Reacting to Severance Season 1 & 2: Theories, Clues You Missed, Questions We Still Need Answered & Why We Love this Show!
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The new series, Severance. Everyone's talking about Severance, so are we. Is this a comment on communism? Is it a comment on our government? The fact that no one knows the work that they're doing, but it's very important. What is the business model? You're going to bring people back from the dead? How are you making money?

Deep in their outie souls, they are in love. Is love powerful enough? To break through severance. The only thing that prevents integration or facilitates it is love. It's a love triangle across consciousness. Multiple parts of ourselves not trusting one another. Fascinating. What happens when you trust no one is you can't even trust yourself. That's what it is. There you go. There you go. Mic drop right there. Maybe Gretchen's dead too. We don't know it.

Okay, you're in a subreddit that has gone off the rails. So let's talk about overtime contingency. I think that was my favorite part of season one. They just want a little bit of information. Like, what do I do outside of there? Who am I? Every child has this crisis. We then have to spend our lives saying, what do I do with this? That was, I think, the best summation. Take that to Reddit.

Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to a very special MBB Reacts to Severance. Everyone's talking about Severance. So are we. And the reason we're talking about Severance is it has many philosophical implications to the things that we talk about here.

You may be used to coming here for our celebrity interviews and deep philosophical conversations with health experts and people exploring the edges of consciousness and spirituality. But today we are going to focus on the hit Apple TV show Severance. So often the shows that strike a chord in the public are a reflection of what's going on in society. Art is often a reflection of the public zeitgeist.

So can we see what's happening in the world by looking at the popular culture that is resonating with people? That's what we're here to talk about today. The main premise of severance in its simplest form is what if you could be one person at work and a totally different person at home? But what if your work personality has desires besides just what you think they're supposed to do at work?

And before we do get into more of the details of the episodes and the themes, there will be spoiler alerts. We need to say that. So if you haven't watched Severance, if you don't plan to, this episode is for you. But if you haven't seen the season finale of season two, do that and then come back here. There's a lot to learn about human nature, about desire, about mental health. We'd also love to know what people's favorite episode was. So please tell us below. A little bit of context here.

Adding to the explanation that you provided is that the split that we're talking about, the innie who goes to work has no recollection or understanding of what happens outside of work. And the person outside of work, the outie, as they're called, has no recollection of what happens inside of work. So one example is someone bruised their hand in one episode and they leave work and the

The Audi is like, I don't know. They just told me that I was loading a water bottle. It's a divide. It's a deep, deep divide. Right. And what the show is, it's a science fiction, you know, kind of exploration of what if there was this implant. Looks like it's going, I don't know, somewhere in the limbic system. I don't know if it's hippocampus. I can't really tell. I'd have to freeze the screen and zoom in. There's a hole in someone's head and they're drilling in. So generally we have no idea.

What we come to learn is that the entire kind of process is a larger experiment by this huge, huge corporation. And there's a lot to get into there. So some of the questions I had, and I've poked around a little bit in the Reddit universe because that's where people seem to talk about things. And there's been a lot of articles that we've also seen. I'm mostly curious if the actors knew when they were first hired what the trajectory of their character would be.

So, for example, the actress playing Helly, she's the opening shot of this show. She's laying on a table. She has no idea how she got there. She doesn't know who she is. She really can't answer anything. And there's an intercom asking her questions as she wakes up from this...

operation where her consciousness has been severed and she's in a meeting room, a conference room, lying on the table with no recollection of anything. So when I think about like what was her audition scene, right? Did she know that what is revealed at the end of season one is

is that her Audi is the heir of the entire company and this split allows someone who is an heir to the company to have an innie that is understanding the inner workings of the entire company did she know that like I'm just curious or if she was just like oh I'm gonna play the love interest

I mean, it's an amazing opening scene. It's so catchy. You're left enthralled. I'm like, what is happening? Where does this go? We're all different at work than we are at home for the most part. But what does it mean to be different? To what level are we different? You know, sometimes we work in a place where we have to

not share all the parts of us. When do we behave differently? When do we wear masks in our lives, not just at work, but even in relationships or in relationship with certain people, we all have like that person in our life that when we see them, it's like, Oh, I really don't feel like myself with this person. Right. Um, severance is showing this exaggerated sense of, um,

you know, really the dissociation that we have to encounter as we function in the world. You know, what we know from dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality disorder, is that different selves can have completely different physiological makeups, different parts. So in some very significant examples of dissociative identity disorder,

Sometimes parts will be right-handed or left-handed. They don't all have the same handedness. You can see, you know, basic physiological markers, blood pressure, things like that change significantly. There was one report, I can't remember what it was specifically, but like one part had diabetes and they found different markers for insulin processing.

Meaning, there are so many, you know, Severin's got this right, there are so many windows into who we are that are contained in one body that while we may not have this kind of procedure for separating us, this kind of separation is something that we are wired to do to some extent and some people can even experience to a greater extent.

The diabetes thing is like you have temporary diabetes when you are only expressing one of your personalities, like the complexity...

physiologically of that is profound. This leads to sort of a discussion of one of the aspects of corporate culture, which I think is such a perfect breeding ground for this show, for these characters, for this world that they live in. The coining of the generation that we call Gen X actually comes from a book called Generation X by Douglas Copeland. And it was this really, really delightful, strange book about...

the generation that we now call Generation X, who was mostly being kind of farmed out to these, he called them McOffices, like McDonald's, like a McOffice. And it was this notion that you kind of went from like college and you're like young and excited and then you're just put in a cubicle, you know, to kind of like punch the clock and interact with all these people. And there were certain aspects of the way, you know, Severance shows the actual, you know, kind of work environment that reminded me a lot of that

That awareness that the coining of Generation X brought. And I think that's what's so kind of sweet about this notion of an innie. Everything is new to them. You can introduce everything new to them. So the fact that like they're working in this like strange little cubicle, like it's just everything is so weird. I thought a lot about the Dilbert cartoons, like workplace cartoons.

fodder right um it kind of has this like simpsonsy edge like in terms of its its narrative obviously office space comes to mind how could it not um but there's always hints like throughout for me of like that kind of seinfeld inanity like things that don't make sense but are funny or interesting or worth observing for example the chinese finger traps the erasers

I think it's erasers. Like when Dylan goes and explains like what he gets for doing this work that no one understands what it is. Like also the fact that no one knows the work that they're doing, but it's very important. And the fact that they're all brainwashed by these principles that the company stands for and they're all so passionate to withhold these principles, but no one has any clue what the actual work is.

