot lines to something more overtly emotional, which is like Irving and Dylan. We'll talk about them one by one, but I wanted to group them together here because I'm going to go ahead and call him friend of the pod.
Alan Seppamall was talking to me about this episode. And I was like expressing some of my frustrations.

He pointed out, and I really like this point,

that like Irving and Dylan inside of this episode exist as this sort of like cautionary tale

for the love triangle, quadrangle, polycule

that we're tracking with Mark and his various ladies.

Oh, yeah.

Previously, Harmony Cabell said quite memorably

that there's no honeymoon ending waiting for Mark, right?

And that hasn't stopped us from trying to like,

Thank you. Yeah.
Previously, Harmony Cabal said quite memorably that there's no honeymoon ending waiting for Mark. Right.
And that hasn't stopped us from trying to like do the math that will make it work out. There's a lot of math involved, though.
The geometry is getting increasingly complex. How can Gemma be happy and Heli be happy and maybe even Helena be happy and all the marks be happy?

You know, and what we see here with the absolute dissolution of the Dylan, Dylan, Gretchen love triangle. Yes.
And the Irving, the Birving. You want to, you want to give us.
Everybody's talking about Birving. Everybody's about Bervin.
Rob, it's incredible.

Thank you.

And I really appreciate you.

I have to go to a really deep and dark place in my soul to channel Billy.

But you got there.

I appreciate it, though.

Thank you, Jo.

No, thank you.

And then Irving and Burt and this sad ending for them.

I do want to talk about this.

You mentioned feeling more emotional. I got really wound up by the Dylan stuff.
The Burving stuff. Oh, that didn't work for you.
Well, it did and it didn't. Okay, so we're in.
I had texted you before you saw the episode that there was like an unexpected say nothing crossover. You thought I was talking about a cast member.
but what i meant was they smuggled in dollar's price into this show yeah that they that they took a plot line of the main character of say nothing and this idea of how implicated are you in the dirty deeds if you're just driving the people to the place where they get shot or otherwise mangled or buried.

So it turns out that... In the dirty deeds if you're just driving the people to the place where they get shot or otherwise mangled or buried.

So it turns out that Bert, as we expected, is an enforcer of some kind for Lumen. A goon.
A hench. And and but has such like unexplained feelings for Irving that he is trying to smuggle him out of uh cure before Drummond can do anything to him right yeah so they go to this train station which they filmed in I still are pronounced it Utica I've always pronounced it Utica but I think he's right and I'm wrong anyway in in in Utica on the east coast there's a there's a Ut California as well, but that's not where they were.
And then they say goodbye. And there is this, here's what I'll say.
I am a huge crier at TV shows. You know this about me.
I've told you that I cry during episodes of The Pit. I mean, The Pit is pulling the heartstrings.
They're really going for it hard. Are you a TV crier, Rob? I don't know that I know if you are.
It are it takes a bit i think for me it really takes like more than just a moment it needs to be sort of the culmination of a storyline right like you take me on a journey and that payoff is really gonna hit hard by the end and so yeah i'm not getting there with this and i think that speaks to maybe some of the way the the burving stuff is handled in general, which is a little chopped up a little bits and pieces, a little disparate, a little there's some there's like an emotional distance within so much of severance. Right.
These are characters who are trying to reconcile different parts of themselves. And I feel the distance.
I just think in this case, I also am such a sucker for the looping and the callback and the reference and overall the way that they are trying to close that like these two characters who are so desperate for connection trying to close that distance together so the the callback that you're referencing here is in season one episode six in the plant room irving and bert share this moment where bert is like hey there's nothing in the handbook that says we can't have lip to lip contact. And Irving's like, well, actually, blah, blah.
And Bert kind of goes for it. Irving says, I'm truly sorry, but I'm just not ready.
And Bert says, and rewatching that, this scene actually kind of got choked up. The season one, episode six scene.
Yeah. The way that Walken as Bert delivers, just stay, stay here with me.
So I'm not ready. stay stay here with me so I'm not ready just stay here with me versus I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready Bert saying bon voyage buddy well he gives him the I can't first or we can't yes yes there's more tender stuff but like it's versus just stay here with me bon voyage buddy I, buddy.
I did not love Bon Voyage, buddy, but. No, no, no.
I'm not. I'm not.
I'm not anti the writing of it. It's it's a crushing.
Yes. Attempt at, you know, distancing himself from intimacy to say buddy.
Yeah. All of that sort of stuff.
I will say this. I feel like I'm kind of an easy mark for a cry.
And thinking about, you know, some of the shows that I love the most, some of the shows that you and I like thinking about the leftovers and thinking about like, if you think about a moment like this in the leftovers, given the way that they built all of those stories, I would be like sobbing through this. This would be devastating.
And there is, you know and and Chris and Andy have been flagging this all season there is this sort of like slightly antiseptic quality I will I will about to uh reverse completely when we get to Dylan like I will talk about that in a second but there is a slightly sort of like chilly quality um that kept me at slight remove. And I wanted to just sort of like be devastated and feel it and be swept away by it.
But that's sort of like where I sat with it. How about you? I don't think it is a devastating moment.
I think it is somewhat of a bittersweet thing. And that is my zone as far as this kind of content goes.
That's exactly what I am looking for. And so i think part of it is these characters are not going to have that sort of emotionality these are two people who in their respective ways are quite repressed right like irving as he like explains has never experienced this kind of love or any kind of love like it before and so he is desperate to to hold on to it so tightly and i think the whole idea of what does it feel like to be loved with an action like this is such a poignant idea.

