‘Severance’ Season 2 Premiere: Are You Innie or Outie?

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That's my very good friend, Rob Mahoney, and I'm his best friend, Joanna Robinson. And we're here to talk to you about Severance Season 2.
Hey, Rob, how are you doing? I prefer Rob M. these days, actually.
If we're just going to go by really formalities. Okay.
Rob M. and Joanna are here reporting in on Severance Season 2.
We are thrilled. We are so excited.
Rob and I have not been this excited about a show that we've covered in a little while with love and respect to the shows we've been recently covering. This is one that we are like very passionate about or really excited about.
So just so you know, Severn season two, this is a week to week Rob and Joe joint. That is what we are doing for the foreseeable.
So we'll be doing this. We're also going to, yes, catch up with the agency as we promised at the end of that season.
So we'll be back to do an end of season check-in for the agency. And also, you guys really like the pit? Question mark? Slash you work in the medical industry.
We got a lot of emails from doctors. Thank you for listening.
Doctors and nurses and all sorts of medical professionals. So thank you for listening.
Thank you for emailing with your insight. It was very educational.
So we will be checking in on the pit. Not every week, but sporadically.
So keep the emails coming. We love to hear them.
We are going to hit you with some severance specific email options in a second rob and i have been doing some brainstorming but in general press tv at spotify.com uh is where you can find us to talk about the agency the pit severance squid upcoming white lotus yeah your old squid game thoughts whatever it is we'll we'll be here for you did Did you just watch Presumed Innocent? Welcome. Yeah.
What if she never consumed the ragoon? Yeah, exactly. So before we get into our Severance specific emails, we thought we, in our sort of like more ambitious state, we're like, should we do a whole entire episode recapping season one? And we didn't do that, but we bring, we come here to you today with Rob and I put together and not shared with each other our very own personal, like sort of three things to remember from season one from each of us.
I've just decided we're going to go back and forth sort of saying what they are. Rob is like, should they be big picture? Should they be tiny little things? And I said, whatever moves your heart, that is what we're here to talk about.
Because I do think the show does a pretty good job, despite it being three years since season one. And I don't know if this is just informed by me having just binged season one of Severance over the last few days.
But I think season two, episode one, which we're going to talk about in a bit, does a pretty good job of sort of refreshing certain things and recapping certain things. But Rob, what's your sort of like number three thing to remember from season one of Severance that you want to share? This is going to be an interesting dance between the two of us, Joe, as I try to weave around what I anticipate you might pick.
So we're not too redundant in our selections. I'm going to go kind of bigger picture.
Something that is hinted around throughout season one, something that's intimated in exchanges between characters or little bits of context, that there's still a lot of resistance to the severance procedure itself in the outside world. There's sort of a battle for whether this is a thing that should exist for everyone outside of our core characters.
And as a result, there's kind of an ongoing PR battle happening. And you see that in the season one finale as a Helly's outie, Helena, Helena Egan, as it is, is basically attempting to get up on stage to put a face to this procedure and convince people that actually it's warm and fuzzy.
It's okay. Everyone is so happy and so much happier this way.
I think it potentially explains some of the softer, friendlier Lumen that we see here in Season 2 as well. Kind of post-potential news apocalypse.
Putting a new face on this whole thing. And trying to spin it in a completely different direction because it's pretty clear that not a lot of people are on board with it.
Stop motion animation, Lumen. Keanu voiceover, Lumen.
100 100 keanu reeves voiceover great i mean if i could pick someone to voice over my uh complete corporate overhaul from my uh sinister reality i would definitely pick keanu um okay i will sort of yes on that with with my number three which is that a reminder that this isn't really dealt with in the season two, episode one, because they're dealing with a lot of other things. Bob Balaban is here, like there's a lot of important things to dwell on.

But reminder that Irving, in addition to sort of chasing after Bert in his foray out in the outside, we find out that he's got a trunk full of Lumen employee information. And there's also just like, you know, this is a very theory friendly show.
So like, I don't know how to talk about things without talking about theories next door to them. So just there's this prevailing theory that Irving, because he's been at Lumen for nine years, but only severed for three years, there's this prevailing theory that perhaps he once had Milchick's job or something like that, that Irving has been at Lumen, that Irving maybe was management higher up something and something about being there set him on this course that he wanted to either whistleblow something and he was severed to shut him up or severed in order to pursue something but just that Irving in addition to uh being the most devout of of the innies um uh his fascination with Bert uh and his painting of this spooky ooky hallway uh that we see Miss Casey go down at the end of season one, he's got a lot of information in a trunk in his house.
He certainly does. Let me, yes and your yes and.
Because I also have an Irving related item, which is, I would say we're starting to get some clarity as to the direction of this. But it's pretty clear that the boundary between Innie and Audi is at least a little bit porous.
We see Irving in the outside world, as you said, painting the black hallway that leads to the testing floor over and over and over and over. Immaculate work.
Great motorhead deployment. I'm in favor of all of it.
But just a reminder that if it's been a minute since you've seen Severn in season one, we also see Irving's innie see the kind of black paint goop seeping into his workspace in a hallucinogenic sort of sequence. And so during season one, admittedly, I was wondering which way is it going, right? Is this the understanding of the inner world seeping into the outside world? And this is a vision that the outer Irving has had in his painting.
But you're right. Like a lot of our signs now as we enter season two, and certainly a lot of the theories are out there, point much more toward Irving having a past within the company that would at least lead him into that hallway.
I think your number two really underlines a very important question of like, how different is your innie and your outie? How severed is your severance? How much can you compartmentalize your humanity, your memories, your grief, whatever it is? We'll get to Helena in this episode, but there's a moment where she defiantly says, we have nothing in common. The innies and the outies have nothing in common.
We owe them fucking nothing, right? She's saying lots of things in this episode. She does say a lot of stuff.
Okay, that brings me to, we'll sort of get into our theories about what are they doing? What is the point of lumen? What is the point of severance? We don't have a clear answer to that. But I do want to underline, I think, one of the more perturbing in a sea of perturbing things.
There's a lot of perturbment going on.

Perturbation happening here.

