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Severance S2E3 Recap: We Don’t Abide Such Fripperies

“Who Is Alive?”

Mark and Helly in a hallway at Lumon.
Courtesy of Apple TV+

The following recap contains spoilers for Severance S2E3, “Who Is Alive?” (written by Wei-Ning Yu and directed by Ben Stiller)


Severance S2E3 begins with Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) sleeping on the side of the road in her VW Rabbit. I’ve always found it noteworthy that she drives a Rabbit, but I’ve never come up with anything interesting to say about it. Regardless, she ultimately decides to turn around and return to Lumon, where she confronts Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) later in the episode.

Cobel wants her job back (and not the other job Helena offered her in S2E2), but she’s not going to get it. Helena offers Cobel a conversation with the Board about it, but something spooks Harmony as they walk toward the Lumon building, and she flees again in her car.

I continue to wonder about Ms. Cobel’s motives, not just at this point in the story but going back to Season 1. Why did she pose as Mrs. Selvig and infiltrate the outie life of Mark Scout (Adam Scott)? It seems that Lumon did not authorize her to do so, but we should bear in mind that it’s not why she was fired. She was fired because Helly R. tried to hang herself in the elevator and Cobel hid that from the Board, along with the results of her investigation into what happened with Petey (Yul Vazquez).

Cobel seems keen on returning to MDR and tells Helena that she wants to see Cold Harbor through. If we take her at her word, that would put the kibosh on the notion I’ve had that Cobel doesn’t agree with what Lumon is doing with regard to Ms. Casey/Gemma (Dichen Lachman), but perhaps we shouldn’t take her at her word. Recall that she seemed somewhat disappointed in Season 1 as she viewed the wellness session she arranged for Mark right before Ms. Casey was retired. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) had to remind her that it was a good thing that the two didn’t recognize each other.

Ms. Cobel’s motives have always been obscure, and it complicates the matter to think about how they may have shifted since she was fired. At the end of S2E2, she seemed disappointed in Mark for returning to Lumon instead of quitting, but S2E3 sees her trying to get back to the severed floor. She’s conflicted because she believes in Kier but has been spurned by Lumon. This is how I’m reading things, anyway. It will be interesting to see if she ultimately turns against the company, but I think her belief in its pseudo-religion is firm.

Ms. Cobel stands in the Lumon parking lot.
Courtesy of Apple TV+

Within the Lumon office, our innie friends set about looking for Ms. Casey. Irving (John Turturro) heads to O&D for the first time since Burt (Christopher Walken) left and has a good chat with Felicia (Claudia Robinson). Mostly, they reminisce about Burt, but when Irving shows Felicia the notebook in which he’s made sketches of Burt, she sees the drawing he’s made based on his memory of his outie’s paintings and recognizes the hallway.

I wonder if this was a ploy on Irving’s part, but full credit if so because he pulls it off naturally. Felicia calls the hallway “exports” and says they used to take shipments there themselves, though now Lumon sends a guy to pick things up. It seems like there’s a good chance that she tells Irving where the hallway is offscreen, and, if so, that’s a big lead in the search for Ms. Casey, even if Irving and the others don’t know that she went down that hall and into that elevator.

The view down a dark hall with a red arrow pointing downward above the elevator at the end
Courtesy of Apple TV+

Meanwhile, Mark and Helly search for (and find) the room where they saw the man with a baby goat (Brian Rock) in Season 1. This time, no one is there, but they notice a tunnel with a flap door (which totally gives Being John Malkovich vibes) and decide to go through it. They’re led to an indoor pasture full of goats and an intimidating Gwendoline Christie.

She refuses to answer their questions about Ms. Casey and tells Mark and Helly to leave. When they don’t, the rest of Mammalians Nurturable rises up to surround them. Eventually, though, Mark and Helly are able to secure peace. They learn that Ms. Casey used to visit the department, but not much else. Regardless, MN agrees not to hinder their search.

We all wanted to know what was going on with the baby goat back in Season 1, and I don’t know about you, but I’m struck by the extent to which my curiosity is assuaged simply by getting the name Mammalians Nurturable. It’s not like it makes less sense than what we’ve seen of O&D to this point.

