S02.E10: Cold Harbor

[JKL845]

It's really easy for Dylan. His outie and innie want the same thing. Outie Dylan knows he needs to keep a job and this way he doesn't have to endure working when it would make him miserable. 

[Ilovepie]

On 3/22/2025 at 12:15 PM, KarenX said:

Red in this show has always accompanied self-realization.

Red has also been coded for "Outie" scenes; blue/green for "Innie". What strikes me is that although Brit Lower has said it was Helly in episode 10, when she is standing at the end of that hallway and Mark has to choose between her and Gemma, the entire hallway is red. Just something to consider.....

As far as the lack of security, I think it's hubris. They control the severed floor and testing floor with mind games and torture (break room anyone?). Then there are the "corporate goons" as Irving called them. Also, if all else fails they can just send them back up if they are a problem and tell their Outie whatever they want (as we have seen them do with Mark and his various "injuries"). The Outie would never know there is chaos and a rebellion happening.

[desertflower]

Just came to say Adam Scott’s delivery of “Yeah but I want to live with you” to Helly broke my heart into a million pieces. He sounded like a sad little boy. I loved Adam in Parks and Recreation but my appreciation for his acting has really grown watching this show. 

[ombre]

1 hour ago, Ilovepie said:

As far as the lack of security, I think it's hubris.

There's a super-important scholar of Haitian history, Michel-rolph truillot, who argues that revolution in Haiti was "unthinkable" - as in, it was too utterly horrifying (to white folks) to bear thinking on. If they ever really reckoned with the fact that they were outnumbered in *insane* ratios by people who they tortured and killed with utter impunity, they would be reduced to quivering balls of fear and panic. So they just didn't think about it. A number of people who look at the literature of the period point out ways that this terror runs under the surface of, well, almost all of it. Think of Bertha Mason Rochester in Jane eyre. 

The hubris of Lumon reminds me very, very much of the hubris of Haitian slave owners. If the innies do decide to do a revolution, it will be possible because of that hubris. 

It is perhaps worth noting that living in a world where it is impossible to contemplate the real fabric of your existence without going insane is its own kind of, well, severance. Disassociation. I've been having a lot of thoughts about disassociation and severance over the last month but haven't had non-work time at an actual keyboard (ie, without the decking pop-up ads covering the whole screen), so I haven't put them into words yet. 

Edited Monday at 10:25 PM by ombre

[seank941]

24 minutes ago, ombre said:

There's a super-important scholar of Haitian history, Michel-rolph truillot, who argues that revolution in Haiti was "unthinkable" - as in, it was too utterly horrifying (to white folks) to bear thinking on. If they ever really reckoned with the fact that they were outnumbered in *insane* ratios by people who they tortured and killed with utter impunity, they would be reduced to quivering balls of fear and panic. So they just didn't think about it. A number of people who look at the literature of the period point out ways that this terror runs under the surface of, well, almost all of it. Think of Bertha Mason Rochester in Jane eyre. 

The hubris of Lumon reminds me very, very much of the hubris of Haitian slave owners. If the innies do decide to do a revolution, it will be possible because of that hubris. 

The reason that example doesn't work for me is that slave owners didn't have to deal with PR, or explain to families what happened if the slaves turned against each other. If the departments turned against each other like the drawings showed last season, Lumon would have to explain to the outside world why dozens of severed workers ended up dead in horrific ways. They also already had a mini uprising in season 1. 

I really like this show but the core concept keeps an uprising plot from making any sense. If the innie mind was downloaded into a separate body the uprising would work so much better. It really feels like they want the plot of Westworld, when they have a chance for something so much more unique and interesting.

[Ilovepie]

15 minutes ago, seank941 said:

I really like this show but the core concept keeps an uprising plot from making any sense.

I'm not sure if those painting were prophetic or actual renderings of past uprisings, but what we've been shown is that Lumon keeps the abuse more on an emotional level than physical because that couldn't be explained away. When they go up that elevator, as far as the outies are concerned, they are "fine". 

[Affogato]

5 hours ago, AstridM said:

It’s just internet nonsense 🤦‍♀️

That was a lie she made up. 

Yes. The point about the ointment is that by saying it was not made by lumon she told us lumon made pharmaceuticals. 

Edited Tuesday at 12:00 AM by Affogato

[ombre]

2 hours ago, seank941 said:

The reason that example doesn't work for me is that slave owners didn't have to deal with PR, or explain to families what happened if the slaves turned against each other.

Getting a little off-topic here, so my apologies to anyone who objects (but hey, not so hard to skip to the next post?).  Slavery *absolutely* had to think about pr. The end of slavery in the British colonies came about because of a long pr campaign by abolitionists, combined with a slave revolt in Jamaica that so horrified normies back in Britain that they elected a parliament who would end slavery in their colonies.  A pr loss for slavery after many, many years of pr victories. The US was awash with positive and negative pr about slavery. That's part of what made pro-slavery folks so convinced that slavery was right and just and moral - they were buying the pr arguments of the generations who had come before them. And lots of people outside the US south had financial incentives to protect slavery because their industries were all bound up in it. Plenty of companies right now don't like too much attention on exactly how they get things done - people get really upset at hearing about, say, Amazon workers peeing in bottles and getting injured on the job, it is offensive to the idea of human dignity. They do some positive pr and try to keep people from talking about the bad stuff. 

 

I'll stop now, but yeah, the pr campaign that supported slavery is a super fascinating topic. As is, of course, the pr campaign that fought against it. 

Edited Tuesday at 01:00 AM by ombre
Clarity. And typos

[Affogato]

1 hour ago, Ilovepie said:

I'm not sure if those painting were prophetic or actual renderings of past uprisings, but what we've been shown is that Lumon keeps the abuse more on an emotional level than physical because that couldn't be explained away. When they go up that elevator, as far as the outies are concerned, they are "fine". 

I think we are given a lot of information as the story unfolds, and a lot of the information is given tangentially, so i think we will know about those pictures at some point. We know the paintings all have significance. Yes, Lumon certainly has been careful, as we have been shown, to provide a gift card and an explanation for any minor injury. 