Jamie Egan, who is the current CEO of Lumen, who is Helena's father, in the finale, says to her that she will be at his side at his revolving. His what now? His revolving? Joe, you've never been to a revolving before? Do you even revolve, bro? So, what is a revolving? Are we seeking some sort of artificial immortality? That's what it always seems to come down to with these people with too much money and science on their hands.
So is the idea of a sort of digital resurrection, like how much can we recreate humanity? How much can we sever humanity? Is he going to revolve into something wholly artificial? Or is part of him going to revolve into Helena, his heir? Or what is all going to happen? But the word revolving is so disturbing to me.

and it sets my mind spinning in terms of like what is the point yeah of severance and lumen it of course is not what they're what they're packaging, which is like, come be a happy, pliant worker for us. That's a perk, for sure.
But what is the larger, certainly more nefarious goal of the severance program? Yeah, like, ultimately, the severance program itself seems like just a shield to protect very sensitive information. And specifically, as you say what it is that they're doing which is almost has to be terrible almost has to be whether necromantic or not we'll see i mean there's certainly a lot of things happening in this show that are flirting with the edge of death and existence and that's why for me i think one other thing to keep in mind is we don't really know if reintegration is even possible for these characters.
Yeah. And so there's a lot of things happening in the season two premiere where, for example, our kind of core four macrodats are given the choice of like, you can stay here or you can go.
Right. But what's meant by you can go is your existence can blink out.
Yeah. Because there's no reason to think that you have a life up there, that you would be allowed to continue to exist.
And so I think the hopeful eventuality for these characters is that they would find some way to reintegrate Innie and Audi. But we've seen that go pretty messily and end in death so far in terms of Petey trying to navigate that process.
Admittedly, he did not follow the post-op instructions. Didn didn't follow the aftercare instructions, Rob.
They were very specific, and he blew it. It was rest, ice, compression, elevation, and he didn't do it.
So, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. If you're not going to do your PT, you're not going to reintegrate.
But I hope, I don't wish ill, obviously, on our core for anyone else, but I rewatching season one,

Yul Vazquez, an actor that I love as Petey, watching how much fun they had with the

scrambled reintegration, him sort of blipping in and out of reality and memory and the way

that they used camera trickery and sort of like in-camera movements to convey all of that is just a really fun part of season one that I had kind of had a loose memory of, but it was fun to revisit. So I wouldn't hate seeing that again, but hopefully in a way that doesn't require any of our favorite characters to bleed heavily from any orifice whatsoever.
Unless they're into that, you know, I don't want to yuck anybody's yum. We're not yucking yums here on this podcast.
Okay. So is that your last point? That's my number three, or I guess my number one.
My number three or my number one, if you prefer. Oftentimes in these sci-fi stories where the question of what does it mean to be human? What does it mean? All that sort of stuff like that.
Even Christopher Nolan does this. Oftentimes it comes down to this notion of love and so I just want to remind everyone that Mark like there's the Burt and Irving storyline from season one which gets a little bit of a recap here in season two episode one so good yeah Dylan um I love that I love that he used the word courtship in this episode yeah describe it and in season one season one, he's like, are you sweet on him? It's like the phrase he used.
Very sweet. So, Bert Nerving, that is, of course, beautiful.
But I just want to point out that Mark, in his various guises, has a plethora of love interests in season one. Good for you, Adam Scott.
There's Helly, of course. There's Miss Casey slash Gemma, his deceased, question mark? Yeah.
Resurrected, question mark? Big old TBD on that one. Wife.
And there's as Milchick sort of put out in this episode, this idea that Mrs. Kobel or Mrs.
Selvig wants an erotic thruffle with Mark's Annie and Audi. What an idea, by the way.
Great idea. And are we going to see some version of that inside of this season? Let's tune in to find out.
But like, there are moments in season one, whether or not it's under the guise of her, like her undercover work as this sort of health nut kook neighbor that she plays in season one. But that that Mrs.
Selvig, you know, says is hitting on Mark like pretty heavily occasions. So, and then there's also a fully another woman that Mark terrorizes with his grief and drinking a problem in season one.
So, this idea of connection, of love, and it doesn't have to be romantic love. I think Dylan with his kids and his family.
We know some casting information about his family in season two that we may or may not get into, but does that count as a spoiler, a casting? I think for this show, it might. Okay.
We won't, we won't talk about that. And this is as good as kind of any to, to, to promise you all, as I've already promised Rob, I'm not watching past one episode a week with this show.
This is a theory show and it is cheating to watch ahead. So we will be in the dark down here in the basement in the dark.
In the office hellscape with all of you. With all of you.
Just scrabbling through the hallways trying to figure out our theories together. So that is, we are not watching ahead on this show.
No, not a bit. So those are our three random things.
If I could smuggle one thing, it would just be that there is a room full of baby goats and we still don't know why. And I just want to put that out there in the world.
We don't know why. And the quote, when they bust into the room of baby goats, the guy says, you can't take them yet.

They're not ready.

Ready for what?

And I'm just waiting.

I'm waiting for them to be ready.

Oh my God.

What if we get sort of like a little mini baby goat stampede

through the hallway?

I know.

That'd be phenomenal.

I do have, you know, as to pivot off the baby goats.

Yes.

As we soft launch potential new emails.

I'm so excited.

I have a couple, but I can't wait to hear yours. What are yours? The goats lay the eggs at gmail.com.
Okay. Which is one of the explanations for the egg party and perhaps why they were so good.
Those did look like some incredible deviled eggs. The egg bar is coveted as fuck.
It's just a quote I randomly have on a scrap of paper here on my desk. I like that.
So, you know, it's important to remember. Yeah.
How about the UUR at gmail.com? Okay. The UUR.
Okay. I feel like with a lot of these, there's some questionable spellings.
There's some dubious grammatical constructions. I want to pick one that's clear in a way that the UUR is not.
Perhaps pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.

That's a really good one.

I have a couple from this episode.

I only have two from this season two,

episode one.

Shambolicrube at gmail.com.

And nightgardner at gmail.com.

Oh, nightgardner is good.

Also would watch nightgardner.

The nightgardner.

The upcoming Netflix series starring, like, I don't know, Jason Statham or whatever. I'm up for that.
The Night Manager spinoff, The Night Gardener? Of course. It simply must be.
Yeah. Okay, great.
Okay, anything else that I had written down from season one? Do you have other ones that you want to float? One that I don't think can fly based on the questionable spelling of Egan that I'm guessing people just don't have off the tip of their tongue. AnimatronicEgan's at gmail.com.
I also, in honor of my favorite exchange in this episode between Irving and Dylan, your favorite perk at gmail.com or I'm your favorite perk at gmail.com if you prefer. I was wondering if you want to do something with like finger

traps

but I didn't

workshop that well enough. It's pronounced

fingy trap but okay.

The VIP area of

pips at gmail.com

What a show this is. Obviously

waffle party at gmail.com is right there. Alright so we're gonna go with pineapplebobbingatgmail.com yes we've conferred away from the cameras in the supply closet waffle party not available whichever one of you sick fucks is sitting on wafflepartyatgmail.com you won this round but pineapplebobbingatgmail.com is what we're gonna to go for.
I love a pineapple, so it sounds great to me. I think it's aspirational, too.
I would love to see the pineapple bobbing in action this season at some point. I actually think, I know it sounds like it would be really hard, but I actually think it would be quite easy because there's so much leafy stem to grab onto.
Joe, what? Okay, so when's the last time you participated in or saw an apple bobbing competition it's been a long time but a pineapple is not easier okay let me tell you this last uh october uh as you know at you know rob that i did a like live show for a buffy vampire slayer podcast Of course. Part of the show was an apple bobbing competition

that I did not compete in,

but I watched.

And I watched one participant demolish the other

by simply going for stems.

Yeah, that's the move.

Grabbing apple stems and tossing them over.

So you can,

there's so much pineapple stem to grab.

But it's all pointy.

It's quite pointy.

