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

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And Bert, how did you come to be at the company?

Me?

Yes, I'm very curious.

Well, as a matter of fact, I was guided to Lumen's store by Jesus.

Oh.

Jesus Christ? That's the one hello welcome back to prestes tv podcast feed i I'm Joyner Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney.
And we're here at the world's most awkward dinner party to talk to you about severance. Rob, how are you doing? I'm doing great.
Yeah. I gotta 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.
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.
Bert, shady ass, potentially evil Bert. I'm not getting the invite.
I'm sorry. No.
In the background the background of that clip you might have heard crackling and that would be from the roaring fire it's very normal not ominous not telling um that is not at all you know sort of uh letting us know that our fondest ship everyone's talking about burving as you know uh but now are they still are they talking about furt? Are they talking about... Everybody's talking about Burving, as you know.
Are they still? Are they talking about Furt? Everybody's talking about Burving. Everybody's talking about Burving.
I'm so upset that you just introduced Furt into my life. I'm really mad.
I would say Beals. Let's go with Beals.
I kind of like Furt. I kind of like Furt, but all right.
I deferred. You're the expert, Joe.
I am. I think we should ask Billy Bush.
I'm kind of like hashtag team Fields to a certain degree on this. Like I was really feeling for Fields and I was a big fan of what John Noble did in this episode.
Same. All right.
Before we get into that, just a quick reminder that elsewhere here on the feed, we're double dipping on White Lotus. 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, Rob and Joanna special?

Question mark.

So 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?

If you have pressed play on this episode, wondering if we would answer that question. Here we are.
Yellowjackets is being covered on a different podcast feed this season, House of R. It's the same host, Mally Rubin, Joanna Robinson, that's me.
But it's a different feed altogether. So we'll be doing weekly coverage of that show over on that feed, is where you can find it.
And then we're going to be back, we're going to do another couple other pit stops is on the schedule for us. So thanks.
You guys are still sending your pit emails and we are enjoying them. So thank you for that.
Speaking of emails, Rob. So many emails this week, Joe.
You guys continue to show out 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 prestigetv at spotify.com. Your theories and queries are always welcome.
And if they're listening to this, they're like, what was that email I could write in about White Lotus thoughts, Rob? What is that email? That would be monkeyshootout at gmail.com if you're so inclined. But again, if you forget, you can always email prestigetv at spotify.com.
There is a fail-safe plan here for our madness. We've got this.
We've got this. Alright, so to check in on some of the most popular subjects that people sent us emails about, There is the 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?

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.

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.
Very much appreciated. Thank you, Dr.
Doug. But we also had some medical professionals saying, you know what? Maybe Rob's onto something.
Maybe these could be for some kind of perverse, perhaps basement brain surgery as we got this week. You know, a lot of just improvised surgeries happening, and I'm glad that at least the fine folks at Lumen have something resembling actual tools to perform it.
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.
Right? I'd take bathroom and kitchen, which are the other two sort of cross-cont sort of cross contamination most compromised rooms in the house um 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 yeah i 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. If you're in the kitchen of somebody who washes their chicken, we're not performing surgery in there.
That's simply a no. Washing chicken makes it feel less sterile to you? Oh, it makes it less sterile.
Okay. I definitely don't wash my chicken.
You wash it in the sink, Rob, and then you clean the sink. Well, the problem is it sprays out everywhere, spreading the bacteria all over the place.
This is the problem. I don't know what kind of slapdash chicken washing you've been experiencing, but I am very precise.
Well, I'm not doing it. That's for damn sure.
All right. Okay.
Yeah. So Dr.
Doug went through all of the tools in the tray here. We did.
We got mostly dentists saying, hey, yeah, those are dentists tools. And a few other people being like, hey, if you wanted to do spooky little basement surgery, you could maybe use this tray as well.
um dr doug wanted to point out that there's like diagnostic tools dental scalers but But he said, most interestingly,

various surgical blades and instruments used to cut gum tissue,

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.