Like when you work in a very large organization and the company that I was at at one point got purchased by a large tech company.

And we went from like this very cool white couches and cool hangout spots. And everyone had like all these great snacks and teas. And it was like the epitome of sort of what we've come to understand as the, not the hippie startup, but like the, I guess nowadays it's almost passe. You know, there was like a, I think really at the end of Twitter, when Twitter started

was exposed for all the snacks they had and all the perks they had. When we went to the... When we got purchased by this company...

There was all of these sayings and phrases and this mandate and everyone was like, yay to the company, but it was 250,000 people all around the globe and no one had any idea what other departments would do. And you'd be like discovering things all the time. Like you wouldn't discover goats by any means and we'll get to the goats of it all. But there was this...

sense of corporate talk that no one outside of that organization had any clue what the acronyms would ever speak to. Yeah, the list that I sort of made was like inanity reigns. Like everything's like kind of seems inane. There are unspoken rules that only the higher ups know. The reward system is both infantile and infantilizing. You can't really present any real part of yourself having interests or opinions or perspectives. And

There are unseen bosses pulling the strings. You can't really file a complaint. You have no autonomy. It's essentially a totalitarian system. You don't have agency. The nature of the work you're doing is unknown even to you. And you're a cog in the machine. So in season one, I was like...

Is this a comment on communism? Is it a comment on our government? You know, is it a comment on the way we allow ourselves to be managed and controlled without having agency to be able to get out of it? Let's talk for a second about the ballgame.

Like the icebreaker ball game. Well, there's something also very, there's like a real kind of 80s vibe to it. Like that game reminds me of like being a kid in the 80s where you'd have to play like, you know, with the big parachute like after class. Like there's this very kind of austere sort of like

childish sort of vibe to a lot of it. Even the costume, I mean, these are all things that are selected specifically. And, you know, this is Ben Stiller's eye. And for anyone who hasn't seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, I highly, highly recommend it. You will see Ben Stiller's eye from Secret Life of Walter Mitty in Severance. Like, it's a very, very specific aesthetic. But,

But yeah, like the ball, the, um, like even the, the outfits that they wear, you know, I kept looking at Helly's outfits. She wears this like very sensible, low pump, you know, kind of like the rules about everything, but the actual work they do are very simple. Everything else is so complicated. The ball game for just a second, you're sitting there and you have to roll a ball in order to have your turn to talk.

And you have to say something about yourself, but these innies have no concept of who they are, so they can't really say anything. And the level of excitement and enthusiasm that they're supposed to show, like, that's the other thing is like, you can't just show up to work and do your task and get through it. You have to

pledge this excitement and enthusiasm like milchick is the greatest example of this the supervisor who comes in and he just has like this love for like when he brings the melon party i think he's one of the finest actors in the whole show his performance is so he's terrifying he's terrifyingly pleasant which if anyone's ever worked with a boss like that which maybe some of us have

He's terrifyingly pleasant, but he can turn on a dime. He uses words that you often don't understand, but asking doesn't work. He's the perfect, perfect, you know, kind of holder for that authoritarian boss. And that's actually, I think, what's so terrible. He's also a great dancer. A fantastic dancer in the second season.

But that's what's so fantastically terrifying about corporate culture. It's like, smile, everyone, we're having fun. He's taking pictures of like these dance parties and these, I use air quotes here, socials that they're having because they're rewards, but there's...

Only four of them ever. And the lights change. And now all of a sudden they're highly orchestrated. They're supposed to be having fun. And he's taking Polaroids and snap or old school film pictures of them trying to document how much fun they're having. And like Adam Scott is slowly dancing like in this most awkward way. It's very it's cringe. I mean, there's so much. There's so much cringe. And like that, I think, is a lot about the discontent.

corporate culture, it's like, oh, we can't actually be ourselves. We have to play these roles. And while we're doing that, we have to face

like we're having the greatest time ever so that everyone is happy and they don't turn on you because when they do turn, it is devastating. Yeah, I don't know. I think corporate culture is a great setting for it, but I don't know if this is that different than the way many of us feel in our families. If you think about what it was like to be a kid, if you were any variety of people

unhappy or different kind of kid you might feel this in your home you might feel this at school like to me it really is about the feeling that it evokes I also think you know

can we be effective at doing our part if we don't know the larger contribution that it makes? That's a question that comes up, you know, for specifically for these characters because they are doing, they're doing piecework, right? My grandparents worked in sweatshops, which was, you know, a form of labor that transformed the, the,

the economy, right? It transformed how we make cars. It transformed, you know, my grandparents made clothing, right? My grandfather put the back vent in men's jackets. That's what he did. And he went to a factory and he did, that's all he did. All he did was the back vent. All he did was the back vents, you know? And that was seen as productivity. But when I think about

gosh what was the structure of that kind of labor what is the structure of that kind of labor which still goes on obviously all over the world can we feel satisfaction if we don't get to be part of something bigger and so to me you know severance is also it's looking at kind of class stratification you know who gets to know who gets to know who gets to benefit um

There was also elements that reminded me of Squid Game in terms of the observation by, you know, an elite observer, which again is not... It has a lot of Big Brother vibes. A lot of Big Brother vibes. People are always being surveillanced, surveyed, but then all of a sudden they have freedom. Like there's... It's a little confusing. Yeah. So this is also a great time to bring up...

