‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 6: Burt’s Dark Secret

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Speaker 6 And Bert,

Speaker 6 how did you come to be at the company?

Speaker 6 Me? Yes, I'm very curious. Well, as a matter of fact, I was guided to Lumen's door

Speaker 6 by Jesus.

Speaker 6 Oh,

Speaker 6 Jesus

Speaker 6 Christ?

Speaker 6 That's the one.

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

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 And we're here at the world's most awkward dinner party to talk to you about severance.

Speaker 2 Rob, how are you doing? I'm doing great.

Speaker 2 I got to say, you know, of the dinner party participants, just a quick power ranking. Oh, sure.
I think Irving is the number one dinner party guest here.

Speaker 2 I thought Fields, for his part, showed potential to be delightful. Granted, he's in a very unusual circumstance, maybe not being his best self.

Speaker 2 Bert, shady ass, potentially evil Bert. I'm not getting the invite.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 No, in the background of that clip, you might have heard crackling, and that would be from the roaring fire.

Speaker 2 It's very normal. Not ominous, not delicate.

Speaker 1 That is not at all, you know, sort of letting us know that our fondest ship, everyone's talking about about burving as you know but now are they still are they talking about fertilizing everybody's talking about berving

Speaker 1 everybody's talking about burving i'm so upset that you just introduced furt into my life i'm really mad but i would say beals let's go with bealds

Speaker 2 I kind of like Fert, but all right. I'm deferred.
You're the expert, Joe.

Speaker 1 Am I? I think we should ask Billy Bush. I'm kind of like hashtag Team Fields to a certain degree on this.

Speaker 1 Like, I was really feeling for Fields, and I was a big fan of what John Noble did in this episode. So,

Speaker 1 um, all right, before we get into that, just a quick reminder that elsewhere here on the feed, we're double-dipping on White Lotus.

Speaker 1 So, Bill and Mallory and I are doing post-white lotus immediate reaction pods, and then Rob and I are doing whatever it is we're doing a little later in the week, you know, a Robin Joanna special

Speaker 1 question mark. So, that's that's uh, you find that in the feed.
And then, also, a lot of people have been emailing and asking, where is Yellow Jackets on this feed?

Speaker 1 Uh, If you have pressed play on this episode, wondering for you to answer that question, here we are. Yellow Jackets is being covered on a different podcast feed this season, House of R.

Speaker 1 It's the same hosts, Mallory Rubin, Joanna Robinson. That's me.

Speaker 1 But it's a different feed altogether. So you can find, we'll be doing weekly coverage of that show over on that feed is where you can find it.

Speaker 1 And then we're going to be back. We're going to do another.
A couple other pit stops is on the schedule for us. So thanks.
You guys are still sending your pit emails and we are enjoying enjoying them.

Speaker 1 So thank you for that. Speaking of emails, Rob.

Speaker 2 So many emails this week, Joe. You guys continue to show out

Speaker 2 with the theories with the dental opinions. A lot going on and I appreciate every single one.
So thank you for everyone emailing pineapplebobbing at gmail.com or prestige TV at spotify.com.

Speaker 2 Your theories and queries are always welcome.

Speaker 1 And if they're listening to this, they're like, ah, what was that email I could write in about white lotus thoughts, Rob? What is that email?

Speaker 2 That would be monkeyshootout at gmail.com if you're so inclined. But again, if you forget, you can always email prestige TV at spotify.com.
There is a fail-safe plan here for our madness.

Speaker 1 We've got this. We've got this.
All right. So to check in on some of the, you know, most popular subject that people sent us emails about, please.
There is

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 dental tool question, the surgical tool. Where are you sitting now, Rob, a week later, on what kind of tools those are based on the emails we got?

Speaker 2 We've heard from a lot of dentists, a lot of dentist adjacent professionals. And I have to say, I think there's a little bit of a mixed opinion out there.

Speaker 2 I think there is some consensus that some of these tools sure look like dental tools. And we had some dentists email us in, going piece by piece through the collection.
Dr. Doug.

Speaker 2 Very much appreciated. Thank you, Dr.
Doug. But we also had some medical professionals saying, you know what? Maybe Rob's onto something.

Speaker 2 Maybe these could be for some kind of perverse, perhaps basement brain surgery, as we got this week. You know, a lot of, a lot of just improvised surgeries happening.

Speaker 2 And I'm glad that at least the fine folks at Lumen have something resembling actual tools to perform it.

Speaker 1 Of all the houses, of all the rooms in the house, is the basement the last place you want to have surgery, Rob? Is that good lord?

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 1 I'd take bathroom and kitchen, which are the like other two like sort of cross-contamination most compromised rooms in the house.

Speaker 1 But there's still like an idea of sterility inside of those places. You at least like regularly wipe down those surfaces in theory.
Whereas the basement or the attic surgery, oh, it's a no, simply no.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 See, that's the thing. Is it, do you want it to be actually clean or just make you feel better that it might be clean? Because the kitchen makes me very nervous.

Speaker 2 If you're in the kitchen of somebody who washes their chicken, we're not performing surgery in there. Like that's simply a no.

Speaker 1 Washing chicken makes it feel less sterile to you?

Speaker 2 Oh, it makes it less sterile. Okay.

Speaker 1 I definitely don't wash my chicken.

Speaker 1 You washed it in the sink, Rob, and then you clean the sink.

Speaker 2 Well, the problem is it sprays out everywhere, spreading the bacteria all over the place. This is the same thing.

Speaker 1 I don't know what kind of, I don't know what kind of slapdash chicken washing you've been experiencing, but I'm not precise.

Speaker 2 That's for damn sure. All right.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
So Dr. Doug went through all of the tools in the tray here.
We, we did. We got mostly dentists saying, hey, yeah, that those are dentist tools.

Speaker 1 And a few other people being like, hey, if you wanted wanted to do spooky little basement surgery, you could maybe use this tray as well.

Speaker 1 Dr. Doug wanted to point out that there's like diagnostic tools, dental scalers, but he said, most interestingly, various surgical blades and instruments used to cut gum tissue,

Speaker 1 peel gum tissue away from jawbones, scrape out and clean away infection from tooth sockets after teeth have been pulled and a fine bone file to smooth sharp edges from bone for better healing following some of these procedures.

Speaker 1 He also was like really objecting to the way that the tools were laid out on the tray. He's like, that's not how anything gets it.

Speaker 1 And he said, unfortunately, this is my favorite part.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, for whoever ends up on the other side of these dental tools, there was one very important instrument missing from this tray, and that is the syringe used to give the dental injections necessary to make this procedure even remotely tolerable.

Speaker 1 Undergoing a surgical procedure like this without quote novocaine, we actually don't use that drug anymore, would be literal torture. Love the show.
Be sure sure to brush and floss. So thanks, Dr.

Speaker 1 Doug, and all the other dentists who emailed us.

Speaker 2 We really appreciate you.

Speaker 1 I was reminded after we recorded that in season one, the MDR crew go to this wall of smiles

Speaker 1 that is actually called the quote lumen legacy of joy. That is just like a bunch of people's

Speaker 1 creepy photos of a bunch of people's smiles up on the wall that like you would get at a dentist's office, actually.

Speaker 2 So there's a lot of floor-to-ceiling giant ass pictures of smiles.

Speaker 1 Not like that, but my childhood dentist had like a wall of just like close-up of, yeah, close-up of people's smiles.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, there is the close-ups. I think it's the scale of the printout that is so disconcerting about those giant ass smiles.

Speaker 1 That's a great point. What we've had a bunch of theories about what, like, let's say these are dental tools.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Let's say seven out of eight dentists agree that these are dental tools. Um,

Speaker 1 what could Lumen be doing with dental tools if if we are engaging in this sort of like we're building copies of people? Or alternatively,

Speaker 1 say your wife got terribly burned in a car accident, but she's not dead, but you need people to believe that that's her body. And perhaps they might check the dental records.

Speaker 1 So perhaps we need the right teeth to be in a different corpse.

Speaker 2 I don't know how that works. As one does.

Speaker 1 If it were me, I would simply switch the dental records and not move the teeth.

Speaker 2 Agreed.

Speaker 1 I don't work for Lumen and I'm not a big picture thinker, so who's to say? But any thoughts or theories about the dental tools or surgery tools, Rob?

Speaker 2 Yeah, something cover-up-related makes sense.

Speaker 2 Although, at this point in the game, our view of severance is so narrow and it's so much focused on Mark and the MDR team that we don't know about like other cover-ups that might need to take place with other people who are being brought into the company for other projects that are not Cold Harbor.

Speaker 2 So I'm almost not inclined to follow that particular thread. And I'm thinking more, say, for example, you have a clone of Gemma slash Miss Casey, and the time has come to move on to the next model.

Speaker 2 What do you do? Maybe you furnace the majority of that body, but you preserve the teeth for DNA purposes slash cloning purposes.

