S2E2: Goodbye Mrs. Selvig (with Dan Erickson)

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Speaker 4 Adam,

Speaker 5 I want you to close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Speaker 7 Okay, give me a second.

Speaker 8 It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.

Speaker 9 Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Speaker 5 Okay, keep them close. If our partner, ZipRecruiter, was helping Lumen hire for various roles, how do you think HR would feel about ZipRecruiter's ability to search resumes quickly via keywords?

Speaker 8 Let me get into character here.

Speaker 9 I think they'd love it.

Speaker 13 It's efficient.

Speaker 7 It's targeted.

Speaker 15 We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Speaker 5 Okay, you can open your eyes now. Oh, thank you.
So if you were actually a business owner and not an actor who plays a guy who works at a weird company, like you do in the show. Hey, wait a second.

Speaker 5 ZipRecruiter has all these tools and features and more. And they're designed to make hiring faster and easier.

Speaker 5 So see for yourself when you try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash severance.

Speaker 7 ZipRecruiter excels at speed.

Speaker 16 It's smart technology. Starts showing your job to qualified candidates immediately.

Speaker 16 And if you've got your eye on an exceptional candidate, you can use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply message to personally reach out to them.

Speaker 5 Yeah, see how much faster and easier hiring can be with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

Speaker 7 You know what? Lumen should make ZipRecruiter a perk.

Speaker 15 It's way more fun than a finger trap.

Speaker 5 Finger traps are not even fun.

Speaker 3 No, I actually get legitimately claustrophobic when I use a finger trap.

Speaker 5 Yes. I know.
Even the prop ones.

Speaker 10 Totally.

Speaker 5 Because the finger traps are real.

Speaker 16 It freaks me out when I use it.

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Speaker 18 Ziprecruiter.com slash S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E.

Speaker 6 Hey, I'm Ben Stiller.

Speaker 20 I'm Adam Scott.

Speaker 6 And this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every episode of Severance.

Speaker 21 Today, we're diving into the second episode of season two, Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig, written by Mohammed El-Masri and directed by Sam Donovan.

Speaker 6 First, we'll be joined by the creator of Severance, Dan Erickson, to help us unpack some of your burning hotline questions, which is very exciting.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Then Adam and I will talk about a few of our favorite scenes from the episode and get into it a little.

Speaker 22 And finally, Zach Cherry will give us his predictions for what happens in episode three.

Speaker 29 My goodness.

Speaker 6 It's always interesting. It's exciting.
I'm always wondering what like Zach has actually read or seen of the show.

Speaker 29 I'm always interested in anything Zach is thinking.

Speaker 6 And it's always a surprise when it comes out, isn't it?

Speaker 22 Always. There's always something in there.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Oh, and also, spoiler warning, we'll be talking about everything and anything from this episode. So make sure to watch the second episode of season two and then come back to us.

Speaker 6 So just pause if you haven't watched it and just go right to Apple. You can do it all on your phone now.
Everything can happen on your phone.

Speaker 32 How weird would it be if you listened to these episodes and then watch the television episodes?

Speaker 33 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 That would be probably less fun. Yeah.
I think.

Speaker 34 I've done that before with other recap podcasts.

Speaker 6 You've listened to recaps of shows you haven't seen.

Speaker 29 Well, I listened to some like Sopranos recap episodes and I hadn't seen the episodes in like 20 years or whatever.

Speaker 36 And then went back and was like, why am I doing it like this?

Speaker 25 So what was your thinking on that that you would reacquaint yourself with the episode first and then be able to enjoy it more I guess so I guess I listened to the episode that that was recapping the episode I had watched and just let it run and was like I why not I like listening to these guys talk and just got comfortable listening to them But then watching the episode, I was like, okay, well, now I know what happens and I'm distracted by all the behind the scenes stuff.

Speaker 37 So it's really not the way to do it.

Speaker 6 Great. Well, you learned something.
I did.

Speaker 22 And I'm able to share it with our audience and with you. Great.
It's actually dangerous to do that.

Speaker 6 Okay. I'm excited that we're going to talk to Dan here.
Yeah. I mean, the brain in a jar, Dan Erickson.

Speaker 41 Hey, guys, the jar is back.

Speaker 28 That's what we call your head.

Speaker 41 I was going to say, good to see you both, but the brain has no eyes, but they tell me that you're here.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 37 You can feel us, right?

Speaker 41 I can feel you. I can feel your presence.

Speaker 6 So how was it, Dan? I'm going to ask you as if I was not there at all or around.

Speaker 10 Just curious.

Speaker 6 What was it like, the writing process for you on season two?

Speaker 41 Oh, man, so easy.

Speaker 41 It was fun, though. I do remember sitting down with you guys and starting to talk about, like, okay, how can we sort of mess with the form of the show?

Speaker 41 And, like, can we play with presenting the episodes different ways?

Speaker 41 And that sort of gets into how episodes one and two ended up, you know, panning out with being this sort of all-in-y thing thing and then this all-outie thing.

Speaker 41 And I remember being really excited about

Speaker 41 trying that and trying different sort of variations on the formula.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I was trying to remember back to when that actually took shape, the first episode being Innie's, the second episode being outies, because it is a really fun way to kick off the season.

Speaker 6 I remember we were thinking about there's so much to kind of deal with, you know, so many loose ends to sort of tie up or like just questions to address, you know, what happens after you say she's alive.

Speaker 6 Right. Right.
And we were thinking, how do you deal with what's going on in the Audi world? How do you deal with what's going on in the any world? Yeah.

Speaker 41 Well, it's funny because I think it's a show that lends itself well to a direct pickup. Like, especially the way that we ended season one,

Speaker 41 it's like you want to know what happened immediately after that. But because of the conceit of the show, you can sort of do two different direct pickups.

Speaker 41 It's like, what happens to any mark immediately after, you know, he comes to, and then what happens to Audi Mark when he returns at the party?

Speaker 41 And I always was so excited about that idea of that sort of reverse shot of, you know, she's alive. And then suddenly we're back at the party and everyone is looking at Mark.

Speaker 41 It was just such a fun opportunity to just jump right back in.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And then there was this cool thing of like people starting to embrace the show.

Speaker 6 And all of a sudden, it was a very different environment in working on the show because for so long you had been working on it in a vacuum and now a world of people out there who were waiting for the next season.

Speaker 41 Yeah. I mean, it was so, so strange because like I have all these sort of like, you know, nerdy entertainment YouTube channels that I like to watch just on my free time, just like to decompress.

Speaker 41 And suddenly those guys were talking about severance.

Speaker 6 Can I ask you a question? Yes. How do you watch them without having eyes?

Speaker 6 Do you wire them directly into your brain?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 45 Yeah. How do you listen without ears?

Speaker 41 These are the existential questions of my brain jar existence. That's right.