And the show that sort of began this genre, and I did a little bit of research, I'm not just making it up, Lost. I was a huge Lost fan. Huge, huge, devoted Lost fan. Even as it lost its way a little bit, I was still a diehard fan. And a lot of people are saying that, you know, Lost was kind of the first of...

What we now see was a genre of... It's a black box genre. It's a black box. It's a bunch of people who are placed somewhere, which also Jean-Paul Sartre did this half a century ago. Well, let's just touch on that for a second. Like we've all been placed here and we're kind of, there's a lot of unknowns in life and we're all just making the best of it.

Sartre tackled this as a philosopher, as a literary philosopher. And there's a very famous Twilight Zone episode that, you know, for many people is one of our faves.

Um, it's a bunch of people and they're all different characters. There's, I believe a ballerina, there's a clown. And the metaphor is that that's essentially what we, not to be a downer, but that's essentially what we're experiencing as humans. We're all put here. We're all trying to figure it out. There's kind of like no way out, no exit. Um, and we have to figure it out with limited information. And if you do believe in some sort of like power greater than yourselves or some sort of deity, um,

There is an overseer that is observing your pain, your suffering, your struggles, your joys, and is experiencing that in a way that you don't have access to. Definitely, you know, for me, we're elements of that lost narrative of we're all trying to figure it out. There's all these mysteries. There's all these questions of do you have free will? Do you not? The thing that is different to my understanding is that

with Lost, like they admitted, the writers and the creators admitted they didn't really have a game plan. It was like, let's see what happens if we put a polar bear here. Um,

Like, let's just see what happens. Um, with Severance, my understanding is that they knew, they knew from, from its inception and presumably the actors may have known, um, what roles they would play, for example, Helly, but that there is a larger plan. What I was told is that if you watch the behind the scenes, it actually helps you more. And now I'm kind of thinking maybe I need to go back and do that. Um,

There's a lot, lot, lot of Easter eggs, which is also a feature of Lost and a feature of many, many shows that I've also watched, like Fringe and all these other things that have touched on this. And there are Easter eggs throughout. I'm going to throw out one of my favorite Easter eggs that I didn't even know was an Easter egg.

So Mark is at his sister's and brother-in-law's house for a party. And his brother-in-law has written this very, very bizarro kind of... New agey self-help. New agey kind of like pedantic like...

pointless but very pointed book about our existence. And he's got all these people at the party that are like his fans. And I didn't give much thought to it. I needed a crutch and Jonathan served as that crutch. That being said... One moment where I was that crutch was...

Patricia Arquette, when it's revealed that she's Mark's neighbor, you did not see that coming. Oh, I see nothing. I walked out of the Sixth Sense at the Century City Mall. I came down the escalator. At the bottom of the escalator, I was like, oh my God. That's how long it took me. Literally, the movie ended. I went out. I peed. I still didn't get it. Look, everyone processes in their own time. I have a real problem. Anyway, so that's how I watched Severance. But-

We're at the party. And one of my favorite things was this woman, Rebecca. And I just loved it because I was like, is that short for Rebecca? That's so cute. I've never thought of that.

I mean, you have a cousin, Rebecca. I do, but I never thought of shortening it to Rebecca. I don't know. I should ask her if she'd like that. Anyway, so the woman says that she's self-conscious because her bird- Has pecked the back of her head. Has pecked the back of her head. And I was like, that's just like, well, Jonathan was like, look, it's a friend for you. You like strange friends? I do like strange friends. You also had a bird once? I did have a bird. I did have a bird.

It never occurred to me to think anything more of it, even after we learned that the procedure involves a hole in the back of your head. So now I'm like down this rabbit hole on Reddit with all these people who are like, are all of his brother-in-law's followers who are so obsessed with his book.

Are they all either former severed, current severed? They've all had the procedure. So what went from me being like, oh, what a quirky, weird thing. It's actually a thing. So that's why I think I may need a little more support. There's layers to this. There's a lot of layers to everything. There's a lot of layers. Yes. Let's get into some of the specific episode moments that struck us.

So like we're going to do some broad strokes because we're going to get through all two seasons. I should mention, because I think it is the other kind of large theme that besides the corporate culture, the cult components of the show are very powerful and also very disturbing. You know, there's a reverence for a leader in this case, kind of an unseen leader who

Um, real, real lack of clarity about purpose, meaning for the people who are working crazy hierarchy, crazy hierarchy. And also just even the way, you know, when we said, when we had Steve Husson on the cult expert, he talked about the, even the way that speech is organized in a cult. And I thought about Milchick and Ms. Wong's like stilted speech and, and,

you know, the need for repetition, you know, is Severance also showing you what religion can look like? The lore, the stories that are told and passed down and the way we do that. And obviously that's the purpose of religion, but the way that they are utilized in Severance is to create a cult. And what we get to see is four people in varying stages of kind of not buying it and getting to break that, which I think is fascinating.

The break room specifically was where they would be sent when there was something wrong done. Reminded me of what I've heard about Scientology. The conditioning that goes on in Scientology. And they have to read a statement over and over again. And there's, I guess, a lie detector being attached to them. Something that's monitoring some sort of physical response to know if they mean it enough. And having to actually go through that. First of all, the like...

From a cult standpoint, the fact that the world, the harm they have caused the world for neglecting in their work, the sense of importance that's built into something like this, which is very cult-like. Very cult-like, but also very religious-like. I mean, it's also become very political-like. Like, for example, I don't want to take a shot, but Elon Musk says often, if this doesn't happen, it's going to be the end of humanity. Yeah.

