‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 8: Cobel’s Chilly Origins

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

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 We're here today to talk to you about

Speaker 1 Severance.

Speaker 1 How excited are you to talk about Severance, Rob?

Speaker 2 I mean, flip my toboggan joke. Come on, let's get into it.

Speaker 1 It's the end of the week. This is always a joy for me on a Friday morning to talk to you about the latest Severance episode.
We get up early.

Speaker 1 We do this early in the morning so we can get it out for you guys.

Speaker 1 This episode is called Sweet Vitriol.

Speaker 1 Written by Adam County and Casey Perry and directed by one Mr. Benjamin Stiller.

Speaker 1 And just to remind folks who are listening to this, if you you want to hear more from Rob and yours truly, we're also covering White Lotus on a weekly basis.

Speaker 2 We certainly are.

Speaker 1 Bill Simmons, ever heard of him, Molly Rubin and I are also covering White Lotus on Sunday nights. And then a couple days later, Rob and I do it.
Next week, we're headed back to the pit.

Speaker 1 So we're going to check in on our favorite doctors and all the trauma that's been happening in the weeks since we last checked in with them.

Speaker 2 Very trauma-heavy slate on the pit, I got to say.

Speaker 1 And we still keep getting emails about this, so I will keep reminding you that Yellow Jackets is now being covered over on the House of Our Feed.

Speaker 1 Molly Rubin and I are covering it, not this week, but usually week to week on the house of our feed. We're covering yellow jackets over there.
It was a very dense week over on the Rigverse.

Speaker 1 So that is what is going on around the various feed.

Speaker 1 Sweet vitriol, the name of this episode, Rob, is another sort of a condensed version of a name for ether. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sweet oil of vitriol is what diethyl ether, which we will talk about a plenty as we do this podcast.

Speaker 2 Have you partaken, Joe? Is that a recreational activity of choice for you?

Speaker 1 Guess what? I've never huffed a single thing in my life.

Speaker 2 I know. It does.
It's not pleasant, I gotta say. With this paint thinner, no ether.
I'm out, I think.

Speaker 1 It's a no for me on huffing. If you're watching this on video, you may have noticed a lumen sort of-esque box behind me.

Speaker 1 Apple sent over,

Speaker 1 what is the memo that they sent me? It says senior refiner Audi gifting memo. So that is that is what they sent over.
It's a little, it's like a little fake vending machine.

Speaker 1 So if you're watching this on video, which you can do on the Ringer TV YouTube channel or on Spotify, we're going to do like a not a full unboxing, but a mini unboxing a little later in the episode.

Speaker 1 Hopefully, keep it audio-friendly. So if you're listening, you can also enjoy that.

Speaker 1 But that is the plan today as we talk about this episode. Rob,

Speaker 1 how many emails did we get about

Speaker 1 our friend Miss Casey, aka Gemma, and which hands she prefers to write with?

Speaker 2 Respectfully, a lot.

Speaker 2 Our listeners are quite diligent. And this was something we mentioned that clearly stuck in a lot of people's craw was the idea that, oh, she is right-handed.

Speaker 2 And therefore, writing left-handed in the dreaded thank you card room would be a particular kind of torture, which agreed.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We were mentioning that she was writing left-handed in the thank you note room, that writing left-handed with a fountain pen is horrible because of the smear factor, that writing that many notes is horrible, how gibberish her handwriting looked because maybe she had some brain damage, but also a bunch of people pointing out that early in the episode we see her fill out an intake form with her right hand.

Speaker 1 We certainly do.

Speaker 1 So not only all those other factors, but also they're forcing a righte to write as a lefty.

Speaker 2 One thing about the thank you note room that we did not mention that I wish we had was that it's playing baby it's cold outside during that sequence, which does perfection. Wonderful.

Speaker 1 Date rapiest of all the Christmas sequences.

Speaker 2 I don't even remember where we are in the cycle of it being pushed away slash recontextualized slash reclaimed. Like I've seen so many reevaluations of that song.
I don't know where we are.

Speaker 1 I think we're in an embrace, a consensual embrace era with Baby is Cold Outside. We certainly are.
The pendulum will swing any moment now. I wanted to start.

Speaker 1 We have a lot to talk about in this episode, even though it was like a fairly short runtime. Actually, before I already told you what we were going to do, broadly speaking, Rob, though,

Speaker 1 did you like this episode of Severance?

Speaker 2 I liked it fine. Okay.
I think, given how long it had been since we last saw Harmony Cobel, I was a little underwhelmed. Yeah.
We got some, I think, some interesting character beats.

Speaker 2 This is certainly an episode that's going to change the way you think about Harmony Cobel in a couple of different key ways. And I'm not shying away from any of that.
I'm not poo-pooing that.

Speaker 2 I think that stuff is really important. Yeah.
But it had been 35 days for us in this world since we last saw Harmony Cobel in a Severance episode.

Speaker 2 And for to be the sort of big payoff of that, I have mixed feelings about it.

Speaker 1 Do you think? So this is a short run time. It's like a 37 minute episode.
And I would say even less of that is like crucial, crucial plot information.

Speaker 1 They're still withholding a bunch of information about Harmony. So here's two alternatives.
Let's say this was not my favorite episode of Severance, and that's okay.

Speaker 1 A question that I got, someone like Instagram DM'd me was sort of, which is not how the way I encourage you to reach me, but like, like, uh, you can how do you encourage people to reach you?

Speaker 1 Just chase you down on the street, press UCB at spotify.com, okay, pineapple bobbing at gmail.com. Yes, if you've got white lotus thoughts, monkeyshootout at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 We're still getting emails from like grief card again at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 You can I respect all of them. Those are the real heads.

Speaker 1 But this is, this is a listener I kind of know. So like, I understood why.

Speaker 1 But anyway, she was like, how many very special episodes, like sort of premise-breaking episodes is too many premise-breaking episodes inside of

Speaker 1 a short season of television. Because I would say between this, last week's, which we loved, and the Orpo, those are like quite premise-breaking episodes.

Speaker 1 But maybe the idea of Severance in season two is like, you know, and we also had the all-in-y episode and the all-outy episode in the first two episodes of the season.

Speaker 1 So maybe the premise of season two is like, there is no standard operating procedure for

Speaker 1 an episode of Severance this season.

Speaker 2 Certainly fits fits the sort of reintegrating theme of what's happening in the season right now.

Speaker 1 Not my favorite episode.

Speaker 1 Really missing

Speaker 1 Bert and Irving. Kai?

Speaker 3 Everybody's talking about Berving.

Speaker 2 Everybody's talking about Berving.

Speaker 1 Two options. One is what if we took the meatiest parts of this episode and seeded it into

Speaker 1 the last few episodes that we're checking in with Harmony as she, you know, hooks up with Hamilton,

Speaker 1 her old chum, and all these other things that she encounters.

Speaker 1 Or alternatively, we have an even denser Harmony Cobel episode that is less withholding about like, what if we get just like a full flashback?

Speaker 1 What is the life of, what was the life of Harmony Cobel sort of as she went through,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 child laborer to

Speaker 1 inventor of severance? Like, what was, what was that complete arc like versus sort of the

Speaker 2 i would say coyer approach uh that we got inside of this episode so do you have like a preference between those two or are you like hey it's not my job to tell someone how to run their tv series it is not my job but if i were to do such a thing joe yeah i would probably lean towards parceling out the harmony elements of the story or i think repositioning this episode within the season.

Speaker 2 And I think to do that, you'd probably have to change the way you break the whole season because you can't go like Ortbo into the Harmony story.

Speaker 2 I think that kind of cliffhanger, that would be a pretty cruel sort of delay on kind of what's happening with Irving, for example.

Speaker 2 But to come off of specifically Chakai Bardo into this, you just feel the momentum of the season and how like how thrilled we were coming out of last week come screeching to a halt.

Speaker 2 Like it feels like the show's slamming on the brakes in a way that can be contemplative in a way that I don't like I appreciate what they're trying to do in establishing and broadening this character and making us think twice about Harmony and the things she said and the things she's done and who she is in this world.

