The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Severance’ Season 2 Premiere: Are You Innie or Outie?

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney play the ball game to recap the Season 2 premiere of ‘Severance.’ They start by briefly looking back at the first season, before discussing some behind-the-scenes context on the three-year hiatus between seasons, their anticipation for its return, and how they felt about the first episode back (2:53). Along the way, they theorize on the introduction of Miss Huang, and the truth behind Helly’s identity (41:03). Later, they talk through how the final shot of the episode potentially reveals something about the mysterious macrodata refinement process (59:43). 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

Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J-Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. Wow.

That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s, in the 2000s, preferably on Spotify. 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.

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Boershead. Backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftmanship behind every bite. Borgeshead committed to craft since 1905. Hello, welcome back to the prestige TV podcast. That's my very good friend, Rob Mahoney, and I'm his best friend, Joanna Robinson, and we're here to talk to you about severance season two. Rob, how are you doing? I prefer Rob M these days, actually. If we're just going to go by really formal. holidays. Okay. Rob M. and Joanna are here reporting in on Severin Season 2. We are thrilled. We are so excited. Rob and I have not been this excited about a show that we've covered in a little while with love and respect to the shows. We've been recently covering this is one that we are like very

passionate about. We're really excited about. So just so you know, Severn Season 2, this is a week-to-week Robin Joe joint. That is what we are doing for the foreseeable. So we'll be doing this. We're also going to, yes, catch up with the agency, as we promised at the end of that season. So we'll be back to do an end of season check in for the agency. And also, you guys really like the pit, question mark. Slash, you work in the medical industry. We got a lot of emails from doctors. Thank you for listening.

Doctors and nurses and all sorts of medical professionals. So thank you for listening. Thank you for emailing with your insight. It was very educational. So we will be checking in on the pit. Not every week, but, you know, sporadically. So keep the emails coming. We love to hear them.

We're going to hit you with some Severance-specific email options in a second. Rob and I have been doing some brainstorming. But in general, press chton-tv at Spotify.com is where you can find us to talk about the agency, the pit, severance. Squid game. Your old Squid game, thoughts, whatever it is, we'll be here for. for you. Did you just watch Presumed Innocent? Welcome. Yeah. Did you consume the Rangoon? Yeah, exactly. So before we get into our severance specific emails, we thought we, in our sort of like more

ambitious state, we're like, should we do a whole entire episode, recapping season one? And we didn't do that. But we bring, we come here to you today with Rob and I put together and not shared with each other, our very impersonal, like sort of three things to remember from season one from each of us. I've just decided we're going to go back and forth sort of saying what they are. Rob is like, should they be big picture? Should they be tiny little things? And I said, whatever moves your heart, that is what we're here to talk about.

Because I do think the show does a pretty good job, despite it being three years since season one. And I don't know if this is just informed by me having just binge season one of Severance over the last few days. But I think season two, episode one, which we're going to talk about in a bit, does a pretty good job of sort of refreshing certain things and recapping certain things. Rob, what's your sort of like number three thing to remember from season one of Severance that you want to share? This is going to be an interesting dance between the two of us, Joe.

As I try to weave around what I anticipate you might pick, so we're not too redundant in our selections, I'm going to go kind of bigger picture, something that is hinted around throughout season one, something is intimated in exchanges between characters or little bits of context, that there's still a lot of resistance to the severance procedure itself in the outside world. There's sort of a battle for whether this is a thing that should exist for everyone outside of our core characters. And as a result, there's kind of an ongoing PR battle happening. And you see that in the season one finale as a Hellie's Audi, Helena Egan, as it is, is basically attempting to get up on stage to put a face to this procedure and convince people

But actually, it's warm and fuzzy. It's okay. Everyone is so happy and so much happier this way. I think it potentially explains some of the softer, friendlier Lumen that we see here in season two as well, kind of post-potential news apocalypse, putting a new face on this whole thing. And trying to spin it in a completely different direction because it's pretty clear that not a lot of people are on board of it. Stop motion animation, Lumen. Kiana Voiceover Lumen.

A hundred percent Kiana Reeves' voiceover. Great. I mean, if I could pick someone to voiceover, my complete corporate overhaul from my sinister reality, I would definitely pick Keanu. Okay, I will sort of yes say on that with my number three, which is that a reminder that this isn't really dealt within the season two episode one because they're dealing with a lot of other things. Bob Balaban is here. Like there's a lot of important things to dwell on. But reminder that Irving, in addition to sort of chasing after Bert in his foray out in the outside, we find out that he's got a trunk full of Lumen employee information. And there's also just like, you know, this is a very theory-friendly show. So like I don't know how to talk about things without talking about theories next door to them. So just there's this prevailing theory that Irving, because he's been at Lumen for nine years, but only severed for three years, there's this,

a prevailing theory that perhaps he once had Milchick's job or something like that, that Irving has been at Lumen, that Irving maybe was management higher up something and something about being there, set him on this course that he wanted to either whistleblow something and he was severed to shut him up or severed in order to pursue something.

But just that Irving, in addition to being the most devout of the NEs, his fascination with Bert and his painting of this spooky uki hallway that we see Miss Casey go down at the end of season one, he's got a lot of information in a trunk

in his house. He certainly does. Let me, yes and, your yes and. Because I also have an Irving-related item, which is, I would say we're starting to get some clarity as to the direction of this, but it's pretty clear that the boundary between Annie and Audi is at least a little bit porous. We see Irving in the outside world, as you said, painting the black hallway that leads to

the testing floor over and over and over and over. Immaculate work, great motorhead deployment. I'm in favor of all of it. Yeah. But just a reminder that if it's been a minute since you've seen Severn's season one, we also see Irving's iny see the kind of black paint goop seeping into his workspace in a hallucinogenic sort of sequence. And so during season one,

admittedly, I was wondering which way is it going, right? Like, is this the understanding of the inner world seeping into the outside world? And this is a vision that the outer Irving has had in his painting.

But you're right. Like, a lot of our signs now as we enter season two, and certainly a lot of the theories are out there, point much more toward Irving having a past within the company that would at least lead him

into that hallway. I think your number two really underlines It's a very important question of like, how different is your iny and your outy? How severed is your severance? How much can you compartmentalize your humanity, your memories, your grief, whatever it is? We'll get to Helena in this episode, but there's, you know, there's a moment where she defiantly says, you know, we have nothing in common. The inis and the outies have nothing in common.

We owe them fucking nothing, right? She's saying lots of things in this episode. She does say a lot of stuff. Okay, that brings me to, you know, we'll sort of get into our theories about what are they doing? What is the point of Lumen? What is the point of severance? We don't have a clear answer to that. But I do want to underline, I think, one of the more perturbing in a sea of perturbing things.

There's a lot of perturbitments going on. perturbation happening here. Jamie Egan, who is the current CEO of Lumen, who is Helena's father. in the finale says to her that she will be at his side at his revolving. His what now? His revolving?

