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- [00:00]
Rob Harvilla
Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 songs that explain the 90s. Except we did 120 songs and now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The strokes, rihanna, jlo, kanye. Sure. And now the show is called 60 songs that explain the nineties. Colon, the 2000s. Wow. That's too long a title for me to say. Anything else right now, Just trust me. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s. Cole in the 2000s preference, preferably on Spotify.
- [00:36]
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 Max.
- [01:51]
Rob Harvilla
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.
- [02:29]
Joanna Robinson
Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV Podcast. That's my very good friend Rob Mahoney, and I'm his best friend Joanna Robinson. And we're here to talk to you about Severance season two. Hey, Rob, how are you doing?
- [02:43]
Rob Mahoney
I prefer Rob M These days actually. If we're just gonna go by really formalities.
- [02:48]
Joanna Robinson
Okay. Rob M. And Joanna are here reporting in on Severin Season 2. We are thrilled. We are so excited. Rob and I have not been this excited about a show that we've covered in a little while. With love and respect to the shows we've been recently covering. This is one that we are very passionate about. We're really excited about. So just so you know, Severin season two, this is a week to week. A Robin Joe joint like that is what we are doing for the foreseeable. So we'll be doing this. We're also going to, yes, catch up with the agency as we promised at the end of that season. So we'll be back to do a an end of season check in for the agency. And also you guys really like the pit question mark. Great.
- [03:29]
Rob Mahoney
Slash, you work in the medical industry.
- [03:31]
Joanna Robinson
We got a lot of emails from doctors. Thank you for listening. Doctors and nurses and all sorts of medical professionals. So thank you for listening. Thank you for emailing with your insight. It was very educational. So we will be checking in on the pits. Not every week, but you know, sporadically. So keep the emails coming. We love to hear them. We are going to hit you with some severance specific email options in a second. Rob and I have been doing some brainstorming but in general prestige TV@Spotify.com is where you can find us to talk about the agency, the pit severance, upcoming White Lotus, your old squid game. Thoughts, whatever it is, we'll be here for you. Did you just watch Presumed Innocent? Welcome.
- [04:17]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah.
- [04:18]
Joanna Robinson
Did you consume the Rangoon? Yeah, exactly. So before we get into our severance specific emails, we thought we in our sort of like more ambitious state were like, should we do a whole entire episode recapping season one? And we didn't do that. But we bring, we come here to you today with Rob and I put together and not shared with each other our very own personal like sort of three things to remember from season one from each of us. I've just decided we're going to go back and forth sort of saying what they are. Rob is like, should they be big picture, should they be tiny little things? And I said whatever moves your heart. That is what we are here to talk about. Because I do think the show does a pretty good job despite it being three years since season one. And I don't know if this is just informed by me having just binged season one of Severance over the last few days. But I think season two, episode one, which we're going to talk about in a bit, does a pretty good job of sort of refreshing certain things and recapping certain things. But, Rob, what's your sort of like number three thing to remember from season one of Severance that you want to share?
- [05:26]
Rob Mahoney
This is going to be an interesting dance between the two of us, Joe, as I try to weave around what I anticipate you might pick. So we're not too redundant in our selections. I'm gonna go kind of bigger picture. Something that is hinted around throughout season one. Something is intimated in exchanges between characters or little bits of context that there's still a lot of resistance to the severance procedure itself in the outside world. There's sort of a battle for whether this is a thing that should exist for everyone outside of our core characters. And as a result, there's kind of an ongoing PR battle happening. And you see that in the season one finale as Helly's outie. Helena. Helena Egan, as it is, is basically attempting to get up on stage to put a face to this procedure and convince people that actually it's warm and fuzzy, it's okay. Everyone is so happy and so much happier this way. I think it potentially explains some of the softer, friendlier Lumen that we see here in season two as well. Kind of post potential news apocalypse, putting a new face on this whole thing and trying to spin it in a completely different direction, because it's pretty clear that not a lot of people are on board.
- [06:32]
Joanna Robinson
Stop motion animation Lumen Keanu voiceover Lumen.
- [06:37]
Rob Mahoney
Sounds 100% Keanu Reeves voiceover Great.
- [06:40]
Joanna Robinson
I mean, if I could pick someone to voiceover my complete corporate overhaul from my sinister reality, I would definitely pick Keanu. Okay, I will sort of. Yes. And that with my number three, which is that a reminder that this isn't really dealt with in the season two episode one, because they're dealing with a lot of other things. Bob Balaban is here. There's a lot of important things to dwell on, but reminder that Irving, in addition to sort of chasing after Bert in his foray out in the outside, we find out that he's got a trunk full of Lumen employee information. And there's also just like, you know, this is a very theory friendly show. So, like, I don't know how to talk about things without talking about theories next door to them. So just there's this prevailing theory that Irving, because he's been at Lumen for nine years, but Only severed for three years. There's this prevailing theory that perhaps he once had Milchick's job or something like that, that Irving has been at Lumen, that Irving maybe was management higher up something. And something about being there set him on this course, that he wanted to either whistleblow something and he was severed to shut him up or severed in order to pursue something. But just that Irving, in addition to being the most devout of the Enies, his fascination with Bert and his painting of this spooky ooky hallway that we see Ms. Casey go down at the end of season one. He's got a lot of information in a trunk in his house.
- [08:23]
Rob Mahoney
He certainly does. Let me. Yes, and your. Yes, and. Cause I also have an Irving related item, which is. I would say we're starting to get some clarity as to the direction of this, but it's pretty clear that the boundary between Innie and Audi is at least a little bit porous. We see Irving in the outside world, as you said, painting the black hallway that leads to the testing floor. Over and over and over and over. Immaculate work. Great motorhead deployment. I'm in favor of all of it. Yeah. But just a reminder that if it's been a minute since you've seen Severin Season 1, we also see Irving's inny. See the kind of black paint goop seeping into his workspace in a hallucinogenic sort of sequence. And so during season one, admittedly, I was wondering, which way is it going? Right? Like, is this the understanding of the inner world seeping into the outside world? And this is a vision that the outer Irving has had in his painting. But you're right, like a lot of our signs now as we enter season two, and certainly a lot of the theories are out there, point much more toward Irving having a past within the company that would at least lead him into that hallway.
- [09:30]
Joanna Robinson
I think your number two really underlines a very important question of, like, how different is your innie and your outtie? How severed is your severance? How much can you compartmentalize your humanity, your memories, your grief, whatever it is. We'll get to Helena in this episode. But there's, you know, there's a moment where she defiantly says, you know, there's. There. We've nothing in common. The Innies and the Outies have nothing in common. And we owe. We owe them fucking nothing. Right?
- [10:00]
Rob Mahoney
She's saying lots of things in this episode.
- [10:01]
Joanna Robinson
She does say a lot of stuff. Okay, that brings me to, you know, we'll Sort of get into our theories about what are they doing. What is the point of Lumen? What is the point of severance? We don't have a clear answer to that, but I do want to underline. I think one of the more perturbing in a sea of There's a lot of perturbment going on, perturbation happening here. Jamie, who is the current CEO of Lumen, who is Helena's father in the finale, says to her that she will be at his side at his revolving. His what now? His revolving.
- [10:43]
Rob Mahoney
Joe, you've never been to a revolving before.
- [10:45]
Joanna Robinson
Do you even revolve, bro? So what is a revolving? Are we seeking some sort of artificial immortality? That's what it always seems to come down to with these, like, people with too much money and science on their hands. So is. Is. Is the idea of a sort of digital resurrection, like, how much can we recreate, you know, humanity? How much can we sever humanity? Is he going to revolve into something wholly artificial?
- [11:17]
Rob Mahoney
Or.
- [11:17]
Joanna Robinson
Or is part of him going to revolve into Helaena, his heir? Or what is all going to happen? But the word revolving is so disturbing to me, and it sets my mind spinning in terms of, like, what is the point of severance and lumen? It, of course, is not what they're packaging, which is, like, come be a happy, pliant worker for us. That's a perk, for sure. But what is the larger, certainly more nefarious goal of the severance program?
- [11:48]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah, like, ultimately, the severance program itself seems like just a shield to protect very sensitive information. And specifically, like, as you say, what it is that they're doing, which is almost has to be terrible. Almost has to be whether necromantic or not. We'll see. I mean, there's certainly a lot of things happening in this show that are flirting with the edge of death and existence. And that's why, for me, I think one other thing to keep in mind is we don't really know if reintegration is even possible for these characters. And so there's a lot of things happening in the season two premiere, where, for example, our kind of core four macro deaths are given the choice of, like, you can stay here or you can go. But what's meant by you can go is your existence can blink out.
