‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 5: Is the Real Helly R. Back?

Did you and Heliard catch up?

We did.

Did you tell her that you fucked her Audi at the Orpo?

Helena Egan.

Leader in waiting of this company.

Have a restful evening. hello welcome back to the prestige tv podcast feed i'm joanna robinson from the void that's rob mahoney from home and uh rob where do you think your affection index is uh these days with our listeners you can't ask me to self-evaluate look i would you what? I was going to ask for those scores.
I don't want those scores. Don't tell us, please, what our affection index scores are.
No, absolutely not. I would say based on the number of emails we got in response to you sharing your nightmare about your recurring nightmare about not being able to drop a class.
Yes. We got so many people saying, yes, Rob speaks for the people.

He is a man of the people.

I would say you're in the 80s this week.

That's what I think.

I have never felt more seen in my entire life.

So shout out to everyone who is also failing exams in their dreams or not knowing their exams in their dreams.

I just feel very connected to the outside world

in a way that as I am currently recording in my closet,

I don't often.

We're here to talk to you about Severance,

season two, episode five, Trojan's Horse.

Just a wonderful Rickanism.

Exactly.

Before we do that, we should mention, in case you haven't noticed there's a lot of white lotus content uh coming in this feed so on sunday night bill and and i will be doing an instant sort of reaction vibey pod and then a few days later rob and i are doing what is known at the ringer as a precap but we don't really fully understand exactly what that means. But what it means is that we will be reading your emails, covering theories, diving deep into White Lotus.
We'll have two White Lotus episodes per week and then our usual severance coverage. And then before all is said and done, we will be heading back to the pit.
We must. So that is what is happening in the Prestige feed.
And if you are a Yellow Jackets fan and you're like, where's the Yellow Jackets coverage?

That's over in House of R. Mallory and I are doing that in House of R.

So that is what is happening all around the various feeds.

PrestigeTV at Spotify.com is how you can reach us for any of the shows.

So if you've got White Lotus thoughts or feelings, we have not come up with a fun and quirky White Lotus email yet.

So PrestigeTV at Spotify.com.

PineappleBobbing at Gmail.com to let Rob know what his affection index score is. Please don't.
Thank you so much. This week's episode, Trojan's Horse, was directed by Sam Donovan, written by Megan Ritchie, and I just got a few responses that I want to cover to last week's episode, Voice Hollow, that we got from people.
A lot of people wrote in about our question about the dot, the creepy doppelgangers that we saw out in the wilderness. And what a lot of people pointed out, we don't, since we usually watch on screeners, we don't get a previously on and we don't get sort of the post credit in conversation thing that they do in the previously on last week, they made sure to show the animatronics in the sort of like creepy cure museum that is exists in lumen and so a lot of people said they thought maybe they were animatronics that seems like a lot of effort to haul those animatronics out for the orpo just for creepy vibes but just for the hall of presidents out in the wilderness it's unnecessary how big do you think that orpo team was because we've got milchik and and Miss Wong, but like Miss Wong's not dragging those animatronics out into the middle of the snow, right?

We've got a whole SWAT team.

Nor is she pitching a tent.

I just think there's a lot of like logistical legwork that has to be done.

And shout out to the ahead team who really set all this stuff up, the mysterious and important Lumen employees who we never see.

But they're doing the good work.

I think that's a good one. Shout out to the Ahead team who really set all this stuff up, the mysterious and important Lumen employees who we never see.

But they're doing the good work.

I think to that end, we got a lot of emails before this week's episode asking us if we thought the Orpo took place in some sort of holodeck, some sort of virtual space. I think this week's episode does the work to try to underline that that's not the case in the conversation that Mark has with Devin about not just a sort of like permission slip aspect of you can take my Annie somewhere fun and mysterious and exciting, but also the comment about him being wet.
Right. You know what I mean? It's just sort of like something physically happened to him that they had to explain to him when he was awoken from it.
I also assume like I wasn't quite sure what to read into Mark having a cough in this episode

if that's supposed to be because he got wet on the Ortbo and it was cold and therefore now has a cold

or is it a side effect of the reintegration but he's clearly feeling something he's got a little

head cold. Yeah I would say a dip in the in the icy waters might do that to you perhaps.
Also those

