As always, Severance answers some questions and raises some new ones in Season 2, Episode 3. From the goat people to Mark’s quest to find out if his wife, Gemma, is still alive, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Spoilers follow.
Irving B And The Export Hall
Inside Lumon’s Severed Floor, Mark S (Adam Scott) recruits his fellow macrodata refiners to help him find the whereabouts of Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman). Irving B (John Turturro) heads to Optics & Design where he runs into Felicia (Claudia Robinson). They have a heartwarming reunion and get to talking.
It’s only at the end of that conversation that things get really interesting. Irving shows her his drawings of Burt G (Christopher Walken) and she stumbles upon the illustration of the down elevator. “How do you know about the Exports Hall?” she asks. “I’m sorry,” Irving replies.
“We send a lot of shipments there. Used to go ourselves. But now . . . they send a guy.”
“Do you remember where it is?” Irving asks. Felicia only gives him a look, but it’s clear she does. This is the first real lead anyone has in the case of the missing Ms. Casey.
Irving remains cagey. He only tells Dylan G (Zach Cherry) about the paintings. He keeps all of his insights from Mark S and Helly R (Britt Lower) because he clearly doesn’t trust her after her obvious lie in the season premiere. Whether his fears will turn out to be correct remains to be seen, but questions remain: Is Helly R actually her Outie in disguise, a mole sent to discover what the others learned during the Overtime Contingency?
Mark S & Helly R Go To Mammalian Nurturable
By far the strangest moment of the episode came during Mark and Helly’s return to the goat room. They find it empty, and crawl through a tunnel intended for the baby goats into a sprawling room covered with grassy knolls. Here, many baby goats (or kids) bleat around the turf, and we finally meat the Mammalians Nurturable department, led by Lorne (played by Gwendoline Christie).
It’s . . . very creepy. One of the Severed workers is wearing a black goat costume. Many of the others are dressed in bizarre hybrid office / farm clothes. When Mark and Helly ask about Ms. Casey, Lorne gets defensive. Eventually, she rings her bell and the MDR duo is surrounded by Severed employees straight out of a Stephen King novel. But they don’t back down. Mark asks what they would do if one of their baby goats went missing. Wouldn’t you try to find it? he reasons. Lorne relents, telling them that Ms. Casey has been there. She says that Ms. Casey did “sessions” in their husbandry tanks.
What this means is less clear. Did she do her Wellness sessions for the Mammalian Nurturable employees in the husbandry tanks? Or was she in the tanks for some other purpose? What exactly is a Lumon husbandry tank, anyways? I think it was just Wellness sessions, however. The MN workers talk about her briefly. The goat man tells them that Ms. Casey said his Outie excelled at stargazing. “It meant a great deal to me,” he says.
With no exact lead, Mark and Helly decide to go, but not before they’re asked to show their bellies. They comply, clearly baffled, and when they do a bet is settled among the Mammalian Nurturable workers when they see that no, MDR workers do not have pouches, after all. “See, pouchless,” Lorne says. “Proves nothing,” another retorts.
This is a callback to Season 1, when Burt G. told Irving B. that there was a rumor that all MDR employees had pouches where they kept their larvae which would eventually grow and devour and replace them.
Dylan G. Meets His Wife
The only MDR employee unwilling to help in the search for Ms. Casey is Dylan G who waves every attempt to recruit him in the case off. This is for a pretty obvious reason: Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) has told him about the visitation wing. He’s also sworn him to secrecy, indicating that informing the others would lead to resentment.
In this week’s episode, Dylan is taken by Ms Huang (Sarah Bock) to the new visitation wing where he sees images of him and his wife. And then she appears, looking rather nervous. This is Gretchen (Merritt Wever) who has never met her husband’s Innie before.
At first, the thought occurred to me that this could just be a plant and not Dylan’s wife at all. That’s the sort of thing Lumon would do, after all. But it becomes clear quite quickly that this isn’t the case. First, she’s so sincere. She’s confused about why a child is working at Lumon. She mentions “Seth” to Dylan’s confusion and is quickly reprimanded by Ms. Huang. She even shows him a picture of their family taken at some Old West location where they’re all dressed up as cowboys. “We live on a cattle ranch?” Dylan asks, clearly confused.
