(Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2 Episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig.” Read our Review of episode 1 here.)
Mr. Milchick really got into it this time. In the wake of The Macrodata Rebellionthe cut-off floor’s newly appointed manager (played by Tramell Tillman) may have cleared all the major obstacles that Lumon higher up set for him—and kept Mark S. (Adam Scott), fire the rest of the Macrodata Refinement team, replace them in just 48 hours, fire replacements (Mark W. will sue!) and rehire the original team—but in episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” he has to throw out bigger bait than a pineapple basket to get the desired result. And he doesn’t even understand what kind of bait he’s offering.
Near the end of the episode, when Mr. Milchick visits Mark at home, hoping to convince him to continue working at Lumon, the company’s delegate is armed with offers. He throws out a 20 percent raise before Mark can even answer if he’s happy with his current salary. He throws in “regular health checks” from “independent organisations” to make sure Innies are well looked after. And then he pulls out the big guns: Gemma. Milchick remembers Mark’s first job interview and reminds him how he felt then. “You said that every day since she died feels like a year. That you felt like you were choking on her ghost. Do you still feel that way, Mr. Scout?”
Again, Mark doesn’t answer until Mr. Milchick pushes forward, telling Mark that his Innie is “happy” and “funny” and, most of all, that he has “found love.” “Love?” Mark says, finally answering. “With who?” Now it’s Mr. Milchick’s turn to not respond, opting instead to finish his sales pitch and let Mark make the decision we already know he’s made. He will return to Lumon. He will be reunited with the severed floor. But he’s not coming back so “the solace” his Innie has found will “get up” to Mark’s Outie. He comes back to find Gemma. And Mr. Milchick’s little speech was the last push he needed to believe that he would actually find her again.
Episode 2 covers a lot of ground in its tight 47-minute runtime, but its main episode arc connects two key moments: The first is the same one we’ve been talking about for the past three years: when Mark’s Innie bursts out of his sister’s back room, hugging a photo of Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and shouted: “She lives!” The second is conveniently split between two moments: when Mark chooses to go back to Lumon and when he confronts Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette). In between, Mark’s Outie is shown to be dismissive and disconnected. He is all too eager to accept the explanation that his Innie was screaming about her missing niece, not Gemma. (“guys, apparently I was referring to the child.”) He drags his feet on whether or not to go back to work after the “overtime standby” incident, and his first decision is to quit. It’s only when Devon (Jen Tullock) presses him on the possibility that Mark’s Innie was screaming about Gemma that Mark’s Outie shows signs of life.
“Honestly, if Ricken died and his body was burned, I’d be sorry for you but I wouldn’t be affected,” Mark says, spitting his sister’s words back at her. “This is obscene.” “I just want to be sure,” Devon says. “I’m sure!” Mark shouts before walking out of the dining room. But that certainty, driven by common sense, time and emotional self-preservation, has been shaken by the faint glimmer of hope from his Innie’s desperate cries. Mark, for as long as we’ve known him, is a desperate man. His grief has driven him to desperate, destructive decisions in the past, such as severance pay the procedure itself, and now it drives him toward hope. If there is any chance that he can be reunited with his wife, even when it seems completely impossible, he will hold on to it. He has to, whether he wants to or not.
Later that evening, the fight with his sister still fresh in his mind, Mark hears how Mr. Milchick picks up Gemma, seemingly out of the blue. Then he hears Mr. Milchick say that Mark’s Innie has found love. “Love?” says Mark. “With who?” The answer he wants is also the one he knows he won’t get – not if Gemma is still alive. But could she be? Could his wife be down there with him? Could she be the one Marks Innie fell in love with? Did they find each other, and some nascent but fundamental part of them both remembered what they once had? Is the life he lost actually, somehow, still waiting for him somewhere in the depths of Lumon’s headquarters?
Perhaps. While we know that the “love” Mr. Milchick refers to is with Helly (Britt Lower), we also know that Gemma works at Lumon under the name Ms. Casey. Mark’s decision to return may not be driven by the right reasoning (and, yuck, it will hurt when he realizes his Innie is in love with someone other than his wife), but he’s trying to piece together the same puzzle as we are, dear readers. And that’s why the end of Episode 2 is so important. When Mark sees Ms. Cobel packing up her strange little white car, preparing to leave town for destinations unknown, it makes sense that he would be angry. She lied to him, she cheated on him, and she invaded his personal life in a way that is just plain scary. “Why did you do this?” Mark shouts. “What the hell is this all about?”
But then the budding little flame of hope bursts out. He can’t stop himself. She leaves, and he has to ask before she’s gone, even if it doesn’t make sense. “Do you know anything about Gemma?” says Mark. Mrs. Cobel lets out a shuddering breath. She looks down. And that’s enough. When she pulls herself together and drives off in a noisy huff, Mark has seen what he needs to see. She didn’t laugh at his question. She didn’t come across as cute or condescending. She looked…guilty.
