S02.E08: Sweet Vitriol

[juno]

Episode airs Mar 7, 2025

TV-MA    37m

"Discoveries are made."

[lavenderblue]

The blurbs for these episodes are starting to remind me of the promos for Mad Men.

[Affogato]

This was not expected! But it certainly cleared some things up. Harmony should be able to help Mark. Will she join the resistance? 

Edited Friday at 03:30 AM by Affogato

[Mr. R0b0t]

There's no greater zealot than a convert.  Has Cobel been converted away from Lumon for good?  I've been wanting Milchick to break good, but now it seems Cobel could be in play.  Devon was the smartest person on the show for 15 episodes, but turning to Cobel for help with Mark doesn't seem too bright.  

I did NOT have

Spoiler

Cobel is the scientist/brain behind severance

on my bingo card....did anyone?

[Girl in a Cardigan]

I'm here for the Cobel revenge tour, if that's what's next.

I'm not sure that's where we're going yet, so I'm still a bit worried for Mark.

Hope everyone else enjoyed their last two weeks off and we get the whole gang back together next week.

[arc]

That was an extremely tedious and annoying lore dump and I've never liked Harmony's weird affect (uncontrolled rage mixed with icy piety) or her stilted turns of phrase, which apparently is a Lumon-wide phenomenon. (Incidentally, it may be that Helena is the least weird talker of the whole bunch.)

lore dumped:

• a drug nicknamed "huff". Possibly related to the Lumon ether factory? But apparently the child laborers would do a hit before work.
• also, Lumon used to use child labor. Still does, considering Ms Huang.
• Salt's Neck is a dying town, and the factory that used to be the main employer must be shut down if it's a safe place to meet quietly.
• Lumon may be out of the ether business now?
• Celestine "Cissy" Cobel is Harmony's sister and a true believer. T
• Harmony was a star in the Lumon pipeline as a child, plucked out of the factories for a Wintertide fellowship
• Harmony created severance (!!!!!!)
• "The Nine" are the nine core principles of Lumon. That Celestine still lives by the word of the Eagans makes her an outcast; presumably the rest of the town hates Lumon now.
• Given Harmony's well-deserved resentments towards Lumon and Jame Eagan in particular, she's been wearing a mask at Lumon even more than Milchick or Natalie. What a phenomenally toxic corporate culture the Eagans have created.
• But my take on Harmony is that she's of two minds about Lumon. She may be a lapsed believer / cult escapee but she still has that cult conditioning and also she's been undercover.
• all the Lumon paraphernalia still left in the old Cobel house and shack/detached cellar.
• the state that Kier is in is a coastal state, or possibly a Great Lakes state. But probably coastal.

[Affogato]

39 minutes ago, arc said:

That was an extremely tedious and annoying lore dump and I've never liked Harmony's weird affect (uncontrolled rage mixed with icy piety) or her stilted turns of phrase, which apparently is a Lumon-wide phenomenon. (Incidentally, it may be that Helena is the least weird talker of the whole bunch.)

lore dumped:

• a drug nicknamed "huff". Possibly related to the Lumon ether factory? But apparently the child laborers would do a hit before work.
• also, Lumon used to use child labor. Still does, considering Ms Huang.
• Salt's Neck is a dying town, and the factory that used to be the main employer must be shut down if it's a safe place to meet quietly.
• Lumon may be out of the ether business now?
• Celestine "Cissy" Cobel is Harmony's sister and a true believer. T
• Harmony was a star in the Lumon pipeline as a child, plucked out of the factories for a Wintertide fellowship
• Harmony created severance (!!!!!!)
• "The Nine" are the nine core principles of Lumon. That Celestine still lives by the word of the Eagans makes her an outcast; presumably the rest of the town hates Lumon now.
• Given Harmony's well-deserved resentments towards Lumon and Jame Eagan in particular, she's been wearing a mask at Lumon even more than Milchick or Natalie. What a phenomenally toxic corporate culture the Eagans have created.
• But my take on Harmony is that she's of two minds about Lumon. She may be a lapsed believer / cult escapee but she still has that cult conditioning and also she's been undercover.
• all the Lumon paraphernalia still left in the old Cobel house and shack/detached cellar.
• the state that Kier is in is a coastal state, or possibly a Great Lakes state. But probably coastal.

Ether was in fact an addictive drug. I don’t know whether it was historically called huff. I’ll go check. Can’t find that. Here is an article on it as a drug. 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ether_addiction

It seemsms to be drunk, for the most part, but is also inhaled. 

Cissy is Harmony’s aunt, older and repeatedly says ‘your mother’. 

The painting of Kier shows small versions of the great lakes  this show was shot in Newfoundland, and salt was present, but I wouldn’t rule out the great lakes area as a location. it may be meant to be something we don’t pin down, like the time period  of the cars or tech.

if Harmony created Severance in a school note book all at once she may legally be able to fight Lumon. Also she must be a lot smarter than we thought.
 

 Also ‘Father’ seems like a jerk  does Helena know? “we fear no one” she says. 
it seems like some of the revelations could have been spread out, but I appreciate giving cobel this small movie.

