The first season of Severance ended with Mark S. (Adam Scott) exploring the world outside the basement of Lumon Industries for the first time. He and the other "Innies" on his team are like kids; everything outside the office is new to them; their "Outies" are the real people and they're the hermetically sealed child slaves. But the Innies have been growing up, questioning their surroundings and pushing the company to treat them better. The first episode of Severance season 2 shows us how the company is pushing back.
The entire episode takes place in the basement of Lumon, so we're robbed of any context. We have no idea if what Mark learns upon his sudden return to the office is true. Mark's supervisor Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) tells him that Mark and his team became famous after making contact with the outside world; we know that in the season 1 finale, Helly R. (Britt Lower) blew the whistle on how badly the severed employees are treated, so maybe it's true?
Or maybe not. Milchick also tells Mark that the outies for all of his other teammates refused to come back to work, but when Mark doesn't take to his new team — played by Bob Balaban, Alia Shawkat, and Stefano Carannante — Milchick is apparently able to change their minds, because the lot of them show up later for a reunion. Mark, Helly, Dylan G (Zach Cherry) and Irving B (John Turturro) must watch a nauseatingly corny video that explains all the wonderful new reforms Lumon has made in the wake of their "uprising"; there's a funny mirror room now! Milchick says every new severed employee will watch this video, but I think it's just as likely it's been made exclusively to keep the four of them in line. They are trapped down there and we are trapped with them.
The opening of the episode sets the tone perfectly: Mark, fresh from his adventure in the outside world, finds himself back in the uncanny white corridors of the Lumon basement. He runs pell-mell down the halls to the tune of toe-tapping elevator jazz, unsure what happened and where to go. Things have changed — he has a new team and Ms. Casey's (Dichen Lachman) department is suddenly gone — but mostly it's all horribly the same.
Except Mark himself is different. There's really no going back for any of the Innies after they got a taste of the real world. Mark wants to rebel but has no idea how, and his first attempts are hilariously amateurish. When he's forced to share a fun fact about himself while getting to know his new teammates (how many office workers have undergone something like this torture?), he avoids saying anything he actually wants to say ("Milchick is evil!" "Everything's a lie!" "My kind-of-wife is alive!") and says that he's made four new friends...well, three new friends, since fraternizing with his new supervisor Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) is inappropriate. He tries to get a message to the outside by slipping a note into the jacket of one of his new severed teammates but is quickly caught.
My guess is that Lumon staffed Mark's new team with severed workers whose Outies are loyal to the cause, so any attempts to influence them will be fruitless. I think Milchick is full of sh*t when he talks about taking out the security cameras so the Innies have more privacy, but I don't know. I DON'T KNOW!
Severance review, Season 2 Episode 1, "Hello, Ms. Cobel"
Severance comes by this paranoia 100% honestly. A lot of shows try to string the viewer along with mysteries, but eventually that wears thin because it's hard to believe that supposedly smart characters can't figure things out. But in Severance, the Innies are at the mercy of a huge corporation bending all of its resources to make sure they have as little information as possible. Any victory against Lumon, no matter how small, will feel like moving a mountain.
We in the audience know a lot more than the Innies do. When the foursome are talking about their experiences beyond the basement, Helly R. straight-up lies about what happened, saying she woke up in a boring apartment rather than at an upscale Lumon function. So either Helly is lying for some reason I can't imagine...or that's not Helly. I think that's Helly's Outie sent to mingle among the rebellious innies as a spy.
I'm not exactly scared for Mark, Irving and Dylan — it's unclear whether Lumon would actually hurt them given that they'd have to explain their injuries to their Outies — but I want Helly found out as soon as possible. I want to know if Milchick will be successful in luring Dylan back into the Lumon fold by promising him a secret family meeting room. (Please no, stay strong, Dylan!) I want to know if Irving will be able to find a new equilibrium after seeing Burt on the outside. Of the four of them, Irving was the most broken by his adventure to the surface world. He went from a true believer to the person who hates Lumon the most, since it broke his heart. Dylan has to talk Irving out of leaving Lumon permanently, since he just wants his heartbreak to end. John Turtutto is wonderful in their intimate scene.
I want to know, once and for all, what in the world the Innies are doing all day organizing those numbers. I want to know what the deal is with Miss Huang; why is she so young? And is she severed? Was Ms. Casey severed? Where did they put her?
Severance presents us with a myriad of delicious mysteries. That can get boring if a show strings itself out for too long without explaining anything, but I have faith that there's a bigger picture coming into focus here. This premiere gave me a lot of confidence. It seems to know what it's doing and where it's going.
By the end of the episode, Mark, Dylan, Irving and probably-fake-Helly are back in their cubicles in the Macrodata Refinement Department, doing whatever it is they do. Everything looks like it's back to normal...but we know better.
Severance Bullet Points
- To hear Milchick tell it, Lumon is blaming everything bad that happened in the first season on Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who has since been fired; Mikchick now has her old job. It sounds like the company is going with the "we had a few bad apples" defense so many corporations use when caught red-handed doing something terrible. Again, we can't know if he's telling the truth, but I can believe something like this happened.
- Speaking of Ms. Cobel, it's weird that the episode is named after her considering she doesn't show up at all.
- Also note that the newspaper Milchick flashes Mark S. has tons of information blacked out. is that just because Milchick doesn't want Mark knowing the details, or was the whole newspaper fabricated to give Mark the idea that he's now famous? I love/hate that we know so little, and I really wanna catch up with Mark's Outie to see what he knows.
- I can't wait until I get to call someone a "shambolic rube" in ordinary conversation.
- Milchick spends a lot of time fixated that the welcome message on his work computer still greets him as Ms. Casey. He may not be severed (or maybe he is, it's hard to be sure of anything), but he's caught in a waking coma as sure as Mark S.
Episode Grade: B+
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