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S02.E05: Trojan's Horse

juno

By juno
in Severance

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arc

arc

OK, first off, dentist type tools are always scary esp in a non-dental-care context.

A thought about the Bad Hallway: how are the fluorescent lights so bright but the hallway so dark? That black paint in there must be nearly Vantablack quality.

Ahhhhh, there's the Helly R walk! Helena even trying to act like Helly, didn't walk like that. Really really solid acting work from Lower.

Thank goodness for subtitles. I would never have guessed "Gråkappan" was spelled like that.

So one of Kier Eagan's first industries was ether. But (from a previous episode) what the hell is an "ether mill"? I'm pretty sure real world ether isn't milled.

LMAOOOOOO at Milchick's "This went well."

BTW, I've remarked before on how Mark S's suits are unflattering, and almost certainly by design, but today he's wearing a slightly better proportioned suit.

I love that even the paper towels are blue. MDR blue? Lumon spends a truly astronomical amount of effort into shaping the workplace experience.

Actually laughed hard at "Your first performance review is today, right? ... That was a question." Is Miss Huang gunning for Milchick's job?

I think Milchick was negligent in not removing the "Hang in There!" poster from the break room, considering it seems to reference Dylan holding the OTC levers down and those were Irv's last words to Dylan. I guess they probably would have noticed its absence anyways, but Milchick should still have tried to remove such a fraught poster.

ahahahahahahahahaha, Miss Huang didn't get to do another theremin performance.

Sydney Cole Alexander's work in that little scene with Milchick was phenomenal. Obviously the context means Natalie couldn't just speak honestly, but still, great work on the writers' part to let the acting tell the story wordlessly.

OH WOW, Irv left a message behind! Milchick was super negligent not removing the poster. But also I guess it means the security cameras weren't replaced with hidden cameras if Lumon genuinely had no idea the message was there.

"here is the lunch menu" -- ahahahahahahaha. This has been one of the funnier episodes of the whole show so far.

Lumon doesn't just print out a monthly (!!!) performance review summary, they have it professionally typeset and with context-appropriate illustrations. Amazing. Feels unfair to have blamed him for the theft of Graner's security card, since that was mainly Graner's fault and it happened under Cobel. Surely as the leader of the severed floor it should have fallen to Cobel to disable his keycard once he went missing. If memory serves, Cobel already knew Graner was dead by the time the innies mounted their little OTC mutiny.

I also love that "too many big words" has come up. I like Milchick's expansive vocabulary and it feels like all of Lumon -- Cobel, Natalie, Drummond, Jame Eagan -- use unusual words. But "incorrect use of paperclips" is so incredibly petty.

Minor (?) detail: why does Milchick change clothes between upstairs and downstairs? It's a white button-down shirt and tie upstairs, and a turtleneck sweater downstairs.

Awwww, I like outie Irv and outie Burt having a moment. And I really love that the show didn't drag out Burt surveilling Irv but just got right to a confrontation.

And I loved Mark's second reclaimed memory from his innie. I wonder if all those outie facts from the wellness session are real.

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Dev F

Dev F

(edited)

If I had to title this episode I might have called it "You, Me, and Fields," considering how much of it centered around an absent third party getting in the way of a relationship between the characters on screen, from Irv's death fracturing the MDR team to Helena spoiling the relationship between Mark and Helly, even to Milchick bridling at Drummond's criticisms of his kindness reforms by insisting that he instituted them "because I'm not Harmony Cobel."

Edited by Dev F
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dwmarch

dwmarch

1 hour ago, arc said:

"here is the lunch menu" -- ahahahahahahaha.

That was hilarious. I love how this show gives us representations of weaponized bureaucracy.

1 hour ago, arc said:

Sydney Cole Alexander's work in that little scene with Milchick was phenomenal. Obviously the context means Natalie couldn't just speak honestly, but still, great work on the writers' part to let the acting tell the story wordlessly.

