(Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” season 2Section 5, “Trojan’s horse.” For coverage of previous sections, read our previous Reviews.)
Helly is Helly again. You know that. I know that. We all know that since section 5, “Trojan’s horse”, goes beyond to ensure that we Know The real Helly R. (Britt Lower) is back on the cut floor. There is the little ding when her chip is activated in the elevator (which some fans claim was missing in previous sections, when Helena pretended to be Helly). There is the shaky comb shot of a destabilized Helly that goes gently back to her workplace (after almost being drowned at Woe’s Hollow). There is the previous scene where Helena Eagan explicitly says it is too risky for her to just pretend to be Helly again. Mark S. (Adam Scott) will not complete Cold Harbor without Helly, so they have to “give her her.”
Lowe’s hyper -focused performance contributes with lots of conviction of itself, which ensures that last week’s twist feels both real and complete. Things are back to normal … at least they should be. But Mark is certainly not – not after a woman he has “goo goo eyes” to spy on him and tricked him into sleeping with her. Dylan (Zach Cherry) is also not, although he is more upset about losing Irving (John Turturro) than feeling betrayed by his colleague and company. The MDR team is completely fragmented, and the insurance that persuades those of us who look at home that everything is right with their underground world again does not mean as much to the characters who live in an upward reality.
“It wasn’t me,” Helly shouts on Mark after his affected reaction to Irving’s tournament ceremony and in greater sense to her return. “I’m not her. I am not! I’m me – Helly. “
“And how do I know that?” he asks.
“You … you don’t,” she says. “You just have to trust me. This is real. Not everything here is a lie. ”
She doesn’t just talk about her identity. Helly refers to their feelings for Mark: their ideals, their friendship, their romance – the latter, for Helly, has just gone as far as a kiss. Mark knows he went further, but like Mr. Milchick (Tramel Tillman) points out, Helly does not know that Mark slept with Helena, because Helly is not Helena.
“It wasn’t me. I’m not her. I’m not. “
That brand could not see the difference is a major problem for our team leader. Did he cheat Helly with Helena? Or did he cheat his wife, Gemma (Duchen Lachman), with Helena? Had he already cheated on his wife with Helly when he kissed her? How much can be forgiven because Mark did not know the woman he thought was Helly was actually Helena? How much can be forgiven because Mark did not know that the woman prevailed at work was his wife (or at least his Outie’s wife)? It’s no wonder he saw Gemma/MS. Casey in the middle of having sex with Helena – his cut brain struggles to keep up with all these mixed emotions.
“It wasn’t me. I’m not her. I’m not. “
Of course, this would be much easier if Helly’s argument was as clear as she does. If Hans Outie and Innie are separate people, only related to a shared body, Mark’s Outie can be happily married to Gemma and Mark’s Innie can be Helly’s happy workkeeper, never Twain to meet. As for the whole Helena event, they can only write it as a mistake – land was already beaten with Helly ( real Helly) When Helena took her place so to be blind enough to continue (and completed) their flirting is a forgive monitoring. Is it strange? Sure. Is it cheating? Only in a strict physical meaning, all emotional storage.
“It wasn’t me. I’m not her. I’m not. “
But … can we really separate Innies and excursions so clean? Isn’t that exactly what Lumon wants? For the excursion to live their lives without a new thought to the other person who slaves away underground? And to embrace their lives without ever dreaming of running fast and free through the sunlight? Section 5 clearly repeats Lumon’s low opinion on its employees at the basement level. “You should not let them have a funeral. It makes them feel like people, “asks Miss Huang” Mr. Milchick. “They are fucking animals,” says Helena when he is pressed to return to the cut floor. Later, in the same boardroom, Mr. Milchick punished for implementing ineffective “kindness reforms” for his team and reminded of “treating (dismissed workers) as what they really is.” “I sharpen the leash,” Milchick replies and again refers that his chipped colleagues are no more than dogs, animals and a means for an end.