Speaker 2 It just feels like you're introducing an element of sort of narrative inertia at a time where you want to be driving forward.

Speaker 1 And to be very clear, I agree with everything you said. And to be very clear, I love Patricia Arquette.
And I am.

Speaker 2 She's awesome in this episode.

Speaker 1 She's so good. And I'm very fascinated by Harmony Kobel.
So it's not like I want less harmony. I think we're just having questions about the when and the where and the why of it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, and the longer she's gone, I think the bigger her landing has to feel. And this felt important to character.
It felt important to plot and mystery in some ways, although I think less so.

Speaker 2 I have to say, I who created Severance or did someone else create Severance was not a driving mystery of the show for me or something I was even all that interested in.

Speaker 1 I agree. On the other hand, I will say, and we're going to go back through some previous Harmony scenes and sort of like

Speaker 1 re-listen to some clips now knowing what we know about Harmony's role. And that's interesting to me because I did have a lot of lingering questions about what was her motivation for XYZ in season one.

Speaker 1 And this helps with that a lot. And so, yes, I did not really, I just assumed it was Negan.
I mean, that's, I just assumed it was an Egan.

Speaker 1 And the fact that it wasn't an Egan and it was this woman who gets treated rather shoddily given all of that information is

Speaker 1 opens the aperture on a character in a way that I really, really like.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about some of the guest stars in this episode. So, well, I want to start with Patty Arquette, Prattia Arquette, because

Speaker 1 reading the Reddit boards, it just reminds me that not everyone knows what a legend Patricia Arquette is.

Speaker 2 Where are these people coming from? Who are they?

Speaker 1 They're younger than we are. So,

Speaker 1 of course, she won an Oscar for boyhood, and I would really recommend you check out that incredible project.

Speaker 1 Obviously, obviously, she's worked with Ben Stiller on Escape from Danamora and an earlier film they did together. True Romance is sort of like my peak Patricia Arquette.

Speaker 1 What do you want to say about Patty, Rob?

Speaker 2 See, I'm of a slightly different generation, and I caught True Romance later in life,

Speaker 2 but a very formative experience watching Patricia Arquette in that movie, I think, for a lot of people. Just one of those characters who is so indelible, who is so like.

Speaker 2 I think that movie and that story just does not work without her being as perfectly charismatic and also sort of elusive as she is.

Speaker 2 And in some ways, that's what makes her work in Severance too, this idea that, you know, she's like curled up on her mom's bed, breathing out of a musty breathing tube.

Speaker 2 And like, my whole body is cringing. And yet I cannot stop watching her do everything that she's doing.
She's, she's a wonderful performer.

Speaker 2 And I think the things that help her embody Cobel at this stage in her career, you can find the through lines earlier.

Speaker 2 It's like, it's all there in terms of these little threads of sort of ethereal or unsettling or like she's just from a different place in time than the rest of us are.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And, you know, from the Arquette acting family,

Speaker 1 raised as like, you know,

Speaker 1 a weird little hippie,

Speaker 1 is a very strange and wonderful person and a really strange and wonderful performer.

Speaker 1 As Alabama in true romance, that is like one of the most like sexually dynamic, alluring like characters you've ever seen in your life.

Speaker 1 And you were like, yes, I will throw my entire boring life away for this person.

Speaker 1 Like, that's the premise of that movie. And so there, there was the shot after she is, I hate that you use the word musty, but it's appropriate.

Speaker 1 After the musty situation, when, and we're going to talk about James Legro in a second, but when Hamilton comes up into the bedroom and they have the moment on the bed, there's the huffing and then there's also a smooch that, according to the official podcast, was unscripted.

Speaker 1 But it was funny, like right before the smooch happened, there was just this shot. You know, she's got this like very severe hair that the hair was Patricia Arquette's idea.

Speaker 1 You know, she's older than she was when she played Alabama in True Romance, but there's just something so alluring about her. Her eyes are just like this really compelling blue that I was just like,

Speaker 1 I would smooch Harmony Cobel. There's just something like bewitching about her that I find.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if you need that larger Arquette filmography context for that or if that works in isolation inside of this. But one of the things that I saw on the Reddit boards that blew my mind,

Speaker 1 and I think this speaks to the wigwork on this show, is someone misidentified this character we meet, Sissy, as her sister, which I understand because some people say Sissy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jane Alexander, who plays Sissy, is her, that's her aunt.

Speaker 1 And she's of a completely different generation. So I'm like, how old do you think Patricia Arquette is, man? Or how youthful do you think Jane Alexander is? Anyway, Jane Alexander.

Speaker 2 It could be a big age gap, like older, younger sibling situation in theory. I do think they leave it open enough for long enough for you to wonder, who are these people to each other.

Speaker 1 I mean, I was definitely wondering if Hamilton and Harmony were siblings and then they smooched.

Speaker 2 So does that even rule it out on a show like this? Who's to say?

Speaker 1 Jane Alexander, legend of stage and screen.

Speaker 1 I,

Speaker 1 you know, has won a pile of awards, is an absolute icon. Playing sissy here,

Speaker 1 asked, according to the official podcast, asked to have her hair cut to look like Harmony so that they could have like matching

Speaker 1 hair.

Speaker 1 Was in a film that has been sort of like lost to time, but was really definitely a thing at the time, which is Cider House Rules, a Mirror Max joint, which won Michael Caine and Oscar, among other things.

Speaker 1 That is the movie. Where I first learned about Huffing Ether as

Speaker 1 a drug abuse situation.

Speaker 1 Michael Caine plays a doctor.

Speaker 2 And your life was never the same.

Speaker 1 Enjoys Huffing Ether. And Jane Alexander plays a nurse in that movie.
So fun little connections. Jerry Stahl, who wrote Permanent Midnight, who Ben Stiller played in the film Permanent Midnight,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 one of the guys in the guy in the diner.

Speaker 1 And then last but not least, James LeGreux, who to me is the runaway star of this episode. I'm a huge James LeGreau fan.

Speaker 1 The original cinematic, Raylan Givens, also played Wade Messer, Unjustified,

Speaker 1 has been in a ton of things, but something that they said on the official podcast about casting him in this role is when you have not much time to establish dynamics between characters, there's a ton of history, unspoken history between these two.

Speaker 1 You cast a James LeGreau who like can just,

Speaker 1 you know, going back to the 90s, drugstore, cowboy, whatever,

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 give you like a life-lived on-a-face kind of, kind of guy. Do you know what I mean? So, anything you want to say about these guest stars or

Speaker 1 our guy, Wade Messer from Justified, uh, specifically?

Speaker 2 I mean, first of all, Wade Messer would be huffing ether. So we're just moving one step over, but a dramatically different characterization.

Speaker 2 I think the sort of down-on-the-luck Kentuckian addicts and degenerates of Justified and the criminal elements of Justified are so different from the people we see in Salt's Neck who are worn down in this like decrepit, dying industry town.

Speaker 2 And to have Hampton step into that as somebody who like clearly is like trying to just soldier on and at the same time, huff an ether every chance he can get, like maintaining this sort of habitual thing that he's had since he was presumably a kid.

Speaker 2 And the way that Harmony has that element with him, where as you said, the unscripted kiss comes after judgment really on her part i'm like how can you how can you do this how can you sell this stuff after everything that we went through right producing it in the mill in the first place the life that we've lived like how can you participate in this thing that that like wrecked our lives and wrecked this town and he's simultaneously somebody who can have lived through all of that and still be huff in the ether and i a hundred percent believe it from legro's performance and i also believe that he's the guy who would stand up at the end of the episode and say what tame these tempers like yeah absolutely But tough for us that I wish we would get a lot more of him.

Speaker 2 I don't see how because he's going to be in salt's neck and he just gave away his truck.

Speaker 1 And, well, unless, you know, Lumen abducts him or something like that. But I, but it's, it sort of feels like a one and done for James LeGreau.

Speaker 1 But if Hampton wants to ride again, I would support that.

Speaker 2 Anytime.

Speaker 1 All right, Rob, what do you

Speaker 1 feel like you understand about Harmony Cobell's life after having watched this episode? What are the key things that we learned from this episode?