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 any single...
That was my favorite part. And he said, unfortunately, this is my favorite part.
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. 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 to brush and floss.
So thanks, Dr. Doug and all the other dentists who emailed us who really appreciate you.
I was reminded after we recorded that in season one, the MDR crew go to this wall of smiles yeah that is actually called the quote lumen legacy of joy that is just like a bunch of people's creepy photos of a bunch of people smiles up on the wall that like you would get a dentist's office actually um so there's a lot of florida ceiling giant ass pictures of smiles not like that but i my childhood dentist had like a wall of just like closeup, but yeah, closeup of people's smiles. I mean, yeah, there is the closeups.
I think it's the scale of the printout that is so disconcerting about those giant ass smiles. That's a, that's a great point.
What we've had a bunch of theories about what it like, let's say these are dental tools. Okay.
Let's say seven out of eight dentists agree that these are dental tools. What could Lumen be doing with dental tools if we are engaging in this sort of like we're building copies of people? Or alternatively, 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.
So perhaps we need the right teeth to be in a different corpse. I don't know how that works.
As one does. If it were me, I would simply switch the dental records and not move the teeth.
Agreed. I don't work for Lumen and I'm not a big picture thinker.
So who's to say? Any thoughts or theories about the dental tools or surgery tools, Rob? Yeah, something cover-up related makes sense. 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 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.
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.
What do you do? Maybe you furnace the majority of that body, but you preserve the teeth for DNA purposes slash cloning purposes. It's getting dark and weird in here, but that's what happens when you make teeth the center of the frame.
I think it's you using furnace as a verb that has really brightened my day. Okay.
On earring watch, I have been told that I was incorrect and then I went and looked and absolutely I was incorrect they're not the same that's the last time i believe something someone says on reddit without checking it with my own eyeballs uh i've been well before and i usually learn my lesson but i i did not it was not top of my game last week what do you want to say rob 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, they are not.
But the camera does still linger on them in a weird way, on Ragabi's earrings specifically. And they do have a similar blue-green color scheme that is not just Helena-coated, but Lumen-coated.
And I have a lot to get into with Ragabi this week. I'm feeling increasingly nudged in the direction of she is in some way working with either Lumen or Helena on the side.
There's something weird happening with her character and her role in this story. And my haunches are raised.
A raised haunch and we're furnishing things. A lot is happening.
It's a busy morning. Last but not least, we got a lot of emails about sort of the Midwest representation inside of this show.
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. As a Michigander, they've been on my mind for a while.

The Perpetuity Wing in particular brought up Henry Ford vibes. You can visit the Henry Ford Museum

in Dearborn, Michigan, where an entire historical village is set up outside, 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.
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 in Kellogg Sanatorium was in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Kim said, I've even seen people on Reddit theorize that the state of P.E. could be something like Peninsula Egan.
Potentially, the Egan family made the Upper Peninsula a separate state. The setting certainly has some of the remote and cold-woundless vies of the UP.
I'm writing all of this from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Mark W. had to give up his lease.
So, uh, shout out to Mark W. I hope he's doing all right.
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? 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 not Michigan?

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. 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. I would buy that too.
In the era where

we're

trying to rename, and I use

we very loosely, trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Wait, that wasn't your pet

project? I think this idea

of oligarchs. The Gulf of Kyr?

Yeah. Can't you just see sort of like

the Gulf of Musk? Like, that

could easily, something that could happen

tomorrow. Okay.
We're here to talk about episode six, Attila. Written by Aaron Wagner and directed by Uta Breschowicz.
And she is one of my favorite TV directors. 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, Kiksuya, which is a Westworld episode. And spoilers for Westworld season two, I'm about to describe this episode to you if you've never seen it.
A character searches for his wife, a character, Akichita, searches for his wife, Kahana, played by Julia Jones, Zach McLarnan, 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. Interesting.
Sound familiar? Very interesting. We've been mentioning some Westworld 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 something on our mind. But Uta Brischwitz is, especially in that episode, which again is one of the best episodes of television I think I've ever seen, Zach McLaren, 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.
And so, especially when we get to the scene in this episode where Heli R. is processing what happened at the Orpo, I thought that was a really good demonstration of what this particular director is quite good at, which is taking us.

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. you know 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 heli are walking back down the hall together

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.
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. I love that Severance can be that kind of show and has the confidence to be that kind of show because you and I both 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 Hellick having to ponder, that have someone muttering aloud to themselves or like writing on a piece of paper.
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. 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 MBR department.
He was like, but she had the idea of going inside of a bathroom stall, which is something we hadn't done. And he was like was like, the way that she blocked that to be both incredibly intimate between the two of them inside of this very small space.
But then also, when Hallie 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. Yeah.
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 or unusual settings inside of a, you know, dry, soulless corporate place I thought was really interesting.
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. I love that you point it out.
I forgot

to write that down, but yeah, I think it was the second

time I watched this episode. I was really trying to parse

I think it's just maybe

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 and the way she comes into frame frame is very unusual that's a great point um i also saw someone pointed out i love this that um in last week's encounter in the elevator speaking of sort of like unusual close spaces inside of the show um someone pointed out that in that scene between um our guy milchik who's going through it in this episode and mark that there is a seam on the wall of the elevator sort of equidistant between them and then he he milchick crosses that line in order to get into the space and that's juicy i saw someone i think it was on i'm probably read it but it might have been one of the God for 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 the set deck or something like that.
So I thought that was really cool. And we know that they love that shit on Severance.
They love any kind of hard line color play. 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.
This is exactly the kind of space this show loves to live in. How do you feel the show handled the violation for Helly and Mark? Like figuring out what happened to the Orpo and then processing it and then having their own sexual encounter inside of this episode.
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.
What do you think of the way it was handled here? 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.
And I think it needed some prompting for us to remember that Helly R goes from getting a quick smooch as she goes down the elevator with Mark to being basically drowned in a lake like that. Like that is the instant transition for her.
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. 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? This is not something you're going to be able to hide from forever. And so instead, coming right out with it, 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 pull back.
That just rings really true for that character for me. Something that Uda, the director, said in the post-episode interviews that they put up on Apple, she was talking about this as this emancipation of Hallie from Helena, that there's an interpretation of this that is about Hallie sort of fighting over Mark, fighting with herself over Mark, or fighting to get her man or whatever, is like true in a way.
But she was like, mostly she's fighting for herself to free herself. And I really liked that interpretation.
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. We must, I regret now, engage in a theory that I was hoping to avoid, but I feel is

now unavoidable.