And I really love, I really, I really gravitated towards that as much as anything.

And then, you know, Bert in his way is not repressed because he's in an openly gay relationship. He has a partner.

He has a different kind of life.

But he's like this sort of relationship is one that I just found myself wondering so so many times with them as we have with many of the character interactions throughout the show is bert feeling some echo of what his in his self felt or is he merely trying to honor the love that he knows existed between him and the inner version of irving i think and and um you know i think i think, again, Damon Lindelof put this really well when we were talking to him about it, this idea of, like, your soul is your soul is your soul, whether you're an innie and an outie. And if you are drawn to someone as an innie, you're going to be drawn to them as an outie.
Like, see also Helena and Mark at the Chinese restaurant. This is just sort of, idea of a connection that transcends whatever.
And so that brings four heads together, apparently. I do think he feels that and has, you know, this obligation to fields or this understanding that there's nothing they can do because Lumens like would never let this happen and it would would put irving in danger and all this sort of stuff like that so i think i think he is feeling it not just like honoring it intellectually but feeling it emotionally that's my understanding of it um and it's i i love a like bittersweet is such a good uh description of it i love uh they wanted to, but they didn't.
That's like a, that's a, that's a really good storytelling mode that I absolutely love. The brief encounters like sort of thing.
So again, I just sort of expected to feel much more than I wound up feeling. I don't know.
Maybe, maybe the pit sort of just like drained it me. I didn't have anything left for Severance.
It's possible. I think what sealed it for me ultimately was, yes, some of the echoes in that exchange.
And we even get like the same sort of ponder some music cues that are from that sort of garden scene in season one here in the train station. Like we are bringing everything full circle for these characters.
But once Irving gets on the train and the sort of smile that Turturro is playing there I think is part of what brings it home for me and this idea that sometimes you do have to let people go sometimes you do have to get on the train sometimes you this is what a relationship is meant to be to be a thing in your life that is not meant to last I love that landing point for these characters because they can't like there is not a plausible way for them to have a happy ending as as harmony laid out for everyone else like it's just not in the cards and so put them on the train bring radar good boy what a good boy uh and and i i like this send-off i will say yeah is there a non-zero chance this is the last we see of john turturro on this show absolutely listen there are some questions that still need to be answered in terms of like who is he talking to on the phone this season yes like all that sort of stuff that that makes me feel like we should see him again should for sure but also turturro has been saying things in interviews all season that makes it sound like he here's what here's actually what i think the state of affairs is yeah to toro's not sure if he wants to come back so they've done in like an apple s save like we put him on a train and we could bring him back if we need to or that's the last time you've seen irving you know um that makes sense i mean i think i think devastated honestly yeah I would be really crushed if we did not get any more Irving but it's possible as would I and I hate that you have to write yourself into those corners but just yeah from a cast perspective I could see John Turturro being like yeah I had fun we did it I'm on to the next thing he's a working actor who's in lots of stuff he He talked about how much he hated. A sad thing, I think, for all of us is, like, we haven't seen the MDR team together since the Orpo, right? And we haven't seen them together in the office since, like, episode three, which is, like, what we initially understood to be, like, the premise of the show.
And they bent over backwards to contort the plot to get them all back together but yes for one episode you know so when we see and we're meant to feel that when we see heli alone at the four desk you know setup like we're meant to feel that but um taturo has said a number of interviews how much he hated specifically filming under the lights of the office so i wonder if like taturo's like i'll come back but you're not putting me on that office set for more than like a few days um exteriors only for john to tro from here on out um on radar watch yes uh and i should say that like mallory rubin when watching this episode texted me like five minutes in and she's like is a radar gonna be okay you need to tell me this before i watch more of this episode um our listener elena elena probably uh wrote in um and with a fun fact that i didn't know the dog who plays radar is also the dog who played mondale on succession the dog is named ditto uh very good boy playing both Radar and Mondale.