Thank you. I don't know what's going on in there, but I don't want any part of it.
Yeah, that goes to something I wanted to talk about next. But before we wrap up on last week's feedback, I want to say that a bunch of people or people wrote in about anagrams which i love an anagram and a mystery box show so natalie t wrote in to let us know that dieter egan the mysterious uh masturbating twin um if you rearrange dieter egan it says ai generated yeah which is exciting and new it is and then a lot of people pointed out that ortbo is an anagram of robot which is just yeah right there something to think about which i think fueled some of the speculation about it being some sort of simulation but it apparently is not so you know you can get a red herring with these anagrams too you should oh all the time um and last but not least uh crispy wrote in to draw a connecting line between irving's final moments in the woods and a really famous John Turturro scene in Miller's Crossing, an excellent film, an excellent early Turturro performance.
So if you've never seen that movie, why not? Use severance as an excuse to watch Miller's Crossing. Sounds like a good idea to me.
On that sort of gross post-op smoothie point that you made i did want to do quick opening credits imagery check-in because those slimy little vials are in the opening credits i didn't even clock that where are they yeah um they're like on a table and they get knocked over and they sort of like spill around and stuff like that on the reddit someone on the reddit called it uh garman bosia which is this twin peaks i don't wait have we talked about twin peaks are you peak sad rob i've never seen it okay in i just need to explain in twin peaks there's this like mysterious substance justin sales is on this call shaking my head at my inability to under like explain what this is but it's supernatural nature it's maybe you're consuming the soul of someone i don't know but it's called garmin bosian it's essentially creamed corn and like it does look a lot like you know what we're we're drinking here at least blend it up you know the canned cream corn the least ideal possible cream corn and i said i say this is a southerner with deep affection for cream corn but this is not the kind you want um and someone else on the reddit uh called Substance, which, hey, if you haven't seen The Substance, why not use Severance as an excuse to watch both Miller's Crossing? There you go. What a double feature that would be, The Substance and Miller's Crossing.
Why not? 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. Tensions rise as Debra and Ava try to get their late night show off the ground and make history while doing it.
Starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder, Hacks season four is streaming Thursday, April 10th exclusively on Max. And don't forget to check out the official Hacks podcast on Spotify.
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. Tensions rise as Debra and Ava try to get their late-night show off the ground and make history while doing it.
Starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder. Hacks season four is streaming Thursday, April 10th, exclusively on Macs.
Don't forget to check out the official Hacks podcast on Spotify. And I wanted to sort of enter into our conversation of this episode today with a clip from Jen Turlock, who plays Devin.
One of our listeners, Joseph T., who sent this in. It's an interview clip where she's talking about what she thinks the show is about.
And I kind of wanted to take that concept and maybe check in with all of our characters inside of this episode through that concept. So Donnie, will you play that clip? People have asked me what I think severance is about.
I think the soundbite is it's about the work-life balance, but I've always said I think it's about American loneliness and ennui and what it means to be in so much pain that you have to cut off half of your consciousness. Yeah.
So loneliness. Yeah.
A little bit of that going around this week. Yeah.
I would say a lot. I would say given that we ended and we talked about this a little over the last couple episodes about how season one ends with this defiant act of fellowship between the core four and how immediately Lumens are scrambled the jets in order to figure out how to isolate them by luring Dylan with his own sort of side plot treat by putting Helena in there instead of Heli.
We're all sort of broken up and now they've removed Irving entirely from the group. So let's run through it.
And I actually want to start with Milchik. Because this is a performance review episode from Milchik.
He gets rebuffed by Natalie's attempt. Like his attempt to find common cause with Natalie is rebuffed.
And then it seems pretty clear based on what happens inside of that performance review and the way that she was sort of talking about it before that, that Miss Wong narked on him, I would say. And so, and in response to that, in response to him feeling isolated, he doesn't have an ally, Miss Wong.
He doesn't have an ally in Natalie. He burned that allyship the moment he refused to let her play the theremin.
I mean... You gotta let her cook.
This is her moment. Do you think it wouldn't have gone as poorly for him if he had just let her play the theremin? Exactly.
Yeah. Okay.
Maybe she doesn't understand the reason for the funeral. I want to talk about some of these scenes, too, between Miss Wong and Milchick, the performance review.
Of course. I wouldn't say they hit me the best of any of the scenes in this show.
And we can, we can circle back to that in a second, but ultimately you got to give her her moment. This is her time to shine.
This is, she's going to get two recitals. One got interrupted.
I would say unfairly. We didn't even get to see the marshmallows through and now you're not even going to let her play.
You're not even going to let her play like taps. What's going on at a at a funeral come on it's it's it's that's the moment for a theremin if you're ever going to use one but i the like the way that she knocked on him justified or not um similar we presume to the way that he knocked on cobell you know and so it's just sort of this like predatory circle of life inside of of corporate culture.

And also, I was thinking about this email we got from a listener a couple of weeks ago about this idea of Miss Wong being that like much younger co-worker in charge of you from like Mark W's point of view or something like that. And that is that is one thing.
But also this idea of like someone younger than, you know, Milchick was younger than Cobell.

And now there's someone even comically younger than him like coming up behind him nipping at his heels um so i just thought i thought all of that was interesting and the fact that it resulted in what did milch how did milchick respond to that not by finding common cause with his fellow illumined employees but by bringing the hammer down on mark harder yep um you know and so that is just sort of like the nature of this trap we find ourselves in sometimes in a corporate setting of just sort of like or or any setting where authority rains down on you instead of just saying like hey we're all together under this authority you just sort of wield what little power you are allowed on the people below you. A tale as old as time, unfortunately.
I think it's heartbreaking for Milchik because it's so clear he doesn't want to be Cobell and wants to try something different, whether for efficacy reasons or moral ones or however he sees the world. He wants to do something else.
And even the slightest resistance to that initial rollout of the softer friendlier lumen now just leads the whole thing to be kaput like there's just no shot anymore and we're all tightening the leash tell me what didn't work for you in those milchik scenes that you want to talk about so i would say overall for this episode great for answering questions we get a lot of like very direct answers to a lot of the things we've been talking about you know will we see irving b again what happened at the orpo was it a physical space like all those things are asked and answered in a way that i think is really good for clarity purposes and certainly for our podcasting purposes as we're trying to unravel what's going on in severance week to week yeah there was also a little bit too like too much of saying the quiet thing out loud and saying things very directly when previously they had been left up for a little bit of mystery a little bit of interpretation and i don't see that in sort of a plot mechanic way but things like milchick and miss wong having their exchanges they're preparing the bereavement materials and she tells him up front like you should not let them have have a funeral because it lets them think that they're people it's like okay that's a that's a theme that we're talking about but when it's coming out of the characters mouths directly i don't i'm not as receptive to it like i want it to be a subtler touch than that and in particular the exchange we get between milchick and natalie in which all of the unsaid things are now just said was kind of disappointing to be honest with you I don't know that I was disappointed but I agree with you that I much preferred the version where they said all of that sort of with their their eyes and and her like rictus grin and all that sort of stuff it's like when this happens what it communicates to me is they didn't trust that they didn't trust that as an audience and as a performance that would be conveyed effectively when I thought it spoke. It said everything we needed to know.
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I agree with you.
I want to watch that space. I think I just want to watch to see if we're progressing towards something, if we're progressing towards a moment for Natalie where she changes her mind about which side she decides to sit with um dylan dylan is like these sort of the the best i think way to exemplify the way in which they're all alone inside of this episode is the scene when all three of them go into milchick's office and they're all demanding different information and dylan is single-minded he doesn't give three dry fucks about anything else right he's like single-minded about what happened to irving is he dead then i demand a funeral you know and so he is like he's not part you know he has been lured away from the from the agenda of the group all season because of you know his relationship with his his wife uh if you prefer it's complicated it's complicated there's love geometry happening all over this show um but inside but now he's he's isolated inside of this like i have to make things something up to irving uh i failed him and i have something to make up to him.
So that's where Dylan sits. The whole dynamic across MDR with Irving's funeral is fascinating to me because on the one end, yes, you get Dylan given the eulogy, speaking from his heart, which as Milchik points out, not something that happens very often for Dylan in this office.
Helly is still so shaken up by her circumstances and everything that's happened, but clearly mournful in her way in losing Irving and losing someone she cared about. And even someone who attempted to kill a version of her or at least like kind of smoke out the reality of who she was hiding in her own skin.
And then there's like everything that's going on with Mark in this episode. And of all the things that he is showing,

and there's a lot,

and I'm fascinated by it and I love peeling it back.