And now I'm rethinking this scene. At first I thought she was a die hard true believer. But as you have reminded me, she didn't say anything. A true believer would have said they loved the paintings or some other ass-kissing remark. Natalie choosing to just dismiss the question tells us she also has "complex" feelings on the subject.

1 hour ago, arc said:

But "incorrect use of paperclips" is so incredibly petty.

I think this also ties into what Milchick was getting at with Natalie. He basically asked her "do you also have to put up with this bullshit?" and the paperclips thing is a great example. Are you trying to tell me that Lumon employees have trouble telling how to read something because the paperclip is backwards? God forbid these people should ever encounter a toilet paper roll that is put on the wrong way!

I have a feeling they'll figure it out soon enough but now that they know Helly is an Eagan, why aren't they trying to use that to their advantage? If Helena can pretend to be Helly, Helly can pretend to be Helena too. I thought this actually happened in the first season when they encountered the goats for the first time. The guy who was herding them was deferential and scared he was going to be in trouble and after the season 1 finale, I thought back to that moment and thought it was because he thought he was in the presence of Helena Eagan rather than Helly R.

Here's hoping Devon divorces Ricken. That is one of the great mysteries of the show to me. How does she put up with this pompous prick?

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arc

arc

10 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

The guy who was herding them was deferential and scared he was going to be in trouble and after the season 1 finale, I thought back to that moment and thought it was because he thought he was in the presence of Helena Eagan rather than Helly R.

I dunno, maybe MDR is special, but none of the refiners knew Helena's identity. Presumably the only things innies know about the Eagans are what's doled out to them in the sacred books and the Perpetuity Wing, and so on.

12 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

At first I thought she was a die hard true believer.

When she first gave the blackface paintings to Milchick, the Board had to remind her to say she was moved by her own such gift. Then Milchick choked out a half-hearted appreciation, the Board ended the call before he could finish, he gave Natalie a "can you believe this BS" glare, and she returned a very pained smile she clearly had to force, before switching the topic to his promotion, where she could more genuinely congratulate him.

(But right now, my money is on Natalie never making any overt move against the company. She may feel the microaggressions, but she's already in deep with the immoral and probably criminal acts of the company.)

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aghst

aghst

That performance review -- did they say it was a monthly review? -- makes you wonder how serious or unserious Lumon is.

According to the actor playing Milchick the complaint about Milchick using big words is Ms. Hwang throwing Milchick under the bus.

That was the #1 criticism in the review.

The #2 criticism was improper use of paper clips.

But the guy did bring up how disastrous the ORTBO was, how Egan heiress was put in a compromising situation.

BTW, Helena didn't want to ever have to go back and have her Innie activated.  Hmm, so she got her desire or curiosity about sexy times with Mark out of her system after the one hook up?

Obviously Mark can't tell Helly R what happened.  She's already upset that Helena tried to pass herself off as her.  Bombshell is coming.  Milchick after the bad review took a dig at Mark, telling him Helly will find out that he fucked her Outie.

But back to the review, the guy said Cold Harbor will be one of the biggest accomplishments in the history of the planet.

Will it be a huge deal or can you trust the judgement of a guy who is making a mountain out of a paperclip molehill?

Not sure what's suppose to be happening at the end though, Mark finds himself in that dark corridor, where Gemma is telling him about his Outie's quirks, like two scoops of the same flavor when he has ice cream, paying his heating and electrical bills within 3 business days.

Is that a part of his reintegration?  Because instead of reintegration bringing more consciousness and knowledge, it looks like Mark's mind is playing tricks on him.

 

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arc

arc

8 minutes ago, aghst said:

Not sure what's suppose to be happening at the end though, Mark finds himself in that dark corridor,

Looked to me like the season 1 corridor to the break room, not the Exports Hallway to the down elevator. Innie Mark definitely had experience with the former corridor.

I took the outie information as outie Mark reintegrating by experiencing some of the memories of innie Mark's wellness sessions, where Ms Casey would tell the innie various good points about their outie. I haven't rewatched the wellness sessions from s1 though.