Speaker 2 I think that one, we knew that her mother was not a believer in the cure cult.

Speaker 2 And I think we're kind of led along through this episode to think that Sissy is sort of her entry point into that world and where she is working in the ethermill from a young age.

Speaker 2 She is like put into this pipeline with the School for Girls and eventually the Wintertide Fellowship. And we're seeing kind of all these elements of her backstory tie together.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, this idea that she, in fact, is the one who invented the severance procedure, or at least like designed it, designed the schematics that became what we know as severance. Right.

Speaker 2 Does that dramatically change the way I think about Miss Cobel? I don't know. I think the fact that she grew up huffing ether fumes changes the way I think about her a little bit.

Speaker 2 And the idea of like, why is she as off-kilter as she is?

Speaker 2 Why is her language presented the way it is?

Speaker 2 And when you hear Sissy speak, I think you get a pretty good idea of how being a member of a cult can sort of infiltrate your brain and shape you on the most like formative verbal levels.

Speaker 2 But to be honest, was having a hard time sort of wrestling with the idea of the reveal of this episode and how much I thought it really changed because it felt like a swerve.

Speaker 2 It felt like the kind of thing where I wanted to go back and revisit as we're going to do today. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then we got an email from a listener, Carrie, who put it in terms that I hadn't quite thought about yet, which is that we had been kind of thinking about severance as a purely capitalistic idea, right?

Speaker 2 Lumen creates this thing so they can eventually sell it or,

Speaker 2 you know, take advantage of their workers or create a whole new workforce or whatever it ends up being.

Speaker 2 And Carrie proposed the idea that if Harmony was creating it as a means to basically escape the abuse that she had suffered as a child,

Speaker 2 someone who had been in this system, who had been treated very cruelly, who had now had her idea stolen from her, that seeing that idea now used for purely capitalistic reasons, probably, and used to hurt so many other people would be such a like a re-traumatizing event for Harmony over and over again.

Speaker 1 on the one hand galling on the other hand and again we'll go back through and sort of revisit these these moments throughout the last few seasons i kind of believe that she was still a true believer until um

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 what is it the tiger ate her face sort of uh moment that happens the leopard ate her face there it is um okay

Speaker 1 To go back, you started with this idea of the voice, the affected accent, and something I thought that was really interesting. I've always wondered about her accent and also what John Toturo is doing.

Speaker 1 They're both doing this like affected mid-Atlantic. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you mentioned Jane Alexander Sissy in this episode, but also something that Patricia Arquette said in a truly unhinged and delightful interview on the official podcast was

Speaker 1 that this was like sort of a, because she was born in poor circumstances, this is a sort of like, sort of similar to Milchik, this is like a, this is how I should speak to be taken seriously

Speaker 1 by the high-toned people that I work with now. This is what an upper-class person sounds like.
So, this is what I will sound like. And this is how I will change my voice to fit in that way.

Speaker 1 I think thinking about Miss Wong's use inside of this season as sort of this, like, uh, precur, you know, hearing wintertide and all this sort of stuff like that, like as this precursor to the way that that Lumen and the Egan family, like, you know, we already had seen the

Speaker 1 shrine in Harmony's home. We knew that she had gone to a school, an Egan Egan school, but

Speaker 1 to see Miss Wong on the severed floor working like child labor as an early, so no, not a clone of Gemma, not Mark and

Speaker 1 Gemma's child, but like just part of this child labor churn that they have been

Speaker 1 probably since the dawn of time taking advantage of. To your point, I really love this point.

Speaker 1 The idea that like Harmony, thinking about Harmony Cabell and Hampton as young child laborers in this factory in the ether mill. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Uh, she says, when they, when they take a good huff of the ether, she hasn't done this since she was eight.

Speaker 2 So, huffing ether

Speaker 1 or inhaling it while they're working, I don't know, um, perhaps intentionally as a way to disassociate from the horrors of their job, right? So, like

Speaker 1 to come up with this procedure that does the same thing,

Speaker 1 but just like with more precision, um, is is really interesting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it does seem given the ether-heavy context in this episode, that Lumen's goal is to give you kind of the spoonful of sugar one way or another. And that's going to take many forms.

Speaker 2 I'm sure it's had many forms in between ether and severance.

Speaker 2 But that more than anything, after what we saw from Gemma last week and how it's kind of articulated in this episode, feels like what the goal of severance is, is to save.

Speaker 2 quote-unquote save you from the pain and the anxiety of all these things while subjecting a different version of yourself to exactly those things.

Speaker 1 To like torture, which is what we saw with Gemma, right? So

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 1 the Eagle-Eyed Redditors, I mean, I know I'm talking to freeze frame Mahoney here. So like, you know, we're going to come back to that.

Speaker 2 There's plenty of freeze framing to be done in this episode.

Speaker 1 You know your way around a freeze frame, but previously when we were in,

Speaker 1 or actually, I think this is like extra textual, they released a bunch of props from the Zoofu Chinese restaurant set online in some article or another.

Speaker 1 And definitely the Redditors were pouring over it. And there were news articles that they had written that mention

Speaker 1 incident at Salt's Neck, ether spill, like ether mill, ruins, town, town, sues, you know, yada yada, Aaron Brockovich, like sort of thing, right? Um,

Speaker 1 and then also in one of the articles that they released, uh, as part of this sort of like prop display, there was also a crab rangoon sign, by the way.

Speaker 1 Just shout out to the Prestige TV podcast, Crab Spelled with a K.

Speaker 2 Can we buy it?

Speaker 1 I think we should.

Speaker 2 Can we bid?

Speaker 1 Crab with a K, crab rangoon from the the Zoo Fu Chinese restaurant.

Speaker 1 That they were creating a version of the chip for children as young as five.

Speaker 2 Jesus.

Speaker 2 Grim.

Speaker 2 Don't like it.

Speaker 2 And I will say, you know, last week at the tail end of the episode, we hear from Rigabi when she's kind of talking to Devin about the idea of calling Cobel, that she was raised by a lumen.

Speaker 2 And I think we had that understanding with the school, with the Myrtle Egan School for Girls, that like clearly she's been brought up in this way of life.

Speaker 2 She seemed like a true believer, as you said, until the leopard ate her face.

Speaker 2 But this, I think, changes how we think about that idea of what it means to be raised by a lumen, specifically with the way she's sort of grieving her mom, which I don't know how you took it, Joe.

Speaker 2 I read as much grieving the mom she didn't really get to have because she's presumably going off to some sort of boarding school. She's being raised within this cult.
Her mom is not a believer.

Speaker 2 I can't imagine she approved exactly of what was happening and kind of the way that Harmony's life was taking shape.

Speaker 1 And didn't come home

Speaker 1 to see her at the end of all things because she was too busy sort of like with work in school and like wasn't allowed or whatever but it still feels like a choice something in looking uh into ether which is something that was a fun part of my job this week um

Speaker 1 there's a few long-term effects of ether addiction this is related to what you're saying though one is memory loss right prolonged ether use leads to memory impairment making it difficult to recall recent events or retain new information.

Speaker 1 So, you know, we're on the severance beat there. But also,

Speaker 1 in terms of her mom, and this is the breathing tube we've been seeing since season one,

Speaker 1 this has been a prop. We sort of thought by the dates that it might pertain to her mom, the date that was like on the breathing tube we saw in the shrine at her house.

Speaker 1 We saw her look at it in the car on the way to Salt's Neck. Like, so this has been, this is the answer.

Speaker 1 A side effect of prolonged exposure to ether is chronic respiratory issues.

Speaker 1 Frequent inhalation of ether results in chronic breathing problems, including coughing, shortness of breath, and respiratory infections.

Speaker 2 So you're telling me huffing a bunch of chemicals isn't good for you?

Speaker 1 I mean, you huffing it directly or just goddamn working in an ether mill because like I have to imagine that that ether mill has been there for a while and like the whole town, again, once again to like everything I know about everything in life I learned from films and I apologize for that.