Well, I think that, you know, the way that that religion, you know, is able to, you know, for lack of a better word, control people is by creating an omniscient God and not all religions, but creating an omniscient God that sees all and knows all. And, you know, for many people who were raised with this kind of dogma, for lack of a better word,

It's what keeps you from sinning, right? Now, that's the way that we control behavior. So this kind of notion, yes, gets extrapolated in a cult to an internal, and Steve hasn't talked about this, to an internal sense of sin.

monitoring and self-monitoring and monitoring of others and that's also what happens we see you know the the Irving character allows us to see the stricter more disciplined you know which when we learn what his Audi is like we see that that's actually a person who's investigating and deeply skeptical and concerned about what's going on on the inside but on the inside he is totally um

the standard bearer. Like he's the rule follower. He knows every passage of this handbook of what's accepted, what isn't accepted. He's the Bible thumper. Yeah. Really extreme. There's only one moment in the first season that I remember where Mark comes back from the break room and then his Audi, that's the moment where he's been injured. He's been injured in the break room. So it's like, oh,

whatever was happening there, he wasn't sorry enough and they sort of had to take it to the next level. And that's where you sort of, of course, there's, it seems like there's malice all over the place in the potential for what the company could do. But that's like when you see, oh, wait a second, if they're not in line, there's going to be some other repercussion. But you can't like send the innie back to the main world without,

with physical damage, otherwise they're gonna be like, wait a second, what's gonna go on? Before you go on to your next point, I think we should talk about the appeal for resignation.

So Heliar, who is the newest character, and it's like a trope. It's not a trope. It's a technique of shows. You have to have the... Either you start with episode one or you start with episode 12. And in episode 12, the world has already happened and you need to enter the world through the eyes of a new character. So the new character is Heli. Heli enters and of course she wants to leave immediately because she's like...

F this. She doesn't have the dogma. She's not bought in. She doesn't believe in the work. She thinks it's ridiculous. She sees through all the, she dies of the audience. They're like, she sees Milchik and she's like, what the heck is this guy? I don't want a melon party, even though melon is delicious. I don't want these rewards. I can't do the work. The work doesn't mean anything. And she tries to resign. Tell us about that.

So the process for resigning involves, you know, a series of back and forths, essentially between your innie and your outie. Your outie has the ability to record a video message, a technique which is utilized heavily in the season finale of season two.

And you, as your innie, the next day when you get to work, get to see the message that your outie has recorded. Because only your outie can actually allow you to quit. Correct. Because the outie has sent this part of you to... Well, the outie is the sentient part that is actually aware of what's going on. The innie becomes aware because they are told you have an outie. But yeah, for her, and this happens with...

different characters in different ways throughout the show, this notion of push and pull is what we get to experience. I do want to talk about what happens in the season finale with the conversation between Mark's Innie and his outie. There's a couple points that I found kind of curious or problematic.

Um, that method of storytelling didn't necessarily work for me just because it went on for so long. But I also was thinking like, gosh, there's not that many ways to convey just thinking as a writer, thinking as a director, there's not that many ways to convey this information back and forth without having them communicate that way. I mean, the only other way would have been to put them sort of in a split screen, communicating with one another. But

There's a larger theme here about change. Mm-hmm.

What part of you wants to change? What part of you wants to hold on? What are you moving towards? Is it fear? Is it not? I wonder if that struck you from like a therapeutic standpoint, this negotiating sort of parts work style. Yeah. I mean, I think it is interesting. I think, you know, we've talked about things like constellation therapy or internal family systems where you really do get to sort of dip into other parts of you and it's considered healthy, right?

to sort of flesh out their needs, their desires. Um, especially if you're working with like younger parts, like when people talk about like inner child work, you know, sometimes the younger parts are petulant. Sometimes they're angry about things that can't be fixed and it's the adult that says like, well, that doesn't make sense or why should I voice that? Um, so yeah, this definitely gives, you know, gives credence to that. But, um, I want to touch on, so for me, the, the back and forth in the end of season two, that was a little

a little, it went on a little long for me, but I understand we needed that information. Another concern that I had, in a company like this,

I would assume that surveillance is much heavier than it was. And sometimes it is like there's a shot at one point, I don't know what episode, where they're in their computer, they're watching everything, and then other times they're allowed to speak and move around. Yeah, and this isn't like a heavy criticism, but I was just interested in that they were able to find places where they could communicate privately, which was very important. The other thing, and this is something that I really cannot wait, there's going to be more seasons, like there has to be. They can't leave me like this.

One of my other favorite actors is Devin, who plays Mark's sister. I just think she is so, so... I just think she's fantastic. And she's so natural. And I just love her performance. I don't get why she's with her husband. The personalities are so different. Opposites attract. So that's what...

Have you been on Reddit? Nope. That's what a lot of people on Reddit, they're like, oh, she just understands and accepts him for the way he is. And then he finally has moments of vulnerability. And I'm like, there's something here that is not, it's not sitting right. It almost seems, here's my theory. It almost seems like there's some arrangement that she's forced to be part of, to be with him. That's your hot take for the future. It may not be as hot as all of you on Reddit, but it is my hot take. But there's something going on there.

with her and with him and I always you know it's very hard for me to get like lost in a show I don't really do that I'm like is it a casting thing meaning if they had cast you know a different actor as the brother as Rick and like would I feel differently and I I don't think that's it it's the character of Rick and his writing is so his his hyper like sincerity and she's so

grounded. She and Mark have this really adorable like brother sister dynamic and they're always kind of like joking with each other and kind of like messing with each other and it's like very kind of self-deprecating and they just like I think they call each other like my lady and you know like they have funny sibling things and then there's this guy who just like it just doesn't doesn't fit and with with Gemma you know with Miss Casey. Yeah. With with that character we get to see in this you know very romantic romantic

which honestly, it was beautiful. It was gorgeous. It was shot beautifully. It did have vibes of this particular lost episode where you really get like all the romance. Um,

But like, I needed to get back to the plot. I needed to get back into the office. Her character, we get to see what she's like. And you see her and Mark have a dynamic that is so different from the way they interact as their innies. I'm not getting that with Devin and Rick. There's not an interaction. No, I don't see them privately like having good times or like inside jokes. She's like, why did I have this baby with him?

