The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 8: Cobel’s Chilly Origins

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Jo and Rob find solace in the nine to recap the eighth episode of ‘Severance’ Season 2. They discuss Harmony Cobel’s highly anticipated return, an array of guest stars, and how the reveal of who originally designed the Severance program changes things (2:49). Along the way, they unpack a Dieter Eagan theory and briefly jump over to the literature corner (30:09). Later, Jo unboxes some Lumon swag as they revisit a handful of Cobel lines from previous episodes with the additional context of her dark past (44:41). Email us! [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Try Coffee mate Creamers Now: http://coffeemate.com Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Donnie Beacham Jr. Video Supervision: John Richter Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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beginning March 13th on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake.

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We're here today to talk to you about severance. How excited are you to talk about severance, Rob? I mean, flip my toboggan, Joe. Come on, let's get into it. It's the end of the week. This is always a joy for me on a Friday morning to talk to you about the latest severance episode. We get up early. We do this early in the morning so we can get it out for you guys. This episode is called Sweet Vitriel, written by Adam County and Casey Perry and directed by one Mr. Benjamin Stiller. And just to remind folks who are listening to this, if you want to hear more from Rob and yours truly. We're also covering White Lotus on a weekly basis. We certainly are. Bill Simmons ever heard of him,

Mallory Rubin and I are also covering White Lotus on Sunday nights. And then a couple days later, Rob and I do it. Next week, we're headed back to the pit. So we're going to check in on our favorite doctors and all the trauma that's been happening in the week since we last checked in with them. Very trauma-heavy slate on the pit, I got to say. And we still keep getting emails about this.

So I will keep reminding you that Yellow Jackets is now being covered over on the House of our feed. Mali Rubin and I are covering it. Not this week, but usually week to week on the House of Our Feed. We're covering Yellow Jackets over there. It was a very dense week over on the Riververse. So that is what is going on around the various feed. Sweet Vitriel, the name of this episode, Rob, is another sort of a condensed version of a name for Ether.

Sweet Oil of Vitriel is what diethyl ether, which we will talk about a plenty, as we do this podcast. Have you partaken, Joe? Is that a recreational activity of choice for you? Guess what? I've never huffed a single thing in my life. I know. It doesn't seem pleasant, I got to say.

No. Paint thinner, ether. I'm out, I think. It's a no for me on huffing. If you're watching this on video, you may have noticed a Lumen sort of esk box behind me. Apple sent over, what is the memo that they sent me? It says,

Senior Refiner Audi gifting memo. So that is what they sent over. It's like a little fake vending machine. So if you're watching this on video, which you can do on the Ringer TV YouTube channel or on Spotify, we're going to do like a not a full unboxing, but a mini unboxing a little later in the episode. Hopefully keep it audio friendly. So if you're listening, you can also enjoy that. But that is the plan today as we talk about this episode.

Rob, how many emails did we get about our friend, Ms. Casey, aka Gemma and which hands she prefers to write with. Respectfully a lot. Our listeners are quite diligent. And this was something we mentioned that clearly stuck in a lot of people's craw was the idea that, oh, she is right-handed and therefore writing left-handed

in the dreaded thank-you card room would be a particular kind of torture, which agreed. Yeah. We're mentioning that she was writing left-handed in the thank-you note room, that writing left-handed with the fountain pen is horrible because of the smearer.

that writing that many notes is horrible, how gibberish her handwriting looked, because maybe she had some brain damage, but also a bunch of people pointed out that early in the episode, we see her fill out an intake form with her right hand. We certainly do. So not only all those other factors, but also they're forcing a righty to write as a lefty. One thing about the thank you note room that we did not mention that I wish we had was that it's playing baby it's cold outside during that sequence, which does perfection. The date rapiest of all the Christmas.

I don't even remember where we are in the cycle of it being pushed away slash recontextualized slash reclaimed. Like I've seen so many re-evaluations of that song. I don't know where we are. I think we're in an embrace, a consensual embrace era with maybe it's filled outside. We certainly are. The pendulum will swing any moment now. I wanted to start, we have a lot to talk about in this episode, even though it was like a fairly short runtime. Actually, before, I already told you what we were going to do, broadly speaking, Rob, though.

Did you like this episode of Severance? I liked it fine. Okay. I think given how long it had been since we last saw Harmony Cobell, I was a little underwhelmed. Yeah. We got some, I think, some interesting character beats. This is certainly an episode that's going to change the way you think about Harmony

Cobell in a couple of different key ways. And I'm not shying away from any of that. I'm not poo-pooing that. I think that stuff is really important. Yeah. But it had been 35 days for us in this world since we last saw Harmony Cobell in a severance episode. And for this to be the sort of big payoff of that, I have mixed feelings about it. Do you think, so this is a short run time, it's like a 37-minute episode.

And I would say even less of that is like crucial, crucial plot information. Yeah. They're still withholding a bunch of information about Harmony. So here's two alternatives, let's say. This was not my favorite episode of Severance, and that's okay. A question that I got, someone like Instagram DMed me was sort of, which is not how the way I encourage you to reach me. But like, you can...

How do you encourage people to each other? Just chase you down on the street? Press HDTV at Spotify.com. Okay. Pineapple bobbing at gmail.com. Yes. If you've got White Lotus Thoughts, monkey shootout at gmail.com.

We're still getting emails from like grief card again at gmail.com. I respect all of them. Those are the real heads. But this is a listener I kind of know. So like, I understood why. But anyway, she was like, how many very special episodes, like sort of premise...

breaking episodes is too many promise breaking episodes inside of a short season of television. Because I would say between this last week's, which we loved, and the orpo, those are like quite premise breaking episodes. So maybe the idea of severance in season two is like, you know, and we also had the all any episode and the all outy episode in the first two episodes of the season. So maybe the premise of season two was like there is no standard operating procedure for an episode of severance this season. Certainly fits the sort of reintegrating theme of what's happening in the season right now.

Not my favorite episode. Really missing Bert and Irving. Kai? Everybody's talking about birving. Everybody's talking about birving. Two options. One is, what if we took the mediest part of this episode

and seeded it into the last few episodes that were checking in with Harmony as she, you know, hooks up with Hamilton, her old chum, and all these other things that she encounters. Or alternatively, we have an even denser

Harmony Cobell episode that is less withholding about like what if we get just like a full flashback? What is the life of, what was the life of Harmony Cobel sort of as she went through, you know,

child laborer to invent her of severance? Like what was that complete arc like versus sort of the, I would say, coir approach that we got inside of this episode. So do you have like a preference between those two? Or are you like, hey, it's not my job to tell someone how to run their TV series? It is not my job.