And there are layers within layers and with layers,

within layers of what's happening with both Mark and Mark S right now,

him being so cold and cavalier about Irving dying is the part that I'm

trying to understand the most right now.

Like I can,

I can get behind and find my way to some sort of motivation for most of the things that mark is doing in this episode but the way he's just like bolting out the door at first instance from the funeral i don't like i don't i don't know what to make of that just yet yeah so adam scott talked about this a little bit on the official podcast um he was talking i actually kind of see it a reverse side of this because from his perspective mark is like done he's so devastated by the betrayal that he's just like let's just put our head down and do the work yeah and forget rebellion forget fellowship forget any of this i'm just here to do the work the nihilism is coming through real strong by the right so all of that makes sense to me as like a sort of trauma response to you know thinking you're having sex with someone when you're having sex with someone else or all of that uh all of that stuff the insistence that he still have helly with him is actually the flip side of that that makes less sense to me if he's just given up if he if he's just in nihilism, let's just get the work done mode, what Drummond and Natalie say is that he will not do it without Helyar. Yep.
Quote, so we have to give her to him, right? Yeah. And in a plot mechanic sense, actually a plot, I was like, how are they ever going to get Heliar back in this plot?

Like, how is that ever going to happen?

So they figured out a way through twists and turns of the plot to make it happen.

And I'm glad for that because I love Heliar and I'm glad she's here.

Yeah.

But to your point, I think with the nihilistic state we find Marken in this episode and also what feels like to me an incursion of the outie mark attitude yeah bullshit gazette is such an outie mark thing to say to milchick in the elevator it's not and so i don't i think some some viewers were confused they were like is that actually outie mark in the elevator i don't think it is no but we're reintegrating so things are sort of seeping through you know and so i think along with the memories there's like this snarky attitude that outie mark had that any mark never had but it's like we're all coming together it's sort of how i was reading it inside of this you know and coming as we said from a very fair place like his whole world has been shaken up and i think what he tells heli in terms of having to confront the idea that everything they have been working for has been sabotaged that every you know they thought they were so smart with their cute little plans but they are three little people four now three within a giant machine and everything that they've accomplished has been something they were allowed to accomplish and that's's a hard thing to reckon with for anybody. And where it, I think, leaves Mark is, you know, we have this conception of Mark as, okay, there is Mark as in Mark Scout.
There are these two guys, two versions of the same person. Throughout this episode, I think we basically get four Marks because you have classic sad boy, Mark Audi, who is presenting to the world, his sister included, as a certain kind of thing and then also going through this process of reintegration with Rigabi that's a whole separate life now he's carving out even within his Audi life and then inside you have some version of company man Mark S still there like diligently putting the numbers into the buckets yeah who doesn't want to take the funeral too seriously and just wants to kind of move on because he doesn't know what else to do.
And then you also have, I don't know, like nihilist Mark, comrade Mark, whatever version is kind of like staring himself in the mirror, trying to get his shit together. And by the end of the episode, all of these versions have kind of started to bleed together.
I love that you, so I really did want to bring up, in terms of this isolation loneliness theme that I am insisting we put on every single person, Audi Mark lying to Devin about what he's doing, when Devin was like, that was his community, was his sister. And now he's lying to her about this.
And sure, Ragabi's living living in his basement but they don't seem like they are the most chummiest of of housemates and so yeah how are you feeling about the developing like roommate sitcom between mark and ragabi i don't know he's just got to get that dryer fixed i gotta say if i moved into if i moved to some basement and i was promised a washer dryer yep and there was no was no dryer. Furious.
Irate. What are you going to do? Hang dry in a one bedroom apartment? Come on.
In the winter? Absolutely not. Okay.
So that's Audi Mark. And then any Mark inside of this, he insists on having Heli there.
Yes. This actually breaks my heart.
It's so human. He insists on having her there.
He wants her wants her there he wants to know she's alive he wants to see her yeah but he's not allowing himself closeness with her inside of this episode and to your point this is where i bring up lost in the scene in the bathroom when he's looking in the mirror this is a very late season lost thing there's a whole season with a motif of characters looking in the mirror and having this moment of sort of like where am am I? What am I doing? I can't explain it very well without spoiling anything, but just, just no. So the fact that he's looking in the mirror, but then the scene, when she comes in to talk to him, it's a torturous camera angle to get her reflection.
So there's two hellies there as he's talking to her. And like, you know, obviously it's like, you know, obviously the fractureured natures of these people but like when he says to her in that in that bathroom counter i don't really know you you know and she's like yeah you do but like what what an earth she not just the portrayal of someone was there undercover but she's upset that he couldn't tell the difference and he's upset that he couldn't tell the difference because's like, I really thought I was falling for someone.
