Episode 203 of Severance ended with Mark Scout voluntarily reintegrating himself. Would he and Mark S. begin to bleed into each other? Would Mark end up like his old friend Petey, brain damaged and confused, not sure if who he is at any given time?
Episode 204 basically ignored those questions, but we finally find out what happened to Mark here in Episode 205, "Trojan's Horse." How is the reintegration going? It is...drumroll please...TBD.
I don't know why this is sticking in my craw so much. I think if you end an episode of a cliffhanger you have a responsibility to meaningfully follow up on it in a timely fashion, but here we are two episodes later learning that nothing has really changed for Mark. Reintegration is a process and he may or may not experience spill-over as time passes. That said, it was easy to go along with the slow burn now that Severance looks a little more like itself. After the icy outdoor escapades in "Woe's Hollow," we're back in the cramped confines of the Lumon basement, which I found oddly comforting. I'm more willing to play the waiting game when the show looks familiar, because I know that show is going places, even if it takes a while to get there.
With that, let's dive into the particulars of "Trojan's Horse." Beware SPOILERS below!
The mystery of Mark
"Trojan's Horse" marks the actual return of Helly R, our Helly R, to the office. Apparently whatever project Mark is working on is so important that Helena Eagan assents to give her body over to Helly even after two murder attempts. Obviously Helena's takeaway from that is that the Innies are "animals," not that the slaves that Lumon has created and then abused are willing to fight back against the people torturing them. In any case, the revelation that Helly was a fake the whole time has deeply shaken Mark S, especially since he bought it so completely. How can he trust anything he sees now? He's beginning to think that their crusade against Lumon is pointless. After all, Lumon is watching everything they do, Helena told them everything they were planning, and the people at Lumon are just "smarter" than them. It's great to see Helly back, but it sucks that it happens right as Mark S seems to give up on his mission.
The thing Mark isn't saying, of course, is that he and Helena had sex in the previous episode, back when he thought she was Helly. That would screw with a normal person's head, to say nothing of whatever Mark is: a full-grown child just now approaching full self-awareness in the weirdest of conditions. That said, I don't think Mark has it in him to completely give up the fight, especially not after Helly implores him to stop being as asshole. He's throwing sass as Milchick by the end of the episode.
Or is it Mark Scout doing that? "Trojan's Horse" ends with the two Marks finally starting to meld, but I wonder if that wasn't already happening. Perhaps Mark S is all over the map this episode because the reintegration process is cycling in the background. It's almost like Mark S and Mark Scout have switched personalities. Mark S turns away from his friends out of guilt and shame, which sounds like something his Outie would do. Meanwhile, Mark Scout is trying proactively to make his reintegration a success, borrowing some of his Innie's gumption.
At the end of the episode, the walls start to come down in the sort of eerie, mind-swirling sequence this show does so well. Mark Scout finds himself in the too-bright, too-white halls of the Lumon basement, face to face with Ms. Casey, or his wife Gemma, or whoever she is. She's telling Mark S all of things his Outie is great at. Or maybe she's telling Mark Scout. Or maybe the point is that there isn't any boundary between the two any more.
For the details, we'll have to see what happens next week, which I find myself saying a lot in these reviews. But the anticipatation is part of the appeal. It's great to watch a series like this and be able to trust that it's building to something worth the wait. Severance has earned that.
Severance review: Season 2, Episode 5, "Trojan's Horse"
We get a smattering of development for a bunch of other characters. What happened to Irving at the end of the last episode has hit Dylan G hard. He's aghast that Irving's desk has been permanently removed from the office, and openly says that Lumon has killed their colleague, rather than using the word "retire" as the company prefers. Severance is the stories of the Innies coming to think of themselves as individual people rather than subservient parts of their Outies, and this underlines how far they've come.
