Severance Season 2 [OPEN SPOILERS]

[ASL_v2.0]

@MaxTheVool

@ASL_v2.0

I don’t see it as incentive, I see it as reward. You’re thinking too much like a free-minded human, and not enough like an Eagan cultist who sees “hoo-mons” as a collection of tempers that must be managed.

I don’t really see much of a distinction here. We know from S1 that doing well leads to reward, which is sometimes objects like finger traps and sometimes experiences. The marching band was just that, but moreso… and the machinery of the severed floor was set up to deliver it regardless of whether Mark was about to be fired. (Or do we agree?)

Partial agree. Yes, the marching band et al. were “issued out” to MDR and iMark despite the near-certainty that iMark was about to be permanently unalived (though I wouldn’t be shocked if the next season sees Hellie R preserved at the expense of Hellen E). My point is that the marching band wasn’t an incentive, but a reward. While someone who thinks consequences matter might think more in terms of incentives, I think it’s clear enough the Eagan cultists that run Lumon are not concerned with consequences so much as they are with some perverse (and, frankly, perverted) moral system they have divined whereby people are supposed to get what they deserve, as in irrespective of the consequences.

So the marching band and other “treats” as incentives for future performance don’t really make sense if the plan is to “terminate employment” as soon as the performance is over. Because there will be no future performance. A reward, on the other hand, does not carry the same presumption of an incentive for future performance: it may be earned based on past performance, irrespective of whether there is an expectation of future performance.

Again, you’ve got to stop thinking like a utilitarian or other kind of consequentialist, and start thinking as a deontologist, where morality is premised not on desired or expected results, but on some more metaphysical notion of right and wrong that exists irrespective of our mere human ends.

Deontology is nuts when you really think about it. And so is Lumon. A natural fit.

@Alessan

I also saw it as a reference to ending of the Graduate, with the two lovers running off together to what seems like a hopeless future. It even had someone pounding against a window!

I had the exact same feeling. Like, ok, you’re on the bus, but what next? Hello darkness my old friend…

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

The probable presence of cameras to record the great event for posterity would explain the celebratory reward. The mural in the elevator foyer shows how much they want to immortalize the event.

[Driver8]

@Eonwe

The final moments were iconic with them running down the stark halls with red alert lights, while we hear “The Windmills of Your Mind”, and the shot gets a kind of grainy appearance. It nailed the 70s aesthetic perfectly. It felt like a mashup of Logan’s Run and a low budget sci-fi serial. “Will our lovers make it out alive? It seems hopeless, but tune in next week!”

I like that interpretation, but I actually had a different reaction. It felt like the shot was dissolving into one of those ridiculous paintings we keep seeing, which I can only describe as “corporate mythology”.

My emotional response was similar to that of Brazil, where the “happily ever after” ending is abruptly shown to be the hallucination of the completely broken main character, who is still in the torture chamber.

[Alessan]

There was also a bit of the freeze-frame ending of Butch and Sundance:

Cue the Bolivian Army.

[Eonwe]

@CoolHandCox

With all that said, I do get confused on what they mentally “bring with them” so to speak.

Yes. This is one of the places where I’m willing to just not think too hard. This isn’t a show about the science, so I don’t mind the details being fuzzy. However, that’s also part of why I didn’t like the reintegration plotline- it forces the audience to ask questions about how it all actually works.

@Elmer_J.Fudd

As for the Cold Harbor efficacy test, it’s telling how little confidence Jame and Mauer had that it could pass a stress test that involved Gemma’s husband showing up. All Mark’s appearance did was prove that their experiment was a failure.

Great observation! Though, as a counterpoint, all of the rooms Gemma went into were tests as you (and the show) say… I think they also have an in-world purpose of psychological manipulation. Like Ms. Huang being forced to smash her toy, Milchick’s performance review and subsequent corrections, and almost everything about Lumon, it’s about control. Gemma breaking down the crib was a test, but it was also an opportunity to quash the strongest, deepest connections between her innie and outie minds. Not the same, but a similar kind of scene to Palpatine tempting Luke Skywalker to attack him to make the transition to the dark side complete. Mark, in this case, is Vader (forgive me for running with this analogy), who disrupts the process and breaks the spell.