 

[seank941]

5 hours ago, ombre said:

Getting a little off-topic here, so my apologies to anyone who objects (but hey, not so hard to skip to the next post?).  Slavery *absolutely* had to think about pr. The end of slavery in the British colonies came about because of a long pr campaign by abolitionists, combined with a slave revolt in Jamaica that so horrified normies back in Britain that they elected a parliament who would end slavery in their colonies.  A pr loss for slavery after many, many years of pr victories. The US was awash with positive and negative pr about slavery. That's part of what made pro-slavery folks so convinced that slavery was right and just and moral - they were buying the pr arguments of the generations who had come before them. And lots of people outside the US south had financial incentives to protect slavery because their industries were all bound up in it. Plenty of companies right now don't like too much attention on exactly how they get things done - people get really upset at hearing about, say, Amazon workers peeing in bottles and getting injured on the job, it is offensive to the idea of human dignity. They do some positive pr and try to keep people from talking about the bad stuff. 

 

I'll stop now, but yeah, the pr campaign that supported slavery is a super fascinating topic. As is, of course, the pr campaign that fought against it. 

I'm a history major so I enjoy discussing modern Europe/ American history. I think I worded my response poorly. It's not that I don't believe Lumon treats their workers like slaves, I just think they have enough to lose that they should hire some security as a precaution. How often do adolescents do stupid things that require an adult to intervene. 

As for my slightly off-topic response. I consider Lumon to be closer to Colonialists than slave plantation owners. As we saw in the Cobel episode, they move to a town, convert the inhabitants to their beliefs, and put them to work in their factories. Most European colonies had rather large contingents of soldiers to keep order, which is what Lumon should do. You could have the same result, since some colonies did successfully defeat European military units. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:09 AM by seank941
clarity

[ombre]

4 hours ago, seank941 said:

I'm a history major so I enjoy discussing modern Europe/ American history. I think I worded my response poorly. It's not that I don't believe Lumon treats their workers like slaves, I just think they have enough to lose that they should hire some security as a precaution. How often do adolescents do stupid things that require an adult to intervene. 

As for my slightly off-topic response. I consider Lumon to be closer to Colonialists than slave plantation owners. As we saw in the Cobel episode, they move to a town, convert the inhabitants to their beliefs, and put them to work in their factories. Most European colonies had rather large contingents of soldiers to keep order, which is what Lumon should do. You could have the same result, since some colonies did successfully defeat European military units. 

I think we're going at this in two different directions. I'm looking at what Lumon does (minimal security, in this instance) and trying to understand why. We've seen that they treat the innies as children and that they have a very strong quasi-religion, also that they keep their departments quite siloed (both through physical space and myths about long-past warfare), which means smaller groups to have to quash. It seems to me, therefore, that they think that is enough.  Maybe it is, maybe it's gonna bite them in the butt. It's also possible that having more security would have begat more rebellion sooner by making people *feel* their imprisonment (much like how having a more heavily armed police force makes crowds more likely to become violent.)  It seems obvious that they need more security now, of course, but how will they get that? It would be hard to hire for - who is going to be willing to hold the gun that keeps their neighbors enslaved? - and the Lumon hierarchy already seems stretched quite thin. 

I disagree with your characterization of how colonization works, but also, it seems that they have already tried *and* *abandoned* the approach that created cobel's hometown in favor of building their own town (keir) in their own province (pe) and creating an authoritarian world within that administrative buffer. There are clearly people in there who hate Lumon (which... Interesting! Not authoritarian outside the company building, presumably because it would be bad pr!) but getting a connection between them and the innies would be difficult, in no small part because each of the outies we've seen (except perhaps Gemma) has a real reason to want their innie to be going to work every day. 

[Affogato]

2 minutes ago, ombre said:

I think we're going at this in two different directions. I'm looking at what Lumon does (minimal security, in this instance) and trying to understand why. We've seen that they treat the innies as children and that they have a very strong quasi-religion, also that they keep their departments quite siloed (both through physical space and myths about long-past warfare), which means smaller groups to have to quash. It seems to me, therefore, that they think that is enough.  Maybe it is, maybe it's gonna bite them in the butt. It's also possible that having more security would have begat more rebellion sooner by making people *feel* their imprisonment (much like how having a more heavily armed police force makes crowds more likely to become violent.)  It seems obvious that they need more security now, of course, but how will they get that? It would be hard to hire for - who is going to be willing to hold the gun that keeps their neighbors enslaved? - and the Lumon hierarchy already seems stretched quite thin. 

I disagree with your characterization of how colonization works, but also, it seems that they have already tried *and* *abandoned* the approach that created cobel's hometown in favor of building their own town (keir) in their own province (pe) and creating an authoritarian world within that administrative buffer. There are clearly people in there who hate Lumon (which... Interesting! Not authoritarian outside the company building, presumably because it would be bad pr!) but getting a connection between them and the innies would be difficult, in no small part because each of the outies we've seen (except perhaps Gemma) has a real reason to want their innie to be going to work every day. 

I think maybe I see more rust belt. Here in the ether belt, or old mining area, people need jobs and jobs are scarce. The country is full of people left behind or not there yet and Lumon is exploiting them. 

[ombre]

6 minutes ago, Affogato said:

I think maybe I see more rust belt. Here in the ether belt, or old mining area, people need jobs and jobs are scarce. The country is full of people left behind or not there yet and Lumon is exploiting them. 

Which particularly sucks because, as I think I remember discussing in the sweet vitriol thread, there's a lot of evidence that cobel's hometown had some good stuff going for it before Lumon. There was a there there and Lumon sucked it dry. 

[Affogato]

1 hour ago, ombre said:

Which particularly sucks because, as I think I remember discussing in the sweet vitriol thread, there's a lot of evidence that cobel's hometown had some good stuff going for it before Lumon. There was a there there and Lumon sucked it dry. 

I suspect multinational, so like Google and so on getting people in Africa to watch ptsd inducing material to mine data for AI. Imagine severing would help. Not that I necessarily think Lumon is into AI. I still suspect we start from the Kelloggs having one wellness/religious brother and a business brother. Unholy alliance. 

[iMonrey]

On 3/23/2025 at 4:27 PM, peachmangosteen said:

I always go back and forth on whether I like this show tbh. It took me over a year to finish season 1 because I kept being like "I don't think I like this" and stopping and then I'd see someone mention how good it was so I'd try again multiple times until I did indeed finish it. Even this season, I watched through episode 5 and was like "Do I care?" and decided no but then friends were raving about the finale so I ended up watching the last 5 eps the past 2 days. And I'm still not sure how I feel.

