‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 4: The Lumon Work Retreat From Hell

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Speaker 6 She's not healing! She's an Egan!

Speaker 6 Turn her back, Mr. Milchak!

Speaker 6 Turn her back! Goddamn, let's not do it! Yes!

Speaker 6 Do it, Seth!

Speaker 3 Hello, welcome back to the Press Use TV podcast feed. I'm Joyna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 3 Rob is still podcasting from the void.

Speaker 2 If you're watching this on video, live from the severed floor, Joe.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Rob's an indie today. I'm an Audi, and we're going to switch places next week because I'm going out to LA and Rob's coming back here to the Bay Area.
So we are swapping places.

Speaker 3 Before we start to talk about today's banger episode of Severance, season two, episode four,

Speaker 3 I want to do some like quick programming reminders bits here and there. If you missed it, Rob and I did a sort of brief, like little video-exclusive check-in on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer news.

Speaker 3 Rob and I are huge Buffy Vampire Slayer fans, and there's news of a reboot

Speaker 3 sequel, et cetera, that's coming down the pike. And we just spent, I don't know, 30 minutes or so talking about our innermost thoughts and fears about that.
So that's on YouTube.

Speaker 3 If you want to go to the

Speaker 3 rare TV feed on YouTube, you can

Speaker 3 watch Rob and the Void and me at home talking about that.

Speaker 3 Also on this feed, stay tuned. We've got massive White Lotus coverage coming up.
We're going to be doing two prestige episodes per episode of White Lotus.

Speaker 3 So you'll get sort of the instant reaction, Bill Simmons, Mallory Rubin, Joanna Robinson experience.

Speaker 3 And then you will get the sort of like deep dive, send us your emails, theories, and whatever, Rob Mohani, Joanna Robinson experience. So those are two different flavors that taste great together.

Speaker 3 And that is how we are covering White Lotus this season. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How do you think we're going to differentiate ourselves, Joe, other than clearly the deep dive, the theories?

Speaker 2 Like, are we just going to devote 20 to 30 minutes every week for Walton Goggins fits, the innermost thoughts of whatever Carrie Koon's character is doing at a given point in time?

Speaker 2 Many passion projects for us in this particular season.

Speaker 3 I think Carrie Corner is a must, and I think perhaps we should consider

Speaker 3 recording all of our episodes while wearing the Walton Goggins goggles in order to get the full experience.

Speaker 2 I'm open to that.

Speaker 2 Does it make for good video content? I guess we'll see.

Speaker 3 Well, tune in to find out.

Speaker 3 We will be covering the pit a bit more. We're sporadically checking in on the pit here and there, a show we're both really enjoying.

Speaker 3 And Yellow Jackets was originally going to be on this feed, but now, given everything that we're doing with White Lotus, et cetera, Mallory Rubin and I will be covering that over on the House of Our feed.

Speaker 3 So if you want Yellow Jackets season three coverage, Buzz Buzz Baby, you will find it over on the House of Our feed.

Speaker 3 So that's a lot of stuff. That is what we were doing here on the Prestige feed.
But right now, it's season two, episode four: Woes Hollow Time.

Speaker 3 This episode is written by Anna O'Young Munch and directed by Ben Stiller. And it is, we're leaving Devin, Natalie, Ricken, and Harmony Cobel behind

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 Seth, Miss Wong,

Speaker 3 Helena, Dylan, Mark, and especially Irving

Speaker 3 are out here for the Ort Bo.

Speaker 3 There's copious luxury meets, and most important, Ramahoni, we go bobbing for some truth, would you not say?

Speaker 2 It's the best kind of bobbing you can do, in my experience.

Speaker 3 Here we go. Um, this is a wild episode.
Uh, this is not at all what we were expecting. That we had like some guesses about what this episode would be.

Speaker 3 So, if you've ever needed proof that Rob and I are not watching ahead, go listen to what we thought episode four of this.

Speaker 2 Listen to how wrong we were and are on a regular basis. Yes, deeply wrong.

Speaker 3 Um, but let's start, let's start.

Speaker 3 Opening image,

Speaker 2 Toturo

Speaker 3 infers as Irving in the middle of a frozen lake.

Speaker 3 Did you think, first of all, I want your like

Speaker 3 big picture thoughts on the episode, whether or not you liked it. And then also on this image,

Speaker 3 what did you think when you were in a dream? What did you think when you first saw the opening image of this episode?

Speaker 2 Love the episode. This is the good stuff.

Speaker 2 And I think it's kind of severance at its best in a a lot of ways, which is odd to say because it's a setting that's totally unfamiliar to us, a structure that is very unfamiliar to us.

Speaker 2 We're diverging from the formula of what Severance has been, but it can be as baffling as ever, as ominous as ever. And I think totally struck exactly the chord that I love so much about this show.

Speaker 2 And some of that is, I think, from the disorientation that you're alluding to opening this way.

Speaker 2 As I'm saying, a completely unfamiliar setting. The last we saw was Mark being maybe reintegrated reintegrated or maybe beginning to be reintegrated.

Speaker 2 Could this episode be a construction within Mark's mind? Could this be an actual physical space, which I think it ultimately plays out as being?

Speaker 2 But the fact that it opens in that manner,

Speaker 2 given the way we ended things in episode three, is just such a thrilling way to start.

Speaker 2 And I think the sort of cold open format, no opening credits, if I'm remembering correctly from this episode, like we don't get any divergences from this little, this little adventure we're on, this little Orto experience.

Speaker 3 I had this moment where I was like so certain we were right about what this episode was going to be that I, my brain kept trying to

Speaker 3 figure out a way that that could still be true, even though we opened very clearly in Irving's point of view. And I was like, that's probably not going to happen inside of Mark's head.
Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Probably not, but maybe. You know, maybe it could be an out-of-body experience.
Maybe it could be transported. There is something about the furs and the cold

Speaker 2 that is very third-level deep inception, you know, that kind of reads in a way where it's like, oh, this is a dream state. There is something so ethereal about it.

Speaker 2 Turns out it's just Severance being creepy as usual. And I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 I was at a party once the year that Inception came out, and someone was talking to me, and he was like, I want to go down to like the snow fortress layer of your mind. And I was like, Someone,

Speaker 3 we're done having this conversation now, I think. No, just wouldn't recommend inception-level

Speaker 3 pickup lines at a party

Speaker 3 in a year, honestly. Okay, so

Speaker 3 what I loved about this episode, and among many other things, this is very

Speaker 3 international assassin. This is an episode of the leftovers that you and I talked about on this very feed fairly recently.

Speaker 3 It is

Speaker 3 visually quite stunning.

Speaker 3 There's, you know, if you listen to the official sufference podcast, they talked about how they filmed all of this sort of in and around the Catskills in New York, how how they were on location for a lot of this.

Speaker 3 Even this opening sequence, which looks so strange, you feel like it's digitally created.

Speaker 3 Adam Scott was saying he was actually on a cliff and Totoro was actually on a frozen lake and they were actually yelling at each other. Wow.
And that's...

Speaker 3 stunning.

Speaker 3 You know, they've somehow found the world's largest waterfall and shot next to it. It's just like incredible stuff.
You know, they actually like put a cubicle in the middle of a forest.

Speaker 3 Again, that looks digitally created, but they actually did it. And I think that gives the, you know, and there's like shots inside of this episode.

Speaker 3 They're dressed in these incredible furs, as you mentioned. And there's shots, especially with the four of them in frame together.

Speaker 3 It looks like an album cover. I started looking at photos of the Beatles.
I was like, is there a Beatles album cover that looks like this?

Speaker 3 The closest, of course, we get is health, but no one is dressed in head-to-toe furs in that album cover.

Speaker 3 So I couldn't make the one-to-one comp, but like it was, it was definitely framed up as like, this is the band and perhaps the last time we're going to see the band together, because the question I want to ask you, and this is sort of skipping to the end of the episode, but I think it's worth opening with, do you feel like this is the last time we see Irving be Irving's Innie?

Speaker 3 What do you think?

Speaker 2 I do think it probably is.

Speaker 2 And I don't know what that signals in terms of the overall structure of the timeline of the show.

Speaker 2 I think one of the things that's so thrilling about these last two episodes is Mark is getting reintegrated more quickly than we probably would have imagined if we were to sketch out how this season might go.

Speaker 2 And ultimately, if this is pulling the plug on Irving B and certainly the Helena reveal being a part of that, we're burning through some of the big developments that we are anticipating in this season pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 And that's so exciting and so energizing in terms of what the rest of the season could be, because I do think this is... I mean, basically, I think there's two paths here, Joe.

Speaker 2 And correct me if you see a third one here. Irving B is gone from the severed floor, or Irving B is clean slated, memory wiped as an any and basically factory reset.

Speaker 2 Do you see a third path here as far as the any version of Irving continuing on this show?

Speaker 3 A later reintegrated version

Speaker 3 is, I think, the only other thing I can see. And we'll talk about clean slate.
We'll talk about the various contingencies. We got a little bit more information on that stuff inside of this episode.

Speaker 3 But I think the way it was, I guess I'm just thinking more sort of in a storytelling sense. What does death mean on a show like Severance?

Speaker 3 Like this was shot very much like, you know, when Irving makes his stand, which we heard at the top of the episode, and I guess really belatedly, spoilers for episode four of Severance, but like when Irving makes his stand, knowing.