Okay.

Is it time for pregnancy corner?

Is that where we're going?

It is time for pregnancy corner.

And here's the deal with pregnancy theory corner.

I hate when that is a go-to after two characters have sex on a show because usually, I don't know, there's this air of there have to be consequences for sexual encounters. Or in a particularly horrible version of this was, I remember on Game of Thrones, people were sort of body checking Sophie Turner between seasons and stuff like that.
That really pissed me off.

So I try to 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 a space with

each other in the span of...

How many vessels are being shared here?

There's a lot of vessel sharing. Yeah, there is a lot of vessel sharing.
We've talked about this, about the complicated love quadrangles, polycules that are going on inside of all of the plot lines in this episode. But if Mark had sex with Helena and then had sex with Heli, and if that vessel becomes pregnant

and the

sexual... If Mark had sex with Helena and then had sex with Heli, and if that vessel becomes pregnant, and the sexual assignations were so close in the timeline to each other, then I do think we need to consider that this could be like a—whose baby is it? Yeah.
And it's a way to raise the stakes emotionally. I get it.
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 make us cringe a little bit less. It also, just within the construct of all the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo we're working with here, is kind of an incredible body horror sort of premise 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 a jarring reality for the story to have to then deal with that i think could work but like you i've i've been a little reluctant to go down this path 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.
But sometimes it just is. And I think that there's a couple things.
We've talked about this before, about the way in which Severance engages in high-minded sci-fi concepts. And also just very basic soap opera storytelling.
And so inside of this episode, we've got Bert bringing, as Walken described it in the podcast, Bert bringing his boyfriend home to meet his husband, essentially. Or we've got Gretchen cheating on her husband with also her husband.
or, you know, we've got a dead body that actually she's still alive. Like, this is all soap opera stuff.
But 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, oops, she's pregnant

sort of storyline

or something like that.

But with added layers of complexity,

I don't know.

I would like to trust that

if they're doing this,

that Severance will do this very well.

I hope so.

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. My fringe watching is a little incomplete, but there was a lot of relationship persona swapping shenanigans happening on that show.
Faux Olivia. Oh God, yeah.
A wig change can do a lot, apparently. It really can.
Okay. 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.
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 when when Mark pushes Helly against the wall

