The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 4: The Lumon Work Retreat From Hell

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Jo and Rob go on an ORTBO to recap the fourth episode of ‘Severance’ Season 2. They discuss why this was such a thrilling episode, Irving’s emotional sacrifice, and one refiner’s identity crisis finally coming to a head (3:35). Along the way, they talk through the biblical imagery present throughout the start of the season and Helena’s most obvious tell (24:20). Later, they break down the final sequence involving Milchick’s removal of the Glasgow Block (51:26). 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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She's not healy. She's in Egan. Turn her back, Mr. Milchak. Turn her back. Goddust, stop doing it. Yes. Do it, Seth. Welcome back to the Press News TV podcast feed.

I'm Joanna. I'm Rob Mahoney. Rob is still podcasting from The Void if you're watching this on video. Live from the Severed Floor, Joe. Yeah, Rob's in any today. I'm an outy and we're going to switch places next week because I'm going out to L.A. and Rob's coming back here to the Bay Area. So we are swapping places.

Before we start to talk about today's banger episode of Severance, season two, episode four, I wanted to do some quick programming. reminders bits here and there. If you missed it, Rob and I did a sort of brief little video exclusive check in on the Buffy

the Vampire Slayer News. Rob and I are huge Buffy Vampire Slayer fans, and there's news of a reboot, sequel, etc. That's coming down the pike and we just spent, I don't know,

30 minutes or so talking about our our airmost thoughts and fears about that. So that's on YouTube. If you want to go to the press, see it, the rare TV feed on YouTube,

you can watch watch Rob in the Void and me at home talking about that. Also on this feed, stay tuned. We've got massive White Lotus coverage coming up. We're going to be doing two prestige episodes per episode of White Lotus. So you'll get sort of the instant reaction, Bill Simmons, Mallory Rubin, Joanna Robbins, and then you will get the sort of like deep dive, send us your emails, theories, and whatever, Rob Mahoney, Joanna Robinson experience.

So those are two different flavors that taste great to. And that is how we were covering White Lotus this season. Yeah. How do you think we're going to differentiate ourselves, Joe, other than clearly the deep dive, the theories, like, are we just going to devote 20 to 30 minutes every week for Walton Gagons' fits, the innermost thoughts of whatever Carrie Coon's character is doing at a given point in time? Many passion projects for us in this particular season. I think Carrie Corner is a must, and I think perhaps we should consider recording all of our episodes

while wearing the Walton Goggins goggles in order to get the full experience. I'm open to that. Does it make for good video content? I guess we'll see. Well, tune in to find out. We will be covering the pit a bit more. We're sporadically checking in on the pit here and there,

a show we're both really enjoying. And Yellow Jackets was originally going to be on this feed, but now, given everything that we're doing with White Lotus, etc., Mallory Rubin and I will be covering that over on the house of our feed. So if you want Yellow Jacket, Season 3 coverage, Buzz, Buzz, Baby, you will find it over on the House of our feed. So that's a lot of stuff. That is what we were doing here on the prestige feed.

But right now, it's season two episode four, Woe's Hollow Time. This episode is written by Anna O. Young Munch and directed by Ben Stiller. And it is, we're leaving Devin, Natalie, Rickin, and Harmony Cobel behind. Because Seth, Miss Wong. Helena, Dylan, Mark, and especially Irving, are out here for the Orp Bo. There's copious luxury meets. And most important, Ramahoni, we go bobbing for some truth, would you not say? It's the best kind of bobbing you can do in my experience.

Here we go. This is a wild episode. This is not at all what we were expecting that we had like some guesses about what this episode would be. So if you ever needed proof that Rob and I are not watching ahead, go listen to what we thought episode four of this. Listen to how wrong we were and are on a regular basis. Yeah, deeply wrong. But let's start opening image to Toro in furs as Irving in the middle of a frozen lake.

Did you think, first of all, I want your like big picture thoughts on the episode whether or not you liked it. And also on this image, what did you think when you were you like were in a dream? What did you think when you first saw the opening image of this episode? Love the episode.

This is the good stuff. And I think it's kind of severance at its best in a lot of ways, which is odd to say because it's a setting that's totally unfamiliar to us, a structure that is very unfamiliar to us. We're diverging from the formula

of what severance has been, but it can be as baffling as ever, as ominous as ever. And I think totally struck exactly the chord that I love so much about this show. And some of that is, I think, from the disorientation that you're alluding to opening this way. As I'm saying, a completely unfamiliar setting. The last we saw was Mark being maybe reintegrated or maybe beginning to be reintegrated.

Could this episode be a construction within Mark's mind? Could this be an actual physical space, which I think it ultimately plays out as being? But the fact that it opens in that manner, given the way we ended things in episode three, is just such a thrilling way to start. And I think the sort of cold open format, no opening credits, if I'm remembering correctly from this episode, like we don't get any divergences

from this little adventure around, this little Orpoh experience. I have this moment where I was like so certain we were right about what this episode was going to be that my brain kept trying to figure out a way that that could still be true, even though we opened very clearly in Irving's point of view. And I was like,

that's probably not going to happen inside of Mark's head. Oh, no. Probably not, but maybe. Maybe it could be an out-of-body experience. Maybe it could be transported. There is something about the furs and the cold that is very third-level deep inception. You know, that kind of reads in a way where it's like, oh, this is a dream state. There is something so ethereal about it.

Turns out it's just severance being creepy as usual, and I really enjoyed it. I was at a party once the year that Inception came out, and someone was talking to me and he was like, I want to go down to like the snow fortress layer of your mind. And I was like, someone, we're done having this conversation now, I think. No, no, no. I just wouldn't recommend inception level pickup lines at a party in any year, honestly. Okay, so I, what I loved about this episode, and among many other things, this is this is very international assassin. This is an episode of the leftovers that you and I talked about on this very feed fairly recently.

Um, it is visually quite stunning. Um, there's, you know, if you listen to the official severance podcast, they talked about how they filmed all of this sort of in and around the Catskills in New York, how they were on location for a lot of this. Even this opening sequence, which looks so strange you feel like it's digitally created. Adam Scott was saying he was actually on a cliff and Duturo was actually on a frozen lake. And they were, were actually yelling at each other. Wow. And that's studying. You know, they've somehow found the world's largest waterfall and shot next to it. It's just like incredible stuff. You know, they actually like put a cubicle in the middle of a forest. Again, that looks digitally created, but they actually did it.

And I think that gives, you know, and there's like shots inside of this episode. They're dressed in these incredible furs, as you mentioned. And there's shots, especially with the four of them in framed together, it looks like an album. cover. I started looking at photos of the Beatles. I was like, is there a Beatles album cover that looks like this? The closest of course we get is help, but no one is dressed in head-to-to-fers in that album cover. So I couldn't make the one-to-one comp. But like it was definitely framed up as like, this is the band. And perhaps the last time we're going to see the band together because the question I want to ask you, this is sort of skipping to the end of the episode,

but I think it's worth opening with, do you feel like this is the last time we see Irving B Irving's any. What do you think? I do think it probably is. And I don't know what that signals in terms of the overall structure of the timeline of the show. I think one of the things that's so thrilling about these last two episodes is Mark is getting reintegrated more quickly than we probably would have imagined if we were to sketch out how this season might go. And ultimately, if this is pulling the plug on Irving B, and certainly the Helena reveal being a part of that, we're burning through some of the big developments that we are

anticipating in this season pretty quickly. And that's so exciting and so energizing in terms of what the rest of the season could be. Because I do think this is, I mean, basically I think there's two paths here, Joe. And correct me if you see a third one here. Irving B is gone from the severed floor or Irving B is clean slated, memory wiped as an iny and basically factory reset. Do you see a third path here as far as the iny version of Irving continuing on this show? A later

reintegrated version is I think the only other thing I can see. We'll talk about Clean Slate. We'll talk about the various contingencies. We got a little bit more information on that stuff inside of this episode. But I think the way it was,

I guess I'm just thinking more sort of in a storytelling sense. What does death mean on a show like Severance? This was shot very much like when Irving makes his stand, which we heard at the top of the episode, and I guess really belatedly, spoilers for episode,

uh, for of severance, but like, whatever he makes his stand, knowing, like fully knowing that he is putting himself at risk for termination. And Irving specifically being the character in season one, who was most closely associating termination with death.