 

 

Edited Friday at 12:20 PM by Affogato

[Affogato]

5 hours ago, Girl in a Cardigan said:

I'm here for the Cobel revenge tour, if that's what's next.

I'm not sure that's where we're going yet, so I'm still a bit worried for Mark.

Hope everyone else enjoyed their last two weeks off and we get the whole gang back together next week.

I wonder what Irving is doing. There is so much that could be going on. I assume that we have just seen what Cobel has been doing, our time stamp is Devon’s calling her. 
 

i wonder if Mrs Selvigs activities and the severed room will turn out to be a side project of Cobel’s and not Lumon at all. 

[overtherainbow]

So Cobel

Spoiler

invented the severance chip, drew up all the schematics, and the Eagans basically took credit for it.

Freezing her out of whatever Cold Harbor is was the last straw for her before she decided to go awol and return to the town for her drawings? Her agreeing to help Mark was not something I would have clocked. I'm still not sure I trust whatever her motives are. She was always the most rapidly devout/zealous.

Learning about her past was interesting, though. Growing up in a Lumon company town and being specifically chosen for her smarts to be an apprentice is more interesting than the theory that she was an Eagan daughter out of wedlock. 

This whole show is uncanny valley central between the bizarre archaic language the Lumon devotees use and the 'grungy' dirty sci-fi aesthetics. This season had a pretty slow start but I'm expecting a lot more to be revealed in the final two episodes, and I'm here for it. The last two episodes were really good. 

Edited Friday at 02:11 PM by overtherainbow

[Affogato]

Co el did extract Petey’s chip in record time and has always been doing experiments on the severed people. In retrospect it seems to come together. 

[iMonrey]

5 hours ago, arc said:

That was an extremely tedious and annoying lore dump and I've never liked Harmony's weird affect (uncontrolled rage mixed with icy piety) or her stilted turns of phrase, which apparently is a Lumon-wide phenomenon. (Incidentally, it may be that Helena is the least weird talker of the whole bunch.)

This show is losing me, fast. I guess I appreciated it more in Season 1 when it was a smaller, tighter story about four main characters. As it grows wider this season I find my interest waning. It jumps from plot point to plot point, from character to character, with no real continuity. It's just all over the place.

It also confirms my opinion that episodic television is just not a good medium for mystery stories. By nature a TV show aims to go long, which means dragging the mystery out indefinitely. They are piling on more and more questions rather than heading towards any kind of answers. I get that a lot of people get a kick out of that sort of thing but I am not among their numbers, clearly. 

I agree about Harmony too, and feel the same way about Milchick. I just want someone to punch them both in the face.

Edited Friday at 04:59 PM by iMonrey

[Affogato]

23 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

This show is losing me, fast. I guess I appreciated it more in Season 1 when it was a smaller, tighter story about four main characters. As it grows wider this season I find my interest waning. It jumps from plot point to plot point, from character to character, with no real continuity. It's just all over the place.

It also confirms my opinion that episodic television is just not a good medium for mystery stories. By nature a TV show aims to go long, which means dragging the mystery out indefinitely. They are piling on more and more questions rather than heading towards any kind of answers. I get that a lot of people get a kick out of that sort of thing but I am not among their numbers, clearly. 

I agree about Harmony too, and feel the same way about Milchick. I just want someone to punch them both in the face.

It isn’t a mystery story. It is a science fiction story. You are piecing together the world and understanding how it works. Seeing where Lumon comes from is a huge part of the world building, it isn’t meant to lead directly to solving a crime. That this episode manages to combine this with character building and ties in to Devon and Mark at the end is how it is done. Yes, if you don’t like that sort of thing, well…you may be in the wrong place. But the episode before this does not make the story a romance, either. It is a SF story with some romantic and mystery elements. 

[Dev F]

1 minute ago, Affogato said:

It isn’t a mystery story. It is a science fiction story. You are piecing together the world and understanding how it works.

Yep, and discovering that severance was invented by a former child laborer who had to get high on ether to do her degrading factory job is a pretty big piece of the puzzle.

[AstridM]

14 minutes ago, Affogato said:

It isn’t a mystery story. It is a science fiction story. You are piecing together the world and understanding how it works. Seeing where Lumon comes from is a huge part of the world building, it isn’t meant to lead directly to solving a crime. That this episode manages to combine this with character building and ties in to Devon and Mark at the end is how it is done. Yes, if you don’t like that sort of thing, well…you may be in the wrong place. But the episode before this does not make the story a romance, either. It is a SF story with some romantic and mystery elements. 

I think Apple bills it as a “thriller?” I generally detest science fiction, so there’s that, lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ombre]

I can understand the line of thought of "I liked it more last season when it was the four at their desks" but I disagree with it.  I think that one of the major organizing principles of the season has been *denying* the four at their desks.  Because the four at their desks was a bad thing, as Helly was so determined to prove.  But it was really, really interesting how the first ep of the season felt really awful because of Mark being in with a bunch of the wrong people.  When the team gets back together at the end of that ep, it's a real moment of satisfaction and relief for the audience.  But then the next couple eps show that it was a lie.  

