As a response to the show’s first and biggest question, “Who Is Alive?” – Severance Season 2 Episode 3 – is a suitably Severance-y follow-up. By itself, the question is a bit off-center, intelligible as a string of words but as unexpected as a baby goat and its defensive keeper. As an episode, “Who Is Alive?” is about as straightforward as Severance ever gets, deepening our understanding of some characters, opening up literal and metaphysical new territory for the viewers at home to explore, and nudging us closer to some of the other big questions while raising plenty more. Put another way: It’s a propulsive banger.
WARNING: Spoilers abound. Here be spoilers. Heavy spoilers ahead – roiling and churning like the treacherous seas of yore. Proceed with caution, like the wary sailors of yore. Be ever Magellan.
Guess Who’s Coming to Middle Management
On the “Hello, Ms. Cobel” episode of the official Severance podcast, Tramell Tillman recalled asking Ben Stiller whether Mr. Milchick “knew that he was Black” during filming for Season 1. That question has never been more painfully relevant than with this episode, in which Milchick is forced to consider the question for the first time afte the always-terrifying Natalie drops by his office with a gift from the always-invisible Board: a copy of every painting in the Kier Cycle, the sacred depiction of all the most integral, pivotal, or otherwise memorable moments in the life of the company’s founder. Only these versions have been “inclusively recanonized,” so now Kier is Black! The better for Milchick to “see [him]self” in the founder, right guys?
Except, of course, that Milchick was already a Lumon man to his core. When confronted with these images, the ever-loquacious, vocab-tastic Seth is left speechless for the first time in Severance‘s history. It seems like he’s left wondering why he shouldn’t have been able to see himself in Kier before; fortunately, as we know both from Severance and the real world in which we, ourselves, exist, these sorts of self-interrogating queries always resolve themselves easily and never leave any lingering personal or social fallout. Which is probably why Milchick seals up the package and hides it on the highest shelf in his secretest office by episode’s end.
FUCKIN GOATS
In between seasons of Severance, the mysterious and important goats became the show’s #1 fan-favorite conspiracy. What do they mean? What are they on the severed floor for? And may we have some more, please? Well, one answer to “Who is alive?” is GOATS! One of the funniest things about this episode is that it manages to steep its literally biggest, most audacious, and arguably most terrifying scene in both fan service and a winking punchline: “Oh, did you guys want some more goats? Well then here: have ALL OF THE GOATS.” As Sam and I discuss on the latest episode of Cracking Open the Melon Bar: A Severance Brainrot Podcast, there appear to be approximately 49 goats in the Goat Department (which, it turns out, is actually called “Mammalians Nurturable” [and that figure is not an exaggeration; I counted the goats. I may have missed a few!]). Combine them with the more than two dozen people who work with the goats and can be summoned to attack position by the aggressive ringing of a goatbell and we are presented with an immense swirl of what the fuck.
Fortunately for Mark and Helly, who have gone goatwise in search of Miss Casey, the Goat People can in fact be swayed by Mark’s nascent pro-unionization remarks, and what threatens to become a horrible beatdown instead turns into a sweet reminiscence of Miss Casey’s “gentle way” and a promise that MN won’t stand in the way of MDR’s search. Unfortunately for Severance fans, beyond the name of the department (and the tantalizing clue that Miss Casey used to come to the goat room to do Wellness sessions, rather than have the goatfolk tromping through the hallways to her), we don’t actually find out more about what the goats are for in this scene. Instead, it functions as a goat-tease – not to be confused with Goatese, the English-goat hybrid language that the handlers speak to calm their four-legged mammalian bretheren – and a showcase for some more inter-departmental paranoia-turned-collegiality á la the great MDR-O&D truce from Season 1’s “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design.”
Still: goats!
The Most Awkward 18 Minutes Since Watergate
Meanwhile, in other misguided Lumon decisions, Milchick has doubled down on his transformation of the Break Room by actually making good on the plans he showed Dylan in the Season 2 premiere: the former security office is now the Outie Family Visitation Suite. So Dylan, brought here by Miss Huang for the Suite’s maiden voyage, goes from dread upon seeing his destination to something a bit closer to frolic when the door’s actually opened. The problem, of course, is that his wife’s name really is Gretchen – and we know that because in this episode we really do get to meet her, via a simply beautiful performance from Merritt Wever, for whom I will riot if award nominations are not forthcoming.
