We pick up this week where we last left off, with Mark Scout and Reghabi in Mark’s garage directly after a reintegration flash. Mark is telling Reghabi about what he saw, and she tells him that she doesn’t know what exactly is going on, but clearly Gemma is “essential” to Lumon, and perhaps Mark should consider letting her speed up the reintegration process.
With that on his mind, he goes to work.
On the severed floor, Mark S. has another reintegration flash—stronger than last time. He tells Helly about what happened between himself and Helena at the ORTBO; that they “shared vessels,” to which Helly responds, understandably, badly.
“She tricked both of us,” Mark says, and it’s true—he didn’t know he was sleeping with Helena, and Helly didn’t know she was sleeping with Mark. They take their space and try to process this, silently, alone.
After a bit, Helly’s ready to deal with it. She storms up to Mark and rages—not about him, about Helena. If we thought Helly couldn’t hate her outie more, we were sorely wrong.
“I don’t want her memory,” Helly says. “I want my own.”
So Mark and Helly make a new memory in an abandoned office underneath a tarp they set up to be their own “tent.” They kiss, and their bodies are reflected on the underside of the table, their heads cut clean off. Mark checks in with her beforehand—“Yes?” “Yes,” she says, and they have sex. It’s quiet, and slow, and blue, and nothing like what Mark had with Helena, because with Helena, they didn’t talk about it. With Helena, he didn’t know.
Afterward, he gets a nosebleed. Between this and the coughing, it’s getting harder not to worry about the number that reintegration is doing on him. That, or Helly was just too hot.
Miss Huang takes his vitals. She’s pretty much in charge today, which is good for her, as it’ll probably help her get further in her “fellowship” and work her way towards being “Wintertide material,” as Milchick explains to her (and us) at the start of the episode.
(Side note: I keep musing on the coldness, the snow, the sunset, the “Cold Harbor” and the “Wintertide,” and the water drop that is emblematic of Lumon. There’s something there, something about the North and water and cold and, like, seasonal affective disorder, I don’t know. The sterility of Lumon’s interior matches the white blanket of the outside. We’ll see where that goes.)
Milchick is, as per usual, going through it in his own private way this episode. His decision to let Huang be in charge today wasn’t just benevolence; he uses it as a way to express his displeasure with her attitude towards his performance review, and he uses it as a way to exist in self–flagellation, isolating the entire day.
He drills himself on putting paper clips on files correctly, something that he was called out for messing up in his performance review. After hundreds or thousands of sheaves of paper, Milchick looks himself in the mirror and hatefully works through a sentence, decreasing the complexity of the words he uses until he’s just chanting a single word—“grow”—at himself through gritted teeth, vitriol oozing.
That, too, was part of the performance review—they told Milchick that he uses too many big words. Coming from a Board whose verbiage is flowery, to say the least, this feels like another microaggression against Milchick, who has spent the past two episodes grappling with how Lumon sees him as a Black man. It’ll be interesting to see if he shuts those thoughts down and keeps on serving a company that clearly doesn’t best serve him, or if he joins the revolution.
Innie–Dylan’s also on his own private journey in this episode (does anyone at this company actually work anymore?), first telling Mark and Helly about Irving’s note, and then forgetting all about it so he can have an affair with his own wife. Gretchen has another meeting with him, and it’s heartbreaking and lovely and beautiful and ends in a kiss that is wildly entertaining for those of us who love watching extremely complicated pseudo–adultery play out on our screens.
Afterward, Gretchen lies to outie–Dylan, saying that her meeting with innie–Dylan was canceled. Does it count as infidelity if you’re cheating on your husband with himself?
Irving, meanwhile, has taken Burt up on his offer to have Irving over for dinner in order to meet Burt and Fields (John Noble), Burt's husband, on the outside. As Irving primps outside of Burt’s house, a Lumon thug goes through Irving’s apartment. Suspicious … and not made any more comforting by the fact that Fields lets slip that Burt has been working at Lumon for about 20 years, even though the severance procedure has only existed for 12. Did Burt have a pre–severance job there? Is he a corporate spy? Is there some secret third reason that won’t be revealed until later? Probably that one.
Speaking of the severance procedure, we learn the reason that Burt got severed … he did it for Jesus.
No, really. He and Fields are apparently relatively religious Lutherans, and the church preaches that innies are their own people, with separate lives and souls and aspirations towards heaven. The thought was that even though Burt had sinned a lot, and maybe wouldn’t make it to heaven, perhaps his innie could go up there and be with Fields in eternity.
There is so unbelievably much to unpack about this. First, navigating the unsaid “is being gay a sin” conversation. Second, is Lumon recruiting through non–Kier churches, or is this just one way one theology has interpreted the severance process that just happens to support it? What does the religious landscape of this world look like? Can I headcanon anyone as Jewish? How explicit are we gonna get with the Kier–as–a–religious–figure, Lumon–as–church of it all? Does anyone remember Harmony Cobel’s literal shrine to Lumon from "Season one, episode six"? Where is Harmony Cobel? Is Irving going to get jumped? Why does Burt think he’s going to hell? Will there really be no old gay throuple?
Fields says he hopes that if Irving and Burt boned down, it was good for the both of them.
Mark Scout scarfs down Chinese food in the outside world. Apparently, when two people become one, there are also two appetites in play now. The typical outside world blue is cut with a shock of red, so it’s not so surprising when Helena shows up. She flashes him the world’s most socially awkward smile and sidles up to his table like the odd stalker with zero people skills that she is. It’s pretty great.
Helena introduces herself, and Mark’s like, yeah, I know who you are, obviously. After a slightly bumpy start, the two settle into an easy conversation that escalates quickly into flirting, because the whole Mark Scout/Mark S./Helly R./Helena dynamic wasn’t complicated enough!
And then Helena brings up Gemma, but calls her Hannah—probably Ms. Casey’s first name—and things peter out. Mark rushes home and tells Reghabi to speed up the process, full speed ahead.
Reghabi does. Her bootleg brain surgery is disgusting to watch, but apparently effective, because Mark has another flash of Gemma, and his world is spinning. Literally—the editing and camerawork is, again, visceral and evocative.
And amidst all of this, Devon comes knocking on Mark’s door. Reghabi tells him to ignore her and sit down, but Mark heads to let his sister in and talk to her. Devon first makes a comment that indicates that she’s bisexual, which is awesome, and then asks Mark if he’s made progress. He tells her that he’s handling this on his own.
They fight about it in typical sibling fashion, but instead of it ending with a slammed door, it ends with Mark collapsing to the floor. Reghabi bursts in, and Devon demands to know who she is.
She’ll find out next week, probably. Can’t wait.