She seems a little bit annoyed, although there's a moment in the car when he's dropping off the book for Mark that you can kind of feel her being kind of entertained by his enthusiasm. There's something there. Let's do a quick overview of season one, a few of the standout moments, because we're deep in season two. We're almost finished, but let's take a step back. Episode one, Mark gets promoted. That also was a moment for me where...

if we're speaking about corporate culture,

his best friend in the world gets removed and there's this bittersweet of like, oh, it's so painful and yet I have to go on and something good is going to happen for me. That kind of speaks to some of the push and pull. The company is going to do whatever they want. They're not going to tell anyone. He knows that something isn't right and yet he has to sort of tow company line. Any thoughts on that moment? I mean, that was, you know, such a perfect introduction into sort of the emotional regulation that's required in a company.

you know, in this show, in this scenario, and again, in life, that sense of real injustice, but there not being a place for it or a place to even voice it. - It's also the compartmentalization that happens even, like it's compartmentalization within compartmentalization, meaning the innie has to compartmentalize and not really be able to have any personality.

Episode two, obviously, Heli gets into macro data refinement and she has to learn. There's a bit of the mysterious colleague scenario where, and if we sort of, you know, do a bit of an overview of the next few episodes, what we learn is that there is someone who has done the impossible.

which is like an interesting trope about breaking the boundaries of what we believe can happen in that world. So we think that in Lumen, once you're severed, you can never be reintegrated. And we find out that someone actually is reintegrating, but they're like on the run, they're against the system, they're highly dangerous, and the process itself is extremely dangerous. So for me, thematically...

I'm thinking, oh, wait a second, you make this choice and to go against the company and to try and reintegrate. It has a little bit of a trauma vibe too. It's like, oh, in trauma, we know parts of ourselves can either become frozen or we disconnect from them and reconnecting them, trying to reintegrate can have, you know,

not devastating consequences, but it can sort of get worse before it gets better. And if you can get through the other side and this guy is trying, he's like, I can't live severed anymore. So he's trying to reintegrate. Did you, how did you react to that? Yeah. I mean, for me, it was also this sort of notion as like, there's a price to pay, you know, there's a, there's always a

a price to pay for trying to be your true self in a situation that's not, that it's not really allowing it. Um, but it also, you know, is obviously it's, it's setting us up for understanding the tremendous amount of flexibility that there is in terms of storytelling with a procedure like this, because you can really then let it go wherever you need it to go. It can go well, it can not go well. He can have setbacks. He can pass out like anything can happen.

happen. It also introduces to Mark that there is potentially an out, right? Or there's potentially more to the story. And while his innie can't process that because he doesn't get that information, his outie is like, wait a second. He, for a moment, considers, could I reintegrate? We haven't even mentioned John Turturro. He is fantastic. He's fantastic. And Christopher Walken. Christopher Walken. A very unlikely love pairing.

No one saw that coming. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful story. It reminded me of the Nick Offerman episode and plot line in The Last of Us. This beautiful, beautiful, older man couple. Love plot. And the way that they meet is through...

Irving's love of painting. So Bert is... He's like a curator for the whole company. And he has a totally different department. And the idea is that the departments are kept so separated from one another that actually seeing anyone in this vast maze of hallways... Well, they don't want people to talk because they don't want people to know what's going on. And they definitely don't want

any information passed on that could disrupt the purpose of what they're doing there. Exactly. So one other moment is when Irving finds the book. So it's Mark's brother-in-law's book ends up

In the organization somehow. On the severed floor. On the severed floor. I forget how it gets there now. But Milchik. Milchik. Picks it up from Mark's doorpost. That's right. After it's placed there because they're concerned about what is going on. And it accidentally gets left behind. It has a lot of North Korea vibes, right? It's like...

Banned material has made it behind the wall and now poisoning people's minds because all of a sudden they're expanding and it's like- Well, so they're not allowed to read anything outside of the text of their company, which, you know, sort of their cult text, as it were. So they have this new piece of literature, but they all end up really, really falling for it, which says a little bit about Mark's brother-in-law's philosophy and his writing if it appeals to people who are trying to be liberated. Yeah.

He talks about, you know, liberate the book talks about liberating yourself and not being a slave. And it's exactly the message that disgruntled workers would want to hear. So it has communist manifesto vibes.

It also sort of is considered like the writing is, would you say trite? It's like kind of very broad and it's like... It's like bad self-help. Yeah, it's like super bad self-help. And what's interesting is like it appeals to people who have not seen good self-help, right? Like their media diet is pretty much non-existent. So they're like striving for new ideas outside of what they've been given from the company. And it's interesting to us like, oh, we're going to latch on to this

Writing that other people probably wouldn't. Well, and I think the most interesting turn of events is that that text then gets adulterated by the corporation. And they... They use it as propaganda. They see that it's written in such a way that it is easily digested. It's easily incorporated. And yeah, with a few small tweaks, they are able to modify it so that it can serve...

for loyalty. That's jumping a little into season two where they actually, yeah. And it's like his brother-in-law sells out basically. He wants his work to be accepted so badly. He wants the notoriety. Like, I guess, I don't, I forget if he's published before. I think it's a new book, but it's like, I'm, I'm curious as we learn more about his relationship with the severed community, if that is part of the conflict that Devin is seeing.

that not that he's part of the anti-severed community, which there is also that, you know, kind of they stand outside and chant and hold protests and things about the fact that this process even exists. But Devin is very concerned about him sort of selling out. And if we think about all of his, I don't mean to be like a Reddit person, but if we think about all of his followers at this party and the bird pecking, like,

Perhaps those were people who were reformed and his book helped reform them. And now that book is being used to support the people who are inside and want to keep people inside. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So let's talk about overtime contingency.

That was actually my favorite. I think that was my favorite part of season one. There's an override that they figure out. It's very complicated how they figure it out. Where when their Audis are out in the world, you know, between the hours of 5 p.m. and 9 a.m., there is a way to override the chip, as it were, and let their innie

find themselves wherever the Audi was. So the Audi could be at the supermarket, they could be sleeping, but the Innie's consciousness gets flipped on. So the question is, we have three characters that are going to wake up, and the question is,

What are they going to be in the middle of when the INI gets to experience the Audi world? And this is extremely dangerous because the whole way that they have protected the INI is by giving them no information. Because as soon as you give them a little bit of information about what their life is like, which is why the wellness episodes or the wellness sessions have so...

so much influence over them is because they're striving for context. They just want a little bit of information. Like, what do I do outside of there? Who am I? It's like such an interesting expression of the metaphysical questions. Like, what is beyond this? That is the question of a child. Meaning, every child has this crisis of...