I liked Season 1. And I like the concept. But I felt like this season sort of went off the rails. This article confirms that show creator Dan Erickson takes inspiration from Lost (as well as Black Mirror), and I definitely started getting Lost vibes early this season. I think the basic premise suffers the longer they try to drag it out. And the show basically confirms my belief that episodic TV isn't a good medium for these puzzle box type shows. They are better served contained into limited run series and movies.

[AstridM]

15 hours ago, Affogato said:

We know the paintings all have significance.

You sure?

24 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

I liked Season 1. And I like the concept. But I felt like this season sort of went off the rails. This article confirms that show creator Dan Erickson takes inspiration from Lost (as well as Black Mirror), and I definitely started getting Lost vibes early this season. I think the basic premise suffers the longer they try to drag it out. And the show basically confirms my belief that episodic TV isn't a good medium for these puzzle box type shows. They are better served contained into limited run series and movies.

Ugh, that’s not good news to me. I avoided Lost for a reason. 

[gibasi]

37 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

I liked Season 1. And I like the concept. But I felt like this season sort of went off the rails. This article confirms that show creator Dan Erickson takes inspiration from Lost (as well as Black Mirror), and I definitely started getting Lost vibes early this season. I think the basic premise suffers the longer they try to drag it out. And the show basically confirms my belief that episodic TV isn't a good medium for these puzzle box type shows. They are better served contained into limited run series and movies.

For 3 years I have been encouraging some close friends to watch this show. And then Season 2 happened. I can't recommend it anymore. But I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. If you love it that's fine. I can only say I probably won't watch any subsequent seasons. I don't hesitate anymore in dropping shows that are going off the rails as iMonrey says.

Edited Tuesday at 04:25 PM by gibasi
.

[Affogato]

19 minutes ago, AstridM said:

You sure?

Ugh, that’s not good news to me. I avoided Lost for a reason. 

Yes I am sure the pictures have significance. 

[Ilovepie]

6 hours ago, ombre said:

I'm looking at what Lumon does (minimal security, in this instance) and trying to understand why.

I think they do have security on main level floor. They have to sign in, put stuff in the lockers and wear lanyards. Someone is guarding the elevator. All very normal stuff. The severed floor has cameras everywhere. I really feel like they think they can control them through fear and at worst, put them in the elevator back up to the main level and crisis is over. 

[JenE4]

3 hours ago, Affogato said:

Yes I am sure the pictures have significance. 

Why would Devon and Ricken have been in the painting watching Mark S complete Cold Harbor? It almost seemed like a mistake that they had an artist/set crew create the painting of the whole cast basking in the glory of the momentous occasion, but they shouldn’t have been there. I mean, I guess Lumon is aware that Mark S briefly met his sister and brother-in-law during the overtime contingency, and maybe Ricken is now a Lumon celebrity rewriting his book for the Innies (though we don’t know whether it’s published for them yet), but it really didn’t make sense for them to be in the painting.

[Affogato]

6 hours ago, JenE4 said:

Why would Devon and Ricken have been in the painting watching Mark S complete Cold Harbor? It almost seemed like a mistake that they had an artist/set crew create the painting of the whole cast basking in the glory of the momentous occasion, but they shouldn’t have been there. I mean, I guess Lumon is aware that Mark S briefly met his sister and brother-in-law during the overtime contingency, and maybe Ricken is now a Lumon celebrity rewriting his book for the Innies (though we don’t know whether it’s published for them yet), but it really didn’t make sense for them to be in the painting.

They are associates of Genma and therefore part of the picture? The picture would be made for the future, not just the moment?

[Dev F]

8 hours ago, JenE4 said:

Why would Devon and Ricken have been in the painting watching Mark S complete Cold Harbor? It almost seemed like a mistake that they had an artist/set crew create the painting of the whole cast basking in the glory of the momentous occasion, but they shouldn’t have been there.

I think O&D were tasked with creating a painting of Mark S. and everyone he's ever met. Though if that's the case, it does seem to be missing anyone he met before the start of the series, particularly old refiners like Dylan's predecessor Carol D.

[RedHawk]

20 hours ago, Ilovepie said:

I think they do have security on main level floor. They have to sign in, put stuff in the lockers and wear lanyards. Someone is guarding the elevator. All very normal stuff. The severed floor has cameras everywhere. I really feel like they think they can control them through fear and at worst, put them in the elevator back up to the main level and crisis is over. 

Does the severed floor have cameras "everywhere"? It's confusing, because at times we've seen the MDR team being observed and at other times they're doing things in their "office" and in the hallways that security would stop immediately if they were aware of what's happening. 

For me this show suffers from the same thing I've noticed with other shows (like "Handmaid's Tale") and it kind of ruins them for me. In these scenarios that are either an alternate of our own time or a near future, there would be cameras everywhere. We are already under far more surveillance than we realize, so I can't imagine these situations where people are under so much control but not watched constantly. Whenever I notice, it makes it hard for me to suspend disbelief. 

Adding this: Or maybe it's to show us how sloppy these people are with their weird mind-control thing. They really are comically inept at times, and the whole Keir mythology and how its used is hilariously bad, when it's not downright creepy (like the waffle party). 

I miss the satirical humor from S1. I also didn't like S2 because it went too far off the rails into "Lost"/Lynch territory in all the wrong ways. All the things I liked about S1 went away and it became disturbing, annoying, and tiresome. I didn't enjoy it. As much as I love Ben Stiller, I have no interest in watching S3. For me, the finale of S2 is how the show ends, and I'm good with that. 

Edited Wednesday at 01:59 PM by RedHawk
Added more thoughts

[Affogato]

2 minutes ago, RedHawk said:

Does the severed floor have cameras "everywhere"? It's confusing, because at times we've seen the MDR team being observed and at other times they're doing things in their "office" and in the hallways that security would stop immediately if they were aware of what's happening. 

For me this show suffers from the same thing I've noticed with other shows (like "Handmaid's Tale") and it kind of ruins them for me. In these scenarios that are either an alternate of our own time or a near future, there would be cameras everywhere. We are already under far more surveillance than we realize, so I can't imagine these situations where people are under so much control but not watched constantly. Whenever I notice, it makes it hard for me to suspend disbelief. 

