The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 3: The Baby Goats Are Back

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Jo and Rob hand out missing posters to recap the third episode of ‘Severance’ Season 2. They discuss the highly anticipated return of the goats, the degree of difficulty that accompanies a theory show like this, and what truly differentiates the innies from the outies (2:17). Along the way, they talk about Irving’s growing suspicions and Gwendoline Christie’s introduction as one of the leaders of the goat collective (25:55). Later, they break down the potential ramifications of Mark’s reintegration (60:26). Email us! [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Donnie Beacham Jr. Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Come back to PrestiHTV podcast feed. I'm Joyner Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. And we're out here looking for goats. and missing wives and all sorts of stuff here on severance. Rob, how did you feel about the fact that they were unwilling to help when he made a plea to humanity? But when he mentioned the goats, they were like, oh, okay, we'll help. It's one of those things that seems like a bridge too far.

And I am somewhat baffled by the fact that this is what got through to the goat people. At the same time, I know people like this in the real worlds who need the plea to animal safety and survival above human safety and survival. So really, is it that weird? Is it that unusual? Is it that unbelievable at the end of the day? It's some real dog people energy, and I said that with love and respect to you, a dog person. Okay.

Let's not do that. I don't think that's what, I really feel like that's a dog person energy and not a cat person energy. Cat people have their own off-putting energy, and I will own that. But like, this is not our strain of, you know. It's a fair point in the sense that your cats don't care if you live or die. Correct.

And no matter what happens, they're just going to go about their business. They don't really need to be taken care of in the same way. So I take your point. I take your criticism. I'm listening. I'm learning. I'm trying not to be that kind of dog person. We're here to talk to you about season two, episode three of Severance,

who is alive directed by Ben Stiller and written by way naming you. She is a writer on not only Severance, not only Gen V, but also Andy Greenwald's buyer patch. You may have heard of it. You might have heard of it. So what did you, like overall big picture? We've got a lot, I should say, pie-upobbing at Gmail.com. I don't think we've ever gotten so many emails for a show.

Would you agree? The emails are a bobbin, Joe. They are, it's like the black sludge of Irving's paint sort of spilling over the cubicle walls. That doesn't sound very complimentary. Your emails are incredible. There were so many of them. I read them all.

we will not get to all of them, but we have a lot to cover in this episode based on everything that happens in this episode and based on all of your very cogent observations from this, that, and the other thing, dear listeners, please keep your emails coming. I do love them. They're amazing.

But Rob, sort of like big picture. What did you think of? We had the any only episode, the Audi only episode. We end this episode with reintegration, so now we know why we had to have those episodes because that's the last time, theoretically, we're going to be able to be with Mark

all-in-e, all-outy. Now it's just going to be a mish-mash, I hope. What did you think of this episode? I have to say, I think this one was kind of odd, and not all of it worked for me. There's some really great moments, some emotional beats that I think really hit.

But overall, for one of the most polished shows on TV, felt a little bit stilted. There's a lot that I really loved. I would say the Irving stuff works for me, the Dylan stuff worked for me, the reintegration moment really worked for me, the Milchick stuff really worked for me.

I thought that was wonderful. The goat stuff? I'm not sure, actually. With love and respect to Gwendolyn Christie, I just, and I love the weirdness of severance. We had weird, masked exotic dancers during the waffle party last year.

I'm not saying weird off-putting stuff is out of the out of the realm of possibility of the show, this just felt like them, I felt a little bit of like the sweat of them trying to be weird in a way that felt like it didn't quite work for me. So, yeah.

It was a little less severance, a little too much like Dr. Seuss in terms of the language. It just felt, even just like, Mamalian's Nutrable is very like, you're flambazing the horn swoggle. Like, you really don't need to do it.

You don't need to go that far. I'm a little torn on it because I get that the intention is we are stumbling into a world that feels so foreign from MDR. It's like it's supposed to feel like a different show. Yeah. But the contrast is so jarring and so grating. And I think some of the characters' actions and conversations are inexplicable in a bad way. That kind of took me out of the severance experience. I agree with you.

But overall, it didn't feel like a, oh, no, should we worried about season two sort of thing or anything. anything like that. It was just one facet of this episode that I was like, I'm not sure this works for me. I was unsure if you were going to come to the episode and say, I loved the goat stuff. It's my favorite stuff I've ever seen on Severn's because my sense is that a lot of people did really like that stuff. But for me, I don't know, it just feels like a, again, just like a slight distraction or a slight spectacle inside of a show that, like, yes, has weird stuff happen.

But does such a good job. as we talked about before, and inside this episode of integrating true character moments with the oddities that are happening inside this world. It felt a little like over-indexing on something that us and audiences across the world watching Seferance latched onto from season one, which is that little goat reveal that's almost like a throwaway scene that they have now woven, it seems like, into the mythology of the show, which I'm open to that and I encourage it, but this is maybe leaning a little too far in that direction. I had a really good conversation with CR with Chris Ryan over the weekend where we were

talking about sort of theory shows and what happens in a season two of a theory show. And we got this email from our listener, John B. And I just really like the way he put this. He said, Severance has entered a playground that no show has made it out without of without significant injury to its ratings or cue rating. It's taken the elevator to the same floor as the hatch from loss, the lair of the Yellow King, the maze of Westworld, and the Black Lodge, no one has ever come out of this floor

of prestige TV alive. And I think, and John's overall email was like more positive. He's like, but perhaps under these people, this won't be the case. So like overall, more positive.

But the degree of difficulty is what it is. And it's just like the intensive, I love a theory show. You know I do. But like the intensive rabid theorizing, I can't think of a single example of a show that has like survived that to John's point. He mentioned Black Lodge.

Twin Peaks obviously in the long lens of history. And I personally love the Lost finale. I'm a huge Lost fan. But like in the larger culture conversations we have about loss, people don't feel the same way. So I'm hoping, we've talked about this a little bit before. But I'm, I when I saw the Go people, I was like, hold fast. Hold steady severance. You got this.

Maybe we don't need belly. pouches at the end of the day. Perhaps, perhaps not. Speaking of Lost, I did want to shout out the fact, someone on Twitter pointed this out, and I felt so ashamed that I missed it, the Lost numbers, and if you don't, if you never watched Lost,

there are a very famous set of numbers for 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 that show up again and again in Lost are these mystical numbers. Don't mock me, Romano. I'm not. No, when this was pointed out and I saw you acknowledging it,

I felt such a deep existential pain on your behalf. Because I know that this was just racking you with guilt and anxiety for having missed it. I did miss it. When Irving and Dylan and Helena all go to their lockers at the end of episode two, their locker numbers align with the numbers from loss. So a little shout out. You know, it just means that the people are making severance know that they are treading in the Lostian waters. And if you've never seen Lost, you should.

but if you've never seen it, I'll let you know that a very significant, one of the most, and Dan Erickson has talked about this, and other people have talked about this, this moment in Lost, season two of Lost, where they discover they're awash on a desert island, and they discover there's a hatch underneath the island, and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities

of like, we thought we were on a deserted island, what else is happening on this island? And we find a guy, spoilers for Season 2 of Lost, please skip ahead. We find a guy in a hatch who's pressing a button you know, without knowing what that button does. And if that is not MDR, you know, nothing is. If that's not our day-to-day life at this point, Joe, I don't know what that is.

Fair, fair, fair. We got an email from our listener, Jordan, who wanted to point out that in season one, when Hellie first enters the severed floor, she asks Mark, am I livestock? And he says in his classic Adam Scott way, you think we grew a full human and gave you consciousness? How do you feel about that line given our current theories about what's happening with Cold Harbor and Gemma and all of that? Encouraged.

I think things like that speak to a broader vision, speak to that level of callback, even in this sort of capacity, where it is facilitating the theories around the show, even if it turns out not to be a straight line from one line of dialogue to the actual eventuality of what this is. That's fun. That's a delight for me.