I thought I knew someone and I couldn't even tell that it wasn't her. So how real is this connection that I thought I had with her in the first place? Do you know what I mean? Totally.
I love from a big picture perspective that none of this is as simple as you flip Heli are back on. The team is back together.
Like everything is, is pulled so far apart already and so tense yeah that even leading into this you can understand why mark would be so shaken up and not sure what to trust or who to trust or like do you even know helia on any level whatsoever if you were so easily deceived like it is a self-indictment of him as much as anything when he says i don't really know you right like that is a that is a personal lapse on his part and i love from helena's perspective that help you know or sorry from heli's perspective that helena using heli's body is not just a deceitful act to trick mark and do and worse to him to you know deceive the rest of the mDR team to sort of infiltrate and sabotage whatever they had going on. But it's also like very harmful to Helly herself.
It's a violation. The absolute violation of someone else using your body.
And as you said, the double whammy of the people in your life, not being able to understand who you are underneath, which is, I'm sure something that all of us would hope that the people in our lives could do. But realistically, who is anticipating body swap shenanigans? Maybe the people in the world of severance should be a little more open to the idea than we are.
But it's a harder thing to pull out. Is this person having a weird day or are they another consciousness in the body of the person I care about? It's a heady question.
Oh, are you the chilly, evil corporate version of yourself? Or are you you today? Who's to say? The you you are. But Britt Lauer bringing the absolute most to both versions of Helly and Helena.
And I think getting to spend time with Helly for the first time in a while. Yeah.
I mean, you see the physical transformation. You see the completely different vocal delivery, which I would say is like a higher register overall and also more tentative and a little bit more wavering even relative to helena who god knows has her own share of anxieties to deal with and is to be fair isolated in her own way in this episode but just an awesome performance helena's next on my list her sitting uh opposite drummond and natalie and, you know, is my dad okay with this? Yeah.
Father approved it. What was your read on not just that line, but Drummond saying father encouraged it? Yeah, father encouraged it.
On the one hand, like, I think that could be sort of a mocking tone of her asking, did father approve this? Like, yes, your father did. could be kind of a more general term of authority that people use for jame egan calling him father especially within the company i've also seen people throwing out like does this suggest that drummond himself is part of the egan family we did get an email about that like that is he an egan bastard or something like that which is very a very thronesy way to think about it um i think it was more him mocking her that's how i read on it yeah but yeah that is definitely a a question people are asking and the mocking i think facilitates that scene which really hammers home the point that this is not what helena herself wants to do well what i think is interesting to learn about the power dynamic is like we assume that he was like her muscle, her hench.
And then it's like, no, he has authority above her. Yeah.
You know, where is her power inside of this company? In her name, I think. And that's about it.
And she's being controlled and manipulated, not unlike the way that everyone on MDR is. But it doesn't seem like it gives her much.
No. Last but not least, to wrap everything up on this sort of loneliness, alone list, Devin alone.
Mark is lying to her and her husband. I don't know if you noticed.
Sucks. More than usual, I would say.
Yeah. It's interesting listening on the official podcast this week.
They had the actor who played Rickon on and they were talking a lot about rick and they were talking about the rick and devin marriage and they were very sort of like defensive of against the critique of what that people are asking what the hell is devin doing with rick and right like you don't know what goes on inside people's homes you don't know you won't you only see a sliver of their lives that's true yeah opposites attract all the time okay it's very weird to me i was just sort of like not weird i understand why they're defending it but i was like i i've definitely seen couples where there are opposites and i've definitely seen people who are with someone who doesn't seem like worth their time all that sort of stuff we see that all the time but i think that would tell us something about like what did devon need that rick can provide yeah that's interesting to me you know because their their their idea was like he awakened some sort of like creativity or bohemian in her and i'm like no but it's you know it's sort of it's like when you think about um i don't know some of the relationships on succession you know there's just sort of like you see people together and you're like, why? But also I see how hurt and broken you are and how you're grasping for anything that will sort of fulfill that for you. But Devin, we don't know enough about Devin to know anything about that.
No, and I think what would be necessary to sell a characterization like that is some little beat off to the side. And it's not a big plot point.
But as you're saying, if his value or even just what she's reaching for is some sort of artistic side of herself or fulfillment in terms of her creativity, we just don't have any evidence to suggest that based on their interactions on screen. And I like Rick and scenes personally, but they are incredibly broad.
It's the broadest characterization on the show by far. But also I thought the most interesting thing they said on the official podcast about him is that he is such an essential part of the storytelling because he is so important for us understanding what the outside world is like.
Obviously he doesn't stand for everyone on the outside world but we don't