I also didn't like S2 because it went too far off the rails into "Lost"/Lynch territory in all the wrong ways. All the things I liked about S1 went away and it became disturbing, annoying, and tiresome. I didn't enjoy it. As much as I love Ben Stiller, I have no interest in watching S3. For me, the finale of S2 is how the show ends, and I'm good with that. 

We saw mdr being weirdly surveiled by the shadow team. They are studying the reactions to the mdr. Are they AI?  it is clearly a secret project, too. The world thinks they are …something..calling about your warranty. 
 

For the most part I think they are filming but not watching live. It is like putting cameras in a rabbit warren to study the lives of rabbits. There are blank areas. Supply closets and cameras are taken out of the bathrooms. 
 

i was ok with lost and Twin Peaks the Return is the pinnacle of TV for me so far. I agree that this season, while they still give many snippets of information, it has become more character driven. Mrs Cobel/Selvig is suddenly a person.  I suspect there will be more of that before it fully loops back to a conclusion. 

[RedHawk]

29 minutes ago, Affogato said:

We saw mdr being weirdly surveiled by the shadow team. They are studying the reactions to the mdr. Are they AI?  it is clearly a secret project, too. The world thinks they are …something..calling about your warranty. 
 

For the most part I think they are filming but not watching live. It is like putting cameras in a rabbit warren to study the lives of rabbits. There are blank areas. Supply closets and cameras are taken out of the bathrooms. 
 

i was ok with lost and Twin Peaks the Return is the pinnacle of TV for me so far. I agree that this season, while they still give many snippets of information, it has become more character driven. Mrs Cobel/Selvig is suddenly a person.  I suspect there will be more of that before it fully loops back to a conclusion. 

Possibly filming but not watching live. I recently watched the first three episodes of S1 again, and I think in one of those we see one of the Egan-like medical men watching the MDR room. (Or maybe it was S2.) Why, when they're clearly in rebellion like with the marching band scene, is no security person aware? And all it would take to lock this place down is someone watching the hallways.

Perhaps it's because they don't have enough Lumon acolytes to cover the severed floor. They can't hire security people from the outside. The security men they do have are truly scary.

[Affogato]

3 hours ago, RedHawk said:

Possibly filming but not watching live. I recently watched the first three episodes of S1 again, and I think in one of those we see one of the Egan-like medical men watching the MDR room. (Or maybe it was S2.) Why, when they're clearly in rebellion like with the marching band scene, is no security person aware? And all it would take to lock this place down is someone watching the hallways.

Perhaps it's because they don't have enough Lumon acolytes to cover the severed floor. They can't hire security people from the outside. The security men they do have are truly scary.

They have security. If you leave the floor you are an outie. If you eat another innie or kill your boss, you won’t remember it. They can always check the footage later. 

[seank941]

On 3/25/2025 at 8:47 AM, iMonrey said:

I liked Season 1. And I like the concept. But I felt like this season sort of went off the rails. This article confirms that show creator Dan Erickson takes inspiration from Lost (as well as Black Mirror), and I definitely started getting Lost vibes early this season. I think the basic premise suffers the longer they try to drag it out. And the show basically confirms my belief that episodic TV isn't a good medium for these puzzle box type shows. They are better served contained into limited run series and movies.

 

7 hours ago, Affogato said:

i was ok with lost and Twin Peaks the Return is the pinnacle of TV for me so far. I agree that this season, while they still give many snippets of information, it has become more character driven. Mrs Cobel/Selvig is suddenly a person.  I suspect there will be more of that before it fully loops back to a conclusion. 

What made Lost so good is that it was completely character driven. The mystery was simple, convoluted, and overstretched. The reason the show worked for me is that I cared how the mystery affected the characters. Lost would have given us an episode fully about Petey before he died, so we could really care about his daughter's hatred of Lumon. We also would have gotten an entire episode about Dylan's outie, so that his hurt at his wife and decision to quit was so meaningful.

If that's what the show wants to be they need to commit to that. Since Mark won't be reintegrating until next season, we didn't really need to see any of it this season, same with the marching band. Imagine how much more impactful Dylan's letter would have been if we spent all that time focused on him. 

[Affogato]

28 minutes ago, seank941 said:

 

What made Lost so good is that it was completely character driven. The mystery was simple, convoluted, and overstretched. The reason the show worked for me is that I cared how the mystery affected the characters. Lost would have given us an episode fully about Petey before he died, so we could really care about his daughter's hatred of Lumon. We also would have gotten an entire episode about Dylan's outie, so that his hurt at his wife and decision to quit was so meaningful.

If that's what the show wants to be they need to commit to that. Since Mark won't be reintegrating until next season, we didn't really need to see any of it this season, same with the marching band. Imagine how much more impactful Dylan's letter would have been if we spent all that time focused on him. 

I thought the letter spoke volumes about oDylan. We dodn’t need to luxuriate in more conversation between him and Gretchen. It wouldn’t have added much. I’m not sure why you needed more Petey and his daughter.  We did luxuriate in an episode about Cobel’s roots that also told us a lot about the impact of Lumon on people and its past and current attitude and why Cobel is that way and who Huang and possibly Mitchick are and also suddenly a lot of things made sense. 

it isn’t hugely linear. I think it is mostly brilliant in giving out information, as if we were inside it. You see something and suddenly something you dismissed a while ago makes sense. It has characters you see one way and then you leatn something and your prtspective changes. It has a lot of world building, which is a thing in itself.  It juggles these things. 

 

 

 

[Ilovepie]

1 hour ago, seank941 said:

What made Lost so good is that it was completely character driven. The mystery was simple, convoluted, and overstretched.

Totally agree. And unpopular opinion, I still love it, ending and all. But Lost suffered from the old tv model of needing so many episodes. Imagine what that show could be if it had been totally planned out in advance and only 10 episodes a season! I think that's why I am still trusting on this show.  There needs to be an end plan. The goats are this show's polar bear, so to speak. Crossing my fingers they can stick the landing!

I had no problem with this season being different than last season - something had to be different than the four MDR peeps in their room after the OTC last season. They are changed from that experience. I think this season advanced the story and gave enough answers to propel the story forward next season. Some answers were not satisfying (The purpose of the goats), others were great (What is happening to Gemma). My favorite episodes this season were Episode 2 when they bring the team back with that hilarious video about the "Microdata Uprising", and the ORTBO.