Joe, you've never been to a revolving before? Do you even revolve, bro? So, um, what is a revolving? Are we seeking some sort of artificial immortality? That's what it always seems to come down to with these like, uh, people with too much money and science on their hands. So is the idea of a sort of digital resurrection, like how much can we recreate humanity, how much can we sever humanity? Is he going to revolve into something wholly artificial or is part of him going to revolve into Helena, his heir, or what is all going to happen?

But the word revolving is so disturbing to me. And it sets my mind spinning in terms of like, what is the point of severance and Lumen? It, of course, is not what they're packaging, which is like, come be a happy pliant worker for us. That's a perk for sure. But what is the larger, certainly more nefarious goal of the severance program? Yeah, like, ultimately, the severance program itself seems like just a shield to protect very sensitive information. And specifically, like, as you say, what it is that they're doing,

which is almost has to be terrible. Almost has to be whether necromanic or not. We'll see. I mean, there's certainly a lot of things happening in the show that are flirting with the edge of death and existence. And that's why, for me, I think one other thing to keep in mind is

we don't really know if reintegration is even possible for these characters. And so there's a lot of things happening in this season two premiere where, for example, our kind of core four macro debts are given the choice of you can stay here or you can go.

But what's meant by you can go is your existence can blink out. Because there's no reason to think that you have a life up there, that you would be allowed to continue to exist. I think the hopeful eventuality for these characters is that they would find some way to reintegrate any and Audi.

But we've seen that go pretty messily and end in death so far in terms of PD trying to navigate that process. Admittedly, he did not follow the post up instructions. Didn't follow the aftercare instructions, Rob. They were very specific, and he blew it. It was rest, ice compression, elevation, and he didn't do it.

So, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. If you're not going to do your PT, you're not going to reintegrate. But I hope, I don't wish ill, obviously, on our core for anyone else. But I rewatching season one, Yulvaska is an actor that I love as PD, watching how much fun they had with the scrambled reintegration reintegration uh him sort of blipping in and out of reality and memory and the way that they used camera trickery or and sort of like in camera movements to convey all of that is just a really fun part of season one that I had kind of had a loose memory up but it was fun to revisit so I would I wouldn't hate seeing that again but hopefully in a

way that doesn't require any of our favorite characters to bleed heavily from uh any orifice whatsoever. Unless they're into that, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to yuck anybody's yum. We're not yucking yums here on this podcast. Okay.

So is that your, is that your last one? That's my number three, or I guess my number one. My number three or my number one, if you prefer, oftentimes in these sci-fi stories where the question of like,

what does it mean to be human? What does it mean? All that sort of stuff like that. Even Christopher Nolan does this. Oftentimes it comes down to this notion of love. And so I just want to remind everyone that Mark, that Mark, there's the Bert and Irving storyline from season one,

which gets a little bit of a recap here in season two episode one, it's so good. Be it, Dylan. I love that he used the word courtship in this episode, describe it. And in season one, he's like, are you sweet on him? It's like the phrase he used, very sweet. So, Bert Nirving, that is, of course, beautiful. But I just want to point out that Mark, in his various guises, has like a plethora of love

interest in season one. Good for you, Adam Scott. There's Hellie, of course. Of course. There's Miss Casey slash Jemma, his deceased question mark, resurrected question mark. Big old TBD on that one.

Wife. And there's, as Milchick sort of put out in this episode, this idea that Mrs. Ms. Cobel or Mrs. Selvig has once an erotic thruffle

with Mark's Annie and Audi. What an idea, by the way. Great idea, and are we going to see some version of that inside of this season? Let's tune in to find out. But there are moments in season one, whether or not it's under the guise of her undercover work as this sort of health nutcook neighbor

that she plays in season one. but that that Mrs. Selvig, you know, says is hitting on Mark like pretty heavily in multiple occasions. So, and then there's also a fully another woman that Mark

terrorizes with his grief in drinking a problem in season one. So this idea of connection of love and it doesn't have to be romantic love. I think Dylan with his kids and his family. We know

some casting information about his family in season two that we may or may not get into. But does that count as a spoiler, a casting? I think for this show it might. Okay. We won't talk about it then. And this is as good as many to promise you all, as I've already promised Rob, I'm not watching past one episode a week with this show. This is a theory show and it is cheating to watch ahead.

So we will be in the dark down here in the basement in the dark. In the office hellscape with all of you. With all of you. Just scrabbling through the hallways, try to figure out our theories together. So that is, we are not watching ahead on this show. Not a bit. So those are our three random things.

If I could smuggle one thing, it would just be that there is a room full of baby goats, and we still don't know why. And I just want to put that out there in the world. We don't know why. And the quote, when they bust into the room of baby goats, the guy says, you can't take them yet. They're not ready.

And I'm just waiting for them to be ready. Oh my God. What if we get sort of like a little mini baby goat stampede through the hallway? I know. That'd be phenomenal. I do have, you know, as to pivot off the baby goats. Yes. As we soft launch potential new emails.

I'm so excited. I have a couple, but I can't wait to hear yours. What are yours? The goats lay the eggs at gmail.com. Okay. Which was one of the explanations for the egg party. And perhaps why they were so good. Those did look like some incredible deviled eggs.

The egg bar is coveted as fuck. It's just a quote I randomly have on a scrap of paper here on my desk. I like that. So, you know, it's important to remember. Yeah. How about the UUR at gmail.com? Okay. The U.U.R.

Okay. I feel like with a lot of these, there's some questionable spellings. There's some dubious grammatical constructions. I want to pick one that's clear in a way that the UUR is not. Perhaps pineapple bobbing at gmail.com. That's a really good one. I have a couple from this episode. I only have two from this season two episode one.

Symbolicroob at gmail.com and Nightgardener at gmail.com. Oh, Nightgardener's good. Also, would watch Nightgarner. The night gardener? The upcoming Netflix series starring, like, I don't know, Jason Statham or whatever. Like, I'm up for that. The night manager spin-off, the Nightgarner.

Of course. It simply must be. Yeah, okay, great. Okay, anything else that I had written down from season one. Do you have other ones that you want to float? One that I don't think can fly based on the questionable spelling of Egan that I'm guessing people just don't have off the tip of their tongue. Animatronic Eagans at gmail.com.