So here's the question from Elena.

Okay.

Is this dog better off with Irving?

But it won't be.

So I guess with Irving on a train going somewhere or with Shiv and Tom.

Easily with Irving.

Yeah, I agree.

Shiv and Tom had their

had Montel

in like a little playpen

despite their massive

Thank you. with Shiv and Tom.
Easily with Irving. Yeah, I agree.
Shiv and Tom had Mondale in like a little playpen despite their massive flat. Like the tiniest crate for that dog despite so much room in their house.
Those are not good dog owners. No.
You could tell it from every aspect of their personality. Devastating.
Devastating for our guy Irving. You know, how old is john totero in his 60s would you say seems fair to have you know someone like that say like i've never experienced romantic love at all in my life yeah as an outie and then we get to dylan and any who says to Gretchen, like, my life started when I met you.

Yeah. to Dylan and any who says to Gretchen like my life started when I met you yeah I did not exist before you and she's like sure you did and he's like nope it was just finger traps and erasers and that was it it was nothing you know so I think it's really poignant to have both an Audi in Irving and an innie in Dylan be like, this is my first brush up against the concept of love.
Yes. What a heady, powerful thing it is.
And to think about every innie on this show, Helly and Mark definitely included, every relationship we've seen, this is like first love. Yeah.
Which is like an extremely potent brew brew um to quote malay so dylan and gretchen and dylan a proper mickey 17 thruple in action nice mickey 17 reference um i feel like there's a way these crazy kids could have made this Ruppel work you think so but and I mean I'm with any Dylan like why wouldn't he be happy that you know we all get I don't know I feel like that's short changing Audi Dylan's anxiety is quite a bit I think there is obviously look there's the I love that as we are getting this more complicated love triangle quad quadrangle geometry happening, we have all of these different aspects of the emotional fallout. I think Irving's version of that is not even experiencing the love, at least outie Irving, not experiencing it, but feeling the pain of losing it.
That's such a weird kind of sci-fi idea that I think not a lot of genres can tackle in the way in the way that severance can tackle heli's pain as is as she's confronted by dylan in this episode is this idea that the other version no heli's as she oh yeah you know she and dylan have the debrief where he he confronts her with the idea that like mark couldn't even tell the difference between you and helena this idea that your romantic partner wouldn't know you well enough to separate you from your other self. And then I think for Dylan, it's that Gretchen can tell a difference, but she likes the other guy better.
Like she likes the other version of you better. That she can tell the difference between Audi Dylan and any Dylan and she likes any Dylan better is what you're saying.
Yeah. I mean, the whole conversation with her and Audi Dillon when she's...
He kind of braces her and preempts like, oh, are you going to say it didn't mean anything? And Gretchen's responsive. I wasn't going to say that.
Like, it clearly meant a lot to her. She doesn't say better.
Here's my... She's going back to him for a reason, right? And she's keeping it secret for a reason.

No, I mean, she's like...