Yeah. When, when Bert was retired and Irving lost his shit, because he's just like, you're just killing him essentially. So putting himself on the line, for for Heli, for Mark, for Dylan, knowing that he's putting his own sort of iny at risk

and walking into the woods, cameras on the back of his face, then we get the front of his face, the smirk he gives Milchick before he goes, this sort of like sense of Purick victory, the score, everyone's reactions. I'm like, this is a big character death moment on a TV show, but of course we're going to see John

Totoro some more. And of course there could be a twist in the plot where we turn Irving B back on for some reason or another or reintegration. So just sort of like taking the standard rules of television inside of this sci-fi concept. It's like how we talk about it in the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now. Everything's possible in the multiverse. Robert Denny Jr. is coming back because everything's possible in the multiverse. Anything's possible in a show where you can turn people on and off with a switch with a walkie-talkie call, you know?

And that's where Severance gets to have its cake and eat it too, because we do get the stakes of this maybe being a send-off for Irving B, but as you said, we don't have to say goodbye to one of the beloved actors on this show and the best performances on this show. And if this is the last we see of Irving B, I will be very sad about that. I've grown to really love this character, and even within this episode, which is very much a detective Irving on the case kind of structure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is allowed to be that and to be deeply skeptical of Helena, as he has been now for this

entire season, but also still kind of credulous about the greater keyer myth. And I love that balance of somebody who, because of the construct of the world he engages in, still lives within the walls that Lumen has set out for him. But within those walls, he sees someone he knows pretty well, acting bizarrely, and is really the only person to single and figure that out. He's got some night gardener questions, as did we. What was the vest? What was he wearing? What was he doing? What do you wear a reflective vest to garden a night? Probably, you know? I would I will miss, I don't know. Yeah, we've, no, we have not heard Audi Irving speak, right?

Just paint, just listen to Ace of Spades, just slam night coffees. Yeah, yeah. Maybe he said hello to his dog, but I don't know if we have, I will say, I will miss the weird mid-Atlantic accent that John Totoro has affected for this role, that he and Patricia Arquette seemed to agree that they were going to do. do this weird accent work for their role. I love it. And I will miss it if Audi Irving does not have that accent. Now that you mentioned, I think we do hear him speak very briefly when Milchick shows up to his house, pineapple in hand to recruit him back. But we don't get a lot of dialogue. And so it's

a little tough to hear if the accent will continue. I'm hoping and praying that it will work. You mentioned we don't get an opening credits, but I do want to, I think we should do sort of a regular opening credits check in because as they mentioned, there will be moments in the opening credits that once we watch the episodes, we go, aha, so I would say, we see in the opening credits,

ordinarily we see Mark out on an ice flow. Like, that's part of the opening credits. And then also, in the opening credits, there's the glitch between Hallie, Helena, and Miss Casey, which we get inside of this episode as well. So those are just

two little opening credits moments that are reflected inside of this episode. What was your read on that glitch within this episode? Not to jump ahead. But during Mark and clearly Helena's own Ort Boe encounter,

you know, their own little time away, a little retreat within the retreat. We get this glitch flash as Severance is ought to do and loves to do from Helena to Gemma. Do you read that as Mark's reintegration starting to click

into effect? Is that the only way to read it or did you see something else in that moment? Oh, I think there's plenty of ways you could read it, but that was what I was hoping it was, because we had erroneously assumed that given what we saw at the end of the last episode, we would be from now on fully reintegrated mark. And that is incorrect. It seems like they're going to slow roll this out. And so this is like, I think they needed to do something inside of this episode to give us like a flash of reintegration. Otherwise, you're sort of like, What did we do? Are we just forgetting what we did at the end of last week's episode?

You know, so that was sort of my take on it. I mentioned leftovers. I am duty-bound to also mention Lost really quickly. The show is baiting you into it at this point. It's not my fault. No. The video that they watch on top of the cliff of Milchick talking about the Orpo and everything else is maybe the clearest lost reference yet.

that we've gotten on this show because if you've never watched Lost, occasionally they stumble across these instructional videos from a figure who goes by different names, Pierre Chang, Marvin King, Candle, Edgar Hallowax, Mark Wickman, there's more.

Anyway, it's always like this. It's like a weird sort of soundtrack, like score in the background and then like glitched and edited through. So it's like, it's a direct loss reference the way that this like video is presented here. With the weird soundtrack you're describing, is it a similar,

I particularly love that it's not just the cure anthem but like cure anthem. MIDI is effectively the effect we're going for here? Is a similar kind of a chip tune effect? Not quite because what they find are I think they were made in like the 70s so they're like real to real but it's like a similar it is sort of a similar vibe but yeah great MIDI work. You're absolutely right. Also I will say this is where I'm reaching but I will say

TED sex is a classic lost staple trek across the island classic lost staple etc etc let's talk about Helly and Helena inside of this episode Please

Helly is finally back a vindication for everyone who believed that this was Helena undercover as Helly from the start there was a moment inside of this episode where I actually experienced

my highest level of doubt about whether or not we were right before we were obviously conclusively proved right. Yes. But I will say that of all of her acting skills, of which Helena, very spotty actress in her Helly role throughout the season,

but her sort of bewilderment when they first are in the wilderness here, she kind of sold that. I was like, is this Helly? I mean, I think she was bewildered, though. Would Helena do this? But, you know, it was it was hellie all along. I think there's something kind of perfect there.

Honestly, there is acting and there is not acting. And I think what's so fun about this episode is parsing the moments from Helena and trying to figure out what is Helena herself reacting to authentically and what is her trying to play something as Helly. And so, yeah, her being bewildered in the woods, I kind of believe, in the same sense that when she shows up to present the snow seal to Irving, and kind of like chuckles nervously. Very homeschool kid energy to me.

You know, this is a person who has not been outside a lot. And I particularly love the idea of putting her in this foreign setting. And it is to her as much as it is the inies, it seems like. I don't think she spent a lot of time, you know, even glamping, as it were. Yeah, and this is halfway between regular camping and a glamp experience. They have heaters in the tent. Heaters in the tent, which is a fire hazard, we should say. Absolutely never put a heater like that in the tent.

I don't care if you want to like cosplay, you know, LARP severance in the forest. I'm here to tell you, do not put those heaters inside of your tent. If you are going to LARP severance, don't put the heater in the tent. Don't waterboard anybody. Don't eat the rotting seals shaped thing in the water. I don't know what's going on with the rotting animals. But yeah, look, the space heater makes for a striking visual in a really beautifully evocative and I think energizing episode in that way. Like the visual language of Severance is so fun and so inviting and it's part of what makes this show as mysterious as it is.

And it's details like that that really give you the lighting that you need and the background that you need. Like one thing we didn't get to talk about last week was as they're navigating the halls looking for the goat room again, you get this sort of effect where the lights are kind of turning on and off behind them. them as they're moving and progressing through the hall. I love what they do with lighting on this show. And usually that's very luminescent in the office, right? Like that's very white overhead light. Yeah, yeah. Now we're getting kind of naturalistic settings for the first time.

We're getting people in different spaces. We're getting Lumen employees going wild in their little glamping tents. Shout out to those kids. What I wrote down when Helena and Mark are having their their team building encounter and they're backlit by that heater. I wrote absolute hell imagery in my notes.