I also, in honor of my favorite exchange in this episode, between Irving and Dylan, your favorite perk at gmail.com. Or I'm your favorite perk at gmail.com if you prefer. I was wondering if you wanted to do something with, like, finger trap but I didn't

workshop that well enough it's pronounced fingee trap but okay the VIP area of Pips at gmail.com

what a show this is obviously Waffle Party at gmail.com is right there is right there all right

so we're going to go with pineapple bobbing at gm dot com yes we've conferred away from the cameras in the supply closet

Waffle party not available So whichever one of you, sick fucks is sitting on Waffle Party at Gmail.com, you won this round. But pineapple bobbing at Gmail.com is what we're going to go for. I love a pineapple. So it sounds great to me. I think it's aspirational too. Like I would love to see the pineapple bobbing in action this season at some point. I actually think I know it sounds like it would be really hard, but I actually think it would be quite easy because there's so much leafy stem to grab onto. Joe, what? Okay. So when's last time you participated?

in or saw an apple bobbing competition. It's been a long time, but a pineapple is not easier. Okay. Let me tell you, this last October, as you know, Rob, that I did a live show for a Buffy Vampire Slayer podcast. I like a part of the show was an Apple Bobbing competition that I did not compete in, but I watched and I watched one participant demolish the other by simply going for stems. Yeah, that's the move.

and tossing them over. So you can, there's so much pineapple stem to grab. But it's all pointing. It's quite point. Also, the pineapple itself

is so heavy. It's hard to pick it up by your teeth by the leaf alone. Listen, you make some excellent points and consider the next strength

that would be required for the flicking gesture. I'm strange just thinking about it. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So it's Pineapple Bobbi

in gmail.com or prestige tv at spotify.com. We'll get it from both angles. Also, please pineapple bob, you know, safely. We, you know, we don't strain yourself. Okay. For legal purposes, we do not recommend that anyone out there pineapple bobs, but if you were to do it, we'd love to hear about it at pineapplebott.com. Okay, I want to start, before we get into like theories or bigger sort of picture ideas of this episode of Severance, I want to want to start with just like a tiny behind the scenes context to say that this episode one came out three years ago. I had just started at the ringer when this came out. So it has been so long. But there's a couple of creatives sort of at play behind the scenes here. And I wanted to

explain some, just quickly run through some slight behind the scenes tension and let that help explain why I was a little bit worried about this season and why I'm really happy that I quite liked season two episode one and the reviews of people who have seen more are all quite good. So that's a huge relief. Dan Erickson is the name of the person who came up with the idea for severance in the first place. This is his original concept. Exciting. Since Dan had never made TV before, Apple in their infinite wisdom or whoever, you know, whoever

paired him with Mark Friedman, who does have TV experience. Mark Friedman and Dan Erickson did not get along very well when making season one. And so Mark Friedman, I don't know, other than his own scene or not, is like, I'm out of here for season two. No, thank you. They tried to find someone to replace him to sort of once again. And this is not unusual that you have a creative who doesn't have a ton of TV experience paired with someone who does have a ton of TV experience. for example, a TV show like Lost, Damon Lindelof brought on Carlton Cuse for season to essentially,

you know, because he was like, help. I'm running a TV show and I don't want to do that. I'm a writer. How do, you know, what are the logistics here? Honestly, that sounds like a punchy title. You could put on a Barnes & Noble bookshelf and help many aspiring screenwriters out there. Exactly. Cut that out, Kai.

This is our million dollar idea. We're going to be, we're going to make that. You can fight us in the self-help section. But so that. So that went south. They were trying to figure out someone who could replace Mark in his sort of TV, Infinite TV Wisdom in season two. And Ben Stiller,

who was another, you know, an EP on the show, directed the show, asked Mark to come back because the, you know, according to reports, various reports,

asked Mark to come back because he couldn't find anyone to sort of adequately replace him. Mark came back in some guys. He's accredited writer on episode seven. but I don't think there's no way, in my view, he had the same role that he had in season one. And Dan, of course, has much more TV running experience now than he did in season one.

Who knows how much Ben Stiller stepped up, though, by all implication he stepped up to an even bigger role, perhaps, than he had in season one. And certainly the visual styling of the show comes a lot from his sensibilities. Absolutely. And then they have asked, at one point, according to reports, asked Bo Willemann of House of Cards and Andor fame to work on season three. So these are all these are all this sort of pineapples in the water here, bobbing along in the water here.

A lot of baby goats in need of some kind of shepherd at seems. And so I was quite worried. And then there's writer's strike and there's just like a ton of delays. And even though sort of Ben Stiller and some other people have come out and said like the reports of behind the scene tension are greatly exaggerated. He did in a very recent New York Times podcast say, like, listen, okay, we didn't get along all the time. Like, Ben Seller's like, okay, I'm not going to lie to you. There's some, there was some tension, but it's not as rough as has been reported. So that's just sort of some of the reportage that has happened behind the scenes, all of which has led to

a season two that I was worried was going to be a hot mess. And instead, it seems people are really enjoying it. And especially when you have a show that comes out. out of the gate, out of nowhere, no one was expecting severance to be, even if it wasn't like the biggest ratings hit in the whole world for Apple, at least it's like really, you know, internet friendly, people love to talk about Emmy winning, you know, show for Apple. So when something comes out and has such a sort of explosive season one in that way, I'm always worried about the season two. Definitely.

So Rob, sort of just big picture, where was your anxiety level if any place before season two? And how are you feeling having seen season two episode one? I mean, mine was pretty high. Just any time you get this sort of delay. And in particular, the transition from what I would say is one of the most successful season finale is we've had a recent memory at the end of season one, it's just like a pulse pounding episode that is so definitely sewn together. And then three years of waiting. including not only everything you outlined, but multiple strikes in stoppages in production.

This is a show that's very expensive to make, even though you may not think that based on the setting, but by the camera tricks and overall, like what they're disguising and what they're hiding and overall the structure and styling of the show, the price is clearly piling up for something like this. And I always worry with that of, oh, is it going to get too high?

Is it going to get prohibitive? Is there going to be a cutting of corners that has to happen at a certain point? Because this is a show that, among the things I love about it, I love how great it looks and how disorienting it feels and the camera work feels. And if you have to start sacrificing those things,

I think severance stops being severance. But overall, I'm thrilled with where we're starting for season two. And I'm thrilled that, to me, what is like the clarity of this world has not left it at all. I think it's such a weird thing with the mystery box show where so many of them, to me, Joe, feel like such a hodgepodge where shows are trying to wrong foot you in so many different ways. just throw a bunch of different things at the wall.

And there was just all of a sudden a mystical animal walking through the street. And you're like, all right, I guess that's what's going on now. And that's fine. And you can structure your show that way and that's not well and good. Specific mystical animal in line. Oh, no. That's just strictly theoretical. Okay. That's the tip of the shitberg that could happen to a theory show for sure.

Okay. But I think Severance from the get-go had such a specific sensibility in a way that makes the inexplicable parts of the show kind of makes sense. And I was really hoping it wouldn't lose that. And I'm thrilled to say at least one episode in, I feel like we're right back in it. It's a really incredible feat in terms of this near future sci-fi vibe, which can be so hard to pull off.

But it really does feel like a world that is just like a hop-skip and a jump away from ours. Yeah. Which makes the sci-fi that much more engaging, our own corporate paranoia or whatever, you know, our tech phobia or whatever it is that we're feeling here in 2025. There's a very fine line between the show being acceptable to be on Apple, but this would not be made on Amazon Prime, I think, for a bunch of different reasons. Not to draw dividing lines between the various corporate overlords out there,

but, like, Lumen as an everything company, stands very tall over this whole entire story. You were thinking about Amazon? on. I think it it's what comes to mind for me. Yeah, the people who make your deodorant and your snack foods. And run the internet. Yeah, your, you're in, your Lumen Basics. Do you have Lumen Basics batteries in your remote right now?