The most powerful moment of this season is Irv sacrificing himself to unmask Helena and bring Helly back to life.  That's the only moment when we've had our four heroes back together.  The episodes since then have been deliberately letting the question of Irv's fate stay on the backburner, simmering, building tension.  

For me, this is actually the primary story of the season.  Gemma is important to Mark and Mark is the protagonist, so we're being *told* that her rescue is the central line of the story.  But Irv is the heart of the MDR team, and the question of what has happened to him feels far, far more emotionally important because we have spent a significant chunk of time coming to love him.  

I meant to write this a few eps ago, but I never got around to it: It feels to me like one of the fundamental things that Lumon does not and cannot understand is the weakness of hierarchies.  If you lose one section of the chain of command you may have serious trouble.  This is why we're all cheering for Milchick or Cobel to turn - because it will show the company's weakness.  The MDR team has formed lateral, interconnected bonds.  They *all* think that Mark being "leader" is a joke because they all, on some level, rebel against the company's insistence on there being a leader.  Each of them has taken the lead in their own way and according to their own strength. 

I think this is also connected to why it's so easy to yearn for the return to the four MDRers at their desks.  They were really supportive of one another.  We haven't seen as much of that this season.  We've seen Irving warily gathering intel at a weird dinner date.  We've seen Helena subverting their trust in one another.  We've seen Dylan being swept off his feet by the idea of his outie's family.  We've seen Mark going on his own mythic quest to save Miss Casey - who he barely even knows! - or Gemma and thus being willing to risk death to get information across the severance divide.  And even as he does that I think we're seeing Helly ever more bent on destroying her outie.  The aftermath of the last season is the fracturing of the team, and we were shown that the team was strong because it was working in unity.

So for me, this episode was fine.  It gave good info, it showed the impact of Lumon on another corner of the world (sucking it dry, leaving the husk, a few souls in that husk still trying to care for one another), it offered us hope that Cobel will turn (red herring?!?), it was mindblowingly beautiful (hey, we're all allowed to be a little shallow, right?), and it served as a distraction from (and thus proved the importance of) the main questions - what's going on with Irv and, secondarily, what will come of Marks' reintegration?

[ombre]

44 minutes ago, Affogato said:

It isn’t a mystery story. It is a science fiction story. You are piecing together the world and understanding how it works. Seeing where Lumon comes from is a huge part of the world building, it isn’t meant to lead directly to solving a crime. That this episode manages to combine this with character building and ties in to Devon and Mark at the end is how it is done. Yes, if you don’t like that sort of thing, well…you may be in the wrong place. But the episode before this does not make the story a romance, either. It is a SF story with some romantic and mystery elements. 

Or, if you like mysteries and like seeing the world through the lens of mysteries, the mystery is "wtf is going on in this world?" and then "jeepers, what crazy shit happened in this world to make it what it is?" we can see that it is in some ways similar to our and in some ways different, but we're exploring how those layers enmesh and overlap and disagree and shine light on one another. 

[lovett1979]

Did anyone else notice the music scoring for this episode was often based around the Kier "anthem" that Ms Cobel had sung in the first season? To me, it evoked that Kier/Lumon was permeating everything in that town.

[Affogato]

3 hours ago, AstridM said:

I think Apple bills it as a “thriller?” I generally detest science fiction, so there’s that, lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of Tom Clancy is science fiction, but near future stuff, but it still is less world building and more action. He was always open about this. I dunno. Kurt Vonneguts publishers are reported to have said they would get more sales selling a cookbook with his name on it than a book labeled as a science fiction book. But his books are science fiction. The term puts some peopleoff, yet they will often consume the product when it is called something else. 

[mjc570]

Much as I enjoyed the revelations produced in this episode, I feel they could have been done in half the time.  

[iMonrey]

6 hours ago, Affogato said:

It isn’t a mystery story. It is a science fiction story.

It is many things but the show itself is riddled with mysteries. That's my point. What do the numbers mean, what the hell are they doing with Gemma, why did they tell Mark she died, what is cold harbor, etc. etc. etc.

The premise in Season 1 was more basic. The innies wanted to know what their outies did and figured out a way to find out. It was just a clearer trajectory. This season is all over the map by comparison. Yeah, sure it's "world building" but as the world gets bigger and bigger it loses focus, and it loses my interest.

Most recappers do, in fact, classify this series as one of those "mystery box shows," similar to Lost.

Edited Friday at 11:32 PM by iMonrey

[aghst]

20 hours ago, Mr. R0b0t said:

There's no greater zealot than a convert.  Has Cobel been converted away from Lumon for good?  I've been wanting Milchick to break good, but now it seems Cobel could be in play.  Devon was the smartest person on the show for 15 episodes, but turning to Cobel for help with Mark doesn't seem too bright.  

I did NOT have

  Hide contents

Cobel is the scientist/brain behind severance

on my bingo card....did anyone?

It explains her scene with Helena earlier in the season, how aggrieved she felt that she was fired and not allowed to continue the work on the severance floor.

She wanted Milchick fired and her job back.  It wasn't some petty corporate climbing rivalry, she wanted to finish her life's work.

She drew those diagrams and schematics when she was really young?