spend a lot of time outside of the like lumen coterie right and so we don't know what it's like for people on the outside outside of like rickens weird no dinner parties and book readings and what is rebecca like etc so all of that and for it to come from a skeptic and like a faux intellectual who can so easily be pulled into this orbit with like a single check and really just the assurance that what you do is important. And who among us is not so susceptible to that? Who among us this week of all weeks, Joe, would have to ponder the idea of like, what if we could create change within the machine? What if we could be the resistance that is actively changing things as we ourselves are co-opted and corrupted i it's just not relevant at all um but it never works out that way does it um irving alone except he's had this encounter with bert now he's also on a cruise experience so yeah I don't know we'll see who do you think

who do you think he's calling? I feel like from the Roger Ebert economy of characters, it's got to be Cobell. Okay.
Cobell is a theory. Raghabi is still on the table to a certain degree.
Sure, yep. And I think there's some merit to the idea that maybe he hasn't been reintegrated fully, but at least is aware enough of the procedure to try to blend between his consciousnesses, to try to work some things.
Ultimately, I don't think that Irving has been reintegrated, as I've seen theorized. Because if he were, then he wouldn't need to try to pass messages from any doubt.
Yeah. Like it's clear that he's still pretty distinct.
It's just he's trying to navigate the border. What we learn inside of the bereavement process is that he has I think it's 12 quarters.
Right. And so he has been severed for three years, but he's been a Lumen employee for nine years yep so there's six years and we've talked about this before there's six years that irving was there that he wasn't severed we know that he's got this trunk full of sort of information on other severed people so yeah he he it seems like he severed himself voluntarily in order to try to infiltrate mdr or that sort of stuff, experiment with the sleep deprivation thing.
Because, yeah, he does know some things about the procedure and maybe how to try to get around it to try to get to that elevator down that hallway if he can. He's not trying to burn notes into his retinas.
You know, he's a little further along in the process. He knows a bit more.
Let me ask you this, Joe, while we're on the Irving beat. The watermelon visage of Irving is horrifying.
It did give me like Night King vibes for some reason, but obviously juicier. Like there's something about the way he's carved into that fruit that reads as the Night King to me.
A real juicy Night King situation. That's the last thing you want your Night King to be.
But do you yourself have a fruit of choice that when you do pass on from this mortal coil, how would you like to be carved and into what fruit? Rob, thank you so much for asking me. I think I'm going to stick, I'm going to be wildly predictable and I got to stick with the pineapple.
I think it has to be a pineapple. It's a great one.
I think it would make a great canvas for carving in terms of like the shadows and texture you could get using the, you know, the outer skin and the inner flesh. All of this sounds terrible.
I like that. Rob, what kind of fruit would you like your visage carved upon? Do you think if you put like- When we here at Spotify for memorialize you.
Do you think if you put like here at Spotify, do you think if you put like a hair straightener to the strands to the greenery at the top of the pineapple, could you get it to curve down as hair? Is that a thing that is within the power of the pineapple? Well, I don't think it's a hair straightener. I think what you have to do is you have to sever the stem, take the individual sort of things off and then like reattach them in a hair like setting.
Sounds wonderful. I think it would turn out beautifully.
I think you're on the right track where it's got to be something hardy, clearly something big enough to make a head out of. And I want to reclaim a fruit that I feel like just gets a lot of flack for no reason.
And that's my beloved honeydew. So shout out to the honeydew, which I think would make for a great carving fruit.
And I think would display my head particularly well. I actually do think a honeydew suits your head.
Thank you. Well, it's a disgusting fruit, but I think I understand.
I take back the thank you then. This is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax.
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See guaranteed details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.
Yeah, we must talk about it. Which is the tune that the dentist, question mark, is whistling at the opening of this episode.
I want to take you on a journey that I went through with this, with this particular. Please.
I heard the whistling. I was like, I know that fucking song, but I was, um, I can't remember if I was watching the screeners with captions or not, or I can't remember, but I was just sort of like, how am I going to figure out what this is? Yeah.
I was like, I know it. I can't Shazam this.
There's no lyrics for me to Google, but I know this tune. God damn it.
And then it again uh with a friend of mine and she was like is that the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald and i was like what you just what a poll and then we were watching the second time with the captions on and it says in the caption like continues to whistle the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald and i was like oh the answer was there all along i really thought i was gonna have to do some major detective work on this. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
And I was like, Oh, the answer was there all along. I really thought I was going to have to do some major detective work on

this.

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

Yeah.

There is something to the Gordon Lightfoot element.

There's a lot of things around the edges of severance that are like

vaguely Canadian happening.

And I don't know what to make of that other than the fact that they

shoot some of the show in New York.

And it might be as simple as that for geographic purposes sometimes.

But I'm just going to say I am flagging that it's a Canadian artist. A sad shipwreck.
And there's a line in this part that he's whistling about Lake Superior, quote, never gives up her dead. Yeah.
We got a couple emails about this. This one from Mikhail S.
says,

could Mark's quest to the underworld for Gemma slash Miss Casey Yeah. We got a couple emails about this.
This one from Mikael S. says,

Could Mark's quest to the underworld for Gemma slash Miss Casey be as doomed as Orpheus?

Is Lumen the Lake Superior here too determined to maintain its grip on the dead?

It has swallowed for everyone, for anyone to ever really get them back.

A depressing thought, much like the song, but it does seem like a pointed musical choice.

I mean, obviously, it could not be a more pointed musical choice than picking this. Weird podcast moment on the official pod, and I think this is the last official pod reference I have to make today.
Adam Scott, before they sort of got into it, he always says, we're going to dive into this episode. He loves a deep dive.
He loves that. Who doesn't? who doesn't know if it's like you know uh a nod to jason and mal or whatever but he loves he loves the phrase a deep dive and but he really emphasized it this week in a really odd way to my ears can can you recreate what he did uh the quote is we're gonna he's like we're gonna dive into the episode we're going deep i don't know it was just like honestly i should have clipped it for you to listen to it was the internet because he says something similar some other podcasts okay now that i explained it to you it really does sound like i'm grasping it at straws but or it sounds like he really is a big binge head you know it's one of the two i just felt like maybe he was like coding something about there's a lot of water-based imagery inside of lumen anyway um what do you think i love that this is the straw that you grasped at but this this is why you're you this is why you're the best joe no stone unturned no no intonation uninterrogated.
I don't know that I'm the best, but Lumen Dentist, what do you make of a Lumen Dentist going down the elevator with some tools? I mean, no fucking clue. Dentist seems like a generous interpretation of what's going on there, but some kind of surgeon, it seems.
Were those not dental tools? i think they were tools to fiddle with something is it something in a brain is it something in a mouth is it something in the human body otherwise we're gonna have to consult the doctors on the pit for that to me i think the takeaway for me was less who is this guy and what is his medical profession although i am interested in that and more o and d clearly has a wide array of fabricating responsibilities beyond the goofy paintings and the pictograms and we've just we've only begun to scratch the surface of everything that that department is responsible for it was like was it like hand sanitizer like large bottles of hand sanitizer is that what it like green gel of some kind, some kind of sanitizing gel,

but yeah, there's a lot going on there and a lot going on there.

That is quite mysterious as well.

The,

um,

the,

the tools didn't read to me as like your classic tray of torture device.

Oh no.

I thought like they were like brain chip tools to me.

That's what it looked like to me.

Oh,

what do you know about brain?

You know, I have a lot of experience. I do a lot of like backdoor in-home surgery you know just like kidney removals and whatnot and i will say that looks like a classic set of brain chip tools okay um pie apple bombing at gmail.com if you are noah wiley's dr robbie and you have other ideas of what those tools might do.
He was wearing something that was slightly giving dentists to me,

this sort of like white short sleeved uniform-esque situation.

Also, dentists, because of Marathon Man, why not make it a triple feature?

Miller's crossing the substance of Marathon Man.

