(Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” season 2Section 7, “Chikhai Bardo.” For coverage of previous sections, read our previous Reviews.)
“Where did you go?”
The first time we hear that question is the beginning of section 7, and GEMMA (Dichhen Lachman) is somewhere deep within Lumon headquarters Having her blood drawn. Look at the small injection bottles with green lids fill one by one, Gemma’s mind withdraws to when she first hit ground (Adam Scott) at a blood flow held in the Campus Library. Then they were only co -teachers who used part of part of a shared good deed, unaware of their polite but potent flirt over a research document entitled “All Quiet on the Western Blunt” would change the rest of their lives.
That’s how love goes. It tends to come from nowhere and then suddenly it is as if it has always been a part of you.
So when Mark finally arrives at the end of the episode and Devon (Jen Tullock) asks: “Where would you go?”, I doubt it would surprise her to learn that he visited Gemma. In times of difficulties, we seek comfort from those we love, and both Gemma and Mark survive their different trials by remembering each other. Gemma is trapped in a prison whose bars are set by a small chip in her brain. Her trial is very real – her jaw hurts from the mysterious dental procedures, and her hand pain from writing thank you cards to fictional friends and family – but Mark’s experience is found only in his memories. Memories he hopes to preserve during reintegration, while he gains access to all those he has lost on Lumon.
But can these memories coexist? Section 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” gets its name from the Buddhist term describing the first stage of death. In step two, they are facing visions from the past, and in step three (last step), they are deinced as something new, which starts about the six phases of life and death.
Literally, Mark and Gemma do not want to start as someone new. Gemma has done it enough in her many visits to many rooms where she becomes many different characters. “I want to go home,” she tells the sadistic Lumon Scientist (played by Robby Benson) who monitors his treatment (and as we first saw in section 5Roll a trolley with dental tools down the black hall). Of course, she can’t go home. Lumon needs her. Why exactly remains unclear, but the researcher (or maybe I would say “researcher”) is trying to deny the request by lying to Gemma. “You’ve been away for a long time, Gemma,” he says. “(Mark’s) continued. You may have moved on too. In one of the rooms. What do you think? ”
Of course, land has not moved on. He is also not ready to start over. He may have been closer to a form of rebirth when he still thought Gemma was dead, but now that he knows she is alive, he is desperate after getting his old life back. She is the only reason he underwent reintegration to begin with, which proves that he is willing to do something to get her back, to get his life back, to go back, not forward.
This is perhaps why Gemma takes up the concept of Chikhai Bardo, after getting a card in the post, Mark initially says that the picture “looks like two guys fighting.” Gemma corrects him and explains that it is actually “the same guy who struggles himself and defeated his own psyche – Egodöd.” Does Mark’s original interpretation show that he is approaching his current problem in the wrong way? Does land see reintegration as an attack? He pits Innie vs. Outie and hopes that the former absorbs (and thus defeat) the latter? Instead, should he look at reintegration as recognition? A battle that can only be won when “the same guy” dismisses his subjective self -identity by recognizing the presence of his two objective self?
Practically, I’m not sure what it would mean for Mark’s Innie and Outie and their respective relationships. But for as much as Section 7 serves to remind us of Mark and Gemma’s intimate, lasting connection, it also reminds us that they can not only go back to what they had before. They have to move forward. Whether they can go there together, yes, that is the question of millions of dollars.
Rating: B+
“Severance” season 2 Releases new episodes every Friday.
Further refinement:
• Brave to Jessica Lee GagnéHead of this section that has been head of photography at “Severance” since then Season 1. “Chikhai Bardo” relies on visual transitions and emotional logic to sew their time -jumping story, while revealing critical details about Gemma’s difficulty. Its performances are a degree from a clear moment to the next in a way that requires a guiding hand to keep them all in harmony as much as it needs to pay attention to professional actors to deliver what is asked about them. Not for nothing, it’s beautiful. Flashbacks are dreamy without becoming Mawkian, and Gemma’s scenes in Lumon are nightmare without feeling unbound or other words. As a whole, it works elegantly, and as part of a longer season it stands out.
• For this purpose, Bravo to Dan Erickson, the co -author in this section (with Mark Friedman) and the creator of “Severance” since the beginning. The section 7 holds together as well as it does is a will not only for its own thought -provoking composition, but every thought -provoking composition that came before it. In a story that continues to ask us to recognize and respect each of Mark’s two self, it is critical that we support each of his relationships equally – or as equal as possible. Hans Innie’s relationship with Helly has developed ahead of us, beat by beat, all the time. They are the couple we have grown with and anchored for, so they have earned our devotion. But we had not seen Hans Outie’s relationship with Gemma until this week, leaving section 7 the inevitable task of balancing the wave. We have to invest in GEMMA as much as we already invest in Helly, and although it may not be a fair demand, “Chikhai Bardo” gives its history to a lively life. It humanizes Gemma in ways that we would not yet see for ourselves.
Code Detectors:
• Still, I have questions. Like, how did gemma end up at Lumon to begin with? Did they just choose her randomly, kidnapped her and falsified a total stranger death? Did she go to them at some point (maybe during her fertility treatments) and voluntarily ended for severance pay in secret? Is there another reason why we have no way to guess yet? No matter what, there is a large part of the time missing after Mark and Gemma’s marriage began to stumble and before the night mark saw Gemma alive. Maybe we’ll get a new flashback-heavy post sometime soon.
• It is soothing, so to speak, to know that what we see Gemma goes through in section 7 hands in the present. For starters, I was worried that her experiments in the various rooms may also have taken place in the distant past, like some of the other scenes, but when Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and the “Doctor” looks at the monitors, they mention Mark “Fast” at 96 percent in cold harbor. Mr Drummond says that the bloody nose held them back (which just happened last week) and the “doctor” wears a stupid holiday sweater, which we see again in the next scene: It is part of another experiment with GEMMA in another room. So it seems at least both Gemma’s current timeline in this section and the MDR workers’ timeline in the previous sections are synchronized. Let the race not End Cold Harbor Starts!
• “So what happens when I have been in every room?”
“You will see the world again, and the world will see you.”
“So I’ll see land?”
“Mark will benefit from the world you summarize. Kier will remove all his pain just as Kier has removed yours. “
(Her eye is well, she’s angry)
“Could you please just talk like a regular person?”
PLEASE! My God! She asks the exact questions we want answered, and she gets nothing but cult nonsense in return! Stop playing with us, “Severance” !!