Are you ready? Are you emotionally prepared to talk about pineapple bobbing from Mahoney? Please bring it on. Pineapple robbing. So in case folks don't know, because you have decided to improve your life by not being on social media, I did not. It's actually, my nephew suggested. My young nephew volunteered to bob a pineapple.

to test whether or not one can. Don't. You coerced and employed, like Ms. Wong, a literal child. I went to my sister's house. There was a pineapple there, and I turned to my nephews, and I said, do you think someone could bob? And actually, they had never heard of apple bobbing. So it was a whole educational process for them.

He bobbed the pineapple. You've seen the video evidence of him bobbing the pineapple successfully. How do you feel? How does this change your point of view on pineapple bobbing? successfully, you say. He bobs this pineapple in like a four-court pot. It's a four-court pot, Joe.

There's nowhere for that pineapple to go. That's not true at all. He crushed it. Crush the pineapple bombing. It's not his fault. He did an amazing job. Okay. His technique is impeccable. I salute him for successfully bobbing the pineapple

within the parameters of what's been established here, which is not regulation bobbing, not authorized by the bobbing authority. You have to have a big body, of water so that the pineapple can move around. That's the whole point. You can't speak for the bobbing authority. You have no credentials to do that.

Says who? Are you telling me you're fully bob trained? Like you know all the parameters of bobbing? Prove that I'm not. Okay, great. That's an interesting philosophy. Prove that I'm not. Okay.

Also, on the pineapple front, we got a couple of us. Our listener, Christina, was talking about how much the visual imagery of like let's say these boxy old cars and the cure you know mural that we talked about

looking very Soviet the Soviet vibes of the Bell Labs where they're shooting this show reminded her stories about you know what it was like to grow up in like the Soviet Union

or in East Germany And so this idea of the pineapple is this sort of symbol of like a luxury fruit that does not make it past the blockades. You know, this sort of like, you know, and it's not like people who live in this town called Kier inside of the show seem like they're wanting specifically. But there are potentially some luxuries like, say, a waffle or an egg or a pineapple that like they can't. readily access is possible. Also kind of telling that the accommodations for the people who work at Lumen, like

Marx, for example, are pretty Spartan, like pretty basic in terms of the structure of those houses and places. And then even when we see the characters who are supposedly doing well, there's very convenient narrative reasons for why we don't see a lot of decadence, right? Like the no-food dinner party is a great bit.

But maybe it's also like a matter of dealing with the realistic circumstances of something like this. We just honestly haven't seen people indulging really in a lot of different ways. I'll spend at least on the pineapple front, and this is, I think, the most important pineapple fact that you and I have learned over the last week, unless you already knew this, someone who emailed us under the name Van Life, which I presume is sort of not their actual name, said I couldn't help but wonder if you were all aware of the use of pineapple,

specifically upside-down pineapple, as an identifying symbol indicating an openness to non-monogamy or partner swapping. I found this fact out recently and then started to notice pineapples all over the place. So inside of an episode, Rob, where Gretchen, a character that we meet for the first time, Dylan's wife, is maybe feeling a spark of something she's lost with her husband on the outside, with the version of her husband on the inside. So, I mean, another erotic thruple has entered the chat. How do you feel about the use of pineapple in this show?

I think we're going to need some authority. I do not have authority in this particular matter. I may be on the bobbing council, but as far as what constitutes partner swapping, if it is indeed still your partner's physical form occupied by another consciousness, look, it's a question that TV has grappled with since the dawn of time.

A lot of body swapping hijinks out there. This is a little bit different, though, in the sense that it is still Dylan or still Mark. It's just a slightly different version of them. And I love that we are getting to the point with Severance, where we're engaging with, what happens when you meet a version of your husband,

but one who hasn't been like weighed down by the world? Yeah, yeah. And that's a question that's asked inside of this episode, when Gretchen, played by the Great Merit Weaver, we'll talk about it second. Let's talk about Dylan and Gretchen. When she shows up and she's talking to him and she says you, and then she corrects herself and she says he,

like really trying to heat the two of them separate. But this is a question we've asked ourselves throughout as we watch, what we believe to be Helena, impersonate Halley, or as we watch the two marks, is there a massive difference between the two? What makes your any different personality than your Audi? Is it just they're missing the heaviness of the world, the grief of a lost spouse, or the failure that Dylan feels like he's surrounded by on the outside, like, and so when we meet you on the inside, you're just sort of like a lighter, pure version of yourself? Is that a possibility?

What do you think? I think so, or at least one that isn't burdened in the same way. We latched on to last week the sort of detail of Dylan's Audi going on these job interviews, being very concerned about whether these jobs that have health insurance as maybe a tip for his family circumstances or something going on with his kids. After this episode, I see it a lot more as sort of the pressure of providing. Yeah. He is trying to keep these jobs in a way that he hasn't found a passion for anything,

a consistency with anything. And so Gretchen has seen this version of a person she loves, deal with all that, grapple with all that, be ground down into just like a lump on the couch reading Midlife Driver magazine, which I think is a fantastic little bit of set deck. He can't even slice the cookie dough. He can't slice the cookie dough. Sugar cookie is not that hard. He should be able to bake a sugar cookie from scratch.

much less the tube. I was wondering how you Rob felt about cookies out of a tube when... I will say they do slap, you know? Like a store-bought Walmart-style giant lump of icing sugar cookie or your Pillsbury slice and bake. Like, I'm going to eat it. You're into it. I'm not turning it down.

All right, let's talk about Merritt Weaver. Genuinely, one of my favorite actresses, like the casting news with love and respect against Gwendolyn Christie and other people, the casting news I was most excited about in this season. In case you are listening to a prestige TV podcast, I don't know who Merritt Weaver is, or in case you, unlike me,

you don't have to watch awards shows for a living. I want to remind people who may not know that Merit Weaver, who has won two Emmys, gave canonically the best Emmy's acceptance speech of all time. Kai, will you play this, please? Thanks so much. Thank you so much.

I got to go. Bye. That's it. Tremendous. That's the iconic Merit Weaver Emmy acceptance speech. You may know her from Nurse Jackie, for which she won an Emmy, from Godless, unbelievable, The Walking Dead,

run a very mixed bag of a show, but a very like Rob and Joanna show, Donald Gleeson, Merit Weaver. It should have been great. It was only okay. That is exactly what I remember her from. Yeah. And a short-lived show in the sense that even I bailed on it, like two-thirds of the way through the seasons.

I know. It started out so strong. I was really promising. Anyway, Merit Weaver is here. I loved everything about this. This sort of seduction of Dylan, like another day, another finger trap. Only this time the finger trap is, you know, you've got this really cool wife. I think Merritt Weaver is a perfect casting choice for this. I think what she conveys about the discomfort but also somewhat excitement of this interaction. I think she does so perfectly

and so subtly. I think watching her be, watching her deliver the reality of Dylan on the outside,

but also not in a shitty way in a like loyal kind way. Like she cares about him. She's not he dumb, he addicts?

She's not calling him dumb or a dick. But when he asks if he's a fuck-up, she doesn't deny it. But also doesn't answer it. Yeah, she just doesn't answer. Not her words. Yeah, yeah. What do you think? I loved this exchange.

I love the setup. And I love the finger-trap element you're describing for both of them. You have our most perk-obsessed character on this show being shown the tastiest perk of all, not just time with his family, but secret time with his story. family that no one else knows about how enticing. Oh, man. And for Gretchen, you know, she's having to overcome, as you mentioned, the overwhelming weirdness of what is happening.

And she's clocking in real time. Who is this child who is speaking in over the loudspeaker, observing our session? It's clear that she's really uncomfortable, but that she's so at least intrigued on a baseline level by the chance to meet this version of Dylan and figure out what he's like. And what, and what, she's somewhat mystified by the fact that he doesn't recognize. her, despite that severance working as intended, it's another thing entirely to encounter it and to experience it and just see

this version of your husband not know you. I think that's a great place to put these two characters. And it helps explain, too, why when she does get home with Audi Dylan, she doesn't even really want to talk about it. Like, I don't think she wants to indicate how interesting

the exchange was for her. She's keeping a secret too, right? Absolutely. It gives a fair because neither of them or telling the other people in their lives about what's happening here. The fact that the sinister, in my view, fact that they've

built this visiting center in the security room in the location of Dylan's great rebellion, and they're like, this is where we're going to put the thing that's going to pacify you. I think is incredible. The design of that place,

the fact that you hear ocean and gul sounds, like the whole time that he's in there, and then it cuts off a, as soon as you, she leaves, he's still in there. So she leaves, that sound cuts out. Sweet, sweet Pavlov. We're really going places. I was very soothed listening to it. The goals and the crashing waves, it was working on me.