Speaker 2 It's getting dark and weird in here, but that's what happens when you make teeth the center of the frame.

Speaker 1 I think it's you using furnace as a verb that has really brightened my day. Okay.

Speaker 1 On earring watch, I have been told that I was incorrect and then I went and looked and absolutely I was incorrect.

Speaker 2 They're not the same.

Speaker 1 That's the last time I believe something someone says on Reddit without checking it with my own eyeballs. I've been

Speaker 1 before and I usually learn my lesson, but I did not. I was not top of my game last week.
What do you want to say, Rob?

Speaker 2 I disagree with the specifics of earring watch. Those are so clearly not the same earrings and not even the same style of earrings.
Nope.

Speaker 1 They are not.

Speaker 2 But the camera does still linger on them in a weird way, on Rigabi's earrings specifically. And they do have a similar blue-green color scheme that is not just Helena-coated, but Lumen-coated.

Speaker 2 And I have a lot to get into with Rigabi this week. Like, I'm feeling increasingly nudged in the direction of she is in some way working with either Lumen or Helena on the side.

Speaker 2 There's something weird happening with her character and her role in this story. And my, my haunches are raised.

Speaker 1 A raised haunch, and we're furnacing things. A lot is happening.

Speaker 2 It's a busy morning.

Speaker 1 Last but not least, we got a lot of emails about sort of the Midwest representation inside of this show.

Speaker 1 We were sort of circling the drain on this, but we got a couple emails sort of putting all the pieces together. So this one comes from Kim P, who says, I'm so glad you mentioned Kellogg and Ford.

Speaker 1 As a Michigander, they've been on my mind for a while. The Perpetuity Wing in particular brought up Henry Ford vibes.

Speaker 1 You can visit the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, where an entire historical village is set up outside,

Speaker 1 including Henry Ford's childhood home. The whole place is a testament to his greatness that obviously leaves out the questionable parts of his past.

Speaker 1 I would also like to point out that the Edmund Fitzgerald was on its way to Michigan when it sank. And this is me, Joanna, adding something.
And Kellogg's sanatorium was in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Speaker 1 Kim said, I've even seen people on Reddit theorize that the state of PE could be something like Peninsula Egan. Potentially, the Egan family made the Upper Peninsula a separate state.

Speaker 1 The setting certainly has some of the remote and cold wilderness vibes of the UP. I'm writing all of this from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Mark W.
had to give up his lease. So

Speaker 2 shout out to Mark W. I hope he's doing all right.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I'm always thinking about him.
So what do you think of all of this sort of this collection of Michigan-based references?

Speaker 2 It makes a lot of sense. Like geographically, we are placed somewhere that is very Midwest, that is very lakeside, that is very Canada-adjacent.
And so why, why not Michigan?

Speaker 2 And overall, like the peninsular theory, I buy that that could be split off into another state in whatever form of whatever timeline we're in.

Speaker 2 And maybe we never get like concrete answers on this stuff. And maybe it's supposed to be this sort of nebulous idea that we are somewhere in this region, but not exactly a real place.

Speaker 2 I would buy that too.

Speaker 1 In the era where

Speaker 1 we're trying to re, and I use we very loosely, trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Speaker 2 Um, wait, that wasn't your pet project?

Speaker 1 I think this idea of all the Gulf of Kier.

Speaker 1 Yeah, can't you just see sort of like the Gulf of Musk? Like that could easily be something that could happen tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 We're here to talk about episode six, Attila. Written by Aaron Wagoner and directed by Uda Breschowitz.
And she is one of my favorite TV directors.

Speaker 1 So I am absolutely thrilled that she was working on this episode. Among many other things, she directed one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen, Kixuya, which is a Westworld episode.

Speaker 1 And spoilers for Westworld Season 2. I'm about to describe this episode to you if you've never seen it.

Speaker 1 A character searches for his wife.

Speaker 1 A character, Akichita, searches for his wife, Kahana, played by Julia Jones, Zach McLarnon, who, stop you've heard this, has had her memory wiped and is in a deep freeze in the basement of a massive shady organization.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Sound familiar?

Speaker 1 We've been mentioning some Westworld

Speaker 1 comps throughout because that's a show that deals with reconstructing bodies or immortality of consciousness inside of fabricated bodies and stuff like that. So that is

Speaker 1 something on our mind. But Udeberschwitz is, especially in that episode, which again is one of the best episodes of television I think I've ever seen, Zach McLarnon,

Speaker 1 an actor I really enjoy, spends a lot of that dialogue-less and just sort of processing things, sort of wandering around the park and processing things.

Speaker 1 And so, especially when we we get to the scene in this episode where Helly R is processing

Speaker 1 what happened at the Orpo,

Speaker 1 I thought that was like a really good demonstration of what this particular director is quite good at, which is taking us.

Speaker 1 It's a great performance, but also as a director, she's very good at taking us just inside and leaving space for the dialogue-less moments inside of a character's head.

Speaker 2 I'm so glad to hear that because not only that scene jumped out to me on watch, but also the post-coital scene where Mark and Helly are walking back down the hall together.

Speaker 2 And it's like, you don't need to say anything in this moment. Like we're getting so much from both of these performances.

Speaker 2 We're getting so much from just like the vibe and their energy and their body language and the relief and the shift in these characters.

Speaker 2 I love that Severance can be that kind of show and has the confidence to be that kind of show because.

Speaker 2 You and I have both, Joe, have seen plenty of other series that don't have that confidence, that feel like they need to have a voiceover in moments like Helik having to ponder, that have someone muttering aloud to themselves or like writing on a piece of paper.

Speaker 2 It's like, let us just kind of stew in what we all know are the emotions of this moment and trust that we all can get there together.

Speaker 1 Something I didn't have a chance to listen to the entirety of the official podcast this morning, but something that Stiller said about Uda as a director is that she, you know, he was like, we thought we had filmed in all of the nooks and crannies of the NBR apartment, department.

Speaker 1 He was like, but she had the idea of going inside of a bathroom stall, which is something we hadn't done.

Speaker 1 And he was like, the way that they, that she blocked that to be both incredibly intimate between the two of them inside of this very small space. But then also

Speaker 1 when Helie understands what sharing vessels means, like the way in which all of a sudden she seems so far away in the corner of this nonetheless very small space.

Speaker 1 Or something like the tent, you know, the tent that they construct out of, you know, the plastic drop cloths and stuff like that. Like just finding these sort of like enchanting

Speaker 1 or unusual settings inside of a, you know, dry, soulless corporate place, I thought was really interesting.

Speaker 2 I think there's so much happening visually in this episode, not just with, as you're saying, that kind of forced intimacy based on perspective, but there's a lot of weird framing choices, like imbalances in terms of where a character is in the frame, all this empty space on the other side, like a lot of headroom randomly in some shots, in a way that you're getting all of that intimacy, all of these like very close emotional connections between people, but also this distinct feeling that something is off in a lot of these sequences.

Speaker 1 I love that you pointed out. I forgot to write that down, but yeah, like, I think it was like the second time I watched this episode, I was really trying to parse.

Speaker 1 I think it's just maybe was one sequence or maybe multiple when Britt Lauer as Helly is walking down the hall towards the camera. And it's like the camera is tilted in a way that is very unusual.

Speaker 1 And the way she like comes into frame is very unusual. That's a great point.

Speaker 1 I also saw someone pointed out, and I I love this, that in last week's encounter in the elevator, speaking of sort of like unusual closed spaces inside the show,

Speaker 1 someone pointed out that in that scene between

Speaker 1 our guy, Milchik, who's going through it in this episode,

Speaker 1 and Mark, that there is a seam on the wall of the elevator, sort of equidistant between them. And then he, he, Milchik, crosses that line in order to get into the space.
And that's juicy.

Speaker 1 I saw someone, I think it was on, I probably read it, but it might have been one of the Godfrey Station social media apps that I'm on, like show other examples inside of film and television where directors or cinematographers will create a physical line just to show someone transgressing it inside of like the set deck or something like that.

Speaker 1 So I thought that was really cool.

Speaker 2 And we know that they love that shit on Severance. They love any kind of hard line color play.

Speaker 2 We even get it some later at the dinner party where you get Irving on one side of sort of the cabinetry, which I think is more of a wood finish, and you get Fields on the other side of the cabinetry, which is very like white, almost like linoleum-y finished.

Speaker 2 Like, this is exactly the kind of space this show loves to live in.

Speaker 1 How do you feel the show handled the violation for Helie and Mar, like figuring out what happened to the Orpo and then processing it and then

Speaker 1 having their own sexual encounter inside of this episode?

Speaker 1 You know, there are versions of the show where that feels hasty, like we didn't really, you know, deal with what happened before we rolled on to the next thing.

Speaker 1 What do you think of the way it was handled here?

