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- [00:01]
Bill Simmons
This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at the Ringer, then you're in luck because every episode of the Rewatchable is in the big Picture now on YouTube.
- [00:14]
Chris Ryan
Like Bill said, Ringer Movies will feature full episodes of my show, the Big Picture, the rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie loving ringer personalities. Search ringer movies on YouTube and experience the joy. Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera.
- [00:34]
Joanna Robinson
This episode is brought to you by Coffee Mate. I love a good crossover, especially when it's with a show you love. This time the crossover isn't with another character, but with Coffee Mate. Coffee Mate has collaborated with HBO's the White Lotus to bring us two tropically inspired limited time only flavors, Pina colada and Thai iced coffee flavored creamers. And as a coffee fanatic, I can't wait to try them. All right. Thai iced coffee in my coffee. Pina colada in coffee. I am adventurous when it comes to new flavors, but this sounds truly different. I'm picturing something tropical and refreshing, like a beachside cocktail, but with a coffee twist. Definitely curious to see how it all comes together. Let's try it. Mmm. The Thai iced coffee is amazing. It tastes like like an authentic Thai iced coffee with that, you know, the condensed milk sweetness to it. I was very skeptical about the pina colada, but it's surprisingly delicious. The coconut and pineapple notes make it feel like a vacation in a cup. Perfect for sipping while watching the latest episode of HBO's original series, the White Lotus Coffee Mates. The White Lotus flavors are only available for a limited time, so try them now and stream HBO's original series on.
- [01:49]
Bill Simmons
This episode is brought to you by Marvel Television's Born Again. Charlie Cox returns as vigilante lawyer Matt Murdock and Vincent D'Onofrio as former mob boss Wilson Fisk. The darker side of Matt Murdock is revealed when he gains a new perspective on his role as the Daredevil and faces an internal struggle between justice and revenge. The devil's work is never done. Don't miss the two episode premiere of Daredevil Born Again on March 4th, only on Disney Plus.
- [02:21]
Chris Ryan
Look, they just disappeared her. And if we let this happen to Ms. Casey, then who's going to step up when it happens to us? If one of your goats went missing, wouldn't you go looking for it.
- [02:41]
Joanna Robinson
Foreign. Welcome back to Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.
- [02:49]
Chris Ryan
I'm Rob Mahoney.
- [02:51]
Joanna Robinson
And we're out here looking for goats and missing wives and all sorts of stuff here on Severance. Rob, how did you feel about the fact that they were unwilling to help when he made a plea to humanity, but when he mentioned the goats, they were like, oh, okay, we'll help.
- [03:07]
Chris Ryan
It's one of those things that seems like a bridge too far. And I am somewhat baffled by the fact that this is what got through to the goat people. At the same time, I know people like this in the real world who need the plea to animal safety and survival above human safety and survival. So really, is it that weird? Is it that unusual? Is it that unbelievable? At the end of the day, it's.
- [03:27]
Joanna Robinson
Some real dog people energy. And I say that with love and respect. To you, a dog person.
- [03:30]
Chris Ryan
Okay, all right, let's not do that.
- [03:34]
Joanna Robinson
I don't think that's what I really feel like. That's a dog person energy and not a cat person energy. Cat people have their own off putting energy and I will own that. But like, this is not our strain of, you know, it's a fair point.
- [03:47]
Chris Ryan
In the sense that your cats don't care if you live or die and no matter what happens, they're just gonna go about their business. They don't really need to be taken care of in the same way. So I, I take your point. I take your criticism. I'm listening, I'm learning. I'm trying not to be that kind of dog person.
- [04:02]
Joanna Robinson
We're here to talk to you about season two, episode three of Severance who Is Alive, directed by Ben Stiller and written by Wei Ning Yu. She is a writer on not only Severance, not only Gen V, but also Andy Greenwald's Briar Patch.
- [04:19]
Chris Ryan
You may have heard of it.
- [04:20]
Joanna Robinson
You might have heard of it. So what did you like overall, Big picture? We've got a lot. I should, pineapple bobbingmail.com. i don't think we've ever gotten so many emails for a show.
- [04:34]
Chris Ryan
Would you agree the emails are a bobbin Joe?
- [04:36]
Joanna Robinson
They are. It's like, like the black sludge of Irving's paint sort of spilling over the cubicle walls. That doesn't sound very complimentary. Your emails are incredible. There were so many of them. I read them all. We will not get to all of them, but we have a lot to cover in this episode. Based on everything that happens in this episode and based very cogent observations from this, that, and the other thing. Dear listeners, please keep your emails coming. I do love them. They're amazing. But, Rob, sort of like big picture. What did you think of? We had the any only episode. The outtie only episode. We end this episode with reintegration. So now we know why we had to have those episodes, because that's the last time, theoretically, we're gonna be able to be with Mark all in, all outie. Now it's just gonna be a mishmash, I hope. What did you think of this episode?
- [05:30]
Chris Ryan
I have to say I think this one was kind of odd and not all of it worked for me. There's some really great moments, some emotional beats that I think really hit, but overall, for one of the most polished shows on tv felt a little bit stilted.
- [05:44]
Joanna Robinson
There's a lot that I really loved. I would say the Irving stuff worked for me. The Dylan stuff worked for me. The reintegration moment really worked for me. The Milchick stuff really worked for me. I thought that was wonderful. The goat stuff, I'm not sure. Actually, with love and respect to Gwendolyn Christie, like, I just. And I love the weirdness of severance. You know, we had weird masked exotic dancers during the waffle party last year. Like, I'm not saying, like, weird off. Putting stuff is out of the. Out of the realm of possibility on the show. This just felt like them. I felt a little bit of like, the sweet of them trying to be weird in a way that felt like it didn't quite work for me. So, yeah, it was a little less.
- [06:31]
Chris Ryan
Severance, a little too much like Dr. Seuss in terms of the language. It just felt even just like Mamalians neutral is very like, you're flambazing the Hornswoggle. Like, you really don't need to do it. You don't need to go that far. And I'm a little torn on it because I get that the intention is we are stumbling into a world that feels so foreign. It's supposed to feel like a different show, but the contrast is so jarring and so grating. And I think some of the characters, actions and conversations are inexplicable in a bad way. That kind of took me out of the severance experience.
- [07:08]
Joanna Robinson
I agree with you. But overall, it didn't feel like a oh, no, should we be worried about season two sort of thing or anything like that. It was just one facet of this episode that I was like, I'm not sure this works for me. I was unsure if you Were gonna come to the episode and say, I loved the goat stuff. It's my favorite stuff I've ever seen on Severance. Cause my sense is that a lot of people did really like that stuff, but for me, I don't know, it just feels like, again, just like a slight distraction or a slight spectacle inside of a show that, like, yes, has weird stuff happen, but does such a good job, as we talked about before and inside this episode, of integrating true character moments with the oddities that are happening inside of this world.
- [07:57]
Chris Ryan
So it felt a little like over indexing on something that us and audiences across the world watching Severance latched onto from season one, which is that little goat reveal that's almost like a throwaway scene that they have now woven, it seems like, into the mythology of the show, which I'm open to that and I encourage it. But this is maybe leaning a little too far in that direction.
- [08:18]
Joanna Robinson
I had a really good conversation with cr, with Chris Ryan over the weekend where we were talking about sort of theory shows and what happens in a season two of a theory show. And we got this email from our listener, John B. And I just really like the way he put this. He said, severance has entered a playground that no show has made it out of without significant injury to its ratings or Q rating. It's taken the elevator to the same floor as the hatch from Lost, the lair of the Yellow King, the maze of Westworld, and the Black Lodge. No one has ever come out of this floor of prestige TV alive. And I think. And John's overall email was, like, more positive. He's like, but perhaps under these people, this won't be the case. So, like, overall, more positive, but.
- [09:02]
Chris Ryan
But the degree of difficulty is what it is.
- [09:04]
Joanna Robinson
And it's just like the intensive. I love a theory show, you know, I do. But like the intensive rabid theorizing. I can't think of a single example of a show that has survived that. To John's point. He mentioned Black Lodge, Twin Peaks, obviously, in the long lens of history. And I personally love the Lost finale. I'm a huge Lost fan. But in the larger cultural conversations we have about Lost, people don't feel the same way. So I'm hoping we've talked about this a little bit before, but when I saw the Go people, I was like, hold fast, hold steady, Severance. You got this.
- [09:42]
Chris Ryan
Maybe we don't need belly pouches at the end of the day.
- [09:45]
Joanna Robinson
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Speaking of Lost, I did want to shout out the fact someone on Twitter pointed this Out. And I felt so ashamed that I missed it. The Lost numbers. And if you don't, if you never watched Lost, there are a very famous set of numbers for 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 that show up again and again in Lost are these mystical numbers. Don't. Don't mock me, Ramon.
- [10:04]
Chris Ryan
I'm not. No. When this was pointed out and I saw you acknowledging it, I felt such a deep existential pain on your behalf because I know that you. This was just racking you with guilt and anxiety for having missed it.
- [10:18]
Joanna Robinson
I did miss it. When Irving and Dylan and Helena all go to their lockers at the end of episode two, their locker numbers align with the numbers from Lost. So a little shout out, you know, it just means that the people who are making severance know that they are treading in the Lostian waters. And if you've never seen Lost, you should. But if you've never seen it, I'll let you know that very significant, one of the most. And Dan Erickson has talked about this, and other people have talked about this. This moment in Lost, season two of Lost where they discover they're awash on a desert island. They discover there's a hatch underneath the island, and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities of like, we thought we were on a deserted island. What else is happening on this island? And we find a guy. Spoilers for season two of Lost. Please skip ahead. We find a guy in a hatch who's pressing a button, you know, without knowing what that button does. And if that is not mdr, you know, nothing is.
- [11:17]
Chris Ryan
So if that's not our day to day life at this point, Joe, I don't know what that is.
