The second episode answers some of my questions, and asks a lot more. It kicks off right where the first season ended, with Mark interrupting a book party his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock), and his brother–in–law, Ricken, were hosting, shouting that Gemma is alive.
Roll an awesome new credits sequence.
After the PR disaster that was the end of season one, Helena, ever the politician, has Milchick run damage control on the outie world. She also gets aggressively spat at by her father, who calls her a “fetid moppet.” So she, of course, puts herself in charge of solving the problem, and along the way, struggles with experiencing the human emotions of a real girl for the first time. Welcome back, Shiv Roy!
Helena invites Cobel back, though not to her position of supervisor of the severed floor—that’s Milchick’s for good. Instead, she offers her a spot on the “Severance Advisory Council," which she says is a new initiative. Never trust Lumon word soup.
While Milchick fires Dylan and Irving on the outside (side note: the cul–de–sac that outie Dylan lives in, we see, is styled in the shape of the Lumon logo), Helena does internal COA–ing. She records a video of herself claiming that she had a bad reaction to mixing alcohol with a non–Lumon cream for an arm rash, which caused her to say crazy things at the party. And that there’s no part of her that’s not fully committed to Lumon.
Depressing, and, the show teases, potentially not the case for long. After her YouTuber cancellation apology video, Helena sits in a glass conference room. Cold and alone, she watches and rewatches the tape of Helly R. and Mark S. kissing before starting their doomed uprising.
Is there something in Helena’s eyes as she watches? Is it a feeling? An idea that innies are people, that they’re real? An idea that she, too, innie or outie, could be something more than a very shiny cog in this very shiny machine?
We’ll see. For the time being, we’re focused on Mark—why is he so damn important? He’s not fired by Milchick. In fact, Milchick basically begs Mark to come back to work.
And so does Devon, when she and Mark chat at a diner, having a talk that’s eavesdropped upon by another Lumon employee. Mark tells Devon he’s quitting, but she insists that he go back. There’s more to uncover, she’s sure, and she’s starting to suspect that—as we, the audience, know—Mark might have been talking about Gemma when he shouted “She’s alive” at the end of season one.
Mark reacts poorly to this, which is, to be honest, entirely fair. Milchick goes to settle Mark’s crash–out, offering Mark a 20% raise and a pineapple for his return to Lumon. And he asks Mark if Mark still feels the same way about Gemma—that he’s “choking on her ghost” in her absence. He insists that innie Mark is happy and that outie Mark could be, too, given time. Given space. Giving this Gemma thing a rest.
We already know that Mark comes back, and we already know that eventually, Irving, Dylan, and Helly (?) do, too. So it’s no surprise when they all eventually return …
Dylan, after a brief attempt at a door factory, where he’s discriminated against in the hiring process because he’s severed—some further indication of the complexities of the debate surrounding the process for the world at large …
Irving, whose outie has been found by outie Burt ...
… and Helly. Or Helena. Or some mysterious redhead with a lot of anger and a set of too–small bangs and a confused sense of self. Big Lumon insists that Mark needs all his buddies (we’ll get there), which includes Helly, so there’s a necessary fourth body required in that space. But whose is it? Helena goes through the check–in procedures, so you’d think Helly would come out the other end, but there’s no tell–tale ding! when the elevator doors close on Helena.
Is that editing? Suspense–building, a tease? Or is it Lumon futzing with the works for their own gain?
I have my suspicions.
Point is, Mark gets his people back eventually. In fact, he gets them back pretty damn quick. It only takes forty–eight hours, according to Milchick, to pull this all together, which is directly contrasting his claims to Mark S. on the inside that this was a five–month process during which the outies were lauded as heroes.
We knew that was bullshit, of course. But it’s gratifying to get it confirmed.
Mark doesn’t know this, but he does know there’s something that Lumon isn’t telling him. He stalks Cobel’s house (Selvig’s house?) about it and confronts her in the dead of night. The pineapple in the gift basket makes a verbal appearance once more.
She’s cryptic about Lumon, of course, as is her M.O., and then she spins out and nearly runs Mark over with her car. Not before letting on that she knows something about Gemma, though.
With the episode over, my main takeaway is this: The Lumon workers’ locker numbers are the same as the LOST numbers. This is huge for me, personally.
Oh, and last but certainly not least—this episode all but tells us that of the main four, the only one Lumon really cares about is Mark. Not for any kind purposes, of course, but in the way that he can serve Lumon. They’re more than happy to let Irving and Dylan go, and Helly, as we know, fulfils her own purpose. But Mark is the one Milchick and Helena are trying to keep. It’s Mark that they insist must stay on to finish Cold Harbor.
So are Irving and Dylan entirely superfluous? They can’t be, not with Irving’s mysterious paintings and Dylan’s yet–to–be–disclosed backstory.
But the main takeaway from this episode is that Mark isn’t the main character—Gemma is. And she’s not haunting the narrative so much as death–rattling up behind it in the dark.