This is the sort of fantasy about his Outie that would appeal to Dylan G, who spent last season theorizing about all the badass things his Outie certainly achieved. Unfortunately, he learns from Gretchen that his Outie never really found his thing. Being a Severed Employee is the only thing that really worked for him. His Outie is kind of a loser, it turns out, though Gretchen doesn’t see it that way. Still, it’s motivation for Dylan G to fall back in line, which is at least one of the things Milchick is counting on (that and the whole “divide and conquer” strategy he seems to be employing).
“I’ll be good,” Dylan tells her. “I’ll make you all proud.”
“I’m always proud of you, Dylan,” she replies. They embrace. “I love you,” she says. “Oh…” he says, clearly not sure what to say. It’s a nice moment, but how it will impact Dylan G and his coworkers is a lingering question.
The Lumon-eers
Mr. Milchick Is Rewarded
One of the best, most awkward scenes in the episode comes when Mr. Milchick is paid a visit in his office from Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander). Natalie is a curious figure in Lumon’s corporate world. We’ve seen her speaking on the company’s behalf on news talk shows. She is clearly the PR spokesperson for the company, but she also acts as intermediary between the non-severed employees like Milchick and Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and the mysterious Board. Who constitutes this Board remains a mystery. They only show up on the other end of the little speaker device and almost always only in the presence of Natalie.
This time, they’re rewarding Milchick for his efforts and presenting him with a gift to show their gratitude and congratulate him on his ascendence to Floor Manager. The gift, however, is not what Milchick expected, and it’s clear from his expression that he’s not entirely pleased. For the first time, something other than MDR antics has thrown him off his game.
“The Board austerely wants you to feel connected to Lumon’s history,” Natalie tells him. “To that end, please accept from the Board, these inclusively recononacalized paintings intended to help you see yourself in Kier, our founder.”
The present is a series of paintings of Kier Egan and the people in his life, only they’ve all been changed from white to black. A black Kier Egan stares out across the mountains. A young black Kier is nursed back to health in bed. “Oh, oh my,” he says, clearly disturbed.
“You’ll find the whole Kier cycle,” Natalie says, her signature plastic smile glued to her face. She tells him that the Board would like him to know that she also received this gift when she was promoted “and found it extremely moving.”
“I’m grateful,” Milchick says. “It’s meaningful to see myself . . . reflected in . . .” He trails off, clearly shaken. He turns and stares at Natalie, his expression almost angry. “The Board has concluded the call,” she says. The two stare at each other. He looks upset. She flutters, confused, then the plastic smile returns and she says, “Congratulations, Seth” and leaves.
This is a fascinating scene for so many reasons. The acting, for one thing. Tillman is so, so terrific in every scene but here he really knocks it out of the park. His confusion, the conflict he feels seeing these images, the deep rage you can see just below the surface, the faltered attempt to show gratitude.
Since I’ve written and thought about “representation in media” a lot, especially as it applies to historical works, I found a lot of subtext here as well. I’ve often critiqued movies and shows that replace historically white characters with black or other minorities, not because I don’t want to see diversity in media, but because it feels dishonest to simply insert diversity into these kind of stories. Not just dishonest, but deeply condescending as well. Do black people really benefit from having a historically white, male Viking chieftain cast as a black woman? Or is this just Hollywood’s version of Lumon’s “gift” to Milchick. Do “inclusively recononicalized” casting choices really count as a victory for diversity and representation, or is it little more than tokenization?
This is a tough question and the debate often boils down to two extremes, one accusing everyone who disagrees as “bigots” and the other claiming that any diversity at all is somehow “DEI” or “woke” but the reality is a lot more complicated, and Milchick’s reaction here illustrates that perfectly. Much to ponder.