- [12:34]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [12:35]
Rob Mahoney
Cause there's no reason to think that you have a life up there, that you would be allowed to continue to exist. And so I think the hopeful eventuality for these characters is that. That they would find some Way to reintegrate Innie and Audi, but we've seen that go pretty messily and end in death so far. In terms of Petey trying to navigate that process. Admittedly, he did not follow the post.
- [12:54]
Joanna Robinson
Op instructions, didn't follow the aftercare instructions, Rob.
- [12:57]
Rob Mahoney
They were very specific. And he blew it.
- [13:00]
Joanna Robinson
It was rest, ice, compression, elevation, and he didn't do it. So, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. If you're not going to do your pt, you're not going to reintegrate. But I hope I don't wish ill, obviously on our Core four or anyone else. But rewatching season one, Yul Vasquez, an actor that I love as Petey, watching how much fun they had with the scrambled reintegration, him sort of blipping in and out of reality and memory and the way that they used camera trickery and sort of like in camera movements to convey all of that is just a really fun part of season one that I had kind of had a loose memory of, but it was fun to revisit. So I would. I wouldn't hate seeing that again, but hopefully in a way that doesn't require any of our favorite characters to bleed heavily from any orifice whatsoever.
- [13:54]
Rob Mahoney
Unless they're into that, you know, I don't want to. I don't want to yuck anybody's yum.
- [13:57]
Joanna Robinson
We're not yucking yums here on this podcast. Okay, so is that your. Is that your.
- [14:01]
Rob Mahoney
That's my number three, or I guess my number one.
- [14:03]
Joanna Robinson
My number three, or my number one, if you prefer. Oftentimes in these sci fi stories where the question of, like, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean? All that sort of stuff like that. Even Christopher Nolan does this. Oftentimes it comes down to this notion of love. And so I just want to remind everyone that Mark, there's the Bert and Irving storyline from season one, which gets a little bit of a recap here in season two, episode one. So good be it, Dylan. I love that. I love that he used the word courtship in this episode. Describe it. And in season one, he's like, are you sweet on him? It's like the phrase he used, very sweet. So Burton Irving. That is of course, beautiful. But I just want to point out that Mark in his various guises has like a plethora of love interests in season one. Good for you, Adam Scott. There's Helly, of course.
- [14:56]
Rob Mahoney
Of course.
- [14:58]
Joanna Robinson
There's Ms. Casey Gemma, his deceased question mark, resurrected question mark.
- [15:05]
Rob Mahoney
Big old tbd.
- [15:06]
Joanna Robinson
On that one wife. And there's, as Milchick sort of put out in this episode, this idea that Ms. Cobell or Mrs. Selvig once. An erotic thruffle with Mark's Annie and Outie. I would.
- [15:28]
Rob Mahoney
What an idea, by the way.
- [15:30]
Joanna Robinson
Great idea. And are we gonna see some version of that inside of this season? Let's tune in to find out. But, like, there are moments in season one whether or not it's under the guise of her, like her undercover work as this sort of health nut kook neighbor that she plays in season one, but that Mrs. Selvig, you know, says is hitting on Mark, like, pretty heavily in multiple occasions. So. And then there's. And then there's also a fully another woman that Mark terrorizes with his grief drinking problem in season one. So this idea of connection, of love. And it doesn't have to be romantic love, I think Dylan. Dylan with his kids and his family. We know some casting information about his family in season two that we may or may not get into. But, um, does that count as a spoiler, a casting?
- [16:26]
Rob Mahoney
I think for this show it might.
- [16:28]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, we won't. We won't talk about it then. And this is as good a time of any to promise you all as I've already promised Rob. I am not watching past one episode a week with this show. This is a theory show, and it is cheating to watch ahead. So we will be in the dark down here in the basement, in the.
- [16:48]
Rob Mahoney
Dark, in the office hellscape with all of you.
- [16:51]
Joanna Robinson
With all of you just scrabbling through the hallways trying to figure out our theories together. So that is, we are not watching ahead on this show.
- [16:59]
Rob Mahoney
Not a bit.
- [17:00]
Joanna Robinson
So those are our three random things. If I could smuggle one thing, it would just be that there is a room full of baby goats and we still don't know why. And I just want to put that out there in the way.
- [17:11]
Rob Mahoney
We don't know why. And the quote, when they bust into the room of baby goats, the guy says, you can't take them yet. They're not ready. And I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for them to be ready.
- [17:21]
Joanna Robinson
Oh, my God. What if we get sort of like a little mini baby goat stampede through the hallway? I know.
- [17:27]
Rob Mahoney
That'd be phenomenal. I do have, you know, as to pivot off the baby goats.
- [17:30]
Joanna Robinson
Yes.
- [17:31]
Rob Mahoney
As we soft launch potential new emails.
- [17:34]
Joanna Robinson
I'm so excited. I have a couple, but I can't wait to hear yours. What are yours?
- [17:38]
Rob Mahoney
The goatslaytheeggsmail. Dot com.
- [17:41]
Joanna Robinson
Okay.
- [17:41]
Rob Mahoney
Which was one of the explanations for the egg party and perhaps why they were so good. Those did look like some incredible deviled eggs.
- [17:47]
Joanna Robinson
The egg bar is coveted as fuck. Is just a quote I randomly have on a scrap of paper here on my desk.
- [17:52]
Rob Mahoney
I like that.
- [17:53]
Joanna Robinson
So, you know, it's important to remember. Yeah.
- [17:55]
Rob Mahoney
How about the uurmail.com?
- [17:58]
Joanna Robinson
Okay. The U U R. Okay.
- [18:03]
Rob Mahoney
I feel like with a lot of these, there's some questionable spellings, there's some. Some dubious grammatical constructions. I want to pick one that's clear in a way that the Uur is not. Perhaps. Pineapplebobbingmail.com that's a really good one.
- [18:19]
Joanna Robinson
I have a couple from this episode. I only have two from this season two, episode one, shambolicrubmail.com and nightgardenergmail.com oh, Nightgardener is good.
- [18:33]
Rob Mahoney
Also would watch Nightgardener, the Night Gardener, the upcoming Netflix series starring, like, I don't know, Jason Statham or whatever. Like, I'm up for that.
- [18:41]
Joanna Robinson
The Night Manager spinoff, the Night Grinder.
- [18:44]
Rob Mahoney
Of course. It simply must be.
- [18:45]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. Okay, great. Okay. Anything else that I had written down from season one? Do you have other ones that you want to float?
- [18:53]
Rob Mahoney
One that I don't think can fly based on the questionable spelling of Egan that I'm guessing people just don't have off the tip of their tongue? Animatronic. Egansmail.com I also, in honor of my favorite exchange in this episode between Irving and Dylan, your favorite perkmail.com or. Or I'm your favorite perkmail.com if you prefer.
- [19:13]
Joanna Robinson
I was wondering if you want to do something with, like, finger. Finger traps, but I. I didn't workshop that well enough.
- [19:22]
Rob Mahoney
It's. It's pronounced fingy trap, but okay.
- [19:24]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. The VIP area of pips. Gmail.com.
- [19:32]
Rob Mahoney
What a show. This is.
- [19:34]
Joanna Robinson
Obviously. Wafflepartymail.com it's right there. Is right there. All right, so we're going to go with pineapple bobbing dot com.
- [19:42]
Rob Mahoney
Yes, we've conferred away from the cameras in the supply closet.
- [19:46]
Joanna Robinson
Waffle party not available. So whichever one of you sick fucks is sitting on wafflepartymail.com you won this round, but pineapple bobbing@gmail.com is what we're going to go for. I love a pineapple, so sounds great to me.
- [19:59]
Rob Mahoney
I think it's aspirational, too. Like, I would love to see the pineapple bobbing in action this season at some point.
- [20:06]
Joanna Robinson
Actually think. I know it sounds like it would be really hard, but I actually think it would be quite easy because there's so much leafy stem to grab onto.
- [20:12]
Rob Mahoney
Joe. What?
- [20:15]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, so when's the last time you participated in or saw an apple bobbing competition?
- [20:20]
Rob Mahoney
It's been a long time, but a pineapple is not easier.
