2 hours ago
3
[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 3, “Who Is Alive?” Read our past episode reviews here.]
After two weeks spent exclusively on the inside and then the outside of Lumon HQ, Episode 3 returns to “Severance‘s” traditional half-Innie, half-Outie storytelling model — and it’s still the weirdest episode of the season. One reason so many curiosities are able to surface in a single hour is because each of our series regulars are sent off on their own. So let’s take a look at each peculiar plotline, one by one, starting with the slightly atypical and running through the disturbingly bizarre.
Harmony’s Disharmony
It’s a small moment, but I love the brash sonic symmetry of ending Episode 2 with Harmony (Patricia Arquette) suddenly screaming and honking her horn at Mark (Adam Scott), and then starting Episode 3 with a passing truck abruptly waking Ms. Cobel with a blaring beep of its own. It appears when Harmony packed up her house and drove off in a huff, she had nowhere to go. And now that she’s rejected Helena Eagan’s (Britt Lower) suspicious invitation to sit with the Lumon board — I wouldn’t have gotten in that car either — I have to imagine her options for a peaceful night’s sleep are even more limited. Where will she go? What will she do? And who holds more power: Ms Cobel or Lumon?
Irving’s Exports Hall
Irving’s visit with Felicia (Claudia Robinson) is about as heartwarming as it gets in the cold halls of Lumon. Greeted with a hug when he arrives at Burt’s old stomping grounds, Optics & Design, to drop off a Missing Persons flier, Irving (John Turturro) gives into reminiscing long enough to open up about his lost love. He and Felicia swap stories, and Irving soon shows her his notebook, which is rife with tender sketches of their shared friend.
But when Felicia flips a few pages too far, she sees Burt’s other drawings — recreations of his Outie’s pitch-black paintings, which Felicia immediately identifies as the Exports Hall. Her serious tone and implicit warning are enough for Irving to know he’s on the right track. He’s got to find that hall, whether Dylan (Zach Cherry) will help him or not.
Dylan’s Disappointment
Oh, Dylan. Lumon really brought you to heel quickly, huh bud? The valiant rebel who stayed underground during The Macrodat Uprising, sacrificing his own glimpse of the outside world to help others, now appears intent on protecting himself.
As promised in Episode 1, Dylan is rewarded for his “good behavior and output” with a visit to the Outie Family Visitation Suite, where he Outie’s wife, Gretchen (Merritt Wever!!) is waiting for him. Their “18-minute visitation event” doesn’t exactly live up to Dylan’s fantasies about his other life — he finds out his Outie is “kind of a fuck-up” who has trouble holding down a job — but seeing pictures of his kids and meeting his wife in the flesh is enough to make him promise to keep up the good work. “I’ll be good,” he tells Gretchen. “I’m going to make you all proud.” (Hearing “I love you,” even as a reflexive goodbye from a virtual stranger, probably felt pretty good, too.)
At first, I had my suspicions about Gretchen. Is she really Dylan’s wife? Is she telling him the truth about his life on the outside? Can you really believe someone who would pose for all those Sears-style family photos? It appears, for now at least, you can. After her visit, we get to see Gretchen back at home with Dylan’s Outie, and the scene around her reflects what she told Dylan’s Innie. His Outie lounges on the couch, reading a magazine in the dark, while one kid sits way too close to the TV and the other two entertain each other. When Gretchen asks if he remembered to bake the cookies, we know the answer before he confirms it. Dylan’s Outie just doesn’t seem all that engaged. As she heads out for the night shift (her uniform indicates she’s a security guard), he finally asks how her “thing” went today at Lumon. “It was good,” she says. “Weird good, but good.”
That comment rings true, as well, though it bodes poorly for both Dylans. His Outie seems suspicious, and his Innie seems happy. Will more “visitation events” instill further obedience in the latter? Might it cause marriage problems for the former? Color me wary, but intrigued.
Gwendoline Christie in ‘Severance’Courtesy of Jon Pack / Apple TV+OK, Let’s Talk About the Goats
Since their emergence in Season 1, the goats have served as a symbolic short-cut for anything related to the show’s mysterious (and important) mythology. Are the goats being used for experiments? For cloning? For religious purposes? Are the goats even real? Some fans see them as a literal symbol — of everything from the gods of Ancient Greece to the devil — but the obsession over understanding the goats living (and dying?) somewhere underneath Lumon HQ has far surpassed their actual screentime in the series.
