It’s been three years since we last saw the inside of the Lumon office building, and, according to Mr. Milchick, the newly–promoted head of the severed floor, it’s been five months since Mark S., Helly R., Irving B., and Dylan G. have, too.
It’s hard to know if he’s telling the truth, as the entirety of the first episode of Season Two of Apple TV’s Severance takes place entirely in the “innie” world, essentially making the audience just as clueless and terrified as the workers whose misery is entertaining us. For all they know, and for all we know, only a day has passed in the outside world. For all they know, and for all we know, it’s been an entire year spent squashing the innies’ end–of–Season–One rebellion back into a bottle.
What we do know is this: Something’s not right here at Lumon. Or, something’s even less right than it usually is here at Lumon.
The episode opens with a signature elevator dolly zoom and with Mark S. (Adam Scott) frantically sprinting through the labyrinthian, sanitized white hallways of the floor the severed workers exist on. It’s a few minutes of labored breath, stressful music, and endless stretches of the same austere, corporate white, interspersed with pops of the innie world’s signature anachronistic style and muted, retro–y color palette. Mark, who can’t find his old coworkers anywhere, is confused. The audience is, too.
And, crucially, Wellness, the department where Ms. Casey, the severed personality of outie Mark’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman)—whom he thought to be dead until the end of Season One—works, is missing.
According to Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), Mark’s old supervisor Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) has been ousted; he’s in charge now, with an odd teenage–ish girl, Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) as his second–in–command—a great actress and also proof that Lumon is doing child labor, which, like, sure, at this point, why not? (Also, in what is maybe one of the best line reads ever, Milchick informs Mark that there was suspicion that Cobel, who, as outie Mark’s neighbor, went by the alias Mrs. Selvig, wanted to strike up a relationship with both the innie and outie versions of Mark “in what may be termed … a throuple.”)
Milchick tells Mark a couple of suspicious things. First, he says that the four outies were revered as heroes for the liberation of severed people, and shows a heavily redacted newspaper to Mark that depicts the four of them in some sort of parade. This seems hard to believe. The Eagan family, in charge of pretty much all that is evil in the world, would never let Helena (Britt Lower) Helly’s outie, revealed dramatically at the end of Season One, become some sort of folk hero. Helena herself would never want that—the entire goal of her experiment was to prove that severance is good, actually, which, of course, Helly blew up in Helena’s face.
Plus, the picture looks mad photoshopped. But who’s to say?
Second, he says that the other three aren’t coming back. Mark’s on his own.
He meets his new Macrodata Refinement coworkers and does not care for them at all. He distracts them and Milchick before making a dramatic run for the speaker that connects him to the mysterious Board in charge of Lumon. Frantically, before Milchick can pull him away, Mark demands his friends back.
And get them back he does. Lumon, as it is determined to get the four (or three? We’ll get there.) to believe, cares about its employees. It intends to extend that gratitude to Mark, Helly, Irving (John Turturro), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) by showing them a horrifying stop–motion video of their uprising and the subsequent changes the company made (better snacks) following it. It made my Parks and Recreation loving heart very happy to see claymation Adam Scott once more. It made my straight people drama–loving heart very happy to see claymation Mark and Helly kiss as they did in their actual bodies at the end of Season One! Also, that’s an HR violation if that’s your work training video—maybe this will finally take Lumon down.
The video also drops some lore. Lumon has been around since 1870, though obviously not in the capacity that it exists today, and it operates in 206 countries globally. At least, that’s what the training video says. At this point, if a Lumon operative told me their name and what day it was I’d think they’re lying.
Milchick shuts off the video and informs the four that they have until the end of the day to decide if they want to remain as the Macrodata Refinement team. If their innies—yes, their innies, not their outies—want to stay, they’ll stay. If not, they’ll be retired. He tells the four that there are no mics and cameras in the room (likely story…) and leaves to let them discuss.
And here comes a debrief that also functions as one of the most flawlessly integrated recaps/exposition dumps I have ever seen. (The writing of this show is so good! Every aspect of this show is so good!)
Mark tells everyone about finding out that Gemma/Ms. Casey is his outie’s wife, and that his outie’s wife is, presumably, alive in some state due to the whole Ms. Casey existing thing. He also tells them that he’s brothers–in–law with Ricken, the leader of a New Age–y self help movement that genuinely inspired the innies but that outie Mark finds to be bullshit at best.
Helly’s next … and she lies. She says she was alone in her apartment, and she ran into a gardener outside at night.
Night gardeners probably exist. I don’t know. I’m from Manhattan, there’s not a lot of greenery there. But I’m suspicious of this—why would she lie about finding out that her outie is one of the figureheads against which the innie revolution is fighting? That feels pretty crucial.
Irving fights through the cloak of gay depression draped over him to call her out on it—a night gardener? Helly blusteringly waves him off, and he stalks away.
Dylan follows, and it’s a good thing he does—Irving is about to leave work early and never come back. He talks Irving down, and Irving reveals that he went to find Burt (Christopher Walken), his innie paramour, only to find out that Burt had another lover on the outside. Irving also reveals that his outie is an obsessive painter who probably has some severance–related trauma based on his repetitive artworks. Ultimately, though, Dylan convinces innie Irving to stay (and am I crazy for thinking there were maybe some vibes between the two of them?)
Helly teases more Gemma information out of Mark, and at this point, I’m convinced the Eagans have sent Helena in and she’s working undercover. Mark says he’s staying to figure out the Gemma situation. Helly says she doesn’t think they owe their outies anything, but if Mark’s staying, she’s staying. Side note—I eat up love triangles, and this is perhaps the most convoluted and insane one I’ve ever seen, so I am excited.
All that’s left is to convince Dylan, which Milchick does by pulling him aside, telling him his wife’s name is Gretchen on the outside, and informing him of plans (false promises, they have to be false promises) of building an “outie family visitation suite” for the innies as a perk. Dylan loves perks. And Dylan loves his family, in theory; it’s a weird situation for innie Dylan to navigate, which is probably part of why he agrees to Milchick’s request to not keep this from the other three, who are all single on the outside.
So, yay, the band’s back together, slaving away in mindless capitalist hell. Mark moves his cursor; numbers bubble placidly, complacently, shoving themselves into the little boxes that Mark feels they’re best suited for. They have no will. They have no knowledge of the world around them. For the workday, or for the fifty–five television minutes it’s condensed into, the numbers and the characters and the audience are buffeted around the orderly halls by an invisible hand.
Click. The box shutters closed. The episode ends. But not before Mark’s screen flashes out, giving the audience a peak at what he’s been refining—Gemma.
The stats on Mark’s screen and the … vitals? numbers? on the image of Gemma match up. The file names are the same: Cold Harbor. Whatever that means.
So, is that what Macrodata Refinement does? Refine people? Refine the severance process? Does Helena know? Is Helena here? Where is Ms. Casey? Is Gemma actually dead? Is Mark keeping her alive, or something? Is that why it’s all vibes-based; do each of the people who work in Macrodata refine a person they know on the outside? If that’s so, who are the others refining? How much time has passed in the real world? What’s Dylan’s outie like? Why is Irving’s outie so messed up? Will gay love pierce through the veil of severance and prevail? Will Mark, Helly, and Gemma enter into what may be termed a throuple? And will Alia Shawkat show up past episode one, or was her cameo as one of Mark’s short–lived new coworkers the only time I will be blessed with her presence?
I’ll clock back in next week to see.
