I dunno, the baby goat room was certainly weird, but after already having seen the painting with the goat (well, ram, technically I guess) in the Wellness waiting room, I wouldn’t say it had a weird-for-weird’s-sake feeling.
FWIW, the writers/producers have said they have an actual plan to the story line, so, hopefully, this shouldn’t be a Lost/Heroes/Battlestar Galactica/Westworld situation.
It occurred to me that when Irving saw Felicia, he could’ve said something or asked about the supposed 6 month passage of time since he last saw her, which would’ve revealed the deception by Lumon. Sloppy security work on their part, but kind of a missed dramatic opportunity. I suppose it’s possible some conversation about that may end up happening sometime during the season.
Yeah, I was going to mention that Irv says something like “sorry to drop in on you after all this time” to Felicia, but she last saw him at Burt’s retirement party (I think) which was only maybe a week ago at most (I think)?
Plus, I thought she didn’t like the MDR team, but she’s very cordial to Irv. And they are reminiscing about Burt like it was years ago, but again it was more like days/weeks. Granted, to their severed perspective, Burt is effectively dead.
Maybe there is more to it, or maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about.
I think part of that is them realizing that all the animosity between teams is made up by Lumon.
“Marshmallows are for team players.”
That episode had so many things that didn’t make sense, even for Severance.
The entire episode was like an extended fever dream, slightly outside the normal Severance universe. I was half wondering if I’d missed a few episodes.
Helly R’s perspective has got to to be wild. Went from being in an office, to a gala where you find out you are the enemy, to being drowned in a freezing river, all in less than an hour.
And the big question; who is Mark in this episode? Have his personalities been integrated as implied in the last episode?
I’m thinking integration is mainly a one way street, where Outie Mark will have Innie Mark’s memories, but not the other way around. But a bit of Outie is starting to creep in with Mark S seeing Helly as Gemma for a second.
I can accept lots. Office retreats. A protocol that kept them unaware until there. The whole religious stuff. The dream he had. The whole Helly Helena head fake. The brief reintegration of Mark.
But the spooky twins produced? So they are really going the clones route? Or hired actors? Animatronics?
Definitely not the episode I was expecting!
After thinking on it, this wasn’t my favorite episode. It really dragged with excessive time focused on wandering through the forest and Mark and Helena in the tent. While Helena deserved it, Irving was still a jerk to her around the campfire and it wasn’t enjoyable to watch.
And maybe it will all be explained later, but all the apparent nonsensical things detracted from it. Why was there so little care given to their safety? Except for Irving’s little naps, this was the first time the innies ever slept - wouldn’t that be a big deal to them? Why did Milchick punish them for something outie Helena did?
It was a setup. She was always going to mock the story. They were never going to get smores.
Ok, I can accept that. But denying s’mores? That’s over the top cruelty.
This seemed like some kind of stress test to test the team’s loyalty to one another when it ran counter to loyalty to the company.
Or intended to sow division.
How does the innie team respond to Irving being removed from existence from ever having been for uncovering Lumon’s and Helena’s duplicity?
Not as over the top of a punishment as no S’mores but still pretty evil.
My biggest failure to suspend disbelief was the extreme danger of the situation. They were constantly seconds away from death on the icy lake and the icy rocks. Even experienced hikers would be. Is Lumen so reckless that they would risk MDR to crack their skulls open? Or freeze to death?
I’m wondering how much of the situation was “real”. Irv spent all night outside and didn’t seem any worse for the wear.
I kept thinking it felt like someone was going to wake up and this was all a dream because it was so weird and nonsense in 1000 different ways. The stuff going on was nonsense, not the episode itself for me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Irving showed up next week and they pretended it didn’t happen. Or maybe it’ll be Bob Balaban.
And I think I might have said it before, but it reminds me so much of the Black Mirror cookie tech that it feels like this was simulation with a cookie that was disposable.