Unorganized 'Severance' thoughts:

 ⚑ MAJOR SPOILERS BEWARE!

I'm now on my second watch of Severance, because I'm watching it with my dad now and it HURTS that not more people my age are watching this!! Literally such a fantastic show and the more that I see people unpack their thoughts on Severance I feel the lore just gets deeper and deeper. Especially re watching it, I can see LITERALLY EVERY SLIGHT THING I MISSED. So I'm gonna yap about everything I and others have observed about the show, including major spoilers so please stop here and just watch the show for yourself.

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Helena versus Helly:

When season 2 started, I had some weird sick feeling about Helly, because something about her seemed so off and watered down. I actually felt worried that because Helly was now like an official love interest for Mark that her character had just gotten watered down to just thinking about Mark. Obviously we know now that Helena was taking Helly's place, so the RELIEF I felt. And Helena is obsessed with Mark, which explained how up and front her affection for him was as soon as they "reunited" after the OTC.

A lot of people watch the show and immediately hate Helena. Which, I don't blame, she's a product of her father and Kier and everything Lumon swears to be. But god, I cannot get away from that very human side of her we see very little in the show. The most obvious being her replaying the clip of Mark and Helly kissing. Because omg, Helena does deep down just want to be loved. Lumon's definition of love is soulless and corporate, and now doubt what she was raised through (in another clip we see her explain how she grew up under the 9 [?] Kier morals/tempers[?] [ykwim]).

Additionally, Helena's participation in Lumon seems so performative. Like, I know they all are shallow and fake, all playing a part in a thinly-veiled cult reaching for world dominance. But at least the rest of the upper management seems completely bought into Lumon's ideologies. Helena says she is, she looks the part and acts the part, but part of me believes she isn't the part.*

*Like when her father tells Helly HE DOESN'T SEE KIER IN HER how did I forget to mention that.

Always rehearsing the same "innies are not people" lines but going out of her way to bond with the innies, and I am not just talking Mark. She tries to relate to all of them in some way, maybe a reason why Irving immediately noticed her slight change. Helly didn't need to go out of her way to relate to everyone, she was ONE OF THEM. Its shown especially at the end of season 2 how all the innies have an "us against them" mindset no matter your department (we see this too when O&D and MDR try to unite against upper management in season 1). All the departments have been fed propaganda against one another, but they are all still innies. That is something special that Helena could never recreate. Helena's desperate and subtle acts of acceptance had to have been when tipped Irving off to something being wrong... sure, her obvious lie about the "night gardener" didn't help but on the rewatch you can see on his face his suspicion against "Helly".

So what really gave Helena away for sure was the ORTBO (obviously) and Helena handing Irving the snow seal. Helly would've never gone out of her way to hurt Irv. Helly was sarcastic and blunt sometimes because she was genuine. She never would hurt someones feelings if she didn't think she was doing it for the right cause. Helena saw Irv during a moment of weakness/fear with the seal corpse and used it to embarrass him. Because that's all Helena has ever known; to hurt others, to use their pain for your gain. 

Helena cannot escape that she is her father's daughter. But it is super cool that they are introducing a possible chance at her reform? Because after the ORTBO incident she called the innies animals and agreed to never take Helly's place, like she had learned better and moved on... but then this chick goes to "accidentally run into" Mark's outie at the Thai restaurant. Just searching for a hint that he could love her like his innies could, even though he obviously has no memory for Helly or Helena. DESPERATION, that's the best way to describe Helena. 

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[Misc] Thoughts Related to Lumon:

Anyways... I feel like people don't talk about what Irv's arc with Burt really reveals. My dad was confused on why their storyline really mattered, but I think its such a subtle way to show the emotional control Lumon has on its employees. 

Like its heartbreaking that Burt feared that his homosexuality and past would never get him a spot in heaven despite repenting. Lumon prays on individuals who hate themselves, who could go through 8 hours a day not thinking about what makes them flawed, what hurts them, etc. The church upheld this during the sermon Burt and his husband attended that told them what they needed to hear. That the only way to escape who you are would just be to forget. The possibility that somewhere there is just a clean, innocent, better version of you in the world that holds no sin, but you yourself are too flawed to be fixed. 

Burt couldn't change that stain on his life so he agreed to a procedure that would allow a version of him into heaven. By the way, just to learn that even his innie was also homosexual. Not explored too much by the show is the fact that the innies ARE pretty similar to their outies. or they reflect an unrealized version of themselves.

Additionally, the show gets so much more interesting when you really pay attention to like every single product being used in the show, not just on the severance floor. Lumon's logo is EVERYWHERE. Even on the medical papers Gemma signed. Every restaurant and shop has some tie to Lumon. Lumon is EVERYWHERE and it isn't being subtle. Not much else to add about this, I just feel if you re watch the show you should super pay attention to every little detail because it is mind boggling when every single thing in town how some loose tie to Lumon.