Because of Marathon Man, dentists and torture always sort of like go hand in hand for me i was detecting some dentist trauma in you making this very quick association i mean my dentist told me i have great dental hygiene so i i like going to the dentist you may not be i'm i'm still skeptical of your of your brain chip meddling uh expertise but we do know that you have nba. Oh, okay.
So we have a question for you from our listener, Rami. He says, Ben Stiller, famously a diehard basketball fan.
There's absolutely no way the quote, no malice palace sign is not a reference to malice at the palace where the NBA players quote fought back and were then severely punished. Can you explain this reference to me and also our listeners? Yeah, look, I think the reason Malice Palace works in both cases is because it rhymes.
But the Malice at the Palace in NBA terms for the uninitiated was an event in 2004 at a game between the Pistons and the Pacers. Ron Artest, a somewhat volatile player for the Pacers, was laying on the scorerers table as the refs were like adjudicating some

bullshit that had happened on the court and a fan threw a cup a beverage of some kind i think it was

a beer and it hit him on the table like the fans grew restless he threw it it hit him ron artest

now uh actually i was gonna say now meta world peace but he's gone through 50 different name

changes since then my all due respect to meta uh jumped up off the table stormed into the stands

We'll be right back. I was going to say now Metta World Peace, but he's gone through 50 different name changes since then.
My all due respect to Metta jumped up off the table, stormed into the stands, started punching this guy. Teammates started coming in after him, also just punching and grabbing random fans and all out like melee happened on the court.
Oh, my God. Jermaine O'Neal, another player for the Pacers, wound up so far.
It looked like he might end a man's life, but mercifully slipped on the court and pulled back just slightly enough that no serious contact was made, at least not enough to end that guy's life. Long story short, lots of players got suspended.
It was like a black eye on the NBA for a very long time. The commissioner of the league threw the book at these players, understandably so, for jumping into the stands and beating on paying customers.
But also no one really came out of it looking great. You know, it's not a good situation for literally anyone involved.
Don't throw beverages or food items at professional athletes. If you're a professional athlete, maybe don't punch people who throw things at you.
All right. So on the one hand, just fun because it because it rhymes yep but also maybe just sort of an encapsulation of a failed uprising and ill-advised uprising uprising seems strong and generous uh for what happened at the mouse of the palace and look i have time to explore that particular event from all angles but i do not think it was an uprising okay great um let's talk about birving everybody's talking about it everybody's talking about birving um so we've already talked about the funeral we've already talked about the phone call let's talk about just in case folks did not do a complete rewatch of season one i had a lot of people ask me this they're like who do who do you think is going to be playing Fields? The good news is who's Bert's husband.
We've been invited to dinner. We've been asked to bring an expensive bottle of red wine.
You know, we're going to meet Fields. We already know who's playing Fields and we're so lucky.
It's John Noble. Oh, come on.
Who a lot of people know from Fringe or a lot of people know from lord of the rings he plays denethor the steward of gondor so uh is he is he going to mash a cherry tomato in one of these scenes that's really all cherry tomatoes at dinner how could you not do it um i don't know if they have if they have the restraint to uh. But yeah, cherry tomatoes could be on the menu.
I'm really excited for this. I'm thrilled we're going to go, I assume, we're going into the Burt Fields home for dinner.
Oh, yeah. Hopefully serenaded by Pippin, you know.
Or is that Mary? God, I always get Mary and Pippin confused. No, it's Pippin.
Okay. It's Billy Boyd himself.
If you were told to bring an expensive bottle of red wine to a dinner, Rob, yes. How expensive is that bottle of wine? Depends on who asks you.
Okay. I think you got it.
What if I ask you and say, Rob, come to dinner, bring an expensive bottle of red wine. See, you would never do that i would this is this is the catch i feel like if someone tells you to bring an expensive bottle of wine it's either one a joke or two the thing you need to take very very seriously yeah uh so in this case it reads more as a bit of a bit of a wink and so i think you can get away with just like a nice enough bottle oh god i thought he was like really you thought he was definitely serious about this yeah i did i did so what would you walkin says everything with a little twinkle yes uh under these circumstances look also mysteries need to be unraveled you're trying to at least get something from this person whether it's personal whether it's business like i think we're all trying to figure that out for burving but everybody's talking about it so why not splurge a little bit yeah and relative relative to a lumen salary i think i think he could spring for a for a 40 bottle of wine okay 40 to 50 bottle of wine i was gonna say 50 i think that's well within range like i would buy a more expensive bottle of wine if someone didn't ask me and I wanted to impress them.
Sure. But if they ask me and I'm like, no matter who asks me, I'm a little pissed that they felt like they needed to articulate that.
So I'm definitely capping it at 50. 50 is as high as I'm going.
If someone asks you to bring an expensive bottle of wine, bring like fucking barefoot or whatever, you know, like they deserve it at that point. Exactly.
All right. We talked, you talked a bit about the Dylan's eulogy, but I do want to like point out one line that caught my eye.
Dylan used the phrase, suck my own fuck. Yeah.
Okay. And I would like to play a clip for you now, please.
I already know is you can go suck a fuck oh please tell me elizabeth how exactly does one suck a fuck how does one suck a fuck um i literally said this into my living room as soon as it came out like how can you if you are as millennial coded as at least i am you you classify yourself as millennial joe yeah uh how can you not reach for this place immediately here's here's the deal Rob that's not true of every millennial and I just want to say this yesterday I was had the privilege of recording with Bill Simmons Molly Rubin and Bill was like do I have Rob our most unlikely podcasting duo on the network wow and I was like why and his explanation was only complimentary to you about how he thought you were when when they hired you he thought you were just a basketball guy and he didn't know you had this sort of like pop culture side to you but i was just like you like there are references that you and like not that we're alone in the world and having donnie darko references but i was just like i knew immediately that you would know that that is a Donnie Darko reference. It simply has to be.
It has to be. And also the funny thing about Bill saying that is he's the person who paired us together in the first place and so he saw some weird alchemy somewhere that suggested that we should do this together.
That's why he's the podfather. Okay um here's a wild theory that's running around burning up Reddit.

Ragabi, basement dweller that she is, is wearing these earrings that the camera sort of focuses on a bit.

Okay.