- [20:22]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, let me tell you this. Last October, as you know. You know, Rob, that I did a, like, live show for a Buffy vampire slayer podcast. I like. The show was an apple bobbing competition that I did not compete in, but I watched and I watched one participant demolish the other by simply going for stems, grabbing apple stems and tossing them over so you can. There's so much pineapple stem to grab.
- [20:50]
Rob Mahoney
But it's all pointy. Also, the pineapple itself is so heavy, it's hard to pick it up by your teeth by the leaf alone.
- [21:01]
Joanna Robinson
Listen, you make some excellent points and consider the next strength that would be required.
- [21:07]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, my gosh.
- [21:08]
Joanna Robinson
Licking gesture.
- [21:10]
Rob Mahoney
It's strange just thinking about it.
- [21:11]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, fair enough. Okay, so it's pineapplebobbingmail.com or prestige tvotify.com we'll get it from both angles. Also, please pineapple Bob, you know, safely. We, you know, we. Don't strain yourself. Okay.
- [21:28]
Rob Mahoney
For legal purposes, we do not recommend that anyone out there pineapple bobs, but if you were to do it, we'd love to hear about it@applebobbingmail.com okay, I.
- [21:37]
Joanna Robinson
Want to start before we get into like, theories or bigger sort of picture ideas of this episode of Severance. I want to start with just like a tiny behind the scenes context to say that this, you know, season one came out three years ago. I had just started at the ringer when this came out, so it has been so long. But there's a couple creatives sort of at play behind the scenes here. And I wanted to explain some slight. Just quickly run through some slight behind the scenes tension and let that help explain why I was a little bit worried about this season and why I'm really happy that I quite liked season two, episode one. And the reviews of people who have seen more are all quite good. So that's a huge relief. Dan Erickson is the name of the person who came up with the idea for Severance in the first place. This is his original concept. Exciting, since Dan had never made TV before Apple, in their infinite wisdom, or whoever paired him with Mark Friedman, who does have TV experience. Mark Friedman and Dan Erickson did not get along very well when making season one. And so Mark Freeman, I don't know, under his own scene or not is like, I'm out of here for season two. No, thank you. They tried to find someone to replace him to sort of, once again, and this is not unusual that you have a creative who doesn't have a ton of TV experience paired with someone who does have a ton of TV experience. For example, a TV show like Lost, Damon Lindelof brought on Carlton Cus for season two, essentially, you know, because he was like, help. I'm running a TV show and I don't know how to do that. I'm a writer. How do I, you know, what are the logistics here?
- [23:26]
Rob Mahoney
Honestly, that sounds like a punchy title. You could put on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf and help many aspiring screenwriters out there.
- [23:32]
Joanna Robinson
Exactly. Cut that out, Kai. This is our million dollar idea. We're going to be, we're going to make that. You can find us in the self help section. But so that went south. They were trying to figure out someone who could replace Mark in his sort of TV infinite TV wisdom in season two. And Ben Stiller, who was another, you know, an EP on the show, directed the show, asked Mark to come back because, you know, according to reports, various reports, asked Mark to come back because he couldn't find anyone to sort of adequately replace him. Mark came back in some guys. He's a credited writer on episode seven. But I don't think there's no way, in my view, he had the same role that he had in season one. And Dan, of course, has much more TV running experience now than he did in season one. Who knows how much Ben Stiller stepped up, though by all implication he stepped up to an even bigger role perhaps than he had in season one.
- [24:29]
Rob Mahoney
And certainly the visual styling of the show comes a lot from his sensibilities.
- [24:33]
Joanna Robinson
Absolutely. And then they have asked, at one point, according to reports, asked Beau Williman of House of Cards and andor fame to work on season three. So these are all, these are all the sort of pineapples in the water here, bobbing along in the water here.
- [24:54]
Rob Mahoney
A lot of baby goats in need of some kind of shepherd, it seems.
- [24:56]
Joanna Robinson
Exactly. And so I was quite worried. And then there's writer's strike and there's just like a ton of delays. And even though sort of Ben Stiller and some other people have come out and said, like, the reports of behind the scenes tension are greatly exaggerated, he did in a very recent New York Times podcast say, like, listen, okay, we didn't get along all the time like Ben Stiller's like, okay, I'm not gonna lie to you. There's some. There was some tension, but it's not as rough as as has been reported. So that's just sort of some of the reportage that has happened behind the scenes. All of which has led to a season two that I was worried was gonna be a hot mess. And instead it seems people are really enjoying it. And especially when you have a show that comes out of the gate out of nowhere. No one was expecting severance to be even if it wasn't like the biggest ratings hit in the whole world for Apple at least it's like really, you know, Internet friendly. People love to talk about Emmy winning, you know, show for Apple. So when something comes out and has such a sort of explosive season one in that way, I'm always worried about the season two, definitely. So, Rob, sort of just big picture, where was your anxiety level, if any place before season two? And how are you feeling having seen season two, episode one?
- [26:17]
Rob Mahoney
I mean, mine was pretty high. Just anytime you get this sort of delay, and in particular the transition from what I would say is one of the most successful season finales we've had in recent memory, at the end of season one is just like a pulse pounding episode that is so deftly sewn together. And then three years of waiting, including not only everything you outlined, but multiple strikes and stoppages in production. This is a show that's very expensive to make, even though you may not think that based on the setting but by the camera tricks and overall what they're disguising and what they're hiding and overall the structure and styling of the show, the price is clearly piling up for something like this. And I always worry with that of, oh, is it gonna get too high? Is it gonna get prohibitive? Is there gonna be a cutting that has to happen at a certain point? Because this is a show that among the things I love about it, I love how great it looks and how disorienting it feels and the camera work feels. And if you have to start sacrificing those things, I think severance stops being severance. But overall, I'm thrilled with where we're starting for season two and I'm thrilled that to me, what is like the clarity of this world has not left it at all. I think it's such a weird thing with a mystery box show where so many of them, to me Jo feel like such a hodgepodge where Chos are trying to wrong foot you in so many different ways. They just throw A bunch of different things at the wall, and there's just all of a sudden a mystical animal walking through the street. And you're like, all right, I guess that's what's going on now, and that's fine. And you can structure your show that way, and that's all well and good.
- [27:48]
Joanna Robinson
Specific, mystical animal.
- [27:48]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, no, no. That's just strictly theoretical.
- [27:51]
Joanna Robinson
Okay. That's the tip of the shitburg that can happen to a theory show for sure. Okay.
- [27:58]
Rob Mahoney
But I think severance from the get go had such a specific sensibility in a way that makes the inexplicable parts of the show kind of make sense. And I was really hoping it wouldn't lose that. And I'm thrilled to say at least one episode in, I feel like we're right back in it.
- [28:13]
Joanna Robinson
It's a really incredible feat in terms of this near future sci fi vibe, which can be so hard to pull off, but it really does feel like a world that is just like a hop, skip and a jump away from ours. Which makes the sci fi that much more engaging. Our own corporate paranoia or whatever, you know, our tech phobia or whatever it is that we're feeling here in 2025.
- [28:42]
Rob Mahoney
There's a very fine line between the show being acceptable to be on Apple, but this would not be made on Amazon Prime. I think for a bunch of different reasons, not to draw dividing lines between the various corporate overlords out there. But like Lumen as an everything company, rings like. Stands very tall over this whole entire story.
- [29:01]
Joanna Robinson
You were thinking about Amazon?
- [29:03]
Rob Mahoney
I think it's what comes to mind for me.
- [29:08]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. The people who make your deodorant and.
- [29:10]
Rob Mahoney
Your snack foods and run the Internet.
- [29:12]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. Your Lumen basics. Do you have Lumen basics batteries in your remote right now? That's funny that you mentioned that, because I was going to say, and I remember talking to sort of like Van and Mallory when we covered this in season one. This. The Apple aesthetic that's on. That's available here. And we get it. So this episode opens with our guy Mark S running for a long time through the halls of the Severance severed level of Lumen.
- [29:39]
Rob Mahoney
The conditioning on this guy for not doing any cardio on a regular basis is quite impressive.
- [29:46]
Joanna Robinson
Did you. Did you happen to see Adam Scott's Colbert appearance?
- [29:50]
Rob Mahoney
No. Did he talk about this?
- [29:52]
Joanna Robinson
He was talking about the running, not. Not the conditioning on. On Mark, who, as far as we've seen, only, like, lifts, whiskey tumblers, and that's about it. Right.
- [30:01]
Rob Mahoney
Maybe a growler at Best.
- [30:03]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, I was. Because I, you know, he. Colbert put up a sort of a still image as. As one does on the late night of. Of just the, like the. The profile of him running.