That said, while Dylan is willing to rock the boat, he's not willing to completely tip it over, in part because he doesn't want to lose those special visits with his Outie's family. He demands that Milchick hold a funeral for Irving, and he gets it. We learn later that Lumon has a standard process for this, even if funerals are only held for Innies that "die on the floor." That brings up a ton of questions — we had no inkling before this that Innies ever died at work — but by now it's hard to be shocked that Lumon is hiding things.
The funeral is quintessential Severance: Milchick wheels in a watermelon carved to look like Irving's face, Ms. Wong is ready to play the theremin, and Dylan gives a heartwarming eulogy about Irving being awesome, and says he misses him. The strangely almost overcomes the emotion, but not quite.
The funeral is an over-the-top version of something you might have experienced in your own office job, perhaps a ceremony in memory of someone who'd been let go; nine seconds of silence and then back to work. There's actually a lot of workplace satire in this episode. I was honestly a bit stressed when Milchick went in for his performance review, which he apparently gets every month and which can last anywhere from four-six hours. If my boss is reading this, know that I appreciate you. I know regular meetings are important to talk about goals and go over performance, but I won't claim that I don't dread them a bit. And Milchick has to endure regular reviews so long they require a break for lunch? It's enough to get me hyper-ventilating. If you work in an office, Severance is weirdly relatable sometimes.
As for his actual review, obviously Milchick has done a terrible job running the severed floor; when one of your employees tries to kill another, you've failed as a manager. He's told to tighten the leash on the Innies, to stop trying to treat them like people and more like the sub-humans that they are. Milchick fancied himself less barbaric than Harmony Cobel, but when push comes to shove of course he carries out his brutal orders, another way the show nails the truth of corporate culture.
Verdict
The final thing to touch on is Irving Bailiff, whom we catch up with outside of Lumon. I was afraid we might have seen the last of John Turturro after last week, but Irving's Outie is thankfully still part of the story. He's making a call to persons unknown when he spots Burt's Outie; remember that Burt has been tailing Irving in his car. Now we find out why: curiousity. Burt's Outie appears to be an innocent in this; he just wants to know why Irving showed up at his door "the other night" screaming and hollaring. He invites Irving to join him and his husband for dinner, a thread we'll pick up next week.
And yeah, based on what Burt said, it seems like the overtime contingency incident from the season 1 finale happened way more recently that Milchick led Mark to believe. But again, who's surprised at this point that Lumon is lying to the Innies? Another thing worth noting is that, after the funeral, Dylan thinks to check behind a poster bearing the words "Hang in There," which was the last thing Irving said to him before getting terminated. The note has directions to find the mysterious dark hallway. More on that soon.
Overall, I think I liked "Trojan's Horse" better than "Woe's Hollow." I liked getting back into the familiar rhythm of the show after last week's departure, I liked the return of the show's wacky humor, and I liked the slow creeping feeling that my mind could be blown clear out of my head at any moment.
Severance Bullet Points
- I would have liked a one-on-one scene between Dylan G and the newly returned Helly R, but there's still half a season to go.
- We still don't know what Cold Harbor is, but we know it's important and that Mark is 85% through it.
- The title of the episode comes from a brief scene between Devon and Rickon Hale, who's writing a version of his self-help book especially for Innies. Devon points out that he's taken out anything remotely inspiring from the book and replaced it with Lumon propaganda. Rickon claims it's a "Trojan's horse," misusing the term "Trojan horse." A very Coen brothers-esque malapropism. Or Michael Scott-esque, take your pick.
- On a deeper level, Rickon seems to know that he's selling out to Lumon, but he wants the money so he and his family can have a better life, which is at least understandable. He and Devon fight about it in the most honest moment between them we've seen yet.
- Here's what the note from Irving said: "From OAD, first turn right, all the way down the hall and turn right, turn right, turn left down a long hall and turn left, turn left, turn right, right, left, left, right, right, left, right, left, left, right, right, left, left down long hall and turn right, then left, right, turn right one more time and all the way down a long hallway..." I imagine Irving got the directions from Felicia back in the third episode.
Episode Grade: B
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