And they are the exact, I think, exact same earrings that Helena Egan wore when we met her at the end of season one. Wow.
Sort of gala situation. And so the question is, are they some sort of like lumen issued, you know, something? Be it like a here's your gold watch.
I was about to say. Here's your earrings or are they a device of some kind? So there is, you know, when I when I watched this episode a second time with a friend of mine, her theory, which had never really occurred to me, she thinks the whole Rugabi thing is still Lumen.
That Rugabi is like... False flagging it.
Right. Pretending this whole reintegration thing, but she's still actually working for Lumen.
i'm not all in on that yeah but um to your point i love to just entertain every idea and the matching earrings is very odd to me so um what do you think about that could i could i take this crazy theory one level deeper please always down to the snow fortress level no one ever needs to go to the snow fortress level of anything anymore after last week uh what if they are in fact not her own earrings like i guess my question is i did not clock these earrings depending on when they appear in the episode could they in fact be earrings that she dug out of gemma's stuff and is wearing to spark the reaction in mark that she says she's trying to do by kind of like using some of her physical things. Oh, a real Cobell stealing the candle

move from last season. Exactly.
And in doing so, suggest something about maybe what Gemma was really

up to. Interesting.
We're on Earring Watch, something I did not know that I was going to say

here in 2025. It's also been huge on, I just started watching Paradise.
Are you watching you watching paradise joe no we got a lot of emails from people wanting us to cover paradise and chris see i was asking cr i was like cr do i have to watch paradise and he was like chris is basically like it would amuse me if you watch paradise i had flagged it because i love sterling k yeah of course and so i had flagged it when we were looking at stuff to cover and i'm glad in retrospect that we did not because it does not stand up to that level of scrutiny but it is very fun and very goofy and very surprising at times also very heavy and earring related subplots so earrings having a huge moment apparently in mystery box shows okay on yellow jackets as well interesting interesting okay we got a bunch of emails about inspirations for kia egan of various sort of like uh figures in our uh american industry culture that i thought it was worth talking about brady wrote in to talk about um wk kellogg we actually got several emails about about the founder of of kellogg uh over the over the years over the years, over the weeks of this podcast. Everything I know about W.K.
Kellogg, I learned from the film The Road to Wellville, starring Anthony Hopkins. As one does, yeah.
W.K. Kellogg.
One of the more perturbing films I've ever seen in my life. Because it's about sort of early wellness culture in America when we knew nothing and we're doing absolutely banana stuff in the name of wellness.
We still are, but... I was about to say, we haven't really come that long away, really.
Wait till you see White Lotus season three. But this is what Brady wrote.
He was like, W.K. Kellogg, of course, invented cornflakes to curb sexual desire, ran his own sanitarium where patients would dance on the rooftops and lead a and led a hugely successful campaign to normalize circumcision in the U.S.
Talk about severance. Michigan is home to Henry Ford as well.
Another influence on the fictional cure, no doubt. Indeed, when the painting of cure overlooking lakes on a cliffside is shown the land below resembles a mitten i know the show is set in a made-up state but where the setting pulls its real-life influence seems intentional um so we've got henry ford yep wk kellogg yeah and then fiona wrote in to talk about joseph smith and mormonism Of course.
I mean I mean that one is also right there the main point that she was making the one that really hit for me is the idea of taming tempers in a cave in the woods this lore that we learn and Joseph Smith and the idea of Joseph Smith finding golden plates in the woods and using these special peepstone glasses in order to read it and stuff like that and the way that the joseph smith mythology changed to sort of suit the needs of the mormon church um as does this like pure egan uh story organized religions would never do such a thing they would never subtly alter their texts over time through convenient like lapses in translation perhaps or anything related to modernization to make them more palatable they would never do such a thing and you're right and you're right and you know you know that as well as i think you know uh brain chip uh devices when you see one okay um i've just had a couple other sort of pineapple and greek mythology based things to get to but i wanted wanted to ask, like, what other scenes do you want to talk about or character stuff do you want to talk about in this episode? I would like to take us back to Milchik's first debrief with the MDR team, as he is explaining, as we mentioned, the answers to their very specific and individual questions. But also, I think putting such a nice and soft spin on this idea of Helena egan infiltrating heli's body to be a part of the team and in the most benevolent way possible which we know is always swedish yes uh the glockshipping yeah just which is just a marvelous introduction by the way how do you actually pronounce it do we know like oh i'm not swedish and I'm not going to try but I do know that everyone who is Swedish said what

when they heard that pronunciation of it i will say dylan's ear though very tuned because he he brings it back pretty quickly like to throw it back in milchik's face and yeah i would say a similar enough pronunciation for being caught off guard with some random swedish at like 8 30 in the morning so shout out to Dylan um Tramiel Tillman's uh delivery of that of everything he's wonderful is wonderful but yeah that was that was like what I really loved about that is because uh I think the joke you made in the first episode this season about Helena posing as Heli was Undercover Boss, which was like hilarious. Turned out to be true.
It's literally canon, Joe.

I love it. in the first episode of the season about helena posing as heli was undercover boss which was like turned out to be true it's literally canon joe i love that this is like classy swedish undercover boss uh which again if you're swedish pineapple bobbing and gmail.com i know that's not how you pronounce it um and i would say true to undercover boss, Helena wants no part of going back amongst the people ever again.

Like she is hit it and quit it.

She's out of there.

She got what she needed.

Does not have any interest in returning to the severed floor and basically has to be dragged into doing it.

No.

I mean, actually, that's not true.

I think she's eager to go down herself.

Oh, but not as hell.

Yes, yes, yes.

That is true.

She's like, I'll just do it again.

I'll just I'll just go down by myself.

I'll pretend again.

Yes.

Maybe I have sex with Mark again.

I got it. to go down herself but oh but not as hell yes yes yes that is she's like i'll just do it again i'll just i'll just go down by myself i'll pretend again yes maybe have sex with mark again that would be nice can you imagine if she did the double deception and mark fell for it like there's no coming back from that mark if you fell for that it's over it's already it's already pretty bleak yeah i think i think she's she would love to go back down and hang out she she loved doing that.
She did. And so when she's like, they're animals, that's not how she actually feels.
She was like, what she really feels is I felt alive for the first time in my cold, cold existence. You know? It is very true.
And I do appreciate, as we are getting all these answers, as we are getting all these revelations within this episode, And there are many, including introducing the idea of Heli back to the MDR team.

We still do have just like the bomb in the back pocket of the fact that Heli does not know that Helena and Mark had sex on the Orpo.