- [30:15]
Rob Mahoney
Yep.
- [30:15]
Joanna Robinson
And I was like, like, that's a Tom Cruise run. And Adam Scott's like, I studied Tom Cruise's run.
- [30:22]
Rob Mahoney
You gotta study the best. You gotta go straight to the greats.
- [30:25]
Joanna Robinson
The best of the best. If you do you have like a favorite Tom Cruise running sequence in film.
- [30:31]
Rob Mahoney
It's. You can't make me choose between my favorites like that. I think. Well, I think the one, because he calls it out specifically is Minority Report. Because everyone runs, Joe.
- [30:40]
Joanna Robinson
You know, everyone does run. Minority Reports are really good. And I love Minority Report, but for me it's the Firm. And I think because in the Firm, he's wearing not just the suit, but I believe also a billowy 90s trench coat on top of it. It's just running through.
- [30:53]
Rob Mahoney
Where is he running through, like an amusement park or something? Or am I getting my Tom Cruise runs confused?
- [30:58]
Joanna Robinson
There's like a fairy. It's like a ferry.
- [31:00]
Rob Mahoney
It's a fair.
- [31:01]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, ferry building area situation. The Adam Scott and Colbert described it as the blade hands. Like, you got to blade your hands run and you got to keep the knees high. And that is. That is the Cruise run. But so. And then Adam Scott said, and I believe this is true, that they took eight months to film this sequence. Obviously not like straight, but, you know, with like break to strikes and all this sort of stuff like that. And watching it, knowing that was really interesting because, like, you could watch it and just sort of get swept up in it is quite fun. But watching it from, you know, like, you and I watch a ton of film trying to track that camera.
- [31:39]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, my God.
- [31:40]
Joanna Robinson
And how they did that. And obviously, like, some of it has to be on green screen because there's one moment where the camera sort of swoops around and almost under him, like around into where there would be a wall and down into where there would be a floor and around him and stuff like that. But I thought it was a really brilliant and fun. But he looks like he's running through an ipod, essentially. Like it's, you know, the white. The stark white ipod, stuff like that. What did you. What do you want to say about the opening running sequence or the apple aesthetics?
- [32:12]
Rob Mahoney
I enjoyed the sequence. I enjoyed all the camerawork you described. Like, the stitching together of all of that is quite delicate and I think very impressive and speaks to what I think makes the show impressive in that one.
- [32:22]
Joanna Robinson
You just lose him around the corner, and that's a way that they can stitch a cut in and stuff like that, just barely.
- [32:29]
Rob Mahoney
And I like, overall, the idea that they can do something very fun with the start of this season where Mark is picking up right where we left off at the end of season one. Right. It is the second that he is walking through the door because of, like, the innie outy dynamic. Like, his consciousness snapped out. I don't know if you heard, but she is alive.
- [32:49]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [32:50]
Rob Mahoney
And so he snaps into consciousness. He goes running, looking for Ms. Kayce, looking for the woman who at least is a mirror image of his wife, if not his actual wife. And we're told later that it's been five months since the events of season one. I would push everybody watching this episode to take all exposition in this premiere with a grain of salt, because basically all of it comes from either Milchick or some Lumen promotional material. So I have no idea how much time has passed or not passed. It could be the next day. It could be years into the future. It could be exactly three years like we have waited, or a little less than three years like we have waited for season two. But then it gets to play off of those things both here and then eventually, when we get the whole gang back together and so many of those characters are snapping into consciousness for what appears to be the first time since the season one finale. So we're both picking up right where we left off, and we have this hanging mystery of, like, what has been happening in the background while all of these innies have been snapped out of consciousness.
- [33:44]
Joanna Robinson
And a really funny sort of mirror image tactic here is that, you know, we start season one, episode one of Severance, where with Mark crying in the car, and we watch him go through the whole procedure of going down into the severed level here inside of this episode. We're trapped with any Mark inside of that reality, and we have no access to the other reality. So to your point, we can't fact check. Milchew clearly doctored seems trustworthy. Newspaper, the heavily redacted newspaper.
- [34:22]
Rob Mahoney
The redacted newspaper was tremendous, with an.
- [34:24]
Joanna Robinson
Image of them being celebrated in a parade, which, when that image showed up in the trailer a couple months ago, the Redditors were quick to point out that this is a doctored image of. I can't remember who it is now. It's either like Eisenhower or Castor or something like that. It's an existent historical image that they just, like, took their group photo from the desk and just airlifted the car. And that's as much effort as whoever put that together used. So yeah, we are stuck not knowing. And I'm not upset or impatient about that. I really liked that limitation that they put on the story here.
- [35:06]
Rob Mahoney
I will say the overall drive to one thing that I was wondering coming out of season one is what kind of role is the absence of Ms. Kayce? Or is her name Gemma? His wife's name is Gemma.
- [35:19]
Joanna Robinson
Is that correct?
- [35:20]
Rob Mahoney
Going to play in this season? Like, clearly this is a character that everyone's trying to locate. Is this a person who's gonna be off screen for the entirety of the season? And already we're seeing kind of like flickering images of her pop up into various spaces and consciousnesses. Which I have to say, one I really appreciate because that central mystery is phenomenal and driving and I'm really eager to see where it goes. But also, like, I really love Dietjen Lockman in this show.
- [35:45]
Joanna Robinson
Yes.
- [35:46]
Rob Mahoney
And her performance style is always so weird and so haunting. And I'm always trying to understand, like, what her characters want or are after. And so the idea that we may get, whether it's flashback, whether it's on the non severed floors, whether it's as we're kind of unspooling, whatever this mystery is, she's still involved in some critical capacity. That makes me very happy.
- [36:08]
Joanna Robinson
Are you. Are you a Dollhouse fan?
- [36:13]
Rob Mahoney
That's a complicated question of it.
- [36:17]
Joanna Robinson
Do you like her in Dollhouse?
- [36:18]
Rob Mahoney
She is terrific in Dollhouse.
- [36:20]
Joanna Robinson
She's so good in Dollhouse, but not very good.
- [36:22]
Rob Mahoney
That's a show that I think has a lot of kind of fundamental weirdness in common with Severance.
- [36:26]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. And she. She absolutely crushes in on that show. She was so good. And I've been sort of following her career with great interest ever since and wanting her to have projects worthy of her, which she doesn't always. She's often sort of this, like, mysteriously, occasionally there kind of person. So hopefully she gets more to do this season. Even more to do. But I thought she did a great job with what she did in season one. Her, like, wistfulness in season one when she talks about how, you know, first of all, that she's only been awake. Was it like 16 hours total? And her wistfulness when she talks about spending time with them in the macrodata office and how it was like, how much she enjoyed that. Sad.
- [37:13]
Rob Mahoney
It's very sad. There's parts of it that are very sweet. And I think overall what I Love about their relationship, whether they are aware of it or not. And Cobell's kind of like obsession, it seems like, with whatever they are to each other is that it allows severance to be kind of perverse ultimately. Like, this is a twisted, gnarled up emotional situation. And a lot of other soft sci fi that's out there doesn't ever really get that far. They like intimate. Oh, it's kind, isn't it kind of messed up that people have severed heads and severed consciousnesses, but they don't get into, oh, this is like actually really, really twisted.
- [37:49]
Joanna Robinson
And I think what. What's brilliant about it is that they're using, and this is often the case with sort of high concept shows, is that they get back to almost like basic soap opera level storytelling. Yeah, that works. It's always worked. It works. And so, you know, to go back to this idea of sort of the love theme, we are watching a. Like a love quadrangle or whatever. We are watching Mark S talk to a woman who is some facsimile of his wife. And so certainly there's a part of us that's like, oh, my gosh, they have to be reunited. Presumably, if she is enough of a semblance of his wife, they have to be reunited. We have to be rooting for them. But then we're also obviously rooting for like, Helly, you know, and Mark and their connection. And so they've given us an impossible love triangle love quadrangle. And again, that is basic soap opera storytelling. And also, my wife is dead. No, she's not. Is also basic soap opera storytelling. Classic side of something that has a lot on its mind and a lot of prestige sheen around its visuals. So I think that really, that works really well. And again, it's impossible for me to separate theory from any plot discussion of this show. So I will say that like Cobell's personal grief, which seems, according to date, sourcing of a hospital bracelet, perhaps related to her mother. Yeah, Question mark.
- [39:25]
Rob Mahoney
Maybe some kind of relative at least.