So she was brainwashed starting when she was a child but you wonder if she's deprogrammed now.  When people in cults are brainwashed, I'm not sure that they will deprogram on their own because they feel wronged or whatever.  I think it usually takes an intervention.

Thus, should Devon trust Harmony to help Mark complete the re-integration safely or could Harmony, regardless of her status with Lumon, try to undo the re-integration so that she can continue to experiment on severed people?

It's kind of a leap of faith?  I don't remember the first season when Harmony cared for her baby under false pretenses?  Maybe Devon feels she has no choice, doesn't know whom to turn to and she doesn't seem too impressed by Reghabi.

Cissy Korbel is still a true believer, despite still living in that desolate town, in that house way out from anyone else.  So you wonder how easily Harmony would just turn against Lumon, which clearly has caused damage to the town -- she said it was older and more feeble than she remembered?

2 hours ago, mjc570 said:

Much as I enjoyed the revelations produced in this episode, I feel they could have been done in half the time.  

Certainly when she was having that argument with Helena, she could have said "I invested Severance, not Keir, not any Egan."

In fact, it's not clear that Helena knows the truth, just assumes her father invented it, not that he stole or took credit for it.  She may know that her father is capable of stealing ideas or inventions but still may not know that Harmony is the inventor and that's why Harmony feels wronged.

 

[Affogato]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

It is many things but the show itself is riddled with mysteries. That's my point. What do the numbers mean, what the hell are they doing with Gemma, why did they tell Mark she died, what is cold harbor, etc. etc. etc.

The premise in Season 1 was more basic. The innies wanted to know what their outies did and figured out a way to find out. It was just a clearer trajectory. This season is all over the map by comparison. Yeah, sure it's "world building" but as the world gets bigger and bigger it loses focus, and it loses my interest.

Most recappers do, in fact, classify this series as one of those "mystery box shows," similar to Lost.

Lost was science fiction too, btw. So, yes, there are similarities. Twin Peaks is also science fiction, it is about aliens. Babylon 5, which I love, has its deepest roots in epic fantasy, for all its spaceships. Go figure, right?  The owls are not what they seem.
 

If you want to call the process of discovering what is going on a ‘mystery box’ that is fine. Thing is the real world is a mystery box. 

The four innies sit om was a small part of the story. 

[Pi237]

“Where is it!? I need it!” 

(Kidding!) I actually liked this episode. Such Scientology parallels from the odd vernacular, the worship of a male leader who ‘supposedly’ invented all the lore, the child labor, etc.

I wonder if there’s anything to Harmony saying, “she met him at an ether factory”. Just the delivery of that line seemed to imply something, but she had such an odd, forced, stilted way of speaking, who knows? 
 

[seank941]

3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

The premise in Season 1 was more basic. The innies wanted to know what their outies did and figured out a way to find out. It was just a clearer trajectory. This season is all over the map by comparison. Yeah, sure it's "world building" but as the world gets bigger and bigger it loses focus, and it loses my interest.

This show is starting to remind me of Westworld, and not in a good way. It's not that messy, but I could see that happening if the writers aren't careful. I really enjoy sci-fi shows with lots of world building, but the pacing feels all over the place. The problem with streaming shows as a whole, is that when we have to wait 3 years for 8-10 episodes I'm expecting them to be perfect. 

This felt like a filler episode. That is fine when there are 16 episodes, but not 10. I found the episode interesting, but it felt like 20 min of content stretched into a 40 min episode. It might have helped if we had seen Cobel, but she vanished for most of the season and I have no idea why she suddenly decided to turn on Lumon. Maybe if this story was around episode 2 when she was still so angry at Lumon that would have been better. 

[seank941]

2 hours ago, aghst said:

In fact, it's not clear that Helena knows the truth, just assumes her father invented it, not that he stole or took credit for it.  She may know that her father is capable of stealing ideas or inventions but still may not know that Harmony is the inventor and that's why Harmony feels wronged.

I'm expecting Helena to be more than just the next Lumon villain. She has to stay in Mark's orbit somehow, and Helly=good Helena=bad, seems too simplistic for this show. 

Mark having some kind of positive relationship with Helena (friendship or more) actually makes the story more interesting to me, how will Cobel handle working with Mark if he is close to someone she hates. 

I do think it's important to remember that severance is worse than Lumon. Cobel might hate Lumon, but how will she feel about destroying her life's work? 

On an unrelated note: Who will move into Mark's basement next season?

[dwmarch]

23 minutes ago, seank941 said:

it felt like 20 min of content stretched into a 40 min episode

I agree. I liked the episode in the end but I think this could have been shortened down a lot. For example, we have all this yelling and drama about Cobel going into her mother's old room. And what does she do when she gets in there? She takes a nap!

 

28 minutes ago, seank941 said:

I have no idea why she suddenly decided to turn on Lumon.

After this episode, I think it's because she knows that Lumon knows she's the real inventor of severance rather than Jame Eagan and she realizes they will kill her to keep that secret. Although having said that, if one is paranoid because they really are out to get you, I would strongly discourage taking a nap in Lumon-allied territory that has been recently visited by the heavy she just ran away from!