Here's my, like, sunshine and lollipops hopeful sort of, once again, representing the Bay Area pro-thruple argument. We love a polycule.
isn't there a way in which the any Dylan and Gretchen interactions could like help reawaken

Gretchen's connection to Audi Dylan remind her what she loved about him in the first place yeah and remind her to look for those things in him in his Audi version not just him being deeply inept around the house and all the other things that are true about him do you know what I mean like yes or you know and this is certainly what audi dylan is afraid of she gives up on audi version entirely because she's got access to any dylan like for sure that's the fear but i feel like there's a way in which all of this could make a rising tide could raise all boats and we could all sort of like get something out of this again i'm trying to force a a honeymoon ending for fucking someone in this democle and dylan and gretchen and dylan are like i i don't know maybe my my best option here but maybe not i i love everything that's happening between them i just don't see it i think out i think outieie Dylan might have been through too much to like, I totally agree with you

that from Gretchen's perspective, she is seeing a version of the person that she loves.

Yeah.

From Dylan's perspective, he's saying you cheated on me with this other version of me.

And look, maybe that's the strongest case yet for any personhood is that to Dylan, any

Dylan is a different person from him to him. This is adultery.
To him, his wife has betrayed him. I think that's where it's hard to reconcile some of the differences between like, are these different people? Are they different versions of the same people? Is any Dylan a less jaded, more naive version of Audi Dylan, like we've been talking about all season? I think all of that is kind of true I just here's what I think and admittedly I've never been inside a love triangle with myself and my wife but like with the other version of you that your wife told you not to worry about yeah yeah don't worry about it um but like are we not all being a bit hasty like Greshchen breaks the news these are matters of the heart joe they they happen in hasty fashion can't we just say hey listen we got to pump the brakes on this for a second you're out he's having a hard time with it i'm gonna keep talking to him about it let's see how we feel he's threatening to quit which is effectively killing any dylan I'll kill him essentially.
Right. So I understand why Gretchen would be like, I got to put the stop to this to save you essentially.
But I just feel like there's a way. I mean, I understand we're inside of a TV show and it's full of drama, but like, isn't there just a way that we could all just like take a beat, go to some couples counseling? But going to the counseling which which version of dylan but everyone i think honestly i think that's such a huge part of what makes this sort of setup so fascinating is that any and outie dylan can never have a conversation right he could get reintegrated he could become one more complete dylan but he's never gonna know and so his idea of the indie version of himself is, is always going to be even worse and even more intimidating and even more painful than the reality.
Via technology. You want to bust out that retro camcorder? Yeah.
Send some tapes back and forth? Helen had a conversation with Heli. I mean, did that go well? No.
Okay. We're going to come back to that also the heartbreak the dylan