Speaker 1 Once again, to invoke Aaron Brockovich or any sort of like similar story, like if you think about you were talking about this, like a town destroyed by industry,

Speaker 1 a town destroyed by ether, like ether inhalation, that everyone there has weird chronic breathing issues or memory issues, you know, like that's just horrifying.

Speaker 2 And a town that is now at this point just sort of aging into death, right? Everyone we see is very gray bearded, white-haired.

Speaker 2 Like this is a town where to the extent that there were young people here, they have been abused and left, right?

Speaker 2 Like they, they were child workers and now they've either grown into damaged adults or they've fled as the town has further decayed.

Speaker 2 And this is an idea that we are, like, has been proposed within the world of Severance, certainly within the world of the Innies, as a very dignified thing, working in the ether mill, right?

Speaker 2 Like this idea that Kier and his wife met. working at the working at the ether mill.

Speaker 2 And we see, we saw the painting of that in season one, a formative birthing moment as they got to kind of gaze upon the ether vat together.

Speaker 2 I have to say, what shook me most about this episode was the way Patricia Arquette, who, look, her pronunciations can be all over the board, pronounced

Speaker 2 with Imogen.

Speaker 1 Imogen, yeah.

Speaker 2 Which shook me to my core that I may have been pronouncing Imogen Heap's name wrong all these years, but it turns out not.

Speaker 1 No, you can, I've heard it both, but like it's more commonly Imogen, but I have heard Imogen, but it is more commonly Imogen.

Speaker 2 Well, shout out to all the Imogens and Imogens out there.

Speaker 1 Imogen's like a real old tiny way of saying Imogen for sure.

Speaker 1 I think this other thing that we learned, because knowing that she was not just like at this Egan school, but also was a child laborer, really underlines this sort of like, has Harmony Cobel ever lived a life?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And so something that she was talking about a little bit, Patricia was talking about a little bit on the official pod, and I think is really evident when you go back and think about it is her Mrs.

Speaker 1 Selvig stuff on the one hand was

Speaker 1 creepy spying on Mark,

Speaker 1 scientific exploration, which we'll talk about a little bit more as she's like kind of testing the bounds of severance, the walls in her own way.

Speaker 1 But also,

Speaker 2 her,

Speaker 1 like, as the con goes on, she starts to enjoy just like not being in the office and not centering everything in her life around Lumen.

Speaker 1 Like, when she's with Devin, and she's just like telling stories and cracking jokes and talking about babies. Like, are there ways in which this is just like actually her enjoying her life?

Speaker 1 Or when she, like, shares a smoosh with Hampton here? Like, is it just sort of like Harmony Cobel has never truly lived as,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 2 Which give her some grace for the fact that I wouldn't say she's particularly great at it yet. She's a little bit of like Denofreo and men in black, like alien bugs in the skin suit sometimes.

Speaker 2 In an egger suit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is that way, but clearly she's learning how to be a person and she's learning everything that comes with that.

Speaker 2 All the pains that come with that, the kind of ego and the sort of the feeling of being wronged by Lumen that she's striving for simultaneously. Yeah, she's dealing with a lot.

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Speaker 1 can i float a fun little theory about you i would love nothing more okay

Speaker 1 di diethyl ether sure so does that sounds sound right to you close enough to me pineapple bobbing and gmail.com if i mispronounce that diethyl ether

Speaker 1 if you take

Speaker 2 the first are we anagramming three letters okay

Speaker 1 and the last two letters

Speaker 1 first four letters last two letters smush them together you get deeter, yep, as in deeter egan.

Speaker 1 Is there a possibility that deeter egan

Speaker 1 was a fever dream was never really real, but is really just the

Speaker 1 I'm on ether dark shadow version of cure egan.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, I don't believe that a dude jerked off on a tree and died, or sorry, jerked off on the ground and became a tree. I want to get my facts straight.

Speaker 2 Yeah, please, please, get the lore right. I want to get the lore correct.

Speaker 2 Uh, yeah, that seems very possible to me uh so good old dieter i'm just gonna call him ether egan this idea of him as like a the shadow self of kirigan yes uh who already seems shadowy in his own right well and and i guess your ether self as people kind of put it in the in the ortpo episode as we were talking about dieter and like who he was and why he was a secret and this idea of the shadow self i mean what is a severed self but an ethered self right it's like this this sort of mirrored version of you that has no cares in the world that as hampton is is sort of like cackle crying as you get high it's the effects are quite immediate and quite severe and clearly lead to some light to medium smooching on a bed that may have been where your mother died and I don't think those sheets were ever cleaned like

Speaker 1 they were not that room was moth eaten to hell no one has been in there she just like laid down forever I was just uh you we saw the like the the light of day pass. I was just like, oh my God.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 The nine get mentioned a couple times and just worth reminding people.

Speaker 1 When she says Sissy lives by the nine, the first time I watched this, not paying enough attention, I was like, is the nine a geographic location? No, living by the nine of the new

Speaker 1 living by the nine, meaning in adherence with the nine.

Speaker 1 And just to remind people, if they don't remember, the nine tenets

Speaker 1 are vision, verve, wit, cheer, humility, benevolence, nimbleness, prob probity, and wiles. Yes.

Speaker 2 Can we take a quick segue into

Speaker 2 Sissy's Shrine Corner?

Speaker 1 Is this where Freeze Frame Mahoney

Speaker 1 comes to play?

Speaker 2 You got to do it. You got to zoom in.
You got to see what's going on here. We've already seen Harmony Shrine in her own place.

Speaker 2 And I will say there's a lot of familiarity here, a lot of familiar artifacts, a lot of crossover.

Speaker 2 You see the same portrait of Keir, understandably, the same sort of like paper-mâché heads of the Four Tempers, same old-timey ad for Severance, which has like an ask your supervisor if severance is right for you tag on the bottom that makes me laugh every time I see it.

Speaker 2 Various newspaper clippings, a note card about probity, which, as you said, is one of the nine core principles. All that stuff we've seen before.

Speaker 2 There's some new stuff, though, including, you know, as we

Speaker 2 see a plaque as Harmony walks down the hall, alluding to the fact that Sissy was sort of like a matron, presumably for these child workers. I'm going to take that as kind of what her role was.

Speaker 2 And you see some lumen ether patches next to her shrine. And they have, have, one of them has an eye on it.
One of them has a full set of teeth on it. One of them has what appears to be a man running.

Speaker 2 I'm going to take those as the eye for vision, the teeth for cheer, the running for nimbleness, as sort of like a merit badge sort of system in terms of what Sissy, you know, some commendations for her work as a matron.

Speaker 1 You don't miss. And I love it.

Speaker 2 I appreciate that. There's also a card with an image.
of a child with some adults that says, quote, you must be cut to heal, which sounds a little creepy in retrospect. Don't love it.

Speaker 2 Don't love anything that I'm seeing there. And I will say the things that Harmony had in her shrine that Sissy doesn't are a lot more childish things, right?

Speaker 2 It's like the awards that she won from school, the most observant, the best use of mealtime condiments, her best girl trophy. I think there was a plush goat in there.

Speaker 2 And so Sissy's is a little bit different. Some different artifacts, some different items, and clearly no breathing tube because Harmony had it in the first place.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't seem like Sissy thinks a lot of

Speaker 2 her departed sister.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Also, definitely Arts and Crafts involved in both, like in terms of like the Four Tempers representation.

Speaker 1 Quick question for you, Rob.

Speaker 2 Please.

Speaker 1 In the 19th century, thank you for doing all that. You're the best.
In the 19th century, when folks would gather together

Speaker 1 and huff ether together for its intoxicating effects. Do you have any guesses as to what they called those gatherings?

Speaker 2 I do because I also Googled it. They were an ether frolic.

Speaker 1 It's an ether frolic.

Speaker 2 Classic ether frolic.

Speaker 1 Frolic, of course, one of the four tempers. We've seen it tattooed on Drummond's hand.

Speaker 2 I would say the best of the four tempers.

Speaker 2 I'm willing to alienate the other three tempers in the process, but it's the only one that I want to be a part of.

Speaker 1 Suck it, whoa.

Speaker 1 I mentioned Aaron Brockovich a couple times. It's obviously not the only way in which we can think about sort of like the ill effects of industry on townspeople.