[seank941]

6 hours ago, dwmarch said:

After this episode, I think it's because she knows that Lumon knows she's the real inventor of severance rather than Jame Eagan and she realizes they will kill her to keep that secret.

Lumon has known this for years and hasn't cared. Even if Cobel is completely done with Kier and the Eagans, what's she going to do, file a lawsuit? It just seems too convenient that right when she goes to get her designs Mark finishes his reintegration and decides to call for help.

Apart from that, I'm really confused by the timeline. If Cobel invented severance so long ago, why has it only been around for 12 years, were there earlier tests that failed? I don't want an entire episode answering these questions, but 5 min would be nice.

[arc]

57 minutes ago, seank941 said:

If Cobel invented severance so long ago, why has it only been around for 12 years, were there earlier tests that failed?

The first severed offices were publicly opened 12 years ago. It makes sense to me that the procedure had to be tested and refined before it could be launched as a 1.0 product.

The reveal really changes how we should view those s1 conversations with the board (mediated by Natalie) about the possibility of reintegration. For Cobel to be the inventor of the process, it's wild that the board insists reintegration is impossible. Surely the board has set a lot of scientists and engineers to work on severance, but Cobel is the creator of it all.

1 hour ago, seank941 said:

Even if Cobel is completely done with Kier and the Eagans, what's she going to do, file a lawsuit?

She could do a lot more. She could possibly undo the procedure permanently. Reghabi apparently could, and she's not even the inventor. Cobel could probably even create Glasgow Blocks or OTC devices outside of Lumon control. Now that I think harder about it, it's 100% crazy for the board to have allowed Cobel to have left the company in any way. They should never have fired her, but having done that, they should have neutralized her (killing, sticking in an asylum, just freezing her like a Star Wars bounty).

[Affogato]

14 minutes ago, arc said:

The first severed offices were publicly opened 12 years ago. It makes sense to me that the procedure had to be tested and refined before it could be launched as a 1.0 product.

The reveal really changes how we should view those s1 conversations with the board (mediated by Natalie) about the possibility of reintegration. For Cobel to be the inventor of the process, it's wild that the board insists reintegration is impossible. Surely the board has set a lot of scientists and engineers to work on severance, but Cobel is the creator of it all.

She could do a lot more. She could possibly undo the procedure permanently. Reghabi apparently could, and she's not even the inventor. Cobel could probably even create Glasgow Blocks or OTC devices outside of Lumon control. Now that I think harder about it, it's 100% crazy for the board to have allowed Cobel to have left the company in any way. They should never have fired her, but having done that, they should have neutralized her (killing, sticking in an asylum, just freezing her like a Star Wars bounty).

I think it is borderline possible that the birthing cottage was not Lumon, but Selvig. Selvig was at the time a believer, but she had her own projects. She might also have contacted Gemma through the clinic. 

[gail56]

I really liked this episode, which is strange for me as I normally would not. Hardly anything really happened for the longest time, but the acting and the visuals had me transfixed. The episode went by so quickly for me.

Harmony creating Severance surprised me but explains a lot of her past behavior. I wonder what her plan is now? She has gotten the proof that she created it but how does she plan to use it? She does seem to have a soft spot for Mark and his family. When Lumon found out she was interacting with them they were not pleased. 

[PurpleTentacle]

21 hours ago, iMonrey said:

It also confirms my opinion that episodic television is just not a good medium for mystery stories. By nature a TV show aims to go long, which means dragging the mystery out indefinitely. They are piling on more and more questions rather than heading towards any kind of answers. I get that a lot of people get a kick out of that sort of thing but I am not among their numbers, clearly. 

That's often a problem with TV shows, but I'm pretty sure these writers have a finite plan here. So far I don't have a feeling that they are piling on mysteries. On the contrary, this episode they answered quite a few questions and I don't think they added any new ones.

13 hours ago, seank941 said:

This felt like a filler episode. That is fine when there are 16 episodes, but not 10. I found the episode interesting, but it felt like 20 min of content stretched into a 40 min episode. It might have helped if we had seen Cobel, but she vanished for most of the season and I have no idea why she suddenly decided to turn on Lumon. Maybe if this story was around episode 2 when she was still so angry at Lumon that would have been better. 

I don't think it has been very long in show-time. Certainly not as long as it has been in real-time.

13 hours ago, dwmarch said:

After this episode, I think it's because she knows that Lumon knows she's the real inventor of severance rather than Jame Eagan and she realizes they will kill her to keep that secret. Although having said that, if one is paranoid because they really are out to get you, I would strongly discourage taking a nap in Lumon-allied territory that has been recently visited by the heavy she just ran away from!

She did say to Helena in episode 2 of this season "you don't value me, you fear me."

Which at the time I thought was a bit self-important and overestimating herself, but now I get why she would think that and why she is probably right.

5 hours ago, arc said:

Reghabi apparently could, and she's not even the inventor.

I got the feeling at the end of this episode that Cobell thinks Reghabi is a hack. So I'm pretty sure Cobell can do much more than Reghabi. She might even be the only person who can save Mark's life right now, since Reghabi clearly overstated her abilities. She is really just poking at things she doesn't quite understand, it seems.