and then makes out with her

and then makes out with her and then bleeds all over her. Minus the bleeding part.
This is like a classic. 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 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 sweetheart. 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 nerd Riz Ben Wyatt moment to me, that like sort of against the wall kiss moment. 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.
Hello, Helena. There is something happening here that I am responding to.
And honestly, seeing her with that much game in the outside world is a little bit shocking given what we saw for her on the severed floor. But maybe she just needs him a little bit damaged too.
She needs the Mark Scout energy and not the Mark S energy. That was my favorite scene.
I loved the dinner party, all of all of that but i think that scene i went back and re-watched this uh the opening part of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind when like uh kit winslet'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 – 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 Eternal Sunshine.
And also this episode ends with a needle drop sunshine of your love sort of uh moment but i was thinking about the juice again once again the juiciness that's only available inside of severance of like the the weighted history of what we're watching here we're watching mark's outie mark scout um like he is flirting with her and he is drawn to her while also knowing that she is the head of an evil corporation. And then she can't stay away.
She's Harmony Cobell-ing her way through the season, man. But they have a connection.
And so 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? 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 close to each other, as people in Severance apparently do.
And what Adam Scott is giving me in that scene as Mark is that a reintegrating Mark can almost feel the pull between them, but doesn't know what it is or what to do with it. 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. And because of that, I'm walking away from these sequences at the Chinese restaurant wondering, what exactly is Helena after here? Because she strolls in.
Hey, I saw you shoveling fried rice into your mouth with your hands from across the restaurant, and I really like your vibe. But it doesn't really make sense that she would just be coming here on neutral terms.
She has a purpose. And so I don't know what your read on this was, Joe, but I'm wondering, does she just want 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 Cobell was fixated on him for whatever reason? We don't quite know yet.
Is she testing Mark in some way, specifically by calling Gemma Hannah? Hannah, yeah. Very pointedly and kind of seeing if he will correct her.
And related to that, is Helena working with Ragabi in some way? Because this is immediately following the scene where Mark has freaked out and left Ragabi and gone out. And presumably, 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.
Yeah, yeah. I think this is definitely paying something for me in terms of like Helena and Raghabi and Cahoots question.
Like, I think absolutely the timing of that is a question. I think 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 and i think that's what's really interesting about the helena character uh is that i think she like she has a crush and, she's got weird corporate agendas.
And she liked the way that this person looked at her when she had sex with him, even though he thought she was someone else. So 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, 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 Milchick feeling like Audi Mark bleeding into Annie Mark. And she had a sort of, like, different interpretation, which I really liked.
I loved this. Yeah, she said, during the last pod and everywhere on the internet, there was conversation on how any Mark was acting more similarly to Audi Mark and attributing that to reintegration.
This wasn't my interpretation actually didn't cross my mind as a possibility until later. Any Mark just watched a friend quote die Irving and experienced a huge betrayal and assault by the woman he had feelings for.
I think Innie Mark is acting like Outie Mark because they're both the same person, but now his Innie has had experiences more comparable to what his Outie has experienced. Severance doesn't make you another person.
It just removes the memory of the experiences that have shaped you into who you are currently. It stands to reason that if you have similar experiences, you'll react and begin to behave in similar ways.
Britt Lauer has been doing an amazing job portraying Helly and Helena differently, but I also think it's important that we as an audience remind ourselves that they're the same being with the same brain, just a couple parts shut off. The only time I doubted Helena was when she was laughing at the Orpo fire.
Her response was so Helly. 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. 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 inies and outies, the similarities aren't just going to show up when reintegration happens. They're already there.
That's a long email, but I think it was all worth reading because to your point about this, the reason I was reminded of Eternal Sunshine of 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. And so Helena knows what's going on inside of this Chinese restaurant, but Mark is drawn to her because there's something in Mark that will always be drawn to something in Helena despite the differences between the Innies and the Audies, you know? It's cosmic, right? Like there is something kind of very specific to those people that will have that attraction.
And I love the idea of any specific 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.
But for someone like Mark, makes him into this very rigid caricature of a middle manager boss. But now he's getting to experience actual shit for the first time.
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. And once you get a taste of that, you're not just going back in the box.
Once you've heard the theremin and tasted the marshmallow. This is what I'm saying.
Well, this is the thing. They haven't tasted the marshmallow, Joe.
It's been dangled, but not yet. This episode is brought to you by Max.
The Emmy award-winning series Hacks returns this April. The new season follows Debra Vance making a move from her Vegas residency to Hollywood showbiz.
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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 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 before things wore him down.

Yeah.

Before the homebrewing started. I was reminded of one of my favorite sports movies of all time that I watch all the time, actually, which is Field of Dreams.
Wow. Sorry.
I love Field of Dreams. I mean, you would pick the sports movie with fucking ghosts in it.
Yeah. 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. He has his whole life in front of him, and I'm not even a glint in his eye.
What do I say to him? Like this idea of like seeing someone you love before life gets in the way, you know? So I thought that was really interesting. 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.
Like there is that 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. And our guy just wants a hug.
You know, he just wants some physical contact. Stiller on the official podcast implied that they did not bang in the security room, but I was not sure uh i thought there was enough of a cut away from the camera that we could have inferred um yeah but there's we know miss wong is asleep on the job people are banging all across the severed floor what's another one what is miss wong's uh you know like what do you call? No, that's cool.
The internal review is going to be scathing for Miss Wong. Yeah, there you go.
There you go. That's the corporate terminology I'm looking for.
Anything else you want to say about Dylan and Gretchen? 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? That has this intimate connection that he's developing with Gretchen for this version of Dylan the first time.
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.
I think it's a good reminder because the momentum at the end of season one

was so strong.

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,

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.

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.
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. He's really leveled up from finger traps as far as I'm concerned.
I don't even want to touch finger traps in this context. Great, rob uh on the on on your point uh kai will you play my favorite heli line in this episode i left it there behind the poster 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 of you actually Okay, yeah, fuck you.
You 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 of you actually being brave?

Okay, yeah, fuck you.

You don't know everything.

Then tell us.

Did everyone sever their balls in the elevator this morning, Jo?

Also very good.

Great stuff from Ellie.

Great, great, great.

You mentioned Miss Wong and her shoddy supervisory work inside this episode

while our guy Milchick was really going through it with the paperclips.

Yeah.

Lore drop. Wintertide, right? Milchik says about her being ready for Wintertide.
So,

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

Certainly would check out.

Okay. Is that your understanding?

Okay, winter tide is sort of like a next thing that she might do. Do we have any thoughts or feelings about what winter tide might mean?

Let me posit some things real quickly.

Please do.

Winter tide and Cold Harbor both just, you know, sound like ice cold water.

Perhaps the Edmund Fitzgerald might be wrecked in or something like that but also winter tide just means winter time that's just what that means the same way like even tide means evening sort of thing it's a way to say winter in a way that would get Milchick in trouble like a little little highfalutin, right? Could Wintertide be the codename for what happens on the floor below?