Speaker 3 like fully knowing that he is putting himself at risk for termination and Irving specifically being the character in season one who was most closely associating termination with death when Burt was retired and Irving lost his shit because he's just like, you're just killing him essentially.

Speaker 3 So putting himself on the line for

Speaker 3 Helly, for Mark, for Dylan, knowing that he's putting his own sort of innie at risk and walking into the woods, cameras on the back of his face, then we get the front of his face, the smirk he gives Milchik before he goes this sort of like sense of Pyrrhic victory, the score, everyone's reactions.

Speaker 3 I'm like, this is a big character death moment on a TV show, but of course we're going to see John Tatoro some more.

Speaker 3 And of course, there could be a twist in the plot where we turn Irving B back on for some reason or another, or reintegration.

Speaker 3 So just sort of like taking the standard rules of television inside of this sci-fi concept. It's like how we talk about it in the Marvel Cinematic universe right now.

Speaker 3 Everything's possible in the multiverse. Robert Downey Jr.
is coming back because everything's possible in the multiverse.

Speaker 3 Anything's possible in a show where you can turn people on and off with a switch,

Speaker 3 with a walkie-talkie call, you know?

Speaker 2 And that's where Severance gets to have its cake and eat it too, because we do get the stakes of this maybe being a send-off for Irving B.

Speaker 2 But as you said, we don't have to say goodbye to one of the beloved actors on the show and the best performances on this show.

Speaker 2 And if this is the last we see of Irving B, I will be very sad about that.

Speaker 2 I've grown to really love this character. And even within this episode, which is very much a detective Irving on the case kind of structure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 He is allowed to be that and to be deeply skeptical of Helena, as he has been now for this entire season, but also still kind of credulous about the greater Keir myth.

Speaker 2 And I love that balance of somebody who, because of the construct of the world he engages in, still lives within the walls that Lumen has set out for him.

Speaker 2 But within those walls, he sees someone he knows pretty well. acting bizarrely and is really the only person to single and figure that out.

Speaker 3 He's got some night gardener questions as did we um

Speaker 2 what was the vest what was he wearing what was he doing what do you wear a reflective vest to garden a night probably you know i would think um

Speaker 3 i will miss i don't know

Speaker 3 i guess yeah we've

Speaker 2 no we have not heard audi irving speak right just just paint Just listen to Ace of Spades, just slam night coffees.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Maybe he said hello to his dog, but I don't know if we have. I will say I will miss the weird mid-Atlantic accent that John Chaturo has affected for this role.

Speaker 3 That like he and Patricia Arquette seem to agree that they were going to do this like weird accent work for their role. I love it, and I will miss it if Audi Irving does not have that accent.

Speaker 2 Now that you mentioned it, I think we do hear him speak very briefly when Milchik shows up to his house, pineapple in hand, to recruit him back, but we don't get a lot of dialogue.

Speaker 2 And so it's a little tough to hear if the accents will continue.

Speaker 3 I'm hoping and praying that it'll work.

Speaker 3 You mentioned we don't get an opening credits, but I did want to, I think we should do sort of a regular opening credits check-in because as they mentioned,

Speaker 3 there will be like moments in the opening credits that once we watch the episodes, we'll go, aha. So I would say we see in the opening credits, ordinarily we see Mark out on an ice flow.

Speaker 3 Like that's part of

Speaker 3 the opening credits.

Speaker 3 And then also in the opening credits, there's the glitch between Hallie, Helena, and Miss Casey, which which we get inside of this episode as well so those are just two little two little opening credits moments that uh are reflected inside of this episode well what was what was your read on that glitch within this episode not to jump ahead yeah but during mark and clearly helena's own uh

Speaker 2 ort bow encounter you know their their own little time away uh a little retreat within the retreat. We get this glitch flash as Severance is ought to do and loves to do from Helena to Gemma.

Speaker 2 Do you read that as Mark's reintegration starting to click into effect? Is that the only way to read it, or did you see something else in that moment?

Speaker 3 Oh, I think there's plenty of ways you could read it, but that was what I was hoping it was because we had erroneously assumed that given what we saw at the end of last episode, we would be from now on fully reintegrated Mark.

Speaker 3 And that is incorrect. It seems like they're going to slow roll this out.

Speaker 3 And so this is like, I think they needed to do something inside of this episode to give us like a flash of reintegration otherwise you're sort of like hey what did we do are we just forgetting what we did at the end of last week's episode you know so that was sort of my take on it

Speaker 3 i mentioned leftovers

Speaker 3 i am duty bound to also mention lost uh really quickly

Speaker 3 this show is baiting you into it at this point it's not my fault no uh the video that they watch on top of the cliff of milchik talking about the orpo and everything else is maybe the clearest lost reference yet that we've gotten on this show.

Speaker 3 Because if you've never watched Lost, occasionally they stumble across these instructional videos from a figure who goes by different names: Pierre Chang, Marvin Keel, Edgar Halowax, Mark Wickman, there's more.

Speaker 3 Anyway, it's always like this. It's like a weird sort of soundtrack, like score in the background, and then like glitched and edited through.

Speaker 3 So it's like, it's a direct lost reference, the way that this video is presented here.

Speaker 2 With the weird soundtrack you're describing, is it a similar, like I particularly love that it's not just the cure anthem, but like cure anthem.midi is effectively the effect I'm going for here.

Speaker 2 Is it similar kind of chiptune effect?

Speaker 3 Not quite because what they find are, I think they were made in like the 70s. So they're like real to real, but

Speaker 3 it is a sort of a similar vibe. But yeah,

Speaker 3 great MIDI work. You're absolutely right.
Also, I will say, this is where I'm reaching, but I will say TED Sex

Speaker 3 is a classic lost staple. Trek Across the Island, classic lost staple, etc., etc.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about Heli and Helena inside of this episode.

Speaker 2 Please.

Speaker 3 Hely is finally back. Vindication for everyone who believed that this was Helena

Speaker 3 undercover as Helie from the start. There was a moment inside of this episode where I actually experienced my highest level of doubt about whether or not we were right

Speaker 3 before we were obviously conclusively proved right. Yes.
But I will say that of all of her acting skills,

Speaker 3 of which

Speaker 3 Helena, very spotty actress in her Helie role throughout the season, but her sort of bewilderment when they first are in the wilderness here,

Speaker 3 she kind of sold that. I was like, She did.

Speaker 3 Is this Helie?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think she was bewildered, though.

Speaker 3 Would Helena do this?

Speaker 3 But, you know,

Speaker 3 it was Helie all along.

Speaker 2 I think there's something kind of perfect there in the honestly, there is acting and there is not acting.

Speaker 2 And I think what's so fun about this episode is parsing the moments from Helena and trying to figure out what is Helena herself reacting to authentically and what is her trying to play something as Heli.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, her being bewildered in the woods, I kind of believe in the same sense that when she shows up to present the snow seal to Irving and kind of like chuckles nervously, very homeschool kid energy to me.

Speaker 2 You know, this is, this is a person who has not been outside a lot. And I particularly love the idea of putting her in this foreign setting.

Speaker 2 And it is to her as much as it is the Innies, it seems like. I don't think she spent a lot of time, you know, even glamping, as it were.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is

Speaker 3 halfway between regular camping and a glamp experience. They have heaters in the tent.

Speaker 2 Heaters in the tent, which is a fire hazard, we should say.

Speaker 3 Absolutely never put a heater like that in the tent. Like, I don't care if you want to cosplay

Speaker 3 LARP severance in the forest. I'm here to tell you, do not put those heaters inside of your tent.

Speaker 2 If you are going to LARP severance, don't put the heater in the tent. No.
Don't waterboard anybody.

Speaker 3 Don't eat the rotting seals-shaped thing in the water.

Speaker 2 I don't know what's going on with the rotting animals, but yeah, look, the space heater makes for a striking visual in a really beautifully evocative and I think energizing episode in that way.

Speaker 2 Like the visual language of Severance is so fun and so inviting and it's part of what makes this show as mysterious as it is.

Speaker 2 And it's details like that that really give you the lighting that you need and the background that you need.

Speaker 2 Like one thing we didn't get to talk about last week was as they're navigating the halls looking for the goat room again, you get this sort of effect where the lights are kind of turning on and off behind them, yeah, as they're moving and progressing through the hall.

Speaker 2 I love what they do with lighting on this show, yeah. And usually, that's very luminescent in the office, right? Like, that's that's very white overhead light.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, now we're getting kind of naturalistic settings for the first time, we're getting people in different spaces, we're getting Lumen employees going wild in their little glamping tents.

Speaker 2 Shout out to those kids.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 what I wrote down when

Speaker 3 Helena and Mark are having their

Speaker 3 team building encounter and

Speaker 3 they're backlit by that heater, I wrote absolute hell imagery in my notes.

Speaker 3 And what we get, we get that, and then we get the conversation they have afterwards, which I think is really useful for your question of when is Helena being sincere and when is she not?

Speaker 3 They're laying down facing each other. Their faces are half lit by the red light.
So you get that nice like severance divided energy. It's very like persona, sort of like half silhouette.

Speaker 3 And you're cutting back and forth between that and Irving in like freezing his ass off in the forest. And his face is half lit, but he's half lit blue by the moonlight.

Speaker 3 And so you've got that like classic severance red blue lighting motif. You've got the divided light on their faces.

Speaker 3 And I will just say that I think like Ben Stiller and his DP on this episode just went absolutely

Speaker 3 apeshit with the imagery in the best way.

Speaker 2 Togwhile.