I guess Devon had the right instincts when she called Cobell. I initially thought it was a bad move, but seemingly it was the only correct one.

5 hours ago, Affogato said:

I think it is borderline possible that the birthing cottage was not Lumon, but Selvig. Selvig was at the time a believer, but she had her own projects. She might also have contacted Gemma through the clinic. 

Reghabi knew about the cottage and she wouldn't have know about something Selvig did on her own. Also the senators wife hinted to Helli about it at the party, where everybody thought she was Hellena. Both point to it being run by Lumon.

[diebartdie]

So I was thinking about this from "Fear and loathing in Las Vegas"

“The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station...This is the main advantage of ether: it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel… total loss of all basic motor skills: Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue – severance of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally… you can actually watch yourself behaving in the terrible way, but you can’t control it...There is nothing worse than a man in the throws of an ether bender.”

I don't understand how people are seeing this episode as "filler", it really explained the whole thing. I know people love to compare this show to "Lost" and I understand where they're coming from but Lost was a big box of nothing while this show is earnestly trying it's damndest to be an anti-caapitalist parable and I love it so much.

EDIT BECAUSE I FORGOT MY ACTUAL REASON FOR POSTING (I am not on ether, I swear), check this headline out y'all:

How Ether Went From a Recreational ‘Frolic’ Drug to the First Surgery Anesthetic

Edited 21 hours ago by diebartdie
I FORGOT MY ACTUAL REASON FOR POSTING

[Ottis]

1 minute ago, diebartdie said:

I don't understand how people are seeing this episode as "filler", it really explained the whole thing.

It's not filler, it's excessive and unnecessary explanation. I guess in that way it's filler to some.

This episode (a very short one, thankfully) was about Cobell going back at a glacial pace to a Lumon factory town to find drawings she did as a kid genius that the Eagans used to found their cult. So what?

We already knew Cobell was disaffecteted and having doubts.

We already knew the cult was founded by a single family, and had odd aspects like "tempers." It sounds like Scientology, and that's all we need to know about the cult.

We met some people left behind by Lumon, and a remaining believer in what had been a sacred house, Yay.

What we didn't learn was why people sever, how severing works, how often one can be severed, what happens to the innies who have been severed (especially if the outtie has no need of them anymore), whether you need to be Or even can be "reunited) and what the larger goal of the Eagan family is and how it is viewed in society.

I'm not sure why the show feels the need to keep giving us unnecessary detail. Get on with it.

48 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

So far I don't have a feeling that they are piling on mysteries. On the contrary, this episode they answered quite a few questions and I don't think they added any new ones.

Agree, they just keep giving us extraneous detail about unimportant aspects of the mystery.

15 hours ago, seank941 said:

This show is starting to remind me of Westworld, and not in a good way.

Interesting point. Westworld lost its way when it left the parks and took us into the real world. It eventually figured that out and came back, but we spent a lot of wasted time wondering what was going on back in Westworld. Severance goes on these little adventures in the real world, instead of getting back to what the heck is happening. 

[Dev F]

5 hours ago, Ottis said:

What we didn't learn was why people sever, how severing works, how often one can be severed, what happens to the innies who have been severed (especially if the outtie has no need of them anymore), whether you need to be Or even can be "reunited) and what the larger goal of the Eagan family is and how it is viewed in society.

We learned why severance was invented via the person who actually invented it. To me that seems much more important than something like "how often one can be severed," which is just an arbitrary number the writers could make up at any time, whereas what we learned in this episode resonates with the most important themes of the series and speaks to essential nature of one of the main characters in a much more specific way than just "she was disaffected and having doubts."

What's more, we did in fact learn a lot about how the Eagans are viewed in society, via those "people left behind by Lumon" you seemed to think were a waste of time. Clearly, Lumon brought some measure of prosperity to previously underdeveloped communities through their exploitative industry practices, buying some of the residents' devotion as a result but leaving behind angry and disillusioned people once these communities were no longer useful and the company callously discarded them.

Sometimes I think people are waiting for the show to tell us stuff that it's already been showing us, and that's the last thing I'd want any series to do.

[Starchild]

12 minutes ago, Dev F said:

We learned why severance was invented

Wait, why? I didn't catch that.

[Dev F]

59 minutes ago, Starchild said:

Wait, why? I didn't catch that.

Because Cobel was a child laborer who used a dangerous dissociative drug to escape the trauma of her work (a drug that quite possibly killed her mother as well), which gave her the idea of pursuing a safer technological solution to the same problem.

Here's an interesting Reddit thread that looks at some other potential connections between ether and the severance process, via Kier's mysterious "twin" Dieter.

[aghst]

It may also tie into the tempers thing, like the chip can flip your mood or feelings.

Mark said it helped with his grief.  When he became an innie he wasn’t conscious of the supposed accident and death.  But did it alter his emotions so that he couldn’t feel grief, sadness?

[seank941]

10 hours ago, Ottis said:

It's not filler, it's excessive and unnecessary explanation. I guess in that way it's filler to some.

This is a much better way of explaining what I meant by filler. 