That's my favorite setting on, it's either heavy rain or crashing beach waves that are the best white noise sounds one could ask for. Plus the beautiful, like, oil painting beach vista behind them. You're very, very well manicured for this corporate visitation suite. I think it's so clever. And I think this idea of, again, And there are, we've talked about love triangles and love quadrangles and all this stuff on the show. There are story opportunities here that one could pursue perhaps in an episode of Black Mirror, but one cannot pursue in your standard prestige TV shows. So to give Gretchen the opportunity to meet her husband, not just her husband not weighed down by the things that have happened in their life, but her husband and that idea of like meeting someone from the first time.

Yeah. And like that excitement. that leads plenty of people to stray from their marriage of like the chase. Is this person going to like me? Like, you know, the early flirtation, like anything like that. But inside of it's also still kind of her husband is a really wild concept to explore. And the fact that when she hugs him, when she says goodbye, she says, I love you and says it's sort of habit and instinctual. But outy Dillon on the couch does not get an eye love.

love you when she goes off to work. It does not. You know, it's stuff. The most cursory of pecks between them. And we should say Dylan G. Doesn't even know what to do with being loved, but he is clearly so giddy at whatever it is that he's feeling, whether that's just attraction, whether it's just curiosity.

I'm sure it's some blend of all these things. But he's feeling a lot in a way that we've never really seen that character feel before. I think it's also important for us to see that outside scene, not just to see the contrast, which is important, but also bless them for doing that because then we don't have to endure a week of theories of like, is that actually his wife? You know, that is actually his wife.

So we know that. We saw that his kids play with Keer dolls on the floor. There were like curdles. Not scary at all. It also just like in general, she's working the night shift. Like they don't spend like, what time do they spend together at home?

he's he's uh on the severance severance server floor during the day she works the night shift like ships in the nights very sad all right uh but but like that takes us to the cost here of this shiny new finger trap uh lure for dylan is the very intentional and it's working division that it causes between dylan and his cohorts the reason they were successful in season one in their uprising is because of the you know the common cause that they found together yeah and here in season two the division between irving and dylan who we saw sure that extremely tender moment in episode one that made

us very emotional and then the fact that we believe that hellie is actually Helena so like there's who's who's an ally to whom nobody they've they've successfully scattered this like impenetable force them to the wind within mere days. It doesn't take a lot, yeah. A couple of carrots here and there, a hidden boss there, and all of a sudden the whole team is broken up. And I think to do it with Dylan specifically, who whatever you may think of that character,

and he can be very like edge lord at times in a way that I find endearing within the context of this show, if not necessarily in the outside world, does something very selfless at the end of season one by volunteering to be the person to stay. And so to turn this person who made that sort of, He didn't have the chance to meet Gretchen in the way that the other members of his team, at least theoretically, could meet the people around them.

Yeah. Helly could have met her Nightgarner, you know, if in fact that had happened. It's a very real thing. Lots of people employ night gardeners, Joe. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity,

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I wish Nikki love me more than anyone in the entire world. Who you. wish for. Obsession is 96% fresh on rotten tomatoes. I love you so, so, so, so much. It's blood-soaked nightmare fuel.

What kind of spoiled you put on her. You have been warned. Obsession, rated R. Under 17, 9 a minute without parent. Only theaters May 15th, with special engagements in Dolby. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot.

Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill, three-burner gas grill or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to home depot.com slash price match for details. Let's talk about Irving or uh, everybody's talking about birving. Everybody's talking about burving. Felicia definitely is. Hell, he

definitely is. We gave Kai a full license to hit that sound drop whatever he did and you did it perfectly, Kai. Thank you so much. I was hoping you would. Okay. Irving, Birmingham and the O&D department. Okay. You mentioned Helly, or as we believe Helena. What did you make of the exchange between Helena and Irving when she was trying to say, when she said, we've got you and give him affection and a kind touch? She just continues to do and say things that Heli would. not do, including asking questions about things that Helly would know. And the hand touch felt very corporate approved physical contact of assurance in a way that feels consistent with Helena to me. To me, it felt like an alien visiting Earth trying to approximate a human.

Well, what's the difference between corporate policy and aliens at the end of the day? How does one comfort exactly? What is your read on how Irving received this gesture from her? He seems overall the most skeptical of what's happening. And I would say that going back to episode one of this season. There's just little bits where you see him seeming to catch something in his facial expression, like a little moment of recognition that, huh, this is a little weird. And granted, everything is weird enough right now that I don't know that he's consciously registering, oh, this is an imposter, but that something seems off with this person he knows.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. We also got like a Dylan eyebrow sort of in the foreground of that moment, and I couldn't tell if that was him also clocking something weird and it would make sense to me that Mark would be the last to know. Yes. It's also hard to say because Zach Cherry

does tremendous eyebrow work in this show. There's just like a constant oscillation of what's going on up there. Who knows what means what? Before Irving goes to O&D, he has this conversation with Dylan that we already sort of referenced, which was another clever bit of,

and I will continuously praise the show for this, exposition wrapped inside of, of a character beat. So he's talking to Dylan about like, you know the hallway. I managed to draw it. We can go find it right now. And what we're discovering inside that exchange is that Dylan is holding something back from Irving.

And that's the character beat that we talked about of like the division in their unity. It also reminds us, the audience, what that hallway is, why he would have a drawing of it in his notebook. So when he then shows it to Felicia and O&D, we're all prep for that. And those are like the little economic. beat inside of an episode of severance that I so admire versus, you know, whatever Mike critiques of the goat stuff, which we'll get back to in a second.

Felicia Irving. What do you want to say about that? I mean, it's just nice that we get this moment to commiserate about birving, if also talking about burving. Everybody's commiserating on it. A lot of commiseration needs to be done. There's a lot of admiration for what Bert brought to O&D, and clearly a lot of affection between him and Irving

as we get this very charming anecdote about Bert fixing his hair for literal hours before going to visit him. But what jumped out to me for this scene is actually before Felicia shows up and we get Irving walking into O&D for the first time. And very kind of sweet and tender moment as he's perusing the paintings and taking stock of the scene. And the score as ever on Severance is wonderful, wonderful stuff.

and here it hits like half noir, half elevator music, which is basically the show to me. I just, I have a lot of admiration for so many of the like very precise points that they're striking between these. Yeah. What should be extremes or things that have nothing to do with each other. No one has ever looked more longingly or tenderly at a flat file cabinet than Irving does in this episode.

His little smile when Felicia tells him the hair story, the long hug between the two of them, especially in contrast to that awkward, effort from Helena, just mere moments before. Although Helena, I mean, our girl, she just wants to jump Margus' bones so bad and doesn't know how to do it? I want to talk about that a second. But last one at least, I will just say that we get all of this,

which is emotional character stuff, and then inside of that we get, boom, Lordump, the exports hall. Felicia knows about the exports hall, kind of what it is, and also significantly where it is. So, hi, Felicia, welcome to the party. You are now part of the coalition. Welcome to the resistance. All right, let's talk about Mark and Helly

and the freaky goat shit. Okay, so what I like about this, the episode opens will obviously get back to Mark on the outside, but the episode opens with, you know, this very heisty, Ocean's 11, let's time the entry to the building moment from Mark. And when we see any Mark, he's also on a mission. They're both marks on a mission inside of this episode, which I really like,

which again speaks to this idea of like they are kind of the same person. There are ways in which they're different, but there are ways in which they're the same. And they're both like, we're going to spearhead a heist and it's going to happen. And the loot is Miss Casey. And so we have Mark showing the sketch and he says, do not leave it behind, which when someone says something like that, I'm like, uh-oh,

someone's going to leave something behind. On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, I don't know, Helen is just there observing all of it, so it's not like they're successfully keeping any secrets at all. And as they point out,

Lumen is listening, which they did tell them. Yeah. Very, very weak here for you. I thought it was what I hear every time I hear of Lumen is listening. Okay, that's what I felt like when Helena comforts Irving,

and she says, we've got you. I was like, they've got them. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Okay. Let's talk about their little moment in the hallway.