William Steig, who many people know who created the original Shrek, William Steig wrote a book called Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. It was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. And it's about a donkey who finds a magic pebble and a lion comes along. And while holding this magic pebble, he says to himself, I wish I were a rock because he's so scared. And he turns into a rock.

And his parents are searching everywhere for him. Where is Sylvester? The whole town. Everybody's freaking out. And he's a rock on a hill. And he has the consciousness to say, I'm a donkey. Why am I a rock now? Like, why can't I be a donkey again? The magic pebble is resting, you know, not touching the rock that is him.

His parents mourn him, they grieve, their son died, he never came home, and one day they have a picnic.

And they sit on the rock that is Sylvester. And he is alone in his consciousness. He goes through seasons. He is aware that he is stuck. And his parents find the magic pebble. And they place it on the rock. And they say, I wish Sylvester was here with us. And Sylvester says, I wish I was too. And...

he is awakened. And what William Steig said was, this is the question every child asks. Who am I? Where am I in this home? Who are these people? Where do I belong? And there are times when we are placed into a place, sometimes because of trauma or challenges or being different, or just some kids just at three are like, oh my God, I'm alive. What is happening? Right?

We then have to spend our lives saying, what do I do with this? Right? So what you just described, like that is the question that, that this show is asking. What part of you yearns to be yourself? How do you get out when you feel stuck and who deserves to become unstuck?

Beautifully said. Thank you. Really, really. I mean, we have been talking about this show. We watched the show together. You didn't know I had so many words in me.

That was, I think, the best summation. Take that to Reddit and see what they say. The overtime contingency is so dangerous because they've been successful at maintaining this focus on work by preventing the innie from knowing anything. But the innies are constantly wondering, what am I like outside? What is the outside world? They haven't seen the sky. And what you described, especially if anyone has had

emotionally immature parents or even like narcissistic parents, we're often kept as children, we're often kept in our parents' view, our parents' perspective.

And we often don't know like what is out there. And obviously there are cases where people are kept and, you know, kept or, or even, you know, not encouraged to grow up. You know, I think about the gypsy Rose story, right? I think about like Munchausen by proxy, right? There are ways that certain parents, um,

you know, manipulate and abuse in this context. But if we kind of like take the 30,000 foot view, like it's kind of everybody's experience is like, what's it like out there? You know, think about when you leave home, when any child leaves home,

When you leave that safety, that comfort, you get to see what's out there. I mean, I have one in college, right? So we talk about this all the time and he'll be like, I didn't know it would be like this outside of your home. And I'm like, sorry, you never would have left if I told you that.

Keep them in ease forever. Just kidding. Okay. So the way that the overtime protocol gets introduced to the show is for some reason, Milchick has to wake up Devin outside of the office. And we don't... No one knows that, right? Like...

The way that the show has been established. He's trying to get information. He's trying to get information. But that's where we learned that this is possible. Oh, because Devin snuck something out. He snuck something out from one of the other departments. It was like a little card.

That's actually an Easter egg we don't understand the meaning of because that card... This is the cards that Gemma was working on as part of her graduate work. I don't know. It's... Yeah. So, okay. That is a little bit of a huge Easter egg and a bit mind-blowing. And if everyone's already figured it out, you can put in the comments below why we're stupid and didn't figure it out. Please help us. Please help us or send us to the right Reddit thread to explain the card of the supposedly same man attacking...

each other but there's a whole there's a whole variety of them there's a variety of them they get them from Burt's uh department okay but so Devin takes one of these cards out Dylan Dylan takes one of these cards out and then Milchik has to wake him up and then he come and he really ask him where he hit it to where he hit it and uh he realizes Dylan realizes that he has a son

in that scene. Milchick has gotten him, Dylan, into a closet and made the son wait in the living room and... Count to a thousand. He counts very fast. The son comes in in the middle. Dylan realizes he has a son and then basically his life is never the same after that. Well, what happens is that Dylan... It's kind of like a...

it's kind of like spiritual awakening when you realize you are in the matrix. Right. Dylan has this moment of like, oh my goodness, not only do I exist in other places, but I have attachments. People love me. I made a baby, right? Like all of these things. And that does become, I think part of, you know, Dylan's kind of

his angst, which then leads to them bringing also another fantastic actress, the woman who plays Gretchen. Oh my gosh, she's so good. I love her performance. And that is also one of the most painful points, which we learn in season two, is that he kind of couldn't get life right on the outside. And his innie is much more confident and she gets to meet his innie. And the wife almost dies.

starts falling for this persona that in the outside world her husband cannot, you know, uphold. It's very interesting also in terms of, you know, sometimes we're at work together and

And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. Why can't we take more of this? I'm sure you feel the same into, you know, the non-work world. And I think, you know, everybody can relate, especially if you've ever, you know, worked with someone that you also interact with outside of work. There's certain features of that. But anyway, so the overtime contingency. So that's how it's introduced. And then they realize, I forget now, how do they realize there's like a plan that the employee who actually was reintegrating that

left in the first correct episode there's a way that they find out okay so they find out and then they go off and make a plan because again it's to me it's a strive for knowledge which has a lot of like i want to break out of the matrix breakthrough trauma whatever the metaphor you want to apply is they want more information they want out of

communist Korea and they want access to the internet. Again, whatever metaphor you want to use. Whichever world leader you'd like to offend. Exactly. So they go and they set out to set off the overtime contingent for Irving, Mark, and Helly. And Dylan is going to facilitate it because there's a control room. It takes two people. So Dylan is literally like holding these two things. And all three of them

Get to experience the Audi world as innies, which is like, I think the...