 

11 hours ago, PurpleTentacle said:

On 3/7/2025 at 8:58 AM, iMonrey said:

It also confirms my opinion that episodic television is just not a good medium for mystery stories. By nature a TV show aims to go long, which means dragging the mystery out indefinitely. They are piling on more and more questions rather than heading towards any kind of answers. I get that a lot of people get a kick out of that sort of thing but I am not among their numbers, clearly. 

That's often a problem with TV shows, but I'm pretty sure these writers have a finite plan here. So far I don't have a feeling that they are piling on mysteries. On the contrary, this episode they answered quite a few questions and I don't think they added any new ones.

I don't think the writers are intentionally dragging the story along or that they don't have a plan, I think the problem is that with the format of streaming shows it's hard to keep the viewer's attention. It's hard to remember all the little details when you have to wait 3 years between seasons. Lost had 22 episodes in one year, the way things have gone it be 6 years before Severance reaches that mark.

 

5 hours ago, Dev F said:

We learned why severance was invented via the person who actually invented it. To me that seems much more important than something like "how often one can be severed," which is just an arbitrary number the writers could make up at any time, whereas what we learned in this episode resonates with the most important themes of the series and speaks to essential nature of one of the main characters in a much more specific way than just "she was disaffected and having doubts."

What's more, we did in fact learn a lot about how the Eagans are viewed in society, via those "people left behind by Lumon" you seemed to think were a waste of time. Clearly, Lumon brought some measure of prosperity to previously underdeveloped communities through their exploitative industry practices, buying some of the residents' devotion as a result but leaving behind angry and disillusioned people once these communities were no longer useful and the company callously discarded them.

Sometimes I think people are waiting for the show to tell us stuff that it's already been showing us, and that's the last thing I'd want any series to do.

I think that all of this would be interesting to explore in season 3. Right now I want to learn about Cold Harbor, Gemma's situation, and Mark's reintegration. Other than last week's episode, we haven't been told or shown anything about the season's three main storylines. I guess we know that Cold Harbor is mysterious and important.

[PurpleTentacle]

17 hours ago, Ottis said:

It's not filler, it's excessive and unnecessary explanation. I guess in that way it's filler to some.

This episode (a very short one, thankfully) was about Cobell going back at a glacial pace to a Lumon factory town to find drawings she did as a kid genius that the Eagans used to found their cult. So what?

This isn't a science lecture though, where every bit of information should be conveyed as fast and efficiently as possible. The episode built atmosphere. It showed the town and house Cobell grew up in and thus shed more light on her character, why she is how she is. I appreciated it.

I think a lot of people are desperate for answers and thus get restless in episodes that don't move fast enough for their liking. I personally don't feel the need for answers right now. It's not that kind of show, that is only held afloat by mystery boxes, like Lost or From. So I'm just enjoying the ride and do so very much. Ymmv.

17 hours ago, Ottis said:

What we didn't learn was why people sever, how severing works, how often one can be severed, what happens to the innies who have been severed (especially if the outtie has no need of them anymore), whether you need to be Or even can be "reunited) and what the larger goal of the Eagan family is and how it is viewed in society.

We know why people sever. There are countless reasons. What we don't quite know is why Lumon wants people to sever. We'll learn eventually, I'm sure.

Severance works by not clearly defined scifi technology. You'll never get a step by step explaination or a diagram, because there isn't any real way this would work. You just have to accept that it does work in this world. But at the same time for all intents and purposes it seems like controlled DID. Even the reintigration is very reminiscent of how DID is treated.

6 hours ago, seank941 said:

I don't think the writers are intentionally dragging the story along or that they don't have a plan, I think the problem is that with the format of streaming shows it's hard to keep the viewer's attention. It's hard to remember all the little details when you have to wait 3 years between seasons. Lost had 22 episodes in one year, the way things have gone it be 6 years before Severance reaches that mark.

Fair. They really need to pick up the pace in producing new episodes. Hopefully with the pandemic over and them knowing that they have as many seasons as they want now, they can do just that.

On the other hand, it had been so long and I had forgotten so much, it was a joy to rewatch season 1 right before this one started.

[Ottis]

13 hours ago, Dev F said:

We learned why severance was invented via the person who actually invented it.

We learned why *Cobel* invented a technology that was then used for severance, and why *she* needed it. We didn't learn why that process then became a global practice that necessitated creating what seems to be a multinational company. While many people have trauma, for severance to have become what it seems to have become has to be much bigger than trauma.

13 hours ago, Dev F said:

What's more, we did in fact learn a lot about how the Eagans are viewed in society, via those "people left behind by Lumon" you seemed to think were a waste of time. Clearly, Lumon brought some measure of prosperity to previously underdeveloped communities through their exploitative industry practices, buying some of the residents' devotion as a result but leaving behind angry and disillusioned people once these communities were no longer useful and the company callously discarded them.

We already knew the Eagans were secretive and manipulative, and what the board was doing was hidden behind a public face. We also know how they view innies (as experiments) and outties (as vulnerable sources of experiments). I don't then need to know additional detail that their company exploited people and towns and then abandoned them. Duh. 

The most interesting aspect of ALL of what we saw Cobel do was that it introduced *scale.* Lumon had a factory big enough to create a factory town, and it lasted long enough for the town to grow and then to decline. That should be decades, not 12 years, so I'm not sure that what they showed us is even consistent with the timeline Fields and Burt outlined. But it's intriguing.