Speaker 2 I think it makes a lot of sense for the pacing of the show and the kind of story that they're trying to tell. And it also makes storytelling sense in the way that the Innies world is so small.

Speaker 2 And I think it needed some prompting for us to remember that Heli R goes from getting a quick smooch as she goes down the elevator with Mark to being basically drowned in a lake like that.

Speaker 2 Like that is the instant transition for her. Yeah.
And so we are living in this broader world. We're seeing inside and outside.
We're seeing all of these different characters and perspectives.

Speaker 2 This is all these people have. And so the idea that Mark, rather than like backing himself into a corner in an office of exactly five people, like, what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 This is not something you're going to be able to hide from forever. Right.
And so instead, coming right out with it.

Speaker 2 And I think Helly's response, which is at once cognitively understanding and trying to explain, maybe this is a tactic to separate us, but in the process, pulling back because she cannot help but but pull back.

Speaker 2 That just rings really true for that character for me.

Speaker 1 Something that Una, the director, said in the post-episode interviews that they put up on Apple is she was talking about this as like this emancipation of Hallie from Helena.

Speaker 1 That there's an interpretation of this that is about Helly like sort of fighting over Mark, fighting with herself over Mark or fighting again her man or whatever, which is like true in a way.

Speaker 1 But she was like, mostly she's fighting for herself to free herself.

Speaker 1 And I really liked that interpretation.

Speaker 2 Well, even in the way she explains it, it's not that she wants Mark, it's that she wants that memory. She wants that experience that she didn't get to have.

Speaker 1 We must, I regret, now engage in a theory that I was hoping to avoid, but I feel is now

Speaker 1 unavoidable.

Speaker 2 Okay. Is it time for pregnancy corner? Is that where we're going?

Speaker 1 It is time for pregnancy corner. And here's the deal: here's the deal with pregnancy theory corner.
I hate when that is a go-to.

Speaker 1 I hate when that is a go-to after two, like two characters have sex on a show because usually

Speaker 1 I don't know there's that there's this air of like there have to be consequences for sexual encounters or

Speaker 1 in in like a particularly

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 horrible version of this was I remember on Game of Thrones people were sort of like body checking Sophie Turner between C's and stuff like that and that really like like pissed me off so I try to like avoid this however if you're doing a television show where you have innies and outies and this very strange dynamic and you have two characters have sex or two vessels share space with each other in the span of how many vessels are being shared here.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of vessel sharing.

Speaker 1 It's yeah, there is a lot of vessel sharing.

Speaker 1 We've talked about this about the complicated like love quadrangles polycules that are going on inside of

Speaker 1 all of the plot lines in this episode. But

Speaker 1 if Mark had sex with Helena and then had sex with Helie, and if that vessel becomes pregnant and the

Speaker 1 sexual assignations were so close in the timeline to each other, then like

Speaker 1 I do think we need to consider that this could be like a whose baby is it?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it's a way to raise the stakes emotionally.
I get it.

Speaker 2 And you hope that a show as well crafted and well-written as Severance would deal with that in the appropriate way, in a way that would be narratively satisfying and maybe less, make us like cringe a little bit less.

Speaker 2 It also, just within the construct of all the sci-fi, mumbo, jumbo we're working with here, is a kind of an incredible body horror sort of premise.

Speaker 2 Like if, if one of Heli or Helena is kind of switched off for an extended period of time and is switched on and is suddenly months pregnant, like that is...

Speaker 2 a jarring reality for the story to have to then deal with that I think could work. But like you, I've been a little reluctant to go down this path.

Speaker 2 One, because of all the reasons you described and how uncomfortable they can be. Also, I think in a lot of cases, it's just boring storytelling.
And I am hopeful that this could be better than that.

Speaker 2 But sometimes it just is.

Speaker 1 And I think that there's a couple of things.

Speaker 1 And we've talked about this before about the way in which Severance engages in like high sci-fi, high-minded sci-fi concepts and also just like very basic soap, soap opera storytelling.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, inside of this episode, we've got, you know, Bert bringing, as Watkin described it in the podcast, Bert bringing his boyfriend home to meet his husband, you know, essentially.

Speaker 1 Or, you know, we've got

Speaker 1 Gretchen cheating on her husband with also her husband. Or, you know, we've got a, we've got a dead body that actually she's still alive.

Speaker 1 Like, this is all soap opera stuff, but with it with a with a sci-fi twist inside of a show that allows for explorations of it that you can't do inside of any other show. So, this is the like,

Speaker 1 oops, she's pregnant sort of storyline or something like that, but with added layers of complexity.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I would like to trust that if they're doing this at Severance, we'll do this very well. I hope so.

Speaker 2 And another touch point that people have been emailing us about, especially now that John Noble is on the show, is fringe, which I think doesn't deal with the pregnancy element of that, at least as far as I can remember.

Speaker 2 My fringe watching is a little incomplete, but there was a lot of relationship persona swapping shenanigans happening on that show.

Speaker 1 Faux, Olivia.

Speaker 2 Oh, God. Yeah.

Speaker 2 A wig change can do a lot, apparently.

Speaker 1 It really can. Okay.

Speaker 1 Two more things on the sharing vessel front that I want to note. One is the red color scheme we talked about for Helena and Mark.

Speaker 1 And so we're in a very much a blue color scheme for Heli and Mark under the sort of plastic sheeting inside of this episode. And then also what I wrote in my notes was Ben Wyatt nerd Riz

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 Mark pushes Hallie against the wall and then makes out with her and then bleeds all over her. Minus the bleeding part.
This is like a classic.

Speaker 1 This is the thing about Adam Scott is that he, and this is what Severance captures so perfectly. He has played some of the like scumbaggiest assholes inside of properties

Speaker 1 or fun versions of sort of his scumbag asshole performance, which I would say is something like Party Down. But he is most famous for playing Ben Wyatt, like an apple pie, like sweetheart.

Speaker 1 And so the duality of that possibility inside of Adam Scott sort of all wrapped up into these various marks that we're meeting. But that was just like such a

Speaker 1 nerd-riz Ben Wyatt moment to me, that like sort of against the wall kiss moment.

Speaker 2 It's funny to me that you wrote down that moment because I wrote down of the sequence where Mark Scout and Helena meet in the Chinese restaurant when she starts getting on him about how, yeah, you should be sorry.

Speaker 2 Hello, Helena.

Speaker 2 There is something happening here that I am responding to.

Speaker 2 And that, like, honestly, seeing her with that much game in the outside world is a little bit shocking given what we saw of her on the severed floor.

Speaker 2 But maybe she just needs him a little bit damaged too. You know, she needs the Mark Scout energy and not the Mark S energy.

Speaker 1 That was my favorite scene. I think.
I mean, I loved, I loved the dinner party, all of that. But I think that scene, I went back and rewatched this

Speaker 1 the opening part of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when like

Speaker 1 Kit Winslow's character and Jim Carrey's character who have dated in the past but have had their memories of each other erased foresee each other in a diner sort of like in a similar thing like several booths down sort of thing and then again on a train when she like Helena comes over and tries to talk to him and stuff like that there's a lot of

Speaker 1 It was too long for me to cut like a convincing clip for you, but like there's a lot of similarities there and we've talked about etern, eternal sunshine.

Speaker 1 And also this episode ends with a needle drop sunshine of your love sort of moment.

Speaker 1 But I was thinking about the juice again, once again, the juiciness that's only available inside of Severance of like the

Speaker 1 weighted history of what we're watching here. We're watching Mark's Audi, Mark Scout.

Speaker 1 Like he is flirting with her and he is drawn to her

Speaker 1 while also knowing that she is the head of an evil corporation,

Speaker 1 you know, and then she can't stay away. She's Harmony Cabelling her way through the season, man.

Speaker 1 But they have a connection. And so

Speaker 1 this is the question we have to keep asking ourselves is like, what bleeds through or what is eternally true about the severed? Like, what do you want to say about this encounter?

Speaker 2 Well, first of all, as far as the eternal sunshine element, I think the most poignant part of that scene is the ending where Mark gets up to leave and they are again standing uncomfortably uncomfortably close to each other, relative, you know, as people in severance apparently do.

Speaker 2 Right. And the what Adam Scott is giving me in that scene as Mark is that a reintegrating Mark can almost like feel the pull between them, but doesn't know what it is or what to do with it.

Speaker 2 And I think he's processing it in real time. Helena obviously is privy to a lot more information as to what their relationship and dynamic is.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And because of that, I'm walking away from these sequences at the Chinese restaurant wondering, like, what exactly is Helena after here? Because she strolls in.

Speaker 2 Hey, I saw you shoveling fried rice into your mouth with your hands from across the restaurant, and I really like your vibe.

Speaker 2 But like, it doesn't really make sense that she would just be coming here on neutral terms. Like, she has a purpose.