Helena and Mark have this little moment in the corner of a hallway. My interpretation of what's going on here is yes and to you. She definitely wants to jump his bones. She does not know how to initiate. She's hoping he'll initiate. He's used to a heli who is the one who grabbed him and smooched him in the first place. So he's sort of waiting for her to initiate. And then the moment just kind of passes.

and he sort of remembers what he's supposed to be doing, which is looking for his wife. Oops. But I love this moment, and Britt Lauer's performance especially in terms of what we talked about last week, which is Helena's sort of longing to find out, I don't know. Has she ever kissed a boy?

What's it like to kiss a boy? I don't know. Helena Egan has gotten to do that. So how do I do this? awkward middle school vibes from Helena Egan here which I really liked. Just making eyes at him.

I think you pinpointed exactly the difference in assertiveness between Heli and what we assume is Helena and the non, the grabbing of the lapels versus the shuffling awkwardly. It could not be more clear and maybe the rug will be pulled out from us down the line and this is just

all of a sudden I guess Helly turned very sheepish for no reason whatsoever, but every bit of evidence tells us this is Helena. Speaking of sheepish, let's talk about goats. Another thing that happens inside of this moment when they're going into the goat room and all of this sort of stuff is she's like, are you sure? Oh my God. What are we doing?

Whereas I feel like, the heli that we knew would be like leading the way. She'd be first down the goat hall. The unmistakable being John Malkovich image of the two of them crouching in front of the hallway. And again, I don't like to assume that any of our listeners are. our age or anything like that. So if you are younger and you've never seen being John Malkovich, just Google image search being John Malkovich, you'll see the most iconic image.

Or better yet, remedy that fact. Oh, watch it. Do go watch being John Malkovich. The Charlie Kaufman, like early aughts, David O. Russell, sort of off-kilter quirky, sci-fi realism stuff that is floating around this episode. We're going to talk about Eternal Sunshine in a little bit, but like I was really glad.

to see a being John Malkovich illusion here. When they get to the goat room, though, if they become John Malkovich. Yes, when they become, when they're just like, Malkovich, Malchowicz. Being Seth Milchick, they climb into Milchick's consciousness, and we go from there. And they're like, blackface Kierregan,

I'm not sure that's what I want. We're going to have to circle back to that big time. Not sure. When they get into the goat room, Helena, if that is Helena, I mean, we think it is. I'm just going to keep. caviating, though. Helena looks genuinely confused and perturbed.

Like, I don't think she knows about the goat room, about mammalians, naturable. How much do you think Helena knows in general about what goes on on the severed floor, etc.? I mean, she's big picture, right?

Like, she knows in a general sense, probably what they're trying to accomplish, but not all of the means by which they're accomplishing it. So I think she probably knew there were goats, and there's some process by which goats and human beings on the severed floor are interacting or related,

but maybe not that, oh, there's this giant-ass, like, meadow within the floor itself. A knoll fully staffed with a bunch of goat people, weirdos, and frankly, like, a whole herd of goats. Flock? What's the plural of goat? Oh, like, what's the group name for a goat? Yeah.

I would say a flock of goats, no? A herd of goats? Goather. A herd of goats I guess help us out if you're out there And you know the answer If it's really murder of goats We would love to know it Just let us know

An ecstasy of goats Yeah no I mean I think if she had encountered What we saw in season one Which is just a guy bottle feeding some goat Guy in a suit bottle feeding some goats Which is weird But not as weird as the rolling grassy knolls

Of what we see As Gwendolyn Christie In like fashionable businessware But also a kerchief of Gwendolyn Christie with her face smeared with dirt, but also a really heavily applied smoky eye. I have a lot of questions about a lot of choices in here. We've got a guy.

Find you a Malian who can do both, Joe. We've got a guy who looks like Black Phillips storm the Capitol in January 6th. So there's a lot going on in this room. And something that PD says in season one, and his little map that he drew, he had this sense or idea or knowledge that some people never leave the severed floor, that they live down there.

Would you say you think the goat people live on the severed floor? It feels like they've been in there pretty long, and they've certainly seen some shit. All of that is conveyed quite simply. But I think from there it gets a little muddled. You know, like Gwendolyn Chrissy's character approaches them with shears in hand

asking if they're there to kill her. But then later insists that she's not afraid of them at all and they don't fear these interlopers from the outside world. Well, I don't believe her when she says that. I mean, I don't either, but I'm just like, I don't have any sense of what's going on here or why or how. And here's the thing that bugs me most about the entire goat sequence. Yeah.

A real and surprising lack of curiosity on Mark's part. Like, this is a person who has never seen grass before. for and it's just walking in matter-of-factly in a way that can we not get one Terrence Malikian beat of Mark bending down to touch the grass for the first time? Is that something that we're not entitled to? And then once we do get into conversation and they're being interrogated about their bellies, we have no follow-up questions to that? Well, no, no.

Okay. I was a little weirded out by this, but then I remembered in season one that, like, Dylan had all these senses of, like, what the O&D people were. Yeah. He had all these, like, weird, like, the O&D people are. these weird, freaky creatures. So there's just this like, because when you sever someone

and they don't know what wind feels like and they've never seen grass, you can tell them that like literal monsters are working in the other departments and don't go there because they'll kill you and that's how they divide and conquer, right? And so like the thing that we saw in season one between Burton Irving.

Everybody's talking about birthing. Everybody's talking about birving. Be very careful, Joe. I'm done. I think that's it. I think that's enough Billy Bush for all of us inside of this. Certainly. When Bert and Irving make their connection, their romantic connection, their Romeo and Juliet as connection,

it is the only thing that combines the O&D and the MDR department otherwise. And they have all these suspicions of each other and hatred for each other as perpetuated by Lumen to keep them to divide and conquer. Personally, if I were Lumen, I would just keep them on separate floors entirely, but you do you, Lumen. Yeah. We also have some questions. A couple email questioning why everyone arrived at different timing to get down to the elevator, and they talked about this in season one, that they were specifically asked to stagger their arrivals into the building so that nobody sort of interacts with each other outside of the floor.

These are sort of some of like unreliable ways. Because what if you're running five minutes late? these are the unreliable ways which Lumen tries to keep people separate and divide and conquer but I think that's the source of like do you have pouches? Are you here to kill us? Because that's the propaganda

we've heard about MDR or something like that. It's still I apologize to Gwendolyn Christie. She had the smoky eye. The sequence still doesn't work for me but maybe some of the internal logic is more sound than I thought. I think it would have been good to have like a slight reminder of that. It was a bit

starring for me as well. I want to shout out, in addition to watching Being John Malkovich and perhaps Merit Weaver's Emmy Exempton speech and all the other homework that we've thrown at you. Watch the first couple of episodes of run. They're good, not the whole season. I was watching,

have you ever seen the Francis Ford Coppola movie Rumblefish? I haven't. I watched it for the first time this last week. Really cool movie. I really loved it. But it's filmed, but it kind of blew my mind. It's Mickey Roebbled.

York, Matt Dillon. It's filmed in black and white, except for there are these fish in a pet store that Mickey Works characters obsessed with, and they're red and blue, and they're kept in the tank, and they're kept separate because the idea is this breed of fish, if they were allowed to be in the same tape together, they would fight each other. So they're divided, and the imagery of the blue and the red fish was not only Dr. Seuss, but very severance to me. Mark on the outside has a fish tank in his house that has one red fish, one blue fish in it.