- [11:21]
Joanna Robinson
Fair, fair, fair. We got an email from our listener Jordan, who wanted to point out that in season one, when Helly first enters the severed floor, she asks Mark, am I livestock? And he says in his classic Adam Scott way, you think we grew a full human and gave you consciousness. How do you feel about that line? Given our current theories about what's happening with Cold harbor and Gemma and all of that?
- [11:53]
Chris Ryan
Encouraged. I think things like that speak to a broader vision, speak to that level of callback, even in this sort of capacity where it is facilitating the theories around the show, even if it turns out not to be a straight line from one line of dialogue to the actual eventuality of what this is. That's fun. That's. That's a delight for me.
- [12:13]
Joanna Robinson
Are you ready? Are you emotionally prepared to talk about pineapple bobbing?
- [12:16]
Chris Ryan
Rob Mahoney, please Bring it on.
- [12:18]
Joanna Robinson
Pineapple robbing. So in case folks don't know because you have decided to improve your life by not being on social media. I didn't ask. Actually, my nephew suggested. My young nephew volunteered to bob a pineapple to test whether or not one.
- [12:38]
Chris Ryan
Can bob don't you coerced and employed like Ms. Huang, a literal child.
- [12:45]
Joanna Robinson
I went to my sister's house. There was a pineapple there, and I turned to my nephews and I said, do you think someone could Bob? And actually they had never heard of apple bobbing, so it was a whole educational process for them. He bobbed the pineapple. You've seen the video evidence of him bobbing the pineapple successfully. How do you. How do you feel? How does this change your point of view on pineapple Bob successfully.
- [13:06]
Chris Ryan
You say he bobs this pineapple in like a four quart pot. It's a four quart pot, Joe. There's nowhere for that pineapple to go.
- [13:15]
Joanna Robinson
That's not true at all. He crushed it. He crushed the pineapple bobbing.
- [13:19]
Chris Ryan
It's not his fault.
- [13:20]
Joanna Robinson
He did an amazing job, okay?
- [13:22]
Chris Ryan
His technique is impeccable. I salute him for successfully bobbing the pineapple within the parameters of what's been established here, which is not regulation bobbing, not authorized by the bobbing authority. You have to have a big body of water so that the pineapple can move around. That's the whole point.
- [13:38]
Joanna Robinson
You can't speak for the bobbing authority. You have no credentials to do that.
- [13:43]
Chris Ryan
Says who?
- [13:44]
Joanna Robinson
Are you telling me you're fully Bob trained? Like you, you know, all the parameters.
- [13:48]
Chris Ryan
Of bobbing prove that I'm not.
- [13:50]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, great. That's an. That's an. That's an interesting philosophy. Prove that I'm not. Okay. Also on the pineapple front, we got a couple emails. Our listener, Christina B. Was talking visual imagery of like, let's say these boxy old cars and the kier, you know, mural that we talked about, looking very Soviet. The Soviet vibes of the Bell Labs where they're shooting this show reminded her of stories about, you know, what it was like to grow up in, like, the Soviet Union or in East Germany. And so this idea of the pineapple is this sort of symbol of like a luxury fruit that you. That does not make it past the blockades. You know, this sort of like, you know, and it's not. It's not like people who live in this town called Kier inside of the show seem like they're wanting specifically, but. But there are potentially some luxuries like, say, a waffle or an egg or a pineapple that, like, they can't readily access. It's possible.
- [15:06]
Chris Ryan
Also kind of telling that, you know, the accommodations for the people who work at Lumen, like Marx, for example, are pretty Spartan, like pretty basic in terms of the structure of those houses and places. And then even when we see the characters who are supposedly doing well, there's very convenient narrative reasons for why we don't see a lot of decadence. Right. Like the no food dinner party is a great bit, but maybe it's also like a matter of. Of dealing with the realistic circumstances of something like this. We, we just honestly haven't seen people indulging really in a lot of different ways.
- [15:37]
Joanna Robinson
Last but not least, on the pineapple front, and this is, I think, the most important pineapple fact that you and I have learned over the last week, unless you already knew this. Someone who emailed us under the name Van Life, which I presume is sort of not their actual name, said, I couldn't help but wonder if you were all aware of the use of pineapple, specifically upside down pineapple, as an identifying symbol indicating an openness to non monogamy or partner swapping. I found this fact out recently and then started to notice pineapples all over the place. So inside of an episode, Rob, where Gretchen, a character that we meet for the first time, Dylan's wife, is maybe feeling a spark of something she's lost with her husband on the outside with the version of her husband on the inside. So, I mean, another erotic throuple has entered the chat. How do you feel about the use of pineapple in this show?
- [16:31]
Chris Ryan
I think we're gonna need some authority. I do not have authority in this particular matter. I may be on the bobbing council, but as far as what constitutes partner swapping, if it is indeed still your partner's physical form occupied by another consciousness. Look, it's a question that TV has grappled with since the dawn of time. A lot of body swapping hijinks out there. This is a little bit different, though, in the sense that it is still Dylan or still Mark. It's just a slightly different version of them. And I love that we are getting to the point with Severance where we're engaging with what happens when you meet a version of your husband, but one who hasn't been, like, weighed down by the world.
- [17:09]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, yeah. And that's a question that's asked inside of this episode when Gretchen, played by the great Merritt Weaver, we'll talk about in a Second, let's talk about Dylan and Gretchen. When she shows up and she's talking to him and she says you and then she corrects herself and she says he like really trying to keep the two of them separate. But. But this is a question we've asked ourselves throughout as we watch what we believe to be Helena impersonate Heli or as we watch the two marks. Is there a massive difference between the two? What makes your innie a different personality than your outie? Is it just they're missing the heaviness of the world, the grief of a lost spouse or the failure that Dylan feels like he's surrounded by on the outside. And so when we meet you on the inside, you're just sort of like a lighter, purer version of yourself. Is that a possibility? What do you think?
- [18:04]
Chris Ryan
I think so. Or at least one that isn't burdened in the same way we, we latched onto last week. This sort of detail of Dylan's outtie going on these job interviews, being very concerned about whether these jobs would have health insurance as maybe a tip for his family circumstances or something going on with his kids. After this episode, I see it a lot more as sort of the pressure of providing of he. He like he is trying to keep these jobs in a way that he hasn't found a passion for anything, a consistency with anything. And so Gretchen has seen this version of a person she loves deal with all that, grapple with all that be ground down into just like a lump on the couch reading Midlife Driver magazine, which I think is a fantastic little, little bit of set deck. Wonderful.
- [18:47]
Joanna Robinson
Can't even slice the cookie dough, you know what I mean?
- [18:49]
Chris Ryan
Just slice the cookie dough. Sugar cookie's not that hard. He should be able to bake a sugar cookie from scratch, much less the tube.
- [18:56]
Joanna Robinson
I was wondering how you rob felt about cookies out of a tube when.
- [18:59]
Chris Ryan
I will say they do slap. You know like a store bought Walmart style giant lump of icing sugar cookie or your Pillsbury slice and bake. Like I'm going to eat it.
- [19:12]
Joanna Robinson
You're into it.
- [19:12]
Chris Ryan
I'm not turning it down.
- [19:14]
Joanna Robinson
All right, let's talk about Merritt Weaver. Genuinely one of my favorite actresses. The like the casting news with love and respect against Gwendolyn Christie and other people. The casting news I was most excited about in this season. In case you are listening to Prestige TV podcast and don't know who Merritt Weaver is or in case you unlike, unlike me, you don't have to watch awards shows for a living. I wanted to Remind people who may not know that Merritt Weaver, who has won two Emmys, gave the canonically the best Emmys acceptance speech of all time. Kai, will you play this, please? Oh, no, thanks so much.
- [19:55]
Chris Ryan
Thank you so much.
- [20:00]
Joanna Robinson
I gotta go. Bye. That's it.
- [20:05]
Chris Ryan
Tremendous.
- [20:06]
Joanna Robinson
That's the iconic Merritt Weaver Emmy acceptance speech. You may know her from Nurse Jackie, for which she won an Emmy from. From Godless. Unbelievable. The Walking Dead run a very mixed bag of a show, but a very like Rob and Joanna show. Donald Gleason, Merritt Weaver. It should have been great. It was okay.
- [20:23]
Chris Ryan
That is exactly what I remember her from is. And a short lived show in the sense that even I bailed on it like two thirds of the way through the season.
- [20:31]
Joanna Robinson
I know it's starting. Did not deliver. It was really promising. Anyway, Merritt Weaver is here. I loved everything about this, this sort of seduction of Dylan, like another day, another finger trap. Only this time the finger trap is, you know, you've got this really cool wife. I think Merritt Weaver is a perfect casting choice for this. I think what she conveys about the discomfort but also somewhat excitement of this interaction, I think she does so perfectly and so subtly. I think watching her be, watching her deliver the, the reality of Dylan on the outside, but also not in a shitty way. In a like loyal, kind way. Like she cares about him. She's. She's not he dumb. He a dick. Like she's not calling him dumb or a dick, but when he asks if he's a fuck up, she doesn't deny it. You know, and so it's.
- [21:34]
Chris Ryan
But also doesn't answer it.
- [21:35]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, she just doesn't answer.
- [21:36]
Chris Ryan
Not her words.
- [21:37]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think?
- [21:39]
Chris Ryan
I loved this exchange. I love the setup and I love the finger trap element you're describing for both of them. You have our most perk obsessed character on this show being shown the tastiest perk of all. Not just time with his family, but secret time with his family that no one else knows about. How enticing.
- [21:58]
Joanna Robinson
Oh, man.
- [21:59]
Chris Ryan
And for Gretchen, you know, she's having to overcome, as you mentioned, the overwhelming weirdness of what is happening and she's clocking it in real time. Who is this child who is speaking in over the loudspeaker, observing our session. It's clear that she's really uncomfortable, but that she's so at least intrigued on a baseline level by the chance to meet this version of Dylan and figure out what he's like and what she's somewhat mystified by the fact that he doesn't recognize her. Despite that severance working as intended. It's another thing entirely to encounter it and to experience it and just see this version of your husband not know you. I think that's a great place to put these two characters. And it helps explain too, why when she does get home with Outie Dillon. Yeah, she doesn't even really want to talk about it. Like, I don't think she wants to indicate how interesting the exchange was for her.