10 minutes ago, aghst said:

Will it be a huge deal or can you trust the judgement of a guy who is making a mountain out of a paperclip molehill?

I think Helena could have fought being sent back to the severed floor, esp fully severed instead of with a Glasgow Block, if Cold Harbor was ultimately inconsequential. This is already something so important that they brought back original MDR because Mark wouldn't accept the replacement refiners.

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maddie965

maddie965

(edited)

So no one asked Hely what happened when her innie was out? And she didn't tell them? I know there was a lot going on, but, for Hely, that just happened.  Of course she would have wanted to tell them, specially Mark. "Hey, I pretended to be Helena and told everyone the truth about what happens here" is quite a big deal.

Poor Mark. Going from outie to innie without warning, feeling betrayed (and maybe raped?) by Helena, not knowing if he can trust Hely, meeting his wife but not really... no wander he's a mess right now. But yeah, stop being as asshole to people, Mark!

I don't understand how Irv could have left a message to Dylan. And is it about the corridor of hellish lights?

OMG Irv and Burt together again! Please please let that happen.

Edited by maddie965
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Affogato

Affogato

It sounds as if ‘cold harbor’ is closer than we think.

I have Many random and maybe disconnected thoughts. Ether was much used in dental surgery as an anesthetic. It was also used as a drug and sometimes called ‘Lethe’, which kind of connects it to severance, since people forget themselves when they undergo the process. It also maybe means that Lumon is connected to big pharma, ether as an addictive drug, opiods. Mark has deadened his grief with the severance drug, Dylan his failure, and so on.

I really feel for Helly R in this episode. The others never doubt that they chose to work on the severed floor, this is not her choice. I suspect it was never Helena’s choice, either, and she is genuinely afraid.  I can see Helly as being Helena when she was a little girl, before she put on her defensive mask. I like the Innies more than the Outies, a lot of the time and they have so much less baggage. I will be sad when they are reintigrated, I think. 

Now that it has been pointed out to me it is hard to unsee the connections with slavery, and Rickon’s self help book rewritten as a slavery bible is a horrifying thought. No wonder Devon is horrified. 

What is going on with Mark? His cough doesn’t sound good. And his ‘handler’ may have done this many times before and may not have any respect for his life or his outcome.

Miss Huang is not to be trusted.

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KarenX

KarenX

(edited)
9 hours ago, dwmarch said:

Here's hoping Devon divorces Ricken. That is one of the great mysteries of the show to me. How does she put up with this pompous prick?

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.”

Edited by KarenX
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Affogato

Affogato

1 minute ago, Colorado David said:

well now lots more questions and darn few answers.

i have never paid attention to the orientation of a paper clip in a stack. now i doubt i will never not notice it. thanks show.

what is this  dentistry angle??

It could simply be religious implements (of torture?) stemming from Lumon’s history with Ether. A dental anesthetic. Maybe they use them in the baby goats. There is an unpleasant thought. 

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iMonrey

iMonrey

Well, at least this episode got the story back on track after last week's fiasco. But the concept of true Severance is starting fall apart now that they all know Helly is an Eagan and that her Outie was posing as her. I was kind of surprised Milchick was so frank and open about what happened. One thing the show does really well is make a distinction between each Innie and Outie as if they were really two different people, and now those lines are beginning to blur. 

Loved the scene in the elevator when Milchick asked Mark if he told Helly he fucked her Outie. That was tense.

I want to know who the hell Irv keeps calling. Maybe he's reintegrated too?

I still think the aesthetics of the show are just weird for weirdness's sake. A phone booth? 

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arc

arc

22 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

Why was Mark drinking garlic juice (or something?) and taking those pills? I vaguely remember the pills from season 1 but not fully.

Not outright stated but presumably to mitigate reintegration problems. He only started taking them this episode and right when he saw Reghabi, who's apparently now crashing at his place to oversee his reintegration.