Speaker 2 And so, I don't know what your read on this was, Joe, but I'm wondering, like, does she just want

Speaker 2 Mark's vessel in the way that Helly wants Mark's vessel? Is that a thing? Is she more broadly obsessed with Mark in the way that maybe Harmony Cobel was fixated on him for whatever reason?

Speaker 2 We don't quite know yet. Is she testing Mark in some way, specifically by calling Gemma Hannah

Speaker 2 very pointedly and kind of seeing if he will correct her?

Speaker 2 And related to that, is Helena working with Rigabi in some way? Because this is immediately following the scene where Mark has freaked out and left Rigabi and gone out. And presumably...

Speaker 2 It's a question, Mark, as to whether he's going to continue reintegrating. And just like that, Helena appears out of nowhere to kind of nudge him back on course.
It's just, it's a little suspicious.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I think this is definitely pinged something for me in terms of like Helena and Rigabi and Kahoot's question.
Like, I think absolutely the timing of that is a question. I think...

Speaker 1 As is the case with sort of like, why has Helena opted to go into the MDR department in the first place undercover? I think the answer could be nine different things.

Speaker 1 And I think that's what's really interesting about the Helena character is that I think she like, she has a crush and also she's got weird corporate agendas and

Speaker 1 she

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 you know she got to have she she liked the way that this person looked at her when you know she had sex with him even even though he thought she was someone else um

Speaker 1 so i you know i thought all of that was really interesting i think to your point in terms of like reintegrated Mark, we got this really fascinating email from our listener, Liz,

Speaker 1 that I really liked where we were talking last week about, or I was talking at least, last week about Mark in the elevator with Milchik feeling like Audi Mark bleeding into Annie Mark.

Speaker 1 And she had a sort of like different interpretation, which I really liked. She said, yeah, she said

Speaker 1 during the last pod and everywhere on the internet, there was conversation on how Annie Mark was acting more similarly to Audi Mark and attributing that to reintegration.

Speaker 1 This wasn't my interpretation. Actually, it didn't cross my mind as a possibility until later.

Speaker 1 Innie Mark just watched a friend, quote, die, Irving, and experienced a huge betrayal and assault by the woman he had feelings for.

Speaker 1 I think Innie Mark is acting like Audi Mark because they're both the same person, but now his Innie has had experiences more comparable to what his Audi has experienced.

Speaker 1 Severance doesn't make you another person. It just removes the memory of the experiences that have shaped you into who you are currently.

Speaker 1 It stands to reason that if you have similar experiences, you'll react and begin to behave in similar ways.

Speaker 1 Britt Lauer has been doing an amazing job portraying Helie and Helena differently, but I also think it's important that we as an audience remind ourselves that they're the same being without with the same brain, just a couple parts shut off.

Speaker 1 The only time I doubted Helena was

Speaker 1 Helie was when she was laughing at the Orpo fire. Her response was so helly.

Speaker 1 And I think that's another good example of these being the same person without being around family or in a formal job/slash cold setting. She gets to laugh at the ridiculousness.

Speaker 1 I think it's an important thing to keep in mind for us in the audience, since the show does a good job of showing us the difference between innies and outies.

Speaker 1 The similarities aren't just going to show up when reintegration happens. They're already there.

Speaker 1 That was a long email, but I thought, I think it was all worth reading because to your point about this,

Speaker 1 the reason I was reminded of Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind is that when Joel and Clementine, those characters, meet again, despite having had the memory of each other and their relationship erased, there's a certain something between them and they're drawn to each other again.

Speaker 1 And so Helena knows what's going on inside of this Chinese restaurant, but Mark is drawn to her because

Speaker 2 there's something in mark that will always be drawn to something in helena despite the differences between the innies and the outies you know it's cosmic right like there is something kind of very specific to those people that will have that attraction and i i love the idea of the innie specifically living in such a sterile environment that they don't have the context and the life experience and in ways that i think for someone like dylan can make him feel lighter and more confident uh but for someone like mark makes him into this like very rigid kind of caricature of like a middle manager boss.

Speaker 2 But now he's getting to experience actual shit for the first time.

Speaker 2 And maybe this was the fatal flaw of the Ortbo, in addition to everything else, is that Milchik has exposed these innies to actual human experience.

Speaker 2 And once you get a taste of that, you're not just going back in the box.

Speaker 1 Once you've heard the theremin and tasted the marshmallow, this is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Well, this is the thing. They haven't tasted the marshmallow, Joe.
It's been dangled, but now you're.

Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by salty, cheesy, cheez-it crackers. Should this whole podcast just be me eating cheez-it? That would be a top-notch podcast.
You could hear them crunching in my mouth.

Speaker 2 You could think about how salty and savory and delicious they are. You could just get cheese it on the brain.
Oh man, those cheez-it cravings, they get you.

Speaker 1 Anyway, what was I talking about?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, cheez-it. Yeah, cheese-it crackers.
Go check them out.

Speaker 1 I was also reminded on the Dylan front, like of this exact same thing on the Dylan front, this idea that like Gretchen is falling in love with this like

Speaker 1 less burdened by life version of her husband she loves him or she's attracted to him she's drawn to him because he is Dylan yeah but he is perhaps and we discussed this earlier but he is perhaps the more like the Dylan she met

Speaker 1 before things warmed down um yeah before the homebrewing started I was reminded of uh one of my favorite sports movies of all time that I watch all the time actually, which is Field of Dreams. Wow.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 2 Costner,

Speaker 2 I love Field of Dreams.

Speaker 2 I mean, you would pick the sports movie with fucking ghosts in it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 When Costner sees a younger ghost version of his dad on the baseball field, and I'm crying at that point, right? And he says, My God, I only saw him later when he was worn down by life. Look at him.

Speaker 1 He has his whole life in front of him, and I'm not even a glitter in his eye. What do I say to him? Like this idea of like seeing someone you love

Speaker 1 before

Speaker 1 life gets in the way, you know? So

Speaker 1 I thought that was really interesting.

Speaker 2 And I would say, in addition to that, too, someone you love before life has gotten in the way, someone you love who is confident in what they do, and also someone you love who is seeing you for the first time and wanting you for the first time in a way that feels novel to them.

Speaker 2 Like there is that

Speaker 2 childlike puppy love in Dylan at seeing this woman who is his wife, who, yeah, clearly on like a chemical level, he is attracted to.

Speaker 2 And our guy just wants a hug, you know, he just just wants some physical contact.

Speaker 1 Stiller on the official podcast implied that they did not bang in the security room, but I was not sure.

Speaker 1 I thought there was enough of a cut away from the camera that we could have

Speaker 2 inferred.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but there's a lot

Speaker 2 on the job. People are banging all across the severed floor.
What's another one?

Speaker 1 What is Miss Wong's, you know,

Speaker 2 like, what do you call that? Progress report? No, that's cool.

Speaker 2 The internal review is going to be scathing for Miss Walker.

Speaker 1 That's the corporate terminology I'm looking for. Anything else you want to say about Dylan and Gretchen?

Speaker 2 I think we're just seeing the continual raising of stakes for Dylan. Like you see in him that this is a character that now has something to lose, right?

Speaker 2 That has this intimate connection that he's developing with Gretchen for this version of Dylan the first time.

Speaker 2 And you can already see him pulling away from Mark and Helly because of it and being hesitant to go find the mysterious dark hallway with the shady elevator. Like he doesn't want to do these things.

Speaker 2 I think it's a good reminder because the momentum at the end of season one was so strong.

Speaker 2 And that season closes in such like a convincing and dramatic and fun way that it's easy to forget that the members of MDR.

Speaker 2 while they have had the occasional common cause, are not always aligned or often aligned. They are on very separate journeys for the vast majority of this show.

Speaker 2 And they were kind of brought together because of their distrust of what was going on at Lumen. But these are characters who are after their own things.

Speaker 2 And Dylan, as we know, has always been after a perk, even if it's like a little makeout session with his maybe kind of wife in the side room.

Speaker 1 He's really leveled up from finger traps, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 2 Um, I don't, I don't even want to touch finger traps in this context.

Speaker 1 Great, great point, Rob. Uh, on the on your point, uh,

Speaker 1 Kai, will you play my favorite Helly line in this episode?

Speaker 6 I left it there behind the poster.

Speaker 6 Why didn't you just take it? I just didn't. Okay, I don't want to get in trouble right now.
Okay, well, I don't give a shit about that, so I'll go get it. You said it's behind the poster.

Speaker 6 Have you actually been grave? Yeah, fuck you. You don't know everything.
Then tell us.

Speaker 2 Did everyone sever their balls in the elevator this morning, Joe? Also, very good. Great stuff from Ellie.
Great, great, great.

Speaker 1 Um, you mentioned Miss Wong and her shoddy supervisory work inside this episode where while our guy Milchik was really going through it with the paperclips.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Lord drop.