Gwendoline Christie ringing a white cowbell in Severance S2E3.
Courtesy of Apple TV+

Innie-Dylan (Zach Cherry) gets to meet with his outie’s wife, Gretchen (Merritt Wever), for the first time, and while things are a little awkward, the scene is also sweet. Dylan is probably upset to learn that his outie does not do muscle shows and has had trouble holding other jobs, but mostly he seems to appreciate Gretchen’s kindness and enjoys seeing pictures of their kids.

It’s a weird thing to think about—the sense of identification but also distance between innie and outie. I also noted that innie-Dylan apparently doesn’t know that Milchick’s first name is Seth, which is no big deal, but Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) intervenes to make sure Gretchen doesn’t tell Dylan who Seth is, which is odd.

Irving talking to Dylan at his desk.
Courtesy of Apple TV+

Speaking of Milchick, Tramell Tillman continues to steal the show. Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander) pays him a visit in S2E3 to deliver a gift of paintings from the Board, and… they are basically the Kier series except that Kier is Black. I don’t think Milchick appreciates the gesture—it’s strangely pandering while also maybe being racist?—but everything’s down to reading his facial expressions, besides the fact that he stores the paintings on a shelf later in the episode. I did love the moment when Natalie speaks for the Board in saying that they gave her, Natalie, the same paintings and she found them extremely moving. That’s what the Board says, not what Natalie says, even though she’s talking. The whole dynamic with Natalie is just brilliant. It’s like she has no authentic self.

In the outside world, Natalie visits Ricken (Michael Chernus) to talk about the possibility of creating a version of his book, The You You Are, specifically for severed Lumon employees. There’s apparently nothing wrong with the language of the original book, but Natalie insists that there is certain verbiage to which the innies respond more favorably. In short, they don’t want to censor the book; they just want to censor the book. However, I’m more curious as to why Lumon wants to do this at all.

Devon (Jen Tullock) has managed to push the question of what Mark’s innie meant by “She’s alive!” to the point where Mark himself wants an answer, so the pair work on a plan to create afterimages in Mark’s eyes that will last long enough for his innie to see them. Apparently, they read about this idea online, but it isn’t really a good one.

As Mark attempts to sear the question, “Who is alive?” into his retina, he’s disrupted by Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), who tells him that it won’t work and he could make himself blind. Besides, how is innie-Mark supposed to answer?

We haven’t seen Reghabi since her brief appearance in Severance Season 1, but I have been wondering when reintegration would re-enter the story. So, I wasn’t surprised to see Reghabi pop back up. I was somewhat surprised that Mark seems to be reintegrated by the end of the episode.

I suppose this makes sense. Reghabi tells Mark that, to her knowledge, Gemma is indeed alive, and so he immediately says yes to the procedure. Reghabi also says she’s gotten better at reintegration since Petey, and she has made some remarks about Petey not following her instructions, so I hope that’s not Severance waving its hands at the problems with reintegration it made a point of showing us in Season 1. I guess time will tell.

I don’t think that reintegration is the solution to the central problem of this series in terms of its philosophical stakes, but that’s something I’ve written about at length elsewhere. I do think it’s a fascinating plot development for Mark to undergo reintegration at this point in the story.

We know that Lumon is keen to finish Cold Harbor and that they believe they need Mark to do so. At the same time, innie-Mark has already been on the case of looking for Ms. Casey/Gemma, and the information Irving has could move that along quickly.

But, can a reintegrated Mark effectively pose as innie-Mark, or will he be found out? Milchick noted in S2E2 how Mark’s innie doesn’t have the sadness that can be easily read on outie-Mark’s face, and he was not wrong about that.

I continue to think that outie-Helena entered the severed floor instead of giving herself back over to innie-Helly, but we don’t know for sure. Either way, surely Helly will notice something off with Mark the next time they come into work, don’t you think?

Three episodes into its second season, Severance is progressing at a lightning pace. There are a ton of questions, but it looks like everything might come together far more quickly than I would have anticipated.

See you next week.

Written by Caemeron Crain

Caemeron Crain is Executive Editor of TV Obsessive. He struggles with authority, including his own.

Caesar non est supra grammaticos

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