‘Severance’ Episode Review: Season 2 Premiere Posits a Peculiar Return-to-Office Plan — Spoilers
[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 1, “Hello, Ms. Cobel.”]
The Break Room isn’t the break room anymore. The Macrodata Refinement team isn’t the same either, and the Wellness Center is just… gone.
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Much has changed in the five months since Mark S. (Adam Scott) last sat at his green-lined cubicle, culling floating numbers into discretionary digital bins. But by the end of Season 2, Episode 1, “Hello, Ms. Cobel,” one has to wonder… has it? What, exactly, is different? Mark, Helly (Brit Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) are all back at work. They’re refining the numbers again. The status quo, at least as far as Lumon is concerned, has been restored.
Coming out of the Season 1 finale, such an idea seemed all but inconceivable. For 40 frantic minutes, the MDR team of 9-to-5 Innies scrambled to learn as much as possible about their Outies’ 5-to-9 lives (save for Dylan, who volunteered to stay behind and hold the switches — a taxing stretch now immortalized as a Lumon inspirational poster with the cheeky slogan, “Hang in There”). What they found out was nothing short of world-shaking.
Irving discovered a horde of bleak, black paintings, before rushing off to find his lost Innie love, Burt (Christopher Walken). Helly learned her Outie is the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan, and she still used her pulpit at a company gala to preach the truth of her fellow Innies. Mark, poor Mark, shook off a surprise hug from Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), navigated his brother-in-law’s stuffy book reading, and discovered his Outie’s presumed dead wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman) was actually alive and not-so-well at Lumon — serving as the Severed Floor’s wellness counselor, Ms. Casey.
How could anyone be expected to sit still at a computer terminal when so much insane shit is happening elsewhere in Lumon’s labyrinthine hallways? Well, setting aside the figurative interpretation, where we acknowledge the compartmentalization required to keep America’s workforce focused on what’s in front of them while [insert top-of-mind catastrophe here] is raging just outside the office doors, Mark’s sense of urgency is obvious in the opening moments of “Hello, Ms. Cobel.” To him, the Gemma/Ms. Casey discover just happened, and he bursts out of the elevator doors, desperate to find her. But like a miniature encapsulation of the ensuing episode, all that running around slowly recedes until he’s completely stationary. Just as each choice Mark makes appears logical enough to go along with, each action Mark takes still leads him back to his desk job — which makes each move seem like it’s been anticipated, to some degree, by the powers that be.
First, he finds the Wellness Center, where Ms. Casey used to work, but the doors that led to and from her office have been walled up. (“I went to Wellness,” Mark tells the team later on. “It’s gone. I mean, gone.”) Then, when he’s introduced to a new data refinement team — including Bob Balaban as another Mark and Alia Shawkat as an Innie who’s extra curious about life on the outside — he throws a fit, tries to get them fired, and then starts running again, this time until he reaches the manager’s office where he can scream into the speaker (a direct line to the Lumon Board of Directors) that he wants his “friends” back.
“We must be cut to heal, mustn’t we.” That’s what Mr. Milkshake, er, Milchick (Tramell Tillman) tells Mark after describing how “painful” the MDR team’s escape to the outside was for the company, as well as himself personally. But I’ll admit, when he first said it, I heard a different expression: Instead of “heal,” I thought he said “heel.” The former implies tending to exposed wounds can be painful but necessary, while the latter is more of a threat: The hurtful employees should be brought to heel, or cut down to size until they learned to be submissive.
In the moment, it’s clear Mr. Milchick meant “heal,” given how apologetic, supportive, and accepting he is with Mark and the rest of MDR throughout the episode. But I still feel like “heel” may have been Lumon’s ultimate agenda. After Mark S’s attempt to frame Mark W, he’s stripped of his status as department chief. After breaking into Mr. Milchick’s office, he’s escorted to the elevator and reprimanded harshly enough that Mark asks if he’s being fired.
Instead, he’s given exactly what he asked for — all his friends come back. Rather than being punished, Mark is rewarded… but why? Mr. Milchick previously told Mark that his colleagues had refused to return to Lumon. So what did the company offer them to come back this time? Or… was Milchick lying before? Was it actually Lumon that didn’t want Helly, Dylan, and Irving back in the building? If so, why cave to Mark’s demands now?
Let the theorizing commence, but I’m betting on a simple concept: After 155 years, Lumon Industries knows how to keep the trains running on time. Severed workers are hard to come by — at least as difficult to track down as most full-time professionals with years of experience in their field. Corporations would love if everyone thought otherwise. That workers were the interchangeable cogs they’re often treated as, but guess what? They matter. It’s extremely difficult, time-consuming, and costly to fire and hire employees working in a specialized field. Lumon knows this and, having already tried the stick (with Ms. Cobel), they’re trotting out the carrot (with Mr. Milchick).
So, rather than simply disciplining the rogue data refiners, the executives acknowledge their feelings by enacting superficial refinements at Lumon. They play to the team’s sense of self-importance by recognizing their rebellion as an important step in the company’s continued evolution, calling their actions in the Season 1 finale “The Macrodat Uprising” and building another weird video to immortalize their motivations and the ensuing reforms. (Keanu Reeves is not credited in the episode, as the voice of the admin building, but there’s no mistaking John Wick’s authoritative timbre.)
