Severance

I realise this is supposed to be a dystopia but I can't help but notice that the workers are not being bothered by Outlook or Teams/Slack pings. They get to focus for hours at a time on their mysterious and important work, and what's more, they are unambiguously rewarded for executing that specific task well.

Is anyone else just the tiniest bit jealous? Maybe Jame Eagan read a lot of Cal Newport or something.

I mean a cosmically fair tribunal.

Ok, so what is Helena's game here? Why did she go and visit him?

It seems like she's stalking him to an extent, and comes up with an apology for the OTC - but this feels more like an aplogy for deceiving his innie during the ORTBO and feels guilty about it.

It almost seems like the start flirting a little, but then she calls his wife by a different name when she will clearly know it's Gemma. Surely she'd know this would piss him off? What was the point in that line?

Then there's a moment where oMark is about to leave and looks at her almost as if he recognises her but can't place her, in which he suddenly runs off and changes his mind about re-integrating. What was it that got him so spooked? Is it the idea that she might be behind Gemma "dying"?

The completion of Cold Harbor is hyped up so much throughout this series. Jame Eagan  tells Helly AND Helena about it excitedly, Drummond describes it as “Lumon’s greatest day”, and Lumon fired three good workers in favor of three known dissidents because they knew Mark wouldn’t complete Cold Harbor without it.

So when Gemma walks into a room and disassembles a crib, many viewers were either perplexed or in disagreement. How could this be the crowning moment? How could it be so banal?

Theories on the purpose of cold harbor fall into two camps:

It’s testing compliance

ColdHarbour Gemma is different from every innie we’ve seen on the show. In mark’s first moments, he threatened to find and kill Petey. Helly assaulted mark and tried to run away. Even Gemma’s other innies show reservations, like when she’s distressed on the plane or reluctant at the dentist or hateful in the Christmas card room. 

CH Gemma is different. She’s given the same onboarding question and standard memory wipe as Mark & Helly, but instead of acting out, she complies instantly with the task she’s given. 

Kier sought to tame the four tempers to create maximum efficiency, and in CH Gemma, that’s worked perfectly: she has no objections to any prompting whatsoever. Cold Harbor could be about trying to create the perfect employee.

It’s testing severance bounds

We know Cobel was obsessed with reintegration and putting iMark & Mrs. Casey together. She loots Mark’s house for his wife’s things to prod iMark during the wellness sessions, and watches closely as iMark sculpts a tree in front of Mrs. Casey.

We know at least some of the rooms were personalized to Gemma’s anxieties and dislikes; Allentown forces her to write thank-you cards repeatedly because she hates doing that. In the same way, Cold Harbour is personalized to her greatest pain: losing the baby with Mark.

Cold Harbor could be about pushing the bounds of severance; Dr. Mauer says so himself. There is no emotion bleeding through here; CH Gemma tackles one of the lowest moments of her life completely docile and oblivious.

(As an aside, if this was the intention, mark “passed” this test when Gemma did not. iMark abandons his outie’s wife after his outie experienced the most resplendent joy in years, proving love can’t transcend severance.)

What do you think of Cold Harbor? What was it trying to achieve? Was it the best way to achieve either purpose?

Sorry about it being a YouTube short, I’m not sure how to upload it as a video.

Sheet music is found here, go and give them a five-star rating if you have an account

Spoilers, obviously.

In the finale, we get the back and forth comedy argument between Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and an animatronic Kier Eagan (voice of Marc Geller, animatronics by Ben Stiller).

I'll quote the exchange below:

Kier: Hail your earthbound steward, your very own flooooooooooor manager!

[audience cheering]

Milchick: Thank you, Kier! And may I say, you're looking very handsome, sir.

Kier: Thank you. I'd say the same of you, if not for my favorite core principle.

Milchick: Probity?

Kier: No ... Vision!

[audience laughter]

Milchick: Well, it's truly special to host a man so illustrious, so sapient, so magnanimous--

Kier: My, you're verbose. Good thing you didn't write the first appendix. It would have burst!

[audience laughter, Milchick visibly discomfited]

Milchick: It's an honor to receive your barbs, Mr. Eagan. The legacy you've left behind is truly and irrefutably larger than life.

Kier: You mean my company?

Milchick: (coldly) No. I mean this wax statue that's five inches taller than you actually were.

[audience chuckles, awkward silence]

Kier: (darkly) Thank you for that feedback, Seth.

Milchick: Thank you, Kier.

This is clearly a prepared routine. It has setups and punchlines and Milchick is visibly reading most of his lines from note cards. However, the performance obviously goes some way off the rails in the back half.