But if I were to do such a thing, Joe. Yeah. I would probably lean towards parceling out the harmony elements of the story or I think repositioning this episode within the season. And I think to do that, you'd probably have to change the way you break the whole season because you can't go like Ortbo into the harmony story. I think that kind of cliffhanger, that would be a pretty cruel sort of delay on kind of what's happening with Irving, for example.

But to come off of specifically Chikai Bardo into this, you just feel the momentum of the season and how like how thrilled we were coming out of last week. I'm screeching to a halt. Like it feels like the show slamming on the brakes in a way that can be contemplative in a way that I don't, I appreciate what they're trying to do in establishing and broadening this character and making us think twice about Harmony

and the things she said and the thing she's done and who she is in this world. It just feels like you're introducing an element of sort of narrative inertia at a time where you want to be driving forward. And to be very clear, I agree with everything you said, and to be very clear,

I love Patricia Arkette. She's awesome in this episode. She's so good, and I'm very fascinated by Harmony Cobell, so it's not like I want less, harmony. I think we're just having questions about the when and the where and the why of it. Yeah. And the longer she's gone, I think the bigger her landing has to feel. And this felt important to character. It felt important to plot and mystery in some ways, although I think less so.

I have to say, who created severance or did someone else create severance was not a driving mystery of the show for me or something I was even all that interested in. I agree. On the other hand, I will say, and we're going to go back through some previous harmony scenes and sort of like re-listen to some clips now knowing what we know about Harmony's role. And that's interesting to me because I did have a lot of lingering questions about what was her motivation for X, Y, Z in season one. And this helps with that a lot. And so, yes, I did not really, I just assumed it was Negan.

I mean, that's, I just assumed it was a Negan. And the fact that it wasn't a Negan and it was this woman who gets treated rather shoddily, given all of that information, is. opens the aperture on a character in a way that I really, really like. Let's talk about some of the guest stars in this episode. So, well, I want to start with Patty Arquette, Patricia Arquette, because reading the Reddit boards, it just reminds me that not everyone knows what a legend Patricia Arquette is. Where are these people coming from?

Who are they? They're younger than we are. So, of course, she won an Oscar for Boyhood. And I would really recommend you check out that incredible project, obviously. obviously she's worked with Ben Stiller on Escape from Danamora and an earlier film they did together. True Romance is sort of like my peak, Patricia Arquette. What do you want to say about Patty?

Rob. See, I'm of a slightly different generation and I caught True Romance later in life. But a very formative experience watching Patricia Arquette in that movie. I think for a lot of people, just one of those characters who is so indelible, who was so like, I think that movie and that story just does not,

work without her being as perfectly charismatic and also sort of elusive as she is. And in some ways, that's what makes her work in severance too, this idea that, you know, she's like curled up on her mom's bed breathing out of a musty breathing tube. And like my whole body is cringing and yet I cannot stop watching her do everything that she's doing. She's, she's a wonderful performer. And I think the things that help her embody Cobel at this stage in her career, you can find the through lines earlier. It's like it's all there in terms of these little threads of sort of ethereal

or unsettling or like she's just from a different place in time than the rest of us are. Yeah. And, you know, from the Arquette acting family, raised as like, you know, a weird little hippie is a very strange and wonderful person and a really strange and wonderful performer. As Alabama in true romance, that is like one of the most, like, sexually dynamic, alluring, like, characters you've ever seen in your life. And you were like, yes, I won't. throw my entire boring life away for this person. Like, that's the premise of that movie. And so there was the shot after she is, I hate that you use the word musty, but it's appropriate.

After the musty situation, when, and we're going to talk about James LaGro in a second, but when Hamilton comes up into the bedroom and they have the moment on the bed, there's the huffing, and then there's also a smooch that, according to the official podcast, was unscripted. Okay. But it was funny, like, right before the smooch happened, There was just this shot, you know, she's got this, like, very severe hair that the hair was Patricia Arquette's idea. You know, she's older than she was when she played Alabama and true romance. But there's just something so alluring about her.

Her eyes are just like this really compelling blue that I was just like, I would smooch Harmony Cobell. There's just something like bewitching about her that I find. I don't know. And I don't know if you need that larger Arquette filmography context for that or if that work. works in isolation inside of this. But one of the things that I saw on the Reddit boards that blew my mind, and I think this speaks to the wig work on this show, is someone misidentified this character we meet Sissy as her sister, which I understand because some people say Sissy.

Yeah. Jane Alexander, who plays Sissy, is her, that's her aunt. And she's of a completely different generation. So I'm like, how old do you think Patricia Rekette is, man? or how youthful do you think Jane Alexander is. Anyway, Jane Alexander is... It could be a big age gap, like older, younger siblings situation.

In theory, I do think they leave it open enough for long enough for you to wonder, who are these people to each other? I mean, I was definitely wondering if Hamilton and Harmony were siblings, and then they smooched. Well, does that even rule it out on a show like this? Who's to say? Jane Alexander, Legend of Stage and Screen.

I, you know, has won a... Kyle of Awards is an absolute icon playing Sissy here, asked, according to the official podcast, asked to have her hair cut to look like harmony so that they could have like matching hair. Was in a film that has been sort of like lost to time, but was really definitely a thing at the time, which is Siderhouse Rules,

a Miramax joint, which won Michael Cain and Oscar, among other things. That is the movie where I first learned about, huffing ether as a drug abuse situation. Michael Kane plays a doctor. And your life was never the same. enjoys huffing ether. And Jane Alexander plays a nurse in that movie.

So fun little connections. Jerry Stahl, who wrote Permanent Midnight, who Ben Stiller played in the film Permanent Midnight, is one of the guys in the diner. And then last but not least, James Ligrow, who to me is the runaway star. of this episode. I'm a huge James Legerow fan. The original cinematic, Railing Givens, also played Wade Messer on Justified, has been in a ton of things. But something that they said in the official

podcast about casting him in this role is when you have not much time to establish dynamics between characters, there's a ton of history, unspoken history between these two, you cast a James Legrow, who, like, can just, you know, going back to the 90s, drugstore cowboy, whatever, can just give you, like, a life lived on a face kind of guy. Do you know what I mean? So anything you want to say about these guest stars or our guy, Wade Messer from Justified specifically. I mean, first of all, Wade Messer would be huffing ether. So we're just moving one step over, but a dramatically different characterization. I think. The sort of down on their luck,

Kentucky in addicts and degenerates of justified and the criminal elements of justified are so different from the people we see in Salt's Neck who are worn down in this like decrepit dying industry town. And to have Hampton step into that as somebody who like clearly is like trying to just soldier on and at the same time huff and ether every chance he can get like maintaining this sort of habitual thing that he's had since he was presumably a kid. And the way that Harmony has had.

that element with him, where, as you said, the unscripted kiss comes after judgment, really, on her part. I'm like, how can you do this? How can you sell this stuff? After everything that we went through, producing it in the mill in the first place, the life that we've lived, like, how can you participate in this thing that, like, wrecked our lives and wrecked this town? And he's simultaneously somebody who can have lived through all of that and still be huffing

the ether. And I 100% believe it from LaGro's performance. And I also believe that he's the guy who would stand up. at the end of the episode and say, what, tame these tempers? Hell, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But tough for us that I wish we would get a lot more of him. I don't see how, because he's going to be in Salt's Neck and he just gave away his truck.