Also, the pineapple itself is so heavy.

It's hard to pick it up by your teeth by by the leaf alone listen you make some excellent points i hadn't considered the next strength that would be required oh my gosh licking gesture i'm strange just thinking about it okay fair enough okay uh so it's pineapple bobbing at gmail.com or prestigeTV at spotify.com. We'll get it from both angles.
Also, please pineapple bob, you know, safely. We, you know, we don't strain yourself.
Okay. For legal purposes, we do not recommend that anyone out there pineapple bobs, but if you were to do it, we'd love to hear about it at pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.
Okay, I want to start before we get into like theories or bigger sort of picture ideas of this episode of Severance.

I want to start with just like a tiny behind the scenes context to say that this, you know, season one came out three years ago.

I had just started at the ringer when this came out. So it has been so long, but there's a couple of creatives sort of at play behind the scenes here.
And I wanted to explain some slight, just quickly run through some slight behind the scenes tension and let that help explain why I was a little bit worried about this season and why I'm really happy

that I quite liked season two, episode one, and the reviews of people who have seen more are all quite good. So that's a huge relief.
Dan Erickson is the name of the person who came up with the idea for Severance in the first place. This is his original concept.
Exciting. Since Dan had never made a TV before.

Apple and their infinite wisdom

or whoever paired him with Mark Friedman, who does have TV experience. Mark Friedman and Dan

Erickson did not get along very well when making season one. And so Mark Freeman, I don't know,

other than his own scene or not,

is like,

I'm out of here for season two.

No,

thank you.

They tried to find someone to replace him to sort of once again,

and this is not unusual that you have a creative who doesn't have a ton of

TV experience paired with someone who does have a ton of TV experience.

For example,

a TV show like lost Damon Lindelof brought on Carlton Cuse for season two,

essentially,

you know,

because he was like,

help.

I don't know how to do that i'm a writer how do you know what are the logistics here honestly that sounds like a punchy title you could put on a barnes and noble bookshelf and help many aspiring screenwriters out there exactly cut that out kai this is our million dollar idea we're gonna be we're gonna we're going to make that. You can find us in the self-help section.
So that went south. They were trying to figure out someone who could replace Mark in his sort of TV, infinite TV wisdom in season two.
And Ben Stiller, who was another, you know, an EP on the show, directed the show, um, asked Mark to come back because the, you know,

according to reports, various reports asked Mark to come back because he couldn't find anyone to sort of adequately replace him. Um, Mark came back in some guys, he's a credited writer on episode

seven, but I don't think I, there's no way in my view, he had the same role that he had in season

one. Um, and Dan of course has much more TV running experience now than he did in season one.
Who knows how much Ben Stiller stepped up, though, by all implication, he stepped up to an even bigger role, perhaps, than he had in season one. And certainly the visual styling of the show comes a lot from his sensibilities.
Absolutely. And then they have asked, at one point, according to reports, asked Bo Willimon of House of Cards and Andor fame to work on season three.
So these are all the sort of pineapples in the water here, bobbing along in the water here. A lot of baby goats in need of some kind of shepherd, it seems.
And so I was quite worried. And then there's writer's strike, and there's just like a ton of delays.
And even though sort of Ben Stiller and some other people have come out and said like the reports of behind-the-scenes tension are greatly exaggerated, he did in a very recent New York Times podcast say like, listen, okay, we didn't get along all the time. Like Ben Stiller's like, okay, I'm not going to lie to you.
There was some tension, but it's not as rough as has been reported. So that's just sort of some of the reportage that has happened behind the scenes, all of which has led to a season two that I was worried was going to be a hot mess.
And instead, it seems people are really enjoying it. And especially when you have a show that comes out of the gate, out of nowhere, no one was expecting Severance to be, even if it wasn't like the biggest ratings hit in the whole world for Apple, at least it's like really, you know, internet friendly, people love to talk about Emmy winning, show for Apple.
So when something comes out and has such a sort of explosive season one in that way, I'm always worried about the season two. Definitely.
So Rob, sort of just big picture, where was your anxiety level if any place before season two? And how are you feeling having seen season two, episode one? I mean, mine was pretty high. Just anytime you get this sort of delay.
And in particular, the transition from what I would say is one of the most successful season finales we've had in recent memory at the end of season one. It's just like a pulse pounding episode that is so deftly sewn together.
And then three years of waiting, including not only everything you outlined, but multiple strikes and stoppages in production. This is a show that's very expensive to make, even though you may not think that based on the setting, but by the camera tricks and overall, like what they're disguising and what they're hiding and overall the structure and styling of the show, the price is clearly piling up for something like this.
And I always worry with that of, oh, is it going to get too high? Is it going to get prohibitive? Is there going to be a cutting of corners that has to happen at a certain point? Because this is a show that among the things I love about it, I love how great it looks and how disorienting it feels and the camera work feels. And if you have to start sacrificing those things, I think Severance stops being Severance.
But overall, I'm thrilled with where we're starting for season two. And I'm thrilled that, to me, what is like the clarity of this world has not left it at all.
I think it's such a weird thing with the mystery box show where so many of them, to me, Joe, feel like such a hodgepodge where shows are trying to wrong foot you in so many different ways. They just throw a bunch of different things at the wall.
And there's just all of a sudden a mystical animal walking through the street. And you're like, all right, I guess that's what's going on now.
And that's fine. And you can, you can structure your show that way.
And that's all well and good. Specific mystical animal in mind? Oh, no, no.
That's just, just, just strictly theoretical. Okay.
That's the tip of the shitberg that can happen to a theory show for sure.

But I think Severance from the get-go had such a specific sensibility in a way that makes the inexplicable parts of the show kind of make sense. And I was really hoping it wouldn't lose that.
And I'm thrilled to say at least one episode in, I feel like we're right back in it. it's a really incredible feat in terms of this near future sci-fi,

uh,

vibe,

which can be so hard to pull off.

But it really does feel like a world that is just like a hop, skip and a jump away from ours, which makes the sci-fi that much more engaging, our own corporate paranoia or whatever,

our tech phobia or whatever it is that we're feeling here in 2025.

There's a very fine line between the show

being acceptable to be on Apple,

but this would not be made on Amazon Prime,

I think, for a bunch of different reasons.

Not to draw dividing lines

between the various corporate overlords out there,

but Lumen as an everything company stands very tall over this whole entire story. You were thinking about Amazon? I think it's what comes to mind for me.
Yeah, the people who make your deodorant and your snack foods. And run the internet.
Yeah, your Lumen Basics. Do you have Lumen Basics batteries in your remote right now? That's funny that you mentioned that because I was going to say, and I remember talking to Van and Mallory when we covered this in season one, the Apple aesthetic that's available here.
And we get it. So this episode opens with our guy, Mark S, running for a long time through the halls of the severed level of Lumen.

The conditioning on this guy for not doing any cardio on a regular basis is quite impressive.

Did you happen to see Adam Scott's Colbert appearance this week?

Did he talk about this?

He was talking about the running.

Not the conditioning on Mark, who as far as we've seen only lifts whiskey tumblers,

and that's about it, right?

