Whatever state park (or corner of the Eagan Reserve) they rented out for the production?
Sorry, but that place seemed a bit too expansive (and over-grown) to be an underground annex to an office building.
Ben Stiller is a big ST:NG fan. It’s a holodeck.
Hey, why wouldn’t all the Eagan money budget for that? They can afford all the “rooms” Gemma visits, and the costumes (look expensive 
).
The ORTBO seemed pretty dangerous regardless.
But as they established in Episode 1 Season 1, innies don’t wake up with no knowledge or experiences. They don’t remember anything about their personal lives, but they retain language and writing skills, general knowledge of geography, job skills, etc.
Although the more I think about it, Mark’s motivation for becoming a severed employee doesn’t make sense. Depression over the loss of his wife drove him to become to work for Lumon. But people in those circumstances would normally throw themselves into their work as a distraction. Sad Outtie Mark wouldn’t have any such distractions. He would just experience life as Sad Outtie Mark constantly 16 hours a day
Yes, having time to heal from grieving really makes no sense when you’re unaware of the passage of time. You’re not processing your grief or even racking up time since the incident – you go to work, blink, you’re done. His motivation doesn’t really make sense.
Some people throw themselves into work to escape grief, others take a long absence from work. Severance is basically a permanent work leave of absence. I have no trouble understanding the mentality of “I’m depressed and don’t want to deal with work.”
Don’t forget that this was all a set up. Mark didn’t just happen to decide to work for Lumen. They were probably on him as soon as Gemma “died”.
ETA: Devon said Mark tried to throw himself into his work as a professor but he just couldn’t handle it.
I think the justification he gave for agreeing to severance was more like “I’m miserable all the time because of her death, and by doing this, I’m spending more time where I don’t have to think about her”
If it’s just “I’m not capable of work in my current state” then it makes more sense.
Same reason some grieving people drink.
Yea, I always thought it him choosing either 24 hours/day depressed or 16 hours/day depressed. Lesser sounds better. Outtie is just taking one for the “team” so to speak.
Lumon put someone who was good with technology in charge of people. That will never go wrong.
“Come tame these tempers, a**holes!” Man, I gotta find a way to use that phrase in real life.
I was unaware of this series until just now. Sounds interesting, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
So here’s a rabbit hole that might (but probably won’t) yield some enlightenment…
Something cool I just learned: the old guy in the diner who gets handed the bottle of ether by Hampton was played by Jerry Stahl. Stahl is the author of the book Permanent Midnight; Ben Stiller played Stahl in the film adaptation of the book.
Another amazing episode but beyond the plot and character developments, damn it is simply beautiful to watch. The cinematography, the mood, the foreshadowing… this is masterful stuff.
Each episode is recontextualizing what we have seen before. The theme of the rabbit-fish writ meta: suddenly we see this same character, the same events, very differently.
Different rabbit hole.
So ether leads to frolic…
Very short but very atmospheric episode. The whole foreboding practically abandoned town with the creepyish house felt a lot like the Godric’s Hollow segment from Harry Potter to me.
I didn’t love this episode. Atmospheric, yes, beautiful, yes, but did we really need to watch Cobel brush her teeth?
Most frustrating, however, is that I don’t feel like the twist that Cobel invented severance was earned/justified. Up until now we’ve seen plenty of evidence that she was smart, and very devoted to the severance program, but nothing indicating that she was deeply knowledgeable about the technical/neuroscientific aspect of it. There were plenty of times it would have made sense for the viewer to see this, but we never did (with the arguable exception being her quickly extracting Petey’s chip… but that’s hardly the same skill set as inventing the process in the first place).
Takes vary. A whole mess of previous Cobel behavior and attitude clicked into a different (and more interesting complex) thing in my perception. The toothbrushing bit, which also was our first view of a huff addict and her reaction to them, was textbook showing not telling of her mental state and the state of the town the same time.