Or what do you think Wintertide means?

Yeah, I thought of it just on first blush again.

This is our first mention of Wintertide 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 for your further indoctrination, you go from the school for girls to now winter tide where you're turned into management. You're groomed for these jobs.
You're given even fuller sense of the mythos of Kier and you're drinking the Kool-Aid nonstop over there. It felt like, to me, a progression in her process, but not necessarily at the company.
It might be the kind of thing where she does this and then leaves and then comes back. In the SNL, there's something about Miss Wong, like her, I don't know, I want to say entitlement.
She wants to sit at that desk. 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 say something about a younger generation's sense of, like, I belong here, which is both good and bad in my view when I think about younger generations.
I'm like, that's great, but also I have other things to say about that. But also, 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. 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. Absolutely.
Yeah. And then I think also, I was thinking about interns that I've experienced.
When I worked at Vanity Fair, a lot of people who intern at Vanity Fair are children of quite famous people. Or Adam Sandler detailed this in his SNL 50 song that I cried over this last weekend about all weekend about like all the interns at SNL who were like the children of famous people.
So like, I wonder if Ms. Wong's odd and approach it, like she's acting like someone who is above Milchick, even though she is technically below Milchick, like she has connections on the board or something like that, that would make her feel like she is above his supervisory authority.
Do you know what I mean? I definitely know what you mean. That's just the vibe.
Their dynamic is one of the most interesting on the show to me. And a lot of that has to do with just everything that is going on with Milchick 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.
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 Cobell. Where is Harmony Cobell? What is she doing? We saw her last kind of getting spooked by Helena Lumen driving out of the parking lot, and she has been gone, doing God knows what in whatever throuples she is able to conjure for herself.
Like, the possibilities are really endless and I also can't wait to see what's going on with Harmony. 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.
It's been this many days since we last saw Harmony Cobell.

Where is she?

What is she doing?

Okay.

We've, we've danced around it.

We've,

we've covered a lot of other things.

Well,

actually before we get,

I,

you know,

I want to go to the dinner party before we get there.

What do you want to say about Seth?

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 you fucked her outie at the Orpo to come after the mirror, like, you know, transitioning from this highfalutin language to grow the fuck up. Something so much more direct.
Yeah, something more vulgar and direct.

Yeah.

That's a great call.

I really like that.

I gotta say, I'm of two minds about these sequences.

Because on the one hand, it's very self-flagellating, break room sort of behavior.

What he's doing to himself, which makes sense.

This is how Milchik knows how to manage.

Why would it not be the way he's trying to manage himself?

Right. On the other hand, the writer and self-editor in me, Joe, 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.
I do similar. Yeah, you have to strip out the alienating.
Like, is this word doing the work that I want this word to do? Or is it distracting? Is it getting in the way? I love precision of language. But can I say this in a more straightforward way that feels less alienating to a reader is, is something I ask myself more often when I used to write more than I do now.
Um, okay. When you stare into the mirror and tell yourself to grow up.
All right. Uh, 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.
Uh, it was almost our opening clip. 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? We also have corn.
Oh yes. We could feed him a pile of loose corn.
Oh, What your innie ever saw in this philistine is beyond me. John Noble.
What a presence. The way this pile of loose corn just like scratches something in my brain.
I think it's incredible. Okay.
Pineapple at Burt's house. On the counter.
Just hidden away there. Pineapple on the counter directly between 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.
I have very complicated feelings about the kitchen, I gotta say. I want to hear all of them.

There's a pineapple on the counter.

So is this pineapple here on the counter

right around when Field says,

what's mine is yours,

to denote sort of the

polycule

definition that we talked about earlier?

Or is it an indication

that Milchick was there at that house

earlier this week and he dropped off a fruit basket and that's the pineapple, the Lumen pineapple? 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? Oh, because Bert's definitely still working for Lumen. Shady as fuck.
Bert, you fuck. Okay.
You fuck. Fields, the kitchen.
Rob, Mahoney. 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. There is a level of clutter that makes me very anxious to even see on screen.
There is also the feeling of like the melding of two lives that would happen with two people of very defined taste coming to live together. 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.
Would I want that in my own kitchen? I'm on the fence about it. I've been going back and forth literally since I finished the episode.
On the one hand, I definitely would. This is a very Deborah Vance and Hacks thing to collect salt and pepper shakers.
But something about the grinders and the wood make it feel a little more on theme. I would want that.
I love that. Those would have to be dusted constantly because as you know, Rob, 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.
So I just feel like those 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.
This is something that we can speak to, Joe. I remember reading a profile of the former NBA player, Sean Bradley, who is seven foot six.
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.

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 homes of our friends and family.

And let me tell you,

you guys are not dusting up there enough.

It's tough.