Speaker 2 But what if episode nine is just Julia rolling up and you just get the full backstory of what happened here in Salt Snack?

Speaker 1 Like she has everyone's phone number memorized. It's great.

Speaker 2 So she does.

Speaker 1 Another, I will say, another film that I think would help me understand this kind of experience is that there's this great movie called Medawan, which is like about

Speaker 1 unionizing labor around coal mines in early 20th century,

Speaker 1 I think, West Virginia, and this idea of like company towns, coal mining towns, the way that a company town, we've talked about this with Kier where Mark lives, the idea of a company town that they own the general store, they own your house, they own everything.

Speaker 1 They own a Zoofu Chinese restaurant. They own Zoo Chinese restaurant.
They're setting you up on blind dates.

Speaker 1 That in

Speaker 1 certain areas of America, that they would not pay you in money, but pay you in script that you could only use at the company store. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So, you can never get out of the cycle of control that people like J.P. Morgan or Andrew Carnegie or these other titans of American industry, who are surely models for Cure Egan,

Speaker 1 instituted in our great nation.

Speaker 2 And not a coincidence that often those company towns and that sort of payment systems came with extraordinarily dangerous work, right?

Speaker 2 Like things that people don't want to be doing, but then feel beholden to and feel trapped in because they don't have any actual currency to speak of.

Speaker 1 And the Midwest,

Speaker 1 you know, we've talked about all the like Michigan,

Speaker 1 Michigander sort of stuff, you know, like thinking a lot about Detroit as a city that has been in a different sense, but sort of hollowed out by industry where there was like the booming auto industry.

Speaker 1 And then as those factories shuttered, went overseas, whatever it is, that town,

Speaker 1 that city is rebuilding, but became became something of like a ghost city for a while?

Speaker 1 There was like a streak of incredible horror films that were filmed in like the outskirts of Detroit because it just looked like abandon.

Speaker 1 And that's no disrespect to any Detroiters who are listening because there's like vibrant and very cool parts of that city, but there's also ways in which that city was forever changed by

Speaker 1 an industry that fed it and then abandoned it, you know, without any

Speaker 1 like not even fed it, like milked it essentially for its labor and then just sort of like left it high and dry so yeah

Speaker 2 the midwest part i thought was interesting with this episode because this feels very different in terms of the location the setting there's i mean clearly we're out and about in a way that we are not often very very much on severance it also felt i don't know where this was shot kind of newfoundland okay i was about to say coastal canada is kind of the vibe that it's evoking and i think you know everything we've seen to this point both in art and uh pixelated graphics and out in the real world has been more like lake town oriented it felt like and this was it felt like a real venture to the coast to see some actual coastside some manchester by the sea sort of uh energy here that's not the energy you want let me tell you let me say never okay um

Speaker 1 brief foray to literature corner um

Speaker 1 We did get an email from a listener that I have, what is it? It's Christine wrote in,

Speaker 1 in response to me mentioning A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, this exploration of of these Russian, various Russian short stories, she she was rereading it after we talked about it last week.

Speaker 1 Um, love that. Love when people read books because we talked about it.
It's very exciting.

Speaker 2 I love when people do the reading. You know, you assign it every week, and many people don't even crack open their books.

Speaker 1 I do love it. Anyway, um,

Speaker 1 she said she reread the first chapter, which is about Chekhov's in the cart, and she was talking about how much that story, which is about a woman whose life is sort of like who's mourning the loss of her mother and her life has like passed her by, and she's been disappointed.

Speaker 1 It's just her on the road in a cart in many in the ways that like Harmony has been in her white rabbit for like much of the season.

Speaker 1 Like she's like, there's so much of that text and how sparse and spare 37 minute runtime like that story is and just they gave that in relation to this, which I think is very rich.

Speaker 1 I did not study Russian literature. in school.
I studied British literature mostly.

Speaker 1 So I have to shout out our guy, Charles Dickens.

Speaker 1 Our guy.

Speaker 2 You really don't.

Speaker 1 I do because.

Speaker 2 Not only can Woe suck it, Dickens can suck it.

Speaker 1 Absolutely not. Charles Dickens was a child laborer.
And so a lot of his books have this element of child labor in them. Something like David Copperfield, who works in like a bottling factory.

Speaker 1 Charles Dickens works in a, in a boot blacking factory when he was a kid. And this, also, this idea of upward mobility and going back home again.

Speaker 1 So in David Copperfield or Great Expectations, this idea of like you have elevated yourself in society. You have tried to separate yourself from from your humble beginnings.

Speaker 1 And then what is it like for you to go home again and people to resent the airs that you've put on or for you to be repulsed by your more humble origins and all that sort of stuff?

Speaker 1 That was very much, I think, in the, in the mix for me inside of this episode. For sure.

Speaker 2 And also, I think from Sissy's perspective, the deep disappointment.

Speaker 2 in someone that presumably it seems like she had it, at least after Harmony's mother's death, a sort of active hand in raising and presumably like out on the warehouse or on the mill floor, like is in charge of Harmony in some ways.

Speaker 2 And you get the line about how she, you know, she thought she was her beautiful flower, but she was just her weed.

Speaker 2 That line read was fantastic.

Speaker 2 I was very much a fan of everything that's going on there with Jane Alexander. But,

Speaker 2 you know, this, this idea of not only are you trapped in this company, trapped in this life, this company, not just a company town, but a company lifestyle.

Speaker 2 And when you try to break out of it, everyone you've ever cared about has stolen your ideas, has used them for their own personal gain, now sees you as a disappointment, is firing you when you thought you were untouchable because if nothing else, you had dedicated your life to this cause.

Speaker 2 And now what are you left with if you're Harmony Kobell other than your precious, precious schematics that will prove, I don't know to who, but even if I did have them, I wouldn't hand them to Sissy when she's standing by a fire.

Speaker 2 I will tell you that much.

Speaker 1 There are two things that happened this episode among, you know, whatever else. There are two things that I'm just sort of like, really? One was her handing the schematics to Sissy.
So dude.

Speaker 1 She was sitting right in front who had just, just put another log on the wood burning stove.

Speaker 1 And then also, with love and respect, Devin spilling every bean to Harmony on the phone, but her calling Harmony, which a lot of people had an issue with last week, I was just sort of like, she's desperate.

Speaker 1 Her brother is potentially dying. She will do anything to try to get help.
That I understood.

Speaker 1 Her telling Harmony everything on the phone. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I have some questions.

Speaker 2 This is a woman who manipulated her brother, who kidnapped her child and then abandoned the child and committed lactation fraud.

Speaker 2 You tell me which of those is the worst. I don't know.
But three things that Devin might be holding against Miss Cobel at this stage in the story.

Speaker 2 Again, I understand the desperation that you're alluding to. She just watched her brother go thud real loud on the floor and then be slowly brought back to consciousness.
She's freaked, but

Speaker 2 I think there are many other places you could potentially go. And I think here's the thing.

Speaker 2 At this point, her being desperate and wanting answers with no Rigabi makes more sense than when Rigabi was still there.

Speaker 2 And she's saying, what if we call Miss Cobel and try to get Mark into the birthing retreat so we can talk to his innie? I didn't understand any of that.

Speaker 1 That's fair. And I think that's fair.
Anything else you want to talk about before we do the sort of like

Speaker 1 unboxing/slash tour through

Speaker 1 Cobel's greatest hits?

Speaker 2 I do have one thing I want to mention, Joe, which is so much about this episode, so much about this show, so much about Harmony.

Speaker 2 Cobel, we have talked about as being out of time and very difficult to pin down in terms of

Speaker 2 these very 70s and 80s cars that they use, the technology both inside and outside of the severed floor. It's so hard to get a feel for where we are and kind of what these people are dealing with.

Speaker 2 And there's kind of an interesting effect with that on the soundtrack this week, too.

Speaker 2 We get this track, Where Do We Go From Here, by Charles Bradley, after Harmony sees Hampton in the cafe, asks for a favor, favor, and he immediately goes. Our guy is not hesitating.