And, well, unless, you know, Lumen abducts him or something like that. That's true. But it sort of feels like a one and done for James Legrow. But if Hampton wants to ride again, I would support that. Oh, anytime. All right, Rob, what do you feel like you understand about, Harmony Cabell's life after having watched this episode. What are the key things that we learned from this episode? I think that when we knew that her mother was not a believer in the Kier cult,

and I think we're kind of led along through this episode to think that Sissy is sort of her entry point into that world, and where she is working in the ether mill from a young age, she is like put into this pipeline with the school for girls and eventually the Wintertide Fellowship, and we're seeing kind of all these elements of her backstory, together. And then of course, this idea that she, in fact, is the one who invented the severance procedure, or at least like designed it, designed the schematics that became what we know as severance. Right. Does that dramatically change the way I think about Ms. Cobell? I don't know. I think the fact that she grew up huffing ether fumes

changes the way I think about her a little bit. And the idea of like, why is she as off-kilter as she is? Why is her language presented the way it is? And when you hear Sissy speak, I think you get a pretty good idea of how being a member of a cults can sort of infiltrate your brain and shape you on the most formative verbal levels. But to be honest, I was having a hard time sort of wrestling with the idea of the reveal of this episode and how much I thought it really changed because it felt like a swerve. It felt like the kind of thing where I wanted to go back and revisit as we're going to do today. Yeah. And then we got an email from a listener, Carrie, who put it in terms that I hadn't quite thought about yet, which is that we had been kind of thinking about severance as a purely

capitalistic idea, right? Lumen creates this thing so they can eventually sell it or, you know, take advantage of their workers or create a whole new workforce or whatever it ends up being. And Carrie proposed the idea that like if Harmony was creating it as a means to basically escape the abuse that she had suffered as a child, right? Someone who had been in this system, who had been treated very cruelly, who had now had her idea stolen from her, that seeing that idea now used for purely capitalistic reasons probably and used to hurt so many other people would be such a like a re-traumatizing event for harmony

over and over again. On the one hand, galling, on the other hand, and again, we'll go back through and sort of revisit these moments throughout the last few seasons. I kind of believe that she was still a true believer until the, what is it, the tiger ate her face sort of a moment

that happens. The leopard ate her face, there it is. Okay. To go back, you started with this idea of the voice, the affected accent. And something I thought that was really interesting. I've always wondered about her accent and also what John Totoro is doing. They're both doing this like affected Mid-Atlantic. Yeah. And you mentioned Jane Alexander Sissy in this episode, but also something that Patricia Arquette said in a truly unhinged and delightful interview on the official podcast was that this was like sort of a, because she was born. in poor circumstances.

This is a sort of like, sort of similar to Milchick, this is like a, this is how I should speak to be taken seriously by the high-toned people that I work with now. This is what an upper class person

sounds like. So this is what I will sound like. And this is how I will change my voice to fit in that way. I think thinking about Miss Wong's use inside of this season as sort of this like, you know, hearing winter tide and all this sort of stuff like that,

like as this precursor to, the way that Lumen and the Egan family like, you know, we already had seen the shrine in Harmony's home. We knew that she had gone to a school in Egan's school, but, you know, to see Ms. Wong on the severed floor working,

like child labor as an early, so, no, not a clone of Gemma, not Mark and Gemma's child, but like just part of this child labor churn that they have been probably since the dawn of time taking advantage of. To your point,

I really love this point, the idea that like Harmony Coble in Hampton as young child laborers in this factory in the ether mill. Yeah. She says when they take a good huff of the ether,

she hasn't done this since she was eight. So huffing ether or inhaling it while they're working, I don't know, perhaps intentionally as a way to disassociate from the horrors of their job, right? So, like, to come up with this procedure that does the same thing, but just like with more precision is really interesting.

Yeah, it does seem, given the ether heavy context in this episode, that Lumen's goal is to give you kind of the spoonful of sugar one way or another. And that's going to take many forms. I'm sure it's had many forms in between ether and severance. But that, more than anything, after what we saw from Gemma last week and how it's kind of articulated in this episode feels like what the goal of severance is, is to save, quote unquote, save you from the pain

and the anxiety of all these things while subjecting a different version of yourself to exactly those things. To, like, torture, which is what we saw with Gemma, right? Yeah. So in the Eagle-Eyed Redders, I mean, I know I'm talking to freeze frame of Mahoney here, so, like, you know, your way around.

There's plenty of freeze framing to be done in this episode. You know your way around a freeze frame, But previously when we were in, or actually, I think this is like extra textual, they released a bunch of props from the Zufu Chinese restaurant set online in some article or another. And definitely the Redditors were pouring over it. And there were news articles that they had written that mention incident at Salt's Neck, Ether spill, like Ether Mill Ruins Town, Townsues, you know, yada, yada, Aaron Brockovich, like sort of thing, right? And then also in one of the articles that they released as part of this sort of like prop display, there was also a crab rangoon sign, by the way. Just shout out to the prestige TV podcast.

Crab spelled with a K. Can we buy it? I think we should. Can we bid? Crab with a K, crab rangoon from the zoo food Chinese restaurant. That they were creating a version of the chip for children as young as five. Jesus. Grim.

don't like it. And I will say, you know, last week at the tail end of the episode, we hear from Raghabi when she's kind of talking to Devin about the idea of calling Cobel that she was raised by a loomis. And I think we had that understanding with the school, with the Myrtle Egan School for Girls that, like, clearly she's been brought up in this way of life. She seemed like a true believer, as you said, until the leopard ate her face.

But this, I think, changes how we think about that idea of what it means to be raised by a loom. specifically with the way she's sort of grieving her mom, which I don't know how you took it, Joe. I read as much grieving the mom she didn't really get to have because she's presumably going off to some sort of boarding school. She's being raised within this cult. Her mom is not a believer.

I can't imagine she approved exactly of what was happening and kind of the way that Harmony's life was taking shape. And didn't come home to see her at the end of all things because she was too busy sort of like with work and school and wasn't allowed or whatever, but it still feels like a choice. Something in looking into ether, which is something, that was a fun part of my job this week,

there's a few long-term effects of ether addiction. This is related to what you're saying, though. One is memory loss, right? Prolong either use leads to memory impairment, making it difficult to recall recent events to retain new information. So, you know, we're on the severance beat there. But also, in terms of her mom, and this is the breathing tube we've been seeing since season one.