13 hours ago, Dev F said:

Sometimes I think people are waiting for the show to tell us stuff that it's already been showing us, and that's the last thing I'd want any series to do.

THIS show keeps "showing us" the same points, over and over. It is taking forever to introduce any meaningful *new* information to "tell us" what is happening in that world. If it now shows us there were multiple "company towns," and the story behind each one, I might throw my remote.

1 hour ago, PurpleTentacle said:

We know why people sever. There are countless reasons. What we don't quite know is why Lumon wants people to sever. We'll learn eventually, I'm sure.

We know one reason why people do it ... to forget/deal with trauma. But there have to be more. Would soldiers use it to eliminate fear? Would athletes use it to remove doubt? Would public figures use it to project confidence? No idea. But it started as one thing and somehow became something more, maybe big enough to control many aspects of that society. I'd like to know more.

1 hour ago, PurpleTentacle said:

Severance works by not clearly defined scifi technology. You'll never get a step by step explaination or a diagram, because there isn't any real way this would work. You just have to accept that it does work in this world.

Yeah, no problem with that. The one thing that seems off is how "old fashioned" it all seems, from the way they talk about it to "ether" to terms like "stewman." Feels almost like an alternative universe with a different history, and the outside environment is always so dark and cold.

Edited 1 hour ago by Ottis

[PurpleTentacle]

1 hour ago, Ottis said:

We know one reason why people do it ... to forget/deal with trauma. But there have to be more. Would soldiers use it to eliminate fear? Would athletes use it to remove doubt? Would public figures use it to project confidence? No idea. But it started as one thing and somehow became something more, maybe big enough to control many aspects of that society. I'd like to know more.

We know a lot more than one reason why people do it:

1. Mark did it to deal with the trauma of his wife dying.

2. Dylan did it because he couldn't really deal with the job market and got fired all the time.

3. Hellena did it for PR.

4. Gemma was forced.

5. Burt did it so his Innie could get into heaven. / To please his partner.

6. The senator's wife did it to not have to endure the pain of child birth.

7. Irving is still a little unclear, but it seems like he wants to investigate something at Lumon, with all the information he had lying in his flat.

1 hour ago, Ottis said:

Yeah, no problem with that. The one thing that seems off is how "old fashioned" it all seems, from the way they talk about it to "ether" to terms like "stewman." Feels almost like an alternative universe with a different history, and the outside environment is always so dark and cold.

The old fashioned language seems to be mostly a Lumon-thing.

Then there there are the stylistic choices. Like old cars, old computers, but still smart phones and hightech microchips. That is very deliberate, to project an earie feeling of things being "not quite right", because those things shouldn't exist at the same time.

[AstridM]

9 hours ago, seank941 said:

It's hard to remember all the little details when you have to wait 3 years between seasons.

Yes, this is a MAJOR issue in my opinion. It’s ruining TV for me. 2-3YEARS between seasons is excessive. 

[Dev F]

8 hours ago, seank941 said:

I think that all of this would be interesting to explore in season 3. Right now I want to learn about Cold Harbor, Gemma's situation, and Mark's reintegration. Other than last week's episode, we haven't been told or shown anything about the season's three main storylines. I guess we know that Cold Harbor is mysterious and important.

I don't find the open question hugely more urgent than the ones they have been addressing; as I mentioned, I've been impressed by how much the answers we've been given resonate with the core themes of the series, especially after there was so much speculation that we'd be getting much more typical mystery-box-type answers like "Severance is part of a secret plan to resurrect the Eagans."

That said, I do think there's some inelegance in the way Mark's reintegration storyline has been paced. My understanding is that it was originally meant to kick off later in the season but Adam Scott argued for moving it up, because he thought Mark would immediately jump at the opportunity as soon as he learned that his wife might be alive. While that's obviously true, it's necessitated putting that storyline in a weird holding pattern waiting for the rest of the season's story points to catch up. But everything else has worked so well for me that I consider it only a minor issue; other viewers clearly feel differently.

1 hour ago, Ottis said:

The most interesting aspect of ALL of what we saw Cobel do was that it introduced *scale.* Lumon had a factory big enough to create a factory town, and it lasted long enough for the town to grow and then to decline. That should be decades, not 12 years, so I'm not sure that what they showed us is even consistent with the timeline Fields and Burt outlined.

It's not. Lumon has existed as a company since the nineteenth century, and their ether factory in Salt's Neck obviously predates the development of severance by decades, since Cobel's experiences there are what inspired her to invent the technology as a young woman. Indeed, it seems possible that industry in the town collapsed because severance allowed Lumon to pivot away from chemical manufacturing—which adds another level of irony to the situation if the thing Cobel thought would make life better for the workers of her hometown only ended up throwing them all out of work.

That's why I don't see the new Lumon revelations about Salt's Neck to be redundant. They're not showing us another example of how Lumon functions as a modern tech company with a highly sensitive proprietary technology; they're showing us the skeletal structure of naked industrial exploitation that allowed them to become the secretive and sterile powerhouse they are today.