zach cherry like screaming gretchen the proposal with the ring the ring is quite elegant i gotta say beautiful stuff from our guy uh this is the second podcast this week uh i'm gonna say this but any dylan hidden swifty paper rings who's to say um i say yes but um yeah very very sad stuff does do the innies know who taylor swift is um that's a great question i guess what what transcends like pop culture knowledge and transfers into knowledge of the world because i would argue knowledge of taylor swift is less like are you familiar with this band and more like are you familiar with this cultural event severance with love and respect is so inconsistent on this front we've talked about this alia shot cap being like what does wind feel like yes versus like they know how to dress themselves you know what i mean it's just sort of like there's just like what do they what do they retain? And early in the season we did get like long emails from brain scientists who were just sort of like this is how memory works or whatever. I feel like Taylor Swift might be a big enough cultural event that it could sort of permeate on you.
Bigger than wind. Taylor Swift bigger than wind.
There I said it. Okay.
Let's talk about the eagans um the not so secret eagans um egg egg stuff go is what i wrote here uh in this we've already talked about the egg stuff a bit um one of our listeners francesca pointed out that helena was eating the uh taking small cuts and only eating the boiled white the outer yeah the audi of the egg i'm 100% sure on this because I feel like when we cut back to the plate, I think it's a great call. And I love if this is true.
When we cut back to the plate, it's a little obscured by the angle, but it looks like some of the yolks are also gone. So I'm not 100% sure that she's an Audi only.
That's it. If you were in any only, if you're making boiled eggs and only eating straight yolks, I'm concerned.
I've never heard your accent come through stronger than on the word yolk. It's because of the y'all hybrid, you know, it's just the hard why sounds really bring it out of me.
Okay. And then our listener who signed the email Tedward, so I'm just going to take them for their word that that is their name.
Okay. Says, would you rather eat a raw egg while Jamie Egan watches you or watch Jamie Egan eat a raw egg in front of you? I'm really scared of what that looks like for him to eat the raw egg.
So's so ghoulish. I mean, but look, is there something so wrong about a proud supportive father who just wants to watch his daughter eat raw eggs? Is that so wrong, Joe? I would rather you had taken it wrong.
Everything about this was horrible. Jesus Christ, Jamie.
Oh my God, it was gross. And honestly, look, the whole I really enjoyed.
I wish you'd take them raw. Please.
That's what he said. No one say that again in the history of the world.
No one say it again. Also, if you are sitting across the room and watching your daughter eat boiled eggs, do not softly moan to yourself.'t do it or even i let's or loudly moan how about no moaning at the breakfast table no moaning at the breakfast table no moan zone at the breakfast table i think we can all agree upon that okay do you think he is not eating himself because of his revolving oh this dude's a straight blood bag joe like he's being pumped full of nutrients he is not consuming food of any kind i don't know it's so it's soylent soylent in blood bags yeah yeah something is keeping him alive and it's not eggs okay great um okay this is what dan erickson said in the post episode uh that went up on Apple after the episode credits.
He says, Jamie is never going to give her the foundational love that we all need in order to be human beings. duh i mean like i could have told you that but not not duh to him but like

is this something helena is just reading, realizing as she is bisecting and bisecting and bisecting a boiled egg in front of her creepy, creepy father after her cold plunge swim? Also, am I, am I just like unwashed swine that I'm, I feel like she is being overly delicate with this egg white white like she's cutting it into the smallest possible piece you can just eat yes the one sixth piece of egg white in a bite that is a reasonable sized bite you can all i mean not to be like an absolute rude but you can also just like take a boiled egg and take a bite of it right you you can i will say I once in a different life, Joe, played middle school football.

My middle school football my middle school football coach would come into the locker room

and eat an entire hard boiled egg not in bite just pop the whole thing in his mouth

and then mash it while talking to people it was horrendous with like yolk crumbs of course

they're spraying all over the place it was terrible that's it's just simply enough for me

Thank you. to people it was horrendous with like yolk crumbs of course they're spraying all over the place it was terrible that's it's a simply a no for me listen this is a big day for jamie again uh everything it's all coming it's all culminating yes around whatever's happening with cold harbor etc etc we don't really understand what it is do you take it by design is cold harbor to him a breakthrough that will lead to something or are we supposed to interpret that like his revolving is supposed to happen today i think cold they have to complete cold harbor yes so that he can revolve yes and i don't know how those two things are related but that's what feels true to me yeah and as harmony points out this episode in that process gemma is either literally or at least figuratively dead i mean as good as dead she makes it sound straight up actually dead yeah what does she say exactly um she says and if you've completed it well well what she's already dead but like she's already dead honestly in a show like severance could mean like a number of things do you know what i mean the plausible deniability of this show really tremendous um on this idea of like revolving who sits with kira all this sort of stuff like that one of our listeners wrote in to underline the fact that in episode eight when um our favorite character sissy is talking about um like the rooms in the house she says that room stays shut until all who remember her sit with kia yeah so the idea of sit with k cure as a phrase just meaning um dead yeah pass on pass on uh yeah i think that's just something again that's just sort of like flowery language to think about when we parse whatever they're trying to say of like be at my side of my revolving like what is that what does that mean you know in the in the language of this world um heli you already mentioned the dylan and heli conversation which i thought was really good dylan identifying the most hurtful thing that he could possibly say to her um but her being the kind of person who's like fuck it i'm gonna do this but her being like irving did know the difference and what did irving want irving wanted us to figure out what was going on with the elevator so i'm gonna do this thing that irving wanted yeah and that is her goal she's the last faithful uh to use traders language left at the cubicle and then here comes dad to say my heli you tricked me yeah um okay so i mean it's better than every other thing he said in this episode that's deeply true i wish you had taken it wrong okay so like um my hell you tricked me do you think this is just a reference to the season one finale uh where she did oh indeed trick him there i didn't even take it that way necessarily.
I interpreted this as he was promised two things.