Speaker 2 He wants that smooch so bad, even though he doesn't know it yet.

Speaker 2 It's this track that sounds extremely 70s soul, but was released in 2013. Oh.
And if that's not severance, I don't know what is. Like, that's really the vibe we're trying to cultivate.
I love that.

Speaker 1 On the music front, did you know what another name for a theremin is?

Speaker 2 I did. Wait, no, we did.
We talked about this. It was like the etherphone.

Speaker 1 Etherphone.

Speaker 2 Classic etherphone.

Speaker 1 Etherphone. Let's do,

Speaker 1 we're gonna, what we're gonna do is we've got six clips that we're gonna play and just sort of like discuss what was going on

Speaker 1 underneath the scene that we were watching now that we know that Harmony Cobel invented Severance.

Speaker 1 My favorite comment that I've seen on Reddit and elsewhere is like, a woman in STEM, Harmony Cobel.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 celebrating innovator, Harmony Cobel, we're gonna go through those clips and also we're going to unbox some of these weird little boxes that Apple has sent over. Yes.

Speaker 1 I have sent Rob a sort of like a photo of the boxes so he gets to pick which we start with. Rob, which box would you like to start with?

Speaker 2 I think there's only one choice, Joe, which is the middle box for roasting.

Speaker 2 I see we have to know what marshmallows are in there. Are we going to get a proper cure stamped marshmallow within this box?

Speaker 1 We did not. There was no dry run of this extracting the box situation.
There we go.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 For roasting fireside delight is what the box says.

Speaker 2 Wonderful. I mean, we can presume, but I want to know if the stamp's on there.

Speaker 1 Then there is

Speaker 1 inside there is a jar, and it is

Speaker 1 chocolate, graham cracker,

Speaker 1 marshmallow,

Speaker 2 unstamped. Unstamped.

Speaker 1 Unstamped. It's more's ingredients.

Speaker 2 I'm already.

Speaker 1 Chocolate is stamped with the word severance. Okay.

Speaker 2 You can stamp the chocolate. You can't stamp that marshmallow.

Speaker 1 There's no, I guess I'm going to touch the marshmallow on a podcast. I'm sorry.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm going to touch the marshmallow. Famous last words by Joanna Robinson in her professional podcasting career.

Speaker 1 Stamp-free. Stamp-free.

Speaker 2 Okay. I'm a little bummed, but look, I weigh the s'more.
Stamped or not, I'm thrilled about it.

Speaker 1 So that is box number one. Was a s'more fixins from Apple TV Plus.

Speaker 2 But what delicious quote do we have, Joe, in box number one?

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for that setup. Kai, will you play this from season one, episode one?

Speaker 5 You know my mother was an atheist.

Speaker 5 She used to say that there was good news and bad news about hell. The good news is

Speaker 1 hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination.

Speaker 5 The bad news is

Speaker 5 whatever humans can imagine, they can usually create.

Speaker 2 My main takeaway from this clip, Joe, was that Patricia Arquette as Harmony has gone fully around the bend since episode one of season one.

Speaker 2 The accent, just the zaniness of the delivery overall has been amped up to 11.

Speaker 1 That's deeply true.

Speaker 1 Good news about hell is that was the name of the pilot season one, episode one, the name of the pilot episode.

Speaker 1 And we should note that she says, my mother was an atheist here. And then later when she's talking to Devin, she says, my mother was a Catholic.
So like, we don't know what, if any, of this is true.

Speaker 1 Yes. But this idea of humans can invent their own hell.
I thought that that was like particularly salient when we're thinking about Harmony Cobel, the inventor of severance.

Speaker 1 Like, yes, she was living a hell as a child laborer who was huffing ether. And then she dreamt up this, like, a way to spread that far and wide out of the ether mills into the cubicles of America.

Speaker 1 So, um,

Speaker 1 complicated, complicated legacy.

Speaker 1 Um, next box, Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 2 Next box, I would love to see what's in the desk furnishing box because it's subtitled pineapple.

Speaker 1 That's the one I thought you were going to start with. I was like, how is he not going to start with pineapple?

Speaker 2 I did learn one, you know, this is maybe a little far afield for this episode, which has nothing to do with Gemma anymore. Strictly Cobel focused this week.

Speaker 2 We got an email from Mary Kate about how the pineapple is a symbol in the fertility community,

Speaker 2 which is something that I can't, did we brush on that as we've gone through the eight different things that pineapples represent?

Speaker 1 What has a pineapple not stood for is my question.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 In this case, I think there's a belief that eating pineapple at various points in your pregnancy will help establish it, especially in the IVF process.

Speaker 2 And the science on that seems a little bit fuzzy, but it's become this sort of like emblematic, hopeful thing, I think, for people trying to get pregnant, which is a fascinating subtext for severance too.

Speaker 1 This box that says desk furnishing pineapple, it says, congratulations on your new desk companion, an air plant.

Speaker 1 And it's got care instructions for like an air plant which i guess is inside further inside are we going we're going full succulent on this thing um let's find out it's been in a box for like a couple weeks you can't kill an air plant so uh yeah that's that's the next uh oh okay wait okay it's an air plant inside of like a little plastic pineapple did you just kill the airplane no i just i just made it go for a little ride but now it's fine it's a little pineapple air plant thingy how's your green thumb, Joe?

Speaker 1 Oh, pretty, pretty shriveled.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 2 did you ever see the movie The Troll in Central Park? No, what? No.

Speaker 2 This is an animated movie about a troll who lives in Central Park, and he's like, has a superpower, which is his thumb turns green and he can like make plants grow.

Speaker 2 But then the villain of the movie, I can't remember what the villain is, has a red, evil thumb that kills the plants. And I would describe that as most accurate to my planting and nursing experience.

Speaker 1 I have killed unkillable succulents before.

Speaker 1 All right, next clip comes from season one, episode five, and it is a conversation between Cabella and Milchik.

Speaker 3 I saw Miss Casey down there.

Speaker 5 You're having her watch Helior.

Speaker 5 I am.

Speaker 5 May I ask why?

Speaker 5 The light of discovery shines truer upon a virgin meadow than a beaten path.

Speaker 5 I'm trying something new with Miss Casey.

Speaker 1 Keep it between us. Do you have any thought, anything you want to? I'm the only pixie's clip, so like, you know, but anything strike you about that clip in particular?

Speaker 2 The light of discovery shines truer on a virgin meadow than a beaten path feels like something that James Egan might have told Harmony in sealing her idea.

Speaker 2 This like, I am a wisened old inventor, but you are part of our family and clearly your mind is more tapped in to the cosmos and its infinite potential.

Speaker 2 And therefore, this is why I'm going to take your idea from you. This is, this is why everything that you've created belongs to me.

Speaker 1 I love that. It should be noted that in the closed captioning, there is quote, there are quotes around that part.
And so like, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 1 She's like, I think often quoting Egan scripture, essentially, in the first season.

Speaker 1 So yeah, that whole light of discovery egan bullshit thing.

Speaker 1 But also just this idea that like her experimentation with Miss Casey and Mark, this idea of it as like her, her furthering her own scientific discovery outside of the bounds of Lumen.

Speaker 1 Like they take, they took her idea

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 either stole, I mean, stole it definitely, but stole it in a way that they like, but you're in charge, so it's still your project. And we'll get to that in a second, obviously.

Speaker 1 But also no further

Speaker 1 experimentation from you required. And her inquiring scientific mind is like, no, I want to steal some scented candles and

Speaker 1 leave them in the wellness room. And like all these other things that she does with Mark and Miss Casey sort of running her own scientific experiments

Speaker 1 because she is. a science-minded person.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that's the big takeaway as far as looking back at the Ms. Cobel scenes is a lot less ambitious middle manager,

Speaker 2 meddlesome, obsessive, like just overall like weird workplace element and more, oh, this is somebody who is tinkering from a place of scientific interest.

Speaker 2 This is somebody who clearly has not just a lot invested in the idea of severance, but in furthering it and perfecting it in the way that the scientific method would suggest you should.

Speaker 1 Next box, Rob?