That's funny that you mentioned that because I was going to say, and I remember talking to sort of like Van and Mallory when we covered this in season one, the Apple aesthetic that's available here and we get it. So this episode opens with our guy, Mark, running for a long time through the halls of the severed level of Lumen. The conditioning on this guy for not doing any cardio on a regular basis is quite impressive. Did you happen to see Adam Scott's Colbert appearance?

No. Did you talk about this? He was talking about the running. Not the conditioning on Mark, who as far as we've seen, only lifts whiskey tumblers and that's about it, right? Maybe a growler at best. I was, because I, you know, Colbert put up a sort of a still image, as one does on the late night, of just the profile of him running. And I was like, that's a Tom Cruise run. And I was got to like, I studied Tom Cruise's run.

You got to study the best. You got to go straight to the grades. The best and the best. Do you have like a favorite Tom Cruise running sequence in a, in, film? You can't make me choose between my favorites like that. I think, well, I think the one, because he calls it out specifically, is Minority Report, because everyone runs, Joe. Everyone does run. Minor Report's a really good and I love Minority Report, but for me it's the firm. And I think because in the firm, he's wearing not just the suit, but I believe also a Billow-Ey

90s trench coat on top of it. It's just a lot of- Is he running through like an amusement park or something? Or am I getting my Tom Cruise runs confused. There's like a ferry, it's like a ferry building. Yeah, fairy building. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. The, Adam Scott and Colbert described it as the blade hands. Like, you've got to blade your hands as you run, and you got to keep the knees high. And that is, that is the cruise run. But so, and then Adam Scott said, and I believe this is true, uh, that they took eight months to film this sequence, obviously not like straight, but, you know, with like breaks or

strikes and all sorts of like that. And watching it, knowing that was really interesting because you could watch it and just sort of get swept up in it is quite fun. But watching it from, you know, like you and I watch a ton of film, trying to track that camera. Oh my God. And how they did that. And obviously, like, someone has to be on green screen because there's one moment or the camera sort of swoops around and almost under him, like around into where there would be a wall and down into where there would be a floor and around him and stuff like that. But I thought it was a really brilliant and fun. But he looks like he's running through an iPod essentially. Like it's, you know, the white, the stark white walls, stuff like that. What did you, what do you want to say about the opening running sequence or the Apple aesthetics? I enjoyed the sequence. I enjoyed all the camera work you described. Like the stitching together of all of that is quite delicate and I think very impressive.

Yeah. And speaks to what I think makes the show impressive in that way. You like just lose him around the corner and that's like a way that they can, you know, stitch a cut in and stuff like that. Just barely. And I like overall the idea that they can do something very fun with the start of this season

where Mark is picking up right where we left off at the end of season one. It is the second that he is walking through the door because of like the any outy dynamic like his consciousness snapped out. I don't know if you heard, but she is alive.

Yeah. And so he snaps into consciousness. He goes running, looking for Miss Casey, looking for the woman who at least is a mirror image of his wife, if not his actual wife. And we're told later that it's been five months

since the events of season one. I would push everybody watching this episode to take all exposition in this premiere with a grain of salt, because basically all of it comes from either Milchick or some like Lumen promotional materials. So I have no idea how much time has passed or not passed. It could be the next day.

It could be years into the future. It could be exactly three years, like we have waited, or a little less than three years, like we have waited for season two. But that it gets to playoff of those. things both here and then eventually when we get the whole gang back together. And so many of those characters are snapping into consciousness for what appears to be the first time since the season one finale. So we're both picking up right where we left off and we had this hanging mystery of like what has been happening in the background while all of these inies have been

snapped out of consciousness. And really funny is sort of mirror image tactic here is that, you know, we start season one episode one of Severance, we're with Mark crying in the car and we watch him go through the whole procedure of going down into the severed level. Here inside of this episode, we're trapped with any mark inside of that reality, and we have no access to the other reality. So to your point, we can't fact-check

Milchick's clearly doctored. Seems trustworthy. The heavily redacted newspaper. The redacted newspaper was tremendous. With an image of them being celebrated in a parade, which when that image showed up in the trailer a couple months ago, the Redders were quick to point out that this is a doctored image of, I can't remember who it is now. It's either like Eisenhower or castor or something like that. It's an existing historical

image that they just like took their group photo from the desk and just airlifted them into the car, and that's as much effort as whoever put that together used. So yeah, we are. We are. We are, stuck not knowing and I'm not upset or impatient about that. I really like that limitation that they put on the story here. I will say the overall drive to... One thing that I was wondering coming out of season one

is what kind of role is the absence of Miss Casey or is her name Gemma? His wife's name is Gemma. Is that correct? Going to play in this season. Clearly this is a character that everyone's trying to locate. Is this a person who's going to be off-screen for entirety of the season, and already we're seeing kind of like flickering images of her pop up into various spaces and consciousnesses, which I have to say, one, I really appreciate because that central mystery is phenomenal and driving, and I'm really eager to see where it goes. But also, like, I really love Dechen Lachman in this show. Yes. And her performance style is always so weird and so haunting.

And I'm always trying to understand what her characters want or are after. And so the idea that we may get, whether it's flashback, whether it's on the non-severed floors, whether it's as we're kind of unspooling whatever this mystery is, she's still involved in some critical capacity. That makes me very happy. Are you a dollhouse man? That's a complicated question.

I'm a dog. I'm a person who watched. Do you like her in dollhouse? She is terrific in dollhouse. And that's a show that I think has a lot of kind of fundamental weirdness in common with separace. Yeah. And she absolutely crushes in on that show.

She was so good. And I've been sort of following her career with great interest ever since. Same. Wanting her to have projects worthy of her, which she doesn't always, she's often sort of this like mysteriously, occasionally there kind of person. so hopefully she gets more to do this season, even more to do, but I thought she did a great job with what she did in season one.

Her, like, wistfulness in season one when she talks about how, you know, first of all, that she's only been awake was it like 16 hours total? And her wistfulness when she talks about spending time with them in the MacroData, you know, office and how it was like how much she enjoyed that. Sad. It's very sad. There's parts of it that are very sweet. And I think overall what I love about their relationship, whether they are aware of it or not,

and Cobel's kind of like obsession, it seems like, with whatever they are to each other, is that it allows severance to be kind of perverse ultimately. Like this is a twisted, gnarled up emotional situation. Yeah. And a lot of other soft sci-fi that's out there doesn't ever really get that far. They like intimate, oh, isn't it kind of messed up that people have severed heads and severed consciousnesses, but they don't get into, oh, this is like actually really, really twisted. And I think what's brilliant about it is that they're using, and this is often the case with

sort of high concept shows, is that they get back to almost like basic soap opera level storytelling. Yeah. That works. It's always worked. It works. And so, you know, to go back to this idea of sort of the love theme, we are watching a like a love quadrangle. or whatever. We are watching Mark S. Talk to a woman who is some facsimile of his wife. And so certainly there's a part of us

that's like, oh my gosh, they have to be reunited. Presumably if she is enough of a semblance of his wife, they have to be reunited. We have to be rooting for them. But then we're also obviously rooting for like, Helly and Mark in their connection. And so they've given us an impossible love trying.

