Severance Recap: Triangles of Sadness

For more on Severance, sign up for Severance Club, our subscriber-exclusive newsletter obsessing, dissecting, and debating everything about season two.

It’s a huge bummer that none of the love triangles in Severance can end in anything other than sadness and tragedy. This week, we found out that Outie Burt is not only married but also potentially a nefarious Lumon bigwig … but I totally still want his Innie to end up with Irving B. And, even though Mark is reintegrating, I somehow want him to be with both Helly R. and Gemma at the same time. This is clearly impossible. Severance is setting us up for serious heartbreak, and I’m trying (and failing) to prepare my fragile heart for all of it.

As we head into the back half of the season, all of our “core four” are headed deeper into knotty relationships that involve both their Innie and Outie. But before we get into all of that, let’s take a minute to discuss Milchick because his arc doesn’t necessarily involve love. Instead, in the wake of his performance review, he feels deep shame and conflict over his failings. First, he practices putting paper clips on hundreds, perhaps thousands of documents. Then, in a seriously depressing moment, he addresses the contention of “Uses Too Many Big Words” by staring at himself in a mirror and toning down his vocabulary a notch at a time. The wonderfully eloquent phrase “eradicate childish folly” slowly becomes “grow up.” Then, as Milchick begins to aggressively address himself, it simply becomes “grow.”

This sequence, like many sequences in this episode, is tinged with elements of horror. Milchick is willing to change everything about himself in order to fit in the box that Lumon has designed for him. The idea of Lumon asking Milchick to tone down his vocabulary is particularly curious because the practice of telling Black men that they are “well-spoken” can be considered a condescending microaggression, but Lumon makes it even more personal. Seeing as other Lumon bigwigs often use words like “contretemps” and “calamitous,” the “Big Words” contention seems specifically designed to keep Milchick in his place as a Black man at the company. Between this and the Kier blackface paintings, the conflict between his faith and his identity is being tested to the point of madness.

One thing is for sure: Milchick is MIA. And the refiners are getting up to all sorts of shenanigans in his absence. Early in the episode, Dylan tells them about the elevator map Irving left for him in the Break Room. Helly insists that she’s going to retrieve it, but then she gets derailed by Mark. Convinced that this is, indeed, Helly and not Helena Eagan, he wants to come clean. He haltingly tells her that they “shared vessels,” er, he had sex with Helena at the ORTBO.

Helly is floored. I mean, literally, she goes out into the hallway and sinks down to the floor. She takes her shoes off and ponders this situation for a while. I feel for Helly. Not only because she’s my favorite but also because the idea of someone co-opting my body only to sleep with my crush is absolutely horrifying. Helly being Helly, she comes to terms with the situation in her own way — she’ll sleep with Mark and get her own experience.

The way that Helly forcefully says, “I don’t want her memory. I want my own,” is rousing. She’s decisive and goes for what she wants, and that “I-want-it-now” Veruca Salt energy that carries over from Helena is definitely still there, but in a fun, playful way. Since Mark and Helly are relatively new Innies, they’re effectively teenagers, and their affection for one another very much feels like puppy love. Their innocence is palpable as they giddily look for a place to have sex. (It feels worthy of note here that creator Dan Erickson told Vanity Fair that season one introduced the Innies as children and that season two marks a shift into adolescence. The “first love” between Mark and Helly certainly underscores that theme.)

Unlike the foreboding sex scene between Helena and Mark at the ORTBO, Helly and Mark’s office hookup is sweet and pure. Director Uta Briesewitz focuses on the tenderness between the two. Both Innies have an adorable emotional naivete when it comes to sex, but their bodies know how to respond. Mark leads the way, gently laying Helly down and asking for her consent to touch her body in different places. Instead of focusing on the physical, Briesewitz stays with Helly. This sex scene gets it right: Sex is surely something the body experiences, but add in genuine emotion and love, and the experience shifts to become something else entirely. For that reason, an Innie experience at a waffle orgy is very different from what happens between Mark and Helly in that abandoned office.