And for Milchik to throw it in Mark's face so clearly and so maliciously

as he so often does,

like the man knows how to wear a turtleneck and he knows how to deliver

like a very frightening line of dialogue. And he knows how to stand way too close.
Incredibly. That's not an elevator for two people.
And frankly, the question of, can I come in? The answer is a hard no. You're going to have to wait for the next one.
I'll meet you on the outside. Yeah, for sure.
Come on out. Yeah.
Are you ready for more pineapple lore? It just goes deeper. I thought you would never ask.
Hit me. Okay, great.
Okay, so what do we have so far? We have, it's for like polyamory, group sex, right? Is something we learned about pineapple? Apparently so. Margita said something from the Smithsonian Library and Archives about, titled, The Prickly Meetings of the Pineapple.
Very good. During the 18th century, the pineapple was established as a symbol of hospitality, with its prickly, tufted shape incorporated in gateposts, door entryways, and finials, and silverware, and ceramics.
The motif continues, prevalent in Christmas decorations in Williamsburg today. But with pride a place on the lavish dining tables of the enslavers of North America, the pineapple continues its association with slavery.

George Washington, who first encountered the pineapple at the plantations of Barbados, had them imported from the West Indies, a port in the triangular trade of enslaved Africans.

So luxury, Christmas, slavery. I mean, that's the severance mood board as far as I can tell.
That's the trifecta, baby. That's the trifecta right there.
And there's also, I would say, the sort of vague gesture away from office life towards something exotic and tropical, right? Like every illusion we get, you know, to Irving's Audi going on a cruise, to the music that's playing after the funeral, to the existence of these fruits and the way that they are sort of held over people's heads as something to covet and want. It is very longing out of your cubicle for the vacation that you can never have.
And this is the closest that they can get to it. And it is very, very sad, Jo.
Do you think that they think the outside is just like sort of this tropical paradise when in fact it's the bleak midwinter always outside of lumen they would be so disappointed to find out what the real world is actually like including the midwest winter which is no joke i also i also love that um you know when mark talks about the fact that he got all wet falling like that that they told him had a ropes course, it seems like, on their orpo. It plays better than a near drowning.
It does. It's not outside the realm of what they set up.
There were tents, marshmallows. I could see day two being a ropes course.
But I guess they didn't mention. Also, we hauled animatronic versions of you out into the wilderness to point you towards a cave.
The other thing about the animatronics that people did point out was that the animatronic, and we say this theoretically, we assume it's an animatronic at this point. Helly has a bit of like an askew head situation, like evocative of when she tried to hang herself.
So if that is true, look, fucked up work by o and d or whoever came up with the animatronics like that's just nasty business and uncalled for but also if i think it speaks to not everyone knowing and maybe where the circle of trust is as far as helena's infiltration like clearly milchik knew some people in the control room knew but this felt like drum, but this felt like a pretty tight circle of people who understood that that was Helena on the severed floor. Real Haunting of Hill House vibe with a broken neck lady.
But I think also I like that as sort of like an illusion because, yeah, she's awkwardly sort of like bent over in a way that the other ones aren't. Yeah.
But I don't know like that necessarily means that o and d who of course made it because they as we found out this week make literally everything i don't know that we're meant to then infer that they know everything that happened um last but not least tim wrote in about on on the greek mythology front team tim wrote in about the sort of maze-like quality of the hallways, reminding him of the story of the Minotaur in Greek mythology, this idea of a monster at the center of a maze. I think what was so effective about that running sequence at the beginning of the season, as sort of annoyed as Adam Scott seems to have been to have filmed it over the course of several months.
Can you blame him?

It really did establish for us, like every time we're down there, it now feels more claustrophobic than it ever did before for me, just knowing how sort of Warren-like it is. I mean, we walked with them through there before.
We knew that there were like a lot of twists and turns and blank white hallways, But about the length of that running sequence just really you know sets the world for us when we're down there in the in the underground so and a great bit of filmmaking too because if you've seen any of the visual effects like previs shots of this show it's a pretty limited space of hallway that they're actually working with and yet they make it feel infinite and i think one of the benefits of having these sorts of drab office interiors is you can do wonders to stretch them out to elongate them to to push them like a little bit past the point of absurdity and i i am always so interested by like the office satire elements of this show and ultimately how they are tying into the themes and they're tying into this loneliness like how they are making characters feel more isolated um and maybe never more never more pointedly than when someone's walking down a long ass white bleak hallway with not a person in sight not a door in sight no clear way to understand even where they're going we love a long uh white hallway especially on an apple uh property certainly and um just to, Rob Mahoney loves an office satire,

hates the office.

That has been.

Also,

I will say the bit about Milchick not properly applying his paper clips to his reports,

a little too office space for me.

A little,

a little TPS report,

a little TPS report.

Like I thought,

I thought we're getting maybe a little too cute with that part of it.

Anything else you want to say about this episode? Just to return to one of our recurring bits, as listeners have been emailing us about what they would sever from their own lives. Joyce emailed us to say that she would sever a great candidate that many people ended up echoing.
Commuting. Very relatable.
Very understandable. And she noted that at least her innie would get to listen to some ringer pods as they are commuting from place to place, which I'm certainly thankful of.
But I'm also starting to detect a bit of a theme, Joe, between the commuting, the exercise, people flying, people doing their chores. Like these are all things that people are wanting to sever out of their lives.
And they're also time that they spend with us. So I i'm starting to wonder are we severance are i'm starting to take it personally yeah so easily severable from your lives dear listeners but also are we you know the little bit of sugar that's making the corporate life go down more smoothly like our is that our role in the universe uh how do you feel about that because i feel like your your face has been imprinted on a marshmallow i wish i wish i was at that level of authority where i would be but no i i am but the marshmallow i am but the one being imprinted on and fed to the masses to make them get through their little orto experience all right well this has been uh another uh marshmallow episode from us your lures to get through your corporate day.

Thanks so much to Donnie Beecham for his work on this episode.

Thanks to Justin Sales for his work on the feed.

Thanks to John Richter for helping me find my way into the void.

Will I?

No, I'll be in the void, I think, for the rest of the season because I'm down here for the.

So just get used to it.

Yeah, get comfortable.

And we'll see you next time.