Speaker 25 Yeah. Yeah.
Just a brain in a jar.

Speaker 6 But was it fun for you, Dan, to kind of jump back in thinking about, you know, episodes one and two? Was it fun to do this new structure, having one fully innie episode and one fully outie episode?

Speaker 41 I loved it. And to me, that was once we sort of latched onto that structure and knew that that's what we were going to do.

Speaker 41 That's when it started to get fun for me because I remember sitting down and it did feel so daunting because they're, like we said, there's all the questions you have to answer on the on the outie side and then everything on the innie side and the characters have to get caught up they have to catch each other up like devin has to tell mark what she heard all of this stuff and it wasn't until we sort of came up with this separation of okay

Speaker 41 innie episode outi episode that it started to make sense and take shape for me But then it is like there's a really fun, just sort of procedural pleasure in its like, what immediately would happen after, like if Mark really did wake up, like what would his Audi know?

Speaker 41 What would Milchik be doing? What would Lumen be doing?

Speaker 41 And all of these pieces having to come together in this sort of, it sort of continues the kind of manic pace of episode 109, but in a different way.

Speaker 24 One thing that's a kind of a fun byproduct of this innie episode, then purely Audi episode is we get to experience the, you know, going to work or leaving work from inside or outside as it is for an innie and an Audi, which is just an instantaneous experience.

Speaker 37 You don't experience that that full day of work or that full night of rest or whatever.

Speaker 39 You see what it's like for an innie going home at the end of the day and then immediately starting work the next day and vice versa for the Audi.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Totally.

Speaker 6 And that was something in episode one that we talked about a little bit was the idea of the claustrophobic nature of it that I felt directing wise in episode one was that idea of like you feel more of the weirdness of Mark's experience and all the innie's experience.

Speaker 6 I realized, oh, the show show really could never exist just on the severed floor. It just would go crazy.

Speaker 10 Right. Right.

Speaker 6 So, Dan, it was really fun for me to see Helena. Yes.
Really? For the first time, except for the video that we saw in the first season.

Speaker 6 And we get to see that there's this new character that Dari Olfsson plays, who's sort of seems like he's an important person there, who helps bring in Jane Egan when they talk. And we see a new space,

Speaker 6 some sort of a conference room. And it just was fun to sort of introduce this other world for the first time.

Speaker 41 Yeah, in a way, it feels like just a whole new arena to play in with all of these strange new characters that are, you know, higher in status, but still very much in this lumen world

Speaker 41 and just trying to figure out what they're doing and what's making them tick.

Speaker 6 And also we had to sort of pick up the thread now on the other characters who've now been exposed to the Audi world in terms of with Irving and with Dylan, and even though Dylan hadn't gone up, but we still were going to see what's happening with Dylan.

Speaker 47 I mean, just specifically to Helena, it's just incredible, like you said, getting to see her outside of that one video in season one and see just how different she is from Heli and how great Britt is at playing this other person.

Speaker 22 And this person that is,

Speaker 30 I found her to be chilling in this episode talking to Kobe.

Speaker 2 An apology

Speaker 2 is warranted.

Speaker 2 I apologize.

Speaker 2 My father apologizes.

Speaker 2 The board apologizes.

Speaker 49 We've treated you poorly.

Speaker 49 I'm sorry.

Speaker 49 I welcome your contrition.

Speaker 49 I'm so glad.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, the fun thing is to see the flip side of this dynamic that we've seen the whole first season of Kobell, you know, sort of over Helly.

Speaker 6 And now it's the, you know, which is one of the things in the show that only you can do in the show is,

Speaker 6 you know, see two characters in a totally different dynamic.

Speaker 10 Totally.

Speaker 29 Yeah, and it's fun in this episode getting to see the kind of new replacement workers on the outside of Lumen, Bob Balaban and Alia Shockat.

Speaker 6 Stefano Caranante. Yes.

Speaker 22 God, Stefano's fantastic, isn't he?

Speaker 24 All three of us.

Speaker 6 Great Italian actor. Yeah.

Speaker 41 By the way, Bob Balaban needs to be hired to June's band from season one because of how well he shouts, fuck you, Lumen.

Speaker 28 That's exactly what I thought, too.

Speaker 18 I thought immediately of that band.

Speaker 41 Like if they need a new lead singer.

Speaker 6 I love that little callback from episode six, right? From season one.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 The feeling of the fuck you, Lumen, that's out there in the world. Yeah.

Speaker 41 It's out there in the air.

Speaker 6 I really enjoyed also the whole sequence of the first team coming back in episode one, and then as you see them doing the same thing in episode two, but coming into the locker room. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And Sam Donovan and I sort of collaborated on that because we knew that we wanted those shots to match each other.

Speaker 6 And both shots are pretty much the same exact timings that we tried to get. And it was really fun watching Sam choreograph that scene, which I thought you guys, it was very complicated to do.

Speaker 42 So what you're referring to specifically is the scene in episode one where everyone comes back and comes out of the elevator and we greet each one matches the scene in episode two of them getting ready and entering the elevator from their lockers.

Speaker 6 Supposedly. I've never really actually checked it, though we did try to get the timings right when we shot it.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But somebody probably will do a YouTube.

Speaker 41 Yeah, I'm sure someone will look into that for us. Yeah.

Speaker 6 But it was really fun because, you know, we had to figure out that shot for episode one and then Sam had to really figure out it's complicated because, like, it's really just one shot, and you see a new section of the locker room, Dylan's locker, and you have to believe that they're not seeing each other as they come in, and the timings are all staggered.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was hard to do, yeah, very challenging for both the camera-wise and for the actors, and also to make it interesting. I thought Sam did a great, great job with it.

Speaker 36 I love doing stuff like that because it's just so satisfying when you do it, and it requires so much focus and sort of cooperation and concentration from everybody on set.

Speaker 25 And I don't know how many times we went through it a lot, but when you finally get it, it's so satisfying and so much fun and everyone celebrates.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 10 it's great.

Speaker 6 It was also fun in this episode to see how, you know, what we learn about them having been out for five months, supposedly. Yeah.
That's kind of not true at all.

Speaker 41 That's kind of not true at all. Yeah.
I think it was just a couple of days.

Speaker 6 How did you come up with that idea of the Keir Chronicle?

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 18 It feels so specifically Keir and Lumen to come up with this five-month lie and then the bad Photoshop, all that stuff.

Speaker 46 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 41 I mean, Lumen is always, you know, telling the innies what they think they want to hear and showing them what they think they want to see.

Speaker 41 And it's like their approximation of what the workers want is often so clumsy and weird in addition to being dark and sinister. That to me is where it gets really funny.

Speaker 41 And it's so funny to me that Lumen wrote the article and then redacted half of it. Like

Speaker 41 half of the article that they themselves had written.

Speaker 32 It's a mind game.