And so this idea of like we have to keep them separate or they'll fight. Spoilers for Rumblefish, at the conclusion of that film, they put the fish in the river and the fish don't fight because they're like sort of. Anyway, it's a very heavy metaphor. A movie that I really love, but it's very weird. It's really cool, very weird. But I was like, are you rumble fishing? is this, this is the idea is like keep everyone separate in their

department so that they can't the workers can't unite and overthrow you know. Yeah, the messaging from Lumen is we're doing this so you don't fight. We're doing this so these incredibly violent scenes that have been painted will not happen again. But yeah, the reality is obviously they're trying to keep everyone separate from

consolidating power and perspective and information. And for example, the fact that the people of the Mamalians Nurtrable have met Ms. see before is a pretty big reveal in this episode. And that she has a kind, a gentle way about her. She does have a gentle way. All right. I'm ready to talk about Milchick, Devin, Ricken, and perhaps the star of the show, Natalie.

Oh, my God. What a Natalie episode. What a Natalie episode. Okay. So let's talk about the Milchick thing first. We have arrived at the great role. evolving of Akir and the revolving is Milchick turning that box around on the top of the shelf never to be seen again. This was so good. We referenced, I think last week or the week before,

we referenced Get Out as sort of like this possible. What are these creepy billionaires doing with this technology? Are they trying to achieve immortality of some sense? Is it as it is and get out this idea of like, let's put the consciousness of a decrepit old man into a younger, healthier body. And the get-out vibes were off the charts here. They certainly were. They certainly were.

They're not. They certainly were. A series of paintings of Kear Egan as reimagined as a black man. And Milchick's reaction is phenomenal. Natalie's reaction is even juicier. Natalie's saying she was gifted something similar, and as soon as the board hangs up, the look she gives him of like,

I can't describe it, but this shared look of like how fucked up this is. Yeah. And then her plastering that trembling, broad corporate smile on top of it, is like ice water in your veins. It's so good. Anything you, what do you want to say about this?

Yeah. Sidney Cole Alexander, who plays Natalie. And I mean this as a compliment, just has such a perfect, vacant smile. Like, as you're saying, absolutely plastered on.

And I think a lot of it is what she's doing with her eyes, which are just so wide and dead as she's trying to, like, basically grit her teeth through doing this. And the board insists that she found the gesture

very meaningful when she was gifted the paintings. Like, everything about that character in this episode, I found to be wonderful in terms of the performance and the usage.

The Milchick stuff, bizarre as fuck. very strange for all the reasons we're kind of circling around as far as why a black-facing cure might be a little weird and off-putting to some people in this world. Joe, I have concerns. You know, you've very astutely brought up in our earlier podcasts that there are all these hints and little blinking lights and arrows and severance pointing to the Civil War and Civil War, names and iconography and little bits and pieces, little breadcrums along the way. as a broader metaphor for the idea of severance,

great, no harm, no foul. We've had the theory floated, including in our inbox at pineapple bobbing at gmail.com, that maybe severance takes place in not just an alternate reality, but maybe an alternate butterfly affected reality where, say, for example, the Confederacy won. This kind of like the re-canonicalized portraits of Kier made me a little concerned

that that could be something that the show is interested in exploring and if that is really the case I hope severance has not bitten off more than it can chew. Okay. I agree, you and I both don't really want exactly that. At all?

Like there's reckoning with the general ideas in a broader sci-fi sense and then there is literalizing them in the world in a way that I think could be quite thorny. I hear you. I love the scene. Yes, agree. I think this scene is wonderful. I think, to your point, if the idea is to get more literal with it elsewhere, is that something that severance is the show where we really want to see that examine.

I think that's a good question. Something I think is interesting is that Tremel Tillman in the official Severance podcast, which I told you I've been listening to, he said that he asked the creative team early in production of season one, does Milchick know he's black? that that was a question that he asked about his character in season one. Does this guy know he's black? And like, should I be playing him with an awareness of, inside of like this oppressive environment, should I be playing him with an awareness of what he brings the table as a black man? Or should, is this, you know, are we alleging that this is like a race blind situation? And so I think the answer is very clear here inside of this exchange here.

also inside of this sequence Natalie calls the board it Helena later says them we've heard them used for the board Natalie says it which is not grammatically wholly grammatically incorrect you're supposed to refer to like corporations as it rather than they that's like grammatically what you're supposed to do but it did paying I think for some people this question of like, is the board, which we've never seen, we've heard as a disembodied voice,

the very mention of Sends Kobel sort of high-tailing her way out of her exchange with Helena, which we'll talk about in a second. Is the board actually a board of people, or is it an AI conscious? I don't know. A circuit board? Who knows? Is it a head in a jar? A surfboard? A cheese board? No, like, is it like an AI consciousness?

Is it Cures, yeah, a brain in a jar? Like, what is the board, you know? I love that we don't know. I love everything about the way the board communicates. And to your point about the grammatical constructions there, I think also makes sense virtue of their relative status, right? To Helena, these are, could be people, maybe not peers, but people she knows through her father.

And to Natalie, they are this amorphous, disembodied voice who has clearly rung out a level of control over her and her life that her eyes and smile would tell us she's not like 100% comfortable with. This is not all Natalie gets to do this episode. She also gets to go see Rickin and have a top-tier exchange with him about his book and with Devin. I just want to say, and maybe I'll write out a post-it so I can remind myself when we record, when she says remarkable so astute

and he goes, is it that's what I was going for? I feel like we should make that part of our podcast. It really is what we're going for. Remarkable, so astute. Is it, that's what I was going for? Incredible stuff. What do you want to say about Natalie and Rickin

in this exchange? I mean, for one, the kind of subtle differences in what Natalie is delivering here. And I think we have all the reason to assume that there's not like an iny and outy version of Natalie, that there is one consciousness because she's operating in the same way that like Kobel, for example, was operating on the floor. And Milchick, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the way she delivers things to Milchick in that kind of very tense exchange versus, I mean, just the ease with which she has Rickin eating out of the palm of her hand by saying one nice thing about his dumb book. Like, she knows in the same way that Milchick knows, like how to play this to the outside world. how to say the right thing, how to put the gentle touch, how to, you know,

pamper the people who need pampering and compliment the people who need complimenting. And then all of a sudden, you know, she has Rick and himself believing that this

adaptation of the book in which all the language has been changed to serve Lumen's needs could be a real game changer, Joe. And it feels like Rickon's just going to tumble along

and do whatever they ask of him. Ricken, who was sort of posturing that he had a problem with separate since season one is now like, Oh. You want to put out in paperback?

Me? I'll write the new foreword. Me? Something, so we have this Devon exchange with Natalie, which, you know, Devin continues to be the best person in this town. Something that one of our listeners pointed out to sort of circle back to your idea of how, like, literalizing we're making some of these, like, Civil War-esque allusions. I listened to Lizzie Jean C. pointed out that the term, I think it was drummond

used for Devon was uppity. And that upity is a very racially coded word, a slavery coded word. This idea of like an uppity person who is acting above their station. So, you know, if we're not talking literal

Civil War slavery, we're talking about a slavery of a kind or a slavery mentality that women has. A modernized techno slavery. Yeah, exactly. Devin. Mark. Ragabi. Actually, before we do that, let's do Helena and Cobel. It's 23 miles to Salt Neck, but we're not going to Salt Neck. It's more than that. I think it was 238 miles to Salt Neck, but we're not going to Salt Neck. We're going back. We are turning around. Patricia Sharkand has had to do a lot of driving acting this season. She's great at it, though. Very dramatic. The dramatic cassette push into the tape deck. No one does it better.