Speaker 1 Wintertide,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 1 Milchik says,

Speaker 1 you know, about her being ready for wintertide.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 couple things. Do we think Miss Wong is here in a fellowship from Myrtle Egan's School for Girls?

Speaker 2 We would check out.

Speaker 1 Okay. Is that your understanding? Okay.
Wintertide is sort of like a next thing that she might do. Do we have any thoughts or feelings about what winter tide might mean?

Speaker 1 Let me

Speaker 1 posit some things really quickly.

Speaker 2 Please do.

Speaker 1 Winter tide and cold harbor both just, you know, sound like ice-cold water that perhaps the Edmund Fitzgerald might be wrecked in or something like that.

Speaker 1 But also, winter tide just means winter time.

Speaker 1 That's just what that means the same way, like even tide means evening, sort of thing.

Speaker 1 It's a way to say winter in a way that would get Milchik in trouble, like a little highfaloon.

Speaker 1 Could winter tide be the code name for

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 2 happens on the floor below or what what do you what do you think wintertide means yeah i i thought of it just on first blush again this is our first mention of winter tide in the show we will see what this turns out to be given the context and miss wong's fellowship It sounded to me like kind of the next academy level, like this for your further indoctrination, you go from the school for girls to now wintertide, where you're, you know, turned into management.

Speaker 2 You're groomed for these jobs.

Speaker 2 You're given even fuller sense of the mythos of Keir and you're drinking the Kool-Aid non-stop over there. Like it felt like to me a progression in her process, but not necessarily at the company.

Speaker 2 It might be the kind of thing where she does this and then leaves and then comes back.

Speaker 1 In the essence, there's something about Miss Wong, like her,

Speaker 1 I don't know if I want to say like entitlement.

Speaker 2 Unusual to her. She wants to sit at that desk.

Speaker 1 Unusual to her age, obviously, and if she's just here on sort of like an internship, unusual to her position, that is either trying to like say something about a younger generation's sense of like, I belong here, which is

Speaker 1 both good and bad in my view. When I think about younger generations, I'm like, that's great, but also

Speaker 1 I have other things to say about that. But also,

Speaker 2 it's complicated. I don't want to make it too generational because I agree with you.
And I think that could be in the air here.

Speaker 2 But I also, you know, I see a lot of my quote-unquote gifted and talented peers growing up. Like there is a precociousness to her that is familiar to me, even crossing generational lines.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I think also

Speaker 1 I was thinking about interns that I've experienced. When I went to Vanity Fair, a lot of people who intern at Vanity Fair are like

Speaker 1 like children of quite famous people.

Speaker 1 Or Adam Sandler detailed this in his SNL 50 song that I cried over this last weekend about like all the interns at SNL who were like the children of famous people. So like, I wonder if Miss Wong's

Speaker 1 odd approaches, like she's acting like someone who is above Milchik, even though she is technically below Milchik, like that she has connections on the board or something like that that would make her feel like she is above his supervisory authority.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 That's I definitely know what you mean.

Speaker 1 That's just the vibe.

Speaker 2 So their dynamic is one of the most interesting on the show to me.

Speaker 2 And a lot of that has to do with just everything that is going on with Milchik and clearly the brewing distrust between them as he is kind of pulling away from her more and more and trying to get his own shit together.

Speaker 2 I hope we get a lot of time with them over the back part of the season, but I'm also a little nervous, Joe, because we've gone now three full episodes without Harmony Cobel.

Speaker 1 Where is Harmony Cobel?

Speaker 2 What is she doing?

Speaker 2 We saw her last kind of getting spooked by Helena at Lumen, driving out of the parking lot, and she has been gone, doing God knows what in whatever thrupples she is able to conjure for herself.

Speaker 2 Like there, the possibilities are really endless. And I also can't wait to see what's going on with Harmony.

Speaker 1 If we don't get Harmony next week, because we haven't seen her since episode three, if we don't get her next week, I'm going to introduce a house of our bit, which is it's been this many days since we last saw Cobb Vance.

Speaker 1 It's been this many days since we last saw Harmony Kobel. Where is she? What is she doing? Okay, we've danced around it.
We've covered a lot of other things.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, before we get, you know, I want to go to the dinner party. Before we get there, what do you want to say about Seth?

Speaker 1 and not just the paper clipping but the but the mirror conversation one idea i had i really liked this inside of this episode i did wonder if perhaps this was done slightly out of order only because wouldn't it make so much more sense for

Speaker 1 you fucked her outie at the orp bow to come after the mirror like you know, transitioning from this highfalutin language to grow.

Speaker 2 Something so much more direct.

Speaker 1 Yeah, something more vulgar and direct. direct.
Yeah. That's a great call.

Speaker 2 I really like that.

Speaker 2 I got to say,

Speaker 2 I'm of two minds about these sequences because on the one hand, it's very like self-flagellating break room sort of behavior, what he's doing to himself, which makes sense.

Speaker 2 Like this is how Milchuk knows how to manage. Why would it not be the way he's trying to manage himself?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 On the other hand,

Speaker 2 the writer and self-editor in me, Joe,

Speaker 2 also does some version of this same thing very often of like, let's take this thorny sentence and condense it down to its simplest idea, which is not a bad instinct to have, but maybe don't do it in a way where it feels like you are punishing yourself with every syllable.

Speaker 1 I do similar. Yeah, you have to strip out the

Speaker 1 alienating. Like, is this word doing the work that I want this word to do? Or is it getting in the, is it distracting? Is it getting in the way? Like, I love precision of language.

Speaker 1 But like, can I say this in a more straightforward way that feels less alienating to a reader is something I ask myself more often when I used to write more than I do now. Okay.

Speaker 2 When you stare into the mirror and tell yourself to grow up, repeat it. Grow.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 We're going to go out to a dinner party. And I would like, this is the first clip.
This is the first clip I knew I wanted to clip from this episode. It was almost our opening clip.

Speaker 1 And I just want that on the record. Before I heard that they used the same clip on the official podcast, but it's just that good.
This is a condensed version of it. Kai, will you play this, please?

Speaker 6 We also have corn. Oh, yes.

Speaker 6 We could feed him a pile of loose corn.

Speaker 6 What your any ever saw in this Philistine

Speaker 6 is beyond me.

Speaker 2 John Noble.

Speaker 2 What a presence.

Speaker 1 The way this pile of loose corn just like scratches something in my brain. I think it's incredible.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Pineapple at Bert's house.

Speaker 2 On the counter, just hidden away.

Speaker 1 Pineapple on the counter directly between

Speaker 1 Irving and Fields when they meet for the first time inside of this kitchen, which I'm going to let you go off on this kitchen in a second, Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 2 I have very complicated feelings about the kitchen, I got to say.

Speaker 1 I want to hear all of them.

Speaker 1 There's a pineapple on the counter. So is this pineapple here on the counter right around when Fields says, What's mine is yours, to denote sort of the polycule

Speaker 1 definition that we talked about earlier? Or is it an indication that Miltchick was there at that house earlier this, you know, this week and he dropped off a fruit basket?

Speaker 1 And that's the pineapple, the lumen pineapple.

Speaker 2 Or I would say, is it a broader gesture if we want to just kind of associate pineapples with lumen in general as to what Bert's role in this story might ultimately be?

Speaker 1 Oh, because Bert's definitely still working for Lumen.

Speaker 2 Shady as fuck. Bert, you fuck.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Fuck.

Speaker 1 Fields, the kitchen.

Speaker 2 Rob, Mahoney.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Okay.
First of all, from a set deck standpoint, it is incredibly chaotic in there in a way that I think is great. Like, there are elements of this kitchen that I am incredibly envious of.

Speaker 2 There is a level of clutter that makes me very anxious to even see on screen.

Speaker 2 There is also the feeling of like the melding of two lives that would happen with two people of very defined tastes coming to live together.

Speaker 2 I am torn onto whether above the cabinetry, there's like a row of what I think are like salt and pepper grinders of varying sizes and shapes, almost all wood.

Speaker 2 Would I want that in my own kitchen?

Speaker 2 I'm on the fence about it. I've been going back and forth literally since I finished the episode.

Speaker 1 On the one hand, I definitely would. This is a very Deborah Vance and Hacks thing to collect salt and pepper shakers.

Speaker 2 But something about the grinders and the wood make it feel a little more on theme.

Speaker 1 I would want that. I love that.
Those would have to be dusted constantly because, as you know, Rob,

Speaker 1 if you don't get the high places in the kitchen, that's where like oil particles and dust come to like join together in a horrific goop situation that you only discover like on the top of your cabinets when you move out of a place or something like that.

Speaker 1 So I just feel like those shakers are in the danger zone. So it would have to be just like a constant dusting and degreasing process at the top of the kitchen.

Speaker 2 This is something that we can speak to, Joe. I remember reading a profile of the former NBA player, Sean Bradley, who was seven foot six.

