S02.E06: Attila

[arc]

2 minutes ago, AstridM said:

That frolic tattoo was shown for a mere few seconds that first time in the diner, IIRC. 

Yes. I just checked. In 2x02, he's holding a cup of coffee, and from that shot on his hand the camera immediately pulls back a bit to show it's Mr Drummond, established earlier in the episode.

He's been a really crucial secondary cast member! He personally spied on the Scout siblings, then approved the replacement MDR workers, and then after that he's the one who approved (or spoke for the board in) rehiring Mark's friends and forcing some version of Helly back to MDR.

10 minutes ago, AstridM said:

It sounds like you’ve spent more time than the average viewer watching these episodes. Maybe keep that in mind before assuming others haven’t been paying attention.

To be clear, I don't rewatch entire episodes very often at all. I've just been rewatching bits and pieces here for purposes of replying to the forum thread in order to confirm what I already remembered from watching the first time. Because I was paying attention the first time.

[JenE4]

I always had the impression that Drummond is a spokesperson for the board, like Natalie. If Natalie is the voice of the board, Drummond is the muscle. Natalie is only trusted to pass messages along verbatim, in real time. I assume Drummond is more of a fixer. The board tells him there’s a problem and entrusts him to take care of it. 

[peachmangosteen]

16 hours ago, KarenX said:

I straight up despise Gretchen for exploiting Dylan the Innie because she’s bored. She’s awful.

I kinda didn't like her right away but I thought maybe it was because I sort of have an irrational annoyance of Merritt Wever's acting. Now though I think she just actually does suck.

5 hours ago, JenE4 said:

I always had the impression that Drummond is a spokesperson for the board, like Natalie. If Natalie is the voice of the board, Drummond is the muscle. Natalie is only trusted to pass messages along verbatim, in real time. I assume Drummond is more of a fixer. The board tells him there’s a problem and entrusts him to take care of it. 

That would make sense but it would be odd for 'the muscle' to conduct Milchick's performance review.

Edited 20 hours ago by peachmangosteen

[JenE4]

6 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

 

That would make sense but it would be odd for 'the muscle' to conduct Milchick's performance review.

When I say fixer/muscle, I don’t mean just physically. Drummond was also the one who told Helena she had to get Helly back in there. I think when there’s any tough “convincing” that needs to be done, Drummond passes along the message from the board that you have no choice in the matter. 

[Affogato]

50 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

I kinda didn't like her right away but I thought maybe it was because I sort of have an irrational annoyance of Merritt Wever's acting. Now though I think she just actually does suck.

That would make sense but it would be odd for 'the muscle' to conduct Milchick's performance review.

It may be that the refning group is actually the whole focus of the severance program. It is at minimum a really vital experiment. I’m theorizing, in bringing the dead back to life. I really suspect ‘the board’ is deceased. Even if not, drummond clearly has oversight o er this particular program.Helena does not, she probably does not have an actual job in the company (except for Helly). 

50 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

I kinda didn't like her right away but I thought maybe it was because I sort of have an irrational annoyance of Merritt Wever's acting. Now though I think she just actually does suck.

It is an unusual circumstance. Also she is obviously bearing the brunt of the stress in the family. InnieD may remind her of why she fell in love with Dylan in the first place. 

Edited 23 hours ago by Affogato

[iMonrey]

17 hours ago, lovett1979 said:

From Wikipedia: Rape by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in a sexual act to which they would otherwise not have consented, had they not been deceived. Deception can occur in many forms, such as illusory perceptions, false statements, and false actions.

I would say that this is applicable to Helena/Mark because, while he did consent to sex, he consented to sex with Helly NOT with Helena.

With all due respect to Wikipedia, it's an all-too common TV trope where a man is "tricked" into having sex with someone - especially on soap operas. And I am not comfortable defining these tropes as "rapes." I know it's a sensitive topic and people can get very triggered, but men being "tricked" into having sex with a woman when they think it's really some other woman? How often do you suppose that happens in real life? And to categorize it as rape, IMO, diminishes an actual violent crime of assault. 

I'll allow that Mark was violated, but I cannot apply such a liberal definition to actual rape.

[Affogato]

3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

With all due respect to Wikipedia, it's an all-too common TV trope where a man is "tricked" into having sex with someone - especially on soap operas. And I am not comfortable defining these tropes as "rapes." I know it's a sensitive topic and people can get very triggered, but men being "tricked" into having sex with a woman when they think it's really some other woman? How often do you suppose that happens in real life? And to categorize it as rape, IMO, diminishes an actual violent crime of assault. 

I'll allow that Mark was violated, but I cannot apply such a liberal definition to actual rape.

Yeah, the trope is ‘science fiction rape’, or so I have heard it called.  But that isn’t the point. It was sex without consent. Consent isn’t clean cut. This is, though, because Helena knew she wasn’t Helly and knew Mark thought she was. 
 

 

[arc]

5 hours ago, Affogato said:

Also she is obviously bearing the brunt of the stress in the family.

Yeah. Outie Dylan has three kids but Gretchen effectively has to deal with four. =( 

[Pi237]

7 hours ago, Affogato said:

InnieD may remind her of why she fell in love with Dylan in the first place. 

That’s what I took from their scenes. InnieD is interested in her and their kids. He’s paying full attention to her and everything she says. He Wants to know her and know about their family. OutieDylan wants to buy a car and couldn’t care less (or is oblivious to) how his actions affect his wife and family.  He must have been more attentive when they were dating, which is usually how it goes. She seemed to enjoy having an attentive husband again. 