This has been a prop. We sort of thought by the dates that it might pertain to her mom, the date that was on the breathing tube. We saw on the Shrine in her house. We saw her look at it in the car on the weight of salt's neck. So this has been, this is the answer. A side effect of prolonged exposure to ether is chronic respiratory issues. frequent inhalation of ether results in chronic breathing problems including coughing, shortness of breath, and respiratory infections.

You're telling me huffing a bunch of chemicals, is it good for you? I mean, huffing it directly or just goddamn working in an ether mill because, like, I have to imagine that that ether mill has been there for a while. And like the whole town, again, once again, to like everything I know about everything in life I learned from films and I apologize for that. Once again, to invoke Aaron Brockovich or any sort of like similar story. Like if you think about, you were talking about this, like a town destroyed by industry. Yeah.

A town destroyed by ether, like ether inhalation, that everyone there has weird chronic breathing issues or memory issues, you know, like that's just horrifying. And a town that is now at this point just sort of aging into death, right? Everyone we see is very gray-bearded, white-haired. Like, this is a town where to the extent that there were young people here, they have been abused and left, right? Like, they were child workers and now they've either grown into damage. adults or they've fled as the town is further decayed. And this is an

idea that has been proposed within the world of severance, certainly within the world of the innies, as a very dignified thing working in the ether mill, right? This idea that Keir and his wife met working at the ether mill. And we saw the painting of that in season one, a formative burving moment

as they got to kind of gaze upon the ether vat together. I have to say what shook me most about this episode was the way Patricia Arquette, who, look, her pronunciation can be all over the board pronounced with imogen i'm it which shook me to my core

that I may have been pronouncing imogen heaps name wrong all these years but it turns out not no you can I've heard it both like it's more commonly imaging but I have heard imogen but it is more commonly imaging well shout out to all the imagines and imogens out there imogen's like a real old tiny way of saying um imogen for sure um I think this other thing that we learned because

knowing that she was not just like at this Egan school, but also was a child laborer, really underlines this sort of like, has Harmony Cobell ever lived a life? Yeah. You know what I mean? And so something that she was talking about a little bit, Patricia was talking about a little bit on the official pod, and I think is really evident when you go back and think about it is her Mrs. Selvig stuff on the one hand was creepy spying on Mark, scientific exploration, which we'll talk about a little bit more, as she's like kind of testing the bounds of, of, of, of. of severance, the walls in her own way. But also, her, like, as the con goes on, she starts to enjoy just, like, not being in the office

and not centering everything in her life around Lumen. Like when she's with Devin and she's just, like, telling stories and crack and jokes and talking about babies, like, are there ways in which this is just, like, actually her enjoying her life? Or when she, like, shares a smooch with Hampton here? is it just sort of like Harmony Cobell has never truly lived. She is not.

You know? Which give her some grace for the fact that I wouldn't say she's particularly great at it yet. She's a little bit of like Dinafriot and men in black like alien bugs in the skin suit sometimes. In an egger suit. Yeah. It is that way. But clearly she's learning how to be a person. And she's learning everything that comes with that, all the pains that come with that, the kind of ego and the sort of the feeling of being wronged by Lumen that she's striving for.

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whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th. Can I float a fun little theory by you? I would love nothing more. Okay. Diethyl ether. Sure.

That sounds sound right to you. Close enough to me. Piedipelbombing and Gmail.com if I miss pronounced. But diethyl ether, you take the first... Are we anagraming? Three letters. Okay. And the last two letters.

First four letters, last two letters. Swish them together. You get Dieter. Yep. As in Dieter Egan. Is there a possibility that Dieter Egan Was a fever dream? Was never really real, but is really just

the I'm on Ether, dark shadow version of Cure Egan. I mean, yeah, I don't believe that a dude jerked off on a tree and died. Or sorry, jerked off on the ground, it became a tree. I want to get my facts straight. Yeah, please, please. Get the lore right. I want to get the lore correct. Yeah, that seems very possible to me.

So good old Dieter, I'm just going to call him Ether Egan, this idea of him as like the shadow self of Keer Egan. Who already seemed shadowy in his own right? Well, and I guess your ether self, as people kind of put it in the Orpo episode, as we were talking about Deeter and like who he was and why he was a secret in this idea of the shadow self. I mean, what is a severed self but an ethered self, right? It's like this sort of mirrored version of view that has no cares in the world, that as Hampton is, it's sort of like, cackle crying. as you get high, the effects are quite immediate and quite severe and clearly lead to some light to medium

smooching on a bed that may have been where your mother died. I don't think those sheets were ever cleaned. They were not. That room was moth eaten to hell. No one has been in there. She's just like laid down forever. I was just we saw the like

the light of day pass. I was just like oh my God. Okay. The nine get mentioned a couple times and just worth reminding people, when she says Sissy lives by the nine, the first time I watched this, not paying enough attention, I was like, is the nine a geographic location? No. Living by the nine meaning, living by the nine meaning in adherence with the nine. And just to remind people if they don't remember, the nine tenants are vision, verve, wit, cheer, humility, benevolence, nimbleness, probity,

and wiles. Yes. Can we take a quick segue into please Sissy's Shrine corner Is this where Freeze Frame Mahoney comes to comes to play? You got to do it. You got to zoom in.

You got to see what's going on here. We've already seen Harmony's Shrine in her own place. And I will say there's a lot of familiarity here, a lot of familiar artifacts, a lot of crossover. You see the same portrait of Kier, understandably,

the same sort of like paper machet heads of the Four Temperes. Same old-timey ad for severance, which has like an ask-your-supervisor of severance is right for you tag on the bottom that makes me laugh every time I see it. Various newspaper clippings, a note card about probity,

which as you said is one of the nine core principles, all that stuff we've seen before. There's some new stuff, though, including as we see a plaque as Harmony walks down the hall, alluding to the fact that Sissy was sort of like a matron, presumably for these child workers. I'm going to take that as kind of what her role was.

And you see some lumine ether patches next to her shrine, And they have, one of them has an eye on it, one of them has a full set of teeth on it, one of them has what appears to be a man running. I'm going to take those as the eye for vision, the teeth for cheer, the running for nimbleness,

as sort of like a merit badge sort of system in terms of what Sissy, you know, some commendations for her work as a matron. You don't miss, and I love it. I appreciate that. There's also a card with an image of a child with some adults that says, quote, you must be cut to heal,

which sounds, a little creepy in retrospect. Don't love it. Tough. Don't love anything that I'm seeing there. And I will say the things that Harmony had in her shrine that Sissy doesn't are a lot more childish things, right? It's like the awards that she won from school, the most observant, the best use of meal time

condiments, her best girl trophy. I think there was a plush goat in there. And so Sissy's is a little bit different, some different artifacts, some different items, and clearly no breathing tube because Harmony had it in the first place. And it doesn't seem like Sissy thinks a lot of her. her departed sister. No. Also, definitely arts and crafts involved

in both, like, in terms of, like, the Four Tempers representation. Quick question for you, Rob. Please. In the 19... Thank you for doing all that. You're the best. In the 19th century, when folks would gather together and

huff ether together for its intoxicating effects, do you have any guesses as to what they called those gatherings. I do because I also Googled it. They were an ether frolic. It's an ether frolic. Classic ether frolic.

