Many of the characters on Severance are severed, meaning that they don't remember anything about what they did at work when they're at home, and vice versa. Their work selves are basically completely distinct personalities, with their own goals and relationships. For instance, Irving B (John Turturro) and Burt G (Christopher Walken) formed a passionate connection while at work that their "outie" selves knew nothing about. That's complicated since Burt's outie is married to someone else: a guy named Fields we haven't met yet. But is it cheating in the "innies" for Irving and Burn did not know and could not know that their outies had other romantic entanglements?
That's the kind of weird question you ask when watching this show, which airs new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+. In the season 1 finale, Irving's innie broke out of the Lumon offices and saw Burt's outie with his husband. Distraught, he banged on the door, which was where we left that story. In season 2, Burt's outie finally confronted Irving's outie and asked him over for dinner.
That sets up what's coming in the next episode, when Irving, Burt, and Burt's husband Fields will all sit down for a meal. “It is one of those dinners that you dread, like one of those holiday dinners with your family where you’re not supposed to talk about politics but somebody does, and everyone starts fighting and everyone wishes they hadn’t shown up," Christopher Walken told TVLine. “Yeah, [there’s] a little tension!”
And how could there not be? Burt was fired from Lumon Industries because, we are told, of his innie's "unsanctioned erotic entanglement” with Irving B. Irving B was not fired for that, which could put Burt's story into question or could just be another example of Lumon Industries screwing everyone around and doing things for mysterious reasons known only to them.
Severance is about to have the most confusingly awkward dinner party ever
In any case, the dinner is awkward because, while neither Irving nor Burt have memories of what their innies did, "[i]t's still there," according to Turturro. “It’s there in all the characters, you can’t completely escape that.”
"The whole scene is navigating brand-new territory...and lots of stuff is still bleeding in from their relationship as Innies."
It's weird for Irving, who is hanging out with the man that his innie is in love with. “It’s a big adjustment when someone who is the apple of your eye is taken,” Turturro said. But is it as big an adjustment when that someone is the apple of the eye of the other person who sometimes shares your body? I don't know. It also must be super weird for Fields, who “is suspicious of what [their partner] has done or not done,” even if it wasn't exactly their partner who did the thing.
It's all very confusing and I'm sure will make for fascinating TV when the new episode of Severance, "Attila," airs later this week. Here's simpler something to wrap your head around: they're having ham. “I’d forgotten that he cooks a ham, that ham is his specialty," Walken laughs. “It’s interesting that an actor would be cooking another actor a ham!”
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