Speaker 2 And the interview asked him, like, what is something that you know being your height that other people don't? And what he said was, the top of your refrigerator is disgusting. Disgusting.

Speaker 2 Absolutely disgusting. And he's right.
The top of all of your cabinetry. You and I have the privilege of looking down on many of these surfaces, even in the home, the homes of our friends and family.

Speaker 2 And let me tell you, you guys are not dusting up there enough. It's, it's tough.

Speaker 1 Correct. Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry you're taking the tour so we did the the salt and pepper grinders what else it's a lot um but there is a mid-century modern meets exposed brick meet it meets like luscious plant life all the fruit you know strewn across the counter as you mentioned that i'm into and as you so lovingly pointed me to joe the multiple oven situation is

Speaker 2 making me actively angry that this is not something I have in my life. We see, I would say it's two full ovens and maybe an oven warming drawer is the arrangement here.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's a third fully functional oven. I don't know.

Speaker 2 But as someone who's out here living the one oven lifestyle, I'm furious that this is a level, the kind of luxury that people just have in their lives.

Speaker 1 I've been in houses that have like a two oven stack, and I'm like, that's great.

Speaker 2 That's something that's the dream.

Speaker 1 But this is a kitchen island with three.

Speaker 1 I think it's three ovens because I was wondering if the middle one was, I think there's maybe like a warming drawer underneath that one, which is why it's half half size but it's got a glass front and usually like a warming drawer doesn't have a glass front to it so i'm like i think that's also an oven three fields is operating fields is making his cumin glazed ham

Speaker 1 and potentially loose corn in like three separate ovens inside of his his kitchen island it's it's incredible um i thought uh john noble was incredible i would like to apologize for most people in my life because i erroneously was going around saying that john noble was in the finale last season, and that is incorrect.

Speaker 1 It was a different actor. Oh, interesting.
He's like John Noble-esque, but not John Noble.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have his essence. Doesn't have the graviton.
Doesn't say Philistine the way that John Noble does.

Speaker 1 The one thing that I loved about the salt and pepper shakers, and I love the way that you put it, do you say like distinct, two people with distinct tastes or defined tastes?

Speaker 2 Yeah, very defined for sure.

Speaker 1 There's like a creepy clown painting here in this house. The salt and pepper shakers.

Speaker 2 I can't talk about the clown painting. What is going on with the clown painting?

Speaker 1 The salt member shakers were giving to me. This is our bit.
We collect these on our travels. These were the ones we got in Sicily.

Speaker 1 These are the ones we, or whatever these countries are called in this alternative reality. But like, you know, when we were in France, we got these.
When we went to Japan, we found these.

Speaker 1 You know, like, that's, you know, an older couple who's well-traveled and artistically minded. Like, that's sort of what that made me think of.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 What do you want to say about the clown painting?

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 How? Who painted it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, please don't.

Speaker 2 For those who did not spot this clown painting, it's on sort of the exposed brick style wall as you're entering from the foyer into the kitchen.

Speaker 1 It's not even exposed brick.

Speaker 2 It's like concrete. I guess it's style.
It's like

Speaker 2 labs. But I thought there was kind of a brick, like a gray brick arrangement there, but it's some kind of contrasting styled wall.

Speaker 1 It's bricked, but it looks like almost industrial. It's not like cozy red, warm bricks.
It's like this weird industrial wall inside of this home. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 Gray industrial wall. And there's this painting of what appears to me to be a man sort of halfway into a clown costume.
Like he has the bald cap on, but not the wig on.

Speaker 2 He's got the makeup, but not all the makeup. He's not.
fully transformed into a clown. And maybe we're just kind of waving our hands, yada, yada, reintegration with this.

Speaker 2 I don't know exactly what sort of the symbolism is, but there is a, this is a midpoint of a man, and that man happens to be part man, part clown, and it's distressing to me.

Speaker 1 Um, midpoint of the man,

Speaker 1 your memoir at some point?

Speaker 2 I hope, I really hope not. I hope, I hope we get to the midpoint.
Part man, part clown, your memoir at some point. Okay.
That's just true to life.

Speaker 1 Um, okay, listen. Let me give you my thoughts on who Bert is and what's happening here.

Speaker 2 Let's get to it.

Speaker 1 And you can agree or disagree with me.

Speaker 1 Or let me ask you some questions. Do we think Bert invited Irving to his house just so that Drummond could then break into Irving's house while he was gone?

Speaker 2 Check. Okay.

Speaker 1 Side question, I'll return to Bert in a second.

Speaker 1 Does Drummond have the key to every single person's home in all of Keir?

Speaker 2 If you're in corporate housing, I assume so. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 It was just like a big key of rings on our guy Drummond.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Back to Bert.

Speaker 2 And I will say the Bert-Drummond connection, as far as like the causality of that, is part of why I look at the Rigabi-Helena stuff askew, too.

Speaker 2 There's sort of like a mirroring situation of cause and effect that I'm wondering, are these similar situations as far as kind of dealing with damage control?

Speaker 1 Do we agree with Deep in His Cups fields that Bert was working at Lumen 20 years ago, well before Severance was a thing?

Speaker 2 Very much so, yes.

Speaker 1 Do we think potentially Bert was involved in the development of severance in the first place?

Speaker 2 Seems entirely possible. Okay.

Speaker 1 Do we think Bert was ever actually severed on the floor? This is

Speaker 1 not. This is where we disagree, but okay.

Speaker 2 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Tell me why you think you think Bert was always playing Irving.
Take me through that.

Speaker 2 I don't know the why or the how. And maybe it's as simple as this.
Maybe Lumen was suspicious of Irving, who they caught wind for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 He was kind of poking around things and wanted to manipulate him in some way. And this is the means to do it.
That seems possible.

Speaker 2 There's just something about the way Christopher Walken is navigating these scenes and ominously standing in doorways that makes me think, yeah, something is clearly up here.

Speaker 2 And there's something about the way that Bert and the way he looks at Fields when Fields is explaining information, when he's like over-explaining some of the circumstances, and something about the Fields question too, of even like,

Speaker 2 so did you guys fuck at work?

Speaker 2 One, if that were a true thing, neither one of them would know it. Unless, for example, Bert was somebody who was never severed in the first place.

Speaker 2 And the existence of a previous work partner would suggest that there has at least been a time at work where Bert was not severed.

Speaker 2 We know that based on the timeline, but I think there's just a strong enough implication that Bert, while quote unquote, retired at work, like that's just a video of him talking to himself in a room with a bunch of people he's going to leave while playing undercover boss.

Speaker 2 That's how it read to me. Okay.

Speaker 1 So, you think he is more Helena in this season in terms of

Speaker 1 he was down on the floor, he was snooping and spying around, but all the while he was reporting back

Speaker 1 on what was happening there.

Speaker 1 I'm inclined to believe, and I don't have all the evidence on this, and your case is going to be as compelling as mine, I think. I'm inclined to believe this religiosity reason.

Speaker 1 I'm inclined to believe that Bert

Speaker 1 has

Speaker 1 blood all over his hands for stuff that he has done at Lumen.

Speaker 1 And I'm inclined to believe that his partner Fields, who I think he actually does care about, was like, We're gonna, I'm gonna go to heaven, you're gonna go to hell, and that distresses me.

Speaker 1 And so he's like, Okay, I'll do my time on the inside in order to like get an any version of me that gets to go to heaven because then I get to believe in Berving from season one and believe that this Bert is evil as fuck, which is what I would choose.

Speaker 1 And so then it's more of like a helly hell in a situation where the innie version of Bert is like a good, sweet guy who just likes weird art.

Speaker 1 And the Audi version of Bert is a piece of shit who uses, who lures you to his home with a promise of Cumin-glazed ham. I know.

Speaker 2 And loose corn. And loose corn.

Speaker 1 Just, anyway, I think both things are possible.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think, I think personally, it's slightly more compelling if

Speaker 1 any Bert exists and any Bert is innocent

Speaker 1 and Audi Bert is villainous, but or at least compromised.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But we will see.

Speaker 1 I thought the conversation about

Speaker 1 the church and Lumen was really interesting. I want to talk about that in a second.
What else do you want to say about this?

Speaker 2 Well, as far as the church element, there was something so pointed to about Fields and Bert have been having these conversations, and then all of a sudden the church pastor starts talking about how Innies can have a soul.

Speaker 2 Sure. And he even, Fields even points out, oh, it's like they were listening to our conversation.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think ultimately there's a version of this where we're kind of both right, where my interpretation based on what we know now is that Bert's cover story to Fields is that he is severed and going to work on the severed floor.

Speaker 2 But in reality, he's not severed. And so he has this cover.

Speaker 2 He's able to give a level of relief to his partner, who I agree with you, he does seem to care about, but ultimately is just like in such shady business and in so far over his head in whatever he's doing that there's probably no coming back from that.