- [22:49]
Joanna Robinson
She's keeping a secret too. Right. Like, they're both. It gives a fair. Because neither of them are telling the other people in their lives about what's happening here. The fact that the sinister, in my view, fact that they've like built this visiting center in the security room in the location of Dylan's great rebellion. And they're like, this is where we're gonna put the thing that's gonna pacify you, I think is incredible. The design of that place. The fact that you hear ocean and gull sounds like the whole time that he's in there. And then it cuts off as soon as she leaves, he's still in there. So she leaves. That sound cuts out.
- [23:29]
Chris Ryan
Sweet, sweet Pavlov. Like, we're really going places. I was very soothed listening to it. You know, the gulls and the crashing waves. It was working on me.
- [23:36]
Joanna Robinson
It's my favorite setting on. It's either heavy rain or crashing beach waves that are the best white noise sounds one could ask for.
- [23:44]
Chris Ryan
Plus the beautiful, like, oil painting beach vista behind them, you know, very, very well manicured for this corporate visitation suite.
- [23:52]
Joanna Robinson
I think it's so clever. And I think this idea of again, there are. We've talked about love triangles and love quadrangles and all this stuff on the show. There are story opportunities here that one could pursue perhaps in an episode of Black Mirror, but one cannot pursue in your standard prestige TV show. So to give Gretchen the opportunity to meet her husband, not just her husband, not weighed down by the things that have happened in their life, but her husband. And that idea of, like, meeting someone for the first time and like, that excitement that, like, leads plenty of people to stray from their marriage of, like, the chase, is this person gonna like me? Like, you know, the. The early flirtation, like anything like that. But inside of it's also still kind of her husband is a really wild concept to explore. And the fact that when she hugs him, when she says goodbye, she says I love you, and says it's sort of habit and instinctual. But. But Audi, Dylan on the couch does not get an I love you when she goes off to work. So, you know, it's stuff.
- [25:00]
Chris Ryan
The most cursory of pecs between them. And. And we should say Dylan G. Doesn't even know what to do with being loved, but he is clearly so giddy at whatever it is that he's feeling. Whether that's just attraction, whether that's just curiosity. I'm sure it's some blend of all these things, but he's. He's feeling a lot in a way that we've never really seen that character feel before.
- [25:21]
Joanna Robinson
I think it's also important for us to see that outside scene. Not just to see the contrast, which is important, but also bless them for doing that, because then we don't have to endure a week of theories of. Is that actually his wife? That is actually his wife. So we know that. We saw that his kids play with Kir dolls on the floor there were totally normal. Not scary at all. It also just like, in general, she's working the night shift. Like, they don't. They don't spend time. Like, what time do they spend together at home? He's. He's on the severance Severn floor during the day. She works the night shift. Like ships in the night. Very sad. All right, But. But, like, that takes us to the cost here of this shiny new finger trap. Lore for Dylan is the very intentional and it's working division that it causes between Dylan and his cohorts. The reason they were successful in season one in their uprising is because of the, you know, the common cause that they found together. And here in season two, the division between Irving and Dylan, who we saw share that extremely tender moment in episode one that made us very emotional. And then the fact that we believe that Heli is actually Helena. So who's an ally to whom? Nobody. They've successfully scattered this impenetrable foursome to the wind within mere days.
- [26:52]
Chris Ryan
It doesn't take a lot. Yeah. A couple of carrots here and there, a hidden boss there, and all of a sudden the whole team is broken up. And I think to do it with Dylan, specifically, who, whatever you may think of that character, and he can be very like edgelord at times in a way that I find endearing within the context of this show, if not necessarily in the outside world, does something very selfless at the end of season one by volunteering to be the person to stay. And so to turn this person who made that sort of like, he didn't have the chance to meet Gretchen in the way that, you know, the Other members of his team, at least theoretically, could meet the people around them.
- [27:26]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, Helly could have met her nightgardener, you know, if in fact that had happened.
- [27:32]
Chris Ryan
It's a very real thing. Lots of people employ nightgardeners, Joe.
- [27:38]
Bill Simmons
This episode is brought to you by Lincoln. There's something buzzy in the air. Spring is coming, the mood is shifting and new journeys are beginning. Say goodbye to the winter blues and experience the revitalizing qualities of driving a Lincoln. Everything about a Lincoln is designed to invigorate our senses. And the Lincoln Spring sales event. It's happening right now. Step outside and visit your local lincoln retailer or lincoln.com to find some seriously mood enhancing offers on current and past Lincoln models. Learn more@lincoln.com get the Angel Reef Special at McDonald's.
- [28:11]
Joanna Robinson
Now let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and the drinks.
- [28:21]
Chris Ryan
Sound good?
- [28:22]
Joanna Robinson
Ba da ba ba ba.
- [28:23]
Chris Ryan
I participate in restaurants for a limited time.
- [28:25]
Joanna Robinson
This is a message from sponsor Intuit. TurboTax Taxes was getting frustrated by your forms. Now Taxes is uploading your forms with a snap. And a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you. One who's backed by the latest tech which cross checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy. All of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back guaranteed. Get an expert now@turbotax.com, only available with TurboTax Live full service. Seek guaranteed details@turbotax.com guarantees. Let's talk about Irving or Everybody's talking about Burvy.
- [29:02]
Chris Ryan
Everybody's talking about Burvy. Felicia definitely is. Helly definitely is.
- [29:08]
Joanna Robinson
We gave Kai a full license to hit that sound drop whatever he did. And you did it perfectly. Kai, thank you so much. I was hoping you would. Okay, Irving burving in the O&D department. Okay, you mentioned Heli or as we believe, Helena. What did you make of the exchange between Helena and Irving when she was trying to say. When she said we've got you and. And give him affection and. And a kind touch.
- [29:34]
Chris Ryan
She just continues to do and say things that Heli would not do, including asking questions about things that Heli would know. And the. The hand touch felt very corporate approved physical contact of assurance in a way that feels consistent with Helena to me.
- [29:51]
Joanna Robinson
To me it felt like an alien visiting earth trying to approximate a human.
- [29:55]
Chris Ryan
Well, what's the difference between corporate policy and aliens? At the end of the day, how does One comfort.
- [30:01]
Joanna Robinson
Exactly what is your read on how Irving received this gesture from her?
- [30:07]
Chris Ryan
He seems overall, the most skeptical of what's happening. And I would say that going back to episode one of this season, there's just little bits where you see him seeming to catch something in his facial expression, like a little moment of recognition that, huh, this is a little weird. And granted, everything is weird enough right now that I don't know that he's consciously registering, oh, this is an imposter. But that something seems off with this person he knows.
- [30:30]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, yeah, I agree. We also got like a Dylan eyebrow sort of in the foreground of that moment. And I couldn't tell if that was him also clocking something weird. And it would make sense to me that Mark would be the last to know. But, you know, it's also hard to say.
- [30:45]
Chris Ryan
Cause Zack Cherry does tremendous eyebrow work in this show. There's just like a constant oscillation of what's going on up there. I. Who knows what means what?
- [30:53]
Joanna Robinson
Before Irving goes to O and D, he has this conversation with Dylan that we already sort of referenced, which was another clever bit of. And I. And I will continuously praise the show for this exposition wrapped inside of a character beat. So he's talking to Dylan about, like, you know, the hallway. Yes, I managed to draw it. We can go find it right now. And what we're discovering inside that exchange is that Dylan is holding something back from Irving. And that's the character beat that we talked about of, like, the division and their unity, but also reminds us, the audience, what that hallway is, why he would have a drawing of it in his notebook. So when he then shows it to Felicia and O and D, we're all prepped for that. And those are like the little economical beats inside of an episode of Severance that I so admire versus, you know, whatever. My critiques of the goat stuff we will get back to in a second. Felicia, Nerving. What do you want to say about that?
- [31:48]
Chris Ryan
I mean, it was just nice that we get this moment to commiserate about berving, if also talking about berving.
- [31:55]
Joanna Robinson
Everybody's commiserating on Irving.
- [31:58]
Chris Ryan
A lot of commiseration needs to be done. You know, there's a lot of admiration for what Burt brought to ond, and clearly a lot of affection between him and Irving as we get this very charming anecdote about Burt fixing his hair for literal hours before going to visit him. But what jumped out to me for this scene is actually before Felicia shows up and we get Irving walking into O and D for the first time and very, very kind of sweet and tender moment as he's perusing the paintings and taking stock of the scene. And the score, as ever on Severance is wonderful, wonderful stuff. And here it hits, like, half noir, half elevator music, which is basically the show to me. I just. I have a lot of admiration for so many of the very precise points that they're striking between these. What should extremes or things that have nothing to do with each other.
- [32:48]
Joanna Robinson
No one has ever looked more longingly or tenderly at a flat file cabinet than Irving does in. In this episode. His little smile when Felicia tells him the hair story. The long hug between the two of them, especially in contrast to that awkward effort from Helena just mere moments before.
- [33:06]
Chris Ryan
Although Helena, I mean, our girl, she just wants to jump MARG s bones so bad and doesn't know how to do it.
- [33:14]
Joanna Robinson
I want to talk about that in a second. But last but not least, I will just say that we get all of this, which is emotional character stuff, and then inside of that, we get, boom, Lore, dump the Exports Hall. Felicia knows about the Exports hall, kind of what it is and also significantly, where it is. So. Hi, Felicia. Welcome to the party. You are now part of the coalition.
- [33:38]
Chris Ryan
Welcome to the Resistance.