Frolic, of course. One of the four tempers. We've seen it tattooed on Drummond's hand. I would say the best of the four tempers. I'm willing to alienate the other three tempers in the process, but it's the only one that I want to be a part of. Suck it, whoa. I mentioned Aaron Brockovich a couple times.

It's obviously not the only way in which we can think about sort of like the ill effects of industry on townspeople. But what if episode nine is just Julia rolling up and you just get the full backstory of what happened here in Salt Snacks? And she has everyone's phone number memorized. It's great. So she does. Another, I will say, another film that I think would, helps me understand this kind of experience is that there's a great movie called Medawan, which is like about unionizing labor around coal mines in early 20th century. I think West Virginia, and this idea of like company towns, coal mining towns, the way that a company town, we've talked about this with Kier where Mark lives, the idea of a company town that they own the general store, they own your house, they own everything. They own the Zufu Chinese restaurant. They own Zufu Chinese restaurant. They're setting you up on blind dates.

that in certain areas of America, that they would not pay you in money, but pay you in script that you could only use at the company store. You know what I mean? You can never, like, get out of the cycle of control that people like J.P. Morgan or Andrew Carnegie or these other, like, Titans of American Industry who are surely models for Kier Egan instituted in our great nation.

But it's not a coincidence that often those company towns and that sort of payment systems came with extraordinarily dangerous work, right? Like things that people don't want to be doing, but then feel beholden to and feel trapped in because they don't have any actual currency to speak of. And the Midwest, you know, we've talked about all the like Michigan-Michigander sort of stuff, you know, like thinking a lot about Detroit as a city that has been in a different sense, but sort of hollowed up by industry where there was like the booming. auto industry, and then as those factories shuttered, went overseas, whatever it is, that town, that city is rebuilding, but became something of like a ghost city for a while. There was like a streak of incredible horror films that were filmed in like the outskirts of Detroit because it just looked like abandoned. And that's no disrespect to any Detroiters who are listening because there's like vibrant and very cool parts of that city, but there's also ways in

which that city was forever changed by an industry that fed it and then abandoned it, you know, without any, like, not even fed it, like milked it, essentially for its labor and then just sort of like left it high and dry. So, yeah. The Midwest part I thought was interesting with this episode, because this feels very different in terms of the location, the setting. I mean, clearly we're out and about in a way that we are not often very much on severance. It also felt, I don't know where this was shot. Newfoundland. Okay, I was about

say coastal Canada is kind of the vibe that it's evoking and I think you know, everything we've seen to this point both in art

and pixelated graphics and out in the real world has been more like Lake Town oriented it felt like and this was, it felt like a real venture to the coast

to see some actual coast side. Some Manchester by the sea sort of energy here. That's not the energy you want. Let me tell you. Let me say never. Okay. Brief foray to

literature corner. We did get an email from a listener that I have, what is it? Christine wrote in, in response to me mentioning A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, this exploration of these Russian, very special in short stories. She was rereading it after we talked about it last week. Love that. Love when people read books because we talked about it. That's very exciting.

You love when people do their reading. You assign it every week and many people don't even crack open their books. I do love it. Anyway, she said she reread the first chapter, which is about Chekhov's in the cart, and she was talking about how much that story, which is about a woman whose life is sort of like, who's mourning the loss of her mother and her life has like passed her by. And she's been disappointed. It's just her on the road in a cart in many, in the ways that like Harmony has been in her white rabbit for like much of the season.

Like she's like there's so much of that text and how sparse and spare 37 minute runtime like that story is. and just they gave that in relation to this, which I think is very rich. I do not study Russian literature in school. I studied British literature mostly. So I have to shout out our guy, Charles Dickens. You don't, though. You really don't.

I do because... Not only can Woe suck it, Dickens can suck it. Absolutely not. Charles Dickens was a child laborer. And so a lot of his books have this element of child labor in them. Something like David Copperfield, who works in like a bottling factory, Charles Dickens works in a boot blacking factory when he was a kid.

And there's also this idea of upward mobility and going back home again. So in David Copperfield or Great Expectations, this idea of like you have elevated yourself in society. You have tried to separate yourself from your humble beginnings. And then what is it like for you to go home again and people to resent the airs that you've put on or for you to be repulsed by your more humble origins and all that sort of stuff? That was very much, I think, in the mix for me inside of this episode. For sure. And also I think from Sissy's perspective, the deep disappointment in someone that presumably, it seems like she had at least after Harmony's mother's death, a sort of active hand in raising and presumably out on the warehouse or on the mill floor, like is in charge of Harmony in some ways. And you get the line about how she, you know, she thought she was her beautiful flower, but she was just her weed. That line read was fantastic. I was very much a fan of everything that's going on there with Jane Alexander. But, you know, this idea of not only are you trapped in this company, trapped in this life, this company, not just a company town, but a company lifestyle.

Right. And when you try to break out of it, everyone you've ever cared about has stolen your ideas, has used them for their own personal gain, now sees you as a disappointment, is firing you when you thought you were untouchable because if nothing else, you had dedicated your life to this cause. And now what are you left with if you're Harmony Kilbell, other than your precious, precious schematics that will prove I don't know to who, but even if I did have them, I wouldn't hand them to Sissy when she's standing by a fire. I will tell you that much.

There are two things that happen this episode among, you know, whatever else. There are two things that I'm just sort of like, really? One was her handing the schematics to Sissy standing right in front who had just, just put another log on the wood burning stove. And then also, with love and respect, Devin spilling every bean to Harmony on the phone. Her car. Her call Calling Harmony, which a lot of people had an issue with last week. I was just sort of like she's desperate. Her brother is potentially dying. She will do anything to try to get help.

That I understood. Her telling Harmony everything on the phone. Yeah. I have some questions about it. This is a woman who manipulated her brother, who kidnapped her child and then abandoned the child. Yeah. And committed lactation fraud. You tell me which of those is the worst.