- [39:27]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. A mother she lost or someone she lost. So if she's someone that is grieving, would she not like? Because I was trying to figure out what's her investment in Mark and what's her investment in trying to test Mark and Gemma slash Ms. Casey with the scented candle and stuff like that.
- [39:47]
Rob Mahoney
The candle is wild. Right. There's like levels of like, oh, this is a weird situation that she's toying with. And then over the course of season one, it gets like, pretty deep because.
- [39:56]
Joanna Robinson
She'S a creep, but also a total psycho because she's trying to test something or trying to prove something. You know, she's asking Mark's sister, like, does he ever think he sees her somewhere? You know, I mean, she's testing and she's probing. And so I have to imagine. And outside the scope seemingly of her job. And so I have to imagine that.
- [40:18]
Rob Mahoney
You don't think working as an undercover lactation consultant is part of her job?
- [40:22]
Joanna Robinson
I don't think the was it chamomile cookies were on the menu there.
- [40:27]
Rob Mahoney
But like, first of all, that doesn't even sound good.
- [40:29]
Joanna Robinson
It sounds gross. When, when I was rewatching season one, she's like, I've been experimenting with chamomile. And then he eats the cookie and he looks like he enjoys it. Absolutely not.
- [40:39]
Rob Mahoney
I know we live in a world that's like the Earl Grey ification of everything, but some teas go in food and some teas don't go.
- [40:45]
Joanna Robinson
There needs to be a boundary. You can Earl Gray something, you can green tea something. But I don't think you can chamomile something.
- [40:51]
Rob Mahoney
And I sever that right out. Keep that in tea world.
- [40:54]
Joanna Robinson
Pineapp bombingmail.com if you have a chamomile recipe that you feel like we should try, we probably won't. But you should submit.
- [41:04]
Rob Harvilla
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- [41:36]
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. Sound good?
- [41:48]
Rob Mahoney
I participate in restaurants for a limited time.
- [41:50]
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. So what is her motivation outside of the scope of her. Of her own corporate ambition? And it seems to be this sort of, like, if she's someone who's experiencing crippling personal grief.
- [42:31]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah.
- [42:32]
Joanna Robinson
Would she not be invested in figuring out, does this actually work? Can I sever out this grief and not feel this anymore? Can I forget this per. You know, can I. Internal sunshine, essentially, this person out of my heart or mind. And has that successfully happened for Mark and Gemma? To your point earlier about the black sludge encroaching on Irv Irving, who has been severed the longest out of any of them? So, like, how permanent is this? Or did he have, like, an older model and that's why the black paint is oozing in, or sort of. How does. What are the boundaries of this procedure?
- [43:15]
Rob Mahoney
You know, I think we're still learning what the applications are, too. Right. There's mention in season one about one of the senators who is, like, supporting them in terms of some legislation. His wife gave birth while severed.
- [43:27]
Joanna Robinson
Sure. What would you want to sever your way through, Rob?
- [43:30]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, this is a great question. Expense reports, for sure.
- [43:35]
Joanna Robinson
I was gonna say tax season. So same thing. Same thing.
- [43:38]
Rob Mahoney
Anything that fine. Tooth comb and financial. Get it right up out of here.
- [43:42]
Joanna Robinson
Receipts.
- [43:43]
Rob Mahoney
Severed Rob can handle that.
- [43:44]
Joanna Robinson
Receipts plus forms plus whatever. Severed Joanna can do that.
- [43:49]
Rob Mahoney
Anything@ the DPS, DMV. Severed Rob can handle that stuff.
- [43:53]
Joanna Robinson
But I would want to be a benign overlord to my severed self and say severed me can also do some fun things. As long as she does the things I absolutely don't want to do, she can.
- [44:04]
Rob Mahoney
They can go pineapple bobbing.
- [44:05]
Joanna Robinson
She can pineapple bob her little heart out. And I will deal with the cuts and bruises on my mouth as a result. It'll be fine.
- [44:13]
Rob Mahoney
As we're sussing out what severance can be used for and what it can't be used for, I am fascinated by the introduction of Ms. Huang, one of our new characters, who I'm still trying to figure out, you know, as the deputy manager of this office working under Milchick. Is this a character who is severed or not? You know, most of the managerial characters have not been. If this is not a severed character, why is a literal child working in this office?
- [44:37]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah.
- [44:38]
Rob Mahoney
And if it is a literal child who is severed, what is it that they are severed from? Like, my. I'm just. My mind is racing with questions about who this person could be. Is it someone with A terminal illness who is, like, trying to sever their way away from some of the pain of that. Oh, yeah. Like, is this a character who, you know, we see Mark. It flashes of Ms. Kayce as he looks at her. Is there any relation between these characters at all? Is there any kind of weird cloning shit that's been going on in this place? Like, I. I don't know what's happening. I just know that this character's mysterious enough, and I am. I have such a deep admiration for her organizational technique and her desk drawers that I am. I'm interested in whatever's going on in that corner of the show.
- [45:16]
Joanna Robinson
The little hand game she has with the rings and the water unlocked a memory. And I had, like, a similar thing we all did. It didn't have Kier Egan, as far as I can tell, inside of it, but it definitely existed.
- [45:29]
Rob Mahoney
I wonder what the version of that will be for Gen Z or Gen Alpha. This, like, we had all of these dog handheld games that don't really work and are not even fun to play.
- [45:40]
Joanna Robinson
They don't have to deal with it. They don't have to make little silver balls go through little mazes on, like, a. Whatever. They don't. They don't do slide puzzles.
- [45:47]
Rob Mahoney
But what's their version of the slide puzzle?
- [45:50]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, two dots on iOS? I don't know. But the clone idea is a good one. I, like, I get really wary inside of a theory show to be, like, this character and this character have, like, a very passing resemblance to each other. So, like, are they. But I did. But I couldn't help my dumb brain being like, can I do math to make this their daughter? No, I did the same thing. So, yeah, clone I have.
- [46:21]
Rob Mahoney
But could you do math to make it not necessarily their daughter who was born, but a daughter, like, grown? I think there was mentioning of, like, IVF in the first season. Like, there's. There's just enough breadcrumbs to make me wonder. And I agree with you. Like, we. We are perilously close to, like, Rey Palpatine territory in a way that I don't want to be. Yeah, this. This is my fundamental concern about this show. I love that central mystery so much about Mark and Gemma and, like, and what is it that happened to her and why is it that she is popping up as Ms. Kayce in this world? There's so many different things pointing to Mark being a character of, like, critical structural importance that I'm worried he's too important. I'm worried he's not just Like a guy caught up in this big thing that we're all trying to unravel, but someone who he specifically is key to whatever story they're trying to tell. I'm always a little wary of that.
- [47:13]
Joanna Robinson
I think I agree with you. I don't want him to make him, like, sort of Lumen Jesus or anything like that, but I think he seems more circumstantially important.
- [47:23]
Rob Mahoney
I hope so.
- [47:23]
Joanna Robinson
Than actually important. The sort of. What do they call it? The freshman fluke. The thing that earned him his little, you know, head etching on his desk, has to do with him refining a file quicker than anyone had ever refined a file before. So, yeah, that points to sort of Lumen Jesus, but I think it's more. More like he is a man crippled by grief who has a wife who died or didn't in a way that they could sort of exploit to experiment on something, you know, so circumstantially important more than, like, he's got the midichlorians that they need to do this, that, or the other thing. I was really happy. It's. I think it only takes, like, 18 minutes for our Core 4. It's really only the Core 3, but, like, theoretically the Core 4 to get back together.
- [48:15]
Rob Mahoney
This is Core 3. Let's be real about what's happening here.
- [48:18]
Joanna Robinson
I was a little mad because I was like. I was. I was like. As soon as she came out, I was like, oh, that's definitely Helena. That's not.
- [48:24]
Rob Mahoney
Body language is totally different, you know?
- [48:26]
Joanna Robinson
Absolutely. And then they, like, revealed it inside, like, immediately inside the episode. I was like, damn it. I wanted to be ahead of the show.
- [48:32]
Rob Mahoney
But here's the thing. Did they.
- [48:34]
Joanna Robinson
Yes. I'm.
- [48:35]
Rob Mahoney
I'm curious where they want us to be with that character right now.
- [48:38]
Joanna Robinson
I think that there's an interpretation so helly when she's. Or Helena when she's saying what the truth was of her experience up top, that she would lie because she doesn't want them to know that she's an Egan, that she's an Egan. That had not even occurred to me. Rob. That's interesting.