Then we get this Helena Cobel exchange where Cabell once again insists that she be back at this. This is her second attempt to insist that she belongs on the severed floor with MDR and that they got to get Milchick out of there. And her second failed attempt to intimidate Helena. We have a lot of Cobel theories flying fast and furious around this joint. anything you want to say before we sort of get into that like a theory corner about Cobel? I think the theory corner is the natural place to go. There's so much happening in which Cobel is just kind of spinning her wheels at this point,

basically begging us to theorize as to what her role in all of this is. And the one that grabbed me, Joe, was one that a listener, Wendy, emailed us about. In particular, you know, we get this moment between Cobel and Helena in which Helena asks her, like, why don't we go in and reset? And that made my, it registered my interest in lots of different ways, in particular the fact that Cobel knows not to go inside after that conversation takes place. And what Wendy emailed us about was this theory that Cobel herself could be a permanent

any, you know, someone who is stuck in that condition for whatever reason, that maybe she either became brain dead in the outside world, that there was some kind of event, that the feeding tube she is carrying around is, in fact, not one of a mother or or relative, but maybe it was her own at one point in time. And she's always wearing turtlenex to kind of conceal potentially some sort of wounding, some sort of scarring that may have taken place from whatever she was going into. And there's these little bits of pieces of evidence, for example, Harmony's name being on one of the control boards that say maybe, in fact, she was an iny at one point in time.

Maybe there is a history there beyond just wanting to be a manager and her interest in getting back on the floor and running the floor. and ultimately completing the Cold Harbor project could have a personal bends in a very different way than we've been talking about. Love that. I always love to track. I'm always on Turnal Neck Watch.

I love that for us. There's a number of other. So this idea that she was an in any at one point, that the breathing tube was hers, that this has to do with her own desire for reintegration or something like that, because she's the one, we talked about this already,

but she's the one, is the one who's the most adamant about this idea of reintegration and whether or not the science is working there or something like that. Okay. There's a couple other

popular theories going around. We got an email from listener Deb who wants to propose the idea that this reminds me have so many secret Targaryen emails that... How many have you fielded over the years, Joe?

Countless. The limit does not exist. Harmony Cabell is actually... Okay, these are the two prevailing, is actually Helena Egan's mother. Yeah. Let's do some quick age math on this. Patricia Arquette is 56.

Britt Lauer is of 39, which would mean that Cabell would have to be around 17, which is gross, but not outside the realm of possibility, because we see that she was at the girl school, the Myrtle Egan School for Girls. By the way, on the shrine that was in her house that we saw in season one, among the many juicy little Easter eggs on there, there is an award that she won for, quote, use of meal-time condiments. is one of my favorite details. But she was a child at an Egan school.

Was she groomed in some way? Was she used? Because we have not heard anything about Helen's mother. No. So what goes on there? In season one, this is per the email we got from Deb. In season one, Irving quotes Helen's father, Jamie Egan. when they first enter the perpetuity room and says,

quote, come now children of my industry and know the children of my blood. So this idea of using girls that come through the Egan school as sort of like, sorry, for the expression, like brood mares, like I can kind of see that that could be something that could happen. It's a compelling idea.

Another idea sort of given Helen's father's advanced age is that she is an illegitimate daughter. Like actually like a sister And inside of this scene That Harmony and Helena have Where she basically calls Helena a Nepo baby And she's like, I earned everything I had It was given to you

It could read very much Like I was sort of the bastard child And cast aside And you are the sort of The legitimate heir sort of thing Or conversely that she earned it through childbirth Or she earned it through this sort of grooming ordeal

that she went through, right? Right. So sister or mother, that's a potential theory. I'm most compelled by, to go back to the breathing tube, this idea that people are assuming that the breathing tube belonged to her mother because it says Charlotte Kobel in it, and the date seems like it would be, again, we don't know when this show takes place, but it seems, I think it was like 1940 something, so it seems like it would be the mother of Harmony Cobel.

Right. So this idea, and there's this kind of cheating a little bit, but, Severance put out like extra show material around season one and there's something called the Lexington letter that has like lore in it and that's not really fair to give extra reading to the class but that's what the podcast is here for. But in the Lexington letter, there is a language about a breathing tube defects as, you know, manufactured by Lumen. So Lumen manufactured these breathing tubes that had defects. And perhaps that is why Harmony's mother died because of a Lumen defect breathing tube and that she's vowed revenge on Lumen. So she's really like the ultimate mole in there to get vengeance for her mother.

And this whole like true believer thing is an act and part of her spy mission to get vengeance. And the fact that she when she turns around from what was it 238 miles, from Saltzneck. 38 miles. Yeah. I mean, a long way to go still. When she turns around, like, it's the breathing, it's looking at the breathing tube on the front seat of her car that makes her turn around.

So, yeah. And there's something in there with both Cobell. And I think this is true of Milchick and his scenes, too, where, yes, Lumen is this, this gigantic corporation that seemingly makes everything, including a lot of, like, medicine and medical equipment, has the severed floor business doing whatever it is that they're doing. but every character in the show has their sort of relationship with Lumen the company

and they have their relationship with Lumen the cult and I think we see that tested with Miltchick a little bit of like he seems like a pretty loyal employee but also what the fuck is this shit and with Harmony we have kind of assumed some of her allegiances throughout based on the way she's acted or tried to infer based on how erratic she's been

but I think it's fair to say that even though she may subscribe to the cult side on some level maybe she does have that vengeance against the company that you're describing, where it is something that's more personal that happened to someone that she knows in which a piece of equipment, for example, defected.

And how long has this sort of infiltration mission been going on? Many people noted on that shrine that we see in season one that there is a frolic mask, one of the masks from the waffle party is on her shrine. And so someone was like,

was she a former waffle party erotic dancer at some point? Was that all part of the long game? Who knows? I would love to hear the backstory of Harmony Cobell and how she got here and how she keeps her hair so frizz-free.

Anything else you want to say? I know there was another email you wanted to read about Ms. Wong. Do you want to talk about that? I do want to talk about this one. I think it brings true in this episode, too, to some extent. Although we're still getting to know Ms. Wong in lots of ways. But overall, David emailed us about Miss Wong as sort of a stand-in for being a working professional,

specifically a middle-aged or older working professional, and all of a sudden having to manage having a much younger boss. And if we take that to a cartoonish extreme, it turns into Miss Wong escorting you to the security room and then listening in on your conversation and budding in whenever you don't address her specifically by name. I think it's a very smart thing for the show to wrangle and to wrestle with in the same way that it does with a lot of random little,

workplace angst and anxiety. And we have no idea where the plot lines are going with Ms. Wong. She's still such a mysterious character, but everyone, including Dylan and Gretchen, both in this episode, are asking, why is this a child? Why are you a child? Why are we pretending this is normal?

Yeah. All right. We're going to move into our last sort of section here that we need to talk about, which is the Devon Mark Ragabi situation here, the reintegration. Before we get there, lest I get embarrassed again, I do want to point out that if it's 238 miles of Salsnik,

eight and 23 are lost numbers. So, you know, save your emails, but send all other emails to findable bobbing at gmail.com. Okay. Reintegration time. Okay, first of all, I love the heist plan, the burning on the retinas, all of this. I love a heist, personally.

I'm a huge heist fan. So, like, all this stuff really worked for me, the fact that, like, Devin and Mark are doing it secret, this, like sort of arts and crafty science, like, let's talk about our teacher, sort of conversation, all of it's great. And then I also love that it's just, like,

immediately debunked by Regina. This is a terrible plan. Immediately like, I'm sorry. First of all, she knows exactly what he's trying to do. And secondly, she's like, it's absolute bullshit. Sorry. But the fact that she knows that it wouldn't work or has thought it through makes me want to circle back to our question about the phone call that Irving made last week.

Because our question was like, is he, when he said, when Irving last week said to someone on the phone, he got the message. and we were like, is he talking to Ragabi? It's worth thinking about this idea of like burning an image on your retina as like an after image versus what Irving on the outside has done which is paint the same thing over and over and over again.

And as one of our listeners pointed out, Joseph Adi, one of our listeners pointed out that Irving on the outside was drinking night coffee. Oh, he's chugging coffee. So like this idea that he's like keeping himself awake, painting this image over and over again to induce you know is this

regabi's is this a regabi medical plan of like okay if you make him sleepy as an iny he might fall asleep on the inside and if he falls asleep on the inside perhaps this image will be burned on his subconscious and it will seep through into you know what I mean like that seems like something

a scientist might have invited why are you just working at me it's very like Philip Kate it's like do Android's dream of electric sheep is where we're going Yeah, well, I mean, listen, we got it. Okay, listen, I love everyone's emails. We got a few emails from people who are like, that's not how cloning works,

and I just want to encourage you to remember that this is a sci-fi show. It's a sci-fi show. You know, it's a sci-fi show. I appreciate that it is soft enough and grounded in a kind of a reality that we're grasping at, oh, is severance a theoretically possible thing within the human consciousness? But I'm telling you it's not. And that's okay.