Speaker 2 And thematically, too, I think in terms of the structure of this show, there's something so telling telling about the fact that the truth isolates Irving and the lies bring people like Helen and Mark together.

Speaker 3 That's so devastating to me.

Speaker 2 It's tough.

Speaker 3 To your question about, so what happens here between Mark and Hella?

Speaker 2 I just want to, I just want to say this.

Speaker 3 If you can't get informed consent from someone, this is sexual assault. This is not like Mark cannot give informed consent to this encounter.

Speaker 2 Body swapping sexual politics is

Speaker 2 dicey territory.

Speaker 3 This is this more than anything. And maybe this is a weird place to draw my line, but like I was sort of in on the idea of like a Helena redemption arc.

Speaker 3 This is

Speaker 3 really tough for me to watch her come back from. Inside of the same moment,

Speaker 3 we get this conversation where she's talking about who she doesn't like who she was on the outside.

Speaker 3 The shame she feels, which to your point, I think is genuine stuff from Helena. So like that is appealing to me emotionally, but what she does to Mark here

Speaker 3 is reprehensible, repugnant, like devastating, you know? And so like when he

Speaker 3 is able to process that beyond what he learns, the stunning information that he learns at the end of the episode, the follow-up for him of like what he's done here and then the fallout, like, I don't know, are we going to get more Helena?

Speaker 3 Are we going to get more Helly? Like,

Speaker 3 they turn Helie on at the end of this episode. Is there a reason to keep her on? Like, are we going to see how she feels about Mark having sex with Helena?

Speaker 2 Or,

Speaker 3 you know, what are we going to do with that? Is my question.

Speaker 2 I think we have to get that beat. We have to have Helly being told what just happened and everything that someone has been doing in what is her body.

Speaker 2 Like, we, I think we think about and talk about these things in a way because of the agency involved.

Speaker 2 As, you know, someone like Mark Scout has signed up to sever himself and give over part of his consciousness into this any form. But like the any form, that is their body too.

Speaker 2 And they're having to coexist within it with everything that their Audi version does.

Speaker 2 And in this case, like the Helena character has done some terrible things and has done some terrible things to your point about her arc for reasons that are very humanistically understandable, right?

Speaker 2 Like it's so fun watching her try to navigate this with Mark and what she says and doesn't say and how she's like trying to engage and connect with him.

Speaker 2 Because, on the one hand, she doesn't know Mark well enough to really be in love with him or to have feelings for him in the way that Helly did. Like, Helly and Mark have been through a lot together.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Helena saw it on tape, decided she wanted some of those smooches and more, and more, jumped in, and is so starved for not just physical contact, it seems, but just deep emotional intimacy that she's inhabiting someone else's skin to try to attain it.

Speaker 3 She's full of so much self-loathing and

Speaker 3 is like

Speaker 3 exists in a world where people look at her and don't like her that she is just desperate for someone to look at her the way that Mark looks at Helie. And so goo eyes.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she wants those goo-goo eyes, baby. On the hell imagery, I did want to read.

Speaker 3 We got several emails from people last week, not only disagreeing with how we felt about the goat room, that's its own thing, but a lot of people were like, hey, you missed this biblical illusion.

Speaker 3 So I think it's, it's worth talking about inside the context of this hell imagery here.

Speaker 3 Because we've been talking about, we talked about the Greek underworld a lot, but let's talk about Judeo-Christian underworld inside of an episode where we're getting these incredible sermons sort of situations.

Speaker 3 Anyway, Kevin D.

Speaker 2 Let me tell you, even as a raised and lapsed Catholic, this will not be the last biblical illusion we miss. You know, it's a dense book.
There's a lot to parse.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and as a die-in-the-wole atheist, I do my best.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 Kevin D wrote in to say, I was surprised you didn't touch on the biblical allusion to the parable of the lost sheep, close enough. And Mark's positioning as a savior figure.

Speaker 3 He was trying to resurrect his wife and arguably performed an exorcism of a sort at the end. Not that any Mark is a demon, but two entities possessing one body, I think, is analogous.

Speaker 3 Maybe now Mark's identity will be defined by a new contradiction, the way he is fully two people in one as Christ is fully human and fully divine, or how the Trinity is three persons in one entity.

Speaker 3 I think, like you guys, I don't want Mark to be any Jesus, but it seems like they're pointing towards that.

Speaker 3 So we got a lot of emails about the parable of the lost sheep and how close, sort of, some of what Mark was talking about in terms of like, what if it was your goat missing? Would you care?

Speaker 3 is very close to parable Jesus and the parable of the lost sheep in the Bible.

Speaker 3 So Mark being positioned as Lumen Jesus, which yes, we have explicitly said we weren't like terribly excited about, but I think, you know, if that's something that they're doing, it's worth tracking and thinking about.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And this is a show that has not just mythology, but religion so clearly on its mind. Not overtly as there is a savior-like figure, unless Mark turns out to be that or some messiah.

Speaker 2 It's more about the mythology around these things, the way figures and stories propagate.

Speaker 2 Even the, you know, the recital and the reading that we get of this fourth appendix, look, it is, it's creepy as hell. And I, I want to personally salute.

Speaker 2 whoever is in charge of literally writing these texts because they are hitting the exact strand and the exact point that I would like them to hit.

Speaker 2 And I'm having so much fun with the text within the show. But they do have kind of an old world mythological bent that is very hard to strive for when you're purposely trying to strive for it.

Speaker 3 Well, I think it's interesting that like

Speaker 3 in the Bible, again, I am an atheist, but in the Bible, but I was a child once. So I do know that there's the figure of Odin in the Bible.

Speaker 3 Onin sort of like famed,

Speaker 3 famously sort of shunned and punished for wasting, spilling his seed on the ground and wasting his seed on the ground, which is sort of exactly what we're talking about when we talk about Dieter Egan inside of this episode.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 great stuff, Severance, the Demented Show. I love you very much.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Also, on that question, I'm so glad you brought up this idea of like bodily autonomy inside of the innies and the Audi world, because I think it's good to think about that in contrast to what

Speaker 3 Helena said

Speaker 3 earlier in the season when she's like, we owe them nothing. Yep.
Like, she's talking about the Audis, but really talking about the Innies. Like, they don't really, we don't owe them anything.

Speaker 3 We don't, you know, she doesn't, she's trying to convince herself that they're not people that, you know, so she could do whatever she wants with them.

Speaker 3 Our listener, Rebecca C., wrote into,

Speaker 3 uh, reference another sort of dystopian near-future sci-fi story, Never Let Me Go, which is the Kazu Ushiguro book, which has turned into a film.

Speaker 2 This is a great call.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and says,

Speaker 3 She wrote, if you recall that book/slash movie, it's about farming kids, innies, so they can live unfulfilling lives and ultimately be organ providers

Speaker 3 for their Audis. And, like, the same as severance, you have to separate yourself from the idea of the cruelty you're doing to this innie so that you can benefit from what they provide.

Speaker 3 In Rob's case, the ability to never do the dishes. But that innie is a real person with real with real feelings who falls in love and feels pain, but is stuck doing their duty.
You feel me?

Speaker 3 So this idea inside of the story of Never Let Me Go, an incredible book and a great movie.

Speaker 2 If you, if you clone, grow humans or clone humans or whatever,

Speaker 3 you know, to help you,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 are you honor bound to treat them as a human with their own thought and mind and soul? Or are you

Speaker 3 able to think of them as merely chattel? Like, what do you do in something like this?

Speaker 2 So, you know, and I think it's an especially fascinating question for someone like Helena under these circumstances.

Speaker 2 When, as you say, she is on the record that these are not people, that they are not capable of making their own decisions.

Speaker 2 And yet, she's also somebody who, even though she may think of Mark S that way, also at least kind of wants to care about him or wants to feel a kind of connection with him.

Speaker 2 Like that paradox is really juicy.

Speaker 2 I think, again, overall, all the positions that Helena is put in within this episode, and especially when you think back on them and reflect on them or go back for a second, watch things like her cracking up at the campfire at kind of how ridiculous the appendix reads.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Because she's the only person who has like actual real-world context to be able to say, this sounds insane.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And the fact that she might not even be familiar with some of these texts that are that are read and presented to the innies.

Speaker 3 This is what we're teaching.

Speaker 2 This is our corporate. This is it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Jerking it in the forest and turning into a tree.

Speaker 3 Do you think when Helena and Mark were having their encounter in the tent, do you think Dylan went down to the waterfall to drown out the sound of it so that we didn't have to listen to it?

Speaker 2 He did say it was very smart.

Speaker 3 He thought it was a really good idea. It was very smart.

Speaker 3 When she says stuff like, that was mean of me to say that to Irving,

Speaker 3 go, well, let's go back and really say this really quickly. Helena's biggest mistake inside of this episode,

Speaker 3 she's talking about Birving.

Speaker 3 Everybody's talking about everybody's talking about burving everybody's talk that was talking about birving that was her tell that that that that was like where she put her toe over the line yeah she brought up burt and she says to mark that was a mean of me to say that to irving and i really feel like that's helena being like

Speaker 3 i don't want to be that person

Speaker 3 some i don't know i don't think you have this there's like

Speaker 3 like maybe covering like there's a version there's an interpretation there that she's just covering her action and playing the part of helly But I also just think,

Speaker 3 I can't believe this is the comp that's coming to mind, but in one of my favorite films, You've Got Mail,

Speaker 3 don't email me. Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com about anything else, but not about You've Got Mail.
But

Speaker 2 like Tom Hanks. So

Speaker 2 embodying someone else's body for an encounter, not good. Hiding your identity within the context of the internet.
Fine. Fine.