The two lovebirds make their way back down the hallway, and Helly asks Mark if it is different with her. He swoops in for a kiss — Adam Scott is going for the swoon-worthy moment here — but their dalliance is cut short by his nose, which is starting to bleed. They go to Miss Huang for medical assistance, and she’s very suspicious of his ailment. Quick aside about Miss Huang: Earlier in the episode, we found out that she’s working on the severed floor as a part of a fellowship. Now, what that means, I could not tell you, but it felt very Scientology-coded. Miss Huang hasn’t done much but hang around and be an unsettling child, but I still have hope that her character will serve a larger purpose in the near future.

Elsewhere on the severed floor, Innie Dylan canoodles with his Outie’s wife. Gretchen even steals some passionate kisses from her husband’s body. Scandalous! Later, they’re eating dinner with their three children, who seem happy and healthy (and, like, super quiet for little kids), and we see a plaque on a shelf in the background. From what I can see, it was awarded to Gretchen as “Dispatcher of the Month,” which seems to further suggest that she is a cop but also might explain Innie Dylan’s obsession with perks. He craves to be recognized, just like his wife. For her part, Gretchen lies about the family visitation, saying it was canceled. Is this retaliation for Dylan insisting that he’s going to look at a new car even though she’s asking him not to? Or is it something deeper?

Elsewhere, another woman is taking advantage of the obliviousness inherent to severance. Helena stalks Mark down at a Chinese restaurant. He’s just finishing a gigantic meal, his hunger courtesy of the reintegration process. The red glow from the neon lights outside telegraphs her arrival before she even walks in the door.

Helena and Mark. Two Outies just chilling in a booth. Mark Scout obviously doesn’t know Helena beyond her status as the Lumon heir, but Helena knows Mark. She knows him well. And, even more chilling, she lets him know that she knows all about him, even mentioning “Hannah,” a.k.a. Gemma. But even though her motives are creepy — she stalked him to a Chinese restaurant to talk about nothing, basically — Mark plays ball, and he almost seems to enjoy it for a minute. Weirdly, the back-and-forth about Mark meeting Helena’s dad feels very much like the banter that Helly R. and Mark S. had about clipping coupons before they triggered the OTC. Do these two actually have natural chemistry?

Furthermore, does Mark recognize Helena as Helly? As the two say their good-byes, Mark stares at her for an uncomfortably long time before getting a little spooked. It seems like his reintegration is starting to work, and he hustles to his car and speeds out of the parking lot, leaving the broken red neon sign of the restaurant reading “FU” in his wake.

When Mark gets home, he tells Reghabi he’s finally ready to ramp up the reintegration process. It sounds risky, and given what Mark has been experiencing, it doesn’t feel advisable. Throughout the episode, we see his Innie flash between worlds, so the process is working. Also, for the first time, we hear Reghabi ask about the mysterious elevator hallway, which is all the rage this season. Why is Reghabi interested in the hallway? Will this show get it together and show us what’s going down there by the end of the season? Pretty please? My brain might explode if we don’t see that elevator soon.

In a gruesome sequence, we see Reghabi pull apart Mark’s scalp to reveal a pretty sizable hole that the severance procedure leaves in one’s skull, and then she sticks a giant needle into the hole to flood the chip. The imagery is gory, but the hole, in particular, recalls the final beat of the new credit sequence: the one in which Innie Mark peeks out of Outie Mark’s brain. It feels like Mark S. might finally get a chance to be free.

However, there’s a complication. Devon comes to check on Mark because he’s not answering his phone while they do “corporate espionage.” Ever the awesome sister (and bored new mom), she’s trying to come up with ways to get more information out of Lumon, and she mentions Gabrielle Arteta, the (likely severed) pregnant woman from season one. Mark cuts her off, saying he’s trying something else, and then the “something else” starts to take effect. Right before Mark has a seizure, his worlds start colliding. He turns to see Gemma, and in a flurry of images, she’s first in her Ms. Casey outfit and then in a purple sweater with longer hair. The purple garment  — the same lilac color that Dylan’s wife Gretchen wears — suggests that the flooding worked and that both parts of Mark’s brain are starting to talk to one another.