I am looking forward to whatever is next!

[applecrisp]

 

Quote

28 minutes ago, Ilovepie said:

Totally agree. And unpopular opinion, I still love it, ending and all. But Lost suffered from the old tv model of needing so many episodes. Imagine what that show could be if it had been totally planned out in advance and only 10 episodes a season! I think that's why I am still trusting on this show.  There needs to be an end plan. The goats are this show's polar bear, so to speak. Crossing my fingers they can stick the landing!

I had no problem with this season being different than last season - something had to be different than the four MDR peeps in their room after the OTC last season. They are changed from that experience. I think this season advanced the story and gave enough answers to propel the story forward next season. Some answers were not satisfying (The purpose of the goats), others were great (What is happening to Gemma). My favorite episodes this season were Episode 2 when they bring the team back with that hilarious video about the "Microdata Uprising", and the ORTBO.

I am looking forward to whatever is next!

 

Agree, it was the people on Lost I liked.

They made me sympathize with an Iraqi soldier. They did a good job with characters.

[aghst]

A lot of the Lost back story episodes were fillers.

They may not have been bad but the motivation for writing and producing them was to keep the show on the air for at least 100 episodes because that was the business model to making a lot of money with shows on broadcast networks, have enough content to sell into syndication.

Also Disney/ABC wanted to keep the show on the air for several seasons, because it started out with great ratings and the show creators and show runners had all kinds of financial incentives to keep the gravy train going.

So they delved into almost every character, give supporting characters  bigger roles once you saw their back stories.

The key thing was to delay and delay revealing all the mysteries they hinted at in the pilot and other episodes in the early seasons.  They kept introducing one mystery after another.

Was it good storytelling to keep dropping these mystery breadcrumbs -- many of which they never revealed or gave very unsatisfactory revelations -- in a cynical way to string along viewers for so many seasons?

Well it's a very polarizing tactic because some people felt they were were manipulated -- and not in a good way -- and others liked the series including the end.

So far I don't think Severance has done anything like that but it's only 2 seasons so far, just 19 episodes total, which is like how many episodes there were of the first season of Lost.

Some people thought the Harmony back story was a waste of time,  could have revealed that she invented Severance in a scene or two instead of dropping the reveal at the end of an episode.

So far though, nothing like the smoke monster or the lottery numbers or  Dharma Initiative or time travel.

 

 

[seank941]

1 hour ago, Ilovepie said:

Totally agree. And unpopular opinion, I still love it, ending and all. But Lost suffered from the old tv model of needing so many episodes. Imagine what that show could be if it had been totally planned out in advance and only 10 episodes a season! I think that's why I am still trusting on this show.  There needs to be an end plan. The goats are this show's polar bear, so to speak. Crossing my fingers they can stick the landing!

I had no problem with this season being different than last season - something had to be different than the four MDR peeps in their room after the OTC last season. They are changed from that experience. I think this season advanced the story and gave enough answers to propel the story forward next season. Some answers were not satisfying (The purpose of the goats), others were great (What is happening to Gemma). My favorite episodes this season were Episode 2 when they bring the team back with that hilarious video about the "Microdata Uprising", and the ORTBO.

I am looking forward to whatever is next!

I agree with all this. I know it was polarizing, but I love the ORTBO episode and think the beginning of the season was great. Irv wondering if they should eat the seal was so ridiculous it seemed like something Lumon might do. Cobel has never been one of my favorite characters, but I think that episode would have been better earlier in the season, coming right after the Gemma episode it took us away from the main characters for a long time. I still love this show, however I'd like to know what the show is going for. Are they trying to destroy Lumon, end Severance, or something else entirely? 

I think 10-13 episodes is the sweet spot for most shows. The episodes can focus on characters and let the pace breathe without having to stretch for time. Now that streaming is a thing, platforms can basically do what networks used to do without ordering more episodes. They can take a hit show and drag it out over 6 years, but only make about 24 episodes. They can count on people streaming repeat episodes for 2 years, and right before they lose interest, put out another batch.

I know I sound negative, but I really do love this show, and until they give me reason for doubt, I believe they have an endgame planned.  

[ombre]

I have other thoughts on the storytelling that I'm not gonna get into right now, but one thing that I keep thinking about is how much time has actually gone by in the show. So many of this season's episodes were either happening right after one another or literally simultaneously that I kinda get the impression that it might have only been a week or so. And we know it starts right after the last season. And honestly, I don't think that last season covered all that much time. Mark missed a few days here and there and helly missed a few days after she tried to hang herself but... The whole show may have taken place within maybe a month? I kind of get the impression that there are weird things going on with sense of time - both because of the three-year gap between seasons and the way that the episodes were spread out over two months for us. But I feel like this has been one crazy snowball for the characters, just one thing right after another, and for the viewers is been a slow, gradual unfolding. Which makes things feel really odd. 

[Dev F]

17 hours ago, Affogato said:

I thought the letter spoke volumes about oDylan. We dodn’t need to luxuriate in more conversation between him and Gretchen. It wouldn’t have added much.

Agreed. This is honestly one of the reasons why I didn't like Lost as much as most people and wouldn't want Severance to follow its lead—because a lot of the character work in that show seemed indulgent to me, more focused on stoking the audience's warm feelings for the characters than digging into them in a really meaty and focused way. I wouldn't have been opposed to, say, a full Dylan episode if the writers really had something specific to say with it, but I didn't feel like there were any gaps in my understanding of the character or his relationship with his wife that really demanded more attention than we got.

Quote

it isn’t hugely linear. I think it is mostly brilliant in giving out information, as if we were inside it. You see something and suddenly something you dismissed a while ago makes sense. It has characters you see one way and then you leatn something and your prtspective changes. It has a lot of world building, which is a thing in itself.  It juggles these things. 

I agree with this too, for the most part, but I do think that sometimes this layered style of storytelling leads to awkward moments—especially when the nonlinearity means that some things don't end up clicking into place by the end of the season. For instance, Milchick's growing disillusionment with Lumen seems to be building to something, but then the show ends up hitting the same notes with it for several episodes instead of developing it further, and then the character just sort of swallows all his resentment in the final episode so he can once again serve as an enthusiastic Lumon heavy. 