Speaker 18 It's a major on top of a mind game.

Speaker 41 It's mind games in mind games in mind games.

Speaker 6 And also the fact that Mark would actually, that actually might work on Mark S. Yeah.
You know, because not because he's, you know, not smart, just because of his world knowledge and his worldview.

Speaker 6 And also the amount of time that Milchik lets him see it for. It's just like, it kind of like pulls it out.

Speaker 29 I remember the amount, deciding on how long he lets me look at it.

Speaker 42 We really kind of tried to balance that perfectly.

Speaker 37 And it's timing-wise, the way you guys, you and Jeff cut it, it's kind of perfect.

Speaker 6 But what I love, Dan, is that the solution sometimes for a very complicated question of how do they deal with this?

Speaker 41 You know, the Innies have been on the outside world is such a simple and kind of almost rudimentary device that they're, you know, it's not some high-tech first of all they're not they're not punishing them they're going the opposite way but then they're doing it in a way that's almost so simplistic well and i think that like where the five-month thing comes in to me is like i mean there's there's a couple reasons behind it but one thing is there is just this intrinsic sense of it's like well we're not punishing you for what happened but just so you know five months has passed like you're now five months older there's this sense of lost time time that, you know, it's not us.

Speaker 41 We would never punish you. But the consequence of your action is that now five months have passed.
And just that would be such a strange thing to suddenly learn.

Speaker 41 It's like, oh, I just lost half a year of time.

Speaker 41 So again, it's mind games and mind games with these guys.

Speaker 41 But it's funny, I was watching the, you know, the eight-minute sneak peek with my mom and the moment where Mark goes, I'd like to hear it from them. She goes, yeah.

Speaker 41 Because it was such a, it's like, that's something that any mark in season one probably wouldn't have said.

Speaker 41 Like he has come back with this more of a sense of being able to call out the bullshit a little bit.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 21 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 28 All right.

Speaker 30 I hate to shut the proverbial door in the listeners' faces, but we got to take a quick break.

Speaker 21 But you know what they say? When one door closes, another one opens.

Speaker 18 Any guesses on what scene we'll talk about when we're when we get back?

Speaker 6 I don't, but you know what they also say? What? One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

Speaker 51 Whoa.

Speaker 6 Okay. I don't know know how that relates to the door thing, but...

Speaker 10 All right, we'll be right back.

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Speaker 4 Adam,

Speaker 5 I want you to close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Speaker 8 Okay, give me a second. It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.

Speaker 9 Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Speaker 5 Okay, keep them close. If our partner, ZipRecruiter, was helping Lumen hire for various roles, how do you think HR would feel about ZipRecruiter's ability to search resumes quickly via keywords?

Speaker 8 Let me get into character here.

Speaker 9 I think they'd love it.

Speaker 13 It's efficient. It's targeted.

Speaker 14 We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Speaker 5 Okay, you can open your eyes now. Oh, thank you.
So, if you were actually a business owner and not an actor who plays a guy who works at a weird company, like you do in the show,

Speaker 5 ZipRecruiter has all these tools and features and more. And they're designed to make hiring faster and easier.

Speaker 5 So, see for yourself when you try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/slash severance.

Speaker 7 ZipRecruiter excels at speed.

Speaker 16 It's smart technology.

Speaker 8 Starts showing your job to qualified candidates immediately.

Speaker 16 And if you've got your eye on an exceptional candidate, you can use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply message to personally reach out to them.

Speaker 5 Yeah, see how much faster and easier hiring can be with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

Speaker 7 You know what? Lumen should make ZipRecruiter a perk.

Speaker 15 It's way more fun than a finger trap.

Speaker 5 Finger traps are not even fun.

Speaker 13 No, I actually get legitimately claustrophobic when I use a finger trap.

Speaker 5 Yes. I know.
Even the prop ones.

Speaker 10 Totally.

Speaker 5 Because the finger traps are real.

Speaker 13 It freaks me out when I use it.

Speaker 5 You know what else is real? What? ZipRecruiter.com is real. So go to it, ziprecuiter.com/slash severance right now to try it for free.
That's right.

Speaker 18 ZipRecruiter.com/slash S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E.

Speaker 18 Dan, before we get to the voicemails, since you're here, we really want to talk about one specific scene from episode two.

Speaker 24 Okay.

Speaker 35 Now, when we had you on from the first season, you told us that you used to work at a door factory.

Speaker 29 And in this episode, we see Dylan interviewing at a door factory.

Speaker 24 So let's listen to the scene here, real quick.

Speaker 57 Okay, great. Yeah.
You know, I think this is going to be a really great fit for me, Mr. Saliba.
You know,

Speaker 57 ever since I was a kid, I've always felt like doors.

Speaker 57 Hold.

Speaker 2 Sorry.

Speaker 58 How old were you when you knew you loved doors?

Speaker 51 Five.

Speaker 58 If you could be any kind of door, what would it be?

Speaker 10 Uh

Speaker 2 pocket.

Speaker 2 Just think.

Speaker 2 Yes. Tell me more.

Speaker 51 Well, you're...

Speaker 57 you know, doing your door thing,

Speaker 57 and then

Speaker 57 when you're not needed, you can just...

Speaker 58 Just tuck yourself away.

Speaker 18 Oh man, Adrian Martinez is so great.

Speaker 41 Absolute national treasure. That was verbatim the exact interview that I actually had at the door factory, word for word.

Speaker 32 Really? No.

Speaker 41 It's very different.

Speaker 6 I love how, yeah, he's just like, he really loves doors, this guy. Yeah.
He needs somebody working there who really cares about doors as much as he does.

Speaker 22 And just the look of the scene.

Speaker 60 It's just really kind of beautifully composed and how much Zach and Adrian look like each other.

Speaker 21 In real life, they don't really resemble each other all that much.

Speaker 42 But in these shots, you guys really lined them up.

Speaker 29 So it just almost looks mirror-like.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Sam Donovan did a great job. And Jeremy Hindle, our production designer, created the space within this factory.
It's actually the location is in Brooklyn.

Speaker 6 It's actually, we shot a scene from Escape at Danamora there, too. It's a factory, yeah.

Speaker 6 And which scene?

Speaker 6 The flashback episode in Escape at Dana Mora, where we see Patricia Arquette's character where she's working at the shoe factory.

Speaker 10 The shoe factory.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 41 So you're saying, Ben, that there's a shared universe between these two shows. There is.

Speaker 6 And then there's also the same

Speaker 6 distillerse. And then Adrian Martinez was in Secret Life of Walter Pitty.
And so you're in that too. And we're all connected.