And what we get, we get that and then we get the conversation they have afterwards, which I think is really useful for your question of when is Helena being sincere and when is she not. They're laying down facing each other. Their faces are half lit by the red light. So you get that nice, like, severance,

divided energy. It's very, like, persona, sort of like, half silhouette and you're cutting back and forth between that and Irving in like freezing his ass off in the forest and his face is half lit but he's half lit blue by the moonlight and so you've got that like classic severance red blue lighting motif you've got the divided light on their faces and I will just say that I think like Ben Stiller and his DP on this episode just went absolutely apeshit with with the imagery in the best way hog wild and thematically too I think in terms of the structure of this show there's something so tell

about the fact that the truth isolates Irving and the lies bring people like Helen and Mark together. That's so devastating to me. It's tough. To your question about, so what happens here between Mark and Hela? I just want to say this. If you can't get informed consent from someone,

this is sexual assault. This is not, like Mark cannot give informed consent to this encounter. Body swapping sexual politics. is it's dicey territory. This is this more than anything, and maybe this is a weird place to draw my line, but I was sort of in on the idea of like a Helena redemption arc. This is really tough for me to watch her come back from.

Inside of the same moment, we get this conversation where she's talking about who she doesn't like who she was on the outside, the shame she feels, which to your point, I think is genuine stuff from Helen. So that is appealing to me emotionally, but what she does to mark here is reprehensible, repugnant, like, devastating, you know? And so, like, when he is able to process that beyond what he learns, the stunning information that he learns at the end of the episode, the fallout for him of, like, what he's done here. And then the fallout, like, I don't know, are we going to get more Helena? Are we going to get more hellie?

Like, they turn Hellie on at the end of this episode. Is there a reason to keep her on? Like, are we going to see how she feels about Mark having sex with Helena? Or, you know, what are we going to do with that is my question. I think we have to get that beat. We have to have Heli being told what just happened and everything that someone has been doing in what is her body. I think we think about and talk about these things in a way because of the agency involved. as, you know, someone like Mark Scout

has signed up to sever himself and give over part of his consciousness into this any form. But like, the any form, that is their body too. And they're having to coexist within it with everything that their Audi version does. And in this case, like the Helena character has done some terrible things

and has done some terrible things to your point about her arc for reasons that are very humanistically understandable. Right? Like, it's so fun watching her try to navigate this with Mark and what she says and doesn't say and how she's like trying to engage and connect with him because on the one hand, she doesn't know Mark well enough to really be in love with him or to have feelings for him in the way that Heli did. Like Heli and Mark have been through a lot together.

Yeah. Helena saw it on tape, decided she wanted some of those smooches and more and more jumped in and is so starved for not just physical contact, it seems, but just deep emotional intimacy that she's inhabiting someone else's skin to try to attain it. She's full of so much self-loathing and exists in a world where people look at her, I don't like her, that she is just desperate for someone to look at her the way that Mark looks at Helly. With goo-goo eyes. Yeah, she wants those goo-goo eyes, baby.

On the hell imagery, I did want to read. We got several emails from people last week, not only disagreeing with how we felt about the Goat Room, And that's its own thing. But a lot of people were like, hey, you miss this biblical illusion. So I think it's worth talking about inside of the context of this hell imagery here. Because we were talking about, we talked about the Greek underworld a lot. But let's talk about Judeo-Christian underworld inside of an episode where we're getting these incredible sermons sort of situations. Anyway, Kevin Dean.

Let me tell you, even as a raise and lapsed Catholic, this will not be the last biblical illusion we miss. You know, it's a dense book. There's a lot to parse. Yeah, and as a died-in-the-wool atheist, I'd do my best. Kevin D. wrote in to say, I was surprised he didn't touch on the biblical allusion to the parable of the lost sheep, close enough. And Mark's positioning as a savior figure, he was trying to resurrect his wife and arguably performed an exorcism of a sort at the end. Not that any Mark is a demon, but two entities possessing one body, I think, is analogous.

Maybe now Mark's identity will be defined by a new contradiction, the way he is fully two people in one as Christ is fully human and fully divine, or how the Trinity is three persons in one entity. I think, like you guys, I don't want Mark to be any Jesus, but it seems like they're pointing towards that. So we got a lot of emails about the parable of the lost sheep and how close sort of some of what Mark was talking about in terms of like, what if it was your goat missing, would you care, is very close to Jesus and the parable of lost sheep in the Bible. So Mark being positioned as Lumen Jesus, which, yes, we have explicitly said we weren't

terribly excited about, but I think, you know, if that's something that they're doing is worth tracking and thinking about. Oh, yeah. And this is a show that has not just mythology, but religion so clearly on its mind. Not overtly as there is a savior-like figure, unless Mark turns out to be that or some Messiah. It's more about the mythology around these things, the way figures and stories propagate. Even the, you know, the recital and the reading that we get of this fourth appendix, look, it's creepy as hell. And I, I want to personally salute whoever is in charge of literally writing these texts because they are hitting the exact strand and the exact point that I would like them to hit. And I'm having so much fun with the text within the show.

But they do have kind of an old world mythological bent that is very hard to strive for when you're purposely trying to strive for it. Well, I think it's interesting that like in the Bible, again, I am an atheist. but in the Bible, but I was a child once. So I do know that there's the figure of Odin in the Bible. Olin sort of like famed, famously sort of shunned and punished for spilling his seat on the ground and wasting his seat on the ground, which is sort of exactly what we're talking about when we talk about Dieter Egan inside of this episode. So great stuff, Severance, the Demented Show. I love you very much. Also, on that question, I'm so glad you brought up this idea of like,

bodily autonomy inside of the ines and the Audi world, because I think it's good to think about that in contrast to what, what Helen has said earlier in this season when she's like, we owe them nothing. Yep. Like, she's talking about the outies, but really talk about the annies. Like, they don't really, we don't owe them anything. We don't, you know, she doesn't, she's trying to convince herself that they're not people,

that, you know, so she could do whatever she wants with them. Our listener, Rebecca C, wrote into reference another sort of dystopian near future sci-fi story, Never Let Me Go, which is the Kazo Ishiguro book, which is turned into a film. This is a great call. Yeah, and she wrote,

if you recall that book slash movie, it's about farming kids, inies, so they can live unfulfilling lives and also be organ providers for their outies. And like, the same as several, You have to separate yourself from the idea of the cruelty you were doing to this in E&E so that you can benefit from what they provide in Rob's case the ability to never do the dishes. But that iny is a real person with real with real feelings who falls in love and feels pain but is stuck doing their duty. Feel me?

So this idea inside of the story of Dever let me go, an incredible book and a great movie. If you if you grow humans or clone humans or whatever, you know, to. to help you, you know, are you on or bound to treat them as a human with their own thought and mind and soul? Or are you able to think of them as merely chattel? Like, what do you do in something like this? So, you know. And I think it's an especially fascinating question for someone like Helena under these circumstances. When, as you say, she is on the record that these are not people, that they are not capable of making their own decisions.

And yet, she's also somebody who, even. though she may think of Mark S that way, also at least kind of wants to care about him or wants to feel a kind of connection with him. Like that paradox is really juicy. I think, again, overall, all the positions that Helena has put in within this episode, and especially when you think back on them and reflect on them or go back for a second watch, things like her cracking up at the campfire at kind of how ridiculous the appendix reads. Yeah. Because she's the only person who has like actual real world context to be able to say, this sounds. insane.

Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that she might not even be familiar with some of these texts that are read and presented to the innies. This is what we're teaching? This is our corporate. This is it? Jerking it in the forest and turning into a tree?

Do you think when Helena and Mark were having their encounter in the tent, do you think Dylan went down to the waterfall to drown out the sound of it so that he didn't have to listen to it? He did say it was very. very smart. He thought it was a really good idea. It was very smart. When she says, when she says stuff like that was mean of me to say that to Irving, well, let's go back and say this really quickly.