- [33:40]
Joanna Robinson
All right, let's talk about Mark and Helly and the freaky goat shit. Okay, so what I like about this, the episode opens, and we'll obviously get back to Mark on the outside, but the episode opens with this very heisty Ocean's Eleven. Let's time the entry to the building moment from Mark. And when we see any Mark, he's also on a mission. They're both Marks on a mission inside of this episode, which I really like, which, again, speaks to this idea of, like, they are kind of the same person. There are ways in which they're different, but there are ways in which they're the same. And they're both like, we're going to spearhead a heist, and it's going to happen. And the. The loot is Ms. Casey. So we have Mark showing the sketch, and he says, do not leave it behind. Which when someone says something like that, I'm like, oh, someone's going to leave something behind. On the one hand, yes. And on the other hand, I don't know. Helena's just there observing all of it. So it's not like they're successfully keeping any secrets at all.
- [34:43]
Chris Ryan
And as they point out, Lumen is listening, which they did tell them. Yeah, very, very we hear for you. I thought that's what I hear every time I hear luminous listening.
- [34:51]
Joanna Robinson
Okay. That's what I felt like when Helena comforts Irving and she says, we've got you. I was like, they've got him. You know what I mean?
- [35:01]
Chris Ryan
That's pretty good.
- [35:01]
Joanna Robinson
That's pretty good. Okay, so let's talk about their little moment in the hallway. Helena and Mark have this little moment in the. In the corner of a hallway. My interpretation of what's going on here is yes, and to you, she definitely wants to jump his bones. She does not know how to initiate. She's hoping he'll initiate. He's used to a heli who is the one who grabbed him and smooched him in the first place. So he's sort of waiting for her to initiate, and then the moment just kind of passes, and he sort of remembers what he's supposed to be doing, which is looking for his wife. Oops. But I love this moment and Brit Lauer's performance, especially in terms of what we talked about last week, which is Helena's sort of longing to find out what. I don't know. Has she ever kissed a boy? What's it like to kiss a boy? I don't know.
- [35:54]
Chris Ryan
Who knows?
- [35:54]
Joanna Robinson
Helena Egan has gotten to do that. So how do I do this? Awkward middle school vibes from Helena Egan here, which I really liked, just making eyes at him.
- [36:04]
Chris Ryan
And I think you pinpointed exactly, like, the difference in assertiveness between heli and what we assume is Helena and the non. The grabbing of the lapels versus the shuffling awkwardly. It just. It could not be more clear. And maybe the rug will be pulled out from us down the line. And this is just all of a sudden, I guess heli turned very sheepish for no reason whatsoever, But. But every bit of evidence tells us this is Helena.
- [36:27]
Joanna Robinson
Speaking of sheepish, let's talk about goats. Another thing that happens inside of this moment when they're going into the goat room and all this sort of stuff is she's like, are you sure? Oh, my God, what are we doing? Whereas I feel like heli. The heli that we knew would be, like, leading the way. She'd be first down the goat hall. The unmistakable Being John Malkovich image of the two of them crouching in front of the hallway. And again, I don't like to assume that any of our listeners are our age or anything like that. So if you are younger and you've never seen being John Malkovich, just Google image, search being John Malkovich, you'll see the most iconic image or Better yet, remedy that fact.
- [37:07]
Chris Ryan
Watch it do go watch Being John Malkovich.
- [37:09]
Joanna Robinson
The Charlie Kaufman, like, early aughts. David O. Russell. Sort of off kilter, quirky sci fi realism stuff that is floating around this episode. We're gonna talk about eternal sunshine in a little bit. But like, I was really glad to see a being John Malkovich illusion here. When they get to the goat room.
- [37:31]
Chris Ryan
Though, they become John Malkovich.
- [37:34]
Joanna Robinson
Yes. When they become. When they're just like Malkovich Malkovich.
- [37:36]
Chris Ryan
When they become Seth Milchick, they climb into Milchick's consciousness and we go from.
- [37:40]
Joanna Robinson
There and they're like blackface Cure Egan.
- [37:44]
Chris Ryan
I'm not sure that's what I want.
- [37:45]
Joanna Robinson
Thanks for watching.
- [37:46]
Chris Ryan
We'll have to circle back to that big time.
- [37:48]
Joanna Robinson
Not sure. When they get into the goat room. Helena. If that is Helena. I mean, we think it is. I'm just gonna keep caveating though. Helena looks genuinely confused and perturbed. Like, I don't think she knows about.
- [38:02]
Chris Ryan
No.
- [38:03]
Joanna Robinson
The goat room. About mammalians. Nurturable. How much do you think Helen knows in general about what goes on on the seventh floor? Etc?
- [38:15]
Chris Ryan
I mean, she's big picture, right? Like, she knows in a general sense probably what they're trying to accomplish, but not all of the means by which they're accomplishing it. So I think she probably knew there were goats and there's some process by which goats and human beings on the severed floor are interacting or related, but maybe not that. Oh, there's this giant ass like meadow within the floor itself. A gnoll fully staffed with a bunch of goat people weirdos and a. Frankly, like a whole herd of goats.
- [38:45]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [38:47]
Chris Ryan
What's the plural of goat?
- [38:50]
Joanna Robinson
Oh, like what's the group name for a goat? Yeah, I would say a flock of goats. No, a herd of goats. Goat herder. A herd of goats.
- [38:57]
Chris Ryan
I guess. Help us out if you're out there and you know the answer. If it's really murder of goats, we would love to know it. Just let us know.
- [39:04]
Joanna Robinson
An ecstasy of goats. Yeah. No, I mean, I think if she had encountered what we saw in season one, which is just a guy bottle feeding some. Go guy in a suit bottle feeding some goats. Which is weird, but not as weird as the rolling grassy knolls of what we see as Gwendoline Christie in, like, fashionable business wear, but also a kerchief of Gwendolyn Christie with her face smeared with dirt, but also a really heavily applied smoky eye. I have a lot of questions about a lot of choices in here.
- [39:37]
Chris Ryan
We've got find you a mammalian who can do both.
- [39:39]
Joanna Robinson
Jo, we've got a guy who looks like Black Phillip stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Like, there's a lot going on in this room. And something that Petey says in season one and his little map that he drew, he had this sense or idea or knowledge that some people never leave the severed floor, that they live down there.
- [40:05]
Chris Ryan
Yeah.
- [40:05]
Joanna Robinson
Would you say you think the goat people live on the severed floor?
- [40:09]
Chris Ryan
It feels like they've been in there pretty long and they've certainly seen some shit.
- [40:13]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [40:13]
Chris Ryan
Like all of that is conveyed quite simply. But I think from there it gets a little muddled, you know, like Gwendolyn, Chrissy's character, approaches them with shears in hand asking if they're there to kill her, but then later insists that she's not afraid of them at all. And they don't fear these interlopers from the outside world.
- [40:32]
Joanna Robinson
Well, I don't believe her when she's at.
- [40:33]
Chris Ryan
I mean, I don't either, but I'm just like. I don't have any sense of what's going on here or why or how. And here's the thing that bugs me most about the entire goat sequence.
- [40:44]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [40:45]
Chris Ryan
A real and surprising lack of curiosity on Mark's part. Like, this is a person who has never seen grass before and is just walking in matter of factly in a way that. Can we not get one Terrance Malikian beat of Mark bending down to touch the grass for the first time. Is that something that we're not entitled? And then once we do get into conversation and they're being interrogated about their bellies, we have no follow up questions to that?
- [41:12]
Joanna Robinson
Well, no, no, I. Okay, I was a little weirded out by this, but then I remembered in season one that, like, Dylan had all these senses of, like, what the O and D people were. He had all these, like, weird. Like the O and D people are these weird, freaky creatures.
- [41:24]
Chris Ryan
Sure.
- [41:25]
Joanna Robinson
So there's just this, like the. Because when you sever someone and they don't know what wind feels like and they've never seen grass, you can tell them that, like, literal monsters are working in the other departments and don't go there because they'll kill you. And that's how they divide and conquer. Right. And so, like the thing that we saw in season one between Burt and Irving.
- [41:47]
Chris Ryan
Everybody's talking about birthing. Everybody's talking about birthing. Be very careful, Jo.
- [41:54]
Joanna Robinson
I'm done. I think that's it. I think that's enough, Billy. Bush for all of us inside of this episode, certainly when. When Bert and Irving make their connection, their romantic connection, their Romeo and Juliet as connection, it is the only thing that combines the O and D and the MDR department otherwise. And they, like, have all these suspicions of each other and hatred for each other as perpetuated by Lumen to keep them to divide and conquer. I mean, personally, if I were Lumen, I would just keep them on separate floors entirely. But you do you Lumen. Yeah. We also had some questions. A couple emailed questioning why everyone arrived at different timing to get down to the elevator. And they talked about this in season one, that they are specifically asked to stagger their arrivals into the building so that nobody sort of interacts with each other outside of the floor. These are sort of some of the unreliable ways, because what if you're running five minutes late? You know, These are the unreliable ways in which Lumen tries to keeps people separate and divide and conquer. But I think that's the source of like, do you have pouches? Are you here to kill us? Because that's the propaganda we've heard about MDR or something like that. It's still.
- [43:07]
Chris Ryan
I apologize to Gwendolyn Christie. She have the smokey eye. The sequence still doesn't work for me, but maybe some of the internal logic is more sound than I thought.
- [43:16]
Joanna Robinson
I think it would have been good to have a slight reminder of that. It was a bit jarring for me as well. I want to shout out, in addition to watching Being John Malkovich and perhaps Merritt Weaver's Emmy acceptance speech and all the other homework that we've thrown at you, watch the first couple episodes of Run. They're good. Not the whole season. I was watching. Have you ever seen the Francis Ford Coppola movie Rumble Fish?
- [43:38]
Chris Ryan
I haven't.