Speaker 6 And also, Jeremy did this really cool thing where he had the doors on this sort of like assembly line like hook that

Speaker 6 reminds me of Monsters Inc., where they're like kind of going by. Yeah.
100%.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So that I thought that was, it's such a funny scene to me watching that.
And also how then he turns on him when he finds out he's severed.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 41 The, the look, when he finds out he's severed and he says, you're a severed. And then also like when he, the look when Dylan makes the door prize joke.

Speaker 41 And it's just this, this sort of, how dare you, how dare you make light of this holy slander.

Speaker 41 yeah it was going so well until he said the wrong thing yeah it's always fun to just get a peek into the kind of the cultural reaction to severance and how severance is perceived in the outside world too yeah that's something i yeah that's something i always love when we get to do like similar to the non-dinner party in season one where you just it's like how are people actually talking about this out in the world what are the sort of public perceptions of it But yeah, that was just such a great way also to understand Dylan's dilemma in the outside world and what he's doing.

Speaker 6 You know, things aren't going great for him. His family, he's a little unhappy and Scott obviously has these responsibilities.
And, you know, we see how he ends up coming back to work, really.

Speaker 47 He seems to be sort of grasping for an identity of sorts, trying to look for somewhere to put himself and something to latch onto.

Speaker 41 Yeah. His is

Speaker 41 such an interesting dual performance because sort of on the surface, I feel like it's maybe one of the more different portrayals of an innie and an Audi.

Speaker 41 Like he, you know, there's a little bit more of a natural feel to how he's, or at least a recognizable feel to how he's acting on the Audi side.

Speaker 41 But at the same time, Zach does such an amazing job of putting the same, like you feel some of the same kind of insecurities, but they're expressed very differently because in the innie world, he sort of knows who he is.

Speaker 41 And out here, he doesn't have that. And there's this sense of being a little bit lost.

Speaker 41 A lot of the scenes that make me sort of emotional are seeing Audi Dylan and how kind of he just doesn't have, like you said, he doesn't have an identity really. And he's, and he's looking for it.

Speaker 41 And he doesn't realize that he has one at Lumen and is and is sort of in a way more

Speaker 41 has a more rewarding existence there on

Speaker 41 a certain level.

Speaker 32 His innie is very sure of who he is and the parameters of his place in the world.

Speaker 29 In fact, he's striving and reaching for more. He wants more life to grab onto, whereas his Audi seems to be sort of shrinking away from life and from these responsibilities and things.

Speaker 30 It's really interesting.

Speaker 48 And Zach is just wonderful.

Speaker 41 Well, and especially with the sort of grandiose way that he speculates about his Audi

Speaker 41 when he's down on the floor and that in reality,

Speaker 39 he's this very different figure.

Speaker 6 He's not doing muscle shows.

Speaker 32 No muscle muscle shows.

Speaker 41 Muscle shows.

Speaker 10 Bummer.

Speaker 6 All right. We've been getting some really cool fan questions from our hotline, Dan.

Speaker 10 Oh, okay.

Speaker 6 So would you be up for answering some of those with us?

Speaker 41 I would love it.

Speaker 41 I've been waiting to hear these, actually.

Speaker 6 So this is us too. We have not heard these questions.

Speaker 28 Yeah, this is our first time.

Speaker 10 Oh, really? Okay. All right.

Speaker 62 Hi, this is Gray.

Speaker 62 My question is...

Speaker 62 What was the biggest difference between shooting season two versus season one?

Speaker 62 Congrats on the show. Me and my boyfriend love it.

Speaker 53 Thank you.

Speaker 32 Thank you, Gray.

Speaker 6 Dan, why don't you start? For you, what was the biggest difference?

Speaker 41 Well, certainly I felt like there was definitely more pressure because, you know, season one, we were pretty sure that we were doing something cool, but it was like worst case scenario, nobody will watch this and it'll sort of fade away.

Speaker 41 But this time, you have all of these people who have found it and invested in it and given their time to it and gotten excited about it.

Speaker 41 And you really want to do right by those people and you don't want to let anybody down.

Speaker 41 So in writing it, I would say like, I remember like sitting down and like the first, the first time I was writing an episode for season two, I was like, okay, how do I do this again?

Speaker 41 Like, am I even sure I can still do this? And am I even sure what actually worked about the first season?

Speaker 41 And it took actually getting into it and writing a couple scenes to be like, okay, no, I can still do this. But it was scarier in a way because you just, the pressure is on a bit, a bit more.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 6 How about you, Ben? For me, it was actually, it was fun to know that there was an audience for the show going into it.

Speaker 6 And of course, you know, all along the making of the season, you're always trying to, you know, make it the best it can be.

Speaker 6 And you are still working in a bit of a vacuum because you're making all the episodes and nobody's going to see them until they're all done. So that part of it is always what it is.

Speaker 6 But the fun of it was that we kind of were like doing a series now and we, you know, we're coming back and we kind of knew what the challenges were. We knew how to work within the sets.

Speaker 6 We knew we were going to go for some new things and challenge ourselves and kind of try not to stay exactly in the box we had in the first season.

Speaker 6 But yeah, I'd say, you know, definitely there's a feeling of like, oh, gosh, I hope we can live up to something that people expect.

Speaker 6 But just the fact that people even expected something was pretty great.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 31 I think all of that, and I figured out how to wear more comfortable shoes in season two.

Speaker 47 Season one was just dress shoes for 10 episodes and that really kind of takes a toll.

Speaker 32 And so season two, I realized when my feet are not on camera, I can wear these like super comfortable sneakers and it just made life so much easier.

Speaker 6 Which I was admiring and you got me as a gift.

Speaker 12 I just got you a pair of them. Yeah.

Speaker 30 They were really comfy.

Speaker 6 It makes me think of the great owen wilson who who i've done a number of movies with back in the day and he uh if his feet weren't on camera you could see him wearing a nice pair of uggs yeah usually good foot flops or you know just barefoot it's a great move see i i i always wear uncomfortable shoes when i write out of solidarity to the actors you know

Speaker 41 because i know that they'll have to so shame on you adam yeah very humane of you yeah no more of that i guess i guess now you can slip on some uggs yeah now that i know okay let's let's hear another question.

Speaker 63 Hi there. I was just wondering what the benefits packages are like for December 4.

Speaker 63 I was thinking about doing it, but I just want to make sure that I'm going to be able to support myself and get the health care I need. Thank you.
Get back to me as soon as you can.

Speaker 10 Bye. Hmm.

Speaker 29 It's a good question.

Speaker 41 Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I would say that they are ample.

Speaker 41 I would say, especially because,

Speaker 41 you know, as Irving says in this episode, you never know what your innie's is going to eat down there. You know, your innie could drink whiteout or something.

Speaker 41 And so, you know, you have to be sure that the company is going to take care of you. They're also a med tech company.
So I feel like the health benefits would be pretty good.