Speaker 2 I think the next box, I would love to see see a tasty new snack, the top middle box.

Speaker 1 It says salted dehydrate. What could be salted and dehydrated?

Speaker 2 Oh, we got to get a fruit leather in there. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 what was the, there was like split seeds or something in the lumen vending machine?

Speaker 1 Cut beans. Salted, cut beans.

Speaker 2 Split seeds, cut beans. Who's to say?

Speaker 1 It says it's a fruit leather box. Okay.

Speaker 1 And a cut beans box. Salted beans.

Speaker 2 So we will finally understand what cut beans are. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So fruit leather, which is just fruit leather, which is fine. We understand that.
Cut beans. Is this good audio? Let's just, you guys should just switch over to the video if you don't.

Speaker 1 Organic green beans, canola oil, tapioca starch, dexterid, and sea salts.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 Cut beans. Sounds great.
Sounds not a good thing.

Speaker 2 We're going to need the full report.

Speaker 2 Just go to Joe's Instagram account where she will be live streaming her eating cut beans.

Speaker 1 The things you do for content. All right, let's play clip number three.
This comes from season one, episode seven.

Speaker 5 Whoever Whoever killed Mr. Grainer is probably the same person who reintegrated Peter Kilmer.

Speaker 1 The board reminds you that reintegration has happened.

Speaker 5 Reintegration happened, and I have the data to prove it. And I would be happy to share my findings in person without intermediaries.

Speaker 1 She has the findings. She has the proof.

Speaker 2 She does. She dug it up.
She drowned

Speaker 2 the guy's brain.

Speaker 2 What more proof do you need?

Speaker 1 Her relationship with Grainer, too, we should point out that in season one, episode five, in that light of discovery episode,

Speaker 1 when they're talking about reintegration and PD and Rigabi and stuff like that,

Speaker 1 he says to her, you were right, Harmony, we should celebrate.

Speaker 1 So this idea of Grainer as like her ally, Grainer, who died and we thought was fairly villainous, and he is, but like was her ally in her endeavor to prove something about reintegration.

Speaker 1 Again, like more information about

Speaker 1 her own scientific discovery. She wants to know, is reintegration possible?

Speaker 1 She's constantly pissed about Rigabi working on it outside of the bounds of Lumen, but she's still very curious. And the board is like, reintegration doesn't exist.
She's like, it does, man.

Speaker 1 We have to know everything about severance, you know? So

Speaker 2 I also want to say that Harmony, for her part, is not villainous. Like, we've learned a lot more about her.
She's still done some weird, fucked-up things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And ultimately, I think is still so driven by the idea of furthering her discovery and her invention, even if she's not given credit for it, at the expense of all of these people around her.

Speaker 2 Anyone who's working on the severed floor, anyone else who might be severed out of the world, drilling chips out of dudes' heads.

Speaker 2 But she has more hard data to her point on this subject than literally anyone else in the world. Even Rigabi, I don't think we have evidence to suggest was able to study PD's chip post-reintegration.

Speaker 1 Harmony's freaking wearing around her neck like a total weirdo. Um,

Speaker 1 she is villainous the way that Milchik is villainous, the way that, like, all of these people who are sort of abused by and still working for Lumen.

Speaker 1 And so, like, Helena, as well, I would say, all these people who are sort of like used and abused by the company, yeah, but are furthering the company's aims nonetheless.

Speaker 2 Like, that is sympathetic and villainous at the same time.

Speaker 1 In fact, i would prefer if you are or someone who's due for a face turn which it kind of feels like is is where we're heading with harmony the only option really um

Speaker 1 we're wrapping up our season one clips but one more box quickly before we do that rob uh i would love to hear auditory pleasure because i don't know how you would capture such a thing in a box i my guess based on like weird random swag i've gotten in the past from various people is that this is like a portable speaker okay i did not say that into the the microphone, that this is a portable speaker.

Speaker 1 They love a portable speaker. That is like one of their favorite things to Zen.
Oh no, it's AirPods.

Speaker 2 Hell yeah, Joe.

Speaker 2 We're just flexing out here.

Speaker 1 Swag life is very weird and I just need you to know that, but it is AirPods, just a random AirPods box.

Speaker 2 So these things are roughly equal, you know, a pineapple air planter. Yeah.
A marshmallow kit for some s'mores and some AirPods, all of roughly equivalent value.

Speaker 1 Um, Liz, I feel really embarrassed that I didn't, I thought all this is gonna be nonsense stuff. I feel embarrassed that there was like an actual high-value thing in there.

Speaker 1 Let's play the season one, episode eight clip of Harmony Cabell getting fired. It has been decided that you be suspended from your position, effective immediately.

Speaker 1 You are fired.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck off, Natalie.

Speaker 1 Is the board even there?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 This is an incredible scene.

Speaker 1 If you re-watch it, the look on Patricia Arquette's face when Natalie says you're fired. And I believe she says, what, get fucked, Natalie, or whatever.

Speaker 2 Fuck off.

Speaker 1 Fuck off, Natalie. There you go.

Speaker 1 The incredulity in her face of like, I invented severance and you, Natalie, a functionary are firing me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then she's like asking if the board's even involved because surely the board wouldn't fucking do this to her.

Speaker 2 Of course not.

Speaker 1 Then we hear from the speaker on her desk. And then the way it's shot, it's like her, she's sitting behind Natalie.
She's like out of focus.

Speaker 1 She like veers around Natalie's shoulder so that she comes into focus and like sees the speaker and is like, and then tries to collect herself and tries to talk to the board, but they're already gone.

Speaker 1 It is, again,

Speaker 1 she is a villain.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to like apologize for her, but watching her get fired, knowing that she invented Severance and they built this entire thing around her invention and then they're firing her,

Speaker 1 watching the leopards eat her face in real time is just like, it's, it's tough.

Speaker 2 I don't want to watch leopards eat anybody's face. No, I also will say, I love the way they shoot the board audio box, the speaker box,

Speaker 2 just because they treat it almost like a character. And

Speaker 2 like people in the room are sort of craning around, like staring at this box, waiting for the barest of possible responses. Exactly.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that stuck out to me, Joe, in revisiting some of these clips, including some of the ones we're still going to get to, is this idea that because James Egan blatantly ripped off Harmony's idea, at least it seems at this point, took it, co-opted it, made it his own, the legend is now that he created it.

Speaker 2 Right. And we do see a photo in her yearbook for the Wintertide Fellowship of him handing her the trophy in which it has been, the schematics have been stashed.

Speaker 2 So clearly they had some kind of actual relationship.

Speaker 2 And at this point, there's just so many vibes in which it seems like he's decided he never wants to be in a room with Harmony Cobel ever, ever again and ever have to explain himself or apologize or contextualize or make any kind of concession to this woman who he has just exploited through and through basically for her entire life.

Speaker 1 Some real Watson and Crick shit. All right.
Before we get to our next clip, what's the second to last box you want me to open?

Speaker 2 I would love to see stress control subtitled A Squishy Friend.

Speaker 1 This has got to be hopefully a very, very inexpensive, cheap stress ball and not another high-priced item. One can only hope.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 it's a stress cow that says Lumen on the side of it.

Speaker 2 Joe, that is not a cow.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's a goat. Oh, my God.
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 I'm so embarrassing.

Speaker 1 That's a goat. That's so embarrassing.

Speaker 2 It's definitely a goat. It's got a little beard.
We got to get you into salt snacks. You got to interact with some real people.

Speaker 1 It's. Yeah, it's a goat.
Obviously, it's a goat. What else could it possibly fucking be? Illumin-branded stress goat.
Okay, let's let's play season two, episode two, clip, please.

Speaker 4 It cost me dearly

Speaker 4 a tin.

Speaker 4 And still, you proved your loyalty tonight.

Speaker 1 Which is why we'd like to ask you back.

Speaker 1 An apology

Speaker 4 is warranted.

Speaker 4 I apologize.

Speaker 4 My father apologizes.

Speaker 4 The board apologizes.

Speaker 4 We've treated you poorly.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 Just all the child laborers out there, we've treated you poorly. Our bad.