Who wrote this routine? Who performed Kier's lines in-universe? Has Milchick rehearsed this routine or does he only know his own note cards? Is Milchick's height roast part of the script or improvised?

I'll post my thoughts in a separate comment.

I have some questions because I recently started watching so I may have missed a lot of details.

-Why do people give birth in a severed cabin, is it to forget the pain of birth?

-How did Irving get all that info on Lumon employees?

-I thought Mark had his chip removed but he seems to not be reintegrated.

-What is the small bottles of baby food in Marks refrigerator?

-Is it ever mentioned what Lumon produces/sells today other than ether?

-Is it ever mentioned or explained how Lumon/Kier went from business owner to cult figure?

I'm not sure if this stuff has been explained and I missed it or if it's purposely left vague for the mystery.

The title undersells it a bit, they also got Jen Tullock (Devon) and Gwendoline Christie (Lorne from Mammalians Nurturable). Weird to hear Dichen Lachman's natural Australian accent.

TV Insider has been running a Severance Aftershow on YouTube for all of season 2. Full playlist

Warning: Season 2 finale spoilers here!

This is an interview with the show's creator. I'll post my opinion on it in the thread.

I think Lumons goal is to create a chip, that can be activated every time a person has to do something unpleasant or painful.

With this chip a person that is afraid of flying or the dentist could just activate the chip and can travel easier and have better dental health.

People that hate to do physical exercises can simply let their innie do the work and be fit and healthy without having to work for it.

Woman that are to afraid to give birth can have children without having to suffer through a potentially painful birth. When Lumon has a chip like that, they might be able to convince a lot of people to get chipped. That is something Jame talked to Helena about in season 1 episode 9. "Everybody should have a chip!"

And when everybody has a Lumon chip they might have darker plans to control people with these chips.

So on the testing floor they created a chip that makes Innies willing to take the pain for the Outie. Maybe they are able to copy Gemmas chip after Cold Harbour. And these copied chips could then be implanted in others?

What do you think?

I thought at first, she standing their in this fire lit room a fire burning behind her, she must be evil. She looks like the devil in this scene. But this is not about Christianity, it is about the Lumon religion! She is the fallen arch angel of Lumon! She is not the antichrist, she is the anti-kier!

Lumon is all about the cold. Cold colours everywhere, the iceberg picture in Milchicks office, the home town of Cobel (home town of Lumon as well?), Cold Harbour, ... But there is Cobel standing in very warm light with a fire cracking behind her. She is no longer a soldier for Lumon. She is the anti-Kier now! She wants to burn this company to the ground now!

there, i said it. i know im the odd man out here but i just cant hold it in anymore. i love tv. i do not love this show.

its like depression distilled. zero positivity ever, zero joy from any character in any situation. its like watching torture porn.

i get it... it has some interesting ideas awash in a bucket of symbolism sprinkled with some of my favorite actors. it just seems like such a chore to watch not caring what happens next.

/rant

ok, go ahead, beat me up. i prolly deserve it.

Opening theme funked out

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I was thinking back to the first episode when Mark nearly ran over Helena in the car park, providing a confirmation "oh hey he really doesn't recognise her".

Knowing what we do now though,

1. Did Mark not realise that he nearly ran over one of the Lumon leadership? He acts as if she was just some random employee.
2. Why is Helena walking to an old car in the outer reaches of the car park when she is so senior and tends to get driven around? (Maybe the flowers she's carrying are a clue?)

It's great news. They need some time for satisfying conclusions.

This relationship between Burt and Irving had me in tears tonight. Not because of gay representation, not because of a cute old couple. But because the writing for these characters has been so great that someone that is relatively young and straight could feel such a strong connection with this. Meaning, I have almost no connection with them on the stereotypes or identities we define, however, they are still the most relatable in this show. Their relationship is so human and so connected.

I don't feel like this is even just good LGBTQ representation (it is don't get me wrong) but it's just such well acted and written that it just representing that on such a human level that I'm just balling my eyes out paused at 35:14.

This show has some flaws but scenes like this just really make me look forward to every week. This was the peak of this season for me.

These two "side" characters have become the most interesting relationship with so much authenticity.

Not sure if anyone is active much here. But just wanted to type some thoughts out into the ether.

Edit: Not directly related to this but you can quote me. "Burt is not severed"

Edit2: I guess the "Burt isn't severed" theory is pretty well thought through after some googling.

Season 2 Episode 9: The After Hours

Aired: March 14, 2025

Synopsis: Mark and Devon team with an ally. Helly investigates further.

Directed by: Uta Briesewitz

Written by: Dan Erickson