Speaker 23 Yeah,

Speaker 29 I was thinking like it would probably good medical benefits, but it's probably like Lumen doctors that they refer you to.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 6 There has to be some sort of

Speaker 6 disclaimer or release or something for what happens when you're down there in terms of like maybe or some sort of like in case of emergency call this number right that they must have that like at school or something yeah like legally it must be something ironclad that they have everyone sign yeah although i think any minor injuries can be treated with a visit to pips the v

Speaker 47 section at pips the food there is very restorative yeah delicious denver omelettes

Speaker 6 so so should we refer this person we didn't get the name but should we refer them to mr milchik or who who does intake who's the

Speaker 41 yeah, Milchik would be the

Speaker 41 liaison for that kind of thing?

Speaker 6 I'm sure he would do a good sales job.

Speaker 61 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 41 Milchik would probably, he could probably do some of the medical stuff himself. He's a very handy, handy right.

Speaker 10 He does, yeah, he does just about everything.

Speaker 6 Yeah, okay, all right. Now, our next and last question: Hello, um, my name is George.

Speaker 64 I was about to apply for a position, but I have one major concern:

Speaker 64 how do I pack a lunch?

Speaker 64 Thanks.

Speaker 10 Oof.

Speaker 30 Excellent question.

Speaker 41 Well, the answer, George, is that you don't.

Speaker 41 I don't think that we've ever actually explained this on screen, but the way that the lunches work is that, you know, if you're in any, you have a lunch in the fridge ready for you every day.

Speaker 41 And you don't get to pick it because those are selected in advance at the start of the week by your Audi, who would be like, okay, Monday, I want fish picata.

Speaker 41 You know, Tuesday, I want jello, you know, whatever. We don't know yet what's in the, in the lunches necessarily, but, but that's how that works.

Speaker 6 Interesting. No cafeteria down there that we know of at this point.

Speaker 30 Well, not that we've seen.

Speaker 6 Not that we've seen. Yeah.
Or food services.

Speaker 25 I have to say, listening to that message, I'm not sure that guy's real name is George.

Speaker 10 I don't know.

Speaker 21 I'm just not buying it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and he's also asking, how do I pack a lunch?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 28 I guess we could provide instructions on how to pack a lunch.

Speaker 41 George strikes me as someone who's trying to get away with something, and I don't think we should hire him.

Speaker 12 That's why he's using the moniker George and Colonel.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And also, if he's thinking of getting severed, of having a brain chip implanted into his head, it's an irreversible procedure. And his one major concern is, how do I pack a lunch?

Speaker 26 Man, there's something going on there.

Speaker 6 All right. Well, Dan, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 41 Thank you guys.

Speaker 6 This was fun. I'm excited that we're off and running on season two.

Speaker 33 Doesn't it feel great now?

Speaker 21 To have people finally seeing season two.

Speaker 28 It just feels so cool.

Speaker 41 Yeah. Yeah.
Such a release. I'm feeling very good about it.

Speaker 6 All right. Well, we'll be talking to you again.
And is somebody going to actually grab your brain or is it what's yeah, yeah, no, they're going to, they're going to come.

Speaker 41 It's Milchik. He's going to come and take it away and

Speaker 34 put me.

Speaker 24 Put me away. Here he comes.

Speaker 18 Tuck me away.

Speaker 41 Tuck me away like a pocket door.

Speaker 18 Just take the mic off of the jar and we'll talk to you next time.

Speaker 18 If you want to call the post box for Lumen Industries Severed Floor, call 212-830-3816.

Speaker 6 All right, we'll be back in a second to talk about more of episode two.

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Speaker 45 All right. I'm excited to talk about this episode with you.

Speaker 24 But, you know, first up, there's something very exciting at the beginning of the episode, which is a new opening credit sequence.

Speaker 38 Yes.

Speaker 22 Yeah. So how did this come about?

Speaker 47 Why did you feel we needed to shift and change a bit?

Speaker 6 Well, it was probably because as time was going by, I was thinking, looking at the opening credits, which we all love, and they were created by Oliver Latta, who's a German artist who works with a computer, and Teddy Blanks, who works in New York, who does the graphics part of it, but the computer animation is Oliver Latta.

Speaker 6 And it was so, in a way, specific to season one, even though it was created not with specific nods to necessarily story points, but images and different settings that it felt to me that there was an opportunity as time was going by, as we were making the season, I thought, well, you know, people are going to have waited a while for season two.

Speaker 6 It might be fun to have something else new for them as well.

Speaker 6 And Oliver, I talked to him and he was totally up for it. I mean, he did, he won an Emmy for them.
It's the first title sequence he ever did.

Speaker 36 He, he, you know, and do you want to talk about how you found Oliver?

Speaker 6 I just, I happened upon his Instagram feed, but he, you know, just had this incredible computer animation of these sort of amorphous blobs of humanoid forms that fall into one another and kind of bubbles and the texture of it.

Speaker 6 It's just something incredibly captivating and satisfying watching his work.

Speaker 22 It really feels like nothing else you see out there animation-wise.

Speaker 44 It feels very singular.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And so it was just like one day on the way to work, I saw it and thought, oh, wow, this could be really cool for the show.

Speaker 6 Oliver, the first time I met him was at the Emmys, actually,

Speaker 6 when he won his Emmys.

Speaker 50 Really?

Speaker 43 In person, you'd never.

Speaker 6 He came to LA for the Emmys and for the, you know, and the after party where, you know, we lost 12 of our 14

Speaker 6 yes i remember but he won he and teddy shapiro won and both very deservedly well deserved yeah and so it was great to meet him there he's a young guy he's super talented and um it was just a great connection that he had with the show and it ended up informing in a way imagery for season two.

Speaker 6 I mean, when you look at you carrying those balloons in episode one, you know, for me, that came out of his balloon image

Speaker 6 that he did in the credits for season one.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, just in my mind, I was like, oh,

Speaker 6 it just made me think of that.

Speaker 6 So in that way, it was fun to think about, okay, what could it be for season two that is maybe more specific and has more Easter eggs and more little nods to the season that people might not even appreciate until the season is over and they look back at it.

Speaker 6 And that was a fun process with him. And first one took about eight or nine months.
And this one, same same thing. And it's been really fun, exciting.

Speaker 6 A little bit scary on my end because I know people love the season one credits so much. But it seems like people have been responding to the season two one.

Speaker 22 I love these ones. I also love it because other characters find their way into the opening credits now.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 42 And remember they were getting kind of the images.

Speaker 38 Everyone had to go and get their kind of the scan that I had to do for season one.

Speaker 6 Yeah, 3D scan where they take pictures of you with like hundreds of still cameras and then then he can recreate your image yeah do you have a favorite image from the um from the credits i really well from season one i really love the balloons with the heads and it's so funny that i it didn't even occur to me that that's where the balloons with the faces on them came from was from the opening credits from season one yeah it's not a really a direct line no no no no no it's just an image in there for me for the season two credits one of the things that i i really love is you jumping off of the desk, little you jumping off the desk, and then instead of going into the head that it does in season one, it goes into a painting of your head in season one.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And there's other, there are other nods to episodes as they go along, as I said, that we can get into maybe as we go along, too.