Speaker 3 But Tom Hanks encounters McBrien and he like says something really snarky to her.

Speaker 3 And then he's just sort of like God I hate that there's that part of me that comes out like I hate that about me you know what I mean and so it's like if Helen is like God I can't help but be an asshole even when I'm given this like fresh start opportunity to be this lovable co-worker I this like shitty part of me comes out anyway you know I just think that that's uh

Speaker 3 Again, very human inside of a really

Speaker 3 shitty, reprehensible

Speaker 3 series of moves that she pulls inside of something. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And we talked previously about within the context of Dylan and Gretchen, the idea of meeting your significant other or someone who cares about you, kind of like for the first time again, and kind of the freshness of that experience.

Speaker 2 One thing we don't really know is what the broad cultural awareness is in the outside world of Helena Egan.

Speaker 2 Like, is this a figure who is on the front page of every newspaper and people know in a very public, like

Speaker 2 front-facing CEO type way? Or is it sort of, oh, people people might know her name.

Speaker 2 People might know that there's this broad, like powerful Egan family, but don't necessarily know what she looks like.

Speaker 2 And so at least within the context of the company and everything adjacent to it, everyone she meets would know who she is and how powerful her family is, if not exactly how powerful she is.

Speaker 2 And yeah, she gets a fresh start with these people, not only as Helena versus Helly, but as a not-so-famous person, like just an innocuous kind of encounter with a coworker versus, oh, you are Helena Egan.

Speaker 3 Right. And

Speaker 3 yeah, very like Prince and the Pauper. Like, what's it like to sort of like walk amongst people and not be genuflected to?

Speaker 2 I prefer Man in the Iron Mask, but you know, to each their own.

Speaker 3 The doubling. We've already talked about sort of some of the imagery in here, but we get these like literal doppelganger figures, which like you can,

Speaker 3 that's the goat room level aspect of this episode because, like, everything else exists pretty clearly inside of the,

Speaker 3 other than the, like, the weird rotting seal thing, everything else exists inside of this premise that we've already understood, which is that you've got a chip inside your head that severs you.

Speaker 3 And that's like sort of a part of the show that we are like, we're buying in on that technology.

Speaker 3 What are we being asked to buy in when we get these weird, freaky doubles in the woods? Are these holograms? Like, are we Kanye hologramming?

Speaker 3 Are we like, have we hired a woman who vaguely looks like Helena Egan to stand in the snow in a pencil skirt?

Speaker 3 You know, that seems like

Speaker 2 emotional violation.

Speaker 3 Like, I don't know. So, like, what's your sense of what these figures are?

Speaker 2 Clearly, we are being led down a road of expecting some sort of bodily cloning, recreation of forms. Like, that is the overall firmament of the show.
Like, it's out there, this idea.

Speaker 2 I at the point where I'm kind of wondering if that might be more of a head fake in certain ways. And this does end up being a little more smoke and mirrors.

Speaker 2 This does end up being something like a literal like hired stand-in body double type situation.

Speaker 2 I love that it's there. I love that we don't know.
I love that we never see those people too closely and we have to ask these questions.

Speaker 2 It is a little bit, not to night country this thing, a little Travis Cole.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Just like mysterious figure pointing into the cold wilderness. Like that, that brought me back a little bit.
But I actually really like this element and I like how unanswered it is.

Speaker 2 I like that we may honestly may never know.

Speaker 2 This could be one of those details that we get to the end of Severance and it's one of those things that's still like, wait, what the fuck was up with those body doubles in the forest?

Speaker 2 There's there's some room for ambiguity and there's room for mystery even within a show that's like five mystery box levels deep already.

Speaker 3 I'm so glad you invoked the mystery box.

Speaker 3 I have already invoked two Damon Lindelof shows. I will invoke no more of Damon Lindelof.
Probably. Oh, actually, no, we got to watch an email.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm lying.

Speaker 3 We will come back to another Damon Lindelof. But Lindelof was so inspired by Twin Peaks

Speaker 3 in making his eerie sort of worlds. And so this is so peaksy,

Speaker 3 these sort of like grinning dockable gamers. We got a great email about sort of the Twin Peaks

Speaker 3 element inside of like Mark's hand Twitch that I think I want to return to when we spend a little bit more time with reintegrated mark.

Speaker 3 But inside of Twin Peaks, which gives us, especially Twin Peaks the Return, which gives us doppelgangers and

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 duality of

Speaker 3 people,

Speaker 3 the evil side of people and the good side of people and all of that inside of that world, I think it's worth thinking about when we think about these creepy little doppelgangers.

Speaker 3 If you have other ideas about what these people invoke, these figures invoke in the woods, Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com. I'm sure there's other things I'm missing.

Speaker 2 Clearly, there's the twinning aspect of the story that they even mention within like Dylan calls out directly, right?

Speaker 2 The whole idea of Kir having a twin brother, the anti-Audi sort of balance overall.

Speaker 2 So many parts of this episode, in particular the ones that I love, and I include this among them, are almost more mood pieces to me than they are clues.

Speaker 2 And like my experience with severance, I imagine everyone is a little different on their balance is like 70% mood, 30% mystery.

Speaker 2 Like the mystery matters to me and drives me, but and when done well, those things are almost inextricable as far as the mood and the place you're put in the story relative to trying to solve it.

Speaker 2 But both are important like form parts of that formula.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't think I'm trying to, I hear what you're saying. And I think I can certainly fall into the like the finger trap of trying to solve a show.
I definitely do that all the time.

Speaker 3 And there are, there are ways in which you can just sort of let something wash over you for the mood and the vibe.

Speaker 3 And that is certainly in David Lynch's world, in the Twin Peaks world, that is certainly what Lynch wants.

Speaker 3 Lynch wants to push you into like a position of emotional uncertainty and just sort of like let you dangle and twist there. Like, that's what he does not want you solving his show.

Speaker 2 And so, not to be guy who watched Mahalan Drive this week, but the visage of the woe, the woe bride that we get is very woman behind the trash can in Mahalan, or behind the dumpster in Mahalan Drive.

Speaker 3 Can we take a two-minute sidebar? You went with our guy, Justin Sales, to see Mahalan Drive. How was that, Rob?

Speaker 2 He took me on a little date. We went to go see Mahalan Drive in the theater.
It was a religious experience for many different reasons.

Speaker 2 Also, you know, just a great thing to do while you're in Los Angeles. Just really learn about the hellscape that you're inhabiting.
It's an important rite of passage, I think.

Speaker 3 Which theater did you go to?

Speaker 2 We went to Video. It's in Eagle Rock.
Oh, yes. Which is the place to see it.

Speaker 2 I had a wonderful time. Thank you to our guy, Justin Sales.

Speaker 3 Okay, Justin's on this call. Thank you, Justin, for giving Rob the true LA experience.
But yeah, that like, I'm fine with just letting, I don't need to solve this. I don't need, I will say this.

Speaker 3 I don't need the sh like, I don't want to be in that space that some of the like sort of bad faith lost fans were where at the end of the thing, they're like,

Speaker 3 you never explained the doppelgangers in the woods in season two, episode four. Like, I don't need an explanation for that.

Speaker 3 I just feel like it's dipping a toe in an in a new layer of surreality that we have not we've been experiencing like sci-fi, but this is like surreality above this sort of premise of the world that we've been in, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 I think this episode two invites it because we're in such a different physical space, right?

Speaker 2 This is clearly an area of land that Lumen must have some control over and ability to like dictate the conditions of, as far as who gets to be here, who doesn't, bringing in these clones or doubles or whatnot, setting up the campsite and the cave and all that.

Speaker 2 Like all of that is part of the larger office experience, but it's not an office floor and a literal office building. And so we are brought into a new physical space.

Speaker 2 And with that comes all sorts of questions, you know, like, how does severance work in a literal physical outside space that is not the office where they did not go through the elevator? Right.

Speaker 2 How did they get here in the first place? How does Irving wake up on a frozen lake? Like, how does that work within the sci-fi constructs that we know?

Speaker 3 Do their Audis know that they're doing this?

Speaker 2 We're told that they do, but who knows? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, are they going to wake up with some sort of windburn, like chap, chop lips and be like, where was I? Somewhere quite cold. Okay, let's talk about Irving's dream.

Speaker 3 So, again, to reiterate, this is real fog.

Speaker 3 They said they didn't use any digital fog in this. This is real fog that they captured in a burned-out, you know, woodland area that they found on the Catskills.

Speaker 3 While they were shooting something else, their location scout found this area and was like, That looks like a nightmare.

Speaker 2 Let's go shoot there.

Speaker 3 So, that's where they shot this. My favorite,

Speaker 3 there's a lot to talk about in this cubicle in the woods here. Yes.
My very favorite thing,

Speaker 3 and these might be digital. They didn't talk about whether or not they were, but the moths around the glowing computer screen, I just thought that was incredible detail.
Whoever came up with that,

Speaker 3 whoever was like, we should put moths on the screens in the woods, I was like,

Speaker 3 You get the marshmallow experience. It might be canceled for other people.
Oh, my God. But you who have thought of moths, you get that.

Speaker 2 Even more reprehensible in retrospect retrospect that it is Helena who costs these three innies their one chance to taste roasted marshmallow.