And it can be fuzzy, and it can be functional within the show. But all neuroscientists, too, please keep emailing me because I'm learning a lot. Pineapple popping atch email.com. Why was Mark practicing this with his car? I know why his car was running for heat, but he's sitting in a running car by a barn. It looks like a barn. And how did Rigabhi find him there? Question mark?

I like much of what happens once Rigabi shows up in a sense. You know, we're moving forward. We're keeping things propulsive. As you say, her quick. her quick debunking of like this plane is terrible. Yeah. I enjoyed quite a bit. It was great.

Her showing up with no explanation whatsoever in front of his car with no way to track him other than I guess just following him from his house. I don't know about that. It just felt like a jump scare for the sake of a jump scare. Um, yeah. I mean, I understand, no, I don't have a good explanation for it. I'm not mad about it. I just don't have a great explanation for it.

A little, just slightly shabby. How did you feel about the fact that Raghabi apparently already, knew that Gemma was alive on the severed floor? Well, that's my question. He's like, is she alive? And she says, she was the last time I saw her. Right. That's vague enough that it could mean a lot of different things.

A lot of plausible deniability in that. I also am not sure I know. She has such an agenda here that, like, it did read to me like she was telling the truth, but it's possible that she was trying to keep her language vague enough so that, like, again, plausible deniability that there is some version of that that's true. what is alive in this context? What is alive? And frankly, does she even know anything about it?

Or is she yes anding a subject because she needs a subject? I mean, that's, that was my first thought was like she's lying because she needs him to do this. But rewatching it, there was like enough sort of emotion in the way she played it that I feel like she's not lying. But she might be stretching the definition of a live in order. to serve her needs here. I think it's a good reminder regardless that all of these characters have their own agendas.

And we have a sense of what Dr. Rogabi wants to happen, which is to successfully reintegrate somebody. We don't really know why. We don't really know the lengths to which she has gone to this point or how many subjects before PD may have met unfortunate ends

or injury or scrambled brains. I think there's a lot of mysteries around that character as much as there are around Lumen. What is very important on a character level is the speed with which Mark agrees to reintegration. Just straight up.

Just like cuts her off and is like, I'll do it. Knowing everything he knows about what happened to PD, it doesn't matter if there's a chance that he could see Gemma, he's going to do it. And that's devastating. You know, like absolutely demolishes me. And again, just like complicates

this like really funky love quintet quadrangle whatever it is that we're dealing with because like I am rooting for Mark and Hallie but like Mark on the outside is just like so devoted to Gemma

it's worth mentioning we talked about Orpheus and Eurytica as like Greek and you mentioned Chipithesis which I thought was so smart we got a lot of emails from people and I think it's I didn't point out but it is of course worth noting that Persephone which is the Greek reference that kicked all of this off in the first place, Persephone was the daughter of

the goddess Demeter who was stolen down into the underworld and forced to live there half of the year. Yeah. Did she eventually grow to love it down there? Accounts vary. But she's down there half of the year because she ate some pomegranate. And don't eat pomegranate. Don't eat pomegranate. And pineapple? Maybe. Pomegranate, never. They mean very different things. we're learning. And her mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvest,

in protest when her daughter is underground, that's when it's fall and winter. And it's spring and summer when her daughter comes above ground.

And so this idea of this like perpetual winter that we're in inside of severance, like is that related to any of this? You know, that's a Greek mythology

corner for your, for your episode here. Okay. Rob and I are wearing red, not necessarily, but kind of in honor of Mark's incredible red sweater that he wears in order to

unknowingly reintegrate at the end of this episode. I mean, the red and the blue motif throughout this series has been so clear, but this is like the reddest red he's ever worn. This is the most Audi mark color we've seen so far, and it's

fitting because we're about to sort of say goodbye to this pure form of Audi mark. This is perhaps the last we will have ever seen of purely any mark and purely outy mark RIP to both of them. Now they are a stew. Anything you want to say? I'm excited

for what the neuroscientists email us about all of the science jargon that gets laid on us here. Anything you want to say about the five different brain waves or anything that Raghavi says here? I mean, I think the five brainwaves and the five little buckets in the macro data like that, that's a call out that kind of naturally draws us in. Yeah. I will see

just like the aligning of the two waves. felt very like captcha to me. You know, it might scramble his brain, but you also might at least get into this website. So things are happening. You might get tickets to Taylor Swift. You never know. Anything could happen.

If you can identify all of these stoplights, you too can be front row. Okay. One thing I've been wondering about reintegration since watching this episode. You know, we've been approaching it, I think largely from the perspective of people like Mark.

Would Mark, would Pedy want to reintegrate? I think Gretchen's appearance in this episode raises a different perspective, which is would she want Dylan to reintegrate at a certain point? Like I think there's the version of the relationship she's developing with Dylan G or at least kind of interested by him. Is that a way to relieve some of the weight that's been on the Audi Dylan's shoulders in order to like, you know, find this happy medium between those two versions of himself?

Similarly with Helen and Helly, like if we don't, like, are we rooting for a reintegration path forward for that person or given the shit that we've seen Helena Egan do? Are we sort of rooting for her demise and just pure hellie are going forward? Which characters do we want to see reintegrate? Which inis and outies

do we want to see sort of win the battle for the body? What do we want going forward? I'm kind of like pro reintegration for everyone, but you know, we'll see. I think it's reintegration, I think, for everyone could create some narrative simplicity that I don't always

love, but it depends on how you execute. It depends on what a reintegrated person looks and feels like and how conflicted those two sides of them are. I mean, like, Audi Irving, you know, provided that Annie Irving is willing to, like, care for the dog, the same degree that Audi, like, what does Outy Irving have to live for?

We don't know anything. We know, like, dead dad stuff in a box and, like, artistry that Eddie Irving seems to possess as well, given, like, all of his beautiful sketches of Bert. Who do you think did the Miss Casey poster? Because I will say Irving's style seems a little more like Wall Street Journal headshot to me, and that one is a little crude.

I'm not, I mean, it's better than I could do, but it's still a little crude. It's definitely Mark. You think that's Mark? I mean, he would know best. I mean, is it not? In the reintegration process, we get, we can't have got me saying so comfortablyingly, I'm much better at it now. Don't worry.

I'm so much better than I was when I did PD. Zero patients have died this week. And then she says, oh, shit, something I think a scientist should not say during the course of some experimentation. And we get what I'm calling Chekhov's hand spasm. We get this very prominent hand spasm from him. So if as we wonder if maybe next week is going to be sort of like an all reintegration episode, we'll talk about that in a second. But if we're watching Mark throughout the rest of the season or the rest of the series

have to pretend that he's one or the other and will the twitching hands give him away or just silo all over again. We're right back into it with the twitching hands. I like that tell. I have to say I like

overall, as with many things in severance, the overall analog, complicated, wired in feel. of this procedure. It reminded me a lot of seeing First Man, the movie First Man, and you get a sense of the tactile nature of early space travel,

and it's like, holy fuck. This screw coming loose is just the difference between life and death. And here, the formations in this, I guess it's like salt, you know, or whatever is like the conduit kind of a vehicle there that's indicating that something is going wrong,

all of this very analog technology being the way to potentially unsever and hopefully not scramble somebody's consciousness. It's just such a fun way to go about this world. And one little a little asterisk I want to put on that. We've talked about the vintage cars. We talked about the old tech inside and outside of the severed floor. Helen also just like casually pops out an iPhone to make the call to the board

when she's talking with Harmony Kobel. So I don't know where we are or what we are as usual, but it's confusing. I love the salt or whatever that was. bouncing around very like rings of power opening credits. That's for the House of Our listeners, not for you, Rob Mahoney. Nope. She asked some of the question about love, and it doesn't really seem to be the thing that is working, but when she asks about shame, it does, and that's something makes me very sad about

Mark. The eye color question, we're getting a lot of the same questions we get to start the series, the sprawled out on a conference table, questions to start everything off. When we cut to, I felt such, I mean, I felt like this was probably going to work. I'm excited that it's happening so early. I thought it was going to happen much later. I'm excited that it's happening here.

