If I thought last week’s “Gemma’s been trapped in the basement this whole time” twist was jaw–dropping, it has nothing on how this 37 minute exploration of Harmony Cobel ended.
What "Sweet Vitriol" might lack in some plot momentum, it more than makes up for it with worldbuilding. This episode expanded the scope of what Lumon is and the conversations the show is having about capitalism in America (two texts I received from F/TV writer Bea Hammam: “CHILD LABOR???” and “Men always taking credit for women's work.”) And it’s adding to my pet theory that the show might take place in Detroit, which is fun.
The episode opens with a cold, ominous shot of waves crashing foamily against black rocks. Cobel, whom we haven’t seen in several episodes, is driving along a winding coast, making her way towards a run–down seaside town called Salt’s Neck. A sting of the “Kier, chosen one, Kier” song that Cobel freakishly sang in season one repeats in the background, but in a minor key.
She’s been living in her car for a few days, presumably; she brushes her teeth and avoids eye contact with a lone drug addict sitting a couple feet away before heading to a cafe called The Drippy Pot.
The Drippy Pot and its patrons are a lot like the rest of the town—pale, cold, run–down, a left–behind byproduct of what once were better days. A waiter, who we’ll later learn is named Hampton, played by James Le Gros, is pouring coffee and making small talk with the regulars. His demeanor changes when Cobel comes in.
“I need a favor,” she tells him. “But not here. Meet me at the factory.”
Despite his obvious reservations, he does as she says.
They pull up to what was once an old ether mill (Kier met his wife at one such mill, Cobel reminds us) where Cobel and Hampton used to work as children. Cobel asks Hampton to drive her to “Sissy’s,” because she’s worried she’s being watched by Lumon. When he says no, Cobel spits at him that she can smell that he’s been using ether, a vein that the town used to tap for money and that they now split open with addiction. She asks why he won’t do a favor for an old colleague; “child fucking labor,” he grinds out. They’re not colleagues. They’re traumatized former working children.
Cobel wins out, though, and Hampton drives her to a small house far away from everything. She huddles in the back of his truck, paranoid. When Hampton lets her out, he says to Cobel: “Tell her to drop dead from me.”
The “her” in question, Sissy, played by Jane Alexander, Cobel’s aunt, has no love for Hampton either—she calls him a “huff peddler,” though Cobel shouts at Sissy that Sissy’s the one who “gave him his thirst for it,” which Sissy vehemently denies. She also tells Cobel that Drummond, the big Lumon thug, came to the house and told her that they’d welcome Cobel back if she returns and apologizes. Cobel doesn’t believe that.
This is the house where Harmony Cobel grew up, and it is cold, austere, isolated, and packed to the brim with fanatical religious devotion to the cult of Kier. It’s no wonder she became the fucked–up woman she is.
Or, it was her house until she was twelve—the lines marking her growth end there. After that, we know, she went to a Kier–focused boarding school, where she did exceedingly well. “Mr. Eagan saw Kier in you,” Sissy says to Cobel, which is immensely creepy. A grown man should not be seeing anything in any tweenage girl.
In fact, Cobel did so well that she won the Wintertide Fellowship—the same program that Milchick and Miss Huang talked about a few episodes before. It must be some sort of internship–type program, and one of the placements must be on the severed floor. Please know I am not being pithy or facetious when I say that I am delighted that ‘Severance’ is having a conversation about how unpaid internships are the work of the devil (and they’ll push it even further by the end of the episode).
Cobel’s mother was not a fanatic like Sissy and like Cobel. Her room is locked tight (Sissy says that it’ll remain that way “until all who remember her sit with Kier,” clearly eager to wipe away the memory of anyone who isn’t drinking the Kool–Aid), but Cobel finds the key to it.
It’s empty, barring a hospital bed and an old life support machine. Cobel attaches her mom’s old ventilator tube—which she brought with her from her shrine back home—to the machine, breathes in deep, and mourns the death of her mother.
A day passes, sunlight slowly fading and darkness creeping in, a picture–perfect representation of the frigidity and isolation of northern rural small towns.
She’s woken up by Hampton and Sissy screaming at each other. Hampton came back for Cobel. They sit on her old bed together; they get high together off of ether, something that Cobel says she hasn’t done since she was (Jesus Christ) eight years old; they kiss.
When they break apart, Cobel says she has to find “it," whatever “it” is, and brings Hampton to what can only be described as a nearby hobbit home. Inside, it’s filled with Cobel’s old things, including a yearbook that marks her as a Wintertide Fellow and an award that does the same.
She cracks open the award and pulls out a thick wad of papers. This is what she was looking for.
Back at the house, Cobel tells Sissy not to say that she was here, but Sissy says she’s loyal to Lumon.
“Lumon destroyed this town,” Cobel growls, “you owe them no loyalty.”
“There was no town before the factory,” Sissy counters.
Finally, we see what it is that had Cobel coming all this way, leaving behind her precious MDR and her beloved Lumon. We see what she was storing in that award.
They’re plans. Original sketches, scientific diagrams, mathematical equations. They’re for the severance procedure. She invented the procedure as a young woman, and Jame Eagan stole her work and passed it off as his own.
Sissy attempts to burn the proof, but Cobel yanks it out in time. She takes Hampton’s truck and runs (“Come and tame these tempers, assholes!” Hampton fires at an approaching Lumon car), where our two timelines reintegrate.
Devon’s calling Cobel. She picks up. “Tell me everything,” she says.
There’s a lot to unpack about this episode. I’ll start with the less–good. First, I don’t love the pacing, seasonally–speaking. I know we needed to have this episode, and I’m glad we got it, but I’m not sure putting it right after the Gemma episode was the best move. Though the world has been expanding these past two episodes, the story has been somewhat stagnating. I feel relatively confident that won’t be an issue for episodes nine and ten, though, so it’s fine.
Second, I’m not sure how I feel about the twist. I love the idea that Jame is a fraud building on the labor and intelligence of an exploited, under– or unpaid woman—it is exactly what the show is about, and it strips away any remaining vestiges of greatness he could claim to cling to. I don’t know how I feel about it being Cobel he took that away from, though; I worry a bit about everyone being Special, when what works so well about this show is how deftly it speaks to the exploitation of average people.
I’m also not super sold on Devon and Cobel chumming it up. We’ll see where that goes.
That said, though, I think this episode struck worldbuilding gold. It’s a fascinating, freezing picture of a devastated Rust Belt town (Detroit, again, comes to mind because of the cars of it all, and the representation that has as the center of factory–era American industrialism) that throws in a sharp jab at those responsible for things like the opioid epidemic and how it has ravaged low-income communities whose economic prospects were taken away and who were not given any support.
It gets explicit about child labor, about the devaluation of women in the workforce, about the way that religious fanaticism is cultivated to shield vultures from arrows that might shoot it down. It drives a grounding stake into the thematic railroad track the show has been laying out, and it does it with brute force.
My last thought—does the droplet on the Lumon pins represent water or does it represent ether? Last episode Gemma said she was more afraid of drowning than suffocating. Cobel and Hampton huff ether by pressing a cloth over their nose and mouth. There are pieces here to be connected, and Cold Harbor still hasn’t been completed.