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peachmangosteen

peachmangosteen

(edited)

OK that's what I figured but sometimes I'm afraid there's some deeper meaning to everything lol. I actually think this show is a lot more straightforward than my initial impression of it.

I also kept trying to remember if Petey was coughing. I assumed that's also a reintegration side effect. I hope so at least since I don't really want them to add a 'Mark's sick' story to this at all.

Edited by peachmangosteen
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ombre

ombre

20 hours ago, arc said:

Minor (?) detail: why does Milchick change clothes between upstairs and downstairs? It's a white button-down shirt and tie upstairs, and a turtleneck sweater downstairs.

Because Mr. Tillman is a beautiful man and in a cruel, hard world we deserve to see his in both business formal hotness and business casual hotness. 

 

(or because as middle management he has to dress up to be fit to meet the board's reps but dress down to be Mr fun for the innies. And the very act of eating his time changing his costume is indicative of the life of middle management.)

 

(but mostly because it is worth the world getting both formal and casual fineness.) 

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iMonrey

iMonrey

4 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I also kept trying to remember if Petey was coughing. I assumed that's also a reintegration side effect. I hope so at least since I don't really want them to add a 'Mark's sick' story to this at all.

Granted, "Severance" is a totally fictional procedure, but from what we've seen about it (a chip inserted into the brain, etc.) I can't imagine why trying to treat or alter the brain signals would make someone cough. 

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CarpeFelis

CarpeFelis

6 hours ago, ombre said:

or because as middle management he has to dress up to be fit to meet the board's reps but dress down to be Mr fun for the innies.

Exactly. This reminds me of a flavor-of-the-month workshop called “Teaming for Change” my whole organization had to attend several years ago, led by a bunch of executives who were all dressed casually in jeans and polo shirts to give us a “we’re all in this together” impression that absolutely no one was falling for.

I very literally LOL’d at “misuse of paper clips”. And I thought Boeing was ridiculously bureaucratic.

Did anyone else initially think those giant drawers at the beginning were actually a morgue? I was surprised when all that was in the drawer was some dental tools.

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aghst

aghst

(edited)
8 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

 

I very literally LOL’d at “misuse of paper clips”. And I thought Boeing was ridiculously bureaucratic.

It makes it appear that MIlchick's supervisor is digging for reasons to downgrade or fire him.

You see it in real life performance reviews, not something so obviously trivial, but they try to come up with reasons to deny you a bigger raise or a promotion.  Or as a prelude to firing people because they're told by management to rank staff so that when they do layoffs, they can whittle the bottom 10 or 20%.

In the context of the show, you see how it's part of a ridiculous ideology for Lumon.  First they have this cult of personality around their founder, the whole mythology they concocted to almost deify him.

Then they have these arbitrary rules including the way they evaluate job performance.

First they gave Milchick the absurd and offensive paintings and expected him to like it.  Now they give him this poor performance review.  Milchick takes it out on Mark with his crack about him fucking Helly's Outie.

But it may ultimately be a setup to Milchick rebelling against Lumon or actively opposing the company's interests before quitting.

Edited by aghst
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CarpeFelis

CarpeFelis

(edited)
3 hours ago, aghst said:

First they gave Milchick the absurd and offensive paintings and expected him to like it.  Now they give him this poor performance review.  Milchick takes it out on Mark with his crack about him fucking Helly's Outie.

But it may ultimately be a setup to Milchick rebelling against Lumon or actively opposing the company's interests before quitting.

Could be. But I’ve also been thinking for quite a while that the Severed floor is a gigantic psychological experiment of some sort. (ETA: if I had to guess, it’s about methods of control.) Notice how people have to find their way around all these ridiculous hallways like they’re rats in a maze. And who could be better test subjects than people who don’t know they’re in a test? People who sign up to be in a psych experiment might try to do what they think are the “right” behaviors.