Obviously, the resentment is still roiling below the surface, suggesting that Milchick may end up being a wild card in the impending innie revolt, but shoving all that into what is essentially a season-ending cliffhanger isn't a hugely satisfying payoff.

Edited Thursday at 03:19 PM by Dev F

[Milburn Stone]

On 3/22/2025 at 7:12 PM, Jack Shaftoe said:

So macro data refining is basically magic? Other people pulling numbers based on vibes somehow has an effect on Gemma? I know the show isn't exactly hard science fiction but this broke my suspension of disbelief into a million pieces.

The running joke that is the security at Lumon (or rather, the convenient lack thereof) also isn't helping me take the show seriously. Sure, it has lots of dark comedy but I don't think we are supposed to not be scared by Lumon at all but frankly at this point I don't think Lumon can steal candy from a baby, so the menace factor is completely gone.

I think maybe you've put your finger on the reason this episode lacked emotional power for me. I mean, certainly I was shocked viscerally by the violence, but I should have cared more. And the marching band smacked of "what could we do now that would blow the audience's mind?" rather than actually blowing my mind. And the Gemma or Helly thing at the end was "interesting" to me on an intellectual level, but I didn't feel emotionally invested at all, and I'm sure the intention was that I would.

[Milburn Stone]

9 hours ago, Dev F said:

For instance, Milchick's growing disillusionment with Lumen seems to be building to something, but then the show ends up hitting the same notes with it for several episodes instead of developing it further, and then the character just sort of swallows all his resentment in the final episode so he can once again serve as an enthusiastic Lumon heavy. 

 

Yeah, that's another problem.

[Ilovepie]

22 hours ago, aghst said:

So far though, nothing like the smoke monster or the lottery numbers or  Dharma Initiative or time travel.

Love this! Although one could argue pushing buttons sorting numbers into "tempers" is the Severance version of 4,8,15,16, 23,42 (I can't remember a password I made yesterday but I can remember that. The brain is a weird thing).🤣

Also, the religious weirdness of Lumon is a little Dharma-like, no? Maybe not a commune, but definitely requires all-in commitment. And the Innies are kind of stuck on an island with no real out, it's just their island is the floor of a gigantic office building....

Edited Thursday at 11:27 PM by Ilovepie
Apparently, I couldn't remember those numbers!

[AstridM]

22 hours ago, Affogato said:

I’m not sure why you needed more Petey and his daughter.

I absolutely needed more. Petey is one of my favorites, and the fact that oMark didn’t even mention him when talking to iMark (when they were allegedly best friends) made no sense, imo. They totally dropped the ball on that one and it leaves a gaping hole in the story for me.

19 hours ago, seank941 said:

They can count on people streaming repeat episodes for 2 years, and right before they lose interest, put out another batch.

Can they truly count on this long term though? I know I’ve about lost my patience with this model.

Edited Thursday at 08:39 PM by AstridM

[KarenX]

1 hour ago, Ilovepie said:

4,8,15,16,24,32

Um

4 8 15 16 23 42

Burned into my brain!

Dharma was mysterious but 100% I’d take a Dharma job before a Lumon one.

[Milburn Stone]

Now that the season is over...does anybody besides me think that Dan Erickson is just a figurehead? The publicity (press interviews, after-show BTS-es, et. al.) would have us believe he's the writer of this show, but I think that's only because it doesn't suit anyone's purpose, including Ben Stiller's, to say that Ben Stiller did everything. And also because it's part of the deal Erickson made to sell them his idea.

I buy that Erickson came up with the basic concept when he was working in a door factory, but I don't know anything Erickson has done prior to this show that would make me believe he's capable of the kind of world-building the show has done, nor of the high level of excellence of the dialogue. There's a writers' room, and Ben Stiller is in charge of it, and every time Erickson comes into the room they humor him and make him think he did something. Just a feeling. (I don't know anything, obviously.)

[aghst]

Maybe.  How often does a guy with a thin resume get his story made into a high budget show?

Stiller must have championed it and he’s doing all these interviews and podcasts to promote the show.

my guess is Apple never would have bought the show if Stiller wasn’t involved.

Stiller could have buried the unknown guy, basically steal the story, but he didn’t. — didn’t do what one of the Eagans would have done, take someone else’s idea and claim it as his own.

[Ilovepie]

24 minutes ago, KarenX said:

Um

4 8 15 16 23 42

Burned into my brain!

Dharma was mysterious but 100% I’d take a Dharma job before a Lumon one.

I was close! Or dyslexic! 🤪

[Affogato]

16 hours ago, AstridM said:

I absolutely needed more. Petey is one of my favorites, and the fact that oMark didn’t even mention him when talking to iMark (when they were allegedly best friends) made no sense, imo. They totally dropped the ball on that one and it leaves a gaping hole in the story for me.

Can they truly count on this long term though? I know I’ve about lost my patience with this model.

Lost was a show about a Genii and about a conspiracy type complany that tried to contain and control it/use it and about how it informed and changed the lives of some people thrown into contact with it. It had a lot of episodes and justification in the story to take side trips with each character. It would have been a lot different if it had only ten episodes, of course, and you would have only concentrated on some back stories, like Cobel, that really directly informed the world. Basically, Mark is going through what Petey went through, we don’t have to see it twice. the protests, daughter, may show up again, too. 

When I have conversations with people about tv I often think of the Futurama episode where the aliens come to destroy the earth because they didn’t like the end of Ally McBeal.  Fry, a leftover from the age of television, makes a predictable ending that doesn’t have any changes and the aliens are satisfied and go away and don’t destroy the earth. 

22 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

Yeah, that's another problem.

I think Mitchick is a longer term goal. Mitchick is a resentful employee, but he still sees this as being a big chance for him. We want him to ‘change sides’ but he may not change sides and he may change sides and it didn’t happen this season, and dammit we all know people like this.

On 3/25/2025 at 11:56 PM, Dev F said:

I think O&D were tasked with creating a painting of Mark S. and everyone he's ever met. Though if that's the case, it does seem to be missing anyone he met before the start of the series, particularly old refiners like Dylan's predecessor Carol D.

I haven’t relooked at the painting, however I think it may be more the ascention of Gemma type of thing.