Okay, I'm sorry. You're taking the tour.
So we did the salt and pepper grinders. What else? It's a lot.
But there is a mid-century modern meets exposed brick meets luscious plant life. All the fruit 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 making me actively angry that this is not something I have in my life. You see, I would say it's two full ovens and maybe an oven warming drawer is the arrangement here.
Maybe it's a third fully functional oven. I don't know.
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. I've been in houses that have like a two oven stack and I'm like, that's something.
That's the dream. But this is a kitchen island with three, 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.
True. I'm like, I think that's also an oven.
Fields is operating. Fields is making his cumin glazed ham and potentially loose corn in like three separate ovens inside of his, his kitchen Island.
It's, it's incredible. Um,'s incredible.
I thought 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.
It was a different actor. He's like John Noble-esque, but not John Noble.
Doesn't have his essence. Doesn't have the gravitas.
Doesn't say philistine the way that John Noble does. 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 taste or defined taste? Yeah, very defined for sure. There's like a creepy clown painting here in this house.
You can't talk about the clown painting.

What is going on with the clown painting?

The salt pepper shakers were giving to me, this is our bit, we collect these on our travels.

These were the ones we got in Sicily. These are the ones, or whatever these countries are called in this alternative reality.

But when we were in France, we got these.

When we went to Japan, we found these.

That's an older couple who's well traveled

and artistically minded like that's sort of

what that made me think of

okay

what do you want to say about the clown painting

why

how who painted it

please don't

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.

It's not even exposed brick.

It's like concrete.

I guess it's style.

Yeah, you're right.

Slabs.

But I thought there was kind of a brick,

like a gray brick arrangement there,

but it's some kind of contrasting styled wall.

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 house.
Go ahead, Sarah. Gray industrial wall.
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 house. Go ahead.
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. 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.
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.
Midpoint of the man, your memoir at some point? I really hope not, I hope we get to the end point. Part man, part clown, your memoir at some point? That's just true to life.
Um, okay, listen. Let me give you my thoughts on who Bert is and what's happening here.
Let's get to it. And you can agree or disagree with me.
Uh, 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? Check.
Okay. Side question.
I'll return to Bert in a second. Does Drummond have the key to every single person's home in all of Kier? If you're in corporate housing, I assume so.
Yeah. Okay.
It was just like a big Kier rings on our guy Drummond. Okay.
Back to Burt. And I will say the Burt-Drummond connection, as far as the causality of that, is part of why I look at the Ragabi Helena stuff askew too.
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? Do we agree with deep in his cups fields that Bert was working at Lumen 20 years ago, well before severance was a thing? Very much so, yes. Do we think potentially Bert was involved in the development of severance in the first place? Seems entirely possible.
Okay. Do we think Burt was ever actually severed on the floor? We do not.
This is where we disagree, but okay. Okay.
Yeah. Okay.
Tell me why you think Burt was always playing Irving. Take me through that.
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. 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.
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. 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, so did you guys fuck at work? one if if that were a true thing, neither one of them would know it. Unless, for example, Burt was somebody who was never severed in the first place and the existence of a previous work partner would suggest that there has at least been a time at work where Burt was not severed.
We know that based on the timeline. But I think there's just a strong enough implication that Burt, 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.
That's how it read to me. Okay.
So you think he is more Helena in this season in terms of he was down on the floor, he was snooping and spying around, but all the while he was reporting back on what was happening there. 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. I'm inclined to believe that Bert has blood all over his hands for stuff that he has done at Lumen.
And I'm inclined to believe that his partner Fields, who I think he actually does care about, was like, I'm going to go to heaven and you're going to go to hell. And that distresses me.
And so he's like, okay, I'll do my time on the inside in order to get any version of me that gets to go to heaven. Because then I get to believe in burving from season one and believe that this bird is evil as fuck,

which is what I would choose.

And so then it's more of like a helly hell in a situation where the any

version of Bert is like a good sweet guy who just likes weird art.

And the audio version of Bert is a piece of shit who uses,

who lures you to his home with the promise of cumin glazed ham. I know.
And loose corn. And loose corn.
Anyway, I think both things are possible. Yeah.
And I think personally it's slightly more compelling if any Bert exists and any Bert is innocent and out-y outy Bert is villainous, but, uh, or at least compromised. Um, but we will see.
I thought, I thought the conversation about the church and living was really interesting. I want to talk about that in a second.
What else do you want to say about this? 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.

Sure.

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

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.

But in reality, he's not severed. And so he has this cover.
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 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. I think it's really interesting to think about the church and Lumen.
I am not a religious person, but the intersection between technology and faith or shady corporations and end faith is sort of is of interest to me. I, this, this woman who was cutting my hair recently was talking to me about, she is much more pro AI than I am.
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, um, email from Asher last week before this episode dropped.
He was talking about some Battlestar Galactica comps, which I think is interesting. But Asher wrote, it also made me think about the comps in both shows regarding spirituality slash faith, more than just Christian references.
Specifically, 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. So for us on the AI front right now, this question

of what makes a human, what makes an AI, something like that. But in a severance world,

what makes you you, the you you are, if severance is a possibility? What is inherently you that is

Thank you. Like in a severance world, what makes you you, the you you are, if severance is a possibility?