Personally, I think that was the best episode of both season one and season two. I mean, the anticipation was so great because again, where are you going to find them? What are they going to be in the middle of? Exactly. And we didn't know what Irving did and we didn't know what Heli R did because we never saw her outside of work. Mark, of course, we knew. So it was a little bit, it was still interesting because I was waiting to see like, how is it going to play out? But it didn't have the same suspense as the other two characters. Yeah.

And the big moment at the end of season one is she's alive. So yeah, Mark finally learns that, well, Mark's Innie gets to communicate to the outside world that he has interacted with

with a woman who he knows is his Audi's dead wife. - Or he learns is his Audi's dead wife. That moment of realization is fantastic where he picks up the photo. - He finds a photo and realizes that the woman that he's been interacting with, who has been responsible for-- - The wellness. - The wellness and kind of the emotional connectedness in his work environment,

that woman is the woman that his Audi has been told is dead. It was a fantastic, fantastic end to season one because the number of questions, meaning like I kept asking, like, how'd they get her body? Like, was she all dead? Did they bring her back from the dead? Was it an accident? And he was told she died because they knew they wanted her. Why did they choose her? What is it about her? Why are they, why so many questions? And that was season one. It also brought up for me,

This idea of like, if she's the wellness person and they're putting her and Mark in such close proximity to each other at work, are they trying to test the technology? Meaning they know that severance... That deep in these people's souls. Exactly. Deep in their outie souls, they're in love. They're in love and can, you know, in each one of the examples that we talked about, love is always the primary driver, right? Like in The Matrix, in...

Any sort of love like breaks all science fiction rules. That's right. So if you've implanted this severing technology, if you put people who are in love in the closest proximity to each other, you but you've walled off that memory is the memory powerful enough is love powerful enough.

to break through severance. And so that's what I was left with at the end of that episode. And then season two. Okay. We're going to rapid fire through season two. I mean, season two is a general, you know,

Insert many, many hallways. Lots of hallways, lots of walking and finding. Season two is these four characters really orchestrating what rebellion can look like. And, you know, there were, for me, many, like, great Star Wars vibes moments of...

Rebellion, what rebellion looks like, especially when you're rooting for those people to rebel and there's some kind of great outside force that doesn't want it to be. So there's a tremendous amount of camaraderie and in and outness and we are experiencing more of these characters outside world. The Irving plot gets fleshed out in terms of him

his exploration. And it's kind of like the clues keep adding up. Every time we go into the outside world, we get another clue that the Indies can use. And, you know, what we see is that when you compare it to the first episodes where there was this really, really strict, uh,

distinction between Innie and Audi in this case again love is the thing that divides it his relationship his developing relationship with Heli becomes the thing that turns him from an obedient you know rule follower who is just like walking the party line to someone who believes there's something more possible and that is what love as a function is supposed to do and

in a lot of the conversations we've had with mystics, with people of religious persuasion, love is sort of this, it breaks through every barrier of consciousness, right? So it's kind of interesting that

Love is what's being tested to see if the consciousness can remain separated. And love is the thing that then breaks him out of his consciousness to be able to imagine something bigger. Absolutely. Even a recent episode with Bruce Lipton, he says, if you want to break through your childhood programming, all the patterns that have been instilled in you from zero to seven, even pre-birth to seven, how do you do it? You fall in love. Gemma is part of...

Some sort of experiment now what I'm curious about is are they testing it out on her because they're going to test it out in a larger way are they trying to see if we take a dead person and we recreate and code all of their emotions can they be brought back to life that's one option.

Is she an experiment for some other reason? My guess, my amateur guess, without going to Reddit to check it, is that they're testing to see if they can bring people back from the dead and have them regenerated. I don't know.

Yes. Oh, like the Christmas scenario where she has to write the thank you notes. I mean, I thought of my kids writing their bar mitzvah thank you notes. That's what it's like. I mean, they were having her experience all of these different emotions. But what it also, it had like a Stepford Wives kind of vibe to it too, of like this woman being...

dressed up and paraded around and experimented on, you know, and used this way so, you know, that we can learn information, right, about things. Like, it just fascinated me. And she's also such a great actress. So interesting how, you know, how she has to play both sides of this. A hundred percent. She's phenomenal. The scenes are very frightening. I like her attacking the guy who's doing the experimenting on her.

However, and I know that probably this isn't necessary. What's the oh no? I'm afraid that you're going to do like that boy thing that boys do of like, maybe she's in on it and it's all just being both. No, no, no, no. I'm like, what is the business model? You're going to bring people back from the dead? How are you making money? The amount of money that that company goes through

property tax on that land. The size of the building, the electrical bill, all those snacks. It is unclear. The R&D. No, so there, I mean, yes, I am unclear and I'm sure if I go on Reddit for this, I can find it too. I'm unclear what the larger business model is. That's true. Doesn't make any sense. But all we know is that

you know, for our season one and two experience, Gemma is the focus. Gemma is the focus. Mark is the focus. Love is the focus. And as we see in the season finale of season two, the only thing that prevents integration or facilitates it is love. Very, very true. Let's get to the love triangle. Speaking of love.

It's a love triangle across consciousness. I mean, if that's not the tagline, I don't know what is. Would you? It doesn't feel like a triangle to me because they're different people. You know, when I think of, you know, Sawyer and Kate, and I think of like the lost situation, they were all there on the same consciousness plane. This feels so different because...

It doesn't feel like a triangle. I mean, it's really a conflict between it's really, you know, for me about Mark and which reality does he want to stay in? There is no reality for him with Helena. That's not his identity. His Audi, to me, it's not an equivalent conversation. The Audi is more you than you're any. It's not 50-50.

Even though the-

Not enjoying themselves, interacting with people that they otherwise wouldn't want to interact with without the pleasures of their families, their kids, hobbies. Like we're all slaves to an innie that really isn't even us. Over 60% of adult relationships start in the workplace. It's you trying to break out of your innie to have an outie life.

I mean, there's the joke. Is the person hot or office hot? Because office hot has a smaller group. So he wants to make his work wife his outside wife, but he wants as an innie to exist as an outie.