[maddie965]

This is a great read about the consent issue: https://mashable.com/article/severance-consent-mark-helly-helena

 

Edited 14 hours ago by maddie965

[KarenX]

2 hours ago, Pi237 said:

That’s what I took from their scenes. InnieD is interested in her and their kids. He’s paying full attention to her and everything she says. He Wants to know her and know about their family. OutieDylan wants to buy a car and couldn’t care less (or is oblivious to) how his actions affect his wife and family.  He must have been more attentive when they were dating, which is usually how it goes. She seemed to enjoy having an attentive husband again. 

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

[dwmarch]

4 hours ago, arc said:

Yeah. Outie Dylan has three kids but Gretchen effectively has to deal with four. =( 

Dylan clearly has ADHD, which is a disability. It may be diagnosed or undiagnosed (or Lumon-diagnosed as some misalignment of his "tempers") but it is obvious that he has it. If Gretchen can't or won't support him in his neurological disability then she is in an abusive relationship and she is the abuser. ADHD cannot be cured by telling people they aren't living up to their potential or they should try harder or any of the other things neurotypical people have been telling them since childhood. You'd never go up to someone in a wheelchair and tell them they could walk if they just tried harder or applied themselves or focused more. Bearing this in mind, I think Gretchen is a Lumon plant. We can already see that she has neutralized Dylan's innie and that she has no qualms about lying and cheating.

[KarenX]

8 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

I think Gretchen is a Lumon plant. We can already see that she has neutralized Dylan's innie and that she has no qualms about lying and cheating.

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.

[Dev F]

23 hours ago, arc said:

I just assumed given that Mark and Helly took a sex break that no one's keeping minute-to-minute tabs on them working or not working.

I think it's more that they now expect the MDR team not to spend every minute working. The "hall passes" and other new amenities ensure that they'll be spending time futzing around, which is something Lumon considers a worthwhile sacrifice if it means Mark finishes Cold Harbor.

But there's still probably someone in charge of whatever's going on with Ms. Casey who regularly looks at the progress of Cold Harbor to see whether the various incentives are proving useful to her progress. (And maybe other guys who are assigned to whatever projects are attached to Helly's, Irving's, and Dylan's refinement files and are pissed that their tasks are at a virtual standstill as the bosses go all in on Cold Harbor!)

Edited 9 hours ago by Dev F

[KarenX]

19 hours ago, arc said:

I don't think that [Milchick self-flagellating] was meant to be fun for the audience. It's meant to show how the drawbacks of this job keep piling up on Milchick. His employees hate him -- for good reason, sure -- and his bosses treat him with casual and wholly unearned disdain despite his loyalty. Everyone at Lumon from Kier Eagan onward uses ornate vocabulary; it feels especially demeaning that he was asked to stop.

Hell, it's been almost non-stop crisis ever since Petey reintegrated and went AWOL. <snip>

He self-flagellated because he's cracking under the strain.

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. 

[Affogato]

44 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

Dylan clearly has ADHD, which is a disability. It may be diagnosed or undiagnosed (or Lumon-diagnosed as some misalignment of his "tempers") but it is obvious that he has it. If Gretchen can't or won't support him in his neurological disability then she is in an abusive relationship and she is the abuser. ADHD cannot be cured by telling people they aren't living up to their potential or they should try harder or any of the other things neurotypical people have been telling them since childhood. You'd never go up to someone in a wheelchair and tell them they could walk if they just tried harder or applied themselves or focused more. Bearing this in mind, I think Gretchen is a Lumon plant. We can already see that she has neutralized Dylan's innie and that she has no qualms about lying and cheating.

Or the symptoms of adhd can be indistinguishable from thise of many trauma victims. We are jerry springerifying a couple of meetinfs between gretchen and idylan and then dr philling the poor guy. 
 

The innies don’t have baggage. Like kids. Gretchen is tenderhearted and responds to childlike Dylan. He is her husband, she also responds sexually. When does she have time in outie life? But it is uncomfortable. It is and isn’t cheating. 

Edited 13 hours ago by Affogato

[Affogato]

All four of the team have sad lives, even Helly was probably desperate to not be the fetid maggot of the family. 
 

[lovett1979]

1 hour ago, dwmarch said:

Dylan clearly has ADHD, which is a disability.

How is that clear? There has been nothing to indicate that. And if Outie Dylan had ADHD, which is in the brain, wouldn't Innie Dylan have it too? But Innie Dylan has none of the issues Outie Dylan seems to have so how does that work?

There's also been nothing to suggest that Gretchen is a mole or a Lumon operative. And, honestly, that would be boring. A woman falling for her husband (who's not entirely her husband) again and lying about it is a fascinating moral quandary for all involved.

Lumon is definitely taking advantage of the fact of her (and the opportunity for Innie Dylan to get time with her) as a way to keep him working more and not sneaking around with the other MDRers. But that's not HER motivation for the visits.

Also, if everyone is a mole and the whole thing is just a Truman Show around Mark, what's the point of anything?

[AstridM]

2 hours ago, dwmarch said:

Dylan clearly has ADHD, which is a disability. It may be diagnosed or undiagnosed (or Lumon-diagnosed as some misalignment of his "tempers") but it is obvious that he has it. If Gretchen can't or won't support him in his neurological disability then she is in an abusive relationship and she is the abuser. ADHD cannot be cured by telling people they aren't living up to their potential or they should try harder or any of the other things neurotypical people have been telling them since childhood. You'd never go up to someone in a wheelchair and tell them they could walk if they just tried harder or applied themselves or focused more. Bearing this in mind, I think Gretchen is a Lumon plant. We can already see that she has neutralized Dylan's innie and that she has no qualms about lying and cheating.

Thank you! I wanted to say this earlier but the comment made me too angry to be able to reply coherently. (While I agree wholeheartedly about the ADHD, I’m not sure Gretchen is a Lumon plant.)

Edited 11 hours ago by AstridM