“It wasn’t me. I’m not her. I’m not. “
If keeping their employees lives separated from their personal is Lumon’s goals, they win. Just look at Mark. While his Innie waffles on his commitment to the uprising, his outcome is desperate to reconnect. He loses off-white, masked drinks and a series of pills prescribed by his (crazy?) Scientist roommate, Asal Rawbi (Karen Aldridge). He has a frightening cough, continues to see visions and hear voices, but he is still To drive for more brain surgery sessions in the basement. Mark Scout risks everything, while Mark S. just wants to get back to work. Does it sound like a person torn between what is safe and what is right, or does it sound like two people who work independently of each other, based on separate motives?
“It wasn’t me. I’m not her. I’m not. “
When Season 2 competitions forward, a confusing question awaits at the finish line: If Mark’s reinterpretation works and suddenly Hans Innie and Outie have to coexist at the same time, what does it mean for his relationships? What feelings win in a battle between Mark’s new love for Helly and his established love for Gemma? And if you think it is an impossible question, what about the one facing Helly and Helena? How can an Innie and Outie live together when they basically oppose each other? We know that an outie can delete an Innie – RIP Irving – but given where our loyalties are (with Helly, Duh), can an Innie delete its outie? And … should they?
“It wasn’t me. I’m not her. I’m not. “
In the immortal words of Laurence LaurenentzWould it be so simple.
Rating: B+
“Severrance” Season 2 releases new episodes Friday on Apple TV+.
Further refinement:
• Love mugs with Irving’s face on them, hate the handles that look like a set Brass knuckles. (Even if you really want to work to read something from the construction, you can claim that that is what Lumon thinks Irving deserves – a solid punch in the face.)
• “For the least fun guy in the world he was really fun.” Dylan’s eulogi could have stopped there, and it would have been perfect.
• Given the flur of emotions that flew over Natalie’s face (Sydney Cole Alexander) the first time Mr Milchick saw the paintings of Kier Eagan like a black man, it feels almost greedy this week when he asks her to verbally elaborate the “complicated feelings.” But hello, the medium handler — which has been made by his staff and laced off by his boss-bends only after someone, any To get in touch with, and it’s hard to blame him for it. Keep using the “big words”, my guy.
• “Oh, do you mean to put the numbers into the matter?” I love it when land gets oblique.
• Ricken! Come on! Take yours “Fiscal and Creative Opportunity” And shoot up Lumon’s ass already! My God, man.
Code Detectors:
• Irvings Innie may be dead, but Hans Outie is still working to bring Lumon down. It’s my takeaway, at least considering everything we learned in the Season 1 final, as well as his repeated trips to the telephone booth during season 2. But who calls Irving? “So they kicked me,” he says in section 5. “I think they knew what my Innie was up to.” Then he sees Burt (Christopher Walken) and “comes on (him)” before calming down and agrees to come to dinner.
Burt is suspicious on his own, only sits there in his car, but I am much more interested in who Irving is planning with. Know Irvings outie what his innie was up to? It does not sound like he knows about Ortbo or Helly (alias the real reason he was fired), but does Irvings Outie have some kind of access to the cut floor that Hans Innie does not know? What is he trying to find out? Why does he investigate Lumon at all? And who helps him?!
• One thing we know: Irvings Innie had a last trick in the sleeve. His last word to Dylan was: “Just remember: Hang there.” – A SLU reference to the poster by Dylan Emblazoned with the very slogan. Dylan remembers, just in time, and controls the back of the poster, where Irving has hidden written instructions to the export hall, the long, black hall with a lift at the end of the Irvings Outie has been furious, forced painting. Now they know how they get there. What they find, it’s still someone’s guess.
• Where is Harmony Cobel? Does she still drive? Has Lumon moved her up? Has she been behind any of this, or has she spent the last two episodes in the cold, on her own?
• Ok, so the real meaning behind Mr. Milchick’s “Story of the gray coat” is … just kidding. It’s pretty obvious – “Swedish horse shit” – and I don’t care either. What is truly important is how Tramel Tillman pronounces “The gray cap.” “DrawyShoo-stock. “Lovely.