- [43:39]
Joanna Robinson
I watched it for the first time this last week. Really cool movie. I really loved it, but it's filmed. But it kind of blew my mind. It's Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon. It's filmed in black and white, except for there are these fish in a pet store that Mickey Rourke's character's obsessed with. And they're red and blue, and they're kept in the tank and they're kept separate because the idea is this breed of fish, if they were allowed to be in the same tank together, they would fight each other. So they're divided. And the imagery of the blue and the red fish was not only Dr. Seuss, but. But very severance to me. Mark on the outside has a fish tank in his House that has one red fish, one blue fish in it. And so this idea of, like, we have to keep them separate or they'll fight. Spoilers for Rumble Fish, the conclusion of that film. They put the fish in the river and the fish don't fight because they are like, sort of. Anyway, it's a very heavy metaphor. A movie that I really love, but is very weird. It's really cool. Very weird. But I was like, are we rumble fishing? Like, is this. This is. The idea is like, keep everyone separate in their department so that they can't unify, the workers, can't unite and overthrow, you know?
- [44:56]
Chris Ryan
Yeah. The messaging from Lumen is, we're doing this so you don't fight. We're doing this so these incredibly violent scenes that have been painted will not happen again.
- [45:04]
Joanna Robinson
Right.
- [45:04]
Chris Ryan
But, yeah, the reality is, obviously they're trying to keep everyone separate from consolidating power and perspective and information. And for example, the fact that the people of the Mamalians, nurtureable have met Ms. Casey before is a pretty big reveal in this episode.
- [45:19]
Joanna Robinson
And that she has a kind, a gentle way about her.
- [45:22]
Chris Ryan
She does have a gentle way.
- [45:23]
Joanna Robinson
All right, I'm ready to talk about Melchick, Devon, Rickon, and perhaps the star of the show, Natalie.
- [45:35]
Chris Ryan
Oh, my God, what a Natalie episode.
- [45:38]
Joanna Robinson
What a Natalie episode. Okay, so let's talk about the Milchick thing first. We have arrived at the great revolving of Akir, and the revolving is Milchick turning that box around on the top of the shelf, never to be seen again. This was so good. We referenced, I think last week or the week before, we referenced get out as sort of like this possible. What are these creepy billionaires doing with this technology? Are they trying to achieve immortality in some sense? Is it as it is? And get out this idea of, like, let's put the consciousness of a decrepit old man into a younger, healthier body. And the get out vibes were off the charts here when Natalie gives Milcik a series of paintings of Keir Egan as reimagined as a black man. And Milchick's reaction is phenomenal. Natalie's reaction is even juicier. Natalie's saying she was gifted something similar. And as soon as the board hangs up, the look she gives him of like, I. I can't. I can't describe it, but this. This shared look of like, how fucked up this is.
- [46:56]
Chris Ryan
Yeah.
- [46:57]
Joanna Robinson
And then her plastering that trembling, oh, my God, broad corporate smile on top of it is like ice water in your veins. It's so good. Anything. What do you want to say about this?
- [47:09]
Chris Ryan
Yeah, Sidney Cole Alexander, who plays Natalie, and I mean this as a compliment, just has like such a perfect vacant smile like, as you're saying, absolutely plastered on. And I think a lot of it is what she's doing with her eyes, which are just so wide and dead as she's trying to like basically grit her teeth through doing this. And the board insists that she found the gesture very meaningful when she was gifted the paintings. Like, everything about that character in this episode I found to be wonderful in terms of the performance and the usage. The Milchick stuff, bizarre as fuck. Very strange for all the reasons we're kind of circling around as far as why a black facing Kir might be a little weird and off putting to some people in this world. Joe, I have concerns, you know, you've very astutely brought up in our earlier podcasts that there are all these hints and little blinking lights and arrows and Severance pointing to the Civil War and Civil War names and iconography and little bits and pieces, little breadcrumbs along the way as a, as a broader metaphor for the idea of severance. Great. No harm, no foul. We've had the theory floated, including in our inbox@applebobbingmail.com that maybe severance takes place in not just an alternate reality, but maybe an alternate butterfly affected reality where, say, for example, the Confederacy won. This kind of like the recanonicalized portraits of of Kir made me a little concerned that that could be something that the show is interested in exploring. And if that is really the case, I hope Severance has not bitten off more than it can chew.
- [48:45]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, I agree. You and I both don't really want exactly that.
- [48:53]
Chris Ryan
Like there's reckoning with the general ideas in a broader sci fi sense and then there is literalizing them in the world in a way that I think could be quite thorny.
- [49:01]
Joanna Robinson
I hear you. I love, I love this scene.
- [49:04]
Chris Ryan
Yes, agree.
- [49:05]
Joanna Robinson
I think this scene is wonderful. I think, to your point, if the idea is to get more literal with it elsewhere, is that something that Severance is the show where we really want to see that examined? I think that's a good question. Something I think is interesting is that Trammel Tillman in, in the official Severance podcast, which I told you I've been listening to, he, he said that he asked the creative team early in production of season one, does Milchick know he's black like that? That was a question that he asked about his character in season one, does this guy know he's black? And like, should I be playing him with an awareness of. Inside of like this oppressive environment? Should I be playing him with an awareness of what he brings the table as a black man? Or should. Is this. This, you know, are we alleging that this is like a race blind situation? And so I think the answer is very clear here, inside of this exchange here. Also inside of this sequence. Natalie calls the board it. Helena later says them. We've heard them used for the board. Yeah, Natalie says it, which is not grammatically. Wholly grammatically incorrect. You're supposed to refer to like corporations as it rather than they. That's like grammatically what you're supposed to do. So. But it did ping. I think for some people this question of like, is the board, which we've never seen, we've heard as a disembodied voice, the very mention of Sens Cobell sort of hightailing her way out of her exchange with Helena, which we'll talk about in a second. Is the board actually a board of people or is it an AI conscious, I don't know, circuit board?
- [50:55]
Chris Ryan
Who knows? Is it a head in a jar board?
- [51:00]
Joanna Robinson
A cheese board? No, like, is it like an AI consciousness? Is it Kier's. Yeah, brain in a jar? Like, what is the board?
- [51:09]
Chris Ryan
You know, I love that we don't know. I love everything about the way the board communicates. And, and to your point about the grammatical constructions there, I think also makes sense. Virtue of their relative status. Right. To Helena, these are could be people, maybe not peers, but people she knows through her father. And to Natalie, they are this amorphous, disembodied voice who has clearly wrung out a level of control over her and her life that her eyes and smile would tell us she's not like 100% comfortable with.
- [51:40]
Joanna Robinson
This is not all Natalie gets to do this episode. She also gets to go see Rickon and have a top tier exchange with him about his book and with Devin. I just want to say, and maybe I'll write out a post it so I can remind myself when we record. When she says, remarkable. So astute. And he goes, is it? That's what I was going for. I feel like we should make that part of our podcast.
- [52:07]
Chris Ryan
It really is what we're going for.
- [52:09]
Joanna Robinson
Remarkable. So astute. Is it? That's what I was going for. Incredible stuff. What do you want to say about Natalie and Rickon in this exchange?
- [52:17]
Chris Ryan
I mean, for one, the kind of subtle differences in what Natalie is delivering Here. And I think we have all the reason to assume that there's not, like, an innie and outy version of Natalie, that there is one consciousness, because she's operating in the same way that Cobell, for example, was operating. And Milchick.
- [52:34]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [52:36]
Chris Ryan
But the way she delivers things to Milchick in that kind of very tense exchange versus, I mean, just the ease with which she has Rickon eating out of the palm of her hand by saying one nice thing about his dumb book. Like, she. She knows in the same way that Milchick knows, like, how to play this to the outside world, how to say the right thing, how to put the gentle touch, how to, you know, pamper the people who need pampering and compliment the people who need complimenting. And then all of a sudden, you know, she has Rickon himself believing that this adaptation of the book, in which all the language has been changed to serve Lumen's needs, could be a real game changer. Joe.
- [53:13]
Joanna Robinson
And it feels like Rickon's just going to tumble along and do whatever they ask of him. Rickon, who was sort of posturing that he had a problem with severance in season one, is now like, oh, you.
- [53:25]
Chris Ryan
Want to put out in paperback?
- [53:27]
Joanna Robinson
I'll write the new forward me something. So we have this Devin exchange with Natalie, which Devin continues to be the best person in this town. Something that one of our listeners pointed out to sort of circle back to your idea of how, like, literalizing we're making some of these, like, Civil War esque allusions. A listener, Lizzie Jean C. Pointed out that the term I think it was Drummond used for Devin was uppity.
- [53:55]
Chris Ryan
Yeah.
- [53:56]
Joanna Robinson
And that uppity is a very, like, racially coded word, a slavery coded word. This idea of, like, an uppity person who is acting above their station. So, you know, if we're not talking literal Civil War slavery, we're talking about a slavery of a kind or a slavery mentality that lived.
- [54:14]
Chris Ryan
A modernized techno slavery.
- [54:16]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Devin, Mark Regabi. Actually, before we do that, let's do Helena and Cobell. It's 23 miles to salt Neck, but we're not going to Salt Neck.
- [54:25]
Chris Ryan
There's more than that. I think it was 238 miles to salt.
- [54:28]
Joanna Robinson
238 miles to salt Neck. But we're not going to Salt Neck. We're going back. We are turning around. Patricia Arquette has had to do a lot of driving acting this season.
- [54:40]
Chris Ryan
She's great at it, though. Very dramatic. The dramatic cassette push into the Tape deck, like, no one does it better.
- [54:47]
Joanna Robinson
Then we get this Helena Cobell exchange where Cobell once again insists that she be back up. This is her second attempt to insist that she belongs on the Sevyn floor with MDR and that they gotta get Milchick out of there. And her second failed attempt to intimidate Helena. We have a lot of Cobell theories playing fast and furious around this joint. Anything you wanna say before we sort of get into that, like, theory corner about Cobell?