Love Quadrangle. And again, that is basic soap opera storytelling. And also my wife is dead. No, She's Not is also basic soap opera storytelling. Classic stuff. Inside of something that has a lot on its mind and a lot of prestige sheen around its visuals. So I think that works really well. And again, it's impossible for me to separate theory from any plot discussion of the show.

So I will say that, like, Cobell's. personal grief, which seems according to date sourcing of a hospital bracelet, perhaps related to her mother? Yeah. Question mark. Maybe some kind of relative at least. A mother she lost or someone she lost. So if she's someone that is grieving, would she not, like, because I was trying to figure out,

what's her investment in Mark and what's her investment in trying to test Mark and Gemma slash Miss Casey with the, The scented candle and stuff like that. The candle is wild, right? There's like levels of like, oh, this is a weird situation that she's toying with. And then over the course of season one, it gets like pretty deep for her. Because she's a creep, but also. A total psycho. Because she's trying to test something or trying to prove something.

You know, she's asking Mark's sister, like, does he ever think he sees her somewhere? Yeah. I mean, she's testing and she's probing. And so I have to imagine, and outside the scope, seemingly of her. job. And so I have to imagine that... You don't think working as an undercover lactation consultant is part of her job? I don't think the

was it camomile cookies were on the menu there, but like... First of all, that doesn't even sound good. It sounds gross. When I was rewatching season one, she's like, I've been an experimented with camomile and then he eats the cookie and he looks like he enjoys it? Absolutely not.

I know we live in a world that's like the Earl grayification of everything, but some tea's going food and some There needs to be a boundary. You can Earl gray something. You can green tea something, but I don't think you can chamomile something. And I will. Sever that right out. Keep that in tea world. Pineapplebobbing at Gmail.com. If you have a camemile recipe that you feel like we should try, we probably won't. But you should send it. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about zebbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA.

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Obsession. When I have a crush on a guy, no one knows. Be careful. I wish to keep loving more than anyone in the entire world. Who you wish for. Obsession is 96% fresh on rotten tomatoes I love you so, so, so, so much. It's blood-soaked nightmare fuel.

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and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. So what is her motivation outside of the scope of her, of her own corporate ambition?

And it seems to be this sort of like, If she's someone who's experiencing crippling personal grief, would she not be invested in figuring out, does this actually work? Can I sever out this grief and not feel this anymore? Can I forget this person? Can I internal sunshine essentially this person out of my heart and mind? And has that successfully happened for Mark and Gemma?

To your point earlier about the black sludge encroaching, on Irving, who has been severed the longest out of any of them. So, like, how permanent is this? Or did he have, like, an older model? And that's why the black paint is oozing in or sort of, how does, what are the boundaries of this procedure, you know? I think we're still learning what the applications are, too, right?

There's mention in season one about one of the senators who is, like, supporting them in terms of some legislation. His wife gave birth while severed. Sure. What would you want to? I just sever your way through, Rob. Oh, this is a great question. Expense reports, for sure.

I was going to say tax season. So same same. Same same. Anything that fine tooth comb and financial, get it right up out of here. Severed Rob can handle that. Receipts plus forms plus whatever. Severed Joanna can do that. Anything at the DPS slash DMV, severed Rob can handle that stuff.

But I would want to want to be a benign overlord to my severed self and say, Severn Me can also do some fun things. As long as she does the things I absolutely don't want to do, she can go pineapple bobbing. She can pineapple bob her a little heart out, and I will deal with the cuts and bruises on my mouth as a result. It'll be fine. As we're sussing out what severance can be used for

and what it can't be used for, I am fascinated by the introduction of Ms. Huang. One of our new characters who I'm still trying to figure out, you know, as the deputy manager of this office, working under Milchick, is this a character who is severed or not? You know, most of the managerial characters have not been. If this is not a severed character, why is the literal child working in this office? Yeah.

And if it is a literal child who is severed, what is it that they are severed from? Like, my mind is racing with questions about who this person could be? Is it someone with a terminal illness who is like trying to sever their way away from some of the pain of that? Oh, yeah. Like, is this a character who, you know, we see Mark get flashes of Ms. Casey as he looks, looks at her. Is there any relation between these characters at all? Is there any kind of weird cloning shit that's been going on in this place? I don't know what's happening. I just know that this character is mysterious enough. And I have such deep admiration for her organizational

technique and her desk drawers that I am interested in whatever is going on in that corner of the show. The little handgame she has with the rings in the water, I unlocked a memory. And I had like a similar thing. We all did. It didn't have Kear Egan as far as I can. can tell inside of it, but it definitely existed. I wonder what the version of that will be for Gen Z or Gen Alpha. We had all of these dog shit handheld games that don't really work and are not even fun to play. They don't have to deal with it. They don't have to make little silver balls go through little mazes on whatever.

They don't do slide puzzles. But what's their version of the slide puzzle? Yeah, two dots on iOS? I don't know. But the clone idea is a good one. I get really wary inside of a theory show to be like, this character, this character have like a very passing resemblance to each other. So like, but I didn't, but I couldn't help my dumb brain being like,

can I do math to make this their daughter? No, I did the same thing. So, yeah. Clone I had thought of. But could you do math to make it not necessarily their daughter who was born, but a dot, like, grown. I think that it was mentioning of, like, IVF in the first season.

Like, there's just enough bread crumbs to make me wonder. And I agree with you. Like, we are perilously close to, like, Ray Palpatine territory in a way that I don't want to be. Yeah. This is my fundamental concern about this show. I love that central mystery so much about Mark and Gemma. And, like, what is it that happened to her?

And why is it that she is popping up as Miss Casey in this world? There's so many different things. pointing to Mark being a character of like critical structural importance, that I'm worried he's too important. I'm worried he's not just like a guy caught up in this big thing that we're all trying to unravel, but someone who hit key specifically is key to whatever story they're trying to tell.

I'm always a little wary of that. I think I agree with you. I don't want him to make him like sort of looming Jesus or anything like that, but I think he seems more circumstantially important. I hope so. And then actually important. The sort of, what's they called the freshman fluke? The thing that earned him his little, you know, head etching on his desk, has to do with him refining a file quicker than anyone had ever refined a file before.

So yeah, that points to sort of loom in Jesus. But I think it's more like he's a man crippled by grief who has a wife who died or died. didn't in a way that they could sort of exploit to experiment on something, you know? So circumstantially important more than like he's got the midichlorians that they need to do this, that or the other thing. I was really happy. I think it only takes like 18 minutes for our core four. It's really only the core three, but like theoretically the core four to get back together. This is core three. Let's be real about what's happening here. I was a little mad because I was like, I was like as soon as she came out, I was like, oh, that's definitely Helena. That's

Body language is totally different. You know, absolutely. And then they, like, revealed it like immediately inside the episode. I was like, damn it, I wanted to be ahead of the show. Here's the thing, did they? Yes.