Helen's biggest mistake inside of this episode, she's talking about birving. Everybody's talking about birving. Everybody's talking about birving. That was her tell. That was like where she's put her toe over the line. She brought up Bert and she says to Mark that was a mean of me to say that to Irving. And I

really feel like that's Helena being like, I don't want to be that person. I don't know. Interesting. There's like, like maybe covering. Like there's a version, there's an interpretation of that she's just covering her action and playing the part

of Helly. But I also just think, I can't, I can't believe this is the cop that's coming to mind, but in one of my favorite films, you've got mail. Don't, don't email me.

Pineplebobbing at gmail.com about anything else, but not about you've got mail. But, Like Tom Embodding someone else's body for an encounter Not good Hiding your identity within the context of the internet Fine

Fine But Tom Hanks encounters McRyan And he like says something really snarky to her And then he's just sort of like God I hate That there's that part of me that comes out Like I hate that about me You know what I mean

And so it's like If Helen is like God I can't help but be an asshole even when I'm given this like fresh start opportunity to be this lovable co-worker, this like shitty part of me comes out anyway. You know, I just think that that's, again, very human inside of a really shitty reprehensible series of moves that she pulls inside. Oh, yeah.

And we talked previously about within the context of Dylan and Gretchen, the idea of meeting your significant other or someone who cares about you, kind of like for the first time again and kind of the freshness. of that experience. One thing we don't really know is what the broad cultural awareness is in the outside world of Helena Egan.

Is this a figure who is on the front page of every newspaper and people know in a very public front facing CEO type way? Or is it sort of, oh, people might know her name. People might know that there's this broad powerful Egan family

but don't necessarily know what she looks like. And so at least within the context of the company and everything adjacent to it, everyone she meets would know who she is and how powerful her family is, if not exactly how powerful she is. And yeah, she gets a fresh start with these people, not only as Helena versus Helly, but as a not so famous person, and like just an innocuous kind of encounter with a coworker versus, oh, you are Helena Egan. Right. And, yeah, very like Prince and the Popper, like,

what's it like to sort of like walk amongst people and not be genuflected to or hate it? and the iron mask, but, you know, to each their own. The doubling. We've already talked about sort of some of the imagery in here, but we get these like literal doppelganger figures, which like you can, that's the goat room level aspect of this episode, because like everything else exists pretty clearly inside of the, other than the weird rotting seal thing,

Everything else exists inside of this premise that we've already understood, which is that you've got a chip inside your head that severs you. And that's like sort of a part of the show that we're like, we're buying in on that technology. What are we being asked to buy in when we get these weird freaky doubles in the woods? Are these hologram? Like, are we conier holograming? Are we like, have we hired a woman who vaguely looks like Helena Egan to stand in the snow in a pencil skirt? You know, that seems like an ocean violation. Like, I don't know.

So, like, what's your sense of what these figures are? Clearly, we are being led down a road of expecting some sort of bodily cloning, recreation of forms. Like, that is the overall firmament of the show. Like, it's out there, this idea. At the point where I'm kind of wondering if that might be more of a head fake in certain ways, and this does end up being a little more smoke and mirrors. This does end up being something like a literal like hired stand-in, body double type situation.

I love that it's there. I love that we don't know. I love that we never see those people too closely, and we have to ask these questions. It is a little bit, not to night country this thing, a little Travis Cole. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like mysterious figure pointing into the cold wilderness. Like that, that brought me back a little bit. But I actually really like this element, and I like how unanswered it is.

I like that we honestly may never know. This could be one of those details that we get to the end of severance, and it's one of those things that's still like, wait, what the fuck was up with those body doubles in the forest? There's some room for ambiguity and there's room for mystery, even within a show that's like five mystery box levels deep already. I'm so glad you invoked the mystery box. I have already invoked to Damon Lindelof shows I will invoke no more of Damon Lindelof.

Oh, actually, no, we got to watch an email. Okay, I'm glad. We will come back to another Damon Lindelof. But Lindelof was so inspired by Twin Peaks in making his eerie sort of worlds. And so this is so peaksy, these sort of like grinning dockable gamers. We got a great email about sort of the Twin Peaks element inside of Mark's hand twitch that I think I want to return to when we spend a little bit more time with reintegrated Mark. But inside of Twin Peaks, which gives us, especially Twin Peaks the Return, which gives us doppelgangers and that duality of people, the evil side of people and the good side of people and all of that inside of that world, I think it's worth thinking about when we think about these creepy little doppelgamers. If you have other ideas about what these people invoke,

these figures invoke in the woods, pineapple bombing at gmail.com, I'm sure there's other things I'm missing. Clearly there's the twinning aspect of the story that they even mentioned within like Dylan calls out directly, right? The whole idea of Kear having a twin brother, the anti-outy sort of balance overall. So many parts of this episode,

in particular the ones that I love, and I include this among them, are almost more mood pieces to me than they are clues. and like my experience is severance. I imagine everyone is a little different on their balance is like 70% mood, 30% mystery. Like the mystery matters to me and drives me, and when done well, those things are almost inextricable

as far as the mood and the place you're put in the story relative to trying to solve it, but both are important parts of that formula. Yeah, I don't think I'm trying to, I hear what you're saying, and I think, I can certainly fall into the, like, the finger trap of trying to solve a show. I definitely do that all the time.

And there are ways in which you can just sort of let something wash over you for the mood and the vibe. And that is certainly in David Lynch's world and the Twin Peaks world. Absolutely. That is certainly what Lynch wants. Lynch wants to push you into like a position of emotional uncertainty and just sort of like let you dangle and twist there. Like that's what he does not want you solving his show. And not to be a guy who watched Mahal and Drive this week, but the visage of the woe, the low bride that we get is. very woman behind the trash can in Mahal and Mahal and Drive.

Can we take a two-minute sidebar? You went with our guy Justin Sales to see Mahaland Drive. How was that, Rob? He took me on a little date. We wanted to go see Mahal and Drive in the theater. It was a religious experience for many different reasons. Also, you know, just a great thing to do while you're in Los Angeles. Just really learn about the hellscape that you're inhabiting.

It's an important right of passage, I think. Which theaters do you go to? We went to Viti. It's an Eagle Rock. Oh, yes. Which is the place to see it. Had a wonderful time. Thank you to our guy, Justin.

Okay, Justin's on this call. Thank you, Justin, for giving Rob the True L.A. experience. But yeah, that, like, I'm fine with just letting, I don't need to solve this. I don't need, I'll say this. I don't want to be in that space that some of the, like, sort of bad faith lost fans were, where at the end of the thing,

they're like, you never explained the doppelgangers in the woods in season two, episode four. Like, I don't need an explanation for that. I just feel like it's dipping a toe in a, in a new layer of surreality that we have not. We've been experiencing like sci-fi but this is like

surreality above this sort of premise of the world that we've been if that makes sense. I think this episode two invites it because we're in such a different physical space. This is clearly an area of land that Lumen must have some control over an ability to dictate the conditions of

as far as who gets to be here who doesn't bringing in these clones or doubles or whatnot setting up the campsite and the cage. and all that. Like, all of that is part of the larger office experience, but it's not an office floor and a literal office building. And so we are brought into a new physical space. And with that comes all sorts of questions.

You know, like, how does severance work in a literal physical outside space that is not the office where they did not go through the elevator? Right. How did they get here in the first place? How does Irving wake up on a frozen lake? Like, how does that work within the sci-fi constructs that we know? Do their outies know that they're doing this? We're told that they do.

but who knows? Yeah. Like, are they going to wake up with some sort of wind burn like chap lips and be like, where was I? Somewhere quite cold.

Okay, let's talk about Irving's dream. So again, to reiterate, this is real fog. They said they didn't use any digital fog in this. This is real fog that they captured in a burned out, you know,

woodland area that they found in the Catskills. While they were shooting something else, their location scout found this area and was like, that looks like a nightmare. Let's go shoot there. So that's where they shot this.