We can be sure that Mark will live to see another day, his very messy love life in total shambles as Mark S. begins to take his first steps in the new world. Rounding out the theme of love and connection in this episode are Burt and Irving. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: these two have a spark. Yet, given what we learn about Burt in this episode, Irving should be cautious.

Irving goes to dinner at Burt’s house as planned, and he’s a bit nervous, fussing with his mustache much in the way I’d imagine Felicia said Burt fussed with his hair before he met up with Irving for the first time. He brings the red wine as requested and finally meets Burt’s husband, Fields. Fields so desperately wants to be chill, but he is absolutely not chill. As they start to talk, Burt reveals that he was brought to severance by Jesus. Mmmmkay. The fact that Outie Burt is a religious man doesn’t come as a true surprise as we know that he was very devoted to Kier on the severed floor. His rationale for severing is somewhat lovely, with Burt and Fields believing that Burt himself wouldn’t make it to heaven (given all the bad things he’s done, presumably), but that his Innie might have a chance. The pastor of their church believes that all Innies are complete people with souls, and furthermore, Fields adds that he believes that all Innies have a right to fall in love.

Severance is a show that is often driven by dialogue, and this dinner scene is quite talky, relying on Burt and a tipsy Fields to reveal a lot of information in a short period of time. Their banter provides a peek into the world beyond Lumon’s walls and illustrates that they have had to overcome barriers both physical (Burt getting doused with red paint) and emotional (grappling with the concept of Burt’s Innie having found love) in the aftermath of Burt’s decision to sever. While Irving is relatively silent throughout the dinner, he often glances at Burt with tenderness in his eyes, and we see Burt returning the loving looks. While Fields hopes that Burt’s Innie would one day find him in the Great Beyond, these looks tell a much different story. If any of this is true — if Innies have souls and there’s an afterlife, etc — Burt and Irving’s Innies are finding one another, for sure.

This would all be very sweet (sorry, not sorry, Fields), but there’s a crimp in the situation. Burt seems to actually be far more involved with Lumon than we may have thought. Fields lets it slide that Burt has been working for Lumon for at least two decades when severance has only been a (public) thing for 12 years. We could write this off as Fields being drunk, but it’s also very suspicious that Mr. Drummond, a.k.a. Frolic hand, breaks into Irving’s house and rifles through his secret trunk of Lumon documents at the very same time he’s away at Burt’s. It’s almost like he knew Irving wouldn’t be home. And then there’s that shift in Walken’s face as he closes the door as Irving leaves. With pursedips and narrowed eyes, he looks like a mafia don surveying a mark. What is that look? In the iconic words of Dylan G.: He a dick?

It’s time for my staggered exit, so I’m going to go grab the elevator. Until next time …

Severed Sentiments

• The final song that plays over the credits, “Sunshine of Your Love” by Ella Fitzgerald, is perfect. People talk a lot about Theodore Shapiro’s contributions to the score — and they’re correct! — but we don’t talk nearly enough about Music Supervisor George Drakoulias always coming in hot to deliver bangers that hit all the emotional notes.

• My kingdom for a look at the fortune in Mark’s fortune cookie!

• I truly believe that Fields’ pointed mention of unprotected sex was a huge bit of foreshadowing that Helena is pregnant or about to be pregnant. There are certainly no condoms on the severed floor, and Helena/Helly’s body has gotten down with Mark Scout’s body twice in a short period of time. Did she plan this with her cycle?

• If Drummond did anything to Radar, so help me Kier, I will find him.

• I do not know nearly enough about Atilla the Hun to break down the potential meaning of Burt and Fields’ pet names for one another, but please do drop your theories in the comments.

• Cobel Watch: We haven’t seen our favorite unhinged lactation fraudster for three whole episodes. Where has she gone?