"Severance" Thread ; "But I'm her, Mark. I'm her."

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fourheels said:
Was Burt in on the espionage? Luring Irv out of the house so Mr. Frolic could go snooping?
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It certainly appeared so. And Walter, I mean Fields, let slip.

But was Irv ever truly severed?

And why was Helena push Marc Outitie’s buttons? Doesn’t it seem like the entire “outside” is entirely about manipulating something to do with the MDR innies?
 
BTW, what was up with Milchick? He seems about to snap … but who is his grow up message really for (I get it was ostensibly a response to the “anonymous” complaint about using too many big words, but it seemed like there was some subtext intended)?

And the meeting between Mark and Helena seemed designed to push him to complete the reintegration process, which makes me suspect that the reintegration lady is also part of the Lumon plot rather than an insider gone rogue. But it was interesting to get confirmation that outtie Mark knows who Helena is (due to her relative fame as an Egan and head of his company).
 
nycfan said:
BTW, what was up with Milchick? He seems about to snap … but who is his grow up message really for (I get it was ostensibly a response to the “anonymous” complaint about using too many big words, but it seemed like there was some subtext intended)?

And the meeting between Mark and Helena seemed designed to push him to complete the reintegration process, which makes me suspect that the reintegration lady is also part of the Lumon plot rather than an insider gone rogue. But it was interesting to get confirmation that outtie Mark knows who Helena is (due to her relative fame as an Egan and head of his company).
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I think milkshake is seething at Huang, who clearly was behind the stupid complaints he got in the review

I think reghabi is legit trying to bring Lumon
 
aGDevil2k said:
I think milkshake is seething at Huang, who clearly was behind the stupid complaints he got in the review

I think reghabi is legit trying to bring Lumon
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I think his anger at Ms. Huang is the surface bit, but the real resentment is aimed at Lumon itself. And I couldn’t help but think that the grow up message was ultimately to himself, though hard to know what that means to him right now.
 
Healing said:
He is seething but the “grow!” scene, IMO, was Milchick imploring himself to lean into his doubts about Lumon. It was a “Will, it’s not your fault” moment, except a character talking to himself.
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Oh no I think that's clear... From last week to getting mad at Huang, he's growing in anti luminosity
 
Didn't know they did this

www.linkedin.com

Lumon Industries | LinkedIn

Lumon Industries | 66,776 followers on LinkedIn. Giving employees the best work environment they’ll never know, with our patented and extremely safe Severance procedure. | Lumon is a fictitious company from the Apple Original Series, Severance, streaming on Apple TV+ Lumon Industries is a...
www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com
 
aGDevil2k said:
Oh no I think that's clear... From last week to getting mad at Huang, he's growing in anti luminosity
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I can see this both ways. He could be drilling himself, like becoming his own drill Sergeant, focusing all the way down to just ritually chanting "grow," to cleanse his mind of the bad thoughts about not liking the paintings, or shaking off the desire of being humanistic with the MDR group and having that backfire. Fixing the paperclips on all those stacks seems to manifest pure OCD behavior in line with serving the cult of Lumon.

Or, the signals we saw before are a "growing" trend, and inside he is indeed rebelling. He had been given some freedom to get MDR to produce, and with his evaluation it's clear that has been removed. His building anger is carving "grow up" (which seems to be anger at Ms. Huang) down to "grow" repeated at himself in the mirror. Is the anger the seed of future sabatoge?
 
fourheels said:
Was Burt in on the espionage? Luring Irv out of the house so Mr. Frolic could go snooping?
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It looks that way, and Mr. Frolic has keys to all severed employees. How much they monitor all of them is a huge issue and may be very inconsistent, as they never found Petey at Mark Scott's house. Nor have they found any of Reghabi's work with Mark Scout, while Ms. Cabel and Mr Frolic were on that trail after events with Petey and his demise. This could be a recent extra level concern with Irving as outie. He used his paintings (obvious knowledge inside the workings of Lumon) to try to blast through memory to his innie via subconscious and dreams, a variation on what Mark Scout tried with burning "who is alive?" into his vision.
 
I am GROWing my own conspiracy theory that Lumon knows of Regahbi's project of reintegration of Mark, and they have a new curiosity if this is possible. I am not convinced at all; just examining this wild notion as a possibility. If he goes to the hospital they gain control of him, as shown with Gemma. I wonder if Mark Scott is captured in this way, and if Gemma and seeing her is held out as motivation to do what they say, as innie Dylan is cooperative to keep getting his romantic time with his outie wife.

Much focus of others is on clues about next week, which suggest death {~!~} or near death for Mark, given the title Chikhai Bardo. This video is one of the best on what that means, a Tibetan stage of death, and possible implications:

 
Horrific nightmare. Tragedy.