Speaker 3 Unforgivable. Marshmallows over team players, Rob.

Speaker 3 They don't just hand them out.

Speaker 2 But some of the team were team players. It wasn't their fault.
Dylan should get a marshmallow.

Speaker 3 Here's my question. So these are marshmallows with Kier Egan's visage sort of stamped on them.

Speaker 2 And I thought as it melted, his visage kind of gets a little scully in the flames a little bit. I don't know if that's deliberate or just me projecting, but that's what it looked like to me.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was bubbling up.

Speaker 3 Rob Mahoney,

Speaker 3 foodie that you are,

Speaker 3 whose visage would you most want stamped on a marshmallow?

Speaker 2 Honestly, you could do much worse than a John Toturo, than a Chris Walken. You know, like I would, I would welcome a

Speaker 2 cast members. Look, if they, if they want to make and market severance marshmallows with the cast members' faces on it, I would support it.

Speaker 3 I am 1,000% certain those exist and are going out in an award season swag bag.

Speaker 2 I promise you that they're quite conscious of these things for sure.

Speaker 3 The Apple box that they, the swag box that they sent out for season one, I didn't, I don't get

Speaker 3 much TV swag anymore, and I like that about me

Speaker 3 because it just like adds up and it's just a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Not to be ungrateful, but it's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 3 It's a lot of stuff. But the Lumen box they sent out, in among other things in there, they did have like Lumen snack boxes from the like vending machine that were like in the thing.

Speaker 3 So I'm confident that whoever is doing Apple TV swag saw those marshmallows in this episode and was like, Oh, thank you for doing my job for me.

Speaker 2 Done and done.

Speaker 3 Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 The dream. Okay.
So here's a couple things. We do get a

Speaker 3 burving appearance.

Speaker 3 We get

Speaker 3 the woe

Speaker 3 bride appearance and then the jump scare, the absolute jump scare that like got me.

Speaker 3 and uh and then we get the refining uh image on the computer and we get the letters e-a-g-e-a-e-a-g-a-n yeah form helena's face on the computer and so something that i think is really interesting uh to point out worth pointing out we've had irving sort of snooze a bit on the inside and that's when we got the black paint sort of going over his cubicle in season one but the annies don't sleep.

Speaker 2 This is the first time they've ever gotten to experience it.

Speaker 3 Do annies dream of electric sheep?

Speaker 2 Like, do they dream? Like, whatever. You know, they do.

Speaker 3 They do. And so what truths are hiding inside of an any dream?

Speaker 3 We don't get to see what Mark was dreaming about. We get to see Adam Scott's tremendous smash into the pillow sleeping face, but we don't get to see like

Speaker 3 what truths he might have found inside of his dream. But Irving gets the answer to his suspicions inside of this.
Who would have been powerful enough to send their Audi onto the separate floor?

Speaker 3 And he gets the letters Egan shaping Helena's face on the monitor for him.

Speaker 2 And this was something that people had emailed in already since this episode came out about.

Speaker 2 How specifically did Irving know that Helena was an Egan? And this is the clearest answer we get within the episode. He does articulate exactly what you said.
Who would be powerful enough?

Speaker 2 Who would have the authority to do this? Right. I think maybe there's a little bit of a jump there between, oh, this is a high-powered Lumen employee to this is an Egan

Speaker 2 specifically. And it needs this sort of dream assist to ultimately get there.
Cause otherwise, how would Irving know?

Speaker 2 The one reason I'm pretty like a little bit more willing to play ball with it is we have seen historically, Irving is maybe the character who has the most porous boundary between any and Audi in terms of the black goo.

Speaker 2 He's been actively trying in his outside life to infiltrate the mind of his Innie and pass information.

Speaker 2 And is it possible that even if it is subconsciously, granted, this is one of the only times we've seen Irving fall asleep.

Speaker 2 And that might be when he's most susceptible to receiving the information that his Audi is trying to send him.

Speaker 2 Could his Audi be trying to tell him specifically that this is Helena Egan that's on your floor or look out for this person, she is an Egan. I think that's very much within play.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And I think also

Speaker 3 to your point about sort of the permeability between the Innie and Audi and Irving, which might mean that like

Speaker 3 we will

Speaker 3 miss any

Speaker 3 Irving less because maybe he's much closer to Audi Irving than we sort of like originally were given to believe. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think when we first met Audi Irving, we were like, this guy is cool in a way that Indie Irving is like distinctly not cool, but like, who's to say? But

Speaker 3 what we know is that Audi Irving is on an intensive

Speaker 3 investigative

Speaker 3 project. He's got, you know, phone numbers and addresses and maps and all this sort of stuff.
And so, you know, all he needs is the yarn wall. And then he's, he's set.

Speaker 3 And so this idea of Detective Irving, like, this is a part of his Audi character as well, is that he is like a guy trying to get to the bottom of something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he has the mind for it, clearly. And he's able to, he puts putting things together in a way that none of the other innies are.
He's noticing these clues.

Speaker 2 And yeah, does he get a little bit of an ethereal dream assist?

Speaker 2 Possibly. And Severance's first kind of foray into horror, as we've said, which is exciting.
Like, this is a very different tonality for the show that has been surreal, that has been unsettling,

Speaker 2 but crossing the line once we start seeing

Speaker 2 ghastly figures in the dream flesh. That's a different level.

Speaker 2 And I think one thing, too, to note is the seat in which Woe is sitting is typically Helly's seat, kind of diagonal from where Irving sits within the cubicle.

Speaker 2 How he's putting all this stuff together, who's to say? But the brain works in mysterious ways.

Speaker 3 And Berts and Dylan's bot?

Speaker 2 Is that right? I believe so.

Speaker 3 okay interesting um

Speaker 3 the file that he's working on is montauck uh

Speaker 3 which to me a non-east coaster immediately invokes eternal sunshine of the spotless mind of course meet me in montauk uh we already talked about eternal sunshine and the spotless mind uh as a as a possible comp for some of these things um

Speaker 3 But I can't find the email, so it must have been someone sent it to me on either like Twitter or Blue Sky. But

Speaker 3 also worth noting, the USS Montauk was an ironclad warship during the American Civil War, just as we track our Civil War references.

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We're worth it.

Speaker 2 We're worth it.

Speaker 2 I have a question for you, Joe, about, you know, one way to read this is Irving subconscious feeding him information about Helena being an Egan.

Speaker 2 One way to read it is our guy who's just a working nine to five stiff having a stress dream about his job in which the numbers are swirling, the letters are swirling, he's panicking, the moths are being drawn to the screen.

Speaker 2 Have you ever

Speaker 2 had a podcast-related stress dream?

Speaker 3 No, but I had a brief stint. Like the, as far as I know, the only time in my life I ever was sleepwalking was the first time I had like like a real job.

Speaker 3 I was a arts and crafts counselor at a summer camp.

Speaker 3 And that was like, it wasn't like a sleepaway camp. It was like a day camp, but it was like a nine to five.
It was like, I was a teenager. It was my first like nine to five summer job.

Speaker 3 And I would walk into my sister's room and start talking about like what the like craft project was. Like, I have to get all these lanyards sorted.
I have to like get the beads or whatever.

Speaker 3 And I was like sleeping and talking about my job.

Speaker 3 So that's like, I've definitely had other stress dreams about work, but that is like the the most extreme example was me sleepwalk, anxiety sleepwalking over my arts and crafts counselor summer, like summer camp job.

Speaker 3 But I can start a lanyard very quickly to this day if you ever need to learn. If you want to tie-dye something, I'm your person.

Speaker 2 How about you, Rob? Have you ever had a podcast nightmare? Not a podcast nightmare, though.

Speaker 2 I do regularly still have school-related nightmares, specifically a college-era nightmare in which I think I have dropped a class, but find out shortly before the final that I have not. Oh, no.

Speaker 2 That is, that is my recurring nightmare that I'm just living through on a daily basis. And so if anyone out there wants to tell me what that says about me, please do.

Speaker 2 But I'm delighted about your arts and crafts nightmare, Joe. And to this day, part of your job is just yarning up a wall, you know, just drawing lines from conspiracy to conspiracy, innie to outie.

Speaker 2 We're putting it all together out here.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Rob.

Speaker 3 If you're a neurologist and you're listening to this,

Speaker 3 as we've seen,

Speaker 3 we've gotten a lot of emails from brain science people.

Speaker 3 if you want to diagnose Rob's uh stress dreams about his fix us please yeah fix us at pineapplebopping and gmail.com um Rob my hope for dream you uh nightmare you is that it's at least a pass fail class uh you know you know it's not

Speaker 3 it can't be or else it wouldn't be a nightmare I know it's not okay anything else you want to say about

Speaker 3 a gaunt bride half the height of a natural human whoa woe is hollow this idea of the like a physical representation of one of of the the four tempers what do you what do you think

Speaker 2 i i never envisioned that we would ever get to see a temper on this show

Speaker 2 it just doesn't feel like it would be of the world and yet we got here in a way that feels super organic and that you know these characters have literally just been shown like picture book versions of what woe would look like and so it's very easy to kind of see how that would infiltrate the brain into dream form i don't suspect we'll see the others but i'm just delighted that we're here and i'm delighted that we've edged into even darker territory within the world of severance.

Speaker 2 And dream states are tricky territory with shows.

Speaker 2 You don't want to over-index on them. You don't want to lean on them too heavily.
Little bits and pieces as seasoning, I think, can go a long way. This one I loved.