[lovett1979]

17 hours ago, AstridM said:

Petey is one of my favorites, and the fact that oMark didn’t even mention him when talking to iMark (when they were allegedly best friends) made no sense, imo. They totally dropped the ball on that one and it leaves a gaping hole in the story for me.

But is that the show dropping the ball, or oMark? oMark makes a lot of "mistakes" in that argument with iMark. He gets Helly's name wrong, he lies about why he reintegrated, he is very dismissive of iMark's whole existence. WE know that mentioning Petey would have been persuasive, but oMark doesn't know that. Because he's not thinking about iMark's real life and real desires and real motivations. It's interesting that iMark starts this season with the sole purpose of finding Gemma (ostensibly FOR his outie) but when given an exact plan to get her out, because it is framed in the wrong way for him, he reacts negatively. (yes, thinks have happened to him throughout this season that may have shifted his desires and motivations, but still)

[Affogato]

18 minutes ago, lovett1979 said:

But is that the show dropping the ball, or oMark? oMark makes a lot of "mistakes" in that argument with iMark. He gets Helly's name wrong, he lies about why he reintegrated, he is very dismissive of iMark's whole existence. WE know that mentioning Petey would have been persuasive, but oMark doesn't know that. Because he's not thinking about iMark's real life and real desires and real motivations. It's interesting that iMark starts this season with the sole purpose of finding Gemma (ostensibly FOR his outie) but when given an exact plan to get her out, because it is framed in the wrong way for him, he reacts negatively. (yes, thinks have happened to him throughout this season that may have shifted his desires and motivations, but still)

Part is that he is emotionally maturing but not mature. At first he wants to learn about outie and please him. Teen iMark is questioning that. A d oMark, well Petey isn’t even part of his reintigration flashes. Not current to iMark. 

[Kirbyrun]

4 hours ago, Affogato said:

I think Mitchick is a longer term goal. Mitchick is a resentful employee, but he still sees this as being a big chance for him. We want him to ‘change sides’ but he may not change sides and he may change sides and it didn’t happen this season, and dammit we all know people like this.

IMHO, Milchick is there to show us that corporate dickery hurts middle management, too. At some point, Seth is going to have to decide if he sides with his rich, powerful bosses...or the proles he's been assigned to lord his (borrowed) power over. I'm actually pleased that this season didn't end with him throwing off the yoke of his overlords and joining Our Heroes. He did some terrible things to Mark and the others, and I'm not ready for a redemption arc for him.

[ombre]

I've been thinking a lot about how the storytelling works in this show and how it's changed between the first season and this season.  One of the things that totally fascinates me in storytelling is when you can make something appear without just obviously having it enter the stage and wave hello.  I first started tracking this in a play I saw a few years ago that used the physiological way the eye and brain work together to literally appear a character onstage out of nothing.  Instead of turning the lights off, they built them to be so bright (with just a solid white set onstage) that your eyes just stopped processing information.  When the lights turned down to a normal level, bam, there he was.  There are a lot of ways to hide information in front of you.  I've loved how Slow Horses does it - inserting tiny scenes or fragments of scenes that have absolutely no obvious connection to the main plots.  We're narrative-loving beasts.  Because the fragments don't fit with the narratives that we're really tracking (and which it takes a fair bit of work to track!) they kind of go into cold storage in your head, like they're your own buried memories, and only come into play much later in the season.  They're managing to both literally put something in front of you and yet hide it from you.  It feels like magic.

I feel like this show is trying something similar.  Because each of the severed characters has one actor, we can feel like we've seen a lot of one actor or another, but the other half of the person is a mystery.  We end up filling in details based on our own life experiences and viewing habits.  They've given us some broad brushstrokes of the other outies - rebellious Helly an Eagan! by-the-book Irving a saboteur! ambitious Dylan a failure! - but we really don't know all that much.  They *seem* like we should know them because we're so familiar with BL, JT, and ZC onscreen, but we truly do not know these characters.  It allows space for them to surprise us.  

I'm so glad that Dylan was the first to get to capitalize on that disjuncture.  I've been so interested in how the Dylan-Gretchen pair - more than any other characters - brings out people's tendency to write their own experiences and prejudices onto their couple dynamics.  (Because where we don't have enough info, we create info, pattern-seeking beasts that we are!)  Outie Dylan - a character we've been told to write off as a fuck-up - did such a good job rising to the moment.  And the way they shot the scene - lingering glances at the kids playing, that tiny, soft contact between Gretchen's hand and Dylan's shoulder - really gave a sense of hope and possibility and love.  And the scenes after gave me a real sense that outie Dylan was about to try to commit to being a better person and that innie Dylan was feeling a new, deep sense of purpose.  It was so astonishingly beautiful.  And I think that moment was only available because they *hadn't* given us a deep sense of who outie Dylan was beforehand.  They'd generally just shown him as a bulk in shadows.  We kinda thought we knew him.  We did not.  He was awesome.

***

I totally agree with not being *quite* ready for Milchick's redeption arc.  I am so *so* curious about that man and I don't want his arc to be rushed.  I want him to have an episode like sweet vitriol where we get a sense of what made him who he is.

I am separately intrigued by the way that he becomes the real center of the show's alluding-to-but-not-dealing-with race, which, in turn, is deeply connected to setting the start of Lumon in a period that we associate with the end of the Civil War.  The portrait and the unspoken convo with Natalie.  The way his different middle-management personae are often connected to stereotypes from ways film has represented Black men (he's always sliding around on a continuum between "Uncle Tom" smiling and the blaxploitation-era version of a "buck" character).*  The constant micro- and macro-aggressions making clear that he does not belong and is there on sufferance.  And then the scene with the fucking statue.  In that scene he's basically stuck playing the Interlocutor role from a blackface show - the *white* role.  The butt of the jokes.  Tambo and Bones, the endmen, always get the laugh.  The Interlocutor is basically a dumb overseer - the boss who the wily workers get to get one over on.  (For anybody who's seen White Christmas, there's a "Minstrel Show number in which Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen play the endmen with Bing Crosby as the Interlocutor that gets at the dynamics pretty well.)  And then he reverses it with his very funny, very biting comment that the statue is five inches taller than Kier was in real life.  I feel like he's ready to turn.  I cannot wait to see it.