One, Mr. Bailiff was going to be dealt with in this episode.

I don't know that he knows what happened with Irving as if yet.

So I'm going to say it's not related to that per se.

The other thing was he was basically assured today is the day.

Today is the day that Cold Harbor will be completed.

And it's very clear we are stuck at that 96 joe not has not budged all day long nope and so i saw it as him coming in it's you know 6 30 p.m he rolls into the office he's like what the fuck we did not come we did not deliver on our deliverables on the one hand yes and thank you for using this all the proper silicon valley language on the other hand tricked is such an interesting word true right like you let me down you lie you know like you lied to me like something like that like you didn't follow through something something but like you tricked me speaks to like a level of deception which is not really the case here it's just a fail a failure yeah if you want to call it that you know so that's me that's why i thought maybe he was talking about and he calls her heli he does call her heli you know but did he but did he call his daughter helena at one point heli right like maybe that's why she this heli was heli in the first place i don't know i don't know the answer to that um i do know

i thought you could put yourself squarely in james egan's mind and just channel and understand everything that that blood bag is going through i haven't had my soylent this morning it's very early rob i don't know what to tell you okay anyway anything else you want to say about helly Helena, like how is she gonna get out of this one uh sort of situation uh that we find her in i echo her what the fuck uh on jane reaching the the severed floor seeing him down there is a thrill i think because especially we are seeing so many of our of our core four splintering off in these different directions right we don't know if dylan will ever be back there we don't know if irving will ever be back there uh you know mark is in the process of reintegrating and doing whatever it is that he's going to do having heli is kind of the one person holding down the fort you need something for her to bounce off of and i think james showing up is a pretty interesting variable and a pretty interesting curveball on what otherwise is is quite a small cast of a show.

Good luck to her.

Yeah.

I'll also say about her conversation with Dylan, where she is encouraging him to save the ring. See who else you can meet down here in O&D with the goat people.
Not the goat people. Not the goat people.
No? Dream bigger than the goat people. I feel like you're being very judgmental.
I feel like there's at least a couple of those goat people who might be open to it well i hated the goat i hope i hope we never go back to mammalian's neutropil yeah but that's not to say dylan couldn't go back there in his free time and i support whatever decisions that character wants to make uh but it did feel like exactly the kind of thing where like she's she's like giving advice to herself in a kind of way not to not to seek someone else out but like she's telling him specifically that woman is not your wife and she almost could not be talking more directly to herself vis-a-vis mark and gemma right this idea that like you are a different person i need you to be a different person who is not that woman's husband i feel like what we really should have seen in this episode is dylan and heli go prowling in ond for new partners you know what i mean a little mixer yeah well ond mixer let's let's put on those like the the dance lights yeah let's crank up the music people in that department so many and you can make anything you need for a proper like date mixer setting that sounds great now compare that to the like little shit tunnel that they had to crawl through to get to the goat people and i think the the choice is obvious clearly um okay harmon harmony devon mark what are we doing here marks what are we doing let's's start on a high with the sarcasm who do you think who do you think had the better zinger? I already know where you're going these are both so good was it Devin saying sorry the wind was whistling over the hole in the back of your skull so I didn't quite get that or was it mark saying to harmony oh my god so good my wife is being held at lumen and i just had brain surgery in my basement who is the better uh wielder of of the snark uh in this episode rob it's got to be mark just because i can see party down adam scott coming out to play and he's always welcome here so good 100% party down although honorable mention to devon for the am i me or am i a copy machine i also very much enjoyed that bit very good very good um okay so i i'm very frustrated by this but i'm hopeful for a payoff in the finale but I do feel like quite sort of strung along by what happened inside of this episode with this trio or actually square of people. Something that I did like.
I didn't like the like, let's hang out all day and not talk about anything. What are they doing for hours and hours and hours uh maybe she brought some ether and they all like you know give us some like hook us up please but when when we are in mark any marks mark s's perspective when he comes into the birthing cabin yes and he's like what the fuck and he tries to like walk out the door and Devin says if you walk out that door he's just gonna come right back in again okay of course this is like a callback to Hallie and Helena yes in a way that could feel overly cutesy yeah but to me I really really liked it because unlike so the thing with Irving that pings for me slightly is like, it's outie Irving saying something that builds upon something any Irving said.
Yeah. And I guess if in like a deeply romantic sense, you could say he just knows that he wasn't ready before and he's ready now or something like that.
So let's put that to the side side and i'll say here devon is no way of knowing that this is like something that they have said to heli or helena on the floor she's not consciously referencing anything but what they are doing in the pursuant pursuance of their goal is like using the weapons uh like what like the the the machinations of their enemy right they are treating any mark as like someone without autonomy in order to get what they need which is to get to gemma it's true are they still heroes that i'm rooting for yes but like you know will what will they stop at to get to their goal and when we've seen people treat innies as like prisoners or people with no choice of what to do those have been villains so what are we to make when maybe our most beloved character devon is the one uh doing it you know what i mean i think part of what makes that snag too is and this is a problem i would say with mystery box storytelling overall where the show doesn't want to show its hand as to for example why do we need any mark like what information does he have that cobel doesn't have that would be instrumental in finding gemma like she knows so much more than mark does she doesn't know what's been going on for like the past week at lumen but that's about it it. She knows what Cold Harbor is and Mark certainly doesn't.