I mean, I can relate to him or that desire to not die. Because remember when they talked about people resigning, they're like, what happens to that Innie? Do they just die? Do they cease to exist? When Bert retires, they have a funeral for him. Because it's not that he's just gone on, that he can't interact with them. He has no recollection of the life that's left there. So, you know, I don't know.

philosophically, does it speak to what happens to those compartmentalized pieces of ourselves if we reject and don't reintegrate them? It's like actually an idea for parts work. If you don't go back and revisit that moment when you were three or that moment at different ages, Wil Wheaton talks about that in the episode we recently released.

then those parts, they just float off into the ether. They cause pain and havoc. They have their own agendas. Well, yeah, they have their own agendas because they will continue to function at the age that you left them if they're not kind of integrated or have an understanding of the you that you are now. So, you know, if anyone's ever thrown an adult temper tantrum,

That's essentially what we're talking about is that there's a part of us that will stay the age that throws temper tantrums. And, you know, there's some sort of integration that has to occur, you know,

But yeah, the goal in parts work is not for funerals, but for, you know, melon parties together. Melon parties. A waffle party. That waffle party was so weird. The dancing that happened. And he has to go to the replica of his home. It's weird. Super weird. Okay. But season two finale.

We have the camcorder moments. Mark's innie and Mark's outie have an extended and extensive conversation. The outie is trying to get the innie on board in order to save Gemma. Finally, the outie realizes his wife is savable. They build a strategy. The innie, I'm going to just say it, being an asshole, will not help the outie save. We don't know until the very end. He doesn't trust the outie.

I mean, why should he? Multiple parts of ourselves not trusting one another. Fascinating.

No, but what happens when you trust no one is you can't even trust yourself. That's what it is. There you go. There you go. Mic drop right there. When you don't, when everything is a lie at work, everything is kept from you. Everything's hidden or in your home of origin. You can't even trust yourself because any good cult or any good structure like that will erode your ability to decipher even for yourself what you want.

And if you have two parts of yourself that want different things, who gets to be in charge? What is more real, his love for Heli or his love for his wife? And this is where you'd say, well, gosh, it'd be his wife. They have, as he said, thousands of memories, thousands and thousands of memories. And, you know, any Mark only has a couple, but... Those are very powerful. Heart wants what it wants. Okay, so this is like Mission Impossible style,

He's going to go. There's a classic film time lock. You got to get from 96%. And then once you get to 100, then she's going to die and you have to save her. Well, we don't know that she's going to die. Once he gets... Yeah, they say. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Patricia Arquette says... That's right. Once you finish the Cold Harbor file, she's going to die. Right. So he has this time that once he finishes the file, there's a hilarious...

Drum band. Because Mark, being the best refiner that's ever existed in the company, they're celebrating this amazing accomplishment of finishing his 24th, 25th file, right? And Mr. Milchick puts on his little white gloves and does a phenomenal dance. It's a very, very beautifully shot scene. But Mark and Helly both end up kind of

escaping the party to meet each of their needs in these final moments. I mean, they're on their own missions. That's actually probably one of the most painful parts of the show is them being stuck in the celebration, knowing that the clock is ticking on Gemma's life. So the, the actual season finale, you know, point for those of us who have, um, not seen it or want to remember it is that any mark is,

is on the other side of the glass from Gemma who is out and behind him comes Helly and he either is going to stay with Helly inside you know red lights are blaring the security breach violations all he has to do all he has to do is go through the door because he's gone through

Multiple parts have worked together, right? Because the severance only works on the specific floor. So he's gone. Audie Mark has gotten his wife. She's recognized him. But he's back to Innie Mark on his floor. And in order to get out of the building, they have to go through the severance floor, which transitions Mark from Audie Mark to Innie Mark. Correct. And he's shepherding her. He gets her out. So he saves her and then...

He chooses to go back into the building with Helly. And this, again, we didn't even get to the goats. I can't even with the goats. But this leaves, again, so many fantastic questions. What's Gemma going to do on the outside? What's that going to be like? What are the repercussions going to be for her on the outside that she was dead, right? And now she's alive. She has to announce to the world that she's no longer dead. And then the repercussions on the inside of...

What they violated the innies cannot in theory be punished for what the outies did or can they and what's gonna happen like was it worth it for mark to save His relationship with heli. We don't know something. I never actually thought about is He's gone back for heli. I understand the emotional beat there but

What life are they going to have there? I don't know. They're going to be there. I don't know. They've seen that the company can't be trusted. They have no life outside of the company. They know everything. They've just had the largest act of insubordination you can have. Irving's gone. Irving went on a train. Bert sent him away.

Dylan tried to resign, but wasn't able to. Dylan's still there. So, I mean, it's cliffhanger amongst cliffhangers from a writing standpoint. I get it. Like, you can't send Mark with Gemma because then what happens? Then they live happily ever after. The season is over. There's no more series. So, I get it, but...

You just wipe the slate clean and they're on another file? Where do we go? Well, they would need another body that they're reconstituting memories for. That's where we're going to need to find out what... Once Gemma is gone and out, what is the company, what in theory is anyone doing there? Is there another body waiting? Also, where is Mark in his process of reintegration? Maybe Gretchen's dead too and we don't know it. Who's Gretchen? Dylan's wife.

Okay, you're in a subreddit that has gone off the rails. There's no evidence of that. We hope that you have enjoyed our reaction. Took us a minute, but we did it. Tell us your favorite episode in the comments. Also, if you haven't seen our episode with Ben Stiller, who directs most of the episodes and is the executive producer, go back and watch our episode with Ben Stiller because we talk about him as a director. And in particular...

why he chooses the projects he does. So I'm curious if there's any little Easter eggs in that interview regarding Severance. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the show on Mime's YouTube channel and subscribe anywhere you get podcasts. It really helps us. Give us a review. Five stars. Why not? All right. Our innies are signing off.

From our breakdown. To the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and Bialik's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down.