Speaker 1 I think it's really interesting to think about the church and

Speaker 1 Lumen. I am not a religious person, but the intersection between

Speaker 1 technology and faith or shady corporations and faith is sort of of interest to me.

Speaker 1 This woman who was cutting my hair recently was talking to me about, she is much more pro-AI than I am.

Speaker 1 And she was talking about what AI might tell us about, like inform us about what it means to be human or what it means to have a soul or something like that. And so we got this really interesting

Speaker 1 email from Asher

Speaker 1 last week before this episode dropped. He was talking about some Battlestar Galactica comps, which I think is interesting.

Speaker 1 But Asher wrote, it also made me think about the comps in both shows regarding spirituality slash faith, more than just Christian references specifically.

Speaker 1 I think of how sci-fi explores how new cult-like religions might develop after huge scientific breakthroughs that raise questions around the nature of the soul or within groups who may be considered quote less than human yeah so for us on the ai front right now this question of like what makes us what makes a human what makes an ai something like that but like in a severance world what makes you you the you you are

Speaker 1 if if severance is a possibility what is it what is inherently you that is true across the marks across the dylans across the helenas um and what does that get get to spiritually?

Speaker 1 Is there something like a soul that is just you across all of these various things? And how this tech innovation might make people question

Speaker 2 their

Speaker 1 thoughts and positions around spirituality, you know?

Speaker 2 I think these sorts of texts lend themselves to that, not just because of all those sci-fi trappings, but specifically the ones where you have a battlestar element, you have a severance element, you have a Jurassic Park element of like, there is someone here playing God, right?

Speaker 2 They are humans. We're talking talking about whether humans have souls.

Speaker 2 We're talking about the religiosity that can result from what by Lumen standards, like they're telling us that Cold Harbor and Mark's role in it is going to be one of the most important things to happen to humanity,

Speaker 2 whether that's true or not, or whether it's something that they believe. And these people are wielding, it seems, a certain god-like power of creation, of cloning, of consciousness altering.

Speaker 2 Just the very act of putting a chip in someone's brain that turns them off is a level of power that humanity should not be able to access.

Speaker 2 Like they, they were so preoccupied with whether they could, Joe, they did not stop to think if they should.

Speaker 1 Wow, you hit us with a gold bloom.

Speaker 2 I love it. You got to hit the pause.

Speaker 1 Oh, Josh the Park, one of my, oh, perfect movie, obviously.

Speaker 1 I think that,

Speaker 1 I don't know, all of this is really interesting to me. I'm really curious to see.
I think this is a great use of Bert, and I'm really curious to see how this unfolds.

Speaker 1 Watkin was talking, Watkins was talking about on the podcast about how much, how happy he was to play Burt in season one because people often don't want that kind of performance from him.

Speaker 2 They want like evil, schemy performances. Well, guess what?

Speaker 1 And he was like, well, here we are in season two. He was also talking about how he was like, I thought when I would get older, people would just want grandpa roles for me.
That I'm just sort of like

Speaker 1 telling people, like, do the right thing and it will guide you. He's like, but they still want me to play the weird roles.
They still want me to play like the vampires.

Speaker 1 And then I think it was Stiller who said grandpa vampire or vampire grandpa or something like that. I was just sort of like, yeah, that's Chris for Walking, Vampire Grandpa.
Love it. You love it.

Speaker 2 Also, would watch Vampire Grandpas if somebody wants to green light that.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 In terms of Drummond's little B and E here, I guess he broke nothing. Key and E here.

Speaker 1 Radar, our guy, radar,

Speaker 1 absolutely useless inside of the game.

Speaker 2 What are you doing?

Speaker 1 He finds the chest with the papers that we saw in season one. Anything you want to note, you of the famously fond of a freeze frame, anything you want to note from these papers?

Speaker 1 We've seen them before, but

Speaker 1 what did you notice this time?

Speaker 2 I mean, revisiting them, I'm just reminded that the systems at work in Irving's note-taking are all over the place. And I'm sure some of that is by design.

Speaker 2 This is meant to be sort of coded, probably for just this sort of occasion, right?

Speaker 2 If these notes get into the wrong hands, he doesn't want his full spread of information laid out right in front of them.

Speaker 2 But man, just the what gets me is not the handwritten notes, but the chaotic nature of the printed notes, which are at various places in indentations, not aligned, not uniform in any way.

Speaker 1 There's forward slashes, there's brackets, there's bolding.

Speaker 2 Again, as a dedicated note-taker, I am aghast at everything that is happening here.

Speaker 1 My understanding is that

Speaker 1 that severance spells out that like if you take the bold letters because people poured over this last season, you can spell out severance at a certain point, which is just sort of like a fun thing for the phrase framers, I think.

Speaker 1 But also, I think we should note there is this note, this handwritten note on there about

Speaker 1 settlement led to severance question marked by someone's name.

Speaker 2 So, like

Speaker 1 there was something, and as a result of the court case, someone was severed. Is that

Speaker 2 ominous? I'm trying to think of how a settlement could lead to that. But yeah, that is what the text says, and it's sure as hell ominous.

Speaker 1 Um, okay.

Speaker 2 I also think we've deciphered one critical piece of

Speaker 2 symbolism here in the notes, which is a big ol' X next to Petey's name. What could that possibly mean?

Speaker 1 All right. I think that's a good transition to

Speaker 1 our favorite medical professional, Dr. Regami.

Speaker 1 Really going through it, eating what I believe to be a tub of frosting at one point in the basement.

Speaker 2 I couldn't tell if it was yogurt, but I like frosting better.

Speaker 1 It looks like it might be. No,

Speaker 1 that is a tub of frosting. It's a very death-becomesary.
It's unsettling.

Speaker 2 Um, just what you want your medical professionals to be doing, yeah.

Speaker 1 Eating, you know, frosting is just like that's like raw cookie dough. I'm sort of like, I think we've all at one point in our lives been in the rock cookie dough space.

Speaker 2 No, but there's such a thing as too much. Like, I don't know if you've ever been to those places that scoop raw cookie dough as if it were ice cream.

Speaker 2 This was like a brief phase some years ago, like a dip and dots sort of craze, but it's like a very short-lived.

Speaker 2 And I tried one of these, and it's just as you would expect, way too much of the thing you think you want to the point that it actively disgusts you.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of how I would feel if I were to go spoon deep in a vat of icing.

Speaker 2 You never go spoon deep in the icing. Please don't.

Speaker 1 You skim the surface only. That's as far as we go.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Forgaby.

Speaker 1 Mark. A hole in his head.

Speaker 2 Rural gross stuff.

Speaker 1 He the makeup work on Adam Scott in the final sequence when he's just sort of like sweaty and like pinched and deep shadows under his eyes, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And the fact that Devin's like, oh, are you still with the flu?

Speaker 1 Like if I, if I, my brother opened the door and looked like that, I don't have a brother, but if I did and he looked like that, I would be like, oh, are you dead?

Speaker 1 Should we go immediately to the hospital? What's happening?

Speaker 2 I want to give a quick shout out to an emailer, Emily, who asked us if we wanted to opine a little bit about Audi Mark turning into Spider-Man 3 emo Peter Parker over the course of this episode.

Speaker 2 I would say peek at the restaurant because at this point he is so sweaty. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But like even when our guy is eating literal fistfuls of food, he's got like teary eyes, full sweat, incredible bang sweep.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the swoop.

Speaker 2 I love the styling of what's happening with Mark overall. And I love how distinct it feels clearly from Mark S.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 We've already mentioned basement surgery.

Speaker 2 I think.

Speaker 1 I think the most harrowing,

Speaker 1 you know, as upsetting as it is to think about loose piles of corn or or going spoon deep and frosting or anything else.

Speaker 1 Um, the shot of Mark trying to pick up that glass of water and not being able to make his motor skills work is deeply uncomfy to watch, to put it mildly. Yeah, absolutely.
And then he goes down.

Speaker 1 He goes down in the same, I saw this, I this I will credit Reddit for. I saw this last night.
Uh, someone pointed out that, were you a better call soul watcher, Ralph?

Speaker 2 Of course, yeah.

Speaker 1 When Chuck goes down in the coffee shop, it's the same thing of like the camera tilting down with the person then just like really feeling that head hit the floor. Oh, it's just, yeah.

Speaker 2 The acoustics of a good violent thud are very important. See also the film Parasite.

Speaker 2 Like there's something about just recreating that sort of impact that I think is very important to making these sorts of scenes work. Because, yeah, otherwise, like we need to feel it.

Speaker 2 And I think they do such a good job of that with all of the sort of side effects of reintegration this deep deep bass droning throbbing visual and audio cue we're getting in mark's head in the immediate aftermath of of this procedure um the the migraine the flickering like i again i i love how severance handles things like this and puts us in the minds of even split characters who are going through something that we could never possibly relate to and making it feel grounded in its kind of way.