Similarly, maybe while Milchick thinks he’s part of running the test, he’s also a subject, like the subjects in the Milgram experiment in which the people giving the shocks were the actual test subjects.

Edited by CarpeFelis
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JenE4

JenE4

(edited)
On 2/14/2025 at 5:29 PM, peachmangosteen said:

The Lumon hand soap was giving me more of that Lost vibe. Loved it.

I thought this episode was so much better than last week. Easy to follow, made sense, moved the plot along nicely.

Why was Mark drinking garlic juice (or something?) and taking those pills? I vaguely remember the pills from season 1 but not fully.

 

On 2/14/2025 at 6:01 PM, peachmangosteen said:

OK that's what I figured but sometimes I'm afraid there's some deeper meaning to everything lol. I actually think this show is a lot more straightforward than my initial impression of it.

I also kept trying to remember if Petey was coughing. I assumed that's also a reintegration side effect. I hope so at least since I don't really want them to add a 'Mark's sick' story to this at all.

While I agree that the jars of white substance Mark was drinking was likely some type of medication to help with his reintegration, along with the pills, there still could be some deeper meaning because in the intro animation, Mark is seen spilling those jars, which I thought were baby bottles until this episode. Though, it’s probably just more of an Easter egg, as the intro also has the mug with Irv’s photo, which was also in this episode. Since they cut irv out of the team photo, I doubt they’ll let them keep the mugs. But it’s handy that the bereavement kit already had mugs of each of them at the ready—just in case any of them die on the floor. The dot-matrix banner with the “quarter 871-883” or whatever numbers instead of birth and death years was a nice touch. Likewise everything about Milchick’s monthly performance review! It was a “total vibe” but, along with the conversation with Natalie about the paintings (a psychological Trojan horse of a gift) is also a good way to illustrate that the people in charge are basically being psychologically tortured and controlled, too. It helped to lay the groundwork for accepting why Helena is forced to make her Innie go back to the Severance floor, because Cold Harbor is mysterious and important—moreso than respecting the free will of Kier’s heir. Mark wants Helly, so he gets Helly…at least until he finishes up the final 15% of Cold Harbor, I guess…and then what? But we also found out that Helena didn’t go down there to spy or control or even necessarily to live the life of Helly (though the fling with Mark was a nice bonus)—the Board was going to make Helly go down there and she was just damn tired of her Innie trying to kill her, and then the other one (Irv) tried to kill her, too!

Edited by JenE4
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seank941

seank941

4 hours ago, JenE4 said:

 

While I agree that the jars of white substance Mark was drinking was likely some type of medication to help with his reintegration, along with the pills, there still could be some deeper meaning because in the intro animation, Mark is seen spilling those jars, which I thought were baby bottles until this episode. Though, it’s probably just more of an Easter egg, as the intro also has the mug with Irv’s photo, which was also in this episode. Since they cut irv out of the team photo, I doubt they’ll let them keep the mugs. But it’s handy that the bereavement kit already had mugs of each of them at the ready—just in case any of them die on the floor. The dot-matrix banner with the “quarter 871-883” or whatever numbers instead of birth and death years was a nice touch. Likewise everything about Milchick’s monthly performance review! It was a “total vibe” but, along with the conversation with Natalie about the paintings (a psychological Trojan horse of a gift) is also a good way to illustrate that the people in charge are basically being psychologically tortured and controlled, too. It helped to lay the groundwork for accepting why Helena is forced to make her Innie go back to the Severance floor, because Cold Harbor is mysterious and important—moreso than respecting the free will of Kier’s heir. Mark wants Helly, so he gets Helly…at least until he finishes up the final 15% of Cold Harbor, I guess…and then what? But we also found out that Helena didn’t go down there to spy or control or even necessarily to live the life of Helly (though the fling with Mark was a nice bonus)—the Board was going to make Helly go down there and she was just damn tired of her Innie trying to kill her, and then the other one (Irv) tried to kill her, too!

