S02.E07: Chikhai Bardo

[aghst]

Except the version of Gemma who attacked Dr. Mauer and tried to escape was Gemma, not Ms. Casey, who's the Innie.

But as soon as she ascended in the elevator trying to get out, she turned and was docile, obeying Milchick and turning back without being forced to go back.

Gemma knows she doesn't want to be there, has a life she wants to return to.

 

[AstridM]

No way in hell do I believe that Gemma voluntarily signed away her rights to Lumon and agreed to fake her death and lie to Mark about it. NOPE. 

[JenE4]

12 minutes ago, AstridM said:

No way in hell do I believe that Gemma voluntarily signed away her rights to Lumon and agreed to fake her death and lie to Mark about it. NOPE. 

She might have agreed to participate in experiments without knowing they were going to fake her death and hold her for years.

[Orff99]

This show did a remarkable job of portraying pregnancy loss and infertility. There is clearly personal experience in the writer's room.

Two things jumped out at me.

First, the doctor talking about what Gemma is "siring". That is an odd description for a woman, and even more so an infertile person. Men sire, women birth. And she doesn't seem to be pregnant in there. Perhaps the "siring" is providing her eggs, for others to birth - like the women in the innie birthing center. I sure hope that they're not being inseminated by Mark... as collected by Helena the one time... and maybe the second time. I'm not 100% sure we're back to Helly.

Second, Selvig being a Lumon soldier and her position in the "outie" world being lactation consultant. Her advice was sound. So maybe she provides that service to the women giving birth to what Gemma has "sired" - and maybe those women aren't breastfeeding, or there are children not being born from women, which means they would need replacement milk, and the best options are either formula or....

goat's milk. Truly. The best natural alternative to human milk, for human babies, is goat milk. It's nurturing.

Mammalians nurturable.

Maybe the nurturable mammals are not the goats, but the babies born from Gemma's eggs (and maybe others). The goats are raised for their milk to nurture the human babies.

We heard "they're not ready yet". Not the goats - the babies.

[seank941]

13 hours ago, Affogato said:

I was always taught that you cannot sign away your rights, as much as people would try to make you think you can.  You can disclose after an NDA, you just lose the benefits detailed in the contract. You cannot sign a contract to make yourself a slave. 
 

Are the outies signing their innies into slavery? If everyone has an in ie for dental work I suppose they won’t want to think about it

I don't know how the Severance legal system works, I'm just assuming they have slightly different laws based on things like the OTC. Either way, there are legal ways to harm outie Gemma as well. Mark definitely should've been fired by now, and I'm assuming they get some housing benefits as Lumon employees.

 

3 hours ago, Affogato said:

Yah. The innies do not have autonomy and choice. Helly, in particular, makes it clear. Her outie dresses her like a baby. She cannot quit. ( her outie can’t either, but she doesn’t know that.) severing creates a separate person. What are your responsibilities to that person? If you choose to quit they die. 

To be clear, I absolutely believe that innies are separate people. However if you are the type of person that doesn't, who cares about them?

Seeing Gemma's experiences, it actually brings up some new questions about the innie personality. If you only use your innie to go to the dentist or a few unpleasant tasks, what are they actually like? The MDR team works 8 hours a day for almost the entire year, and they are still basically teenagers. How long would it take for a normal person's innie to even become a child?

I'm also curious how the chip would work in a normal person. I actually like going to the dentist, and sometimes you need to answer questions while you are in the chair. I also know people who enjoy filling out Christmas cards, and corresponding with relatives, even if they are thank you cards. Are there settings for the severance chips?

[Affogato]

50 minutes ago, seank941 said:

I don't know how the Severance legal system works, I'm just assuming they have slightly different laws based on things like the OTC. Either way, there are legal ways to harm outie Gemma as well. Mark definitely should've been fired by now, and I'm assuming they get some housing benefits as Lumon employees.

 

To be clear, I absolutely believe that innies are separate people. However if you are the type of person that doesn't, who cares about them?

Seeing Gemma's experiences, it actually brings up some new questions about the innie personality. If you only use your innie to go to the dentist or a few unpleasant tasks, what are they actually like? The MDR team works 8 hours a day for almost the entire year, and they are still basically teenagers. How long would it take for a normal person's innie to even become a child?

I'm also curious how the chip would work in a normal person. I actually like going to the dentist, and sometimes you need to answer questions while you are in the chair. I also know people who enjoy filling out Christmas cards, and corresponding with relatives, even if they are thank you cards. Are there settings for the severance chips?

We saw Helly wake up. Panic. Fear. Anger. They would not be prepared for dental work. Detrimental in a plane crash. And it would be abusive even if never seen. So this has something to do with the balancing of the emotions, dread to frolic. The MDR team have fairly lmited experiences, too. 

[arc]

2 hours ago, Affogato said:

We saw Helly wake up. Panic. Fear. Anger. They would not be prepared for dental work.