She has a lot more information.

We certainly don't.

So much more.

And so as a result of that,

like normally in order to set the stakes of the show,

you have to give us some indication of what it is that we actually need

out of these interactions.

And I don't think we have that.

I think we just have characters saying,

we have to do this.

We have to do why.

Devin says in this episode,

we have no choice but to do what Cobel says i would argue many many many other choices that you could make the only the only pushback i have on that is like the thing that mark has that harmony doesn't and it's the reason why he's been able to get away with any mark been able to get away with so much is like some ineffable understanding of the numbers that you need for sure cold harbor yes you know what i mean i don't know how you interrogate that uh in a in a meaningful uh way but that yeah you're right that like the the woman who fucking invented severance and has run the severed floor and knows the ends and outs of lumen has much more intel this is the one thing that any that she doesn't have. Though, again, I don't know if he knows even how to explain what he's done with Cold Harbor.
I thought we got some really interesting feedback from actually two Mikes, one who went by Mike and one who went by Michael. Mike wrote, and maybe there are any Announcement, who knows, but Mike wrote, I'm just as confused as i'm sure all the other viewers of what the fuck is going on with this quote reintegration of mark each episode since the long needle in the brain has given us hardly any mark time but when we do see him we get no reintegration reveal outside of the one right before he passes out which seemed like some sort of info dump overload so like the idea of giving us, we were like, holy shit, they did reintegration for Mark at the beginning of the season.
But like, they did not, where are we now? You know, like this many episodes later, still sort of twiddling our thumbs, waiting for this whole thing to come together. So, which I am feel pretty confident it will in the the finale in a way that will probably smooth over a lot of these like minor bumps and scrapes along the way.
But it's just like in the current, and this is the only time this will be true because after that finale airs, ever after people can just like binge the season and will not feel this sort of like mid-season antsiness but as it stands right now though the cadence of the reintegration reveal is like uh pushing my patience slightly i think i think that's entirely fair i think they have stretched this stuff out to a degree where we've gotten a decent amount of mark screen time but not a lot of mark propulsion or progress or even emotionally speaking. I'm not saying it has to be reintegration.
I think episode seven is the high watermark for that, not just for Gemma, but also for Mark in terms of getting his elements of the backstory like that added to the character in a really significant way. It feels like there are so many balls in the air this season that a lot of the payoffs have nothing to do with what's happening this year right like the birving stuff is a great example the reason that the that birving kind of like farewell moment works to the extent that it does for anyone and as you said joe for you it was a little bit more mixed it all hinges on season one it does not pay off like everything that happened between bird and irving in season two was misdirection was taking them down a a side path, was setting up Bert as a potentially nefarious figure, which he kind of is, but ultimately did not really contribute to the plot or the emotionality of these characters in any meaningful way.