Ms. Cobel Returns And Leaves Again
Ms. Cobel left at the end of last week’s episode. She packed her bags, clearly choosing to turn down Lumon’s offer of a “promotion” and drove off with a scream, forcing Mark Scout to leap out of the way. But on her long drive through a flat and wintry landscape, she has second thoughts. She turns her little car around and heads back to Kier, making her way to an empty Lumon parking lot just as Helena Egan is about to leave for the day.
They talk. Cobel tells Helena that Lumon needs her if they want to finish Cold Harbor (that most mysterious Lumon project that hinges inexplicably on Mark S). Milchick needs to go, she says. He’s not cut out for this work. Helena calls Natalie to see if the Board would be able to convene so that she and Ms. Cobel could have a full conversation about it. It appears they will, and Helena beckons Ms. Cobel to follow. They’ll go back inside and have a chat.
But as Cobel walks across the parking lot, she has yet another change of heart. Either that, or she senses danger. Whatever the case, she stops abruptly and hurries back to her car, peeling out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell as Helena watches. I can’t help but wonder if they had some darker plan in store for Cobel had she entered Lumon instead of fleeing.
Natalie Offers Ricken A Book Deal
Natalie doesn’t just pay Milchick a visit this episode. She also stops by to tell Ricken (Michael Chernus) just how great his book his, stroking his ego mercilessly. When his wife walks in, she’s met with an eager Ricken and the aggressively cloying smile of Lumon’s PR spokesperson (who is quite possibly perma-severed for all we know).
“Ricken’s words have had a profound effect upon our workers,” Natalie tells a deeply skeptical Devon (Jen Tullock). “We think he’s really tapped into something.”
Ricken tells Devon that they want to publish a version of “The You You Are” specifically for Innies. “There’s a certain verbiage to which Innies respond more favorably,” Natalies explains when Devon asks what’s wrong with the current version. Devon makes a hasty retreat.
She heads to her brother’s house and tells Mark all about the awkward encounter. Which brings us to the final chapter of our little saga.
Into The Looking Glass
Devon and Mark’s plan is kind of absurd. We see him at the beginning of the episode timing his entrance from his car in the parking lot to the elevator, and it’s not clear why. But the idea is basically to burn a message into his cornea using a bright light. The message is also this episode’s title: “Who is alive?” They want to know what Mark’s Innie meant when he shouted “She’s alive!” at the party. Mark was skeptical before, but after his encounter with Colbelvig, he’s hungry for answers.
He practices at night in his car, staring at a bright light with the words glued to it and then counting down to see how long the image remains burned to his vision. It’s here that Asal Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) finally returns. We haven’t seen her since Season 1, when she and Mark first met and were so rudely interrupted by Graner (Michael Cumptsy) who Reghabi killed quite brutally, snagging his key card and giving it to Mark, telling him his Innie will know what to do with it. This is actually a phrase echoed in tonight’s episode, when Helly R asks Mark S what they’ll do if they find and rescue Ms. Casey. He tells her his Outie will know what to do.
In any case, Reghabi chastises him for this stupid plan, telling him that he could blind himself and that regardless there’s safeguards in the elevator for this sort of thing. Besides, how would his Innie get a message back?
“Is Gemma alive?” Mark asks. “She was the last time I saw her,” Reghabi replies. She tells him there’s another way to get messages back and forth: Reintegration. It’s what Petey (Yul Vazquez) did and what killed him, but she’s better at it now. Mark agrees, and they head to his basement to begin the procedure. The episode ends as the reintegration begins to take effect. We’ll have to wait until next week to see what happens next.
All told, yet another fantastic episode of Severance. So much happened! This is the first episode of the season where we see both the inside and outside worlds/selves, which is nice. And every character has their moment, from Milchick’s surprise gift to Dylan’s visitation (which sounds like something prison inmates get!) to the Mamallians Nurturable visit and Irving’s discovery of the Exports Hall, not to mention Mark’s procedure. This episode covered so much ground, I basically had to write a book about it, so thank you for bearing with me through such a long recap. I’m genuinely excited for next week’s episode.
Past Season 2 Reviews From Yours Truly:
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