That leaves three Lumon employees with suspicious Gemma-related behavior: Ms. Cobel with his sheepish gaze, Mr. Milchick with his not-so-random question, and Mark’s Innie, holding her picture and screaming for help. Over the course of Episode 2, he’s gone from a staunch non-believer to a curious convert. Does Mark’s Outie really believe he will find his wife when he goes back to work? Maybe not, but he won’t continue to sit at home and be suffocated by her ghost. He, like us, owes a proper explanation.
Get one, Scout. Go get it her.
Grade: A-
“Severance” releases new episodes on Fridays on Apple TV+.
Further refinement:
• “OK,” I can hear some of you saying, “but what about Cobel?! Where is she going? What happened to her? Is she the new head of the Severance Pay Council or what?” I unfortunately can’t answer that, given the enigmatic nature of Ms. Cobel’s scenes this week, but a few things are clear:
1. She is not going back to her old job. Not only did Mr. Milchick made it clear to Mark that “she’s never going down to that floor again,” but Cobel was nowhere to be found last week’s premiere.
2. She is not so eager to accept a “promotion”. In her meeting with Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), Cobel said she wanted to run the cut floor. She was told, politely but firmly, no, it’s Mr. Milchick’s job now, and was instead offered a “promotion” to the “severance board.” Instead of excitement or satisfaction, Ms. Cobel the offer with suspicion. “I’ve never heard of anything like that,” she says, and when Helena explains that it’s a “brand new initiative,” Cobel decides she’s been lied to. “You don’t value me,” she says. “You fear me.” “We fear no one,” Helena replies, but Cobel isn’t buying it. She says she will think about it, but she hasn’t given any further reason to do so. She has made her assessment.
3. Someone is lying about Ms. Cobel. After all, in the aforementioned meeting, she has told Lumon that she “values” her and her “loyalty”. But when Mr. Milchick meets the Outies, he says that Ms. Cobel feels “seriously unwell” and blames her for all the “distress” Mark’s Innie feels. It is clear that Lumon prioritizes Mark over Ms. Cobel, but in what way is still unclear. Maybe her “promotion” is real, and she will gain more authority. Maybe it’s more of a hollow buyout, and Lumon is trying to hide her somewhere safe until they feel comfortable getting rid of her. Either way, she’s a central character, whether she’s a friend — or a nemesis.
• Do you recognize Mr. Drummond, the new character who gives orders to Helena Eagan? You should, as long as you saw the best tv series of 2024. Mr. Drummond is played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who recently starred in “Somebody Somewhere” as Bridget Everett’s tenant turned love interest, Iceland (aka Viglundur). Sure his character in “Severance” won’t be quite as nice as he was in “Somebody Somewhere”, but Ólafsson has also appeared in the Netflix comedies “Eurovision” and “Murder Mystery”, voiced a character in “Hilda” “, and starred in Maria Bamford’s acclaimed sitcom, “Lady Dynamite.” But perhaps most importantly, Ólafsson has a history with the “Severance” director and executive producer Ben Stylelisstarring in “Zoolander 2” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”.
• “Bum mop.” That’s what Lumon CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) calls his daughter, Helena, right after his Innie uncovers the problems plaguing the company’s chipped floors. Those are pretty solid vocabulary terms for an insult that involves calling your daughter a “stinky brat,” but lay off, I guess, you old weirdo.
• Leave it to Ricken to hone in on the important thing about meeting Marks Innie: “He was inspired by my book. He found great meaning in it – depth.”
• For the record, I think Dylan’s “door prize” joke was solid. Was it worth losing the job over? No, but I wouldn’t want to work at Great Doors with such a humorless boss anyway.
Code detectors:
• Perhaps the biggest revelation in Episode 2 (at least when it comes to theories) is the motivation for keeping Mark on Lumon: They need him to complete Cold Harbor.
What is Cold Harbor? No idea, but when Mr. Milchick explains his plan to re-staff MDR with people who “hopefully have good chemistry” with Mark S., Helena replies, “We don’t need chemistry. We need Mark S. back to work long enough to finish Cold Harbor.” Later, after Mark’s minor mutiny, Mr. Drummond tells Mr. Milchick that they will give Mark what he wants (aka, his original team back) because “he won’t quit without them.”
It’s clear they need Mark. It is clear that they will do almost anything to ensure that he will finish his project. What’s unclear is what this project is (just… refine numbers?), how the other team members’ similar work affects (Mr. Milchick didn’t hesitate to fire them after the rebellion), and what happens when he/they complete Cold Harbor . Keep your eyes open.
• I loved the detail in Helena’s apology video where she blamed her “joke” and her “lie” on a combination of alcohol and a “non-Lumon” arm rash medication. Is it a compelling story to make up for her embarrassing confession? Not really, but combined with her other containment efforts, it should do the trick – without even blaming a Lumon-made drug in the process.
• Helena’s scenes in this episode are pretty exciting overall. Sure, she does everything you’d expect to help cover up the Macrodat rebellion, but in smaller, more private moments, she seems…shaken. She watches tapes of her Innie, Helly, kissing Mark. She looks hesitant, or at least worried, after recording her apology video. Later she stares… plaintively perhaps out the window. It seems her Innie’s temporary escape has affected her Outie – we just don’t know how.
• Who is Irving calling from that phone booth? And why is Burt looking at him? Just talk already! You love each other!