- [48:58]
Rob Mahoney
My default assumption from the moment she comes out of the elevator and Mark hugs her, it's like the body language is different. And Brit Lauer, a performer who I really, really like, is. She's playing everything so cautiously. Like, every exchange between Heli and the other characters, she waits for someone else to take the lead, and she responds. She's never the first person to express literally anything.
- [49:21]
Joanna Robinson
Also, the thing she says she Says, where did the security cameras go? Or he said there were no microphones in here.
- [49:30]
Rob Mahoney
Also, the biggest red flag, I would say, the fact that a person who is supposed to be heli, when given the choice to leave without hesitation, chooses to stay. Yeah, that's just not something I would believe that the. Any version of that character would do. Which leads us to only believe that this is Undercover Helena trying to do God knows what with these other people. But she's here for some kind of reason.
- [49:52]
Joanna Robinson
I love Undercover Helena. Like, Helena seems like she sucks. Right? But maybe. She's obviously clearly sucks, but perhaps she is on an arc of some kind because, like, there is some softening around her when she's, like, talking to Mark. She's, like, very. That. It doesn't seem performative, but seems, like sort of actually impactful on her. And, of course, since she's the person to so defiantly say, our innie and our outies have nothing in common, we owe them nothing.
- [50:20]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah.
- [50:20]
Joanna Robinson
She, of course, has to be a character who we're going to see her become more heli than Helena as time goes on. That's what storytelling logic tells me.
- [50:31]
Rob Mahoney
So you think at the end of this episode of Undercover Boss, she's gonna have the big confrontation moment with the rest of the staff and be like, you know what? Actually, you are people.
- [50:39]
Joanna Robinson
I'm sorry, you aren't just family and baby goats for me to shepherd around. Yeah. Undercover Helena is a great idea, I think, for this story.
- [50:54]
Rob Mahoney
Very good, very interesting. It kind of puts us on a weird footing to start the season. And overall, I will say about all the core four, whatever you make of Helior Helena, these are four people who've been through, or at least three people have been through, something pretty intense in terms of their finale experience in season one and the overtime protocol or whatever it's called. But they're still coming back and kind of keeping each other at arm's reach.
- [51:17]
Joanna Robinson
Until Irving and Dylan have, like, the most. The longest, most lovely hug of all time.
- [51:23]
Rob Mahoney
It was wonderful, you know, but. But it takes, like, he has to go have a good long cry and can't even talk about what happened with getting to Burt's house until he has some space to process things. And you even see Mark going through the mental exercise of, can we even talk about any of this openly here? Or is this. Are they trying to mine our experience for more information?
- [51:43]
Joanna Robinson
Well, don't worry, Rhett. He said there's no microphones, so there's.
- [51:46]
Rob Mahoney
No microphones, there's no cameras. This is a safe space.
- [51:48]
Joanna Robinson
I. I can't believe it didn't occur to me that, like, they were trying to sell us another reason that Helena might be lying. But. But in. In putting it in close proximity to Irving, sort of being reticent to talk about his experience up top, that. That makes a lot of sense to me. But what I also love is that in her, in her shitty lie, where she's like, I'm just a sad single person who wears sweatpants and watches TV or whatever, she's like, it's not that the gardener was there at night, which is a great thing for Irving to pick up on a night gardener. You ran outside and you found a night gardener. But it's that Helaena, the most privileged person in the world, can only think, what does one find outside one's front door? Why the hell.
- [52:26]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, it's the groundsman.
- [52:27]
Joanna Robinson
The groundsman. The groundskeeper was in his cottage. And I said, hello. Yeah. So her body language is different. Her. Her voice is lower. Like, you know, she. She's doing. In an interview that I saw with Adam Scott, he was talking about how when he plays Mark S. The innie, that he will wear a sort of posture device.
- [52:54]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah.
- [52:54]
Joanna Robinson
To make sure that he like, stands up taller. So, yeah, watching, you know, we only got a little bit of time with him, but watching John Turturro play Irving, you know, up top with his, like, paint smeared Henley and all of that sort of stuff like that was these, These are tremendous performers. And the little choices they're making to distinguish between their innies and their outies is just a delight, a treasure for us to enjoy.
- [53:24]
Rob Mahoney
Turturro is so fucking good on this show. He's so good. And that's a character who at the outset of season one, because he is so glued, chapter and verse, like the company handbook is. He's so easy to hate. But I find, I think he's my favorite character on the show. Not just performer on the show, but character on the show in Irving. And I love everything that transpired between him and Bert. I love the sort of wounded place that we're finding him at the start of season two and what he decides to do with that. I gotta say, this is just a masterfully constructed and balanced core cast. Those four in particular, we haven't talked enough about Zack Cherry, who plays Dylan, and Dillon is the one outie we haven't had any time with yet because of the nature of the season one finale.
- [54:06]
Joanna Robinson
Right.
- [54:07]
Rob Mahoney
So I'm. I hope we get that at some Point too.
- [54:09]
Joanna Robinson
We got the introduction of the family visitation center with its ergonomic seating. So we shall see how that.
- [54:15]
Rob Mahoney
Does that mean you can visit your family there? Who. Who's to say?
- [54:18]
Joanna Robinson
Who's to say?
- [54:19]
Rob Mahoney
It's right there in the name. But he didn't confirm it.
- [54:24]
Joanna Robinson
And, and speaking of Trammel, Tillman as Milchick is such a joy for me. I, I love him. I love that he's been promoted. There are two moments that I stopped and rewound and watched like several times inside of this episode. And one of them belongs to Adam Scott when he's staring down Ms. Wong and he says three friends after saying four friends and the like 90 different expressions that cross his face as he tries to keep his eyes and face friendly while seething with rage. That I loved. And then Milchick, actually, I can't even pick one. There's no one moment. It's just all the times in which he is actually, it's when they come into the newly refurbished break room, which used to be a torture room and now we've got nice seating and projector. And he like asks, serving to the tall drink of water that is Irving to sit in the back. And he's just talking about whenever he's like, isn't this great? This gift that Lumen is giving you. Isn't this wonderful? That affectation that he puts on I find so delicious. I just think it's wonderful.
- [55:38]
Rob Mahoney
So I think the biggest mystery coming out of season one is why Trammell Tillman was not cast in literally every project over the last three years.
- [55:46]
Joanna Robinson
Well, Brit, lower too. Like, were all of them just in stasis, like, I don't know, waiting to make more severance, you know. Cause I don't think any of them have done much in the interim. Zachary seems like he's kind of always busy, but I feel like all of them are just, you know, we're sort of on hold, which is too bad. And then, you know, we're missing Patricia Arquette inside of this episode. And then we don't get any of Mark's family. All of whom I absolutely love. I love his sister. And then of course his brother in law is wonderful, but his sister, the work that they do in season one with Mark's sister to. There's a lot of exposition they have to get through in season one in terms of like who these people are, what their relationships are to each other, what the state of Lumen is, what severance is. There's a lot of high concept stuff that they have to deliver to us. All of that is done, I think some of the best exposition I've ever seen. But the, the shortcut to establishing intimacy between Mark and his sister is not just like, hello, sister, how are you? Which is like, oh, it's just like one of the worst things that TV and film do. Hey, bro, how are you? You know, but it's like just inside jokes, little voices that they do with each other, little bits that like, you know, sibling bits that they do with each other that they never have to explain. It's just things that, you know, it's just family stuff. And I. I really love her and I'm dying to know, like, I don't know how long we're gonna be kept in the dark as to what was her reaction to she's lying or any of the other stuff that happened at the end of season one. I'm dying to find out.
- [57:25]
Rob Mahoney
So, I mean, I feel pretty confident in guessing and maybe this conf be hoisted by my own petard with these confidence again, Rob, always no, too many petards going around. I doubt very much that any meaningful change has gone on in the outside world. I doubt very much that it. I don't think it's been exactly five months. I don't know how long it's been.
- [57:47]
Joanna Robinson
I wouldn't mind it being five months. I would say zero reform. I expect zero reform.
- [57:53]
Rob Mahoney
Certainly not Castro esque parades.
- [57:56]
Joanna Robinson
Surface level. Yes, surface, surface, surface. Stop motion animation. Keanu Reeves level. Pandering to will do better sort of corporate stuff. But in terms of like, I think the person best poised to pursue meaningful investigative work is Mark's sister. And I can see a version that she sort of keeps a lid on some of the things she knows.
- [58:23]
Rob Mahoney
Yes.