Maybe a growler at best.

Yeah.

Colbert put up a still image,

as one does on the late night,

of just the profile of him running.

And I was like,

that's a Tom Cruise run. And Adam Scott's like, I studied Tom Cruise's run.
You got to study the best. You got to go straight to the grades.
The best of the best. Do you have a favorite Tom Cruise running sequence in film? You can't make me choose between my favorites like that.
Well, I think the one, the one, because he calls it out specifically is minority report because everyone runs Joe, you know, everyone does run. Minor reports are really good.
And I love minority report, but for me, it's the firm. And I think because in the firm, he's wearing not just the suit, but I believe also a Billy Wee 90s trench coat on top of it.
It's just a lot of where is he running through like a, an amusement park or something? Or am I getting my Tom Cruise runs confused? There's like a ferry, it's like a ferry building. It's a ferry, yeah, a ferry building.
Yeah, you're right. The, Adam Scott and Colbert described it as the blade hands, like you got to blade your hands as you run, and you got to keep the knees high.
And that is, that is the cruise run. But so, and then Adam Scott said, and I believe this is true uh that they took eight months to film this sequence obviously not like straight but you know with like breaks and strikes and all sorts of like that and watching it knowing that was really interesting because like you could watch it and just sort of get swept up in it is quite fun but watching it from you know with like you and i watch a ton of film uh trying to track that camera.
Oh my God. And how they did that.
And obviously like some of it has to be on green screen because there's one moment where the camera sort of swoops around and almost under him, like around into where there would be a wall and down into where there would be a floor and around him and stuff like that. But I thought it was a really brilliant and fun, but he looks like he's running through an iPod, essentially.

Like, it's, you know, the white,

the stark white walls and stuff like that.

What do you want to say about the opening

running sequence

or the Apple aesthetics?

I enjoyed the sequence.

I enjoyed all the camera work you described.

Like, the stitching together of all of that is

quite delicate and I think very impressive.

Yeah. And speaks to what I think

Thank you. I enjoyed the sequence I enjoyed all the camera work you described The stitching together of all of that is quite delicate And I think very impressive And speaks to what I think makes the show impressive You just lose him around the corner And that's a way that they can Stitch a cut in and stuff like that Just barely And I like overall the idea that They can do something very fun With the start of this season Where Mark is picking up right where we left off at the end of season one, right? It is the second that he is walking through the door because of like the anti-outy dynamic, like his consciousness snapped out.
I don't know if you heard, but she is alive. Yeah.
And so he snaps into consciousness. He goes running, looking for Miss Casey, looking for the woman who at least is a mirror image of his wife, if not his actual wife.
And we're told later that it's been five months since the events of season one. I would push everybody watching this episode to take all exposition in this premiere with a grain of salt because basically all of it comes from either Milchick or some like Lumen promotional material.
So I have no idea how much time has passed or not passed. It could be the next day.
It could be years into the future. It could be exactly three years like we have waited or a little less than three years like we have waited for season two.
But then it gets to play off of those things both here and then eventually when we get the whole gang back together. And so many of those characters are snapping into consciousness for what appears to be the first time since the season one finale.
So we're both picking up right where we left off and we have this hanging mystery

of like what has been happening in the background

while all of these innies

have been snapped out of consciousness.

And really funny sort of mirror image tactic here

is that, you know, we start season one,

episode one of Severance,

we're with Mark crying in the car

and we watch him go through the whole procedure

of going down uh into the severed level um here inside of this episode we're trapped with any mark inside of that reality and we have no access to the other reality um so to your point we can't fact check,

Milchik's clearly doctored.

Seems trustworthy.

You know, a newspaper.

The heavily redacted newspaper. The redacted newspaper was tremendous.
With an image of them being celebrated in a parade, which when that image showed up in the trailer a couple months ago, the Redditors were quick to point out that this is a doctored image of, I can't remember who it is now. either like eisenhower or castor or something like that like it's an existent historical image that they just like took their group photo from the desk and just airlifted them into the car and that's as much effort as uh whoever put that together uh use so yeah we are stuck not knowing and I'm not upset or impatient about that.
I really like that limitation that they put on the story here. I will say the overall drive to, one thing that I was wondering coming out of season one is what kind of role is the absence of Miss Casey or his wife name Gemma? His wife's name is Gemma.
Is that correct? Going to play in this season. Like clearly this is a character that everyone's trying to locate.
Is this a person who's going to be off screen for the entirety of the season? And already we're seeing kind of like flickering images of her pop up into various spaces and consciousnesses, which I have to say one, I really appreciate because that central mystery is phenomenal and driving. And I'm really eager to see where it goes.
But also, I really love Dijon Lachman in this show. And her performance style is always so weird and so haunting.
And I'm always trying to understand what her characters want or are after. And so the idea that we may get,

whether it's flashback,

whether it's on the non severed floors,

whether it's as we're kind of unspooling,

whatever this mystery is,

she's still involved in some critical capacity.

That makes me very happy.

Are you,

are you a dollhouse man?

That's a complicated question.

I'm a doll.

I'm a person who watched. Do you like her in doll in dollhouse she is terrific she's so good at dollhouse and that's a show that i think has a lot of kind of fundamental weirdness in common with separate yeah yeah and she she absolutely crushes in on that show she was so good um and i've been sort of following her career with great interest ever since and like wanting her to have projects worthy of her, which she doesn't always.
She's often sort of this mysteriously, occasionally there kind of person. So hopefully she gets more to do this season.
Even more to do, but I thought she did a great job with what she did in season one. Her wistfulness in season one when she talks you know, first of all, that she's only been awake, was it like 16 hours total? And her wistfulness when she talks about spending time with them in the Macrodata office and how it was like how much she enjoyed that.
Sad. It's very sad.
There's parts of it that are very sweet and i think overall what i what i love about their relationship whether they are aware of it or not and cobel's kind of like obsession it seems like yes with with whatever they are to each other is that it allows severance to be kind of perverse ultimately like this is a twisted gnarled up emotional situation yeah and a lot of other

soft sci-fi that's out there doesn't ever really get that far they like intimate oh it's kind isn't it kind of messed up that people have severed heads and severed consciousnesses but they don't get into oh this is like actually really really twisted and i think what what's brilliant about it is that they're using and this is often the case with sort of high concept shows, is that they get back to almost like basic soap opera level storytelling that works. It's always worked.
It works. And so, you know, to go back to this idea of sort of the love theme, we are watching a love quadrangle or whatever.
We are watching Mark S. talk to a woman who is some facsimile of his wife.
And so certainly there's a part of us that's like, oh my gosh, they have to be reunited. Presumably if she is enough of a semblance of his wife, they have to be reunited.
We have to be rooting for them. But then we're also obviously rooting for like Kelly and Mark and their connection.
And so they've given us an impossible love triangle, love quadrangle. And again, that is basic soap opera storytelling.
And also, My Wife Is Dead, No She's Not, is also basic soap opera storytelling inside of something that has a lot on its mind,

and a lot of prestige sheen around its visuals.