Speaker 36 And the ending of the opening credit sequences is super interesting, too.

Speaker 6 Yes, when you see like a little baby Keir kind of crawling by.

Speaker 10 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Interesting. All right.

Speaker 6 right all right okay you know what i want to talk about a little bit is um

Speaker 6 you because you know your character is going through a lot in uh episode two really you kind of audi mark is deciding whether or not he wants to return to lumen and we started out with that creepy visit from milchik

Speaker 2 what happened tonight is what we call the overtime contingency It's a safeguard we employ if we ever need to access your work personage off company grounds.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you never told me about this.

Speaker 2 OTC disclosure can be found in your start paperwork.

Speaker 6 It's clear that you just don't feel right about it and you don't know if you're going to go back.

Speaker 6 And he kind of lays that sort of little guilt trip on you about your innie and how brave your innie was to do what he did and you wouldn't want to reward him by ending his life. Right.

Speaker 37 By kill he literally lays it out like I would be killing someone.

Speaker 60 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 And that scene was, I thought Sam again did a great job with that in terms of just just the weirdness of that scene, how Ricken admires his helmet.

Speaker 44 Rickin in all of these scenes here is so deeply funny.

Speaker 6 Yeah. No, it's great because, you know, it's also like, how do you deal with that moment of she's alive? Like, you said she's alive.

Speaker 6 And of course, you know, Rickin kind of goes to the point, well, it had to be the baby, right?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And also he's really a little bit more focused on how it affected his book party.

Speaker 39 That's right.

Speaker 37 He's really preoccupied.

Speaker 32 And decides everything's completely fine, and they can just do it over again.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But, but

Speaker 6 it's a moment of you and Devin connecting in terms of not trusting what's going on. But you kind of,

Speaker 6 you're kind of like at a point where you don't want to go back. You want to, right? I mean, I think until Devin comes to see you and the diner, right, at Pips.

Speaker 24 Yeah, I think at the end of season one, Mark had made a decision that, or Mark was was veering towards a decision to maybe move away from Lumen and maybe, in a way, sort of move on from everything.

Speaker 35 I mean, he came to this party ready to tell his sister he's thinking about quitting his job.

Speaker 23 And that's the last thing he said to Mrs.

Speaker 35 Selvig at the party before he switches over to his Innie in episode nine of season one.

Speaker 60 So I think he was heading in that direction anyway, and this

Speaker 61 just sort of pushes him over the edge.

Speaker 30 It's just too weird.

Speaker 37 And Devin now kind of talking about, you know, bringing up this idea of she's alive is just all, it's just all absurd noise to Mark at this point, I think.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think it's also kind of realistic when you think about how someone might react to this in terms of being told, no, that person who died is actually alive, which is such a crazy, hard thing to wrap your head around.

Speaker 6 And also Mark probably feeling, and I'm, I'm speaking for you, but from my point of view, watching is that Mark all of a sudden was taken out of the equation by his innie taking over.

Speaker 6 And then all of a sudden he's back and he's being told that his innie said she's alive.

Speaker 6 And everybody's sort of like debating what that means.

Speaker 6 And I think a natural reaction would be like, this is just like

Speaker 6 digging something up. You're just, you know, in the process of trying to get over this in some way.

Speaker 6 You're grieving. You're just, you know, you're at the point where you're thinking, no, I can start to try to really move on from being severed.

Speaker 6 And then all of a sudden, you're being told, no, wait a minute, you know, she's a lot. Like, I could understand just wanting to go, no, no, no, no, don't, like, this is crazy.

Speaker 6 I don't want to go there.

Speaker 24 Yeah, it's ridiculous to even consider it and ultimately hurtful that Devin keeps sort of coming at me with this.

Speaker 32 It's, I was sort of at the time sort of trying to figure out how to play this with Audi Mark and kind of landed on it had to feel like the most absurd, stupid thing in the world.

Speaker 35 Like someone coming to you and telling you that someone in your life who passed away years ago is actually, I mean, it's just unthinkable and hurtful to even like bring up something like that.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Particularly in this situation where his feelings are clearly still quite raw about his wife who died.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Let's listen to that scene with you and Devin at Pips.

Speaker 49 My thing is, if we could just get like a half step more confirmation, then it's not going to be something that continues to haunt us. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Us?

Speaker 49 Yes.

Speaker 66 She was my family too, Mark.

Speaker 1 Fuck. Yeah, but she was my wife.

Speaker 49 I know, but you're not the only one her death affected. Oh, really? It affected you? Yes.
Did you have to tell her parents that she was dead?

Speaker 1 How about her students? How about this? Did your sheets smell like her four weeks afterwards?

Speaker 1 You know know what? Honestly, if Ricken died and his body burned, I'd be sad for you, but I wouldn't be affected.

Speaker 2 This is obscene.

Speaker 66 I just want to be sure.

Speaker 1 I am sure.

Speaker 46 Yeah, it's pretty hurtful language.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and a little bit of like sort of the tension with Ricken comes through there too. And yeah, I mean, makes total sense to me.
that why Mark would say I'm not into this.

Speaker 59 I think one interesting thing there is how Mark goes pretty hard at Devon here talking about if your husband died, I would be sad, but not affected.

Speaker 39 And talking about his body potentially being burned, it's a real peek into, first of all, the brother-sister relationship and how with people you've known your whole life, you can go and poke a little further and you kind of give each other the permission to go too far sometimes.

Speaker 22 But also, also, it's a bit of a shot across the bow.

Speaker 50 Like, don't fuck with me because I will bite back harder than you're ready for.

Speaker 29 So just leave this alone.

Speaker 25 You know, I totally got that. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Totally got that. And as I said, I think it's very believable.
Also, in that scene, we see that that character from the beginning of the episode, who I will come to know as Mr. Drummond,

Speaker 6 is

Speaker 6 sort of eavesdropping, possibly, on the scene.

Speaker 24 It's funny, the last time I watched through the episode, I didn't even notice him there.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that was his point.

Speaker 10 He didn't actually notice it.

Speaker 29 And on some takes, I high-fived him as I walked there.

Speaker 6 And you saw his frolic tattoo on his hand as you high-fived him.

Speaker 6 Yeah. We shot that up at the Phoenicia diner in the Catskills.

Speaker 21 As we did in season one for Pips.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And every time we shot there, there would always be a discussion.
You know, there are other diners that are like a lot closer to New York.

Speaker 44 It is quite far.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 it's totally worth it when you get there.

Speaker 22 What is it about this particular diner?