Speaker 2 But yeah, overall, I love this sequence. Even if I got to say, between this and the pit, Joe, more surgical retractors in my life than I need on a recurring basis, just

Speaker 2 incisions getting spread open in ways that I do not enjoy watching.

Speaker 1 I got to tell you, Rob, I'm okay with zero surgical retractors.

Speaker 2 I would love zero. Okay.
Especially if they're concealing a big old hole in your skull that's just been sitting there.

Speaker 1 Do so, do all of them have that? I mean, all of them do have like decent heads of hair.

Speaker 2 So, you know, you wouldn't be able to like self is

Speaker 2 healed. It's just in the skull there's a hole, right?

Speaker 1 In the skull, there's a hole.

Speaker 2 And Rigabi's plan is, what if I just squirted some liquid into your brain using an eight-inch needle?

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 I have a few odds and ends to round up before we go.

Speaker 2 Please.

Speaker 1 Our listener, Jeremy, tweeted at us. Uh, people do still use Twitter.
The pupil dots on Milchik and Captain Frolic Drummond giving off big replicant vibes.

Speaker 1 So if you've seen Blade Runner, you will note that the

Speaker 1 people who play replicants have these sort of reflective lenses, like lens effect

Speaker 1 in Blade Runner. And so I did notice it on Seth inside of this episode.
I didn't go back to look at it in Drummond, but Seth is often shot where you see it.

Speaker 1 I was curious how they did it in the mirror scene

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 1 where is that camera in the mirror scene I guess digitally erased but like where is the lighting rig in that mirror scene because there are like yeah these pinpricks of light in his eyes that are just like unsettling uh quite good um

Speaker 1 uh someone pointed out that so the chinese places they go to we should note despite all the michigan references The filming locations are New York and New Jersey. Yes.
And

Speaker 1 my good

Speaker 1 friend of the pod, Kristen Russo, lives in Kingston, New York. I was there this summer or this fall.
They filmed a lot in Kingston. And so I have seen the Chinese restaurant that they filmed here.

Speaker 1 They changed the sign of it. It's not Zufu, Chinese restaurant, but Zhufu is the name.
And when Mark is walking out of the restaurant, the Zu is not lit up and the F U is,

Speaker 1 which is fun in of itself. But Zufu in Mandarin means paternal grandfather.
You take away the zoo and you just have the foo part.

Speaker 1 And foo by itself doesn't really mean father, but the zoo is what means grand. So like

Speaker 1 father lit up right above Mark when he's walking out of this conversation with Helena. Just something to think about.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 Did you catch the price tag on the bottle of wine that Irving brought?

Speaker 2 I have thoughts about it. Oh, I don't think we saw a concrete price, did we?

Speaker 1 I couldn't read it in, because he was like, you know, fucking with the price tag and I couldn't read it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Here's what we do know. And this is really, as we know, one of the burning questions of the show.
If you ask Irving to bring an expensive bottle of wine, how expensive a bottle of wine will he bring?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 We know it's a 2009 Malbeck. That we know.
That you can read from the label. It seems to be based on my research from a fictional winery, not a real place, not an actual bottle of wine.

Speaker 2 So we can't actually price check it. But it seems to be from a fictional winery called something Cabra, which of course means goat in Spanish.

Speaker 1 we see you severance we see what you're doing i think it's the painted goat i think is what the painted goat you think painted goat i think that's what it is so yeah that's uh it's fun because goats all the way fun we have fun um

Speaker 1 and then let's see what else i already mentioned mergabi and the frosting um

Speaker 2 oh fun fact attila the hun died from a nosebleed that is a fun fact um did you take anything away from the attila couple cutesiness other than the natural transformation of people who've been together for a long time becoming slowly and slowly more insane?

Speaker 1 I thought it was darling. And then it is darling.

Speaker 2 Also,

Speaker 1 having a character that we thought of as like sweet and honey, like being now called Attila is fun in its own right, you know? It is.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 I know that you've not watched the TV series Lost,

Speaker 1 but we did get an email about this episode from Colin that I do think is worth reading for those people who have seen Lost.

Speaker 2 We got many Lost-related emails. Yet again, it just continues to be in the firmament here.

Speaker 1 The most famous episode of Lost is called The Constant.

Speaker 1 And Colin lays out the comparisons between this episode and

Speaker 1 The Constant. He says, both characters flash uncontrollably between two different versions of themselves, at times struggling to piece together when slash where they are.

Speaker 1 Both characters begin to experience nosebleeds as a result of the predicament they find themselves in, which we have been shown will eventually lead to death by a brain hemorrhage if they do not resolve their situation.

Speaker 1 Both of their jumps revolve around one version of themselves desperately trying to make contact with a woman they love. Penny and lost for Desmond, Gemma for Mark.

Speaker 1 This could all just be a fun little homage to Lost, but do we think there's any chance that Mark will need to find his own constant to cure his reintegration sickness?

Speaker 1 And if so, will this mean that Mark may need to seek out Helena Egan again in the real world to be his constant?

Speaker 1 Um, so the constant is just a concept from lost, but this idea of like being unstuck in time or location, the nosebleed, the ticking clock on the nosebleed, especially, I think is interesting.

Speaker 1 Like this character in Lost, Desmond Hume, starts bleeding from the nose. We have previously seen another character start to do that.
And we know that soon thereafter, it's death.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 this is like, we're thinking about Petey. When we see Mark starts to bleed from his nose, we're thinking about Petey.

Speaker 1 Also, someone pointed out that in season one, episode one of Sufferance, where they're talking about Petey's last day, they're talking about how he came to work with a cough,

Speaker 1 which is part of this reintegration sickness. And,

Speaker 1 you know, that is what Mark is experiencing right now as Miss Wong is trying to minister to him. So

Speaker 1 just always thinking about lost when I'm thinking about TV shows in general.

Speaker 2 As one does.

Speaker 1 Specifically, Severance.

Speaker 2 How do you feel about the element of that that would involve? Mark going back to Helena in the outside world as this sort of constant parallel.

Speaker 1 I definitely think Mark and Helena are going to bone in the outside. I don't know.
I just like.

Speaker 2 I don't like this about myself, but I kind of want to see it. Absolutely.
I like it. I just, I'm interested in what's happening there.

Speaker 1 The vibes were awful and yet also immaculate

Speaker 1 in that scene. The way that they're sort of like immediately,

Speaker 1 you know, yes and to each other on this little bit about like take you home to meet the parents and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 The little like quirk of Mark's, you know, mouth as he's like sort of playing along and then remembers himself and is like, oh, wait,

Speaker 2 Lumen, right.

Speaker 1 Also, something I think is worth noting inside of that conversation when Helena in the Zufu Chinese restaurant says, you know,

Speaker 1 talks about how important she is at Lumen and how she has control and oversight over everything.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 When we know that to be very much not, that's just more of a fantasy for her to engage in because we know how powerless she is inside of that structure. I thought it it was really interesting.

Speaker 1 Last but not least, I'm going to end with like a what would I sever question? Anything anything else you want to cover before we go out with a what would I sever

Speaker 2 proposition? I just had one big question, which was how was this given the level of making out and office banging involved, not the Valentine's Day episode of Sever.

Speaker 2 It's like it was, it was right there. You couldn't finagle the schedule a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, we decided to go with Presence Day Week.

Speaker 2 That's what sounds

Speaker 1 right to us.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Richard says, and this is something we kind of heard before, but Richard says, My thought is if I, if I get my innie to go to the gym for me, my innie gets to work out in whatever way they choose.

Speaker 1 They get whatever food and supplements that support a healthier lifestyle. All they have to do is maintain an exercise regime that benefits both of us.

Speaker 1 And having written that, I realize I've just fallen into the trap of the substance. So

Speaker 1 I was thinking about the substance when I saw when we had to watch Mark consume that like milky substance or thing for his reintegration procedure.

Speaker 1 We also got, I don't have this one in front of me, but we did get an email from someone who's like, if I were to sever my commute, let's say, and I couldn't, and my commute me listened to your podcast, right?

Speaker 1 He was like, Audi me would also listen to your podcast. He was like, so you would just double your listenership.

Speaker 2 Let's get those numbers up, yeah. Come on, let's do it.
Let's do it. I'm suddenly pro-severance.
I don't know where I came from, but I'm seeing the vision.

Speaker 1 We love to severance inflate our numbers. So, um, call us, Lumen.
We're interested. All right.
Well, that does it for our coverage of Severance today.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Kai Grady as always, and Justin Sales and Rob Mahoney and everyone at Lumen who's going to help us get our numbers up.

Speaker 1 We will be back with double white lotus coverage and

Speaker 1 pineapplebobbing at gmail.com with your thoughts and questions. We'll see you soon.
Bye.