So I think that works really well. And again, it's impossible for me to separate theory from any plot discussion of this show, so I will say that, like, And Kobell's personal grief, which seems according to date sourcing of a hospital bracelet, perhaps related to her mother? Yeah.
Question mark? Some kind of relative at least. Yeah, a mother she lost or someone she lost.
so if she's someone that is grieving would she not like because I was trying to figure out what's her investment in Mark and what's her

investment in trying to test Mark and Gemma slash Miss Casey with the scented candle and stuff like that. The candle is wild, right? There's like levels of like, oh, this is a weird situation that she's toying with and then over the course of season one, it gets like pretty deep for her.
Because she's a creep, but also... A total psycho.
Because she's trying to test something or trying to prove something. You know, she's asking Mark's sister, like, does he ever think he sees her somewhere? You know, I mean, she's testing and she's probing.
And so I have to imagine, and outside the scope seemingly of her job. And so I have to imagine that...
You don't think working as an undercover lactation consultant is part of her job? I don't think the... Was it chamomile cookies were on the menu there? First of all, that doesn't even sound good.
It sounds gross. When I was re-watching season one, she's like, I've been experimenting with chamomile.
And then he eats the cookie and he looks like he enjoys it.

Absolutely not.

I know we live in a world that's like the Earl Greyification of everything.

But some teas go in food and some teas don't go in food.

There needs to be a boundary.

You can Earl Grey something.

You can green tea something.

But I don't think you can chamomile something.

And I will-

Sever that right out.

Keep that in tea world.

Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.

If you have a chamomile recipe that you feel like we should try, we probably won't, but you should send it. This episode is brought to you by Max.
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Not available in all states. So what is her motivation outside of the scope of her own corporate ambition? and it seems to be this sort of like, if she's someone who's experiencing crippling personal grief, would she not be invested in figuring out, does this actually work? Can I sever out this grief and not feel this anymore? can I forget this person can I internal sunshine essentially this person

out of my heart and mind? And has that successfully happened for Mark and Gemma? To your point earlier about the black sludge encroaching on Irving, who has been severed the longest out of any of them. So how permanent how permanent is this? Or did he have like an older model? And that's why the black paint is oozing in or sort of, what are the boundaries of this procedure, you know? I think we're still learning what the applications are too, right? There's mention in season one about one of the senators who is like supporting them in terms of some legislation.
His wife gave birth while severed. Sure.
What would you want to sever your way through, Rob? Oh, this is a great question. Expense reports, for sure.
I was going to say tax season. So same, same, same, same, same.
Anything that fine tooth comb and financial, get it right up out of here. Severed Rob can handle that.
Receipts plus forms plus whatever. Severed Joanna can do that.
Anything at the DPS slash DMV, Severed Rob can handle that stuff. But I would want to be a benign overlord to my Severed self and say, Severed Me can also do some fun things.
As long as she does the things I absolutely don't want to do, she can also... They can go pineapple bobbing.
She can pineapple bob her little heart out. And I will deal with the cuts and bruises on my mouth as a result.
It'll be fine. As we're sussing out what severance can be used for and what it can't be used for, I am fascinated by the introduction of Miss Huang.
Yes. One of our new characters who I'm still trying to figure out, you know, as the deputy manager of this office working under Milchick.
Is this a character who is severed or not? Most of the managerial characters have not been. If this is not a severed character, why is a literal child working in this office? And if it is a literal child who is severed, what is it that they are severed from? my mind is racing with questions about who this person could

be is it someone with a terminal illness who is like trying to sever their way away from some of the pain of that like is this a character who you know we see mark get flashes of miss casey as he looks at her is there any relation between these characters at all is there any kind of weird cloning shit that's been going on in this place like i i don't know what's happening i just know that this character is mysterious enough.

And I have such a deep admiration for her organizational technique and her desk drawers that I'm interested in whatever's going on in that corner of the show. The little hand game she has with the rings and the water unlocked a memory and I had a similar thing.
We all did. It didn't have Kier Egan as far as I can tell

inside of it,

but it definitely existed.

I wonder what the version of that

will be for Gen Z or Gen Alpha.

This like,

we had all of these

dog shit handheld games

that don't really work

and are not even fun to play.

They don't have to deal with it.

They don't have to make

little silver balls

go through little mazes

on like a whatever. They don't do slide puzzles.
But. They don't have to make little silver balls go through little mazes on like a whatever.

They don't do slide puzzles.

But what's their version of the slide puzzle?

Yeah.

Two dots on iOS? I don't know. But the clone idea is a good one.
And I get really wary inside of a theory show to be like, this character this character have like a very passing resemblance to each other so like are they but I did but I couldn't help my dumb brain being like can I do math to make this their daughter no I did the same thing so yeah uh clone but could you do math to make it not necessarily their daughter who was born grown? I think there was mentioning of like IVF in the first season. Like there's there's just enough breadcrumbs to make me wonder.
And I agree with you. Like we are perilously close to like Ray Palpatine territory in a way that I don't want to be.
Yeah. This is my fundamental concern about this show.
I love that central mystery so much about Mark and Gemma and like what and what is it that happened to her and why is it that she is popping up as miss casey in this world there's so many different things pointing to mark being a character of like critical structural importance that i'm worried he's too important i'm worried he's not just like a guy caught up in this big thing that we're all trying to unravel, but someone who hit he specifically is key to whatever story they're trying to tell. I'm always a little wary of that.
I think I agree with you. I don't want to make him like sort of loom and Jesus or anything like that, but I think he seems more circumstantially important.
I hope so. Than actually important.
The sort of, what's's it called? The freshman fluke? The thing that earned him his little head etching on his desk has to do with him refining a file quicker than anyone had ever refined a file before. So yeah, that points to sort of loom and Jesus.
But I think it's more like he's a man crippled by grief who has a wife who died or didn't in a way that they could sort of exploit to experiment on something. So circumstantially important more than like he's got the midichlorians that they need to do this, that, or thing i was really happy it's i think it only takes like 18 minutes for our core four it's really only the core three but like uh theoretically the core four to get back together this is core three let's be real about what's happening here i was a little mad because i was like i was i was like as soon as she came out i was like oh that's definitely helena that's body language is totally different you know absolutely and then they like revealed it inside like immediately inside the episode.
I was like, as soon as she came out, I was like, oh, that's definitely Helena. That's not Helena.
Body language is totally different. You know, absolutely.
And then they like revealed it inside, like immediately inside the episode. I was like, damn it.
I wanted to be ahead of the show. Here's the thing.
Did they? Yes. I'm curious where they want us to be with that character right now.
Oh, you think that there's an interpretation. So Helena, when she's saying what the truth was of her experience up top that she would lie because she doesn't want them to know that she's an egan that had not even occurred to me that's interesting my default assumption from the moment she comes out of the elevator and mark hugs her it's like the body language is different and brit lauer a a performer I really, really like is she's playing everything so cautiously.