Some of those improvements have already gone into effect, like “hall passes,” which allow freer movements for the formerly “locked” up employees, and new snacks in the vending machines, including “fruit leather,” “cut beans,” “Christmas mints” and “salsa.” (Dylan’s wordless, flabbergasted reaction to his animated doppelg?nger shaking and rattling with joy is hysterical — just fantastic stuff from Zach Cherry.) Other reforms are harder to spot, like eliminating cameras and microphones from the break room (not to be confused with the Break Room, which has already been transformed from its former incarnation) and letting the Innies decide for themselves if they want to keep working at Lumon (rather than letting their Outies make the final decision).
Is this last offer a real choice or just an illusion? We’ll never know, since none of the returning MDR employees try to walk out the “restricted” exit. Irving comes the closest, but Dylan’s pleas to stay — while arguing Burt would want him to — convince the “tall glass of water” to keep serving Kier. Dylan, meanwhile, is given extra incentive to stick around. As the only team member with a married Outie, Mr. Milchick shows him plans for an Outie Family Visitation Suite, where Dylan’s wife Gretchen can spend time with her husband’s Innie. (Hoo boy, sounds pretty risky for Lumon!) Helly is all-in on Innie solidarity, vowing to help protect Gemma/Ms. Casey, who’s also Mark’s primary reason for staying put. (Neither one mentions their feelings for each other, though it’s clear Mark’s hunt for his Outie’s wife creates an awkward situation for he and Helly’s shared romantic pursuit.)
So there they are: back at their blue keyboards, together again, refining those numbers. To Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan, plenty has changed. They’ve won key reforms for severed workers while keeping their team intact. More importantly, they got a lot of answers on their first trip outside, and they’ve set plans in place to get even more — Mark about Gemma, Dylan about his own family, and Irving about the black hallway his Outie is obsessively painting.
But none of that matters to Lumon. The Board certainly wants the MDR team to feel like they’ve won, or at least like they’ve made gains — hence all the hullabaloo about The Great Macrodat Uprising — but no corporation does all that out of the kindness of its nonexistent heart. Lumon is getting something out of Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving sorting numbers at their work stations, and it’s got to be something more valuable than everything they’re doing to keep them there. What could it be? Well, that’s what we’ve been asking all along, isn’t it? The more things change…
Grade: A-
“Severance” Season 2 releases new episodes every Friday on Apple TV+.
Further Refinement:
? The opening — set to a bouncy piece of jazz by Les McCann — has brought astute and tearfully timely comparisons to Agent Dale Cooper’s inability to find a door out of the Black Lodge in the “Twin Peaks” Season 2 finale. Director Ben Stiller’s opening is a beautiful, lively way to start the season, and it’s made all the stronger for anyone who takes notes of its inspirations, purposeful or subconscious as they may be. Keep carrying the torch (log?), everyone, even if you don’t know where you’re going.
? I laughed out loud when Mr. Milchick said Ms. Cobel was living next to Mark because she had an “erotic fixation” on him and wanted to form a “throuple.” Honestly, it’s not the worst lie Lumon could’ve come up with, but it’s certainly the funniest.
? “Why are you a child?”
“Because of when I was born.”
And that’s all we need to say about Ms. Huang (for now).
? “Dude, what’s wrong? You poor up there?”
Never change, Dylan. (Really, don’t fall for that Outie Family Visitation Suite.)
Code Detectors:
? Who is the man in the suit watching Mark from the hallway as he stands in the Wellness Center? It’s not Mr. Milchick, who’s wearing a dark blue turtleneck. This mysterious onlooker is in a blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie.
? Mark is told he and his Macrodat Uprising team achieved “international fame” as the “face of severance reform,” but what does that really mean in the context of Lumon Industries? Assuming the Uprising is only known among severed workers — this being an all Innie episode, we don’t know what’s happening outside — will other departments recognize them if they cross paths? Will they trust Mark & Co. more easily? Will they keep them at a distance? Or is this all just a way for Lumon to pump up its employees without giving them anything substantial? Without enacting real change?
? Gwendoline’s questions about the outside raise a few important reminders about the Innies. They don’t know what state they’re in (“three of us guessed Wyoming”), they don’t know the color of the sky (although that has to be included in the Kier videos or art, right?), and they don’t even know what wind feels like. (“Is it just like being breathed on, kind of?”) The Innies’ innumerable questions show now only what kind of disadvantage their limited knowledge offers when going toe to toe with their unsevered bosses; it emphasizes how fully they’ve been immersed in their world, in their reality, in the only place they’ve ever known.
? Speaking of Kier’s art, “Kier Pardons His Betrayers” is quite the title for a painting that shows four men buried up to their shoulders under a scorching hot sun. Considering Kier, in the image, is holding a sword, is he about to “pardon” them by ending their torture with a swift blade to the neck?
? “A gardener? …a night gardener?” Why does Helly lie about what happened when she was outside? The most obvious explanation is that she’s scared. Telling her fellow Innie rebels that she’s the Lumon CEO’s daughter might make them doubt her, box her out, or worse. But given how fiercely Helly fought against her Outie last season — when she repeatedly tried to quit, especially — I’m not sure anyone would believe she’s holding any repressed loyalty (to her Outie or to Lumon). And no matter why she’s lying, she should’ve concocted a better story than “night gardener.”
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