I don't know. But three things that Devin might be holding against Ms. Cobell at this stage in the story. Again, I understand the desperation that you're alluding to. She just watched her brother go thud real loud on the floor and then be slowly brought back to consciousness. She's freaked. But I think there are many other places you could potentially go. And I think here's the thing. At this point, her being desperate and wanting answers with no Ragabi makes more sense than when

Raghabi was still there. And she's saying, what if we called Ms. Cobell and try to get Mark into the birthing retreat? so we can talk to as any. I didn't understand any of that. That's fair. And I think that's fair. Anything else you want to talk about before we do this sort of like

unboxing slash tour through Cobel's greatest hits? I do have one thing I want to mention, Joe, which is so much about this episode, so much about this show, so much about Harmony Cobell. We have talked about as being out of time and very difficult to pin down

in terms of these very 70s and 80s cars that they use, the technology both inside and outside of the severed floor. or it's so hard to get a feel for where we are and kind of what these people are dealing with. And there's kind of an interesting effect with that on the soundtrack this

week too. We get this track, where do we go from here by Charles Bradley after Harmony sees Hampton in the cafe, asks for a favor and he immediately goes. Our guy is not hesitating. He wants that smooch so bad, even though he doesn't know it yet. It's this track that sounds extremely 70s soul,

but was released in 2013. Oh. And if that's not severance, I don't know what is. Like, that's really the vibe we're trying to cultivate. I love that. On the music front, did you know what another name for a theremin is? I did.

We talked about this. It was like the etherphone. Etherphone. Classic etherphone. Etherphone. Let's do, what we're going to do is we've got six clips that we're going to play and just sort of like discuss what was going on underneath the scene that we were watching now that we know that Harmony Cobell invented severance.

My favorite comment that I've seen on Reddit and elsewhere is like, a woman in STEM, Harmony Cobell. So celebrating Innovator Harmony Cobell, we're going to go through those clips and also we're going to unbox some of these weird little boxes that Apple has sent over. Yes. I have sent Rob sort of like a photo of the boxes so he gets to pick, which we start with. Rob, which box would you like to start with? I think there's only one choice, Joe, which is the middle box for roasting.

I simply have to know what marshmallows are in there. Are we going to get a proper kear-stamped marshmallow within this box? There was no dry run of this extracting the box situation. Okay. For roasting, fireside delight is what the box says. Wonderful. I mean, we can presume, but I want to know if the stamps on there. Then there is inside.

there is a jar and it is chocolate, gramcracker, marshmallow unstamped. Unstamped. Unstamped. Smoor's ingredients. The chocolate is stamped with the word severance.

Okay. You can stamp the chocolate? You can't stamp that marshmallow? There's no, I guess I'm going to touch the marshmallow on a podcast. I'm sorry, okay. I'm going to touch the marshmallow. Famous last words by Joanna Robinson and her professional a podcasting career. Stamp free. Stamp free.

Okay. I'm a little bummed, but, look, I wait a some more. Stamp or not? I'm thrilled about it. So, that is box number one, was some more fix-ins from Apple TV Plus. But what delicious quote do we have, Joe, in box number one? Thank you so much for that setup. Kai, will you play this from Season 1 episode 1?

You know my mother was an atheist. She used to say that there was good news and bad news about hell. The good news. is, hell it's just the product of a morbid human imagination. The bad news is whatever humans can imagine they can usually create. My main takeaway from this clip, Joe, was that Patricia Arquette, as Harmony, has gone fully around the bend since episode one of season one. On the accent. The accent, just the zaniness of the delivery overall has been amped up to 11. That's deeply true. Good News about Hell is that was the name of the pilot,

season one episode one, the name of the pilot episode. And we should note that she says, my mother was an atheist here, and then later when she's talking to Devin, she says my mother was a Catholic. So, like, we don't know what if any of this is true. Yes. But this idea of humans can invent their own hell,

I thought that that was particularly salient when we're thinking about Harmony Cobell, the inventor of severance. Yes. She was living a hell as a child laborer who was huffing ether, and then she drew. ramped up this, like a way to spread that far and wide out of the ether mills into the cubicles of America. So, um, complicated, complicated legacy. Um, next box, Rob Mahoney. Next box. I would love to

see what's in the desk furnishing box because it's subtitled pineapple. That's the one I thought you're going to start with. I was like, how is he not going to start with pineapple? I did learn what, you know, this is maybe a little far afield for this episode, which, has nothing to do with Gemma anymore. Strictly Cobell focused this week. We get an email from Mary Kate about how the pineapple is a symbol in the fertility community,

which is something that I can't, did we brush on that as we've gone through the eight different things that pineapples represent? What has a pineapple not stood for is my question? Yes. You know? In this case, I think there's a belief that eating pineapple at various points

in your pregnancy will help establish it, especially in the IVF process, and the science on that seems a little bit fuzzy, but it's become this sort of like emblematic hopeful thing, I think, for people trying to get pregnant, which is a fascinating subtext for severance, too. This box that says desk furnishing pineapple, it says, congratulations on your new desk companion, an airplant.

And it's got care instructions for like an airplane, which I guess is inside, further inside. Are we going full succulent on this thing? Let's find out. It's been in a box for like a couple weeks. You can't kill an airplane. So, yeah, that's, that's. That's the next, oh, okay, wait.

Okay, it's an airplant inside of like a little plastic pineapple thing. Did you just kill the airplane? No, I just made it go for a little ride, but now it's fine. It's a little pineapple airplant thingy. How's your green thumb, Joe? Oh, pretty shriveled. Okay, is this good audio? Did you ever see the movie The Troll in Central Park?

No, what? No. This is an animated movie about a troll who lives in Central Park, he's like has a superpower, which is his thumb turns green and he can like make plants grow. But then the villain of the movie, I can't remember what the villain is, has a red evil thumb that kills the plants. And I would describe that as most accurate to my planting and nursing experience. I have killed uncillable succulents before. All right.

Next clip comes from season one, episode five. And it is a conversation between Cabela and Milchick. I saw Miss Casey down there. You're having to watch Helyar. I am. May I ask why? The light of discovery shines truer upon a virgin meadow than a beaten by something new is Miss Casey. Do you only thought anything you want to, I'm the one who picks these clips.

Yeah, you know, but anything strike you about that clip in particular. The light of discovery shines true on a virgin meadow than a beaten path feels like something that James Egan might have told. old harmony in stealing her idea. It's like, I am a wizened old inventor, but you are part of our family. And clearly your mind is more tapped in to the cosmos and its infinite potential. And therefore, this is why I'm going to take your idea from you. This is why everything that you've created belongs to me. I love that.