I'm curious where they want us to be with that character right now. Oh, you think that there's an interpretation. So Helene when she's, or Helena, when she's saying, what the truth was of her experience up top, that she would lie because she doesn't want them to know. That she's an ego. she's an Egan, that had not even occurred to me.

That's interesting. My default assumption, from the moment she comes out of the elevator and Mark hugs her. It's like the body language is different. And Britt Lauer, a performer I really, really like is she's playing everything so cautiously. Like every exchange between Heli and the other characters, she waits for someone else to take the lead and she responds. She's never the first person to express literally anything. Also the thing she says, she says, where did the security cameras go?

Or he said there were no microphones in here. Also, the biggest red flag, I would say the fact that a person who is supposed to be helly, when given the choice to leave, without hesitation, chooses to stay. Yeah. That's just not something I would believe that the any version of that character would do, which leads us to only believe that this is undercover Helena, trying to do God knows what, with these other people. but she's here for some kind of reason.

I love undercover. Helena seems like she sucks, right? But maybe she's obviously clearly sucks. But perhaps she is on an arc of some kind because there is some softening around her when she's like talking to Mark. She's like very, that it doesn't seem performative, but seems like sort of actually impactful on her.

And of course, since she's the person to so defiantly say, our any and our outies have nothing in common, we owe them nothing. Yeah. She, of course, has to be a character who we're going to see her become more helly than Helena as time goes on. That's the storytelling logic tells me. You think at the end of this episode of Undercover Boss, she's going to have the big confrontation moment with the rest of the staff and be like, you know what? Actually, you are people.

I'm sorry. You aren't just family and baby goats for me to shepherd around. Yeah, undercover Helena is a great idea, I think, for this story. Very good. Very interesting. It kind of puts us on a weird footing to start the season. And overall, I will say about all the core four, whatever you make of Heli or Helena, these are four people who have been through, or at least three people,

have been through something pretty intense in terms of their finale experience in season one and the overtime protocol or whatever it's called. But they're still coming back and kind of keeping each other at arm's reach. Until Irving and Dylan have like the most, the longest, most lovely hug of all time. It was wonderful. You know. But it takes, like, he has to go have a good long cry. Yes.

And can't even talk about what happened with getting to Bert's house. Yes. Until he has some space to process things. And you even see Mark going through the mental exercise of, can we even talk about any of this openly here? Or is this, are they trying to mine our experience for more information? Well, don't worry, Rob. He said there's no microphone. There's no microphones, there's no cameras.

This is a safe space. I can't believe it didn't occur to me that, like, they were trying to sell us another reason that Helena might be lying. But in putting it in close proximity to Irving, sort of being resistant to talk about his experience up top, that makes a lot of sense to me. But what I also love is that in her shitty lie, where she's like, I'm just a sad single person who wears sweatpants

and watches TV or whatever, she's like, it's not that the Garner was there at night, which is a great thing for Irving to pick up on it. night gardener. You ran outside and you found a night gardener. But is that Helena, the most privileged person in the world, can only think, what does one find outside one's front door? Why the help? Oh, the groundsman. The groundsman. The groundskeeper was in his cottage. And I said, uh, yeah. So her body language is different. Uh, her, her voice is lower. Like, you know, she, she's doing, um, and an interview that I saw with Adam Scott, uh, he was, uh, he was,

was talking about how when he plays Mark S, the N. That he will wear a sort of posture device to make sure that he like stands up taller. So yeah, watching you know, we only got a little

bit of time with him, but watching John Duturo play Irving up top with his like paint smeared Henley and all of that sort of stuff. Like that was, these are tremendous performers. And the little choices they're making to distinguish between

their inies and their outies is just a delight, a treasure for us to enjoy. Terturo is so fucking good on this show. He's so good. And that's a character at the outset of season one, because he is so glued chapter and verse, like the company handbook is so easy to hate.

But I find, I think he's my favorite character on the show, not just performer on the show, but character on the show in Irving. And I love everything that transpired between him and Bert. I love the sort of wounded place that we're finding him at the start of season two and what he decides to do with that. I gotta say,

this is just a masterfully constructed and balanced core cast. Those four in particular, we haven't talked enough about Zach Cherry, who plays Dylan. And Dylan is the one Audi we haven't had any time with yet because of the nature of the season one finale.

Right. So I hope we get that at some point, too. We got the introduction of the family visitation center with its ergonomic seating, so we shall see how to that. Does that mean you can visit your family there? Who's to say? Who's to say?

It's right there in the name, but he didn't confirm it. And speaking of Tremel Timmel Timmin as Milchick is such a joy for me. I love him. I love that he's been promoted. There are two moments that I stopped him rewound and watched several times inside of this episode. And one of them belongs to Adam Scott when he's staring down Miss Wong and he says three friends after saying four friends and the like 90 different expressions that cross his face as he tries to keep his eyes and face friendly while seething with rage. That I loved. And then and then Milchick actually I can't even pick one.

There's no one moment. It's just all the times in which he is, actually, it's when they come into the newly refurbished break room, which used to be a torture room. And now we've got nice seating in projector. And he, like, as serving to the tall drink of water that is Irving to sit in the back. And he's just talking about whenever he's like, isn't this great, this gift that Lumen is giving you? Isn't this wonderful? That affectation that he puts on, I find so delicious. I just think it's wonderful.

I think the biggest mystery coming out of season one is why Tramel Tillman was not cast in literally every project over the last three years. Well, Britt Lower, too. Were all of them just in stasis, like, waiting to make more severance, you know? Because I don't think any of them have done much in the interim. Zach Cherry seems like he's kind of always busy. But I feel like all of them are just, you know, we're sort of on hold, which is too bad. And then, you know, we're missing Patricia Arquette. inside of this episode

and then we don't get any of Mark's family all of whom I absolutely love. I love his sister and then of course his brother-in-law is wonderful. But his sister, the work that I do in season one with Mark's sister to, there's a lot of exposition they have to get through

in season one in terms of like who these people are, what their relationships are to each other, what the state of Lumen is, what severance is. There's a lot of high concept stuff that they have to deliver to us. us, all of that is done, I think, some of the best exposition I've ever seen. But the shortcut to establishing intimacy between Mark and his sister is not just like,

hello, sister, how are you? Which is like, oh, it's just like one of the worst things that TV and Bill do. Hey, bro. How are you? You know, but it's like just inside jokes, little voices that they do with each other, little bits that like, you know, sibling bits that they do with each other that they never have to explain. It's just things that, you know, it's just family stuff. And I really love her.

And I'm dying to know, like, I don't know how long running be kept in the dark as to what was her reaction to, she's live or any of the other stuff that happened at the end of season one. I'm dying to find out. I mean, I feel pretty confident in guessing. And maybe this confident,

I'm not going to be hoisted by my own petard with this confidence. Once again, Rob, always, no. Too many petards going around. I doubt very much that any meaningful change has gone on in the outside world. I doubt very much that I don't think it's been exactly five months.

