Interesting that Seth Milchick is known by his (presumably) real name both within and outside of the Lumon headquarters. There's something special about Harmony Cobel/Selvig.
The second season's second episode fills in a few gaps regarding how things arrived at the end of the season premiere. Irving and Dylan were both fired, initially, and we have a very painful scene in which Dylan's outie must feign a lifelong fascination with doors to get work at a... a door factory, I guess, only for his former status as a severed worker to get him rejected. (He also gets a call from his wife and they discuss baby wipes, so it's clear that he has more than one kid, and that he probably cannot afford to be unemployed at the moment).
Naturally, Helly R, whom, as we discovered at the end of last season, is actually Helena Eagan and a scion of the cult-like clan that runs the Lumon Corporation, is under no such threat of termination, but she's forced to run damage control, while her father has just two words for her: "fetid moppet."
Which, you know, gotta hand it to the Eagans for their creative word choice, though I think this is born less from intellectual creativity and more from a self-imposed social isolation that allows bizarre linguistic patterns to become reinforced (along with the pseudo-religious mythos the company is built upon - one wonders if the original inspiration for the severance procedure was to get a whole lot of people who would not know any better than to take Kier Eagan's words as scripture.)
The episode concludes with Mark Scout (as in, the outie) confronting Ms. "Selvig," who refuses to answer his questions but does seem to confirm something is up when he brings up Gemma and she nearly runs him over, screaming. Following his innie's outburst at the reading of Rickon's book, Mark and Rickon both conclude that the "she's alive" scream had to be about Rickon and Devon's baby, who had been briefly abducted by Harmony. It's Mark's sister who retains a degree of skepticism for this simpler, easier explanation - much to Mark's chagrin. After all, Mark had to identify his wife's body, and also inform her parents and students. Mark went to the length of severing his memory to spend eight hours a day escaping his grief, and is hostile to the idea that he actually meant his wife was, somehow, still alive.
Given the final shot of the premiere, it might be that Macrodata Refinement is not actually just busywork, but could have something to do with Gemma/Ms. Casey.
But let's sit with some of the questions this episode raises:
Irving takes his firing and re-hiring fairly easily compared to Dylan's experience, (Mark's exemption from this firing must have something to do with his wife, right?) but he does find the address for Burt, and attempts to call him (on a pay phone! To be fair, everyone drives boxy cars from the 1980s, so maybe we shouldn't read much into that and put it down to style). While Burt doesn't pick up, it turns out it's because he's searching Irving out. Now, last time they were near each other, Innie-Irving was slamming his fists against Outie-Burt's door, and so Burt might have reason to want to see what is going on with this guy, but this is firmly a "stick a pin in this" territory.
Mark is convinced by Milchick not to quit, offering a raise and promises of some greater oversight (Selvig/Cobel is a perfect scapegoat for Lumon - and they offer her a "promotion" that sounds very much like she's being "kicked upstairs" while Milchick retains her old job.)
Now, I don't know if I misinterpreted things from the previous episode, but there seem to either be missing days that Mark comes into work and then departs, or perhaps he spent more time with the "other team" than I had understood from the season premiere.
However, regardless of what I got wrong, one thing I sure didn't miss was that Mark gets to work one day at 9:03 or something, and leaves at 9:15. That's either a very long day or a very short one - the security guard even says, questioningly, "Mr. Scout?" which Mark clearly interprets as a parting salutation.
Now... maybe I just need to watch that first episode again, but is there a moment where he spends only ten minutes or so down in the severed wing? And when Mlichick told Mark S. that it had been five months... that wasn't true, was it? The whole "you guys are heroes on the outside" was clearly BS from the start, but Mark goes back to work after just a single weekend.
One thing yet to be answered is whether the Helly R we see come down the elevator is truly Helly or if it's Helena. I don't think this episode gives us a solid answer, but especially after watching the scene in which she talks about what they owe the Outies, she certainly seems quite adamant about not being the same person. Granted, this is a Helly who tried to time things so that she would hang herself right as she swapped into the Helena Eagan persona - so that animosity isn't a crazy thing for her to express. Still, it doesn't contradict the theory that Helena is a sleeper agent (that being said, I really like Helly, so if this is a twist that's coming down the pike, I hope it's one that is revealed sooner rather than later).
Truly, one of the existentially horrifying parts of Severance is the notion that simply quitting means dooming one's Innie to non-existence - a threat that Milchick uses to convince Mark to come back to work when he's considering quitting. I'm inclined to believe that these people are, on some fundamental level, singular entities, but there's this chance of losing something you don't even realize you were missing.
As we saw last season, reintegration is not exactly a safe and tested procedure, so I don't even really know what the endgame of this series could really look like. Indeed, for our central protagonist, there's even kind of two separate goals for them to work toward - Outie Mark needs to learn the truth about his wife, and if it's possible, to rescue her. But Innie Mark needs to be allowed his own agency and identity.
What is on full display in this episode, though, is the immense weight that a corporation like Lumon can exert to pressure people into doing what they want it to do. In fact, this is one point that "Selvig" makes to Mark in their episode-ending confrontation: all it took was Milchick to show up with a pineapple and an apology to get him to come back to work, despite everything.
The corporate world has done an amazing job drilling into our minds, making its way of being seem the most reasonable, the most sensible. And it's so good at pivoting, reintegrating criticism of itself into another vector for profit. I mean, I've been using Apple computers since I was three years old, but I wasn't happy when they cancelled Jon Stewart's show for being critical of them. The cult of Steve Jobs may not be precisely the same as the cult of Kier Eagan, but I also think that even if such connections were made a bit more specific, the honchos at Apple would probably just chuckle along with the audience and say "hey, that's some good satire. Just another example of quality programming on our platform!"
Just as one little post-script kind of note: I find it interesting that the outside world in Severance is always depicted as such a bleakly depressing environment. Given a mention of Grand Rapids by the Bob Balaban character in this episode, I assume it's meant to be set in Michigan. I've never been there (I have some family that lives there) so no offense to all you Michiganders, but while the outside world doesn't seem like, run-down, dangerous, or suffering from poverty, it's feels like the entire world outside of Lumon has half the lights out, like Mark's house, as if the entire world is in a depressive grief. We only ever seem to see it in winter, with snow on the ground and grey skies. As someone who grew up in New England and the moved to Southern California, there's a kind of deep bleakness that I associate with that kind of low-light, chilly environment. Paradoxically, while it's a dystopian place, the Severed Floor is nonetheless an exciting and whimsical fantasy world. Is that simply what makes the show fun to watch? Or is there some deeper thing there? Maybe even something insidious?
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