Speaker 1 Thinking about the it cost me dearly,

Speaker 1 thinking about like her

Speaker 2 mom. Yes.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 we already clocked this as like just like a bullshit, I don't mean it apology from Helena. Of course.
But I guess the question, and this goes to like the next clip that we'll listen to as well.

Speaker 1 We don't know if Helena knows that she invented severance.

Speaker 1 In fact, there's every indication that perhaps she doesn't know, but it is still the galling nature of having to listen to this from Helena, of just like,

Speaker 1 you know, and, and, and what that's a longer, there's a longer scene inside of that clip, obviously, that like

Speaker 1 you have no choice, you need me, you fear me, you know, and Helena says we fear no one, but just sort of this idea of like, she's like, you can't, I invented this shit, you can't get rid of me, you need me for this

Speaker 1 is sort of underpinning all of that.

Speaker 2 One thing that I do like about this particular reveal for Kobel is that we've already had the moment of revisiting a lot of Helena's scenes.

Speaker 2 You know, now that once we figured out that she was an Egan, you can rewatch season one and you can understand some of the context a little better.

Speaker 2 You can understand the sort of like my company, your company thing that's happening between Harmony and Helena, or Helie at that point, even though she doesn't know she's Helena.

Speaker 2 And now that takes on a totally new flavor when you know that her company was built on your work and your ideas.

Speaker 2 And so the kind of wrestling within those scenes for meaning as we get reveal and reveal and reveal, that I have a lot of admiration for.

Speaker 1 Last but not least,

Speaker 1 one last box, one last clip.

Speaker 2 What's the best box remaining?

Speaker 2 We have enhanced decor. I'm not so moved by it.

Speaker 1 This is definitely stickers. This is definitely a candle.
This is definitely probably a like a gift card for Starbucks or something like that. And the beverage is available on request.

Speaker 1 So I would say a cure package.

Speaker 2 Let's see it.

Speaker 1 Whatever that is.

Speaker 2 Ambiguous.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 This is my best idea I've ever had for a podcast.

Speaker 2 What do you think of what you've become, Joe, as a formal unboxer?

Speaker 1 I misidentified a goat as a cow,

Speaker 1 a very important part of Severance as a cow. So not great.
Oh,

Speaker 1 it's a box for the AirPods that they put in this thing.

Speaker 2 As you live your life of luxury over there with all of your swag, you must protect it.

Speaker 1 Okay, not that it matters, but I will not be keeping these AirPods. I will probably, I will give them to whichever person who's working here today wants them

Speaker 1 because I can't wear AirPods because they fall out of my ears. So if that helps anyone from not like thinking of me as

Speaker 2 you were so close to being benevolent and then it was like, oh no, I just can't use these. It's not out of the goodness of my heart.

Speaker 2 It's just I couldn't possibly actually use them until someone's aware of it. I'm so very generous person, Rob.

Speaker 1 Let's play the last clip.

Speaker 4 Marcus

Speaker 4 is so close to completing Cold Harbor.

Speaker 4 I intend to finish the work that I started,

Speaker 4 which is why

Speaker 4 Milchuk must go.

Speaker 4 He's not equipped for the task.

Speaker 4 I must be four manager.

Speaker 4 I hear ego,

Speaker 4 hubris,

Speaker 4 arrogance.

Speaker 4 Care teaches us they only cause pain.

Speaker 4 Everything I accomplished, I earned

Speaker 4 through dedication and industry.

Speaker 4 Not because I was born into it.

Speaker 4 I think you've overestimated your contributions

Speaker 4 and underestimated your blessings.

Speaker 4 We didn't have to ask you back.

Speaker 2 How dare you, lady with a fake MBA, say this to a woman in STEM?

Speaker 1 We already, I mean, we covered the

Speaker 1 gall, this, this Nepo baby conversation before, obviously. That was all already there.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 1 hearing you overestimate your contribution

Speaker 1 is quite tough. Also, like

Speaker 1 Harmony saying several times, I need to finish what I started. I need to finish what I started.
And we're like, oh, what she started on the floor.

Speaker 1 No, what she started by coming up with severance in the first place.

Speaker 2 Which she started with her thrupple imaginings with the various marks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 2 This scene too is preceded, we should say, by Harmony's first instinct is to drive to Salt's neck. Cracks.

Speaker 2 And then she turns around and comes back to Lumen to have this conversation and to make like one last pitch, basically, furthering the idea that you put forward early on this pod, Joe that she is a true believer.

Speaker 2 Like she wants to be a part of the machine as much as anything. Like she wants to continue living the cure lifestyle.

Speaker 2 But at this point, they just are like refusing to not only respect her, but even give her the bare minimum of having her old job back.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if you've ever heard this expression, but hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned by her

Speaker 1 industry religion boss daddy.

Speaker 1 Um, and that old chestnut, that old chestnut, and that's where we find Harmony Kobel, uh, scorned by the religion that she believed in, by the uh, company that she gave her entire life to, um, and hopefully out for vengeance or

Speaker 1 out to sell out,

Speaker 1 you know, Mark and Devin for a chance at her job back.

Speaker 2 I don't mind that either.

Speaker 1 It could go either way.

Speaker 2 It could go either way. What is your read at this point on whether Helena Egan knows that her father did not invent severance?

Speaker 1 I don't think she knows. There's so much she doesn't know, you know, that conversation she had at Zoofu with Mark

Speaker 1 where she's like, I know everything. I'm at the top of my company.
And it's just like more and more

Speaker 1 apparent to me that she's kept completely in the dark about everything.

Speaker 2 she definitely could be i think one thing that i i'm so glad about in retrospect is during the overtime contingency you know you get that exchange between jam egan and at that point helly r in helena's body like posing as helena and so when jam tells her this memory of like showing her the the prototype for the severance chip when she was a child right helly has no means to dispute that even if she knew that even if helena knows the truth helly wouldn't know the truth that jam didn't actually invent it and so so, it's one of, yet again, one of these scenes where we're left like grasping at straws as to who knows what and when and what is true to whom.

Speaker 2 I do think Helena probably knows enough to know that maybe her family and the business is full of it in certain senses, and maybe has a sense that, like,

Speaker 2 this isn't all that it appears to be.

Speaker 2 Maybe my father, who I have no idea if he has a scientific background or not, could not just invent something like a brain chip, but she's also in a position where she's not exactly incentivized to poke too hard at that idea.

Speaker 2 Like, any

Speaker 2 poking around she does would take herself down a peg in the process.

Speaker 1 Here's what I hope. Milchik, Helena, Harmony all turn on the company at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 And then who's the literal villain of the show?

Speaker 1 Jay Megan,

Speaker 1 you know?

Speaker 1 Natalie's the body

Speaker 2 of the body of like a big metal spider or something. Like we need something.
This is the problem with the eventual face turns of all the villains as these shows go on.

Speaker 2 And yes, I think all three of those characters have very little understanding. And Natalie have all understandable reasons why they would ultimately come to side with our core macro data refiners.

Speaker 2 But if they do, you're going to have to introduce new villains, right? You're going to have to introduce like the bigger bad to then overshadow the bads that we knew.

Speaker 2 And maybe the bigger bad is capitalism. Maybe it is religion.

Speaker 1 It's obviously capitalism. Clearly.
Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com. Press ECT,

Speaker 1 yep, pressus TV at spotify.com if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about anything that we we have outlined here today or feedback on

Speaker 1 my decision to litter this table in front of me with open boxes.

Speaker 1 We will be back with more white lotus coverage. Thanks so much.
This has been so fun. We only have a couple more episodes left.

Speaker 1 You guys have been like really crushing it with the severance emails, the severance theories.

Speaker 1 The Prestige TV feed is like really,

Speaker 1 the joint is jumping and it's been really fun.

Speaker 1 We will be probably doing, our plan is to do sort of like a live severance theory pod, and I'll give you a little little bit more information about that the closer we get to it.

Speaker 1 But I just wanted to put that on everyone's radar that Rob and I are going to do sort of like a before-the-finale

Speaker 1 live speculation fun thing. And

Speaker 1 that's it. We'll see you soon.
Bye.

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