Yes. elevator and Mark hugs her.
It's like the body language is different. And Britt Lauer, a performer I really, really like is she's playing everything so cautiously.
Like every exchange between, uh, Heli and the other characters, she's, she waits for someone else to take the lead. And she responds.
She's, she's never the first person to express literally anything. Also the thing she says, she says, where did the security cameras go? Or he said there were no microphones in here.
Also, the biggest red flag, I would say, the fact that a person who is supposed to be Helly, when given the choice to leave, without hesitation, chooses to stay. That's just not something I would believe that any version of that character would do, which leads us to only believe that this is undercover Helena trying to do God knows what with these other people, but she's here for some kind of reason.
I love undercover Helena. Helena seems like she sucks, right? But maybe she's obviously clearly sucks, but perhaps she is on an arc of some kind because there is some softening around her when she's talking to to mark she's like very that it doesn't seem performative but seems like sort of actually impactful on her and of course since she's the person to so defiantly say our any and our outies have nothing in common we owe them nothing yeah she of course has to be a character who we're going to see her become more helly than Helena as time goes on.
That's the storytelling logic tells me. You think at the end of this episode of Undercover Boss, she's going to have the big confrontation moment with the rest of the staff and be like, you know what? Actually, you are people.
I'm sorry. You aren't just family and baby goats for me to shepherd around.

Yeah.

Undercover Helena is a great idea, I think, for this story.

Very good.

Very interesting.

It kind of puts us on a weird footing to start the season.

And overall, I will say about all the core four,

whatever you make of Heli or Helena,

these are four people who have been through,

at least three people have been through something pretty intense

in terms of their finale experience in season one

and the overtime protocol or whatever it's called. But they're still coming back and kind of keeping each other at arm's reach.
Until Irving and Dylan have the most, the longest, most lovely hug of all time. It was wonderful.
You know? But it takes, like, he has to go have a good long cry. Yes.
And can't even talk about what happened with getting to Bert's house. Yes.
Until he has some space to process things. And you even see Mark going through the mental exercise of, can we even talk about any of this openly here? Or are they trying to mine our experience for more information? Well, don't worry about that.
He said there's no microphone. There's no microphones.
There's no cameras. This is a safe space.
I can't believe it didn't occur to me that they were trying to sell us another reason that Helena might be lying. But in putting it in close proximity to Irving sort of being resistant to talk about his experience up top, that makes a lot of sense to me.
But what I also love is that in her shitty lie where she's like, I'm just a sad single person

who wears sweatpants and watches TV or whatever,

she's like, it's not that the gardener was there at night,

which is a great thing for Irving to pick up on.

A night gardener, you ran outside

and you found a night gardener.

But it's that Helena, the most privileged person in the world,

can only think, what does one find outside one's front door?

Why the hell? Oh, the groundsman. The the groundsman the groundskeeper was in his cottage and i said um yeah so her body language is different uh her her voice is lower like yeah you know she she's doing um and an interview that i saw with adam scott uh he was talking about how when he plays

mark s the innie that he will wear a sort of posture device yeah to make sure that he like stands up taller um so yeah watching you know we only got a little bit of time with him but watching John Turturro playving uh you know up top with his like paint smeared henley and all of that sort of stuff like that was these these are tremendous performers and the little choices they're making to distinguish between their inies and their outies is just um a delight a treasure for us to enjoy is so fucking good on this show. He's so good.
And that's a character who, at the outset of season one, because he is so glued, chapter and verse, like the company handbook, is so easy to hate. But I find, I think he's my favorite character on the show, not just performer on the show, but character on the show in Irving.
And I love everything that transpired between him and Bert. I love the sort of wounded place that we're finding him at the start of season two and what he decides to do with that.
I got to say, this is just a masterfully constructed and balanced core cast. Those four in particular, we haven't talked enough about Zach Cherry, who plays Dylan.
And Dylan is the one outie we haven't had any time with yet because of the nature of the season one finale. Right.
So I hope we get that at some point too. We got the introduction of the family visitation center with its ergonomic seating.
So we shall see. Does that mean you can visit your family there? Who's to say? Who's to say? It's right there in the name but he didn't confirm it.
And speaking of Tremelel Tillman as Milchick is such a joy for me. I love him.
I love that he's been promoted. There are two moments that I stopped and rewound and watched several times inside of this episode.
And one of them belongs to Adam Scott when he's staring down

Miss Wong and he says three friends after saying four friends and the like 90 different expressions that cross his face as he tries to keep his eyes and face friendly while seething with rage. That I loved

And then

Milchick

Actually seething with rage. That I loved.
And then Milchick, actually, I can't even pick one. There's no one moment.
It's just all the times in which he is, actually, it's when they come into the newly refurbished break room, which used to be a torture room. And now we've got nice seating and projector and he asks Irving to the tall drink of water that is Irving to sit in the back.
And he's just talking about whenever he's like, isn't this great? This gift that Lumen is giving you isn't this wonderful? That affectation that he puts on, I find so delicious. I just think it's wonderful.
So I think the biggest mystery coming out of season one is why Trammell Tillman was not cast in literally every project over the last three years. Well, Britt Lowe were too.
Were all of them just in stasis? I don't know. Waiting to make more severance? Because I don't think any of them have done much in the interim.
Zach Cherry seems like he's kind of always busy, but I feel like all of them are just, we're sort of on hold, which is too bad. And then, you know, we're missing Patricia Arquette inside of this episode.
And then we don't get any of Mark's family, all of whom I absolutely love. I love his sister.
And then, of course, his brother-in-law is wonderful. But his sister, the work that I do in season one with Mark's sister to...
there's a lot of exposition they have to get through in season one in terms of like who these people are, what their relationships are to each other, what the state of lumen is, what severance is. There's a lot of high concept stuff that they have to deliver to us.
All of that is done, I think, some of the best exposition I've ever seen. But the shortcut to establishing intimacy between Mark and his sister is not just like, hello, sister, how are you? Which is like, oh, it's just like one of the worst things that TV and Bill do.
Hey, bro, how are you? You know, but it's like just inside jokes, little voices that they do with each other, little bits that, you know, sibling bits that they do with each other that they never have to explain. It's just things that, you know, it's just family stuff.
And I really love her and I'm dying to know, like, I don't know how long we're going to be kept in the dark as to what was her reaction to, she's lying, or any of the other stuff that happened at the end of season one. I'm dying to find out.
I mean, I feel pretty confident in guessing. And maybe this confidence...
I'd be hoisted by my own petard with this confidence. Once again, Rob.
Always. No.
Too many petards going around. I doubt very much that any meaningful change has gone on in the outside world.
I doubt very much that it... I don't think it's been exactly five months.
I don't know how long it's been. I wouldn't mind it being five months.
I would say zero reform. I expect zero reform.
Certainly not Castro-esque parades. Surface level.
Yes. Surface, surface, surface, stop-motion animation, Keanu Reeves level, pandering to we'll do better.
of corporate stuff but in terms of like i think the person best poised to pursue meaningful investigative work is mark's sister and i can see a version that she sort of keeps a lid on some of the things she knows yes in order to do some actual further investigation i think investigation. I think she has to be very careful.
But yeah, overall, I feel like bringing the group back... And again, the sequencing of how all that happened is fascinating to me, right? You bring Mark back first, we should say, with this sort of dummy new team that he's brought into, which I enjoyed very much, although I kind of wish they had gone full Shaun of the Dead with it and done like bizarro macro data team.
Like just slightly parroting versions, although Ali's Shotcat, I guess, is like kind of a bizarro version of Helly in some ways. But overall, it's like the timing of all that and the way that the company acquiesces ultimately to Mark's request to bring back the team.
And why would they do that? Yeah, I don't know. Ultimately, clearly, there's some information that they want.
Yeah. And there's a reason why Helena has now gone undercover, it seems, to participate in that.
But why they're bringing back the other two members of the team to accomplish that bit, I'm not really sure. But it seems clear to me that overall, the proclamation that, oh, actually, you guys are heroes, mission accomplished, great job, systemic change achieved, is a pacification technique.
We do get some world-building information out of the other team, the Bizarro team that we get. Just love Bob Balaban, always.
He's so good. So Mark W, this might be all we get get of them might be one and done in this episode and that would be too bad but this idea that like um they had different carpet different the different different confused colored keyboards um and then dario uh the italian that he was like our eagans were brooms with plates for faces.
Do you have an elevator? We had a rope. So I'm just envisioning them being lowered down via rope.
I believe all of that stuff in terms of there is world. We are in Keertown, a company town.
Keertown, USA. Well, maybe USA.