It should be noted that in the close captioning, there is quote, there are quotes around that part. And so, like, it's, it's true. She's like, I think often quoting Egan scripture essentially in the first season. So yeah, that whole light of discovery, Egan bullshit thing. But also just this idea that like her experimentation with Ms. Casey and Mark, this idea of it as like her furthering her own scientific discovery outside of the bounds of Lumen, like they took her idea and either stole, I mean, stole it definitely, but stole it in a way that they like,

but you're in charge. So it's still your project, and we'll get to that in a second, obviously. But also no further experimentation from you required. And her inquiring scientific mind is like, no, I want to steal some scented candles and leave them in the wellness room and like all these other things that she does with Mark and Ms. Casey sort of running her own scientific experiments because she is a science-minded person. Yeah. I think that's the big takeaway. as far as looking back at the Miss Cobell scenes

is a lot less ambitious middle manager, meddlesome obsessive, just overall like weird workplace element and more, oh, this is somebody who is tinkering from a place of scientific interest. This is somebody who clearly has not just a lot invested in the idea of severance, but in furthering it and perfecting it

in the way that the scientific method would suggest you should. Next box, Rob? I think the next box, I would love to see a tasty new snack, the top middle box. It says salted dehydrate. What, it could be salted and dehydrated. Oh, we got to get a fruit leather in there. Oh, what? What was the, there was like split seeds or something in the lumen vending machine?

Cut beans, salted cut beans. Split seeds, cut beans, who's to say? It says it's a fruit leather box. Okay. And a cut beans box, salted cut beans. So we will finally understand what cut beans are. Yeah. So fruit leather, which is just fruit leather, which is fine.

We understand that. Cut beans. Is this good audio? Let's just, you guys should just switch over the video if you don't. Organic green beans, canola oil, tapio starch, dextrin, sea salts. Sure. Cut beans. Sounds great.

Sounds not great. We're going to need the full report. Just go to Joe's Instagram account where she will be live streaming her eating cut beans. The things we do for content. All right. Let's play clip number. three. This comes from season one, episode seven. Whoever killed Mr. Greener is probably the same person who reintegrated Peter Kilmer.

The board reminds you that reintegration has not. Reintegration happened. And I have the data to prove it. And I would be happy to share my findings in person without intermediaries. She's the findings. She has the proof. She does. She dug a chip out of a guy's brain. What more proof do you need? Her relationship with Grainor, too, we should point out that in season one episode five in that light of discovery episode,

when they're talking about reintegration and Pedy and Raghabi and stuff like that, he says to her, you were right harmony, we should celebrate. So this idea of Grainor as like her ally, Griner who died and we thought was fairly villainous and he is, but like was her ally in her endeavor to prove something about reintegration

again, like more information about her own scientific discovery. She wants to know is reintegration possible. She's constantly pissed about regabi working on it outside of the bounds of Lumen, but she's still very curious. And the board is like, reintegration doesn't exist. She's like, it does, man. We have to know everything about severance, you know? I also want to say that harmony, for her part, is not,

not villainous. We've learned a lot more about her. She's still done some weird fucked up things. And ultimately, I think it's still so driven by the idea of furthering her discovery and her invention, even if she's not given credit for it, at the expense of all of these people around her.

Anyone who's working on the severed floor, anyone else who might be severed out in the world, drilling chips out of dudes' heads. But she has more hard data to her point on this subject than literally anyone else in the world. Even Raghabi, I don't think we have evidence to suggest was able to stop study PD's chip post reintegration.

Harmony's freaking wearing around her neck, like a total weirdo. She's villainous, the way that Milchick is villain. The way that all of these people who are sort of abused by and still working for Lumen. And so like Alina as well, I would say, all these people who are sort of like used and abused by the company, but are furthering the company's aims nonetheless. You can be sympathetic and villainous at the same time. In fact, I would prefer if you are. Or someone who.

do for a face turn, which it kind of feels like is where we're heading with Harmony. The only option, really. We're wrapping up our season one clips, but one more box quickly before we do that, Rob? I would love to hear auditory pleasure, because I don't know how you would capture such a thing in a box. My guess, based on like weird, random swag I've gotten in the past from various people, is that this is like a portable speaker. Okay. I did not say that into the microphone, that this is a portable speaker. Um, they love a portable speaker.

That is like one of their favorite things is in. Oh no. It's AirPods. Hell yeah, Joe. We're just flexing out here. Swag life is very weird. And I just need you to know that. But it is AirPods.

Just a random AirPods box. So these things are roughly equal. You know, a pineapple air planter. Yeah. A marshmallow kit for some some someores. And some AirPods. All of roughly equivalent value. Um, let's,

I feel really embarrassed that. I thought all of this is going to be nonsense stuff. I feel embarrassed that there was like an actual high value thing in there. Let's play the season one episode eight clip of Harmony Cabell getting fired. It has been decided that you be suspended from your position effective immediately. You are fired. Off Natalie. It's the board even there.

This is an incredible scene if you rewatch it. The look on Patricia Arkney, Kat's face when Natalie says you're fired. And I believe she says, what, get fucked Natalie or whatever. Yes. Fuck off. Fuck off, Natalie. There you go.

The incredulity in her face of like, I invented severance and you, Natalie, a functionary, are firing me. Yeah. And then she's like asking if the board's even involved, because surely the board wouldn't fucking do this to her. Of course not. Then we hear from the speaker on her desk. And then the way it's shot, it's like her. She's standing behind Natalie.

She's, like, out of focus, she, like, veers around Natalie's shoulder so that she comes into focus and, like, sees the speaker and is like, and then tries to collect herself and tries to talk to the board, but they're already gone. It is, again, she is a villain. I'm not trying to, like, apologize to her, but watching her get fired knowing that she invented severance and they built this entire thing around her invention and then they're firing her. watching the leopards eat her face in real time it's just like it's tough. I don't want to watch leopards eat anybody's face. No. I also will say I love the way they shoot the board audio box,

the speaker box. Yeah. Just because they treat it almost like a character. And like people in the room are sort of craning around, like staring at this box waiting for the barest of possible responses. Exactly. And one of the things that stuck out to me, Joe, in revisiting some of these clips,

including some of those we're still going to get to, is this idea that, because James Egan blatantly ripped off Harmony's idea. At least it seems at this point, took it, co-opted it, made it his own. The legend is now that he created it. Right. And we do see a photo in her yearbook

for the Wintertide Fellowship of him handing her the trophy in which the schematics have been stashed. So clearly they had some kind of actual relationship. And at this point, there's just so many vibes in which it seems like he's decided he never wants to be in a room with Harmony Cobell ever, ever again

and ever have to explain. himself or apologize or contextualize or make any kind of concession to this woman who he has just exploited through and through basically for her entire life. Smirle Watson and Crick shit. All right. Before we get to our next clip, what's the second to last box? You want me to open? I would love to see stress control, subtitled, a squishy friend.

This has got to be hopefully a very, very inexpensive cheap stress ball and not another high-priced item. One can only hope. Oh, it's a stressed cow that says Lumen on the side of it. Joe, that is not a cow. Oh, it's a goat. Oh, my God. I'm so sorry.

It's so embarrassing. It's definitely a goat. It's got a little beard. We got to get you out to Salt Snick. You got to interact with some real people. It's, yeah, it's a goat. Obviously, it's a goat. What else could it possibly fucking be?