- [58:24]
Joanna Robinson
In order to do some actual further investigation, I think.
- [58:27]
Rob Mahoney
I mean, I think she has to be very careful. But yeah, overall I feel like bringing the group back. And again, the sequencing of how all that happened is fascinating to me. Right. You bring Mark back first, we should say, with this sort of dummy new team that he's brought into, which I enjoyed very much. Although I kind of wish they had gone full Shaun of the Dead with it and done like bizarro macro data team, like just slightly parroting versions. Although Ali Shawkat, I guess, is like kind of a bizarro version of heli in some ways. But overall it's like the timing of all that and the way that the company acquiesces ultimately to Mark's request to bring back the team.
- [59:05]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. Why would they do that?
- [59:07]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah, I don't know. Ultimately, clearly there's some information that they want and there's a reason why Helena has now gone undercover, it seems to participate in that. But why they're bringing back the other two members of the team to accomplish that bit, I'm not really sure. But it seems clear to me that overall the proclamation that oh, actually you guys are heroes. Mission accomplished, great job. Systemic change achieved is a pacific technique.
- [59:31]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, we do get some world building information out of the other team, the bizarro team that we get. Just love Bald Balaban.
- [59:42]
Rob Mahoney
Always so good.
- [59:43]
Joanna Robinson
So Mark W. You know, this might be all we get of them. Might be one and done in this episode and that would be too bad. But this idea that like they had different carpet, different.
- [59:56]
Rob Mahoney
The different.
- [59:56]
Joanna Robinson
Different piece colored keyboards. And then Dario, the Italian that he was like, our Egans were brooms with plates for faces. And do you have an elevator? We had a rope, like so I'm just envisioning them being like lowered down via rope. It, you know, I, I believe all of that stuff in terms of like there is world. We are in Kiertown, a company town, Cure town, usa. Well, maybe USA this state because there's, you know, God bless the Reddit detectives, as you know. But like PE is the abbreviation for the state that they're in, which is not a real estate. But that there are Lumen offices and severed programs throughout the US that is like true inside of the world building.
- [60:48]
Rob Mahoney
Here within the the inner world during their what in sweet Clippy hell presentation that they're given. I think there was some factoid in there about like it's. Oh, it's in three over 300 countries throughout the world. And I'm gonna call bullshit on that bit.
- [61:04]
Joanna Robinson
I don't know, maybe that seems really fact checked. I mean this.
- [61:08]
Rob Mahoney
Maybe that's giving the world too much credit. Honestly.
- [61:10]
Joanna Robinson
This is a public facing video, right? This isn't just for.
- [61:14]
Rob Mahoney
That's what they say.
- [61:15]
Joanna Robinson
Core 3.
- [61:16]
Rob Mahoney
I think what Milchick says is all of the new severed employees will be shown this 100%.
- [61:21]
Joanna Robinson
That is what he says. But I also feel like it's for like the nervous board members who want to feel like they can claim that they don't endorse an evil corporation or corporate slavery or whatever it is, but.
- [61:35]
Rob Mahoney
Those people would know that the stop motion puppet macro dat revolution did not inspire any actual change in the real world, you know, So I think there'd be too many things in that video that real people above the world of the severed Floor, I guess below the world of the severed floor. Could call bullshit on for it to be for public consumption.
- [61:56]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I wouldn't put it past the. The fear mongering among like Rickon's intellectual friends about. Not fear mongering, like also intellectual. Yeah, the dinnerless dinner partygoers.
- [62:14]
Rob Mahoney
It's so good. Fucking dinnerless dinner party.
- [62:19]
Joanna Robinson
About Lumen's overreach and about the severed program. I wouldn't put it past this world to have, you know, a severed program in every. In 300 countries. But. But to your point, and we should always remember it, don't believe everything you're told, especially not by Lubin. All right, do you want to talk about the. What we get at the very end of the episode when we get sort of a little bit of information about what this macro data refinement process is actually doing. Accomplishing here?
- [62:53]
Rob Mahoney
We do get something.
- [62:55]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, I don't.
- [62:55]
Rob Mahoney
I don't know what we got, but we got something.
- [62:58]
Joanna Robinson
Okay. So I can't wait. We're recording this a little early. I can't wait for the Reddit detectives to screen grab these. This image of Ms. Casey that we get at the end of the episode. But I did pull. I did try to do my best Rob Mahoney impression and pull some. Some words. Here we get 20. The. This is the 25th build. There's the. There's the number 25. And then next to it says build.
- [63:29]
Rob Mahoney
Yes.
- [63:29]
Joanna Robinson
Which to Me means like Mach 25. Of like that is this if we're building an artificial Ms. Casey, which kind of seems like the implication to me.
- [63:42]
Rob Mahoney
It'S at least hinted that way.
- [63:46]
Joanna Robinson
Like the one we scrapped at the end of season one was perhaps build 24. And this is build 25. That mark is refining data under the name Coldharbor. And all of the sort of files that they're working on have names of real towns in the US And I can give you my absolute cuckoo bananas theory on that, but I would love to hear it. But the screen, the Ms. Casey screen at the end is like also Cole Harper and this is her face. And.
- [64:25]
Rob Mahoney
And the way it's shown visually is sort of like if you look through the ambiguous numbers that are being bucketed in his work, it's like this is. It's intimated that this is sort of the layer of truth behind.
- [64:36]
Joanna Robinson
Behind. He's at 68%. And that screen's at 68%.
- [64:39]
Rob Mahoney
68%, exactly.
- [64:40]
Joanna Robinson
So like 68% built. This was like a theory in season one that he was Able to his freshman fluke, his, like, ability to refine the data faster than anyone else was because he was always working on building a version of his wife, and he knows his wife better than other people. Like, that was sort of a common theory. Does this feel like a confirmation of that to you, or.
- [65:10]
Rob Mahoney
I'm not quite sure. That's where I am stumbling on the Is mark important by coincidence or important by design? Because, yes, it does seem like he is in some way contributing to a reassembly of his dead wife or maybe not dead wife in some fashion. And particularly the fact that the numbers are grouped by a sense of feel. It's just like you look at the number and you intuitively feel something is correct and you put them into a bucket. Makes me feel like that is his consciousness identifying something that is familiar to him in something about her. Right, but how does that relate to everyone else in the room and anyone else working in macro data reform? Like, do they have their own versions of that, or are they all working on misconceptions?
- [65:54]
Joanna Robinson
I was wondering that because something I wrote in my notes when rewatching season one is when Helly Helena is in the break room, and she talks about hearing, like, an angry man sort of mumbling behind the audio in. In the break room. And Dylan says he heard a kid crying. And so I'm wondering if, like, if that person for her is a version of her dad and that person for Dylan is one of his kids. You know what I mean? And for Irving, perhaps his father, who we see was serving in the Navy. So is there a person in their life that the severance program is making them work on building? You know, are they assigned a person somehow?
- [66:50]
Rob Mahoney
Certainly speaks to the revolving possibility. Jo.
- [66:53]
Joanna Robinson
I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
- [66:56]
Rob Mahoney
And it gives Helena a dual purpose in doing severance in the first place, participating in this element of the work. Right. There's the PR benefit of, like, look, I am an executive, or at least the daughter of the CEO of this company doing this thing. And also, I'm helping, hypothetically create my dying father a new vessel to live in.
- [67:18]
Joanna Robinson
I was. I was reading through some Reddit theories this morning, and someone was like, this sounds very Westworld. And I'm like, it does. It really does. It does sound.
- [67:25]
Rob Mahoney
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
- [67:29]
Joanna Robinson
Season one a good thing. Further on, we have some, but we're.
- [67:32]
Rob Mahoney
In season two now.
- [67:33]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, so we'll see. Cold harbor and Allentown are at least two of the places in Culpepper and there's like, a few others. And I think in an interview, Ben Stillers says something pretty loose and vague, just like, we picked US Cities. But I was wondering if there was, like, a significance to which US Cities. They picked Cold harbor and Allentown and Culpepper and a few other places. But. But I did not check all of them. So this could be very quickly, sort of. But are all had important Civil War moments occur or battles or incidences. And Lumen was founded in 1865, which is the year the Civil War ended. So, like, that's all. That's the extent of my theory.
- [68:29]
Rob Mahoney
Wow.
- [68:29]
Joanna Robinson
Something, something, Civil War. I don't know.
- [68:31]
Rob Mahoney
Something, something, Civil War. Something, something red and blue. Something, something split. Like, there's a lot of things happening here.