- [55:22]
Chris Ryan
I think the theory corner is the natural place to go. There's so much happening in which Cobell is just kind of spinning her wheels at this point, basically begging us to theorize as to what her role in all of this is. And the one that grabbed me, Joe, was one that a listener, Wendy, emailed us about in particular. You know, we get this moment between Cobell and Helena in which Helena asks her, like, why don't we go in and reset? And that. That made my. It registered my interest in lots of different ways. In particular, the fact that Cobell knows not to go inside after that conversation takes place. And what Wendy emailed us about was this theory that Cobell herself could be a permanent innie. You know, someone who is stuck in that condition for whatever reason, that maybe she either became brain dead in the outside world that there was some kind of event that the feeding tube she is carrying around is in fact not one of a mother or relative, but maybe was her own at one point in time. And she's always wearing turtlenecks to kind of conceal potentially some sort of wounding, some sort of scarring that may have taken place from whatever she was going into. And there's these little bits of pieces of evidence. For example, Harmony's name being on one of the control boards that say maybe in fact she was an innie at one point in time. Maybe there is a history there beyond just wanting to be a manager. And her interest in getting back on the floor and in running the floor and in ultimately completing the Cold harbor project could have a personal bent in a very different way than we've been talking about.
- [56:49]
Joanna Robinson
Love that I always love to track. I'm always on turtleneck watch. I love that for us, there's a number of other. So this idea that she was an innie at one point, that the breathing tube was hers, that this has to do with her own desire for reintegration or something like that, because she's the one. We talked about this already, but she's the one who's the most adamant about this idea of reintegration and whether or not the science is working there, stuff like that. Okay. There's a couple other popular theories going around. We got an email from listener Deb, who wants to propose the idea that. This reminds me of so many secret Targaryen emails that Harmony.
- [57:31]
Chris Ryan
How many have you fielded over the years, Jill?
- [57:34]
Joanna Robinson
Countless. The limit does not exist. Harmony Cabell is actually. Okay, these are the two prevailing. Is actually Helena Egan's mother.
- [57:42]
Chris Ryan
Yeah.
- [57:43]
Joanna Robinson
Let's do some quick age math on this. Patricia Arquette is 56. Britt Lauer is 39, which would mean that Cabell would have to be around 17, which is gross, but not outside the realm of possibility because we see that she was at the girl school, the Myrtle Egan School for Girls, by the way, on the shrine that was in her house that we saw in season one. Among the many juicy little Easter eggs on there, there is. There's an award that she won for, quote, use of mealtime condiments as one of my favorite details. But she was. She was a. She was a child at an Egan school. Was she groomed in some way? Was she used? Because we. We have not heard anything about Helena's mother.
- [58:29]
Chris Ryan
No.
- [58:30]
Joanna Robinson
So what goes on there in season one? This is per the email we got from Deb. In season one, Irving quotes Helena's father, Jamie Egan, when they first entered the perpetuity room and says, quote, come now, children of my industry and know the children of my blood. So this idea of, like, using girls that come through the Egan School as sort of like, sorry for the expression, like broodmares, I can kind of see that that could be something that could happen. It's a compelling idea. Another idea, sort of given Helena's father's advanced age, is that she is an illegitimate daughter. Like, actually like a sister. And inside of this scene that Harmony and Helena have, where she basically calls Helena a Nepo baby, and she's like, I earned everything I had. It was given to you. It could read very much like I was, you know, sort of the bastard child and cast aside and you are the sort of the legitimate heir sort of thing, so.
- [59:34]
Chris Ryan
Or conversely, that she earned it through childbirth or she earned it through this sort of grooming ordeal that she went through.
- [59:41]
Joanna Robinson
Right, Right. So sister or mother. That's a potential theory I'm most compelled by to go back to the breathing tube. This idea that people are assuming that the breathing tube belonged to her mother because it says Charlotte Cobell in it, and the date seems like it would be. Again, we don't know when this show takes place, but seems. I think it was like, 1940 something. So it seems like it would be the mother of Harmony Cobell. So this idea and. And there's this kind of cheating a little bit, but Severance put out, like, extra show material around season one, and there's something called the Lexington Letter that has, like, lore in it, and that's not really fair to give extra reading to the class, but that's what the podcast is here for. But in the Lexington Letter, there is language about a breathing tube defects, as, you know, manufactured by Lumen. So Lumen manufactured these breathing tubes that had defects, and perhaps that is why Harmony's mother died, because of a Lumen defect breathing tube, and that she's vowed revenge on Lumen. So she's really, like, the ultimate mole in there to get vengeance for her mother. And this whole, like, True Believer thing is an act and part of her spy mission to get vengeance. And the fact that she. When she turns around from. What was it? 238 miles from salt snack.
- [61:05]
Chris Ryan
38 miles. Yeah. I mean, a long way to go still, when she.
- [61:09]
Joanna Robinson
When she turns around, like, it's the breathing. It's looking at the breathing tube on the front seat of her car that makes her turn around. So.
- [61:18]
Chris Ryan
Yeah, and there's something in there with both Cobell and I think this is true of Milchick and his scenes too, where, yes, Lumen is this. This gigantic corporation that seemingly makes everything, including a lot of, like, medicine and medical equipment, has the severed floor business doing whatever it is that they're doing. But every character in the show has their sort of relationship with Lumen, the company, and they have their relationship with Lumen, the culture. And I think we see that tested with Milchick. A little bit of, like, he seems like a pretty loyal employee, but also, what the fuck is this shit?
- [61:47]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [61:48]
Chris Ryan
And with. With Harmony, we have kind of assumed some of her allegiances throughout, based on the way she's acted or tried to infer, based on how erratic she's been. But I think it's fair to say that even though she may subscribe to the cult side on some level, maybe she does have that vengeance against the company that you're describing, where it is something that's more personal that happened to someone that she knows in which a piece of equipment, for example, defected.
- [62:10]
Joanna Robinson
And how long has this sort of infiltration mission been going on? Many people noted on that shrine that we see in season one that there is a Frolic mask. One of the masks from the Waffle Party is on her shrine. And so someone was like, was she a former Waffle Party erotic dancer at some point? Was that all like part of the long game? Who knows? I would love to hear the backstory of, of Harmony Cobell and how and how she got here and how she keeps her hair so frizz free. Anything else you want to say? I know there was another email you wanted to read about Ms. Wong. Do you want to talk about that?
- [62:54]
Chris Ryan
I do want to talk about this one and I think it rings true in this episode too, to some extent. Although we're still getting to know Ms. Wong in lots of ways. But overall, David emailed us about Ms. Wong as sort of a stand in for being a working professional, specifically a middle aged or older working professional. And all of a sudden having to manage having a much younger boss. And if we take that to a cartoonish extreme, it turns into Ms. Wong escorting you to the security room and then listening in on your conversation and butting in whenever you don't, you know, address her specifically by name. I think it's a very smart thing for the show to wrangle and to wrestle with in the same way that it does with a lot of random little workplace angst and anxiety. And we have no idea where the plot lines are going with Ms. Wong. She's still such a mysterious character. But everyone, including Dylan and Gretchen both in this episode are asking, why is this a child?
- [63:46]
Joanna Robinson
Why are you a child?
- [63:47]
Chris Ryan
Why are we pretending this is normal?
- [63:48]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. All right, we're gonna move into our last sort of section here that we need to talk about, which is the Devon Mark Rigabi situation here, the reintegration. Before we get there, lest I get embarrassed again, I do want to point out that if it's 238 miles to salt snack, 8 and 23 are lost.
- [64:07]
Chris Ryan
There you go.
- [64:08]
Joanna Robinson
So, you know, save your emails, but send all other emails to pineapplebobbingmail.com okay, reintegration time. Okay, first of all, I love the heist plan, the burning on the retinas, all of this. I love a heist. Personally, I'm a huge heist fan. So like all this stuff really worked for me. The fact that like Devin and Mark are doing it secret. This like sort of arts and craftsy science, like let's talk about our teacher sort of conversation. All of it's great. And then I also love that it's just like immediate.
- [64:33]
Chris Ryan
Oh, this is a bad idea. This is a terrible plan.
- [64:37]
Joanna Robinson
Immediately. Like, I'm sorry, first of all she knows exactly what he's trying to do. And secondly, she's like, it's absolute bullshit. Sorry. But the fact that she knows that it wouldn't work or has thought it through makes me want to circle back to our question about the phone call that Irving made last week. Because our question was like, is he. When he said. When Irving last week said to someone on the phone, he got the message and we were like, is he talking to Regabi? It's worth thinking about this idea of like burning an image on your retina as like an after image versus what Irving on the outside has done, which is paint the same thing over and over and over again. And as one of our listeners pointed out, Joseph D. One of our listeners pointed out that Irving on the outside was drinking night coffee.
- [65:24]
Chris Ryan
Oh, he's chugging coffee.
- [65:25]
Joanna Robinson
Chugging night coffee. So, like, this idea that he's like, keeping himself awake, painting this image over and over again to induce, you know, is this Regabi's? Is this a Regabi medical plan of like, okay, if you make him sleepy as an innie, he might fall asleep on the inside. And if he falls asleep on the inside, perhaps, perhaps his image will be burned on his subconscious and it will seep through into. You know what I mean? Like, that seems like something a scientist might have advised. Why are you smirking at me?
- [65:55]
Chris Ryan
It's just very like, Philip Kate. It's like, do androids dream of electric sheep is where we're going.
- [66:00]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, well, I mean, listen, we got, we got. Okay, listen, I love everyone's emails. We got a few emails from people who are like, that's not how cloning works. And I just want to encourage you to remember that this is a sci Fi show. So, like, it's a sci Fi show. You know, it's a sci Fi show.
- [66:12]
Chris Ryan
I. I appreciate that it is soft enough and grounded in a kind of a reality that we're grasping at. Oh, is severance a theoretically possible thing within the human consciousness? But I'm telling you it's not, and that's okay. And it can be fuzzy and it can be functional within the show.
- [66:28]
Joanna Robinson
But all neuroscientists too, please keep emailing me because I'm learning a lot. Pineapplebobbingmail.com why was Mark practicing this with his car? I know why. His car was running for heat. But he's sitting in a running car by a barn.