A Lumen-branded stress goat. Okay, let's play season two. episode two clip, please. It cost me dearly. It did. And still you approved your loyalty tonight. Which is why I would like to ask you back. It's warranted.

I apologize. My father apologizes. The board apologizes. We've treated you poorly. I'm sorry. Just all the child laborers out there, we've treated you poorly. Our bad.

Thinking about the it cost me dearly, thinking about like her mom. Yes. You know? We already clocked this as like just like a bullshit I don't mean an apology from Helena. Of course.

But I guess the question, and this goes to like the next clip that we'll listen to as well, we don't know if Helena knows that she invented severance. In fact, there's every indication that perhaps she doesn't know. But it is still the galling nature of having to listen to this from Helena of just like, you know, and what, that's a longer,

there's a longer scene inside of that clip, obviously, that like you have no choice, you need me, you fear me, you know, and Helen says we fear no one, but just sort of this idea of like, she's like, you can't, I invented this shit, you can't get rid of me, you need me for this, is sort of underpinning all of that. One thing that I do like about this particular reveal for Cobell is that we've already had the moment of revisiting a lot of Helena's scenes. Once we figured out that she was in Egan, you can rewatch

season one and you can understand some of the context a little better. You can understand the sort of like my company, your company, thing that's happening between Harmony and Helena, or Helly at that point, even though she doesn't know she's Helena. And now that takes on a totally new flavor when you know that her company was built on your work and your ideas. And so the kind of wrestling within those scenes for meaning as we get reveal on reveal and reveal that I have a lot of admiration for.

Last and not least. One last box, one last clip. What's the best box remaining? We have enhanced decor. I'm not so moved by it. This is definitely stickers. This is definitely a candle. This is definitely probably a gift card for Starbucks or something like that and the

beverages available on request. So I would say a cure package. Let's see it. Whatever that is. Ambiguous. this is my best idea I've ever had for a podcast. What do you think of what you've become, Joe, as a formal unboxer? I, you know, I misidentified a goat as a cow.

A very important part of severance as a cow, so not great. Oh, it's a box for the AirPods that they put in this thing. As you live your life of luxury over there with all of your swag. You must protect it. Okay, not that it matters, but I will not be keeping these AirPods. I will probably, I will give them to whichever person who's working here today wants them. Because I can't wear AirPods because they fall out of my ears. So if that helps anyone from not like thinking of me as, you were so close to being benevolent,

and then it was like, oh, no, I just, I can't use these. It's not out of the goodness of my heart. It's just I couldn't possibly actually use them. And also, I'm a very generous person, Rob. Let's play the last clip. Marcus. is so close to completing Cold Harbor. I intend to finish the work that I started.

Which is why Milchuk must go. He's not equipped for the task. I must be floor manager. I hear ego, hubris, arrogance. Kear teaches us they only cause. Everything I accomplished I earned through dedication and industry. Not because I was born into it.

I think you've overestimated your contributions and underestimated your blessings. We didn't have to ask you back. How dare you lady with a fake MBA. Say this to a woman in STEM. We already, I mean, we covered the, the gall, this, this Nepo baby conversation before, obviously. That was all already there. But hearing you over. overestimate your contribution

is quite tough. Also, like, Harmony's saying several times, I need to finish what I started. I need to finish what I started, and we're like, oh, what she started on the floor. No. What she started by coming up with Severance in the first place. Which she started with her thruple imaginings with the various marks.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And this scene, too, is preceded, we should say, by Harmony's first instinct is to drive to Salt's Neck. Correct. And then she turns around and comes back. back to Lumen to have this conversation and to make like one last pitch basically, furthering the idea that you put forward

early on this podjo, she is a true believer. Like she wants to be a part of the machine as much as anything. Like she wants to continue living the cure lifestyle. But at this point, they just are like refusing to not only respect her, but even give her the bare minimum

of having her old job back. And I don't know if you've ever heard this expression, but hell have no fury, like a woman scorn by her industry, religion, boss daddy. That old chestnut. That old chestnut.

And that's where we find Harmony Kobel, scorned by the religion that she believed in, by the company that she gave her entire life to, and hopefully out for vengeance. Or out to sell out, you know, Mark and Devin for a chance at her job back? I don't mind that either. It could go either way. It could go either way.

What is your read at this point on whether Helena Egan knows that her father did not invent severance. I don't think she knows. There's so much she doesn't know, you know. That conversation, and she had at Zufu with Mark, where she's like, I know everything. I'm at the top of my company. It's just like more and more, like,

apparent to me that she's kept completely in the dark about everything. She definitely could be. I think one thing that I'm so glad about in retrospect is during the overtime contingency, you know, you get that exchange between Jane Egan. And at that point, Hellie are in Helena's body, like posing as Helena. And so when James tells her this memory of like showing her the prototype for the severance ship when she was a child, Helly has no means to dispute that.

Even if she knew that, even if Helena knows the truth, Helly wouldn't know the truth that James didn't actually invent it. And so it's one of, yet again, one of these scenes where we're left like grasping at straws as to who knows what and when and what is true to whom. I do think Helen probably knows enough to know that maybe her family and the business is full of it in certain senses and maybe has a sense that like this isn't all that it appears to be. Maybe my father who, I have no idea if he has a scientific background or not, could not just invent something like a brain chip.

But she's also in a position where she's not exactly incentivized to poke too hard at that idea. Like any poking around she does would take herself down a peg in the process. Here's what I hope. Milchick, Helena, Harmony all turn on the company at the end of the day. But then who is the literal villain of the show?

Jamie Egan, you know? Only if he's revolving into the body of like a big metal spider or something. Like we need something. This is the problem with the eventual face turns of all the villains as these shows go on. And yes, I think all three of those characters have very good

and Natalie. And Natalie have all understandable reasons why they would ultimately come to side with our core macro data refiners. But if they do, you're going to have to introduce new villains, right? You're going to have to introduce, like, the bigger bad to then overshadow the bads that we knew. And maybe the biggest bad is capitalism.

It's capitalism. It's obviously capitalism. Clearly. Pineapple bobbing at gmail.com. Pressy-cheevee at Spotify.com. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about anything that we have outlined here today or feedback on my decision to litter this table in front of me with open boxes.

We'll be back with more White Lotus coverage. Thanks so much. This has been so fun. We only have a couple more episodes left. You guys have been really crushing it with the severance emails, the severance theories. The Presti's TV feed is like really the joint is jumping and it's been really fun. We will be probably doing, our plan is to do sort of like a

live severance theory pod and I'll give you a little bit more information about that the closer we get to it. But I just wanted to put that on everyone's radar that that Rob and I are going to do sort of like a before the finale live speculation fun thing. And that's it. We'll see you soon. Bye.