I first became aware of Dichen Lachman when she was a regular on Dollhouse, likely the last TV show that Joss Whedon would create (given his public downfall) and really the lesser of his projects. It's rather fitting, though, that she would have been on that show as well as this, because the premises are actually similar: in Dollhouse, a shady company rewrites the personalities of people it has taken in to serve various functions for those who can afford to rent one of these "dolls," who in theory have all voluntarily signed a contract to do this work, but of course live in a state of naive innocence when they aren't having the memories or personality of an escort, a security guard, a girlfriend or boyfriend for the guy whose parents won't get off his back about finding a partner, etc. The deeper plot involved some kind of sinister plot to use this technology on the general public and create people who could be overwritten to serve the few and powerful, and both seasons ended with a flash-forward to a post-apocalyptic future overrun with dolls.
The show suffered in part because of a steadfast commitment to mostly being episodic in an era when we were really more into serialization, and also in part because its star, Eliza Dushku, while not a bad screen presence, didn't really have the range to pull off the out-there premise. However, the other two main-cast dolls, played by Lachman and Enver Gjokaj, were incredible, possessing that chameleonic quality that allowed them to seamlessly transform with each installed personality.
Lachman has been part of Severance since the first season, but up until this episode, she has largely been more of a plot point than a character in her own right. We first met her as Ms. Casey, who performed the odd function of calming the Innies by telling them supposed facts about their life outside the office. She was kind of just another weird Lumon thing, until we discovered that Ms. Casey is, in fact, Gemma - Mark's wife who supposedly died in a car accident.
Of all the evidence of Lumon's nefariousness, Gemma's faked death and seeming imprisonment has been exhibit A. And, well, it gets worse.
Chikai Bardo fills us in on a lot of things, but the main structural shift is that Gemma is the episode's protagonist, giving us probably more screen time with her since than all her previous appearances combined.
The episode splits its time between flashbacks to her and Mark's relationship, and then seeing the hell she's going through on the Testing Floor, which lies below the Severed Floor.
First off, it appears that she and Mark were previously college professors - her of literature (perhaps primarily Russian lit) and him of, it seems, military history. Notably, it's amazing what a haircut can do to make Adam Scott look about ten years younger (even though the flashbacks start 5 years earlier). They meet at some kind of blood drive (that happens to be being run by Lumon) and bond over the students' papers they have to read and grade. ("All Quiet on the Western Blunt: Drug Use Among Soldiers in World War One" is an amazing title.)
The two are clearly a match, and we kind of hazily go through their courtship, moving in together, getting married, and then trying to have a kid.
But it's this effort that starts to drive an wedge between them. Gemma miscarries, and their efforts at getting fertility treatment don't seem be working. And, as they try to deal with this in different ways - Gemma becoming more closed-off while Mark is getting frustrated with the effort of getting her to open up to the point where he starts to be dismissive and uncaring - this beautiful relationship starts to lose its luster.
Notably, in these good times, we actually get to see their home in a season other than winter. Seeing warm sunlight on green leaves is such a huge departure for this show so perpetually set in a winter of discontent that it truly feels like another world.
And then, it's the stupidest thing: Gemma is going to a party, which Mark has decided he's not going to attend. And, as he works late in his home office, a couple of cops pull up and take off their hats as they approach the door - Mark sees them through the door's windows and we watch as the horror of his realization falls on him.
It's a rough episode. But also beautiful, in a way.
And that's really only half of it. Because the terror here is really what is going on now, with Gemma stuck down in the sub-basement of the Lumon building.
Confirming something I had suspected, Severance need not be limited to just two personae. Gemma's mind has been split into something like eight. Gemma herself lives in this hypogean, clinical world where she has some books to read and some music to listen to, and is attended to by a nurse and a doctor. And then, every day, she is led into multiple rooms, changing her outfit and hair in each one, and as she enters, the persona associated with that room takes over.
And it's hell.
One of her personae goes to endless dentist appointments, her mouth tortured, only to return to consciousness for the next. Another is forced to write endless Christmas thank-you cards, living as if her entire life is Christmas and all she can do is feel her hand cramp as she writes card after card after card. One travels on an airplane (I assume it's a simulator) with profound turbulence. And while she meets a new person in each of these rooms, it's actually just the same doctor, playing a role in each room, where that room's particular Innie is none the wiser.
Each room has its own name, but the one room she has yet to enter is called Cold Harbor. Indeed, now that I think of it, each room I think has the name of one of the folders that the MDR team sorts numbers into. Gemmas comes out of these rooms sometimes with a hurting mouth or a hurting hand, and she is grilled (with an image of her skull via some Lumon device) on whether she experienced various emotions - some of which we will recognize as Kier's "tempers."
Gemma is assured that once she visits all the rooms, she'll usher in some new world that will be a benefit for everyone, including her husband. But she is, notably, also not told she can ever see him again.
The episode climaxes with Gemma attacking the doctor and fleeing the Testing Floor. But as she rides the elevator up, she emerges not as Gemma, but as Ms. Casey. And when she approaches the hallway that could take her to see Mark or any of the other Innies, she instead finds Mr. Milchick, who gives her a BS story about her Outie getting lost in the Lumon building after coming to attend a public art show, and that she must go back downstairs. When Gemma re-emerges, she weeps as she realizes just how trapped she is.
It's interesting to see the Buddhist themes brought up here. I am by no means a theologian, and I'm not deeply versed in Buddhist philosophy, but there is a notion that is echoed in some Western thought about "Ego Death." Essentially, as I understand it, ego death is not a cessation of consciousness, but more a letting go of the self and all the myopic self-obsessions to just be one with existence. Severance is kind of the most fucked-up version of this - contradicting the Lutherans from last episode, we could imagine that the consciousness persists between shifts, but the individual egos of the various personae are left behind.
But if Buddhism's goal is to escape the cycle of reincarnation by becoming this ego-less consciousness, severance could be interpreted as forced reincarnation - any progress toward enlightenment wiped out by forcing you into a tabula rasa state, generating a new ego (and in a culture that pushes you to treasure the most utterly trivial rewards).
Bardo is a state between death and rebirth, or more broadly, the term for liminal states of being. Chikai Bardo (and caveat - this is just from my reading of Wikipedia when writing this post, so there are probably lots of nuances I'm missing) is the state that occurs right as death is approaching.
It's interesting, because our framing for this episode is the immediate aftermath of Mark's collapse during the previous one, where Devon watches over him and argues with Dr. Reghabi, and we could interpret the flashbacks here as taking place from his perspective. But I think that really, this is our moment to see things from Gemma's point of view. Still, while Gemma connects with these ideas from Tibetan Buddhism (Lachman herself is Nepalese-Australian) it looks like Mark is the one in this bardo space for the episode.
Given that we've known Helly for the entire series, we're pretty invested in hers and Mark's relationship, fraught though it is that Helly's other half is the villainous Helena Eagan. But it's kind of fascinating to see a younger, confident, and very-much-in-love Mark with Gemma, and understanding both the intoxicating joy of the relationship's early days juxtaposed against the cruel coldness. At least Gemma reminded Mark to tell her that he loved her before the accident - but she did need to.
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