After rewatching the scene with Helena, I'm curious if she even knows what Cold Harbor is. When the season started, I thought they were just hiding things from the audience, but now I wonder if the entire project is so compartmentalized that only the board knows what it's really about. 

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KarenX

KarenX

23 hours ago, aghst said:

But it may ultimately be a setup to Milchick rebelling against Lumon or actively opposing the company's interests before quitting.

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.

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JenE4

JenE4

59 minutes ago, KarenX said:

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.

Yeah, they definitely did some cool things with the cinematography to symbolize the two halves of the characters. I thought it was particularly interesting when Helly was practically begging Mark to trust her and distraught that he was treating her differently, they somehow had the back half of Mark fading into the light/white of the background. I don’t even know how the heck they did that! But it was before the reintegration triggered at the end, but showing us only half of Mark was present for this conversation.

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Jack Shaftoe

Jack Shaftoe

I love the Ricken is the kind of windbag that doesn't differentiate between a Trojan horse and Trojan's horse. He would fit right in at Lumon.

I am kind of surprised how Dylan immediately accepted Helly as, well, Helly, rather than wonder if her outie is pretending to be Helly once again.

How did Burt find out where Irv lives? And why did Lumon even tell Burt why they were dismissing him? Seems out of character for such a need-to-know bunch of passive-aggressive freaks ("Here is the lunch menu"). They don't even tell the innies what year it is, judging by Irv's "obituary".

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arc

arc

(edited)
5 hours ago, JenE4 said:

they somehow had the back half of Mark fading into the light/white of the background. I don’t even know how the heck they did that!

I think it was a corner of the hallway in the foreground and blurred due to shallow depth of field.

2 hours ago, Jack Shaftoe said:

How did Burt find out where Irv lives?

He followed outie Irv home after the unsanctioned OTC ended? I mean, they didn't outright tell us, but we can just assume some mundane thing happened.

Edited by arc
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ombre

ombre

(edited)
On 2/13/2025 at 11:59 PM, arc said:

I also love that "too many big words" has come up. I like Milchick's expansive vocabulary and it feels like all of Lumon -- Cobel, Natalie, Drummond, Jame Eagan -- use unusual words. 

Milchick's vocabulary has always reminded me of "signifyin'" - the transgressive wordplay that African-American communities have long used as a statement of worth, joy, and protest.  And in the context of a show that is both deliberately color-blind and world-building around worship of a bunch of crazy white 19th century peeps, I find this totally fascinating.

On 2/14/2025 at 1:25 AM, dwmarch said:

And now I'm rethinking this scene. At first I thought she was a die hard true believer. But as you have reminded me, she didn't say anything. A true believer would have said they loved the paintings or some other ass-kissing remark. Natalie choosing to just dismiss the question tells us she also has "complex" feelings on the subject.

Someone posted an excellent interview with the actor who plays Natalie over in the Perpetuity Wing thread.  She talks about how Natalie is a true believer.  Ever since listening to it I've been debating everyone else in the show in relation to that question - where are they on the true believer spectrum?  Which then begs other questions.  Why and how did they come to work at Lumon in the role they serve?  How has their belief changed in the course of events?  (The part of me that studies American slavery also sees these questions in relation to the ways that belief in the validity of slavery changed over the course of the early republic.  To generalize, earlier generations were more likely to see it as a crappy system but they were too deeply in debt to do anything about it.  See Jefferson's comment about having the wolf by the ears.  Later generations developed all sorts of religiousish and scienceish justifications for slavery and gradually became more consistently True Believers on it.)

I am most curious about Milchick.  He's done nothing to show us true belief.  He strikes me as a man who is doing a job.  An increasingly strange job.  He's speaking the lingo and doing the things, but I'm guessing that he's not really a believer and thus he's kinda flying blind.  The kindness strategy was an attempt to get to the end goal (Cold Harbor completed), but it's neither in line with the corporate disdain for innies nor getting the job done.  A very, very tough position.  And particularly interesting as it's quite apparent how his various kindesses are, in themselves, exquisite psychological torture.