I'm excited for the possibilities going forward. When she asked him, I think, what month it is or something like that, right? And he says, do you mean which quarter? That's so chilling. That's so upsetting. What are you? A Netflix employee is going on? Q1, Q1, Q2, whatever?

When are we dropping Squid Game? And then was that PD's voice on the monitor? Do you think? It sounded like it to me. My hope is that so if episode four, and neither of us have seen episode four, but if episode four, which a lot of the critics who reviewed the season who saw, watched all of the screeners said that episode four was an absolute banger. So episode four is like an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind tour through.

We talked about this. when we talked about our season one rewatch, I loved the PD reintegration stuff. I thought stuff was so cool, the way that, like, Tuturo would, like, walk in and out of a scene or, like, we're flashing costumes or flashing locations, just like a real,

surreal bonkers tour through the muddy, like, method of reintegration. If we get to do that, especially, like, rewatching the season two opening credits. Like, it just feels like we could just, you know, in which, we physically go inside of Mark's brain. So if we are inside Mark's brain for all of episode four.

We can only be so lucky. I mean, I would be thrilled. And if that involves us seeing Mark's first days on the severed floor, and so maybe we get like a P.D., like a whole and healthy, you know, peaty appearance that would make me really excited. Love you, Yul Vazquez. How would you feel if we got some Mark and Gem, on the beach dead wife footage?

It's a no for me. Okay. Look, I'm just throwing it out there. It seems possible. Seems like it's something that could happen. You're so right. It's dead dog wife o'clock. Okay.

I have some questions about this. So, like, will any mark be devastated to be burdened by Audi Mark's grief? Wouldn't you? Yes. It seems like a lot. He's like, life was already kind of complicated for me. And now this. I did not consent to this.

He doesn't even have alcohol. He has no medication privileges whatsoever other than fruit leather from the vending machine. It's true. Also, I think we need to redraw the parameters of our love polygon between Gemma and Miss Casey

and Mark and Mark because... We're getting into geometric proof stages of having to redraw this thing, and I'm not qualified for it. The fact that we are going to be watching, I believe. Helena pretending to be Helly. Yes.

Interacting with reintegrated Mark pretending at any given time to be any mark or outy mark. Probably mostly pretending to be any mark. I would think outside, at least with Devin, he can be himself. Yes, but like, you know, if Natalie's around,

if he has to hide it from Rickin, because Rickon's now a company man, if Milchick rolls up on his motorcycle again, there is a scene from the trail, there's just a shot in the trailer of Helena and Mark or

Adam Scott and Brintelauer, whoever they might be playing in that moment in a bar. When Mallory and I were looking at the Severance trailer, we were like, it's brief, but we were like, is that Helena on the outside

trying to approach Mark on the outside without him knowing about Heli and Mark? That was our guest, but now it might be Helena on the outside, trying to approach Mark on the outside, and he knows who she is, and has to pretend that he doesn't.

This is juicy stuff. It's like, baklava, layers upon layers upon layers. You know what I mean? Very delicate pastry work happening. Or it could be something that we get, for example, in a journey of the mind episode four, where maybe it is a memory of him with Gemma or something

with Brit Lauer flickering in and out in the way that the show loves to do. Totally, totally. the question, though, is at what point will Mark on the outside, now somewhat reintegrated, however successfully, perhaps bleeding profusely from his nose, time will tell. When will he see Helena Egan on the television or something and go, uh, what? I mean, that is the reveal, the next level reveal we're waiting for is how the inies become aware of who Helena and Helly is. And it's gotten back for Bernard because there's eight different mysteries happening at once and we're juggling them all.

And there's a lot of plates spinning, safe to say. But that's one that could further divide an already quite divided team. And I at this point don't know how the members of MDR get back on anything resembling the same page. And I'm not saying I want them to. I think the tensions of the show are more interesting if they're not. But it's hard to see how their interests would align at this point. It's just a very credible way in which you scatter them, which you do need to do narratively.

And so we've got, and again, this is very lost of them to give each person their preoccupation. We've got Dylan is preoccupation with Gretchen. We've got Irving with his preoccupation with like Bert slash the elevator. And we've got Helen's whole subterfuge. And then we've got Mark's now reintegration nightmare. Okay. we've got a little long, as we might always do with these severance episodes. There's just a million things we didn't get to, and I'm so sorry, please keep sending your emails.

I'm reading them all. But we're going to end the episode with sort of a reverse of the prompt that we talked about last week, which was sort of like, what would you sever? We got a, we had enabled from our listener, Andrew P. Who said, I like the idea of figuring out which thing you would want to sever out of your everyday life. But I'm even more curious about the inverse. What mundane work or life tasks would you most tolerate being severed into and forced to do for your entire conscious existence? Lakeroom aside, I think you could do a lot worse than long haul flight severed life. This is insane.

Watching movies, looking out your window, drinking cheap wine. These are all things I do regularly in my apartment anyway. Sounds fun, Andrew. Invite us over. We'd love to hang out. With all due respect, Andrew is 5'7. I can tell you right now. This is just not the reality for those of us who are crammed into airplane seats.

Rob is very tall. It's true. Do you have an answer for this? What would you like your severed life to be? Honestly, cooking would be a great one. Cooking but never have to do dishes? I knew you're going to pick that, but that's not that you, Rob, would never want to sever out. What you're saying is...

Why want to eat it? No, what you're saying is if you rob were to pick to sever yourself something around your favorite hobby, which is cooking, it would be doing the dishes. Your iny would be doing only dishes and never getting to eat the food the rest of his life. I mean, am I being nice to my iny? No, but am I getting rid of the thing

that I want to get rid of? Yes. Okay. What made Monday tax? Yeah, yeah. What are you thinking, Joe? Where are you on this? I guess it's like errands.

I don't like to run an errands. What kind of errands do you dislike? All of them? All? Like, I don't mind a grocery shop. I know. There's a certain kind of. that there are certain errands that are worse than others is all I mean to say yeah sure like

DMV is worse than anything I guess anything having to do with my car tire rotation engine issues a recall that I have to like I have to go to the deal if I have to buy a new car I'd never want to go to the car a lot so I want a car I need to deal with all of a car to show up at your house when you need a new one I want the gas tank to always be full but I'm not responsible for doing it That's very true. You know, that's a good one. Or if I get, I really want to get like an electric car, but I am so afraid that I will forget to plug it in. So if that's my innie's job to make sure that the like electric car is always charged and all the maintenance is done.

Aren't you just doing normal severance then and you're delegating all the car stuff to your iny? Well, isn't that what you just said when you said you're going to make your any do dishes? But I think we're trying to find things that you would enjoy. I'm trying to figure out what reverse severance is per the prompt of this. Like, what are we trying to create for ourselves? I think basically you and I are too narrow-minded to think of a mundane task that we might, that wouldn't be the worst thing for someone to have to do. Let's spend a week to think about it.

We'll come back to this, Promp, Andrew P. Meanwhile, our Nies will be doing dishes and servicing the cars, I guess. And perhaps night gardening, who's to say? That's been it for Season 2, Episode 3 of Severance, a, like, slightly makes a slightly, episode, but like the highs outweigh the lows in every regard. I'm really excited for episode four. I cannot wait to watch it. I'll say too, as far as mixed episodes go, like one that really moves the chains, one that feels like we're still advancing and answering questions. And, you know, they're not all going to be absolute hits every second, but I think we're still propulsive enough

and we're still invested enough in all of these things that I'm having a great time. That's remarkable. So astute. Now it just feels insulting. God damn. Natalie. Thank you to Kai Grady. Everybody's talking about birving. Everybody's talking about burving. We'll see you next week. Bye.