And I think you could say the same thing about a lot of what's going on with Mark, where there's a lot of him tripping out post-reintegration, him collapsing into the floor, him seeming to regain consciousness a way where i i just thought there would be a little bit more bleeding over at this point but the very fact that we have to go to the birthing cabin to advance the plot tells us that this is not a reintegrated character this is a guy with a hole in the back of his head that's oozing that for some reason we throw in the back of a pickup truck that's a bad choice for a guy with a hole in his head do not do that either okay to recap no moaning at the breakfast table if you've got a hole in your head you get to sit in the front of the car is that unreasonable it's despite the cloak and dagger of of the sort of operation that they're in are you saying we okay and i'm not opposed it. Are you saying we should have slapped a wig on Mark and put the baby bump under his shirt? Of course.
Okay, great. I would love to see it.
Or get a different car. Do whatever you have to do.
I feel like putting him in a bumpy... There was certainly, there was no room in the rabbit.
I'll tell you that much right now. No room in the rabbit at all.
Okay. Michael wrote, and this made me laugh, maybe the cure Lumen is really working on as a way to make people not slow down to 110 speed every time they say the words cold harbor but how are you going to project how ominous it is if you don't say it at that speed cold harbor um anything else i think we've gone a little long and we've got plenty that we want to save for like our Q&A and stuff like that anything else you want to touch on in terms of this episode Rob Mahoney I think just one thing as we we're kind of closing the loop here from the secret Egan's into Harmony getting them into the birthing retreat which is we get an email a couple weeks ago from Elise who talked about how every adult woman on the show so far has been in some way connected to the idea of birth or rebirth yeah and I think Elise brought it up in the context of the great pregnancy debates that we've been having all season about is Helena going to be pregnant is like what is the situation with Gemma and her ongoing like fertility like all this stuff has been in the air but it's also in the air with Harmony too who is not only the mother of severance as we found out but if she does end up being helena's mother or the mother of an egan child of some kind who met some end yeah i think that would make sense thematically with a lot of what we've been dealing with and it's it's why more than ever i don't want helena slash helen to be pregnant because that's interesting.
But I would like there to be some women, female characters on the show where that is not. It's an ambitious goal, Joe.
Okay, thanks. Thanks for rooting for me.
Before we go, this listener asked to not be named, but I didn't. We got an from a listener uh telling us to check out the track

in the bath by lemon jelly did you did you have a listen i did have a listen to this one minute into that track it's a long track it's a six minute track one minute in if you if you care to listen on spotify wherever you get your your music um you'll hear the severance theme song A very familiar progression of notes.

And I haven't been able to find an interview where the composer like references this song um so i don't know that's it's it's interesting uh yeah is it a direct inspiration is it the collective unconscious is it an indian outie and lives in music? Is Lemon Jelly actually the Audi of the Indy that is the composer of the Severance theme? Shout out to the Severance music. It's amazing.
And this idea is sort of like lifting a few notes from something happens all the time, obviously. One might call it art.
That's how this stuff is made a lot of lot of the time it is a wild moment you're like in this vibey track and then all of a sudden you're like oh what is this existential dread i feel why do i have a why do i have a compulsion to not eat any eggs in front of anyone ever again um all right so pineapple bobby at gmail.com yes ringer tv on youtube is where you'll find us next week at noon for a live q a prestige tv at spotify.com is where you can also send questions comments concerns theories observations we have a few like sort of bigger picture observations that are less than theory corner that i want to save for that so i'm excited to get to that we've had so many amazing emails from you guys this season it's been really incredible wonderful thank you to the early morning crew on this our last severance Friday morning record so thanks to John Richter to Justin Sales to Johnny Beach and filling in for Kai and thanks Rob Mahoney thank you Joe Thank you, Joe. Thank you to Eggs.

Thank you to Jame Egan.

Yeah.

Make sure to eat your yulks.

And we'll see you soon, y'all.