- [66:44]
Chris Ryan
It looks like a barn.
- [66:45]
Joanna Robinson
And how did Vergabi find him there? Question mark.
- [66:49]
Chris Ryan
I like much of what happens once Regabi shows Up in a sense, you know, we're moving forward. We're keeping things repulsive, as you say. Her quick debunking of, like, this plan is terrible. I enjoyed quite a bit.
- [67:01]
Joanna Robinson
It was great.
- [67:01]
Chris Ryan
Her showing up with no explanation whatsoever in front of his car with no way to track him other than, I guess, just following him from his house. I don't know about that. It just felt like a jump scare for the sake of a jump scare.
- [67:14]
Joanna Robinson
Um, yeah, I mean, I understand. No, I don't have a good explanation for it. I'm not mad about it. I just don't have a great explanation for it. A little. Just like. A little. Just slightly shabby.
- [67:24]
Chris Ryan
How did you feel about the fact that Regabi apparently already knew that Gemma was alive on the severed floor?
- [67:30]
Joanna Robinson
Well, that's my question. He's like, is she alive? And she says she was the last time I saw her.
- [67:35]
Chris Ryan
Right.
- [67:37]
Joanna Robinson
That's vague enough that it could mean a lot of different things.
- [67:40]
Chris Ryan
Lot of plausible deniability in that.
- [67:42]
Joanna Robinson
I also am not sure. I know she is such an agenda here that, like, it did read to me like she was telling the truth, but it's possible that she was trying to keep her language vague enough so that, like, again, plausible deniability that there is some version of that. That's true. What is alive in this context?
- [67:59]
Chris Ryan
What is alive? And frankly, does she even know anything about it? Or is she. Yes. Anding a subject because she needs a subject.
- [68:06]
Joanna Robinson
That's. I mean, that's. That was my first thought was like, she's lying because she needs him to do this. But rewatching it, there was like, enough sort of emotion in the way she played it that I feel like she's not lying, but she might be stretching the definition of alive in order to serve her needs here.
- [68:29]
Chris Ryan
I think it's a good reminder, regardless, that all of these characters have their own agendas and we don't. Like, we have a sense of what Dr. Agabi wants to happen, which is to successfully reintegrate somebody. We don't really know why. We don't really know the lengths to which she has gone to this point or how many subjects before Petey may have met unfortunate ends or injury or scrambled brains. I think there's a lot of mysteries around that character as much as there are around Lumen.
- [68:55]
Joanna Robinson
What is very important on a character level is the speed with which Mark agrees to reintegration.
- [69:01]
Chris Ryan
Just straight up, just like cuts her.
- [69:04]
Joanna Robinson
Off and is like, I'll do it. Knowing everything he knows about what happened. To Petey, it doesn't matter. If there's a chance that he could see Gemma, he's gonna do it. And that's devastating, you know, like, absolutely demolishes me. And again, just complicates this really funky love quintet, Quadrangle, whatever it is, you know, that we're dealing with. Because, like, I am rooting for Mark and Helly, but, like, Mark on the outside is just, like, so devoted to Gemma. It's worth mentioning we talked about Orpheus and Eurydice as, like, Greek. And you mentioned Chippithus, which I thought was so smart. We got a lot of emails from people, and I think I didn't point it out, but it is, of course, worth noting that Persephone, which is the Greek reference that kicked all of this off in the first place, Persephone was the daughter of the goddess Demeter, who was stolen down into the underworld and. And. And forced to live there half of the year.
- [70:08]
Chris Ryan
Yeah.
- [70:09]
Joanna Robinson
Did she eventually grow to love it down there? Accounts vary, but. But she's down there half of the year because she ate some pomegranate and don't eat pomegranate. Don't eat pomegranate. And eat pineapple, maybe. Pomegranate. Never.
- [70:25]
Chris Ryan
They mean very different things. We're learning.
- [70:29]
Joanna Robinson
And her mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, in protest when her daughter is underground. That's when it's fall and winter and it's spring and summer when her daughter comes above ground. And so this idea of this perpetual winter that we're in inside of Severance, is that related to any of this? That's a Greek mythology corner for your episode here. Okay. Rob and I are wearing red. Not necessarily, but kind of in honor of Mark's incredible red sweater that he wears in order to unknowingly reintegrate at the end of this episod. I mean, the red and the blue motif throughout this series has been so clear, but this is, like, the reddest red he's ever worn. This is the most Audi Mark color we've seen so far. And it's fitting because we're about to sort of say goodbye to this pure form of Audi mark. Like, this is perhaps the last we will have ever seen of purely Innie Mark and purely Audi Mark RIP to both of them. Now they are a stew. Anything you want to say? I'm excited for what the neuroscientists email us about all of the science jargon, the brain waves that gets laid on us here. Anything you want to say about the five different Brainwaves or anything that Regabi says here.
- [71:45]
Chris Ryan
I mean, I think the five brainwaves and the five little buckets in the macro data like that, that's a call out that kind of naturally draws us in.
- [71:52]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [71:53]
Chris Ryan
I will say, just like the aligning of the two waves felt very like captcha to me. You know, it might scramble his brain, but you also might at least get into this website, so you might get.
- [72:04]
Joanna Robinson
Tickets to Taylor Swift. You never know.
- [72:06]
Chris Ryan
Anything could happen.
- [72:08]
Joanna Robinson
If you can identify all of these stoplights, you too can be front row. Okay.
- [72:12]
Chris Ryan
One. One thing I've been wondering about reintegration since watching this episode. You know, we've been approaching it, I think, largely from the perspective of people like Mark. Would. Mark, would Petey want to reintegrate?
- [72:22]
Joanna Robinson
I think.
- [72:23]
Chris Ryan
I think Gretchen's appearance in this episode raises a different perspective, which is, would she want Dylan to reintegrate at a certain point? Like, I think there's the version of the relationship she's developing with Dylan G. Or at least kind of interested by him. Is that a way to relieve some of the weight that's been on the outie Dylan's shoulders in order to, like, you know, find this happy medium between those two versions of himself?
- [72:45]
Joanna Robinson
Similarly, with Helena and Helly, like, if we don't, like, are we rooting for a reintegration path forward for that person? Or given the shit that we've seen Helena Egan do, are we sort of rooting for her demise and just pure heli are going forward? You know, like, which characters do we want to see reintegrate? Which innies and outies do we want to see? Sort of like, win the battle for the body? Like, what do we want going forward? I'm kind of like, pro reintegration for everyone, but, you know, we'll see.
- [73:17]
Chris Ryan
I think it's reintegration, I think, for everyone could create some narrative simplicity that I don't always love. But it depends on how you execute it. It depends on what a reintegrated person looks and feels like and how conflicted those two sides of them are.
- [73:31]
Joanna Robinson
I mean, like, Audi Irving, you know, provided that any Irving is willing to, like, care for the dog the same degree that Outie want. Like, what does Outy Irving have to live for? We don't know anything. We know, like, dead dad stuff in a box and, like, artistry that Eddie Irving seems to possess as well, given all of his beautiful sketches of Bert.
- [73:56]
Chris Ryan
Who do you think did the Ms. Casey poster? Because I will say Irving's style seems a little More like Wall Street Journal headshot to me. And that one is a little more crude sketch. I'm not crude. It's better than I could do, but.
- [74:07]
Joanna Robinson
It'S still more crude.
- [74:09]
Chris Ryan
You think that's Mark? Yeah, I mean, he would know best.
- [74:15]
Joanna Robinson
I mean, is it not in the reintegration pro process we get. We came with Gabi saying so comfortingly, I'm much better at it now. Don't worry. I'm so much better than I was when I did pd. It's gonna be great.
- [74:30]
Chris Ryan
Zero patients have died this week.
- [74:32]
Joanna Robinson
And then she says, oh, shit. Something I think a scientist should not say during the course of some experimentation. And we get what I'm calling Chekhov's hand spasm. We get this like very prominent hand spasm from him. So if as we. We wonder if maybe next week is gonna be sort of like an all reintegration episode. We'll talk about that in a second. But if we're watching Mark throughout the rest of the season or the rest of the series, have to pretend that he's one or the other and will the twitching hand give him away or.
- [75:11]
Chris Ryan
Just silo all over again? Joe, like we're right back into it with the twitching hands. I like that tell. And I have to say I like overall, as with many things in severance, the overall analog, complicated, wired in feel of this procedure. It reminded me a lot of seeing first man, the movie first man. And you get a sense of the tactile nature of. Of early space travel. And it's like, holy fuck. Like this, this screw coming loose is just the difference between life and death. And in here, the formations in this, like, I guess it's like salt, you know, or whatever is like the conduit kind of vehicle there that's indicating that something is going wrong. All of this very analog technology being the way to potentially unsever and hopefully not scramble somebody's consciousness. It's just such a fun way to go about this world. And. And one little asterisk I want to put on that. We've talked about the vintage cars, we talked about the old tech inside and outside of the severed floor. Helen also just like casually pops out an iPhone to make the call to the board when she's talking with Harmony Cobell. So I don't know where we are or what we are as usual, but it's confusing.
- [76:22]
Joanna Robinson
I love the salt or whatever that was bouncing around very like rings of power opening credit. That's for the house of our listeners, not for you. Rob Mahoney. She asked some questions about love, and it doesn't really seem to be the thing that is working, but when she asks about shame, it does. And that's something that makes me very sad about Mark. The eye color question. We're getting a lot of the same questions. We get to start the series, the sprawled out on a conference table questions to start everything off. When we cut to, I felt such. I mean, I was. I felt like this is probably going to work. I'm excited that it's happening so early. I thought it was going to happen much later. I'm excited that it's happening here. I'm excited for the possibilities going forward. When she asked him, I think, what month it is or something like that, right? And he says, do you mean which quarter? Do you mean which quarter? That's so chilling. That's so upset.
- [77:22]
Chris Ryan
What are you, a Netflix employee? What's going on?