Why is this a problem; why was this decision misguided? Because it’s obvious that a mere 18-minute glimpse into the life of his outie (one that Miss Huang is both surveilling and making zero attempt to disguise the surveillance of) is not going to be enough to satiate either Dylan or Gretchen. The former is more determined than ever to “make [his outie family] proud,” thanks in large part to his wife’s genuine love and tenderness, neither of which Dylan G. has ever experienced in his entire innie life (and please replay that fact in your head if you need a good cry). And the latter is too awed by the strangeness of the whole experience – meeting for the first time a person who has no idea that they share with you share an entire life – and by the harsh words Dylan has for his outie (“So actually…he’s kind of a fuckup”) that she can only respond to the innie with all the love she has for the outie, but to which outie has perhaps become somewhat numb. In other words, Lumon, by trying to give the outies a little bit of the seemingly harmless, cosmetic stuff they want, has in fact allowed them to force their foot into the door and positioned them very well to ask for more.
Disharmony
Last week, we watched Harmony Cobel scream in frustration at Mark-as-proxy for the entire Lumon Existence Experience and drive off in a haze of confusion and burnt rubber. This week, we watch her get many hundreds of miles away from Kier PE, her only companion the mysterious breathing apparatus from her now-destroyed Kier shrine, before an unspoken realization brings her right on back. Last week, her Helena Showdown came in the glass-walled and supremely cold-feeling Lumon Conference Room; this week, she manages an impromptu meeting with Helena in the wide-open Lumon Parking Lot. That’s about where the parallels stop, though, since this week’s edition has a rather curious coda: after getting Helena to summon that pesky Board for an impromptu-meeting-within-an-impromptu-meeting, Harmony pauses mid-stride and stares at the stately, possibly Baird-looking figure who appears to be serving as Helena’s driver. He says nothing; Harmony once again flees to her car and literally speeds out of the lot as if she’s seen a ghost.
And so, once again, we are left wondering: What is going on with Harmony? When will she start giving voice to some of the thoughts compelling her to such dramatic exits? And what on earth is her connection to Driving Ms. Eagan? It’s been a little bit jarring to watch Severance keep Ms. Cobel, who was such a force in Season 1, at such a distance for Season 2; hopefully, the coming episodes will explain why.
A House Less Divided
And finally: there’s no way for Mark Scout to learn the truth about his dead-not-dead wife as long as he’s stuck trying to work both sides of the severed floor while under the influence of that pesky severance chip. And while neither innie nor outie Mark ever comes out and says as much, we ultimately don’t need him to because his erstwhile big sister Reghabi (the incredible Karen Aldridge; I am running out of superlatives for the acting on this show but at least in this case it’s fun to fall short) does it for him. After she catches outie Mark trying to literally burn the question “Who Is Alive?” into his retinas so his innie will see it at work – and points out how very, very stupid that plan is – Reghabi points out the far better way that’s been staring at Mark since his outie met Petey. Once Reghabi has also revealed to Mark that Gemma / Miss Casey was alive at Lumon “the last time [Reghabi] saw her,” it takes a matter of seconds for Mark to agree to undergo reintegration.
I want to emphasize “undergo” because it also seems clear that even though Mark has managed to synchronize his brainwaves and at least blur the line between innie and outie memories, he isn’t “done” reintegrating just yet. As we also learned from Petey, this process is both lengthy and messy; there’s no reason to believe, despite Reghabi’s claim that she’s “gotten better” at reintegrating since she did the job on Petey, that the whole thing is now over and done with and Mark can start searching for Gemma in earnest and sabotaging Lumon from within. Severance is, above all, a slow-burn romance. And by “romance” I of course mean “irresistable dance with inhumanity, whether or not self-inflicted.”
Grade: A
You must be logged in to post a comment.