My favorite, there's a lot to talk about in this cubicle in the woods here. Yes. My very favorite thing. And these might be digital. They didn't talk about whether or not they were. But the moths around the glowing computer screen, I just thought that was an incredible detail. Whoever came up with that, whoever was like, we should put moths on the screens in the woods. I was like, you get the marks.

marshmallow experience. It might be canceled for other people. Oh my God. But you who've thought of moths, you get that. Even more reprehensible in retrospect that it is Helena who costs these three inies, there are one chance to taste roasted marshmallow. Unforgivable. Marshmoles are team players, Rob. They don't just hand them out. But some of the team were team players. It wasn't their fault. Dylan should get a marshmallow. Here's my question. So these are marshmallows with Kearigan's visage, sort of stamped on them. And I thought as it melted, his visage kind of gets a little scully

in the flames a little bit. I don't know if that's deliberate or just me projecting, but that's what it looked like to me. Yeah, it's bubbling up. Rob Mahoney, foodie that you are. Yes.

Whose visage would you most want stamped on a marshalo? Honestly, you could do much worse than a John Tuturo than a Chris Walken. I would welcome any of the cash members. Look, if they want to make and market severance marshmallows with the cast members' faces on it, I would support it.

I am 1,000% certain those exist and are going out in an award season swag bag. I promise you. They're quite conscious of these things, for sure. The Apple box that they, the swag box that they sent out for season one, I don't get much TV swag anymore and I like that about me. Because it just like adds up and it's just a lot of stuff. Yeah.

Not to be ungrateful, but it's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff. But the Lumen box they sent out, in among other things in there, they did have, like, lumen snack boxes from the, like, vending machine that were, like, in the thing. So I'm confident that whoever is doing Apple TV swag saw those marshmallows in this episode and was like, thank you for doing my job for me. Done and done. Thanks so much.

Okay. The dream. Okay. So here's a couple things. We do get a burving appearance. Yep. We get the woe. bride

appearance and then the jump scare, the absolute jump scare that got me. And then we get the refining image on the computer and we get the letters E-A-G-A-G-A-N form Helena's face

on the computer. And so something that I think is really interesting to point out, worth pointing out, we've had Irving sort of snooze a bit on the inside and that's when we got the black paint sort of gooing over his cubicle in season one.

But the annies don't sleep. This is the first time They've ever gotten to experience it. Do Annie's dream of electric sheep? Like, do they dream? Like, we already know they do. They do. And so what truths are hiding inside of an iny dream?

We don't get to see what Mark was dreaming about. We get to see Adam Scott's tremendous smash into the pillow sleeping face, but we don't get to see like what truths he might have found inside of his dream. But Irving gets the answer to his suspicions inside of this. Who would have been powerful enough to send their Audi onto the severed floor? And he gets the letters egan shaping Helen his face on the monitor for him. And this was something that people had emailed in already since this episode came out about

how specifically did Irving know that Helena was an Egan? And this is the clearest answer we get within the episode. He does articulate exactly what you said. Who would be powerful enough? Who would have the authority to do this? Right. I think maybe there's a little bit of a jump there between, oh, this is a high-powered Lumen employee to this is an Egan specifically,

and it needs this sort of dream assist to ultimately get there because otherwise how would Irving know? The one reason I'm a little bit more willing to play ball with it is we have seen historically Irving is maybe the character who has the most porous boundary between Ine and Audi in terms of the black goo, like he's been actively trying in his outside life

to infiltrate the mind of his any and pass information. And is it possible that even if it is subconsciously, granted, this is one of the only times we've seen Irving fall asleep. And that might be when he's most susceptible to receiving the information that his Audi is trying to send him. Could his Audi be trying to tell

him specifically that this is Helena Egan that's on your floor or look out for this person she is in Egan. I think that's very much within play. Absolutely. And I think also to your point about sort of the permeability between the any and outy and Irving, which might mean that like we will miss any Irving less because maybe he's much closer to Audi Irving than we sort of like originally were given

to believe. Yeah. I think when we first met Audi Irving, we were like, this guy is cool in a way that any Irving is like distinctly. not cool, but like, who's to say? But what we know is that Audi Irving is on an intensive investigative, investigative project. He's got, you know, phone numbers and addresses and maps and all this sort of stuff. And so, you know, all he needs is the yarn wall.

And then he's set. And so this idea of Detective Irving, like, this is a part of his Audi character as well, is that he is like a guy trying to get to the bottom of something. Yeah, he has the mind. for it, clearly. And he's able to, he puts putting things together in a way that none of the other innies are. He's noticing these clues. And yeah, does he get a little bit of an ethereal dream assist?

Possibly. And Severance's first kind of foray into horror, as we've said, which is exciting. Like, this is a very different tonality for the show that has been surreal, that has been unsettling. Yeah. But crossing the line once we start seeing, you know, ghastly figures in the dream flesh. That's a different level. And I think one thing, too, to note is the same thing.

seat in which Woe is sitting is typically heli seat kind of diagonal from where Irving sits within the

cubicle. How he's putting all this stuff together, who's to say, but the brain works in mysterious ways. And Burtz and

Dillon's spot? Is that right? I believe so. Okay. Interesting. File that he's working on is Montau.

Which to me, a non-east coaster immediately invokes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Of course. Meet me in Montau.

We already talked about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as a possible comp for some of these things. But I can't find the email, so it must have been

someone sent to me on either like Twitter or Blue Sky, but also worth noting the USS Montauk was an ironclad warship during the American Civil War. Just as we track

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Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. I have a question for you, Joe, about, you know, one way to read this is Irving's subconscious, feeding him information about Helena being an Egan. one way to read it is our guy who's just a working nine to five stiff having a stress dream about his job in which the numbers are swirling the letters are swirling he's panicking the moths are being drawn to the screen have you ever have a pot had a podcast related stress dream no but i had a brief stint like the as far as i know the only time of my life i ever was sleepwalking was the first time i had like a real job i was a arts and crafts

council at our summer camp. And that was like, it wasn't like a sleepaway camp, it was like a day camp, but it was like a nine to five. It was like, I was a teenager as my first like nine to five summer job. And I would walk into my sister's room and start talking about like what the like craft project was. I like to get all these lanyards sorted. I have to like get the beads or whatever. And I was like sleeping and talking about my job. So that's like they, I've definitely had other stress dreams about work.

But that is like the most extreme example was me sleepwalk anxiety. sleepwalking over my arts and crafts counselor summer like summer camp job. But I can start a lanyard very quickly to this day if you ever knew one. I believe it. If you want to tie-dye something, I'm your person. How about you, Rob? Have you ever had a podcast nightmare? Not a podcast nightmare, though.

I do regularly still have school-related nightmares, specifically a college-era nightmare in which I think I have dropped a class but find out shortly before the final that I have not. Oh, no. That is my recurring nightmare. I'm just living through on a daily basis. And so if anyone out there wants to tell me what that says about me, please do. But I'm delighted about your arts and crafts nightmare, Joe. And to this day, part of your job is just yarning up a wall.

You know, just drawing lines from conspiracy to conspiracy, any to outy. We're putting it all together out here. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Rob. If you're a neurologist and you're listening to this, as we've seen, we've got a lot of emails from brain science people, If you want to diagnose Rob's stress dreams about his... Fix us, please. Yeah, fix us at pineapple bobbing and d-emel.com.

Rob, my hope for dream you, nightmare you, is that it's at least a pass-fail class. You know? No, it's not. I know it's not. Like, it can't be, or else it wouldn't be a nightmare. I know, it's not. Okay. Anything else you want to say about a gaunt bride, half the height of a natural human?

Whoa, woes hollow, this idea of the, like, physical representation of one. one of the four tempers, what do you think? I never envisioned that we would ever get to see a temper on this show. It just doesn't feel like it would be of the world, and yet we got here in a way that feels super organic. And these characters have literally just been shown, like picture book versions of what Woe would look like, and so it's very easy to kind of see how that would infiltrate the brain into dream form.