- [77:24]
Joanna Robinson
Q1, Q2, when are we dropping squid game? And then. Was that Petey's voice on the monitor, do you think?
- [77:31]
Chris Ryan
It sounded like it to me.
- [77:33]
Joanna Robinson
My hope is that. So if episode four, and neither of us have seen episode four, but if episode four, which a lot of the people, a lot of the critics who reviewed the season, who saw, watched, all of the screeners, said that episode four was an absolute banger. So episode four is like an eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tour through. We talked about this when we talked about our season one rewatch. I loved the PD reintegration stuff. I thought stuff was so cool, the way that Turturro would walk in and out of a scene or we're flashing costumes or flashing locations. Just a real bonkers tour through the muddy method of reintegration. If we get to do that, especially rewatching the season two opening credits, it just feels like we could just, you know, in which we physically go inside of Mark's brain. So if we are inside Mark's brain for all of episode four, we can.
- [78:32]
Chris Ryan
Only be so lucky.
- [78:33]
Joanna Robinson
I mean, I would be thrilled. And if that involves us seeing Mark's first days on the severed floor, and so maybe we get like a Petey, Like a whole and healthy, you know, Petey appearance. That would make me really excited. Love you. Yoel Vazquez.
- [78:52]
Chris Ryan
How would you feel if we got some Mark and Gemma on the beach Dead wife footage?
- [78:57]
Joanna Robinson
It's a no for me.
- [78:58]
Chris Ryan
Okay, look, I'm just throwing it out there. It seems possible. Seems like it's something that could happen.
- [79:02]
Joanna Robinson
You're so right. It's Dead Dog Wife o'clock. Okay, I have some questions about this. So like, will any Mark be devastated to be burdened by Audi Mark's grief?
- [79:17]
Chris Ryan
Wouldn't you?
- [79:18]
Joanna Robinson
Yes.
- [79:18]
Chris Ryan
He's like, it seems like a lot.
- [79:20]
Joanna Robinson
He's like, life was already kind of complicated for me and now this. I did not consent to this.
- [79:26]
Chris Ryan
He doesn't even have alcohol. He has no medication privileges whatsoever other than fruit leather from the vending machine.
- [79:32]
Joanna Robinson
That's true. Also, I think we need to like redraw the parameters of our love polygon between Gemma and Ms. Casey and Mark, Mark and Mark.
- [79:44]
Chris Ryan
Because we're getting into geometric proof stages of having to redraw this thing and I'm not qualified for it.
- [79:51]
Joanna Robinson
The fact that we are going to be watching, I believe, Helena pretending to be Heli.
- [79:56]
Chris Ryan
Yes.
- [79:57]
Joanna Robinson
Interacting with reintegrated Mark, pretending at any given time to be Inie Mark or.
- [80:04]
Chris Ryan
Outie Mark, probably mostly pretending to be Inymark, I would think, outside, at least with Devin, be himself.
- [80:10]
Joanna Robinson
Yes. But like, you know, if Natalie's around, if he has to hide it from Rickon because Rickon's now a company man, if Milchick rolls up on his motorcycle again, there is a scene from the trail. There's just a shot in the trailer of Helena and Mark or Adam Scott and Brent Lauer, whoever they might be playing in that moment in a bar. And when Mallory and I were looking at the severance trailer, we were like, it's brief, but we were like, is that Helena on the outside trying to approach Mark on the outside without him knowing about Heli and Mark? That was our guess. But now it might be Helena on the outside trying to approach Mark on the outside and he knows who she is and has to pretend that he doesn't.
- [81:00]
Chris Ryan
This is juicy stuff.
- [81:01]
Joanna Robinson
It's like Bakla. Layers upon layers upon layers, you know what I mean?
- [81:06]
Chris Ryan
Very delicate pastry work happening. I mean. Or it could be something that we get, for example, in A Journey of the Mind episode four, where maybe it is a memory of him with Gemma or something with Brit Lauer flickering in and out in the way that the show loves to do.
- [81:20]
Joanna Robinson
Totally, totally. The question though is at what point will Mark on the outside now somewhat reintegrated, however successfully, perhaps bleeding profusely from his nose? Time will tell. When will he see Helena Egan on the television or something and go, uh huh. What.
- [81:44]
Chris Ryan
I mean, that is the reveal. The next level reveal we're waiting for is how the Innies become aware of who Helena and Heli is. And it's gotten back burnered because there's eight different mysteries happening at once, and we're juggling them all. And there's a lot of plates spinning, Safe to say, but that's one that could further divide an already quite divided team. And I at this point, don't know how the members of MDR get back on anything resembling the same page. And I'm not saying I want them to. I think the tensions of the show are more interesting if they're not. But it's hard to see how their interests would align at this point.
- [82:19]
Joanna Robinson
It's just a very credible way in which to scatter them, which you do need to do narratively. And so we've got. And again, this is very lost of them to give each person their preoccupation. We've got Dylan is preoccupation with Gretchen, We've got Irving with his preoccupation with, like, Bert slash the elevator, and we've got Helena's whole subterfuge. And then we've got Mark's now reintegration nightmare. Okay, we've gone a little long, as we might always do with these severance episodes. There's just a million things we didn't get to and I'm so sorry. Please keep sending your emails. I'm reading them all. But we're going to to end the episode with sort of a reverse of the prompt that we talked about last week, which was sort of like, what would you sever? We got a. We had an email from our listener, Andrew P. Who said, I like the idea of figuring out which thing you would want to sever out of your everyday life, but I'm even more curious about the inverse. What main mundane work or life tasks would you most tolerate being severed into and forced to do for your entire conscious existence? Legroom aside, I think you could do a lot worse than long haul flight. Severed life.
- [83:29]
Chris Ryan
Insane. Watching movies.
- [83:31]
Joanna Robinson
Watching movies, Looking out your window, drinking cheap wine. These are all things I do regularly in my apartment. Anyway, sounds fun, Andrew. Invite us over. We'd love to hang out.
- [83:39]
Chris Ryan
With all due respect, Andrew is 5 7. I can tell you right now, this is just not the reality for those of us who are crammed into airplane seats.
- [83:49]
Joanna Robinson
Rob is very tall. It's true. Do you have an answer for this? What would you. What would you like your severed life to be?
- [83:57]
Chris Ryan
Honestly, cooking would be a great one. Cooking, but never have to do dishes.
- [84:00]
Joanna Robinson
I knew you were going to pick that. But that's not that you, Rob, would never want to sever out what you're saying.
- [84:06]
Chris Ryan
I Want to eat it?
- [84:07]
Joanna Robinson
No. What you're saying is if you, Rob, were to pick to sever yourself something around your favorite hobby, which is cooking, it would be doing the dishes. Your innie would be doing only dishes and never getting to eat the food the rest of his life.
- [84:21]
Chris Ryan
I mean, am I being nice to my innie? No. But am I getting rid of the thing that I want to get rid of? Yes.
- [84:26]
Joanna Robinson
Okay. What made mundane?
- [84:29]
Chris Ryan
What are you thinking, Joe? Where are you on this?
- [84:32]
Joanna Robinson
I guess it's like errands. I don't like to run an errand.
- [84:36]
Chris Ryan
What kind of errands do you dislike?
- [84:40]
Joanna Robinson
All of them.
- [84:41]
Chris Ryan
All?
- [84:41]
Joanna Robinson
Like I like.
- [84:42]
Chris Ryan
I. I don't mind a grocery shop.
- [84:44]
Joanna Robinson
I know there's a certain kind of.
- [84:45]
Chris Ryan
Errand that There are certain errands that are worse than others is all I mean to say.
- [84:51]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, sure. Like DMV is worse than anything, I guess. Anything having to do with my car. Tire rotation, engine issues, a recall that I have to like. I have to go to the deal. If I have to buy a new car, I'd never want to go to the car lot. So I want a car and need to deal with all.
- [85:08]
Chris Ryan
You just want a car to show up at your house when you need a new one.
- [85:11]
Joanna Robinson
I want the gas tank to always be full, but I'm not responsible for doing it.
- [85:15]
Chris Ryan
That's very true.
- [85:16]
Joanna Robinson
You know, that's a good one.
- [85:17]
Chris Ryan
That's a good one.
- [85:18]
Joanna Robinson
Or if I get. I really want to get like an electric car but I am so afraid that I will forget to plug it in. So if that's my Annie's job to make sure that the electric car is always charged and all the maintenance.
- [85:29]
Chris Ryan
Aren't you just doing normal severance then? And you're delegating all the car stuff.
- [85:34]
Joanna Robinson
Well, isn't that what you just said when you said you were going to make your Annie do dishes?
- [85:37]
Chris Ryan
But I think we're trying to find things that you would enjoy. I'm trying to figure out what reverse severance is per the prompt of this. Like what are we trying to create for ourselves?
- [85:46]
Joanna Robinson
I think basically you and I are too narrow minded to think of a mundane tax task that we might. That wouldn't be the worst thing for someone to have to do. Let's spend a week to think about it. We'll come back to this prop Andrew P. Meanwhile, our Ennis will be doing dishes and servicing the cars, I guess. And perhaps night gardening. Who's to say that's been it for season two Episode three of severance. A slightly mixed episode, but the highs outweigh the lows in every regard. I'm really excited for episode four. I cannot wait to watch it.
- [86:20]
Chris Ryan
I'll say, too. As far as mixed episodes go, one that really moves the chains, one that feels like we're still advancing and answering questions. And, you know, they're not all going to be absolute hits every second, but I think we're still propulsive enough and we're still invested enough in all of these things that I'm having a great time.
- [86:37]
Joanna Robinson
That's remarkable. So astute.
- [86:41]
Chris Ryan
Now it just feels insulting. God damn it, Natalie.
- [86:45]
Joanna Robinson
Thank you to Kai Grady.
- [86:47]
Chris Ryan
Everybody's talking about bourbon Everybody's talking about.
- [86:51]
Joanna Robinson
Bourbon See you next week. Bye.