Speaker 2 If we're doing this every episode, I'm probably going to feel pretty differently, but for one of the more grounded characters in the show to have this sort of out-of-body experience during the first time where he's basically allowed to sleep

Speaker 2 felt very poignant to me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think if we see the tempers in the dream space, again, a dream space is a place where I'm never like, I never need an explanation or a logic about that. This is a dream, so that's fine.

Speaker 3 All right, let's talk about the confrontation/slash the Glasgow block. Glasgow does relate to the Civil War.
Once again, we can find a connection, but I don't know. I'm disinclined again to overly.

Speaker 3 I opened this floodgate and I'm so sorry. And please do keep sending us emails about this.
But someone on Reddit posted from the sort of stop motion animation

Speaker 3 macro dot propaganda video that we saw at the beginning of the season, there's the shot of

Speaker 3 Helie's sort of cartoon figure bobbing for pineapples shot from underneath the water the way that Helena is shot in this episode with who?

Speaker 3 Irving hang like standing over the background in the background of this animated, like it's up through the water, it's a pineapple, our fave, her face underwater, underwater and then irving behind her and i'm just sort of like great job severance you're the best

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 2 maybe the pineapple really is truth ultimately i'm trying to think of what the stand-in is is ultimately like symbolically if we're gonna really chase that thread down i don't i don't know we'll find out i have a question if like dole or some other big pineapple uh like

Speaker 2 like has incepted me in some way not not to the snow fortress level of my mind but like i've been eating don't ever let dole into the snow fortress level of your mind i don't care how good they say dole whip is

Speaker 3 i don't like a dole whip um but i uh

Speaker 3 i've been eating so much pineapple since we started talking about pineapple on this show i've just been sort of like insatiable for it you're that impressionable well that's what i'm saying i'm like do you think big pineapple was like we want to put pineapples in the show and we're going to get you know dummies like Joyette Robinson.

Speaker 3 They're going to be like, pineapple, that sounds refreshing.

Speaker 2 See, you say this, and I think there is a portion of our listenership that will go, fruit lobbies don't operate that way. And I'm here to tell you they do.

Speaker 2 Please look into the marketing and production of like different apple varieties.

Speaker 2 It is a vicious, cutthroat, consumeristic, like very peak, late-stage capitalist world as far as like how you make fucking cosmic crisp a thing.

Speaker 2 It's an insidious space.

Speaker 3 You only need to watch the highly problematic yet undeniably entertaining

Speaker 3 trading places from the 1980s to know that the orange market is not to be trifled with.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing, Rob Mahoney, that I love about you podcasting in the void. This is like, I don't know if you do this on,

Speaker 3 you've got this great like pointing at the camera thing that you did.

Speaker 2 Try to speak to the people.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Our listener, Tyler M, wrote in, and we've gotten a couple emails about this across the season to go going back to that scene, the screen that we see

Speaker 3 when Dylan is initiating the

Speaker 3 OTC, the system functions had a number of other options.

Speaker 3 Tyler sent us an entire list of it:

Speaker 3 Beehive, Branch Transfer, Clean Slate,

Speaker 3 Elephant,

Speaker 3 FreezeFrame,

Speaker 3 Glasgow,

Speaker 3 Goldfish, Lullaby, Open House, Overtime. So now we've filled in,

Speaker 3 we know what Overtime is, and now we know what Glasgow is.

Speaker 3 Do you have any thoughts or feelings about any of the rest of these? I mean, branch transfer just maybe seems like branch transfer.

Speaker 3 We saw that from Mark's other team, but like Beehive,

Speaker 3 clean slate feels fairly self-explanatory.

Speaker 3 Elephant, restore all memories. I kind of like that.
That was Tyler's guess for that. An elephant never forgets.
Goldfish, extremely short memory span, amnesia, something like that.

Speaker 3 Anyway, what do you think?

Speaker 2 Beehive is definitely the most evocative to me. Yeah.
And I'm trying to put together what that could apply to in terms of maybe recalling people in some way. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Like, I love how ambiguous these are too.

Speaker 2 I love that they invite this sort of speculation, and yet I can't quite put my finger on it in any meaningful way other than, as we said, clean slate makes sense.

Speaker 2 You know, like, you don't need to get too cute with all of them.

Speaker 2 But I like that the programmers at Lumen, you know, they got to stretch out a a little bit. They got to have fun.
They got to be like, okay, yeah, Glasgow. Fuck it.
Elephant. Let's do it.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 I love this conversation. We heard a clip at the beginning.
I do think that Doturo's reading of

Speaker 3 when he says Seth.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 chills every time that I've like re-watched that or clipped it or anything like that. Just like, he's just snarling and he's just like

Speaker 3 acid.

Speaker 3 And the and the switch that he makes, we didn't mention this earlier, but

Speaker 3 uh, Britt Lauer in the scene in the tent when Helena shows up with a little snow seal for Irving.

Speaker 2 The first kind of double-down moment for her.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and she's like, Hi, me, do this snow seal, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 And he's talking to her, and then she goes like, Irving, like very cold, and then sort of tries to warm back, like defrost herself a little bit.

Speaker 3 So that is great stuff. But the switch we get from

Speaker 3 Irving's stand here of like, you know, shoving her face in the ice-cold water, demanding this happen, and then tenderly cradling her when she's helly again.

Speaker 3 Guess what, Rob? This is a great television show.

Speaker 2 And that was a great TV moment. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And to put this all inside an episode in which we're

Speaker 2 propagating the myth of Keir's twin and this idea of like abiding the sins of your brother and therefore contributing to their demise. And here's Irving

Speaker 2 knowing full well that if he even attempts to out Helena for what she is, that he's basically going to be turned off, that his existence will blink out.

Speaker 2 And being self-sacrificial in that way for the, in pursuit of the truth, for the sake of this kind of little group and little posse that he's found at work.

Speaker 2 It's an honestly really beautiful thing. And you're right, the performance of it and the self-righteous, like not the righteous anger, the skepticism, the acid,

Speaker 2 the delivery from Troturo is so sharp at every single turn, whether he's investigating, whether he's giving his big proclamations at the end, whether he's revealing everything that he's found.

Speaker 2 I love this performance. I love this show.

Speaker 2 I'm so.

Speaker 2 I'm just so thrilled that they've allowed Irving to be this, that they allowed Dylan to be this, that this isn't just a Mark and Helly show or a Mark Sout-centric show. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a really fully act, like fully actualized ensemble performance.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And I mean, this is a very Dylan, but let's, we get this Dylan moment, right? Dylan says, I'm sorry, I didn't like listen to you.
I didn't believe you. I didn't help you.

Speaker 3 And Irving says,

Speaker 3 hang in there,

Speaker 3 which we can only assume is an allusion to

Speaker 3 there's a poster in the break room of Dylan,

Speaker 3 you know, operating the two switches on the OTC

Speaker 3 that says hang in there.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 do you think he's like,

Speaker 3 did he, did he hide something for Dylan

Speaker 3 behind the hang in there poster?

Speaker 3 That's a popular theory I've seen floating around. What do you think?

Speaker 2 I would enjoy that.

Speaker 2 I also think we're just naturally set up for Dylan, who has been tempted at this point by the family visitation room, by the idea of even further perks than he was ever entitled before to to pick up irving's quest for the elevator right he's he was the person who was first told that information

Speaker 2 i think there's all the reason in the world to expect that he is now going to be on the hunt for it having seen what happened to irving now knowing helena's betrayal within the team he's going to be looking for his own answers and his encouragement to maybe look behind that poster or pick up on some other clue that irving is trying to pass to him like they have an interesting connection and one that's been fraught at various times one in which they are naturally at odds given their personality types, but became sort of unlikely friends and at least allies in this one way.

Speaker 3 Rewatching, again, if we never see Irving be any Irving again, if this is a true character death,

Speaker 3 I think on rewatch that moment at the beginning of the season when he and Dylan like share that embrace or the moment where we see him and O and D like talking about Bert and reminiscing and getting another hug, like these are in retrospect.

Speaker 3 It's funny because like in the, you know, at the end of the episode,

Speaker 3 you know, Severance is doing that classic HBO inside the episode, sort of like little moments, uh, interviews at the end of the episode. And Adam Scott was like,

Speaker 3 you guys are going to go back and watch the last few episodes and be, oh my God, it was, it was hella all along. And it's like, oh,

Speaker 3 no, we knew that already.

Speaker 2 But the character beats your right, I think, ring differently.

Speaker 3 But, but for Irving,

Speaker 3 as these, these episodes leading up to this as a goodbye for that character, this emotional sort of send-off for this character, that's going to hit differently.

Speaker 3 Um, again, if we never see me, I don't know if we will or not. Um,

Speaker 2 but the structure of this show, too, I think asks you as a viewer to interrogate what you want.

Speaker 2 Do you want to see full reintegration for all of these characters we've come to know and love in various respects?

Speaker 2 Do you want to see the any versions who are much more familiar with overall find find some way to continue their existence?

Speaker 2 Like, it's, it's such a tricky territory where having one existence kind of snuffs out the other. And also reintegration may be dangerous and not even possible for everybody.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 being put in our position, like both ethically in terms of storytelling, like what do you want is such a huge question to have to ponder.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And we, I mean, we, we entertained this before.
And my earlier sort of idea was like, I want everyone reintegrated because I don't want to like

Speaker 3 snuff anyone out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But Helena and Helly at this point, that is

Speaker 3 reintegration. That's my switch in this episode.
I'm like, Helena, you're done for me. Yeah.
I want that to that body to belong to Heli. That would be my

Speaker 3 end of the day preference.