@Alessan

I wouldn’t call that a “conventional” weapon, or really a weapon at all. It was a bolt gun, a device used to slaughter animals. It’s not really a gun at all - it shoots a rod forward at high speed, so you have to press it against the target for it to have any effect.

I had no idea such a thing existed! And the rod is propelled by a bullet? Interesting.

@Alessan

I also saw it as a reference to ending of the Graduate, with the two lovers running off together to what seems like a hopeless future. It even had someone pounding against a window!

I have to admit that I’ve never seen The Graduate. But yes, the Butch Cassidy reference is a great catch!

[ASL_v2.0]

@Driver8

My emotional response was similar to that of Brazil, where the “happily ever after” ending is abruptly shown to be the hallucination of the completely broken main character, who is still in the torture chamber.

I see no more reason to imagine that the end of season 2 is a hallucination or delusion than that the entire series has been so far. I also see no reason, thematically, why such a move should be appropriate. And unlike the imagined ending of Brazil, they have hardly escaped the danger. They are running down a hallway to alarms sounding, still very much trapped within Lumon and bound for an at best uncertain future (but at least as likely as not, certain death). At most, they can be assured over a few more moments together. Nothing more. Though they may get minutes, hours, or even days, they will almost certainly not get get rich and full lives together (the best they can hope for is either, as they call it, half a life, or else to be bound up as mere memories of another).

If the show wants to spend season 3 showing us how it’s not so easy to bring down an all-controlling corporation that appears to wield substantial influence on the government, to the point of exercising complete control over some towns and possibly an entire state as well, then the season finale for season 2 need not have been a dream. They just need to show us what I suspect will be the likely consequence of Gemma getting out and taking her story public: nothing.

If there is a final victory over Lumon in season 3 or beyond, I suspect it will have to come from the workers rising up, not from one easily discounted story by one easily sidelined individual (buttressed through it may be by a disgruntled former employee) who purports (without evidence!) to have been held hostage by Lumon for the utterly ridiculous purpose of opening up a bunch of doors to rooms she can’t ever remember being inside. Now that surely must be the delusion (if not an outright lie, amiright?). I mean, given Lumon’s implied (and at times explicit) power and influence over so many other aspects of society, do you think they’ll have any trouble at all sidelining Gemma, Devon, and Cobel if they try to take their stories public?

[Horatius]

@CoolHandCox

I quoted this part, though because it’s interesting tob. Just pondering these things…It’s definitely creepy to us. But to her, is it creepy? She has no reference point. Her own voice but maybe hers is the odd sounding one.

But we’ve seen Helly R wake up as an innie for the first time. She retained enough “human” experience to realize how weird the situation was, and to desire to escape it. She kept trying to escape until they demonstrated pretty clearly that it was impossible.

So, yeah, she’s creeped out, but what can she do? She has even less chance at escape than Helly did.

[Alessan]

@Eonwe

I had no idea such a thing existed! And the rod is propelled by a bullet? Interesting.

A blank round, I think.

Have you seen No Country for Old Men? The bad guy killed people with a bolt gun, too, except his was powered by a tank of compressed air rather than by gunpowder.

[AlsoNamedBort]

@TroutMan

@Eonwe

Maybe I just didn’t track it in previous episodes, but the Dr. working in the lower level had a Lumon-brand bandage on his forehead, and I think at least one other person did too. Any thoughts/speculation on that?

That was the result of Gemma hitting him with a chair during her failed escape attempt a couple episodes ago.

The other time we see the band-aid is in the very first episode after Helly attacks Mark. I wonder if the creepy doctor also got a gift certificate to Pip’s.

[Driver8]

@ASL_v2.0

I see no more reason to imagine that the end of season 2 is a hallucination or delusion than that the entire series has been so far. I also see no reason, thematically, why such a move should be appropriate. And unlike the imagined ending of Brazil, they have hardly escaped the danger. They are running down a hallway to alarms sounding, still very much trapped within Lumon and bound for an at best uncertain future (but at least as likely as not, certain death). At most, they can be assured over a few more moments together. Nothing more. Though they may get minutes, hours, or even days, they will almost certainly not get get rich and full lives together (the best they can hope for is either, as they call it, half a life, or else to be bound up as mere memories of another).