I don't suspect we'll see the others, but I'm just delighted that we're here, and I'm delighted that we've edged into even darker territory within the world of severance. And Dream states are tricky territory with shows. You don't want to over-index on them.

You don't want to lean on them too heavily. Little bits and pieces as seasoning, I think, can go a long way. This one I loved. If we're doing this every episode, I'm probably going to feel pretty differently. But for one of the more grounded characters in the show to have this sort of out-of-body experience

during the first time where he's basically allowed to sleep, felt very poignant. to me. Yeah. Yeah, I think if we see the tempers in the dream space, again, a dream space is a place where I'm never, like, I never need an explanation or logic about that. This is a dream. So that's fine. All right. Let's talk about the confrontation slash the Glasgow block. Glasgow does relate to the Civil War. Once again, we can find a connection. But I don't know. I'm just inclined again to overly. I opened this floodgate and I'm so sorry. Please do keep sending us emails about this. but someone on Reddit posted from the sort of stop motion animation macro debt propaganda

video that we saw the end of the season, there's the shot of Helly's sort of cartoon figure bobbing for pineapples shot from underneath the water the way that Helena is shot in this episode with who, Irving

hanging like standing over her in the background of this animated like it's up through the water, it's a Pineapple, our fave, her face underwater, and then Irving behind her. And I'm just sort of like, great job, Severance. You're the best. Maybe the pineapple really is truth, ultimately. I'm trying to think of what the stand-in is ultimately.

Like, symbolically, if we're going to really chase that thread down, I don't know. We'll find out. I have a question if, like, Dole or some other big pineapple, like, has incepted me in some way, not to the snow fortress level of my mind, but, like, I've been eating so. never let Dole into the Snow Fortress level of your mind. I don't care how good they say Dole Whip is. I don't like a Dole Whip. It's fine. But I

I've been eating so much pineapple since we started talking about pineapple on this show. I've just been sort of like insatiable for it. You're that impressionable. Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, do you think Big Pineapple was like we want to put pineapples in the show and we're going to get dummies like Joanna Robinson. They're going to be like

pineapple, that sounds refreshing. So you say this and I think there is a portion of our listenership that will go fruit lobbies don't operate that way and I'm here to tell you they do please look into the marketing and production of like different apple varieties it is a vicious

cutthroat consumeristic like very peak late stage capitalist world as far as like how you make fucking cosmic crisp a thing it's an insidious space you only need to watch the highly problematic yet undeniably entertaining

trading places from the 1980s to know that the orange market is not to be be trifled with. Not at all. Here's a thing, Rah Mahoney, that I love about you

podcasting in the void. This is like, I don't know if you do this on, you've got this great, like, pointing at the camera thing that you did. I'm just trying to speak to the people. Okay.

Our listener, Tyler M, wrote in, and we've gotten a couple emails about this across the season, to go, going back to that scene, the screen that we see, when Dylan is, initiating the OTC the system functions

had a number of other options Tyler sent us an entire list of it Beehive branch transfer clean slate elephant

freeze frame Glasgow goldfish lullaby open house overtime so now we've filled in we know what overtime is

and now we know what Glasgow is. Do you have any thoughts or feelings about any of the rest of these? I mean, branch transfer just maybe seems like branch transfer. We saw that from Mark's other team. But like beehive,

clean slate feels fairly self-explanatory. Elephant, restore all memories. I kind of like that. That was Tyler's guest for that. An elephant never forgets. Goldfish, extremely short memory span.

amnesia, something like that. Anyway, what do you think? Beehive is definitely the most evocative to me. Yeah. And I'm trying to put together what that could apply to in terms of maybe recalling people in some way. I don't know.

I love how ambiguous these are too. I love that they invite this sort of speculation and yet I can't quite put my finger on it in any meaningful way other than, as we said, clean slate makes sense. You know, you don't need to get too cute with all of them. But I like that the program, grammars at Lumen, you know, they got to stretch out a little bit.

They got to have fun. They got to be like, okay, yeah, Glasgow, fuck it. Elephant. Let's do it. Okay. I love this conversation. We heard a clip at the beginning. I do think that Titoro's reading of when he says Seth.

Yeah. Chills every time that I've like rewatched that or clipped it or anything like that. Just like he's just snobled. gnarling and he's just like acid. And the switch that he makes, we didn't mention this earlier, but Brilauer in the scene in the tent when Helena shows up with a little snow seal for Irving. The first kind of double down moment for her. Yeah.

And she's like, hi, me, do this snow seal, blah, blah. And he's talking to her. And then she goes, like, Irving, like very cold. And then sort of tries to warm back, like defrost herself a little bit. So that is great stuff. But the switch we get from Irving's stand here of like, you know, shoving her face in the ice cold water, demanding this happen, and then tenderly cradling her when she's helly again.

Guess what, Rob? This is a great television show. And that was a great TV moment. Yeah. And to put this all inside an episode in which we're propagating the myth. of Keir's twin and this idea of like abiding the sins of your brother and therefore contributing to their demise and here's Irving knowing full well that if he even attempts to out Helena for what she is that he's basically going to be turned off that his existence will blink out

and being self-sacrificial in that way for the in pursuit of the truth for the sake of this kind of little group and little posse that he's found at work it's an honestly really beautiful thing and you're right, the performance of it and the self-righteous, the righteous anger, the skepticism, the acid, the, like the delivery from Totoro is so sharp at every single turn, whether he's investigating, whether he's giving his big proclamations at the end, whether he's revealing everything that he's found. I love this performance. I love this show. I'm so, I'm just so thrilled that they've allowed Irving to be this, that they allow Dylan to be this, that this isn't just a

Mark and Helly show or a Marks out centric show. It's a really fully actualized ensemble performance. Yeah. And I mean, this is a very Dylan, but let's, we get this Dylan moment, right? Dylan says, I'm sorry, I didn't listen to you, I didn't believe you, I didn't

help you. And Irving says, hang in there. Which, we can only assume as an illusion, to there's a poster in the breakroom of Dylan you know operating the two switches on the OTC that says hang in there and so

do you think he's like did he hide something for Dylan in behind the hang in there poster that's a popular theory I've seen floating around what do you think I would enjoy that I also think we're just naturally set up for Dylan who has been tempted at this point by the family visitation room

by the idea of even further perks than he was ever entitled before to pick up Irving's quest for the elevator, right? He was the person who was first told that information. I think there's all the reason in the world to expect that he is now going to be

on the hunt for it. Having seen what happened to Irving, now knowing Helena's betrayal within the team, he's going to be looking for his own answers and his encouragement to maybe look behind that poster or pick up on some other clue

that Irving is trying to pass to him. They have an interesting connection and one that's been fraught at various times, one in which they are naturally at odds given their personality types, but became sort of unlikely friends and at least allies in this one way. Re-watching, again, if we never see

Irving be any Irving again, if this is a true character death, I think on re-watched that moment at the beginning of the season when he and Dylan share that embrace or the moment where we see him in O&D, like, talking about Bert and reminiscing and getting another hug. Like, these are in retrospect.

It's funny because, like, in the, you know, at the end of the episode, you know, Severance is doing that classic HBO inside the episode, sort of like little moments interviews at the end of the episode. And Adam Scott was like, you guys are going to go back and watch the last few episodes. Oh, my God. It was Ellen all along. And it's like, oh, no. We knew that already.

But the character beats you're right. I think ring differently. But for Irving, as these episodes leading up to this as a goodbye for that character, this emotional sort of send-off for this character, that's going to hit differently. Again, if we never see me, I don't know if we will or not. But the structure of this show, too, I think, asks you as a viewer to interrogate what you want. do you want to see full reintegration for all of these characters

we've come to know and love in various respects? Do you want to see the any versions who are much more familiar with overall find some way to continue their existence? It's such a tricky territory where having one existence kind of snuffs out the other and also reintegration may be dangerous

and not even possible for everybody. And being put in our position, like both ethically in terms of story telling like what do you want? It's such a huge question to have to ponder. Yeah, and we, I mean, we entertained this before, and my earlier sort of idea was like, I want everyone reintegrated because I don't want to, like, snuff anyone out. Yeah.