Speaker 3 I like to root for difficult women, but this was

Speaker 3 just gonna, we can't come back.

Speaker 2 She's making herself quite difficult, it turns out.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 It will be as if

Speaker 3 you, Irving B, never even existed nor drew a single breath on this earth. Devastating.
And then we get a shot at the end. One thing, my one tiniest nit to pick, tiny quibble.

Speaker 3 And I'm not mad about it. It's just a funny staging thing.
Milchik and Mark and Dylan are at the top of the waterfall and he's down there sort of like plunging her head into the water.

Speaker 3 At the very least, Mark is running down there a bit faster than he is. He just stands there and he's like, oh my God, stop.
And I'm like, get a fucking move on, Mark. What are you doing?

Speaker 2 You know, but you also can't make it.

Speaker 3 You you know if she decides to plunge her head in the water you're not making it in time it's not that tall of a waterfall it's the tallest in the world it's a short it's a short little jaunt downhill to get to this woman you just uh had sex with in a tent okay um Something that they said in the official podcast, which I thought was interesting, is like they had, they contemplated several different endings for this episode.

Speaker 3 They didn't know if they wanted to sort of like black bag,

Speaker 3 you know, people swoop in and sort of black bag Irving and like drag him off or how dramatic they want to be. And what they decided to go with is they do, you know,

Speaker 3 the reverse zoom dolly pullout that they've been doing for the inside the elevator severance moment

Speaker 3 without the ding, obviously. But

Speaker 2 I did love, by the way, the ding that we get when Helly is turned back on while being plunged underwater. Just

Speaker 2 wonderful little ways to execute this stuff.

Speaker 3 But Stiller was saying that

Speaker 3 wanted it to read more like this is just Irving himself realizing that it's the end of something or accepting the end of something rather than the physical process happening then there.

Speaker 3 This is a mental sort of emotional severing from what's happening there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, there's, there's ways in which the style can sort of literalize, and then there's the ways in which it just speaks to the moment.

Speaker 2 And I think you've zeroed in on that really nicely, Joe, in the sense that everything about the structure of of this episode and in retrospect, the last few points to this being a long walk for Irving to here, to this moment, to this decision, to putting himself out there in this way for the sake of unveiling the truth.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I hope that those stakes stick. I'm not saying I don't ever want to see Irving be again, but like this is a meaningful sacrifice.

Speaker 3 I agree.

Speaker 3 Like I was watching this and I was like, they can't just, if they just undo this, then re-watching this episode will not feel like thinking about a show like Lost, which is has these very sentimental sacrificial death moments for certain characters.

Speaker 3 That's a not a spoiler, that's just the premise of Lost, people die on this island.

Speaker 3 Um, like thinking about all the times I've cried over the death of characters on that show, or something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which we just talked about. Like,

Speaker 3 um, these shows that like really get you with these big emotional deaths. And I, I wasn't like weeping for Irving in this episode, but I was genuinely torn up about this ending.

Speaker 3 And then, well, at the other time, there was a voice inside my head was like, are you watching a show where they could just flip him back on if they want to?

Speaker 3 So, like, I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take something like that. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 So, to our earlier discussion, I think that's where Severance gets to still have Trotura on the show and still gets to have Irving as a presence on the show.

Speaker 2 And if anything, now is such an interesting variable to have in the outside world, right?

Speaker 2 And what his level of involvement is going to be with the other characters who we've never seen Mark Scout and the Audi Irving interact before, right?

Speaker 2 Now maybe they have more reason to be in contact as people who are like trying to put the pieces together or with Devin or with, you know, with Harmony.

Speaker 2 Like we don't know how any of these people are going to bump into each other. And I suspect the deeper we go into this show, the more and more important the outside part of the story is going to be.

Speaker 2 And so I'm glad to have Irving potentially in the driver's seat of some of that.

Speaker 3 No, I mean, I am. beyond thrilled that we're going to that we get to have more tutoro on the show i would never want to say goodbye i never want to say goodbye to john choturo in sembrance

Speaker 3 Okay, quick

Speaker 3 sort of a few

Speaker 3 emails to get to, and then maybe some odds and ends, and then we'll wrap up here.

Speaker 3 Our listener Kevin Kaye,

Speaker 3 when wondering,

Speaker 3 you know, you were wondering about like inside of the Civil War theory, there's this question of like, are we

Speaker 3 in a world where the South won the Civil War and that's the follow-up that we're seeing?

Speaker 3 Our listener Kevin Kaye pointed out that during Mark's initial mind-melling quote protocol survey, he is asked to name a dam and Mark says Hoover. Right.
So he's like, the Hoover Dam exists. So

Speaker 3 Hoover exists as 31st president of the United States. Yeah.
Possibly, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 Also, for the record, I could not name another dam.

Speaker 2 I don't know if that's an indictment of me, but I would also reach for Hoover.

Speaker 3 The Oroville Dam? There's a dam in Oroville, California.

Speaker 2 You could convince me of anything.

Speaker 2 Name any fake dam and I will buy it.

Speaker 3 This is what he says. He says, quote, I have noticed television writers play with points of divergence as a way for viewers to theorize about these worlds.

Speaker 3 In Lindelof's HBO, Watchmen adaptation shows a shared world through Nixon's first term until Robert Redford becomes president.

Speaker 3 Redford's impact on the culture and counterculture is part of the show's backbone of messaging, and it gave space to revisit other historical blind spots like Tulsa 1921.

Speaker 3 He also mentions Counterpoint, the J.K. Simmons sci-fi show, and that has like a very specific, I think, 1980s sort of counter, you know, like divergence as well.

Speaker 2 So, um, man in the high castle is is like such a clear touch point here, too.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And so, is that something they need to drill down on? No, I don't need to know when history diverged so that Egan,

Speaker 2 a corporation took over.

Speaker 3 They don't need to do that, but it is a fun thing that like some of these shows play with or whatever.

Speaker 2 And that this is a show that consistently rewards you for that level of investment of parsing the background of scenes, of reading every bit of text that a character has in their hands or has behind them.

Speaker 2 Like it's this is the thing overall with Severance that makes me so thrilled to be covering the show week to week with you in this way, Joe, is there's such a clear level of care put into the construction of it going back to it, you know, as you said, like the prop, like the propaganda video having this visual echo of Helena being plunged underwater.

Speaker 2 When things like that happen, it's like, oh, it's a nice little closed loop and it's a cool detail, but it's also just indicative that these people know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 and that they have a certain range of foresight to know, okay, here's where we want to go. Here's what this is going to mean.
Here's how these reveals are going to twist up the audience.

Speaker 2 This is what's going to change the emotional stakes of the show. I think it just speaks to having a very steady hand at the wheel of severance.

Speaker 3 Great point. I also just like podcasting with Rob in general.

Speaker 2 It's a delight.

Speaker 3 It's better when it's a great show. This is the thing.
But even if it's...

Speaker 3 Disclaimer, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 Book Club Corner, really quickly. We're getting emails from people suggesting like sort of extra reading material, which again takes me right back to my lost days.

Speaker 3 And I have

Speaker 3 purchased two books based on recommendations from people and I've read one and I still need to get to the other.

Speaker 2 But in fairness, it doesn't take much of a nudge to get you to buy a book. Okay, Rob.
I'm just like, that's not a character flaw. I'm just saying, you know,

Speaker 2 you've been gently pushed in the direction of some extracurricular reading.

Speaker 3 Just because you don't read fiction does not mean, but are you going to read the like neuroscience texts that they, I think, I think that should be your job because I'm certainly not going to be able to.

Speaker 2 I guess we'll all have our homework. Okay.

Speaker 3 Luke recommended

Speaker 3 this a play

Speaker 3 because we were talking about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. And Luke recommended this play called Eurydice by Sarah Rule.

Speaker 3 And I

Speaker 3 bought it and I read it. And

Speaker 3 I mean, it's very thin. It's easy to read, but

Speaker 3 it's really, really good. It's from Eurydice's point of view.

Speaker 3 And the reason that he recommended it, and I really see this, is because like in this play, it's a lot about memory, and lot like when you go down to the underworld and you lose your memory, and what is the blessing in that, and what is the curse in that, and what are you trying to hold on to that doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 3 And so, the story from which is often told from your Orpheus's point of view, the story from Eurydice's point of view, this question of

Speaker 3 memory and identity, uh, and what makes you you, I can really see how they might be sort of playing with that

Speaker 2 inside of Gemma's story. Yeah, I would say, in particular, we talk about this show so much as a show about consciousness, but it really is a show about memory.

Speaker 2 And I think the more that the inny and outie versions of this character are meant to reckon with the things that the other version of them have now done,

Speaker 2 like those are memories you might wish you could wipe out in an eternal sunshine kind of way.

Speaker 2 Like those, those, that engagement with that sort of idea, I think is right here for Severance to play with basically anytime it wants to.

Speaker 3 One of the really cool visuals of this play, this is like a very stylized play, and I was looking up sort of videos of tons of iterations and performances of it.

Speaker 3 But one of the main visuals that most of the performances follow is when Eurydice arrives in the underworld, she does so in an elevator where it's raining.