The thank you cards experiment raises two issues. First, that innie isn’t a blank slate, because she would have to know personal details to write thank you cards. Secondly, Lumon must have just implanted a bunch of fake memories for that innie, because that’s a fake husband there and she’s writing cards for gifts she never actually received, and that’s well something beyond the mere memory editing they’ve shown so far.

If Lumon wants to commercialize severance for more than just the innie-outie 9-5 split that we’ve mostly seen (besides Gabby), they probably have plans to do something more advanced than the “outie is the original persona and innie is wiped clean of personal memories” scheme that rules on the severed floor.

[Starchild]

7 hours ago, aghst said:

Except the version of Gemma who attacked Dr. Mauer and tried to escape was Gemma, not Ms. Casey, who's the Innie.

But as soon as she ascended in the elevator trying to get out, she turned and was docile, obeying Milchick and turning back without being forced to go back.

Gemma knows she doesn't want to be there, has a life she wants to return to.

 

Oh yeah this hadn't occurred to me before.

When the outie descends in the elevator to the severed floor, they become the innie.

But when the innie descends even further down in the elevator to the testing floor, they become the outie again.

Interesting.

[FoundTime]

On 2/28/2025 at 7:06 PM, AheadofStraight said:

We just rewatched and one random thing I noticed. When she was doing the thank you notes she was using her left hand and her handwriting was abysmal and she is clearly not left-handed. No idea if that means anything lol 

Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. I just figured that by the time you got to thank-you note #150, your handwriting would be pretty ragged 😅

[seank941]

I know this episode was about Gemma, but there have to other people down there too, right? The experiments are almost useless if you only have one test subject.  I guess they could test people one at a time, but they seem to be in a hurry.

This sort of brings up another question I was thinking of: are there any other companies with severance type of projects? I can't imagine other companies not trying to capitalize on such a profitable technology.

[AheadofStraight]

6 hours ago, FoundTime said:

Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. I just figured that by the time you got to thank-you note #150, your handwriting would be pretty ragged 😅

Well, most likely you are the correct one lol! It just looked like my writing if I try to use my other hand. 

[jacehan]

I don't think it's clear that the Gemma was saw was her Outie. Considering we saw multiple personas in different rooms, couldn't it just be essentially Gemma S., her default innie, while switching to Ms. Casey on the severed floor is just another room persona?

[Affogato]

10 minutes ago, jacehan said:

I don't think it's clear that the Gemma was saw was her Outie. Considering we saw multiple personas in different rooms, couldn't it just be essentially Gemma S., her default innie, while switching to Ms. Casey on the severed floor is just another room persona?

It could be we are not seeing multiple personae. We are seeing severing of memories and negative feelings, but not a loss of what makes her an individual person.  The one in the hall is the same person. She has been told this is an experiment, but it goes on forever and she is tired of it. This contrasts with  Miss Casey, who is a severed person as we know them. 

Edited 23 hours ago by Affogato

[arc]

10 hours ago, jacehan said:

couldn't it just be essentially Gemma S., her default innie,

But she wants to see Mark again. Most likely it is the real Gemma down there.

[Dev F]

21 hours ago, Affogato said:

We saw Helly wake up. Panic. Fear. Anger. They would not be prepared for dental work. Detrimental in a plane crash. And it would be abusive even if never seen.

That makes me wonder if it's possible to fork the severed memories of a person with multiple innies. That is, could you give one innie a general orientation session so they at least understand what severance is and that they'll be doing some sort of work for their outie, and then copy those memories to a bunch of other innie identities instead of starting each one with a blank slate? That would add interesting new wrinkles to the question of severed identity.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that this potentially offers an explanation for questions like "How did Lumon get the MDR team into place in the middle of the wilderness for the ORTBO session?" Instead of making their outies walk into position and then activating them, or puppeting them around zombielike in some way we've never seen before, you could conceivably fork the innies into a separate memory track, have them walk into position, and then return to the original fork, so that from their perspective, they suddenly jumped into position without ever traveling there.

Edited 12 hours ago by Dev F

[ombre]

30 minutes ago, Dev F said:

That makes me wonder if it's possible to fork the severed memories of a person with multiple innies. That is, could you give one innie a general orientation session so they at least understand what severance is and that they'll be doing some sort of work for their outie, and then copy those memories to a bunch of other innie identities instead of starting each one with a blank slate? That would add interesting new wrinkles to the question of severed identity.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that this potentially offers an explanation for questions like "How did Lumon get the MDR team into place in the middle of the wilderness for the ORTBO session?" Instead of making their outies walk into position and then activating them, or puppeting them around zombielike in some way we've never seen before, you could conceivably fork the innies into a separate memory track, have them walk into position, and then return to the original fork, so that from their perspective, they suddenly jumped into position without ever traveling there.