Well, that was about the saddest and most deeply disturbing episode of television I have ever seen. Also, this one told the story far more with images rather than words, very much in the style of Kubrick. The torture of Gemma is unspeakable (painful dentistry to fully test severance), and Robbie Benson as a modern Dr. Mengele is both inspired in the most twisted way, and unavoidably, slightly amusing. Also: he was utterly perfect in the role. A series that has been deeply bizarre has just turned into the depths of sorrow and horror, with all we are now given of Lumon's depravity.
 
an0maly said:
Horrific nightmare. Tragedy.

Well, that was about the saddest and most deeply disturbing episode of television I have ever seen. Also, this one told the story far more with images rather than words, very much in the style of Kubrick. The torture of Gemma is unspeakable (painful dentistry to fully test severance), and Robbie Benson as a modern Dr. Mengele is both inspired in the most twisted way, and unavoidably, slightly amusing. Also: he was utterly perfect in the role. A series that has been deeply bizarre has just turned into the depths of sorrow and horror, with all we are now given of Lumon's depravity.
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Saw this on Reddit. I am all in with this:

  • Theory is that the chips will be sold as a way to sever your mind during bad/annoying experiences (like turbulence, going to the dentist, writing thank you cards) and Gemma is the person they are testing this on and Mark is brought in to refine her chip as he knows her the best.
Also saw this "So it seems to me like Lumon is trying to create a severance chip that gets toggled on whenever someone experiences discomfort. This would give every outie a “perfect” life, where their tempers are always tamed.
Right now, Severance is an on/off thing. But what if they could put a test subject through negative situations, and then refined the data from the test subject to create a version of the chip that was triggered not by a location or on/off switch, but by the emotional temperament of the individual?"

Also, it's clear Lumon ran the IVF clinic she went to with Mark. And that's how she got targeted. Milkshake, Helena, all of them are complicit in torture. Maybe like Milkshake doesn't KNOW the details of her being down there, but he fully knows that she's this captive unavailable to leave. It will be hard to have a redemption arc for any of them after this episode.

They said he (weird doctor in love with her) won't see her again after she goes into Cold Harbor. Does she die in there? Does she drown? Or do they stop the testing and release some fucked up version of her into the wild?

There is something weird about Devon. She's way too attached to her brother. I mean lady where the hell is your kid??
 
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I sincerely apologize for linking this perky freak (I'd kind of like to run him over with a steam roller {nerf steamroller}), but in this video he does examine all of the torture and sadness in this last episode. To reduce the perkiness nausea, you can lower the speed to .75.

 
The Mark and Gemma backstory was very enlightening. With Gemma definitely alive and seemingly aware of who she is and who Mark is to some degree, it also raises lots of questions about how she wound up as Lumon's guinea pig. Clearly Lumon was involved with the fertility clinic so that's part of it. Was she "resurrected" by Lumon technology after the car accident? Did she even die in the accident or was she whisked away to Lumon afterward. Was there really even a car accident? Did she wind up at Lumon by some other means, even her own choice? Also sets the viewer up to choose couples to root for - Innie Mark and Helly or outie Mark and Gemma.
 
She was kidnapped IMO

Lumon is clearly trying to sell a way to avoid all unpleasant experiences in life but if Cold Harbor is her drowning, then she's totally dead. Or is it near death? But the creepy guy can't see her again

I don't know why Gemma thought the elevator escape would work. She's gone in it dozens of times and knows it's a severance passage
 
Really liked this episode and though it had call-backs to several other sci-fi and weird fiction shows, but an intriguing one for me reminded me of Blade Runner the question to Gemma about being in a mudslide was very much like the empathy test questions asked in Blade Runner to determine whether someone was a person or a replicant. Also the focus on eyes reminded me of Blade Runner (and of course Lost).

Not sure what that means, if anything, but thought it was striking.

The strangely outdated computers/tech in Severance remind me of Blade Runner as well.

IMG_5328.webp
 
nycfan said:
Really liked this episode and though it had call-backs to several other sci-fi and weird fiction shows, but an intriguing one for me reminded me of Blade Runner the question to Gemma about being in a mudslide was very much like the empathy test questions asked in Blade Runner to determine whether someone was a person or a replicant. Also the focus on eyes reminded me of Blade Runner (and of course Lost).

Not sure what that means, if anything, but thought it was striking.

The strangely outdated computers/tech in Severance remind me of Blade Runner as well.

IMG_5328.webp
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Agreed on the above, but that eye shot double-references back to similar ones Kubrick created for the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Eyes were a big motif in that film (the leopard's; HAL is shown as Cyclops like eye; and in the "trip" sequence where Bowman is given all conceptual knowledge the coda visual metaphor in his own mind is we see his eye transform through various colors until the final one is flesh color.

~~~
On another note {pun alert}, above I wrote about the extreme strangeness of the music and how well it fits. Well there's a video for that. Even if you are not a musician or into music that much, I still think you will find this very intriguing:

 
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