I don't know how long it's been. I wouldn't mind it being five months. I would say zero reform. I expect zero reform. Certainly not Castro-esque parades. Surface level. Yes. Surface, surface,

stop motion animation, Keanu Reeves level, pandering to will do better. Sort of. corporate stuff, but in terms of like, I think the person best poised to pursue meaningful investigative work is Mark's sister. And I can see a version that she sort of keeps the lid on some of the things she knows in order to do some actual further investigation. I think, I mean, I think she has to be very careful. But yeah, overall, I feel like bringing the

group back. And again, the sequencing of how all that happened is fascinating to me. right? You bring Mark back first, we should say, with this sort of dummy new team that he's brought into, which I enjoyed very much, although I kind of wish they had gone full Sean of the Dead with it and done like bizarro macro data team, like just slightly parroting versions, although Ali's Shotcat, I guess, is like kind of a bizarreo

version of Helly in some ways. But overall, it's like the timing of all that and the way that the company acquiesces ultimately to Mark's request to bring back the team. And why would they do that? Yeah, I don't know. Like, ultimately, clearly there's some information that they want. Yeah.

And there's a reason why Helena has now gone undercover, it seems, to participate in that. But why they're bringing back the other two members of the team to accomplish that bit, I'm not really sure. But it seems clear to me that overall the proclamation that, oh, actually, you guys are heroes, mission accomplished, great job. Systemic change achieved is a pacification technique. Yeah. We do get some world-building information.

out of the other team, the bizarro team that we get, just love ball ballaban always. So Mark W., you know, this might be all we get of them. It might be one and done in this episode, and that would be too bad. But this idea that, like, they had different carpet, different... The different...

Different confused colored keyboards. And then Dario, the Italian, that he was like, our Egan's were brooms with plates for faces. Do you have an elevator? We had a rope. So I'm just envisioning them being like lowered down via rope. You know, I believe all of that stuff in terms of like there is world.

We are in Keertown, a company town, Keirville. Keirtown, USA. The state, because there's, you know, God bless the Reddit detectives, as you know, but like PE is the abbreviation for the state that they're in, which is not a real estate. But that there are loom in offices and severed programs throughout the U.S. That is like true inside of the world building here. Within the inner world,

during their wooden sweet, clippy hell presentation that they're given, I think there was some factor in there about like, so it's in over 300 countries throughout the world. And I'm going to call Bullitt. shit on that bit. I don't know. Maybe. That seems easily fact-shack.

Maybe that's giving the world too much credit. This is a public-facing video, right? This isn't just for our core three. I think what Milchick says is all of the new separate employees will be shown this. 100%. That is what he says. But I also feel like it's for like the nervous board members who want to feel like they

can claim that they don't endorse an evil. corporation or corporate slavery or whatever it is. But those people would know that the stop motion puppet macro dat revolution did not inspire any actual change in the real world. So I think there'd be too many things in that video that real people above the world of the severed floor, I guess below the world of the severed floor, could call bullshit on for it to be

for public consumption. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I wouldn't put it past. the fear-mongering among, like, Rickens' intellectual friends about, not fear-mongering. Also intellectual. Yeah.

The dinnerless dinner-party goers. It's so good. Fucking dinnerless dinner-lety. About Lumen's overreach and about the severed program. I wouldn't put it past this world to have, you know, a severed program in every, in 300 countries. But to your point, and we should always remember it,

don't believe everything you're told. Certainly not. All right. Do you want to talk about what we get at the very end of the episode when we get sort of a little bit of information about what this macro data refinement process is actually doing, accomplishing here?

We do get something. Yeah. I don't know what we got, but we got something. Okay. So I can't wait. We're recording this a little early. I can't wait for the Reddit detectives to screen grab this image of Miss Casey that we get at the end of the episode. But I did pull, I did try to do my best Rob Mahoney impression and pull some words here.

We get 20, this is the 25th build. There's the number 25 and then next to it says bill. Yes. Which to me means like Mach 25 of like that is this, if we're building an artificial Miss Casey, which kind of seems like the implication to me. It's at least hinted that way. Like the one we scrapped at the end of season one was perhaps build 24 and this is build 25. that Mark is refining data under the name Cold Harbor

and all of the sort of files that they're working on have names of real towns in the U.S. And I can give you my absolute cuckoo bananas theory on that. I would love to hear it. But the screen, the Miss Casey screen at the end is also Cold Harbor. And this is her face. and the way it's shown visually is sort of like if you look through the ambiguous numbers that are being bucketed in his work

it's like this is intimated that this is sort of the layer of truth behind he's at 68% and that screen's at 68%. 68% exactly so like 68% built this was like a theory in season one that he was able to his freshman fluke his like ability to refine the data

faster than anyone else was because he was always working on building a version of his wife and he knows his wife better than other people. Like that was sort of a common theory. Does this feel like a confirmation of that to you? I'm not quite sure. That's where I am stumbling on the,

is Mark important by coincidence or important by design? Because, yes, it does seem like he is, in some way, to a reassembly of his dead wife or maybe not dead wife in some fashion. And particularly the fact that the numbers are grouped by a sense of feel. It's just like you look at the number and you intuitively feel something is correct and you put them into a bucket. Makes me feel like that is his consciousness identifying something that is familiar to him in something about her. Right.

But how does that relate to everyone else in the room and anyone else working in macro data reform? Like, do they have their own versions of that or are they all working on Miss Casey? I was wondering that because something I wrote on my notes when rewatching season one is when Heli, Hallie not Helena is in the break room and she talks about hearing

like an angry man sort of mumbling behind the audio in the break room and Dylan says he heard a kid crying and so I'm wondering if like if that person for her is a version of her dad

and that person for Dylan is one of his kids you know what I mean and and for Irving perhaps his father who we see was you know serving in the Navy or something like that so is there a person in their life that the severance program is making them work on building you know are they assigned a person somehow

certainly speaks to the revolving possibility, Joe. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. And it gives Helena a dual purpose in doing severance in the first place, participating in this element of the work, right? There's the PR benefit of like, look, I am an executive or at least the daughter of the CEO of this company doing this thing.

And also, I'm helping hypothetically create my dying father a new vessel to live in. I was reading through some Reddit theories this morning. Someone was like, this sounds a very Westworld. I'm like, it does. It really does. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Season one, a good thing. Further on, we have some questions.

But we're in season two now. Yeah. So we'll see. Cold Harbor and Allentown are at least two of the places in Coalpepper. And there's like a few others. And I think in an interview, Ben Stiller says something pretty loose and vague, just like we picked U.S. but I was wondering if there was like a significance to which U.S. cities they picked.

Cold Harbor and Allentown and Culpepper and a few other places. But I did not check all of them, so this could be very quickly sort of. But our all had important civil war moments occur or battles or incidences. And Lumen was found. in 1865, which is the year the Civil War ended. So, like, that's all, that's the extent of my theory. Wow. Something, something Civil War.