Oh, I wasn’t suggesting they were literally hallucinating. Just that the emotional beats are the same. A moment of bliss and victory followed by an abrupt return to reality. In Brazil that’s literal, in Severance it’s illustrated by the transition of the fleeting moment of joy to what is essentially a corporate propaganda painting. It’s like they get their moment of joy, but the machinery of Lumon will put them back in their box. And not in the most obvious brute force way either. They’ll incorporate and subvert this moment, introduce it into their corporate mythology, and control them that way. They’re kind of like an emotional Star Trek Borg. And it is exactly what they did earlier with the season one final “escape”.

[CoolHandCox]

@Horatius

But we’ve seen Helly R wake up as an innie for the first time. She retained enough “human” experience to realize how weird the situation was, and to desire to escape it. She kept trying to escape until they demonstrated pretty clearly that it was impossible.

You’re right. I thought about that scene after I posted. That scene made me feel like it was short-term amnesia situation. I think the scene was meant to make us think that. But then after awhile, as the show went on, I no longer thought that because other stuff would happen and they would know much less. Like childlike knowledge about basic stuff, or none at all about stuff.

I don’t know. Clearly it’s not a blank slate, but it’s also much less than just severing specific memories, or a even category of memories (ie, personal relationships). Like why kind-sorta sever basic geography? It’s kind of murky, maybe that’s just the science and the procedure can’t be perfect, or maybe it’s plot driven, or both.

[Horatius]

@CoolHandCox

Like why kind-sorta sever basic geography? It’s kind of murky, maybe that’s just the science and the procedure can’t be perfect, or maybe it’s plot driven, or both.

Because Lumon wants to control everything about them, as much as possible. I mean, they went out of their way during the field trip episode to mention, “This is the tallest waterfall in the world!” Even as ridiculous as that is to us, they still told the lie, because they want the innies to be controlled absolutely, and to be in awe of Lumon’s knowledge and power.

It’s kind of pathetic on Lumon’s part, but they seem okay with being pathetic.

[DSeid]

@CoolHandCox

maybe that’s just the science and the procedure can’t be perfect

The science isn’t completely out of left field. Memory is complicated and procedural memory is stored differently than episodic. So we have the famous case of H.M. who had both sides’ hippocampi undercut in an effort to control seizures. He could learn how to do new things, like play a new piano piece, but he couldn’t recall learning it and would deny that he had. People with ECT have memory losses, not only of the time around the ECT but inexplicable memory lacunae of apparently arbitrary things in the past. Times around those events are preserved.

The severed have preserved procedural memories and their access to previous and their other’s episodic (historical and facts recall) memory is blocked along (apparently) with emotional reactions to items of the past or of their other self.

[CoolHandCox]

Fascinating.

re: HM, for me to be clear, it’s not just that he can’t recall learning the new piano piece (like it’s on the tip of his tongue but he just can’t do it). It’s that he had never formed any memory of learning the new piano piece. There is nothing to recall, right? He does have a memory of how to play the piano piece, and is able to play it based on that memory. So it’s sorta like in the Matrix when they just upload kung-fu - Neo just “knows” kung-fu immediately but never learned how to do it. Except even more extreme because in HM’s case, he would not even be aware of the 30 second upload process. It’s just Nothing → Memory of knowing kung-fu and can do it; nothing in the middle.

I’ve read that Severance does have a neurologist as a consultant.

[DSeid]

@CoolHandCox

It’s that he had never formed any memory of learning the new piano piece. There is nothing to recall, right?

Honestly no one knows. That’s the standard interpretation but another is that the memory is there somewhere but that the pointer is gone. Big library. Is the book not there or is it there somewhere but can’t be found? Either could be.

[TroutMan]

@DSeid

The severed have preserved procedural memories and their access to previous and their other’s episodic (historical and facts recall) memory is blocked along (apparently) with emotional reactions to items of the past or of their other self.

That’s kind of what they’re going for, but it differs depending on plot needs (which I’m fine with).

Helly knows of Delaware but not other states. Mark recognized the bloated carcass as a seal, but they don’t know if that’s what dead things look like.

I think they do a great job of world building within this concept, and it’s not meant to be examined closely in terms of plot. It’s just fun to think about outside that context.

[DSeid]

But honestly I wouldn’t expect a new memory technology to do it 100%?