The state, because there's, you know,

God bless the Reddit detectives, as you know,

but like PE is the abbreviation for the state that they're in,

which is not a real state.

But that there are lumen offices

and severed programs throughout the US. That is like true inside of the world building here.
Within the inner world during their wooden sweet clippy hell presentation that they're given. I think there was some factoid in there about it's in over 300 countries throughout the world.
I'm going to call bullshit on that bit. I don't know.
Maybe. That seems easily fact-checked.
Maybe that's giving the world too much credit, honestly. This is a public-facing video, right? This isn't just for...
That's what they say. ...Core 3.
I think what Milchik says is all of the new severed employees will be shown this. 100%.
That is what he says. But I also feel like it's for the nervous board members who want to feel like they can claim that they don't endorse an evil corporation or corporate slavery or whatever it is.
But those people would know that the stop-motion puppet macro dat revolution did not inspire any actual change in the real world.

You know, so I think there'd be too many things in that video that real people above the world of the severed floor i guess below the world of the severed floor uh could call bullshit on for it to be for public consumption yeah interesting interesting i wouldn't put it past the the fear mongering um among like rickens intellectual friends about not fear-mongering among Rickon's intellectual friends about...

Not fear-mongering. Also intellectual.
Yeah. The dinnerless dinner party goers.
It's so good. Fucking dinnerless dinner party.
About Lumen's overreach and about the severed program. I wouldn't put it past this world to have uh you know a severed program in every in 300 countries but but to your point and we should always remember it don't believe everything you're told especially not by lupin all right do you want to talk about the what we get at the very end of the episode when we get sort of a little bit of information about what this macro data refinement process is actually doing, accomplishing here?

We do get something.

Yeah.

I don't know what we got, but we got something.

Okay. So I can't wait.
We're recording this a little early. I can't wait for the Reddit detectives to screen grab this image of Miss Casey that we get at the end of the episode.
But I did try to do my best Rob Mahoney impression and pull some words here. We get 20.
This is the 25th build. There's the number 25 number 25 and then next to it says build yes which to me means like mock 25 of like that is this if we're building an artificial miss casey which kind of seems like the implication to me it's at least hinted that way um like like the one we scrapped at the end of season one was perhaps build 24 and this is build 25 um that mark is refining data under the the name cold harbor and all of the sort of files that they're working on have names of real towns in the US.
And I can give you my absolute cuckoo bananas theory on that. I would love to hear it.
But the screen, the Miss Casey screen at the end is like also Cold Harbor. And this is her face.
And the way it's shown visually is sort of like, if you look through the ambiguous numbers that are being bucketed in his work, it's like, this is, it's intimated that this is sort of the layer of truth behind. He's at 68% and that screen's at 68%.
68%. Exactly.
So like 68% built. This was like a theory in season one that he was able to, his freshman fluke, his ability to refine the data faster than anyone else was because he was always working on building a version of his wife and he knows his wife better than other people.

Like that was sort of a common theory. Does this feel like a confirmation of that to you or i'm not quite sure that's where that's where i i am stumbling on the is this a is mark important by coincidence or important by design because yes it does seem like he is in some way contributing to a reassembly of his dead wife or maybe not dead wife in some fashion.
And particularly the fact that the numbers are grouped by a sense of feel. It's just like you look at the number and you intuitively feel something is correct and you put them into a bucket.
Makes me feel like that is his consciousness identifying something that is familiar to him in something about her right

but how does that relate to everyone else in the room and anyone else working in macro data reform like do they have their own versions of that or are they all working on miss i was wondering that because um something i wrote in my notes when re-watching season one is when heli hel not Helena, is in the break room

and she talks about hearing

like an angry man

sort of mumbling behind

the audio in the break room

and Dylan says

he heard a kid crying

and so I'm wondering if like

if that person for her

is a version of her dad

and that person for Dylan

is one of his kids.

It is. I'm wondering if like, if that person for her is a version of her dad and that person for Dylan is one of his kids,

you know what I mean?

And,

and,

and for Irving,

perhaps his father who we see was,

you know,

serving in the Navy or something like that.

So is there a person in their life that the severance program is,

is making them work on building, you building. Are they assigned a person somehow? Certainly speaks to the revolving possibility, Jo.
I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
And it gives Helena a dual purpose in doing severance in the first place, participating in this element of the work, right? There's the PR benefit of like, look, I am an executive

or at least the daughter of the CEO of this company

doing this thing.

And also I'm helping hypothetically create

my dying father a new vessel to live in.

I was reading through some Reddit theories this morning

and someone was like,

this sounds very Westworld.

I'm like, it does.

It really does.

It does sound very Westworld. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Season one, a good thing.
Okay. Further on, we have some questions.
But we're in season two now. Yeah.
So we'll see. Cold Harbor and Allentown are at least two of the places and Culpeper and there's like a few others.
And I think in an interview, Ben Stiller says something pretty loose and vague, just like we picked U S cities. But I was wondering if there was like a significance to which U S cities they picked cold Harbor and Allentown and Culpeper and a few other places, but, but I did not check all of them.
So this could be very quickly sort of, but are all had important civil war moments occur or battles or incidences. And Lumen was founded in 1865, which is the year the civil war ended.
So that's the extent of my theory. Wow.
Something, something Civil War. I don't know.
Something, something Civil War, something, something red and blue, something, something split. There's a lot of things happening here.
Exactly. I was like, Civil War raging inside of all of us.
I don't know. So I don't know if that's intentional.
Probably you could make a Civil War argument for a lot of the cities on the Eastern Seaboard. That's very true.
But I like where your head's at. We're going to need more yarn to connect all that.
But I like where we're going. I have an endless supply.
I actually have a ball of yarn right here. This is just...
You have skeins and skeins? I do have skeins. I'm always skeining.
Oh, we know that. Okay.
So, what else, anything else you want to make sure that we address? I think I, I am curious to see with Milchik, you know, the severed floor is under new management. He's running this thing now.
He very much wants the welcome screen on his computer to reflect that. He needs a new welcome screen.
Why is it that he is so bothered or so haunted or

so perturbed by

Cobell? Like they didn't have

the best relationship, but it seems like there's

more, obviously, to that welcome screen

situation than just like, oh, I want to be

honored for my contributions here.