Speaker 6 I mean, there's something about that diner. It's been in other things.
And, you know, usually I don't like to shoot things that are in other movies or shit, but like, it's so good.

Speaker 6 And we were able to put our own little spin on it.

Speaker 6 But it's just like a great classic diner. And it's in the middle of this beautiful wooded area.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it just felt right for our, you know, we picked it when we were trying to establish the environment of Kier in the first season.

Speaker 29 And the parking lot figured prominently in season one as well.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And we didn't want to do, when we were figuring it out in the beginning, like we wanted to make Kier feel a little bit desolate and not too urban and not too developed.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, we didn't want to do a diner that was in a town. Right.

Speaker 6 And that one came up much to the chagrin of our line producer.

Speaker 47 It is beautiful out there.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And much to the credit of our Ryan Smith, our amazing location manager, who also did some second unit directing work on season two.
And he's got an amazing eye.

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, you know, we've been tracking Milchik, who has had to sort of clean up a little bit and go and find out what people know, what the innies who were activated know, or the Audis know of what their innie did.

Speaker 6 And then, you know, we know that he has this directive that they have to get Mark to come back. And we don't quite know how that plan has been working.

Speaker 6 We get a little insight into where the new team came from,

Speaker 24 which is super interesting.

Speaker 6 Yeah, very interesting in that we learn that there are other branches,

Speaker 6 which we knew there were a little bit from probably the first episode, you know, from

Speaker 6 the Lumen animated special that they made.

Speaker 29 I mean, according to the primetime animation special, there are offices all around the globe.

Speaker 24 That's right.

Speaker 25 Even out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on one point.

Speaker 29 But you never know what's real and what's not.

Speaker 44 But here they're having this internal conversation there and they're talking about overseas offices and also offices that may have shut down for one reason or another.

Speaker 12 Yep.

Speaker 44 It's interesting.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And so we get the sense that Lumen sort of strung this together last minute to try to create a team around Mark that's going to keep him being productive.

Speaker 6 So you get the sense that maybe the other people aren't as important as Mark. We've always known that Mark is special and a very good refiner.

Speaker 6 And obviously from season one, we know the Mark and Miss Casey interaction. We got the idea that Kobell was sort of up to something with that.

Speaker 6 But I think we get a sense when Milchik gets to see Mark and to try to talk him in. He comes with a pineapple.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 A special pineapple plate that apparently is meant to entice you.

Speaker 21 Going all out.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And he sits down with you and he kind of does a little bit of

Speaker 6 attempts, a bit of sort of sales job here with you. You want to listen to that? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You said since she died, every day feels like a year.

Speaker 2 That you felt like you were choking on her ghost.

Speaker 66 Do you still feel that way, Mr. Scout?

Speaker 2 The mark I've come to know at Lumen is happy.

Speaker 2 He cares for people.

Speaker 2 And he's funny.

Speaker 2 He knows nothing of the pain I see in you right now.

Speaker 2 He's found love.

Speaker 2 Love?

Speaker 2 With who?

Speaker 2 The solace you have given him down there will make its way to you.

Speaker 2 It just takes time.

Speaker 2 I hope you'll give us that time,

Speaker 2 Mr. Scout.

Speaker 6 First of all, just want to say listening to it, not watching it,

Speaker 6 the sound design, I want to just give credit to Jacob Rybikoff and Bob Shafalis, our sound designer and mixer, the bubbling of the fish tank.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 36 And I got to say, my favorite part, the sound of the leather jacket.

Speaker 61 Throughout the episode.

Speaker 22 Trammell wears it incredibly well.

Speaker 29 He looks beautiful in that leather jacket, but also that jacket sounds great.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think that's a case of like turning the bug into a feature type of thing. Yes, I would imagine.

Speaker 6 It was an amazing Sarah Edwards leather jacket or a costume designer that was not going to be denied. Not quite.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But no, that scene is also, you know, really interesting to me because Milchik for the first time is actually talking about your innie in a way and his well-being.

Speaker 6 And kind of, I think it's the first time it's ever even insinuated that his

Speaker 6 feelings would somehow benefit you on the outside.

Speaker 24 Well, I think that for Mark, he

Speaker 39 probably isn't really considering going back seriously.

Speaker 29 But I think the fact that Milchik is doing what you just said, is talking about these feelings will rise up and come and meet you, and you'll feel better because of

Speaker 35 what a good place your your innie is at that will transfer to you shows some measure of desperation.

Speaker 22 At least we, the audience, can sense that.

Speaker 22 But I think the fact that he brings up Gemma after all of this absurd noise he's been hearing from his sister and Ricken, it just sort of piques his interest.

Speaker 35 I don't think he's anywhere near believing that she's alive, but it's just too much of a coincidence.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, also, I think it's picking up on sort of the guilting that he started with you a little bit when you were at Devon and Rickens, where, you know, he says you're going to end his life.

Speaker 6 But it's really great the way you play that scene, I think, because we're seeing how much all of that is weighing on you. And, you know, like you're putting this all together.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 And it really, it's really, I think, feels very effective.

Speaker 59 And Trammell is just so, so great.

Speaker 12 I mean, just this whole episode of him riding around on the motorcycle.

Speaker 22 What is that motorcycle? Was there a particular motorcycle

Speaker 21 you really wanted Milchik to be riding?

Speaker 6 It was an idea that Dan and I discussed. I remember when it came up.

Speaker 6 It was an idea that came up at one of the events when we were in Los Angeles for season one, when we were all together.

Speaker 6 And I just, I remember I said to Dan one night, I said, like, wouldn't it be cool if Milchik rode a motorcycle?

Speaker 6 And he was like, yeah, yeah, I like that. And then it was sort of like, then it went from there.
And it just seemed to me like that we've talked a lot.

Speaker 6 And this came out of really what Dan's idea of Milchik's outer life is, which we have yet to see. So this is a little glimpse into like what his personal style is, right?

Speaker 6 And what his vibe is in the outside world. And he's kind of a cool guy, it seems, who rides a motorcycle.
And yeah, the motorcycle itself is a royal enfield, but we customized it. But that's the

Speaker 6 make of the bike. It's really, you know, it's tricked out.

Speaker 42 Well, it's just, it fits Milchik so perfectly to be riding around on a motorcycle, a fast motorcycle.

Speaker 24 He's like a singular guy. He's sort of always kind of armored up and isolated from everyone around him.

Speaker 22 And now he gets this opportunity to step up and be the floor manager. And his first job is to clean up Kobell's mess, in a sense.
And so he's going to do it.

Speaker 35 And he is out there on a mission. And just, it just feels so right to have him on a motorcycle on that mission.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And we thought, you know, he's going to be traveling around the whole episode, kind of going to each person's house.

Speaker 6 So it might be fun to have, you know, this kind of cool vibe of, you know, these motorcycle shots going through Kier. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then he kind of has to basically come back around and realizes that his other plan of the new team wasn't working.

