Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Severance S2E8, “Sweet Vitriol” (written by Adam Countee & K.C. Perry and directed by Ben Stiller)
Severance S2E8 finally checks in with Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who has been absent from our story since S2E3. At the beginning of that episode, she was asleep on the side of the road near a sign that read “Salt’s Neck 238” before she decided to turn around and go back to Kier. There, she got freaked out after Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) suggested they go into the Lumon office and talk to the Board together, and sped off out of town again.
I mention these details because I find myself a little confused about the timeline. Let’s say that those events in S2E3 occurred on Friday night. That weekend, MDR went on their ORTBO; on Monday they returned to the office in S2E5; on Tuesday, Mark (Adam Scott) left early with a nosebleed before collapsing at the end of S2E6; and on Wednesday, he wakes up to find Devon (Jen Tullock) fretting over him at the end of S2E7. They decide to go ahead and call Ms. Cobel, and we see her receiving those calls on the same day she arrives in Salt’s Neck.
Now, we might presume that Harmony had been driving for a full day before she reached the sign that says “Salt’s Neck 238,” but if that’s 238 miles, it would be less than a day’s drive to get to Salt’s Neck from that point (and if it’s kilometers, it would be even quicker). Yet, the timeline in Severance seems to be telling us that it took her four days to get there.
She could have stopped along the way, or it could be that we should just wave our hands at this apparent inconsistency (it works narratively, don’t worry about it), but this seems like as good of a time as any to dig into the temporal inconsistencies in Severance a bit.
Harmony Cobel drives a Volkswagen Rabbit, and while I’m by no means a car expert, it looks like a model sold in the 1990s at the latest. This is bolstered by the fact that it has a cassette tape deck. Further, all of the cars in Severance are old makes and models. At the same time, though, Helena Eagan has a smartphone.
The computers in the Lumon office have an old-fashioned feel to them, and we might be tempted to chalk everything I’ve mentioned so far up to a stylistic choice in terms of the aesthetic of Severance—it’s a kind of cassette futurism.
However, there are other things that don’t add up. Mark’s driver’s license says he was born in 1978. Meanwhile, the banner at the bereavement ceremony for Irving (John Turturro) lists his end date as Quarter 882. That implies that Lumon has existed for 220 years, and we’ve been told that the company was founded in 1865, suggesting that it is currently 2085. Mark is not 107 years old. Something is not lining up.
When Milchick (Tramell Tillman) leaves Irving’s funeral in S2E5, there is a clock on the wall indicating that it is 1:03. This is before his performance review, which we’re told will last for more than four hours (with a lunch break). However, when Mark decides to leave work six minutes early, we see a clock indicating that it is 4:54, and Milchick catches Mark in the elevator.
It’s possible that Milchick’s performance review didn’t actually take four hours, and if you want to write all of these inconsistencies off, you’re free to do so. But, it occurs to me that none of this had to be in the show. They made a point of showing us Mark’s ID and the clock on the wall. And, further, the passage from The You You Are that Ricken (Michael Chernus) has altered is about the clock on the wall—it’s the same passage innie-Mark quoted from back in Season 1. I don’t have an answer, but it sure seems like Severance is calling our attention to the question.
Regardless, “Sweet Vitriol” focuses on Harmony Cobel’s return to her hometown of Salt’s Neck. She pops into the local diner, where she asks Hampton (James Le Gros) for a favor. They used to be chums, or colleagues, or exploited child laborers together, and she wants him to take her to Sissy Cobel’s (Jane Alexander) house because she’s afraid that Lumon is watching.
I’m not sure if Sissy is Harmony’s sister, or aunt, or what, but Hampton makes clear that she’s a pariah in town and he doesn’t want to go there. Sissy is a devotee of Lumon, and Lumon destroyed Salt’s Neck. Eventually, however, he relents and smuggles Harmony to Sissy’s door in the back of his pickup truck.
Here, Harmony finds that her old room is empty. She’s looking for something, but Sissy says she sold Harmony’s things. They get into a dispute about how Harmony’s mother died, and Harmony wants to go into her mother’s room. Ultimately, she finds the key and enters. She connects the breathing tube she’s been carrying around to the respirator by the bed, lies down, and falls asleep for a little while.
Eventually, Hampton storms into the house because it’s getting dark and he wants to get out of there. First, he and Harmony inhale some ether together and share a kiss, and then we learn that Harmony’s mother hated Lumon.
Harmony realizes there is no way that Sissy would have thrown away the item she’s been looking for and heads to a cellar that is separate from the house. There, she ultimately finds the head of Jame Eagan she’d been given to commemorate her scholarship. She pries open the bottom and takes out a roll of papers. When Harmony briefly returns to the house to tell Sissy not to tell anyone she’d been there, we learn that those papers are the complete design for the severance chip. Harmony invented it.
Sissy tries to throw the papers into the fire, but Harmony wrests them away from her. At the same time, Hampton hollers from outside that a car is approaching the house, so Harmony hightails it out of there, taking his truck. I’m not sure why he doesn’t go with her. I guess he’s planning to stay behind and either stall or fight. Because that’s definitely Lumon pulling up, and he hates Lumon.
As she drives away from Sissy’s house, Harmony finally answers Devon’s call and learns that Mark has been undergoing reintegration. She asks that Devon put Mark on the line, and then asks Mark to tell her everything. Cue credits.
Severance S2E8 is beautiful, and I love how it deepens our understanding of Harmony Cobel. I do, however, continue to wonder about her motivations and what her plan might be at this point. I’ve long thought that if she was going to work against Lumon (and putatively with our friends), it would be from the perspective of a true believer who thinks that the company’s current management has lost its way.
“Sweet Vitriol” suggests, however, that she may be rejecting the religion of Kier, as her mother did before her. At the same time, though, if she invented severance, I don’t know if I think she’s about to reject the idea of severance. I suppose the question is what her play is going to be with those documents she’s retrieved from Salt’s Neck.
She could try to make a power play within the company, threatening the Eagans with the possibility of their plans being exposed in detail to the public if they don’t give her back her job. Or, she might be convinced that the whole thing should be shut down, that the Kier stuff is hogwash, and that severance enables exploitation. I think Severance has some work to do if that’s the path it’s taking this character down, but it’s possible.
See you next week.
