Severance
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This weeksSeveranceasks the question: What if your work handbook doubled as a cult scripture?
And furthermore, what if it were the only thing you were allowed to read?
Well, a hackneyed self-help book calledThe You You Aremight start looking pretty good in that situation.
Helly and Dylan talk about the creepy sounds in the room.
Helly heard an angry mumbly guy, while Dylan heard a crying baby.
Far from broken, Helly has become even more determined to find an escape hatch.
We do get the sense Mark has tried to escape before, though.
Hes been broken, though it seems his spirit might have been easier to break than Hellys.
However, Hellys outie does not seem so kind.
Britt Lowers performance as Helly continues to amaze.
So when she finds herself back in the elevator, blue disc in hand, she is baffled.
Shes even more thunderstruck when she watches the recording.
As Hellys outie, Lower transforms.
At the very least, shes a mega-Karen; at worst, shes pure evil.
He spies an article about Peteys death and sees the funeral is happening.
And Cobel, er, Selvig is there.
Cobel is most definitely not severed.
She heads to the funeral to retrieve the patented Severance chip.
When she brings the chip back to work the next day, Milchick asks, Thats Petey?
At any rate, Cobel is starting to have some doubts about the permanence of the severance process.
And she seems to be using Mark as her guinea pig.
Perhaps she even knows where he goes.
We dont, though.
At least not yet.
As Mark heads to a mysterious location, the camera lingers on a pitch-black road.
Perched in the hills above, we spy Marks headlights snaking through the windy terrain.
Mark continues on, locating a scarred tree.
This, were meant to realize, is where his wife died.
Cobels skepticism leads her to venture to find out.
Innie Mark doesnt really give the candle a thought, but he does build a tree out of clay.
Could this bethetree he was visiting the night before?Severancelets us wonder.
But the comparison I feel most is to the 2004 filmEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Love is what gives us hope even as the often oppressive world seems to be closing in.
Same for Irving and Burt, or Burt and Irvie, as Ive started calling them in my head.
(Sorry not sorry.
Ive been watching a lot ofSesame Streetwith my kid lately.)
They both have unbridled enthusiasm for the word of Kier that they take care to express with measured emotion.
But when they stop to admire a creepy oil painting depicting a handbook passage (um, what?
), their hands naturally gravitate together for an electric moment.
Its a stolen moment, though, because we can all imagine what the handbook says about interoffice relationships.
Any potential relationship between Helly and Mark seems doomed as well as she makes one final plan to GTFO.
Perhaps her outie wants to condemn her to a life in hell, but she cant accept it.
Instead, she plans on ending it all.
Outie Helly really didnt think this through.
We literally just met her aggro outie, so there seems to be a lot more to her story.
It looks like its time for my staggered exit, so Im going to go grab the elevator.
Is he talking Fireballs?
Or something more sinister?
The funniest visual of the week is Cobel fiddling with a finger trap.
Finger traps are the new stress balls!
I will be stealing it.
Is anyone else starting to think Cobel may have possibly killed Marks wife?
She seems obsessed with him beyond just the Lumon connection.
Her comment about them both having a date at the funeral was cringe city.
I really loved how Ms. Casey asked Mark to do an exercise with clay.
Every time the main melody of Theodore Shapiros haunting score plays, it sends a shiver up my spine.
It kicks all the emotion up to 11.