* Apologies if these terms offend.  They *are* offensive, but I don't know how to discuss the idea of these damaging stereotypes without naming the stereotypes themselves, and I'd rather speak plainly and in ways that make clear the discomfort and potential offense.  TT has, to my mind, done a really exceptional job of both evoking the stereotypes and making clear the reasons why his character is sometimes boxed into them and how very, very much they grate on him.  I haven't seen him in anything before Severance and I am dying to see him in other things.  He is so damned good.

[ombre]

Lol.  It's so easy to write one thing and go down a rabbit hole and totally forget half of what you wanted to say.  This is the *other* half of what I meant to say wrt storytelling.

I feel like this season was asking the audience to stick with it for a style of storytelling that is rare and hard in this era of fast jumps.  This season - for better or worse - insisted on telling stories in long chunks rather than short jumps.  The first episode is entirely within Lumon and basically just following Mark (with little interludes with Milchick).  The second episode is entirely outside Lumon.  The camping episode is entirely the camping episode.  The Cobel ep is entirely the Cobel ep.  The Gemma ep is almost entirely the Gemma ep.  Even in eps that have more complex plots, there are often big chunks.  I'm rewatching the finale and so far it's been 20 minutes of the Marks, then 20 minutes of Mark finishing Cold Harbor and Dylan/Dylan.  Really, really big chunks. 

In one sense, I think they kind of forced their own hand into this style by having the action take place over such a *tiny* timeline, but I suspect there's more to it.  In the first ep, I was really aware that we had always followed Mark to and from, to and from Lumon.  This was the first time we ever saw the world as innie Mark does - just an endless fucking slog of bright white corridors.  No escape.  I've been wondering if that's the point of this slower method of storytelling - driving home that sense of being trapped.  But it's *so* not the popular style of telling a story these days.  I watch a fair bit of tv with my mom who is, bless her, not a skilled tv watcher.  (Which fills me with all kinds of conflicting feels to realize that I *am* a skilled tv watcher!  :D brb crying)  She has spent most of her life watching PBS and has *real* trouble with shows that are constantly jumping between four different plots.  I'm going to be curious to see how she does with season two and its nearly aggressively linear storytelling (reintegration flashbacks excepted!!!).  

The timeline thing continues to fascinate me.  I'm gradually starting to think that the entire show thus far has taken place over he course of about three weeks.  In the ep where Devon gives birth (ep 5?), Ricken mentions it's been five days since they dropped off the book (ep 3).  I'm pretty sure Helly started two days before ep 3.  So it's a week between the first ep and Devon giving birth.  And then I think it's about a day for each of the next eps.  And then the new season starts *right* after that.  And in the course of this season there are some days that we experience multiple times.  Cobel is doing her thing while Mark is reintegrating and having flashbacks to his time with Gemma, which means that eps 7 and 8 are simultaneous, and come right on the heels of ep 6 and are *immediately* followed by ep 9, which is *immediately* followed by ep 10.  It's not quite 24, but it's not *that* far off.  But because it has the weird dreamy feel it doesn't seem like it should all be happening bam bam bam bam bam.

 

Also it's been interesting to watch the first season again after watching the second. I think only after the first two eps of the second season did I really understand that literally *all* outie mark does is drink and be a dick to the people around him. (until Petey shows up). An amazing portrait of broken-with-grief-nigh-unto-living-death. It's truly only bearable because we get to escape into the innie world. 

Edited Friday at 09:35 PM by ombre

[Dev F]

9 hours ago, Affogato said:

I think Mitchick is a longer term goal. Mitchick is a resentful employee, but he still sees this as being a big chance for him. We want him to ‘change sides’ but he may not change sides and he may change sides and it didn’t happen this season, and dammit we all know people like this.

That's certainly true, but to me it seems like we got to that point in the character's arc by the end of episode 5, when Milchick's response to his insulting performance review was to take it out on Mark S., viciously threatening him with the knowledge that he fucked Helena Eagan. Up to this point, I think Milchick's arc is pretty brilliant. The show lays out the character's vulnerabilities and legitimate grievances, but also the ways that Milchick's pride twists them into something ugly and destructive. And these developments have a direct effect on the main story of the season, as Mark S.'s response to Milchick's threats is to defuse them by confessing to Helly, which leads to their sexual encounter, thereby deepening the connection will ultimately fuel the season's final twist.

But if Milchick is already at "taking out his legitimate grievances on the innies" by the middle of the season, and that's where he basically still is at the end of the season, what does his story in the intervening half season really amount to? While the season was still unspooling he seemed to be developing further, redirecting his resentment first to Miss Huang and then to Mr. Drummond, but it's weird to present a scene as seemingly earthshaking as Milchick telling his boss to "devour feculence" and have it make no appreciable difference to the trajectory of his character or the broader story of the season.

And that's not even to say that the season had to end with Milchick reforming. I can imagine, say, a storyline where Milchick cussing out his boss and getting away with it helps him regain his sense of power and purpose and perversely binds him closer to Lumon. But nothing like that happens; we just sort of reset to the dancing, impish Milchick of season 1 as if the internal crisis never happened.

Edited Friday at 10:34 PM by Dev F

[arc]

On 3/27/2025 at 3:12 PM, Milburn Stone said:

I buy that Erickson came up with the basic concept when he was working in a door factory, but I don't know anything Erickson has done prior to this show that would make me believe he's capable of the kind of world-building the show has done, nor of the high level of excellence of the dialogue.

Off the top of my head, first-timers -- TV creators who hadn't been in writers rooms before launching their first show -- who were great: Dan Erickson, Dan Harmon, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobsen*, Liz Meriwether**

* they had the Broad City web series, but a web series of that level is not the same thing as TV

** I think she had a pilot picked up before New Girl, but the show was not ordered to series, and before that pilot she had no writing credits at all.

Anyways, Erickson didn't just have the idea of mentally checking out of work. In a very early version of the script, long before Stiller signed on, he had Lumon, MDR (then called "culling"), severance, Cobel's mother being an atheist and a Catholic, acerbic dialogue, Ricken making shit up for no reason, Mark as a former professor, Lumon and Cobel being crazy weird and scary, Mark in the depths of unmanageable grief (but it was a divorce, not being widowed). There's more than enough there to make me think Erickson is just who Apple says he is.

Edited Yest. at 12:22 PM by arc