KarenX

I wonder if we will see another Gemma escape attempt and see that next time, a very angry and disillusioned Milchick will just bring Ms Casey straight to Mark S on the Severed floor.

Ok. I mean… Milchick cracking under the strain, reasonable, yes, expected. Milchick turning into some true believer hairshirt repentance cult stuff…. No. That was not earned by the characterization of Milchick to this point. It was weird for no reason, imposing cult world-building where it doesn’t belong and is redundant. It’s bad writing. Ms Cobel is already a quasi-monastic devotee to Lumon the ReligionIMeanCorporation. We don’t need to see Milchick do it too. Milchick’s story of an outsider with an upper management career trying to advance himself by meeting the needs of employees beneath him and of the executives above him was already interesting. There are so many ways he could crack. I thought the paperclip punishment he imposed on himself was a perfect amount of crazy. I also thought his shaking hand and Mark Scout’s shaking hand built on the suggestion from last episode (their scene in the elevator) that Mark and Milchick will become allies (I hope as a season cliffhanger!) It was perfect! And then the secret mirror and the talking to your reflection and it was weird for the sake of weird and redundant and unbelievable from Milchick and thus boring. And I don’t love that the writers added it to this show.

Hmmm. I’m not sure how many Lumon plants can be in one office. Helena yes, Burt, maybe? but I think he was severed to get Fields—who he doesn’t seem to love—to shut up about his infidelities. Gretchen too would be too many. I think a main theme of the show is “how to survive a corrupt regime” and the show is demonstrating that people living within a corrupt regime are all corrupted by it. Even Devon. She really had no answer for Ricken when he pointed out that his idiotic Innie book was paying their mortgage. Even the Innies are losing their innocence. Maybe Irving is the least corrupted so far, but we don’t really know what he does with his lists and secret documents.

Then she should leave Outie Dylan, and co-parent/collect child support, and find a different husband. She is using a man (Innie Dylan) to feel better about herself, in an environment where she can literally coordinate with Innie Dylan’s boss to summon Innie Dylan on her schedule, for Feel Good Gretchen Time. If this were non-exploitative, then Dylan would be given reasonable productivity goals he could choose to meet for established incentives. He could be an active participant in this. He is not. This is happening to him, outside of his control. And the info Gretchen provides about his children and family is just a list of facts that Dylan seems to enjoy equally. Gross gross gross

I mostly didn’t love this. We have so few episodes left and the scenes in this episode didn’t hold together. I don’t love seeing Milchick self-flagellate, and Helena’s behavior at the Chinese restaurant seemed irresponsible (for a CEO) and immature (for an adult). I just don’t believe the Milchick we’ve seen to this point would self-recriminate like that. And I hate that they are making Dylan’s Outie such a loser. It feels like sabotage of these two characters. I straight up despise Gretchen for exploiting Dylan the Innie because she’s bored. She’s awful. The first meetup was endearing but now it’s icky. And excessive. Do Mark and Helly and Irving and Dylan all have to be manipulated sexually? It’s too much. That said… The dinner party was some Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf realness. I was into every barb thrown at that table.

If we go by the words of Lutheran Pastor Joanie and Jesus… Christ?, then Innies are distinct people with their own souls. Mark S is not married to Miss Casey. His romance with Helly R is not adulterous. Outie Dylan’s wife is cheating on Outie Dylan (with an Innie), at least emotionally.

I think this may speed up Milchick’s acts against Lumon but I don’t think the paintings and performance review triggered it. Milchick probes Natalie for an empathetic reaction to the absurdity they face but he’s looking for allies. Think back to that S2E2 scene of Milchick in Devon’s house. He first tried to get Mark to come back to work by saying that they fixed all the problems. It doesn’t work. His last-ditch appeal to Mark is interesting: Your innie did something brave and rebellious and deserves a chance to come back. Milchick knows Mark S could be an ally. He doesn’t know how to tap into that and at the end of S2E5 he is absolutely LIVID and takes it out on Mark (fucked Helly’s Outie) but did you see did you see?!?!? The way that they filmed it in the elevator?!?! Milchick literally crossed a line and entered Mark’s space. He crossed the line! He went to Mark’s side. Anyway I was very excited and I gasped when that happened.

One of the themes of the show is grief. Mark, Gemma, Devon, and Ricken were best friends. Gemma died. We know how Mark handled it. We don’t know how Devon is managing it but she said she has grief. Ricken hasn’t said anything explicitly but he is sad, too. I assume all his nonsense is a form of distracting himself and also trying to control/tame a dangerous environment. His fifth book is a dumb book that attracted dumb people to his fame. He’s acting like an influencer. But that might not be Devon’s OFR: Original Flavor Ricken. Ricken could pull off a real Trojan horse and I think he will. His character is mysterious will turn out to also be important. I’m as pissed at him as Devon is, though, for calling Natalie, “Nat.”

I suddenly feel like I’ve seen an innie pull a white lunch sack out of a fridge. The snacks are probably just snacks. I think they are provided lunch from Lumon. I feel like I might have seen Petey do that in the Mark reintegration flashbacks.

Now there are three blue turtleneck sweaters! Milchick’s from Mark’s first day back, Helly R’s in this episode, and Gretchen G’s in this episode.

She is a terrible liar in every setting!

I don’t think so. Mark Scout(ie) said to Devon in the diner that he’d had to tell Gemma’s students that Gemma had died. She was a teacher of Russian Lit. Ms Cobel did dismissively refer to Mrs Casey as a part-time innie so I guess it’s possible she had time to be severed and a professor.

Maybe his parts are appearing in Sucked Off or Go Down when they disappear from his sight. Maybe Pete’s soulself being able to leave the grounds is some kind of indication that he is ready to move on, but his head keeps leading him back to his ghost friends. He doesn’t want to leave them. It’s a conflict.

Loved it. And now I love Nancy more! I think Sass must have been injured or killed hunting that moose? Pete should have had a lot longer before losing his body from being off property. Wasn’t he in the Caribbean for like a week?

If Amazon is delivering to a business… I realize now my story about the UPS deliveries to my old office are not an Amazon story. Does Amazon have different delivery protocols for businesses and houses? Would an Amazon driver need a signature for delivering to a business? Wandering the halls of a business is not realistic though.