So he's the one who ratted her out.

So do you think

that like Irving's

previous incarnation of his innie, he is

like a true believer and he believes

that she's sort of like besmirched

Thank you. so do you think that like Irving's previous incarnation of his innie he is like a true believer and he believes that she sort of like besmirched the good quote unquote good works they're meant to be doing there I mean look behind that megawatt smile I would believe anything is going on which is why that character is so great I have a hard time believing that he's that big of a dunce.

It does seem like Cobell

is a patsy. Not a dunce.

Even as he is saying that,

I don't think he thinks that. He knows

too much. Oh, the erotic trouble

business? The erotic trouble

and the idea that she was the one

responsible for all of the abusive practices

happening here, the break room. Of course

she's being blamed. But wouldn't

he be eager to do that

Thank you. idea that like oh she was the one responsible for all of the abusive practices happening here the break room of course she's being blamed but like right wouldn't he be eager to do that if it meant preserving the good name of a company that he believed in the larger work I don't have a good answer for you obviously so but but I think it is an interesting additional layer that they put on his character inside of this episode.
I'm going to guess no. And I say that simply because he and Cobell are shown to be such opposites in so many ways.
And she, in addition to her fixation on Mark, also seems to be like, if not a true believer, at least obsessed with the Keir Egan mission and has her own little shrine to the company slash cult.

I think there are different versions of True Believer.

You know what I mean?

There's like the zealot,

which she was to a certain degree.

And then there's the like,

by the book,

rules and regulations matter kind of thing. He could be that for sure.

I don't know.

He's certainly a striver.

Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com

if you have some theory about that. Or PrestigeTV at Spotify.com if you have a theory about that.
Anything else you want to make sure that we mention? I just want to give a shout out to Dylan because I feel like narratively we didn't talk about him a lot in this episode but just has as often is the case with the show banger line after banger line. Fuck there's easels up there was probably my favorite.
been an improv like i really hope that that was a secretary improv it was so good tremendous stuff um yeah i just uh oh also i want to shout out in the uh in the amongst the new snacks um at lumen chris's mints salsa fruit cut beans? What's a cut bean? Is that like green beans in a can? Is that what that is? I would love to find. I mean, it does sound like a healthy corporate approved snack.
In fact, I can't tell you for certain that there aren't cut beans in the Spotify office. I know there aren't and you know there aren't.
We know about all of them. I i'm not so sure i do love that about this show like obviously there's a lot of uh post-modern version of a corporate malaise thing happening all throughout severance and so it makes the setting so evocative and works so well uh the overall like mark s versus mark w sort of thing brought this out of me where it's like, what I love about Severance

is it feels like the writer's room got together

and ranked from one to 100

the most annoying things

about being in a white collar desk job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they didn't bother with numbers one through 70.

They just looked at 71 through 100

and they're like,

someone has the same first name as you.

That is an annoyance of office life

that we want to harp on

for this little moment

in a show that we probably will not touch on ever again.

But it's what makes it so great.

Around the Mark W.

Post-it debacle,

I do want to say,

wrathfully, your innie Mark W.

is an incredible way to sign off a Post-it.

And I think we should start doing that.

And then also,

Aaliyah Shawkett's delivery of

Do You Even Have a Brother-in-Law Asshole?

Also, her asking about

Thank you. post it and I think we should start doing that.
And then also Aaliyah Shoghatt's delivery of do you even have a brother-in-law asshole?

Also her asking about

wind. Yeah.

Is it just like someone breathing on you?

Very good stuff. Very good stuff.

Alright, so that's

Severn season two episode one.

We had a blast. We're going to continue to do this week

to week and we're so excited.

We will be digging

into all the theories all your questions comments or concerns i got a little deep but like a little too deep but i need to shallow it up into the idea of like how memory works and like the kinds of memory like procedural memory is that what you're talking about? What are you ripping on here?

I don't know.

The way the brain works,

long-term memory, explicit memory,

implicit memory, all this sort of stuff like that.

I just sort of like,

what could you actually do to a brain to achieve what you do with severance?

And what would that bring out?

What is it saying about nature versus nurture?

Who is Helly? Who could have Helena been if she hadn't been raised by assholes? Could she have been Helly, who we quite like? So, you know, all these are great questions asked. Did you want, do you have anything you want to say about the, the Severance pop-up that they did in New York this week? A phenomenal throwback to a time I didn't know existed anymore.
I love this sort of marketing. Yeah.
And I think it helped for me, Joe, just crystallize the idea of Severance as, I mean, I think this is the effect of a thing that's so heavily anticipated that people are really looking forward to. And so it's less to me the existence of the pop-up of them mulling about their office space

and doing the little, it's not a vacuum.

What is that little roller cleaner thing called?

Oh, I don't know.

Like the little carpet cleaner across the green felt.

It's like what they're doing

and the fact that they're doing it is not that important,

but the outsized response

and how psyched people were to see this thing that they loved and are looking forward to that has been cool here is my here are my two notes what so if in case people didn't see they put a glass box inside of grand central station in new york and did a little like the the four cube cubicle setup of the of the office space They had three of the core four in there and then, um, Milchick and, uh,

Kobel were also in there. So they got Patty there.
Patricia Arquette's there. I'm like, Johnny, Johnny Totoro, what were you doing that you were too good for the severance pop-up? I was like, they couldn't get Totoro? It's's, it's, it's a no for me.
He's doing some Batman shit. I don't need to worry about it.
Um, all right. I'm excited.
I love the show. I'm so excited.
It's back. I'm so excited to talk about it with you.
Um, as I mentioned, we'll be back for, um, the agency wrap up next week, along with season two, episode two of severance and more of the pit. So if you are a macro data refinement expert, a CIA spy or a medical professional and you would like to email us.
Yeah, or if you have worked a desk job that you suspected in your heart of hearts might have actually been a covered up attempt to resuscitate a dead relative of yours. I would love to hear about it at pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.
Or if you have some other thoughts and feelings about what one should sever their way through. If it's not expense reports and taxes.
I would love to hear that. I think the birthing process might be a popular one.
It's a real doozy. It's a real good one.
Pineapplebobbing at gmail.com.

PressTCV at Spotify.com. Thank you to Justin

Sales for his work across this feed in

general. He's the best.

Thank you to Kai Grady, who's also

the best for producing this episode.

And we will see you all next week. Bye!