'Trojan Horse' begins with some ominous whistling. A man is taking a cart to the export hall, and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is setting the tone for the rest of the episode.
Mark Scout lies to Devon about reintegration, and we find out that Reghabi is living at his house. He’s pushing her to continue with the reintegration process; but other than the flash of Gemma that Mark S. had while having sex with Helena last week, there hasn’t been any real merging of two souls going on (aside from the aforementioned sex).
Helena herself is going through it; the Board won’t let her retry her disguise gambit. They’re insisting she send in Helly. Helena’s father in particular has encouraged her return.
“They’re fucking animals,” Helena says about the innies, terrified that they’ll hurt her body. Terrified that Helly will be more successful on the second suicide attempt.
But Shiv Roy 2.0 goes through the Shiv Roy rise and fall once more, and Helly goes in. Not that she’s having a particularly great time either; she’s crashing out because Helena stole her identity, and no one, not even Mark, noticed.
“What was she like?” wonders Helena, and Mark says that she was “like you. Or you’re like her. I don’t know. I don’t know who you are, I guess.” (I pause the episode to scream into my hands.)
Also, Helly finds out about the whole wife thing. Which can’t be doing her any favors in the “convincing herself she’s loved or even liked” department, a place that’s really hard to work in when her coworkers are blaming her for Helena’s actions and for bringing an Eagan into their revolutionary safe space.
And they’re not happy with Milchick for letting Helena in, either. He tells the workers some fable about some Swedish king who did Undercover Boss once, and how Helena is carrying on a noble tradition. I think about royalty, about power, about the cult of Kier and the relationship between church and state. Even when this show is being obvious, it’s fucking good.
Dylan wants a funeral for Irving (who has been edited out of the photos on their new three–person–setup desks), so he gets a funeral, despite the protestations of Miss Huang: “You shouldn’t let them have a funeral. It makes them feel like people.” In retaliation, Milchick doesn’t let her play her theremin at the funeral.
While MDR blows up at each other on the inside, Milchick’s work is getting blown up on the outside. It’s time for his first performance review in this position, and it goes—putting it delicately—incredibly fucking badly. This is dangerous, especially considering how important Cold Harbor is, apparently. It’s increasingly obvious that work is, in fact, mysterious and important, and now that Mark is 85% done with it, hopefully we get some answers on what it actually is soon.
Milchick’s not feeling so hot about everything following the performance review and an interaction with Natalie that doesn’t give him as much of a feeling of solidarity as he was hoping for. He asks her if she, too, felt sort of weird about getting race–bent paintings of Kier (and I presume hers were gender–bent as well) as a promotion gift. She says nothing to confirm or deny that she agrees with him that the racial politics of that were weird at best, just flashes her signature gleaming toothy smile, but there’s a discomfort in her eyes that is palpable. Perhaps some sort of recognition from another person that the company they work for isn’t the best?
Not enough, though, to do anything other than enrage Milchick. He corners Mark in the elevator, gets way too close to him, and shouts, “Did you tell [Helly] that you fucked her outie at the ORTBO?” If I screamed before, I yelled bloody murder at this.
The last thing we see inside Lumon this week is Dylan finding a message set for him by Irving. It’s behind the “hang in there” poster—Irving’s last words to the group last week—and it gives directions to the exports hall.
After a very, very long day of work, we see Devon and Ricken, Irving (I MISS YOU IRVING!), and Mark on the outside. Devon and Ricken are workshopping the revised version of Ricken’s book that Natalie (who Ricken calls “Nat”) proposed before. Devon’s mad that Ricken has somewhat drunk the Kool–Aid; isn’t this in direct opposition to what he was advocating for before? Has he become a sellout, a shill, a propaganda maker?
Irving’s outie is making a phone call to someone about something. He’s suspicious of Lumon, and his suspicions are furthered by a strange man stalking him.
… who turns out to be Burt. Burt says that his innie was fired for an erotic entanglement with another employee, and he figures the man who came knocking on his door at the end of season one was that employee. Irving says, “Huh, guess I could be,” and Burt laughs and invites him over to dinner with Burt and his husband. I hope they all three get together just so I can have another beautiful Tramell Tillman reading of the word “throuple.”
Finally, Mark is, as always, sort of losing it. He keeps coughing—scary, it feels like any second he’ll pull a Satine and show a handkerchief delicately coated in blood. He pushes Reghabi again for continued reintegration. And then, finally, he sees something.
It starts with Ms. Casey’s voice. And then Mark’s standing in dark corridors, pushing through them until he gets to the sterile walls of the severed floor, looking confused and out of place.
A flash—he sees his wife. He sees Ms. Casey. He sees the body holding those two people.
And then he’s back in his house.
Ahhh! Ahhhhh! There’s so much going on, but I have full faith in the show to tie everything together. I’m not much of a theorizer (I think it takes away a lot of the fun of going along with a cleverly written thriller/mystery), so I’ve been avoiding the online discourse and I’ve been keeping debriefs with friends that are character–focused over plot. But every so often, I can’t help but wonder.
But I’ll keep those thoughts fledgling, and see where the show keeps going. Until the next work day.