Speaker 3 She shows up and there's like a ding of an elevator and opens and it's raining and she's got this umbrella inside of a raining

Speaker 3 elevator. So,

Speaker 3 you know, the elevator ding, the memory, all of that sort of stuff, it makes sense that this might be sort of in the in the water of severance.

Speaker 3 The other recommendation we got that I have that I have purchased, but I have not gotten to,

Speaker 3 and I'm fine to wait on this because it has to deal with Cobel. So I think maybe we'll delve into this when she re-enters the scene.

Speaker 3 But our listener, Brett, recommended William Volman's National Book Award-winning novel, Europe Central, which has a

Speaker 3 that is a tome.

Speaker 3 That is a thick boy. But he's recommending this.

Speaker 3 There's like a 50-page short story inside of that book called Clean Hands, which is a story of a man called Kurt Gerstein, who basically infiltrated the Nazi organization and, in very small, if you want to put it that way, sort of like functionary ways

Speaker 3 operated to save lives inside of the Holocaust. So, just sort of by recommending

Speaker 3 like clean hands is, I haven't read this short story yet, but sort of Brett summarized it. But this idea of like

Speaker 3 operating inside of an evil organization, executing evil orders inside of that evil organization, but trying to make small changes to do what you can to mitigate the loss.

Speaker 3 A bit like Schindler's List, but it's sort of like even sort of.

Speaker 2 Sounds like maybe even more compromised than that. Ryan, yeah, more compromised than that.

Speaker 3 So is that something that we could think about when we think about Harmony if we think of her as someone who maybe has infiltrated Lumen

Speaker 3 to exact revenge.

Speaker 3 But can we reconcile that with the shit we see her do in season one?

Speaker 3 Can we think of her as someone who is on the side of the angels to a certain degree, but is like playing the games of the devils in order to get there?

Speaker 2 Sort of idea. So we are due for a harmony episode.
Maybe not, maybe not the entire episode, but one in which she is significantly involved in the action.

Speaker 2 We've seen her drive, we've seen her drive back, we've seen her not go into buildings. She is absent this week, as you mentioned.
I feel like five or six, we're going to get a lot of harmony.

Speaker 2 I hope so.

Speaker 3 Also, I don't need to read the emails, but we have gotten several emails from people saying that we're wrong about the chamomile cookies.

Speaker 3 Rob, are you willing to try a chamomile cookie recipe to see if the listeners are right?

Speaker 2 I'm willing to try baking anything. Yeah.
So, yeah, if someone wants to send us a chamomile cookie recipe that they earnestly believe in, we will try it. Okay.

Speaker 3 Last but not least, our what would you sever section has re-emerged here. Uh, we talked about dishes last week.
We talked about a number of of other things.

Speaker 3 We got several emails about the same concept this week.

Speaker 3 First, before we get there, I will say Rachel H.

Speaker 3 wrote in to say she was shocked and appalled to hear me talking about severing anything other than doing my taxes because she's heard me over many years of listening to a podcast talk about how much I hate filling out a form.

Speaker 3 And that's true. So probably I would sever taxes if I could.
But

Speaker 3 Alan L, Grant H, Amy S all wrote in to say like going to the gym And not because

Speaker 3 they don't want to go to the gym.

Speaker 2 This was the part that threw me for a loop. Like, the exact reasoning is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, which was the same across the board, I think, for all three of them, which is like, imagine getting to go work out, whether you're swimming or lifting weights or whatever it is, without the burden of the rest of your life sort of hanging over you.

Speaker 3 I don't know if I've talked about this on this podcast, but something I've been doing in 2025,

Speaker 3 because like for a while, back in 2024, I started doing this like sort of uh get-jacked weightlifting thing, which is great, but uh, it's really come to bear in 2025 because uh, I read what I do is I read the news and I get mad and then I go lift heavy things in the gym.

Speaker 2 That's sort of been my process to coping with things.

Speaker 3 Um, but what if I could do that without the sort of like burning royalty anger at the state of the world? Like, would that be an even more enjoyable experience? What do you think, Rob?

Speaker 2 It might, but I think you're, you're hitting on something that's so important, which is the release of those activities.

Speaker 2 You know, on the the one hand, you don't want something weighing you down while you go to the gym, but on the other hand, when you do hit like a runner's high and it gives you that pacifying feeling where you do forget everything that's happening, like the any version of you wouldn't have that moment of relief.

Speaker 2 They would just feel, you know, the endorphins of exercise, but they wouldn't feel the relief from not having to think about the outside world.

Speaker 3 This also presumes that your like chosen form of exercise is a solitary activity, whereas like Rob, you love a, you love a game of pickup basketball, right?

Speaker 3 Like that's, yeah, and you won't, you wouldn't want to sever yourself from that. That's like, I would come back to you.

Speaker 2 I would never give it up to the point that at some point I'm just going to run my knees and Achilles into the ground.

Speaker 2 There's this famous thing where eventually you get old enough and you either have to actively stop yourself from playing pickup basketball or you will have to be carried off the court at some point.

Speaker 2 I'm going to die out there. On your shield.
That's just the life that I've chosen for myself. So, yeah, I'm not giving my any, any, any minutes of my gym time in that particular way.

Speaker 3 Rob's coming home on his shield from the basketball court, and that, I think, is our season two, episode four severance check-in.

Speaker 3 Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to make sure we reference?

Speaker 2 One thing that's very important to me in terms of the overall mood setting of this episode, when we get our fireside recital of Appendix 4, we also get Miss Wong playing a mean theremin.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 2 This would be a great invitation for me personally, Joe, seeing it on screen to finally learn and understand how a theremin works.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't. Okay.

Speaker 2 There's a reason I am not a physics podcaster. It seems very complex as instruments go.

Speaker 3 Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com. I want to let you know that on the official podcast, they had Teddy Shapiro, who is the composer for Severance, was on this episode.

Speaker 3 He did not understand how a theremin works.

Speaker 2 He composed this piece of truly baffling instruments.

Speaker 3 And he's like, I don't know, you block a wave. And that's how it makes the tone.
Anyway, what they were saying is that the actress who plays Miss Wong learned how to play. So she's actually playing.

Speaker 2 She shall made this thing? Yeah, she did. She just disappeared and learned how to play all the songs of Bob Dylan on the thermo.
Full timbo.

Speaker 3 Full timbo. Absolutely.
All the way.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, I also learned that apparently, so I've always known it as a theremin.
I learned that they're also called an etherphone, which is just bang up job.

Speaker 2 Bang up job by the instrument naming authority. Wow.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Well, this is amazing. Anything else you want to talk about?

Speaker 2 I would, the only person I want to give a special shout out to, because I don't think we touched upon him much in this episode aside from his waterfall superlatives. Great Milchik episode.
The fit.

Speaker 2 Great Trammel Tillman episode.

Speaker 2 You know, as his readings of things that are clearly ridiculous and line deliveries of things that probably would be silly coming out of the mouth of many, many other performers with him always do have that edge of danger, of authority, of just like, this is not someone you want to get on the wrong side of.

Speaker 2 And yet he obviously has the very like corporatized plastic smile thing that he can go to to whenever he wants to. So great, great Trammel Tillman performance.

Speaker 3 Just incredible outfit. I loved, I loved his outfit.

Speaker 3 And also, I think it begs the question, I think this is something we need to keep asking ourselves is like,

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 Seth? Yes, Seth, do it. Is Seth

Speaker 3 a true believer? Because like, is his offense that he takes over them snickering,

Speaker 3 which results in the mushroom and the marshmallows getting thrown in the fire?

Speaker 3 Is his offense like a personal religious one or is it just sort of like, I'm playing by the corporate rules here, you know?

Speaker 2 Seemed rude either way. Great.
No need to throw those marshmallows into the fire.

Speaker 3 If you, like us, are quietly yearning to learn more about anything, you can send us an email, pineapplebombing at gmail.com, pressagetv at spotify.com. Again, we are getting

Speaker 3 so many emails. They're all great.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for sending them.

Speaker 3 They're really, really good and varied. And I will continue to buy books and pineapples thanks to this show.

Speaker 2 One that I, a genre of email that I have enjoyed, that I would enjoy more of if people want to call it these specific examples. An emailer, I don't have their name at the tip of my tongue.

Speaker 2 I apologize.

Speaker 2 Point out one of the very specific visual callbacks in the show, which was Harmony Cobel's rear view or rear lights, taillights on her car as she's leaving the parking lot in episode three.

Speaker 2 This very black background, these, you know, these red lights at the end of effectively what is a long lane, or in this case, a hall is basically exactly like the mysterious elevator. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm loving all that stuff. So, if you see anything that strikes you visually in the show, I would love to hear about it.

Speaker 3 I liked that more with no offense to anyone than the like,

Speaker 3 uh, Dylan's wife is dressed like Pam from the Office. I'm like, I don't know what that gives me that Dylan's wife is dressed like Pam from the Office.
Great shout, good observation.

Speaker 3 It just doesn't do anything for me to matter.

Speaker 2 We're not going to mention the office on this show. That's that's not what we're doing here.

Speaker 3 Okay,

Speaker 3 and that has been Seth France season two, episode four. Rob Hates the Office.
Pineapplebobbing and Gbail.com if you want to talk Rob out of that.

Speaker 3 Thanks to our office mates, John Richter for helping Rob navigate the void here. Justin Sales for helping us navigate the void.
That is the scheduling around all these prestige TV shows coming up.

Speaker 3 And as always,

Speaker 3 on the burbing drop and everything else, Kai Grady, thank you so much. We will see you soon.
Bye.

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