- [68:36]
Joanna Robinson
Absolutely. Like, I was like, Civil War raging, like, inside of us. I don't know. So I don't know if that's intentional. Probably you could make a Civil War argument for a lot of the cities on the eastern seaboard.
- [68:50]
Rob Mahoney
Very true.
- [68:50]
Joanna Robinson
But.
- [68:51]
Rob Mahoney
But I like where your head's at. We're going to need more yarn to connect all that. But I. I like where we're going.
- [68:56]
Joanna Robinson
I have an endless supply of. I actually have a ball of yarn right here. This is just.
- [68:59]
Rob Mahoney
You have skins and skins.
- [69:01]
Joanna Robinson
I do have skins. I'm always skiing.
- [69:02]
Rob Mahoney
Oh, we know that.
- [69:04]
Joanna Robinson
Okay, so what else? Anything else you want to make sure that we address?
- [69:09]
Rob Mahoney
I think I am curious to see with Milchick. You know, the Severed Floor is under new management. He's running this thing now. He very much wants the welcome screen on his computer to reflect that he.
- [69:20]
Joanna Robinson
Needs a new welcome screen.
- [69:22]
Rob Mahoney
Why is it that he is so bothered or so haunted or so perturbed by Cobell, like, they didn't have the best relationship, but it seems like there's more obviously to that welcome screen situation than just like, oh, I want to be honored for my contributions.
- [69:38]
Joanna Robinson
So he's the one who ratted her out. So do you think that, like, Irving's previous incarnation of his innie, he is like, a true believer and he believes that she sort of, like, besmirched the good quote, unquote, good works they're meant to be doing there.
- [69:57]
Rob Mahoney
I mean, look behind that megawatt smile. I would believe anything is going on, which is why that character is so great. I have a hard time believing that he's that big of a. Of a dunce. It does seem like Cobell is a patsy, not a. And even as he's. Even as he is saying that, like, I don't think he thinks that he knows too much.
- [70:17]
Joanna Robinson
Oh, the erotic throw business.
- [70:19]
Rob Mahoney
The erotic throw. And the idea that, like, oh, she was the one responsible for all of the abusive practices happening here. The break room.
- [70:26]
Joanna Robinson
Of course she's being blamed, but, like, wouldn't he be eager to do that if it meant preserving the good name of a company that he believed in the larger work? I don't have a good answer for you, obviously so. But I think it is an interesting additional layer that they put on his character inside of this episode.
- [70:47]
Rob Mahoney
I'm gonna guess no. And I say that simply because he and Cobell are shown to be such opposites in so many ways. And she, in addition to her fixation on Mark, also seems to be like, if not a true believer, at least obsessed with the Kier Egan mission and has her own little shrine to the company slash cult.
- [71:06]
Joanna Robinson
I think there are different versions of True Believer, you know what I mean? There's like this zealot, which she was to a certain degree. And then there's the like by the book rules and regulations matter kind of thing.
- [71:20]
Rob Mahoney
He could be that for sure.
- [71:21]
Joanna Robinson
I don't know.
- [71:22]
Rob Mahoney
He's certainly a striver.
- [71:23]
Joanna Robinson
Pineapplebobbingmail.com if you have some theory about that. Or prestige tvotify.com if you have a theory about that. Anything else you want to make sure that we mention?
- [71:34]
Rob Mahoney
I just want to give a shout out to Dylan because I feel like narratively we didn't talk about him a lot in this episode, but just has, as often is the case with this show. Banger line after banger line. Fuck, there's easels up. There was probably my thing that has.
- [71:47]
Joanna Robinson
To have been an improv. Like, I really hope that that was a Zachary improv. It was so good.
- [71:51]
Rob Mahoney
Tremendous stuff.
- [71:53]
Joanna Robinson
Yeah, I just. Oh, also, I want to shout out in the. In the. Amongst the new snacks at Lumen. Christmas Mints, salsa, fruit leather, cut beans. What's a cut bean? Is that like green beans in a can? Is that what that is?
- [72:12]
Rob Mahoney
I would love to find. I mean, it does sound like a healthy corporate approved snack. In fact, I can't tell you for certain that there aren't cut beans in the Spotify office.
- [72:20]
Joanna Robinson
I know there aren't and you know there aren't. We know about all of them.
- [72:24]
Rob Mahoney
I'm not so sure. I do love that about this show. Like, obviously there's a lot of postmodern version of a corporate malaise thing happening all throughout severance and it's what Makes the setting so evocative and works so well. The overall like Mark S versus Mark W sort of thing brought this out of me where it's like I love. What I love about severance is it feels like the writers room got together and ranked from 1 to 100. The most annoying things about being in a white collar desk job and they didn't bother with numbers 1 through 70, they just looked at 71 through 100 and they're like someone has the same first name as you. That is an annoyance of office life that we want to harp on for this little moment in a show that we probably will not touch on ever again. But it's what makes it so great.
- [73:10]
Joanna Robinson
Around the mark wow post it debacle. I do want to say wrathfully, you're innie Mark W is an incredible way to sign off a post it and I think we should start doing that. And then also Aaliyah Shawkat's delivery of do you even have a brother in law asshole. Also her asking about wind. Yeah.
- [73:32]
Rob Mahoney
Is it just like someone breathing on you?
- [73:34]
Joanna Robinson
Very good stuff. Very good stuff. All right, so that's Severin. Season 2 Episode 1 We had a blast. We're gonna continue to do this week to week and we're so excited. We will be digging into all the theories, all your questions, comments or concerns. I got a little deep, but like a little too deep. But I need to shallow it up into the idea of like how memory works and like the kinds of memory.
- [74:00]
Rob Mahoney
Like procedural memory. Is that what you're talking about? What are you, what are you whiffing on here?
- [74:05]
Joanna Robinson
I. I don't. I don't know the way the brain works. Long term memory, explicit memory, implicit memory, all this sort of stuff like that. I just sort of like what kind of what could you actually do to a brain to achieve what you do with severance? And like what would that bring out? What is it saying about nature versus nurture? Who is heli. Who could have Helena been if she hadn't been raised by assholes? Could she have been helly who we quite like? So you know all these are great questions asked. Do you have anything you want to say about the severance pop up that they did in New York this week?
- [74:48]
Rob Mahoney
A phenomenal throwback to a time I didn't know existed anymore. I love this sort of marketing and I think it helped for me, Joe, just crystallize the idea of severance as. And this, I mean I think this is the effect of a thing that's so heavily anticipated that people are really looking forward to. And so it's less to me the existence of the pop up of them mulling about their office space and doing the little. It's not a vacuum. What is that little roller cleaner thing called? Oh, I don't know, like the little carpet cleaner across the green felt. It's like what they're doing and the fact that they're doing it is not that important. But the outsized response and how psyched people were to see this thing that they loved and are looking forward to that has been cool.
- [75:29]
Joanna Robinson
Here are my two notes. So in case people didn't see, they put a glass box inside of Grand Central Station in New York and did a little like the four cube cubicle setup of the office space. They had three of the core four in there and then Milchick and Cobell were also in there. So they got Patty there, Patricia Arquette's there, Oscar. I'm like, johnny, Johnny Turturro. What were you doing that you were too good for the severance pop up? I was like, they couldn't get Turturro. It's a no for me.
- [76:06]
Rob Mahoney
He's doing some Batman shit. I don't need to worry about it.
- [76:10]
Joanna Robinson
All right. I'm excited. I love this show. I'm so excited it's back. I'm so excited to talk about it with you. As we mentioned, we'll be back for the Agency wrap up up next week along with season two, episode two of Severance and more of the Pit. So if you are a macrodata refinement expert, a a CIA spy or a medical professional and you would like to email us.
- [76:36]
Rob Mahoney
Yeah. Or if you have worked a desk job that you suspected in your heart of hearts might have actually been a, a like a covered up attempt to resuscitate a dead relative of yours. I would love to hear about it@applebobbingmail.com.
- [76:49]
Joanna Robinson
Or if you assume some other thoughts and feelings about what one should sever their way through. If it's not expense reports, I would.
- [76:57]
Rob Mahoney
Love to hear that. I think, I think, I think the birthing process might be a popular one.
- [77:02]
Joanna Robinson
It's a real doozy. It's a real good one. Pineapplebobbingmail.com presstvpotify.com thank you to Justin Sales for his work across this feed. In general, he's the best. Thank you to Kai Grady who is also the best representation producing this episode. And we will see you all next week. Bye.