On 2/14/2025 at 2:07 AM, aghst said:

That performance review -- did they say it was a monthly review? -- makes you wonder how serious or unserious Lumon is.

I mean, f the job is making widgets then they're very unserious.  If the job is surveillance then they're knocking it out of the park!

On 2/14/2025 at 10:53 AM, Colorado David said:

what is this  dentistry angle??

I've assumed the dental tools were to remove Irv's chip.  Which would make it very, very hard for him to ever return.  He truly would be dead to the show.

 

I watched quickly over the weekend but I always seem to get more out of a slow rewatch during the week.  I'll write more about my thoughts from that later.  Only want to say that a lot of people are asking about Mark's cold.  We did see that Petey was coughing a lot and having other symptoms (bloody nose, iirc).  He was also living outside in a broken greenhouse in the show's endless winter, so there's no way to tell if it was from reintegration or from his circumstances.  It seems clear that the show is using cold-like symptoms to show that integration is taking hold and to remind us of the risks of re-integration.  I doubt that they'll get into, say, what's happening on a cellular level to cause those symptoms.  That would probably be relatively boring.  It's enough for it to show that he is (slowly) re-integrating and that re-integration is dangerous.

Edited by ombre
quoted three folks, forgot to respond to one!
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Ilovepie

Ilovepie

What! Not one comment about the work of art that was the watermelon head of Irv???? So creepy! That whole funeral was awesome, and Dylan's speech was perfect. "For the least fun guy in the world he was really fun." "He put the dic in contradictory".  A little sugar with salt indeed. I think it's interesting that Mark was like "he's not dead, he's just not here". I kind of like the funeral situation though - my dear friend that I worked with for 20 years retired last year and at times I feel like I am in mourning missing her at work. At least we are still friends, but it's not the same - how sad for these guys because they won't ever see each other again and even if they did, they wouldn't recognize one another.....

I really hope Milchick breaks on the Innie's side when this comes to a head. He is not a true believer. How much of a company man he is willing to be is not clear yet. He sure didn't waste any time "tightening the leash" after his review, did he? I guess fear is his only weapon - the MDR team does not respect him and are not afraid to say so at this point. I think Mark was surprised by that elevator interaction, but the reality is that Helena fucked Mark, not the other way around. 

I hope we get to see the ham dinner with Burt, Fields and Irv. Also, who the hell is he calling from that payphone?????

  • Like 4
Pi237

Pi237

3 hours ago, Ilovepie said:

What! Not one comment about the work of art that was the watermelon head of Irv???? So creepy! 

Yes! That was both terrifying and hilarious. And they were eating pieces of it with the funniest, sad, confused, shell shocked looks on their faces. Brilliant.

Its funny how the innies are basically who these people really were before Life and other people happened to them. 

  • Like 3
seank941

seank941

5 hours ago, Ilovepie said:

I hope we get to see the ham dinner with Burt, Fields and Irv. Also, who the hell is he calling from that payphone?????

I think Irv might be working with the anti-severance organization Petey was telling Mark about in season one. I've been waiting to see the outies start meeting and Mark isn't getting reintegrated just to see his wife, at some point I'm sure he'll have to do some undercover work as payment. 

  • Like 3
catsitter

catsitter

On 2/16/2025 at 8:44 PM, Jack Shaftoe said:

I love the Ricken is the kind of windbag that doesn't differentiate between a Trojan horse and Trojan's horse. He would fit right in at Lumon.

I am kind of surprised how Dylan immediately accepted Helly as, well, Helly, rather than wonder if her outie is pretending to be Helly once again.

How did Burt find out where Irv lives? And why did Lumon even tell Burt why they were dismissing him? Seems out of character for such a need-to-know bunch of passive-aggressive freaks ("Here is the lunch menu"). They don't even tell the innies what year it is, judging by Irv's "obituary".

I thought Burt said he had been following Irv.

  • Like 1

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