I don't know. Something, something Civil War, something, something, red and blue, something, something split. Yeah. There's a lot of things happening here. Exactly. Like, I was like civil war raging, like inside of all of us. I don't know. So I don't know if that's intentional. Probably you could make a civil war argument for a lot of the cities on the Eastern

Sea board. That's very true. But, um... But I like that. where your head's at. We're going to need more yarn to connect all that, but I like where we're going. I have an endless supply. I actually have a ball of yarn right here. You have

skeens and skeens? I do have skeens. I'm always skeaning. Oh, we know that. Okay. So, anything else you want to make sure that we address? I think I am curious to see with Milchick, you know, the severed floor is under new management. He's running this thing now. He

very much wants the welcome screen on his computer to reflect that. He needs a new welcome screen. Why is it that he is so bothered or so haunted or so perturbed by Cobel? Like they didn't have the best relationship, but it seems like there's more, obviously, to that welcome screen situation than just like, oh, I want to be honored for my contributions here. So he's the one who ratted her out. So do you think that like Irving's previous incarnation of his any, he is like a true believer? And he believes that she's sort of like besmirched the good

quote unquote good works they're meant to be doing there I mean look behind that megawatt smile I would believe anything is going on

which is why that character is so great I have a hard time believing that he's that big of a of a dunce it does seem like Cobell is a patsy

and even as he is saying that like I don't think he thinks that he knows too much oh the erotic trouble business the erotic trouble And the idea that, like, oh, she was the one responsible for all of the abusive practices happening here, the break room.

Of course. Of course she's being blamed. But, like, wouldn't he be eager to do that if it meant preserving the good name of a company that he believed in the larger work? I don't have a good answer for you, obviously. So, but I think it is an interesting additional layer that they put on his character inside of this episode. I'm going to guess no. And I say that simply because. Kian Kowbell are shown to be such opposites in so many ways.

And she, in addition to her fixation on Mark, also seems to be like, if not a true believer, at least obsessed with the Kier Egan mission and has her own little shrine to the company slash cult? I think there are different versions of true believer. You know what I mean? There's like the zealot, which she was to a certain degree. And then there's the like, by the book rules and regulations matter kind of.

He could be that for sure. He's certainly a striver. Pineapplebobbing and Gmail.com, if you have some theory about that or press TV at Spotify.com, if you have a theory about that. Anything else you want to make sure that we mention. I just want to give a shout out to Dylan

because I feel like narratively we didn't talk about him a lot in this episode, but just has, as often as the case with the show, banger line after banger line. Fuck, there's easels up there. That has to have been an improv. I really hope that that was his actuary improv. It was so good.

Tremendous stuff. Yeah, I just Oh, also I want to shout out in the, amongst the new snacks at Lumen, Chris's Mints, salsa, fruit leather,

cut beans? What's a cut bean? Is that like green beans in a can? Is that what that is? I would love to find. I mean, it does sound like a healthy corporate-approved snack. In fact, I can't tell you

for certain that there aren't cut beans. in the Spotify office. I know there aren't, and you know there aren't. We know about all of them. I'm not so sure. I do love that about this show. Obviously, there's a lot of postmodern version

of a corporate malaise thing happening all throughout severance. And so it makes the setting so evocative and works so well. The overall, like, Mark S versus Mark W sort of thing brought this out of me where it's like, what I love about severance is it feels like the writer's room got together,

and ranked from 1 to 100, the most annoying things about being in a white-collar desk job. And they didn't bother with numbers 1 through 70. They just looked at 71 through 100, and they're like, someone has the same first name as you. That is an annoyance of office life

that we want to harp on for this little moment in a show that we probably will not touch on ever again. But it's what makes it so great. Around the Mark W post-it debacle, I do want to say, wrathfully, your any, Mark W, is an incredible way to sign off a post-it,

and I think we should start doing that. And then also, Aaliyah Shodcast delivery of, do you even have a brother-in-law asshole? Also, her asking about wind. Yeah. Is it just like someone breathing on you? Very good stuff.

Very good stuff. All right, so that's Severin Season 2, episode one. We had a blast. We're going to continue to do this week-to-week, and we're so excited. We will be digging into all the theories, all your questions, comments are concerns. I got a little deep, but like a little too deep,

but I need to shallow it up into the idea of like how memory works and like the kinds of memory. Like procedural memories? Is that what you're talking about? What are you riffing on here? I don't, I don't know. The way the brain works,

long term memory, explicit memory, implicit memory, all this sort of stuff like that. I just sort of like what kind of, what could you actually do to a brain to achieve? what you do with severance. And like, what would that bring out? What is it saying about nature versus nurture?

Who is hellie? Who could have Helena been if she hadn't been raised by assholes? Could she have been helly, who we quite like? So, you know, all of these are great questions asked. Did you want, do you have anything you want to say about the, the severance pop up that they did in New York this week? a phenomenal throwback to a time I didn't know existed anymore. I love this sort of marketing.

And I think it helped for me, Joe, just crystallize the idea of severance as in this. I mean, I think this is the effect of a thing that's so heavily anticipated that people are really looking forward to. And so it's less to me the existence of the pop-up of them mulling about their office space and doing the little, it's not a vacuum. What is that little roller cleaner thing called? Oh, I don't know. like the little carpet cleaner across the green felt. It's like what they're doing and the fact that they're doing it is not that important, but the outsized response and how psyched people were to see this thing that they loved

and they're looking forward to. That has been cool. Here are my two notes. So in case people didn't see, they put a glass box inside of Grand Central Station in New York and did a little like the four-cubed cubicle setup of the office space. They had three of the core four in there, and then Milchick and Kobel were also in there. So they got Patty there. Patricia Arkhead's there.

I'm like, Johnny, Johnny Totoro, what were you doing that you were too good for the severance pop-up? I was like, they couldn't get Taturo. It's a no for me. He's doing some Batman shit. I don't even worry about it. All right. I'm excited. I love this show.

I'm so excited to back. I'm so excited to talk about it with you. As we mentioned, we'll be back for the agency wrap-up next week, along with Season 2, Episode 2 of Severance and more of The Pit. So if you are a macro data refinement expert, a CIA spy, or a medical professional, and you would like to email us. Yeah, or if you have worked a desk job that you suspected in your heart of hearts

might have actually been a covered-up. attempt to resuscitate a dead relative of yours. I would love to hear about it at pineapple bobbing at gmail.com. Or if you have some other thoughts and feelings about what one should sever their way through, if it's not expense reports in taxes.

I think the birthing process might be a popular one. It's a real doozy. It's a real good one. Pynopledobbing at gmail.com, press tishevee at Spotify.com. Thank you to Justin's sales for his work across this feed in general. He's the best. Thank you to Kai. Brady, who is also the best for producing this episode, and we will see you all next week. Bye.

Stitch Fix. Stop shopping. Get Styled. A plus on the outfit, Ms. Turner. You were about to slay parent-teacher conferences. Oh, these? Just the most perfect fitting jeans. My stylist sent me. Oh, hello. You, who didn't set one foot in a mall and still looks amazing. Just share your size, style, and budget, and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch Fix. Get started today. at Stitchfix.com. To my stylist.

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