Speaker 6 And he kind of catches some shit for that and has to basically bring a pineapple to everybody

Speaker 6 to get them to come back because that's the only way that you're really going to come back, we've learned in episode one. So

Speaker 6 that comes back to the parallel events of episode one and two,

Speaker 6 which are there. And we really were very aware of how to sort of have both episodes work in concert with each other.

Speaker 6 They're not exactly timeframe in terms of, you know, like beat to beat, because we're seeing different things happen.

Speaker 6 But there are places where you can correlate what happened in episode one, like when Innie Mark made the recording to the board, and then you hear him playing the cassette recording of the, you know, the recording to the board for Helena and Mr.

Speaker 6 Drummond. And so, you know, we see these little touchstones that happened in episode one and how they happened on the outside in episode two.

Speaker 6 And that was the fun thing about putting both these episodes together. And even the title, Goodbye, Miss Cobel, Hello, Mrs.
Selvig for episode one and episode two

Speaker 6 worked together also. But that was fun.
And like we talked about with Dan, putting together that shot of you guys coming back to work, which matches the shot that we see in episode one.

Speaker 30 It's really great.

Speaker 36 Sam did a great job with that, too.

Speaker 6 And then we should talk about the scene between you and Mrs. Selvig.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 24 Kind of the confrontation that...

Speaker 38 Mark certainly has been waiting for and gearing up for this whole episode.

Speaker 33 Yeah,

Speaker 6 I feel like as an audience, you have all these questions you want to ask, like, what are you doing? What are you up to? Why are you doing this? And you get to ask all those questions.

Speaker 6 And she is at a point where basically she's just decided that she's, you know, she's getting out.

Speaker 6 So we don't really know, as we always don't know, what her agenda is.

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 22 I mean, she has this scene with Helena where Helena tries to give her a promotion, which feels to Kobell like bullshit.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's a job that doesn't really exist, a new position. And she senses that they are scared of something that she could, you know, do or say.
Yeah. And she decides to walk.

Speaker 6 And so then when she runs into you, she's basically packing up her rabbit and getting out of there. We don't know where she's going.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 6 But you stop her and

Speaker 6 you demand to know what's going on. And I just love Patricia's response in this scene.

Speaker 36 Me too.

Speaker 1 Who are you?

Speaker 66 I thought you were quitting.

Speaker 1 I trusted you.

Speaker 1 I told you what I'd gone through these past two years.

Speaker 2 You.

Speaker 1 You were in my house. You.

Speaker 1 I ate your shitty fucking cookies.

Speaker 66 They convinced you to stay.

Speaker 1 Was a pineapple involved?

Speaker 66 You're so easy to sway.

Speaker 6 The truth comes out.

Speaker 24 The chamomile cookies weren't particularly good, as it turns out.

Speaker 6 And she knows all the lumen moves of the pineapple.

Speaker 37 Yeah, and she knows how to manipulate.

Speaker 30 I mean, she's been studying this guy and kind of insulting him in this way is the perfect move.

Speaker 6 And we really don't know what her agenda is. So then when you say, do you know something about Gemma? It's like where that scream comes from.
It's obviously

Speaker 6 part frustration, part anger, part, I mean, we don't know what it is, but.

Speaker 24 Yeah, I mean, there are cracks in her loyalties and in her armor that we saw the last thing she said to me in episode nine was get away from them, whispered it in my ear.

Speaker 32 And so her not answering and holding the company line when I ask her some of these questions is super interesting.

Speaker 6 Yeah. It almost feels like she knows something that she's not telling you.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 24 And Mark sort of derives quite a bit from this.

Speaker 37 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then she just lets out the primal scream.

Speaker 6 The long pause that she takes.

Speaker 36 I mean, I think she is really trying to communicate something to Mark there.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 42 Right.

Speaker 6 Before she runs you down.

Speaker 33 Before she tries to murder me.

Speaker 37 Great relationship they have.

Speaker 6 Oh, man.

Speaker 10 All right.

Speaker 6 Well, before we go, we should just check in with our friend Zach Cherry. Oh, yeah.
To find out what he thinks is going to happen in episode three.

Speaker 30 I can't move on from episode to episode without getting his predictions.

Speaker 6 I'm so interested at what he's going to say here. So

Speaker 6 let's talk to Zach.

Speaker 6 Hey, Adam. Hey, Ben.
Thanks for having me back.

Speaker 6 As you know, it's my job to sort of analyze and go deep and calculate everything that's going on and spit out a prediction about what's going to happen next.

Speaker 6 So I'm sorry I didn't get it 100% right last time, but this time, I'm definitely going to nail it.

Speaker 6 Next time.

Speaker 39 on severance.

Speaker 6 Based on that last scene where Miss Cobel and Mark have their little interaction with the car, I think Miss Cobel is going to be

Speaker 6 mandated to some court-ordered anger management classes, and she's going to end up coaching a group of rap scallions who go by the name of the Mighty Ducks, and she's going to take them all the way to the title.

Speaker 6 Let's find out on episode three of Severance.

Speaker 58 Wow. Well,

Speaker 6 I mean, never disappoints.

Speaker 32 No, and who can argue with that?

Speaker 33 All right, that's it, right?

Speaker 22 Yeah, the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam.

Speaker 28 We'll be back next week to talk about season two, episode three.

Speaker 6 That's right, in real time here as the episodes play out. And you can stream every episode of Severance on Apple TV Plus with new episodes coming out every Friday.

Speaker 21 And then make sure you're listening to our podcast, which drops right after the episode airs.

Speaker 20 The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Pineapple Street Studios, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott Productions.

Speaker 6 If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or your other podcast platform of choice.

Speaker 6 Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Henry Malofsky, Gabrielle Lewis, Jenner Weis-Berman, and Leah Rhys-Dennis. This show is produced by Xandra Ellen, Ben Goldberg, and Naomi Scott.

Speaker 6 This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Basil. We had additional engineering from Javi Krustas and Davey Sumner.

Speaker 22 Show clips are courtesy of fifth season.

Speaker 37 Music by Theodore Shapiro.

Speaker 20 Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LeVay, Melissa Wester, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.

Speaker 6 And the team at Red Hour, John Lescher, Carolina Pesakov, Gian Pablo Antonetti, Martin Balderudin, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Oliver Ager.

Speaker 20 And at Great Scott, Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin, and Christy Smith at Rise Management.

Speaker 6 We had additional production help from Kristen Torres and Melissa Slaughter.

Speaker 21 I'm Ben Stiller, and I'm Adam Scott.

Speaker 6 Thank you for listening.

Speaker 18 And thank Kobellpig for not running Mark S.

Speaker 29 over.

Speaker 6 Good, yeah, good reaction there.

Speaker 32 Well, I'm lightning fast.