That is what I have been assuming. 

[jacehan]

2 hours ago, arc said:

But she wants to see Mark again. Most likely it is the real Gemma down there.

I mean, Mark S. also wants to find Gemma. She could easily have been told a (false) story about Mark as motivation to keep her compliant. Because I don't know that what we've seen of Outie Gemma would be. (I suppose we haven't seen that much, but still.)

[Affogato]

1 hour ago, Dev F said:

That makes me wonder if it's possible to fork the severed memories of a person with multiple innies. That is, could you give one innie a general orientation session so they at least understand what severance is and that they'll be doing some sort of work for their outie, and then copy those memories to a bunch of other innie identities instead of starting each one with a blank slate? That would add interesting new wrinkles to the question of severed identity.

Edited to add: It occurs to me that this potentially offers an explanation for questions like "How did Lumon get the MDR team into place in the middle of the wilderness for the ORTBO session?" Instead of making their outies walk into position and then activating them, or puppeting them around zombielike in some way we've never seen before, you could conceivably fork the innies into a separate memory track, have them walk into position, and then return to the original fork, so that from their perspective, they suddenly jumped into position without ever traveling there.

The pregnant woman with the coffee machine seemed to be her outie, like Gemma, but had certain differences. She wanted to name the child one way, but her husband wanted another. This was very much like the Gemma goes in a room episode. Gemma was herself but when she left she didn’t remember what happened in the rooms  that seems to be a room protocol.  

we’ll see. It is probably a ‘protocol’ that allows them to reset chipped people say an hour, or sleepwalk  

I wonder if the older innies have been reset. Remember the Coup? And the MDR unpleasantness? 
 

 

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Affogato

[Dev F]

3 hours ago, ombre said:

That is what I have been assuming. 

It definitely seem possible given the way the technology has been shown to work, now that we know that the chips support multiple innies. I did realize a potential hiccup, though, which is that there are instances when it seems like Lumon would've probably used the forking technology if it's a standard option.

For instance, after the OTC debacle, it seems like it would've been prudent to fork Mark's innie before bringing him back online, in case their gambit to get him back to work failed—which is exactly what happened when he sabotaged the new MDR team. Then Lumon could've returned to the fork point and brought Mark and his old team back as if they were all returning from the OTC together, with Mark retaining no memory of Lumon surrendering to his pressure campaign.

It's a fun idea, but on further reflection it might open too much of a can of worms.

[seank941]

I hope the show doesn't decide to have multiple innies for every character. I want to like that idea, but I worry it would take away from the characters as we know them. I understand the idea of separating humans into the four tempers of Kier, but if that's something the show wanted to sell me on, I would've needed to see it already. 

Something I really like about this show is that Lumon isn't omnipotent. I like that the one variable they never account for is humanity in the innies. I can't even get on board with the idea that love is stronger than severance, because they made such a point of Mark S. and Ms. Casey not recognizing each other. 

I am a little curious why none of Gemma's innies ever tried to fight back. Helly might be extreme, but every member of MDR showed at least a small rebellious side. 

 

[Affogato]

6 hours ago, Dev F said:

It definitely seem possible given the way the technology has been shown to work, now that we know that the chips support multiple innies. I did realize a potential hiccup, though, which is that there are instances when it seems like Lumon would've probably used the forking technology if it's a standard option.

For instance, after the OTC debacle, it seems like it would've been prudent to fork Mark's innie before bringing him back online, in case their gambit to get him back to work failed—which is exactly what happened when he sabotaged the new MDR team. Then Lumon could've returned to the fork point and brought Mark and his old team back as if they were all returning from the OTC together, with Mark retaining no memory of Lumon surrendering to his pressure campaign.

It's a fun idea, but on further reflection it might open too much of a can of worms.

I think that they have tried things before that didn’t work and may have caused the incidents we saw depicted in the first season in pictures of bloody fights. Also I think that Lumon is almost there and doesn’t want to fail this time. There may be an outside competitor, or it may have something to do with bringing back Kier. 

3 hours ago, seank941 said:

I hope the show doesn't decide to have multiple innies for every character. I want to like that idea, but I worry it would take away from the characters as we know them. I understand the idea of separating humans into the four tempers of Kier, but if that's something the show wanted to sell me on, I would've needed to see it already. 

Something I really like about this show is that Lumon isn't omnipotent. I like that the one variable they never account for is humanity in the innies. I can't even get on board with the idea that love is stronger than severance, because they made such a point of Mark S. and Ms. Casey not recognizing each other. 

I am a little curious why none of Gemma's innies ever tried to fight back. Helly might be extreme, but every member of MDR showed at least a small rebellious side. 

 

Miss casey wasn’t alive much, the time she was with the MDR team was the longest time she was awake. She was mostly alone e, probably cobel and mitchick were her team. 
 

we saw her clock the doctor and try to escape. She probably had done that before.