So I was a bit worried when Mark announced he was going to go find “the goat man” at the start of Episode 3, and that apprehension only grew when Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) showed up as the leader of the Mammalians Nurturable department, alongside a flock of freaky shepherds (one of whom is wearing a dead black mountain goat as a headdress). Do we really need to get into this? Do we have peak behind the curtain to find a hillside the size of a football field underneath office lights? Do we not enjoy our own imaginations enough to let this one seemingly insignificant mystery be?
Yes, the Mammalians upped the episode’s weird factor, but I would argue very little else happened of any meaning. Plot obsessives will undoubtedly notice that little progress was made in the search for Gemma/Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman). The goat herders know her and worked with her, but all they could tell Mark and Helly was that they assumed she “retired,” same as everyone else. Meanwhile, the vibes weren’t… great. The costumes, language, and atmospherics were fine, but it all felt more like the writers were stretching to live up to the hype, instead of executing an imaginative vision worthy of “Severance,” the series that gave us waffle parties and Keanu Reeves as a talking building.
I expect the goats to factor in somehow, someway to the events going forward, so here’s hoping reflecting on this visit will be more rewarding in the future. Still weird, though. (“See? Pouchless!”)
Mark’s Desperate Measures
As if Mark’s Outie can sense the white wall his Innie keeps running into, Mark’s Outie ups his urgency this week. For most of the episode, he follows some random internet advice telling him to burn an image into his retinas that his Innie can then read when he opens his eyes on the elevator. Well, that’s not going to work. It takes too long for Mark to get from his car (the last place he can absorb his chosen message) to the elevator, and even if he could make it, there’s no plan in place for his Innie to get a message back to him.
Luckily (or, if you’re pessimistic about her scientific method, very, very unluckily), Asal Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) shows up to offer a “better” solution. She wants to reintegrate Mark — to combine his Innie and Outie selves, so that Mark can remember everything inside and outside the office. Sounds great, right? Well, I’m sure it did to Petey (Yul Vazquez), too, right up until he died. Reghabi may have been the scientist who installed Mark’s severance chip (which would indicate she should know better than most how to safely get it back out), but she’s also 0-1 when it comes to reintegrating a severed worker. Petey’s death looms over Mark, casting a large enough shadow to make him abandon the idea entirely in Season 1.
But that was before he knew about Gemma. As soon as Reghabi “confirms” she saw Gemma alive on the severed floor, Mark’s reluctance vanishes. He’s ready for the procedure, and he wastes no time letting her wire up his brain. As Episode 3 ends, he’s starting to see flashes of his Innie’s life at Lumon. But he’s also experiencing tremors in his hands and recall issues in the present. Can Reghabi really reverse a procedure widely considered irreversible? Or is she just using Mark to advance her own agenda against Lumon, hoping for the best without risking anything herself?
Seth’s Line in the Sand
Beyond Mark’s quick embrace of basement brain surgery, beyond even the goats, the weirdest part of Episode 3 is when Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) is “gifted” a set of paintings in which Kier Eagan has been “recanonicalized” to “help” Seth see himself in Lumon’s founder. How, exactly, would a company created and run by white executives think to make their lone Black manager feel more at home? Well, by reimagining Kier as a Black man, of course.
My colleague, Proma Khosla, spoke to Tillman and creator Dan Erickson about the scene, and you really should read the full piece. ““Even in his management role, he would always in the back of his head be wondering, ‘Well, what do these people actually want from me, and do they have my best interests in mind?’” Erickson said. “What are the strange challenges that he specifically would have to face, as opposed to somebody else working in that same position?”
Being confronted with such a vivid depiction of how his higher-ups think of him — arguably, their first and dominant perspective of him being no more than skin deep — rattles Mr. Milchick. I would argue it rattles Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander), too, who presents him with the paintings on behalf of the board and later confirms she received the same gift. In her portraits, was Kier also a Black man? A Black woman? A white woman? Was Natalie reduced to her outward appearances just like Seth? Her fading smile, as she tells Mr. Milchick the board has left the call, tells me she was, and it unsettled her in a similar fashion (even if she won’t admit it verbally).
So despite Mr. Milchick’s unflinching loyalty, it comes as no surprise (but great significance) when he boxes up the board’s “gifts” and puts them in storage. The question now becomes: Did it rattle him enough to help the MDR team save Gemma? Or can he bury his feelings the same way he’s covered up so many weird Lumon secrets?
Grade: B+
“Severance” Season 2 releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.
English (US) ·