What is inherently you that is true across the Marx, across the Dylans, across the Hellenas? And what does that get to spiritually? 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 their thoughts and positions around spirituality, you know? 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's someone here playing God, right? They are humans. We're talking about whether humans have souls.
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, whether that's true or not, or whether it's something that they believe. And these people are wielding, it seems, a certain godlike power of creation, of cloning, of consciousness altering.
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. Like, they were so preoccupied with whether they could, Joe, they did not stop to think if they should.
Wow, you hit us with a gold bloom in the middle of that. I love it.
You gotta hit the pause. Josh the Park, one of my perfect movies, obviously.
I think that I don't know, all this is really interesting to me. I'm really curious to see.
I think this is a great use of Burt, and I'm really curious to see how this unfolds. Walken was talking on the podcast, how happy he was to play Bert in season one, because people often don't want that kind of performance from him.
They want like evil, schemey performances. Well, guess what? 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, I'm 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.

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

Christopher Walken, Vampire Grandpa. Love it.

Also would watch Vampire Grandpas

if somebody wants to green light that.

100%. In terms of Drummond's

little B and E here, I guess

he broke nothing. Key and E here.

Radar, our guy

Thank you. wants to green light that 100 uh in terms of drummond's little b and e here i guess he broke broke nothing key key and e here um radar our guy radar uh is useless absolutely useless inside what are you doing um he finds the chest with the papers that we saw in season one anything you want to note uh you of the famously fond of freeze frame, anything you want to note from these papers? We've seen them before,

but what did you notice this time?

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. This is meant to be sort of

coded, probably for just this sort of occasion,

right? If these notes get into the wrong hands,

he doesn't want his full

spread of information

laid out right in front of them

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 and

indentations not aligned

not uniform in any way

forward slashes there's

brackets there's bolding

again as a dedicated note taker

I think it's a fun thing for the freeze framers, I think. But also I think we

should note there is this note,

this handwritten note on there about

settlement

led to severance question mark by

someone's name. So like

there was something

and as a result of the court case, someone

was severed? Is that

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.

Okay.

I also think we've deciphered one critical piece of symbolism here in the notes,

which is a big old X next to Petey's name.

What could that possibly mean?

All right.

I think that's a good transition to our favorite medical professional, Dr. Rigami.
Really going through it. Eating what I believe to be a tub of frosting at one point in the basement.
What's it? Yeah. I couldn't tell if it was yogurt, but I like frosting better.
It looks like it might be. No.
That is a tub of frosting. It's very death-becomes- her.
It's unsettling. Just what you want your medical professionals to be doing.
Yeah, frosting is just like... Like raw cookie dough, I'm sort of like...
I think we've all at one point in our lives been in a raw cookie dough space. No, but there's such a thing as too much.
I don't know if you've ever been to those places that scoop raw cookie dough as if it were ice cream. This was like a brief phase some years ago.
Oh, like a Dippin' Dots sort of craze, but it's- Yeah, like a very short lived. 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.
And that's kind of how I would feel if I were to go spoon deep in a vat of icing. You never go spoon deep in the icing.
Please don't. You sk surface only that's as far as we go okay for gabby mark a hole in his head uh real gross stuff uh he the 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.

So like that.

And the fact that Devin's like,

oh,

are you still at the flu?

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?

Should we go immediately to the hospital?

What's happening?

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. I would say peek at the restaurant because at this point he is so sweaty.
Yeah, yeah. But even when our guy is eating literal fistfuls of food, he's got like teary eyes, full sweat, incredible bang sweep.
Yeah, the swoop. I love the styling of what's happening with Mark overall.
And I love how distinct it feels clearly from Mark S. Yeah, absolutely.
We've already mentioned basement surgery. I think the most harrowing, as upsetting as it is to think about loose piles of corn or going spoon deep and frosting or anything else, 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.
He goes down in the same... This I will credit Reddit for.
I saw this last night. Someone pointed out that...
Were you a Better Call Saul watcher, Rob? Of course, yeah. When Chuck goes down in the copy shop, it's the same thing of the camera tilting down with the person and just like really feeling that head hit the floor oh it's just yeah the acoustics of a good violent thud are very important see also the film parasite 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 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 this procedure. The migraine, the flickering.
Again, 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.

But yeah, overall, I love this sequence.

Even if, I gotta say, between this and the pit, Joe,

more surgical retractors in my life

than I need on a recurring basis.

Just incisions getting spread open

in ways that I do not enjoy watching.

I gotta tell you, Rob,

I love zero. Okay.
Especially if they're concealing a big old hole in your skull that's just been sitting there. So do all of them have that? I mean, all of them do have, like, decent heads of hair.

So, you know, you wouldn't be able to, like... The skin itself is healed.

It's just in the skull there's a hole, right?

In the skull there's a hole.