Part of the point of bringing up the weirdness of memory losses with ECT. It makes sense to lose memories that were near in time to the treatments. The spotty holes in longer term memory (observed in a family member)? Make no sense whatsoever. Random blanks.

[MeanJoe]

I know most won’t agree with me on this and that’s okay. I loved season 1 and found season 2 to be disappointing.

After the 2nd episode, I posted on my socials that I was really not enjoying season 2. I kept watching, finding some moments to be pretty interesting but many to just be falling flat for me. I felt much as I did when I started season 2 of Dark, or season 3 of Westworld - both of which I just gave up on and never finished. Episodes this season felt like the only point was to provide weird imagery and obtuse references, not serve a compelling broader story.

All of the hinting at Milcheck’s internal conflict - for nothing. In the end, he violently tried to prevent Mark S and Helly from doing whatever they were doing. The internal conflict apparently no longer existed or was resolved in the favor of Lumon? But we get no insight into how he came to that place.

Reintegration - Introduced in season 1, continued in season 2 and then… nothing. All of the side-effects, episodes, and issues Mark was experiencing, conveniently stopped for unexplained reasons. I did like the idea of iMark questioning if and how he would exist after reintegration, that was very interesting as was iMark’s evolution to seeing himself as a person with agency and a desire to exist and not just an extension of oMark. But those are bigger themes and positives of the show/story that didn’t need reintegration as a plot device.

Devon - Did his sister suddenly just become a different person between episodes on this show? It’s like she was a totally different person suddenly who turned to Harmony Corbel out of the blue. It seemed completely out of left-field and the opposite of everything we’d come to know of her character. I kept going back over episodes in Apple TV to see if I somehow accidentally skipped an episode that would explain this change.

And what happened to Rickon (although I could really care less and the show would be better without him ever existing…but I digress.)

Harmony Corbel - So this emotionally unstable middle-manager who runs 1 severed floor at Lumon and got canned for being bad at her job is actually the inventor of all severance technology. We spend time following her as she confronts her past and obtains the proof. Proof that would be extremely damaging to Lumon. All of that for… absolutely no reason. And let’s not ignore the callous way she was treated throughout by The Board and by the Eagans. One would think that if your entire corporate value is based upon someone else’s work that you stole that one would I dunno… not treat them like they are an insignificant and easily replaceable emotionally unstable middle-manager who runs 1 floor. That you’d not just berate her as being insignificant and nothing before you throw her into the wind considering she could easily destroy your company.

And this whole “Cold Harbor” 2 season arc was to… accomplish the same result of a frontal lobotomy? Emotionless existence lacking attachment to an identity or past? No longer knowing who you are or having connection to anything? How exactly does that benefit Lumon? What is the commercial application here? How do you take this to market and profit as a company? All of this, billions of dollars of investment, sacrificing of countless lives, sacrificing many goats (WTF?), was for nothing of any significance in the real world as near as I can tell. It was such an uninteresting “evil plan” in the end.

[TroutMan]

Maybe I’ll be disappointed in season 3, but I fully expect Milchick’s loyalties to be a major part of next season, and I expect to get a lot more details on what Cobel’s game is. I also think reintegration will be either a path to reconciling Mark’s conflict or it will fail, but it not be dropped from the story completely.

I originally was confused by Devon’s abrupt shift to calling Cobel, but as noted earlier, as viewers we were set up to think of Reghabi as a good guy. Devon doesn’t know her at all, she’s just some strange lady who almost killed her brother. Devon feels like talking to innie Mark is her only hope, and Cobel is the only person who can help with that. What would be a more logical action for Devon to take? “Continue with the brain surgery, it seems to be going great?”

[Darren_Garrison]

@MeanJoe

All of the hinting at Milcheck’s internal conflict - for nothing. In the end, he violently tried to prevent Mark S and Helly from doing whatever they were doing. The internal conflict apparently no longer existed or was resolved in the favor of Lumon?

Or, he doesn’t look forward to the shitstorm he will be in if one more major incident happens on his watch.

Also, apparently Harmony Corbel was running the most important Severed floor in the whole Lumon enterprise. It is the one at the original, first location, near the Egan estate, the one cgoosen for Helley. I don’t think it was “world’s biggest warerfall” puffery when the Voice Of Keir said that Mark S was one of the mist important people in history for helping forward his agenda.