S02.E08: Sweet Vitriol

[Affogato]

5 hours ago, arc said:

Yeah, my loose understanding is that season 2 took about 5 to 8 months to shoot. It's not clear, because the SAG and WGA strikes meant they had to shut down in the middle and restart later. And the opening sequence of Mark running down the hallways was filmed in bits and pieces over that whole time, but it wasn't like they were working a solid five months just on a two minute sequence.

Apparently Apple installed Mark Friedman as a co-showrunner in s1 because series creator Dan Erickson was a newbie, but relations between the two broke down and Friedman was planning to leave -- until Stiller couldn't find a replacement, so Friedman was asked to return. Sounds like a terrible situation if you ask me. Meanwhile Beau Willimon was hired early on to get a big head start on the writing for s3, but then they needed him to pitch in on s2, so Willimon worked on both s2 and s3.

(Friedman was the credited writer on 2x07 though)

They're a megacorporation so vertically integrated they make everything they use internally, per writer's interviews*. But we do have the door factory guy scoffing at how Lumon makes their own doors. We've also seen that they run a fertility clinic, a blood donation drive. I think there were some mentions in s1 about non-Lumon severed offices, so presumably Lumon sells severance as a service to other nearly-as-dystopian employers.

* this is a fascinating and hard to believe idea in itself. Modern car companies, for example, have outsourced or spun off a lot of production, so even things like piston heads might be manufactured by an external company, even if that piston-producing factory used to be a part of the original company. Lumon would have had to buck decades of American industrial trends to keep everything in-house.

There are real-world employers using child labor now.  In America. Not just mom and pop corner stores putting the kids to work, but dangerous occupations like slaughterhouses. It's flat out illegal, but then again there are some proposed bills to undo such prohibitions.

One historian notes that there were 227K child laborers in American agriculture in 1959 between the ages of 10-13, and about a third of them worked 35 hours a week. If we assume Cobel is Arquette's age, she would have been 10 in 1978, which I realize is not 1959, but then again this is an alternate universe.

Also right as we speak states are hurrying to make child labor legal and easier. 

[Affogato]

It is also possie that, as a religious group Kier had some workaroinds. Miss Huang, internship, but child labor, right? Because of when she was born. 

[RedHawk]

On 3/8/2025 at 1:07 PM, diebartdie said:

[snip]

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

We have seen a tattoo of the word “Frolic”. Was it on Irving’s hand or wrist, or someone else’s?

Edited 1 hour ago by RedHawk
Further speculation

[AheadofStraight]

The tattoo was on Drummond's hand.

[lovett1979]

On 3/9/2025 at 12:43 AM, aghst said:

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?

In season one, Petey says "You carry the hurt with you. You feel it down there too. You just don't know what it is."