But Helena and Heli at this point, that is a torturous reintegration. That's my switch in this episode. I'm like, Helena, you're done for me. I want that body to belong to Helly. That would be my end of the day preference. I like to root for difficult women, but this was a, this was a, this was a, This is a just going to, we can't come back from this. She's making herself quite difficult, it turns out.

Okay. It will be as if you, Irving B, never even existed nor drew a single breath on this earth. Devastating. And then we get a shot at the end. One thing, my one tiniest nit to pick, tiny quibble. And I'm not mad about it. It's just a funny staging thing. Milchick and Mark and Dylan are at the top of the waterfall.

And he's down there sort of like plunging her head into the water. At the very least, Mark is running down there a bit faster than he is. He just stands there and he's like, oh, my God, stop. And I'm like, get a fucking move on, Mark. What are you doing? But you also can't make it. You know, if she decides to plunge your head in the water, you're not making it in time. It's not that tall of a waterfall.

It's the tallest in the world. It's a short little jaunt downhill to get to this woman you just had sex with and a tent. Okay. something they said in the official podcast, which I thought was interesting, is they contemplated several different endings for this episode. They didn't know if they wanted to sort of like black bag, you know,

people swoop in and sort of black bag Irving and like drag him off or how dramatic they want to be. And what they decided to go with is they do, you know, the reverse Zoom dolly pullout that they've been doing for the inside the elevator severance moment without the ding, obviously. I did love, by the way, the ding that we get when Helly is turned back on while being plunged underwater.

Just wonderful little ways to execute this stuff. But Stiller was saying that they wanted it to read more like, this is just Irving himself, realizing that it's the end of something or accepting the end of something rather than the physical process happening then and there. This is a mental sort of emotional severing from what's happening there. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's ways in which the style can sort of literalize.

And then there's the ways in which it just speaks to the moment. And I think you've zeroed in on that really nicely, Joe, in the sense that everything about the structure of this episode, and in retrospect, the last few, points to this being a long walk for Irving to here. To this moment, to this decision, to putting himself out there in this way for the sake of unveiling the truth. and I hope that those stakes stick. I'm not saying I don't ever want to see Irving B again, but this is a meaningful sacrifice. I agree. I was watching this and I was like,

if they just undo this, then re-watching this episode will not feel, like thinking about a show like Lost, which has these very sentimental, sacrificial death moments for certain characters. That's not a spoiler. That's just the premise of Lost. People die on this island.

Like thinking about all the times, I've cried over the death of characters on that show or something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which we just talked about. Sure. These shows that really get you with these big emotional deaths. And I wasn't like weeping for Irving this episode, but I was genuinely torn up about this ending.

And then while at the other time there was a voice inside of my head, it was like, or you're watching a show where they could just flip him back on if they want to. So I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take something like that. You know what I mean? To our earlier discussion, I think that's where Severance gets to still have Tritur on the show and still gets to have Irving as a presence on the show.

And if anything, now is such an interesting variable to have in the outside world, right? And what his level of involvement is going to be with the other characters who we've never seen Mark Scout and the Audi Irving interact before. Now maybe they have more reason to be in contact as people who are trying to put the pieces together or with Devin or with, you know, with harmony. We don't know how any of these people are going to bump into each other. And I suspect the deeper we go into this show, the more and more important, the outside part of the story is going to be. And so I'm glad to have Irving potentially in the driver's seat of some of that. No, I mean, I am beyond thrilled that we're going to, that we get to have more Totoro on the show. I would never want to say goodbye.

I never want to say goodbye to John Totoro and Semran. Okay, quick, sort of a few emails to get to maybe some odds and ends. And then we'll wrap up here. Our listener, Kevin K., when wondering, you know, you were wondering about, like, inside of the Civil War theory, there's this question of like, are we in a world where the South won the Civil War and that's the fall of that we're seeing? Our listener Kevin K pointed out that during Mark's initial mind-meling quote protocol survey, he is asked to name a dam and Mark says the Hoover. So he's like, the Hoover Dam exists. so Hoover is the first president

of the United States possibly, etc., etc. Also for the record, I could not name another dam. I don't know if that's an indictment of me, but I would also reach for Hoover. The Orville, there's a dam in Orville, California.

You could convince me of anything. Name any fake damn and I will buy it. This is what he says. He says, quote, I have noticed television writers play with points of divergence as a way for viewers to theorize about these worlds. In Liddlew's HBO Watchman, adaptation shows a shareworld through Nixon's first term until Robert Redford becomes president. Redford's impact on the culture and counterculture is part of the show's backbone of messaging and it gave space to revisit other historical blind spots like Tulsa 1921.

He also mentions counterpoint, the J.K. Simmons sci-fi show. And that has like a very specific, I think, 1980s sort of counter, you know, like diverges as well. Man in the High Castle is like such a clear touch point here too. Absolutely. And so is that something they need to drill down? on, no, I don't need to know when history diverged so that Egan, a corporation took over. They don't need to do that, but it's a fun thing that like some of these shows play with or whatever.

And that this is a show that consistently rewards you for that level of investment, of parsing the background, of scenes, of reading every bit of text that a character has in their hands or has behind them. This is the thing overall with Severance that makes me so thrilled to be covering the show week to week with you in this way, Joe. Is there such a clear level of care? put into the construction of it going back to it. As you said, like the propaganda video having this visual echo of Helena being plunged

underwater, when things like that happen, it's like, oh, it's a nice little closed loop and it's a cool detail, but it's also just indicative that these people know what they're doing and that they have a certain range of foresight to know, okay, here's where we want to go, here's what this is going to mean, here's how these reveals are going to twist up the audience, this is what's going to change the emotional stakes at the show. I think it just speaks to having a very steady hand at the week. of severance. Great point.

I also just like podcasting of Rob in general. It's a delight. It's better when it's a great show. This is the thing. But even if it's disclaimer, I'm happy to be here. Okay.

Book Club Corner really quickly. We're getting emails from people suggesting like sort of extra reading material, which again takes me right back to my lost days. And I have purchased two books based on recommendations from people and I've read one and I still need to get to the other.

In fairness, it doesn't take much of a nudge to get you to buy a book. Okay, Rob. I'm just, like, that's not a character flaw. I'm just saying, you know, you've been gently pushed in the direction of some extracurricular reading. Just because you don't read fiction,

doesn't not mean, but are you going to read the, like, neuroscience text that they, I think that should be your job, because I'm certainly not going to do it. I guess we'll all have our homework. Okay. Luke recommended this play, because you were talking about,

about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. And Luke recommended this play called Eurydice by Sarah Rule. And I bought it and I read it. And I mean, it's very thin. It's easy to read. But it's really, really good. It's from Eurydice's point of view. And the reason that he recommended it and I really see this is because, like, in this play,

it's a lot about memory and when you go down to the underworld and you lose your memory and what is the blessing in that and what is the curse in that and what are you trying to hold on to that doesn't exist anymore? And so the story from, which is often told from Orpheus's point of view, the story from Eurydice's point of view,

this question of memory and identity and what makes you you, I can really see how they might be sort of playing with that inside of Gemma's story. I would say in particular, we talk about this show so much as

a show about consciousness, but it really is a show about memory. And I think the more that the iny and outy versions of this character are meant to reckon with the things that the other version of them have now done, like, those are memories you might wish you could wipe out in an eternal sunshine kind of way. That engagement with that sort of idea, I think, is right here for Severance to play with basically any time it wants to. One of the really cool visuals of this play, this is like a very stylized play and I was looking at sort of videos of tons of iterations

and performances of it. But one of the main visuals that most of the performances follow is when Eurydice arrives in the underworld, she does so in an elevator where it's raining. She shows up and there's like a ding of an elevator, it opens and it's raining and it's raining and she's got this umbrella

inside of a raining elevator. So the elevator ding, the memory, all of that sort of stuff, it makes sense that this might be sort of in the water of severance. The other recommendation we got

that I have purchased but I have not gotten to, and I'm fine to wait on this because it has to deal with Cobell, so I think maybe we'll delve into this when she reenters the scene. But our listener Brett recommended William Volman's National Book Award winning novel Europe Central, which has a that is a tome.