And Raghabi's plan is what if I just squirted some liquid into your brain using an 8-inch needle?

Okay.

A few odds and ends to round up before we go. Please.
Our listener, Jeremy, tweeted at us. People do still use Twitter.
The pupil dots on Milchik and Captain Frolic, Drummond, giving off big replicant vibes. So if you've seen Blade Runner, you will note that the people who play replicants have these sort of reflective lenses,

like lens effect in Blade Runner.

And so I did notice it on Seth inside this episode.

I didn't go back to look at it in Drummond,

but Seth is often shot where you see,

like I was curious how they did it in the mirror scene

because yeah where is that camera in the mirror scene i guess digitally erased but like where's 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 uh someone pointed out that so the Chinese place that they go to,

we should note, despite all the Michigan

references, the film... good um uh someone pointed out that so the chinese place that they go to we should note despite all the michigan references the filming locations are new york and new jersey yes and um my good friend uh friend of the pod kristin 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.
They changed the sign of it. It's not Zufu, Chinese restaurant, but Zufu is the name.
And when Mark is walking out of the restaurant, the Z-U is not lit up and the F-U is, which is fun of itself. But Zufu in Mandarin means paternal grandfather.
You take away the zoo and you just have the foo part. And foo by itself doesn't really mean father, but the zoo is what means grand.
So like father lit up right above Mark when he's walking out of this conversation with Helena. Just something to think about.
Did you catch the price tag on the bottle of wine that Irving brought?

I have thoughts about it.

Oh, tell me.

I don't think we saw a concrete price, did we?

I couldn't read it.

Because he was like, you know, fucking with the price tag and I couldn't read it.

Yeah.

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? We know it's a 2009 Malbec. 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.
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.

We see you, Severance.

We see what you're doing.

I think it's the painted goat.

I think that's what it is.

So yeah, that's fun.

Just goats all the way down.

We have fun.

And then, let's see what else.

I already mentioned ragami and the frosting.

Oh, fun fact. Attila the Hun died from a nosebleed.
That is a fun fact. 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? I thought it was darling.
It is darling.

Also,

having a character that we thought of as sweet and

honey-like being now called

Attila is fun

in its own right.

It is.

Okay.

I know that you have not watched the TV series Lost,

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. We got many Lost-related emails.
Yet again, it just continues to be in the firmament here. The most famous episode of Lost is called The Constant.
And Colin lays out the comparisons between this episode and 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.
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. 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. 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? And if so, will this mean that Mark may need to seek out Helena Egan again in the real real world to be his constant um so the constant is just a concept from loss but this idea of like being unstuck in time or location the nosebleed the ticking clock on the nosebleed especially i think is interesting 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 so this is go well this is like we're thinking about pd when we see mark starts to bleed from his nose we're thinking about pd also someone pointed out that in season one episode one of severance they're talking about pd's last day they're talking about how he came to work with a cough yeah um which is part of this reintegration sickness and uh you know that is what what Mark is experiencing right now as Miss Wong is trying to minister to him.
So just always thinking about Lost when I'm thinking about TV shows in general. As one does.
Specifically Severance. 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? I definitely think Mark and Hela are going to bone in the outside.
I don't know. I just like I don't like this about myself, but I kind of want to see it.
Absolutely. I like I just I'm interested in what's happening there.
The vibes were awful and yet also immaculate in that scene. The way that they're sort of like immediately like, you know, yes-anding each other on this little bit about like, take you home to meet the parents and stuff like that.
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. Lumen.
Right. Also something I think that's worth noting inside of that conversation, when Helena in the Zufu Chinese restaurant says, you know, talks about how important she is at Lumen and how she has control and oversight over everything.
Yeah. 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 was really interesting. Last but not least, I'm going to end with a what would I sever question.
Anything else you want to cover before we go out with a what would I sever proposition for my listener? 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 Severance. It was right there.
You couldn't finagle the schedule a little bit? Yeah. No, we decided to go with President's Day week.
That's what sounds right to us. Okay.
Richard says, and this is something we kind of heard before, but Richard says, my thought is if I get my innie to go to the gym for me, my innie gets to work work out in whatever way they choose 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 and having written that i realized i've just fallen into the trap of the substance so um i was thinking about the substance when i saw when we when we had to watch mark consume that like milky substance or thing for his reintegration uh procedure weation procedure. I don't have this one in front of me.
We did get an email from someone like, if I were to sever my commute, let's say, and the commute me listened to your podcast. Right.
He was like, outing me would also listen to your podcast. He was like, so you would just double your listenership.
Let's get those numbers up, Joe. Come on.
Let's do it. I'm suddenly pro-severance.
I don't know where I came from, but I'm seeing the vision. We love to severance inflate our numbers.
So call us, Lumen. We're interested.
All right. Well, that does it for our coverage of severance today.
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.

We will be back with Double White Lotus coverage,

and

pineapplebobbing at gmail.com

for your thoughts and questions. We'll see you soon.
Bye!