That is a thick boy. But he's recommending this, there's like a 50-page short story inside of that book called Clean Hands, which is a story of a man called Kurt Gerstein, who basically infiltrated the Nazi organization, and in

very small, if you want to put it that way, sort of like, functionary ways operated to save lives inside of the Holocaust. So just sort of by recommending like Clean Hands is, I haven't read this short story yet, but sort of

Brett summarized it, but this idea of like operating inside of an evil organization, executing evil orders inside of that evil organization, but trying to make small changes to do what you can to mitigate the loss.

A bit like Schindler's list, but it's sort of like even sort of... Sounds like maybe even more compromise than that. Yeah, more compromise than that. So is that something that we could think about when we think about Harmony, if we think of her as someone who maybe has infiltrated Lumen to exact revenge. But can we reconcile that with the shit we see her do in season one?

Can we think of her as someone who is on the side of the angels to a certain degree, but is like playing the games of the devils in order to get there sort of idea? We are due for a harmony episode. Maybe not the entire episode, but one in which she is significantly involved in the action. We've seen her drive. We've seen her not go into building. She is absent this week, as you mentioned. I feel like five or six, we're going to get a lot of harmony.

I hope so. Also, I don't need to read the emails, but we have gotten several emails from people saying that we're wrong about the chamomail cookies. Rob, are you willing to try a chamomile cookie recipe to see if the listeners are right? I'm willing to try baking anything. Yeah, I know. So, yeah, if someone wants to send us a camomail cookie recipe that they earnestly believe in, we will try it. Okay.

Last one at least are, what would you sever? section has reemerged here. We talked about dishes last week. We talked about a number of other things. We got several emails about the same concept this week. First, before we get there, I will say Rachel A. Trojan to say she was shocked and appalled to hear me talking about severing anything other than doing my taxes because she's heard me over many years of listening to a podcast, talk about how much I hate filling out a form.

And that's true. So probably I would sever taxes if I could. but Alan L, Grant H., Amy S, all wrote in to say like, going to the gym and not because they don't want to go to the gym. This was the part that threw me for a loop, like the exact reasoning. Yeah, which was the same across the board, I think, for all three of them, which is like imagine getting to go work out, whether you're swimming or lifting weights or whatever it is,

without the burden of the rest of your life sort of hanging over you. I don't know if I've talked about this on this podcast, but something I've been doing in 2025 because like for a while, back in 2024, I started doing this like sort of get jacked weightlifting thing, which is great, but it's really come to bear in 2025

because what I do is I read the news and I get mad and then I go lift heavy things in the gym. That's sort of been my process of coping with things. But what if I could do that without the sort of like burning royally anger at the state of the world? Like, would that be an even more enjoyable experience? What do you think, Rob? It might, but I think you're hitting on something that's so important,

which is the release of those activities. You know, on the one hand, you don't want something weighing you down while you go to the gym. But on the other hand, when you do hit, like, a runner's high, and it gives you that pacifying feeling where you do forget everything that's happening. Like, any version of you wouldn't have that moment of relief. They would just feel, you know, the endorphins of exercise,

but they wouldn't feel the relief from not having it. having to think about the outside world. This also presumes that your, like, chosen form of exercise as a solitary activity, whereas, like, Rob, you love a, you love a game of pickup basketball, right? Absolutely. Yeah, and you wouldn't want to sever yourself from that. That's like a communal. I would never give it up to the point that at some point, I'm just going to run my knees

and Achilles into the ground. There is this famous thing where eventually you get old enough and you either have to actively stop yourself from playing pickup basketball, or you will have to be carried off the court at some point. I'm going to die out there. On your shield. That's just the life that I've chosen for myself. So yeah, I'm not giving my any minutes of my gym time in that particular way.

Rob's coming home on his shield from the basketball court. And that, I think, is our season two episode for Severance check-in. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to make sure we reference? One thing that's very important to me in terms of the overall mood setting of this episode, when we get our fireside recital of Appendix 4. We also get Ms. Wong playing a mean therapist. Thank you. This would be a great invitation for me personally, Joe,

seeing it on screen, to finally learn and understand how a theremin works. Yeah. I don't. Okay. There's a reason I am not a physics podcast. It seems very complex as instruments go. Pineapplebobbing atch email.com. I want to let you know that on the official podcast, they had Teddy Shapiro,

who is the composer for severance, was on this episode. He did not understand how a theroyeraberryman. works. He composed this piece for the thereman. And he's like, I don't know, you block a wave. And that's how it makes the tone. Anyway, what they were saying is that the actress who plays Ms. Wong learned how to play, so she's actually

playing the theremin. She shallomade this thing? Yeah, she did. She just disappeared and learned how to play all the songs of Bob Dylan on the theramen. Full timbo. Absolutely, all the way. Anything else? Yeah. Well, I also learned that apparently, so I've always known it as a thereinemone. I learned that they're also called an etherphone, which is just

bang up job. bang up job by the instrument naming authority. Wow. Okay. Well, this is amazing. Anything else you want to talk about? I would, the only person I want to give a special shout out to, because I don't think we touched upon him much in this episode aside from his waterfall superlatives. Great Milchick episode. The fit.

Great Trammell-Tilman episode. You know, as his readings of things that are clearly ridiculous and line deliveries of things that probably would be silly coming out of the mouth of many, many other performers with him always do had that edge of danger, of authority, of just like, this is not someone you want to get on the wrong side of. And yet he obviously has the very like corporatized plastic smile thing that he can go to whenever he wants to. So great, great tramultilment performance. Just incredible outfit. I loved, I loved his outfit. And also, I think it begs the question. I think this is something we need to keep asking ourselves is like, is Seth? Yes, Seth, do it. Is Seth a true believer?

Because is his offense that he takes over them snickering, which results in the marshmallows getting thrown in the fire? Is his offense like a personal religious one? Or is it just sort of like, I'm playing by the corporate rules here, you know? Seems rude either way. No need to throw those marshmallows into the fire. If you like us are quietly yearning to learn more about anything, you can send us an email, pineapple bombing at gmail.com.

Press htdb at Spotify.com. again, we're getting so many emails. They're all great. Thank you so much for sending them. They're really, really good and varied, and I will continue to buy books and pineapples, thanks to this show. One that I, a genre of email that I have enjoyed,

that I would enjoy more of if people want to call these specific examples. An emailer, I don't have their name at the tip of my tongue, I apologize, pointed out one of the very specific visual callbacks in the show, which was Harmony Cobel's rear view or rear lights, tail lights on her car as she's leaving the parking lot in episode three. This very black background, these red lights at the end of effectively what is a long lane or in this case a hall, is basically exactly like the mysterious elevator. I'm loving all that stuff. So if you see anything that strikes you visually in the show, I would love to hear about it.

I liked that more with no offense to anyone than the like Dylan's wife is dressed like Pam from the office. I'm like, I don't know what that gives me that Dylan's wife is dressed like Pam for the office. great shout, good observation. It just doesn't do anything for me thematically. We're not going to mention The Office on this show. That's not what we're doing here. Okay.

And that has been set for in Season 2 episode 4. Rob hates the office. Find out of bobbledobbinga.com. If you want to talk Rob out of that. Thanks to our office mates, John Richter, for helping Rob navigate the void here. Justin Sales for helping us navigate the void that is the scheduling around all these prestige TV shows

coming up. And as always, on the birving drop and everything else, Kai Grady. Thank you so much. We will see you soon. Bye. Hey, Mama. Thanks for making all my favorite recipes.

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