My dad described Lumon in the most perfect way: it's like if Scientology got what they wanted. Or any modern cult for that matter. Lumon is so integrated into society; they allegedly have locations over the world, control of the government (ex: senators advocating for legal severance), company towns like we see in the show. Although their cult message is only really know through those who work at Lumon, they ideally are the end goal of any cult (but I thought Scientology was a good example here). 

The Kiers and Lumon even has its own Bible, religious stories (like the story of Dieter), prophecies, and so much more. Goat sacrifices are very much, y'know, not subtle, but that as well. Lumon at first just seems like a corporation doing all it does for maximum profit. But the fact that their motives are cult related is so terrifying. They don't want to sever you just because they want to exploit a worker for max profit, they want to sever you to brainwash you. Innies have basically no frame of reference of a cult, while outies obviously do. Now, many people in real life are in cults sure, but imagine the control you would have if no one had ever heard of the concept of a cult, or even had the power to escape one?

Mark And Selfishness:

Now I mentioned earlier that all the innies have some traits consistent with their outies. What I think is most consistent with Mark is selfishness. Don't get me wrong, I love Mark and his character but he is only ever focused on what concerns himself.

Outie Mark suspects Lumon is up to something but never bothers to take action because it doesn't really affect HIM. Like, it may effect his innie but since Mark doesn't even consider his innie at all, he continues to ignore the growing problem. For benefit of the doubt, yeah, there isn't much that Mark can do against Lumon. There is no way they will let him quit, he can't really... fight back against them BUT STILLLL...

Like especially after Petey, he's just kinda like "damn... guess I gotta go to work" BROO...

But then he finds out, even after all the suspicious things happening to him, that his wife could be alive. Suddenly all he wants is to get reintegrated. Mark doesn't care about the politics, about anything that could be effecting other severed employees, not even if its happening to his innie, but he does care when it might benefit himself. 

We see this again when outie Mark is trying to convince innie Mark to save Gemma at the birthing cabin. He doesn't bother to know anything about his innie. He pronounces Helly's name wrong and he shrugs off the fact that if Gemma is saved innie Mark and Helly will "die". He doesn't care as long as he is benefited from innie Mark's bravery. To him, the innie is expendable.

But innie Mark isn't perfect either. After all, the ending scene of season 2 is him and Helly leaving Gemma and running away[?] (running basically nowhere lol) with eachother. Mark knows that he and Helly cannot be together, for they are just the extension of people, but he makes the decision nonetheless because it's what he wants. He knows that Gemma and his outie may be more important to save then himself and Helly since they are doomed but he takes the chance anyways. 

Its easy to be mad at his decision to leave Gemma, especially since we see what she goes through in the testing rooms. But its hard to say that we wouldn't do the same as well. At least innie Mark went through with the plan at the expense of his life, but through the plan he betrayed the person they were trying to save, Gemma. She had been told over and over that her husband had moved on, remarried, and wouldn't go looking for her. And then he did. He sacrificed it all to find and save her, and the last thing she sees is him running away with another woman.

I guess what I'm getting at is that we feel angry because we know what Gemma is going through but its hard to blame innie Mark because he truly just doesn't understand. Its easy to understand that outie Mark never experienced the connection that innie Mark and Helly had. It's difficult to sacrifice something if you don't know the significance of it, but its also hard to convince someone to die for a self-serving reason.

Mark interests me a lot, I hope we get to see a lot more of him developing as a character in the next season. What would be his reaction to his innie abandoning Gemma?

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Lumon's Racism Against Milchick:

Something I'd wish people talk about more is the deliberate racism against Milchick that gets revealed in season 2 because I find it SO FUCKING INTERESTING. Constantly, Milchick is put down by Lumon like he's insignificant even though he does anything and everything for Lumon.

I mean, just the symbolism of him sitting in Cobel's chair, trying to get the welcome screen on the computer to be changed to his name. His entire job is cleaning up the mess Cobel's management caused yet everything is pinned on him. The ORTBO going wrong wasn't really his fault, it was Helena's. He tries to loosen the reins on MDR so they won't rebel and that just leads to more trouble so he tries to do the opposite to no avail. He exists as a scapegoat. Lumon has no respect for him and just uses him because they know he will do anything to prove himself.

It's not like MDR became unstable under HIS management, the seeds were planted under Cobel's strict management. The innies only started to rebel because of the strict rules placed on them by Cobel. Now that it's revealed to them the corruption of Lumon, Milchick cannot do anything to reverse the damage. And yet, Lumon pins all of MDR's mistakes on Milchick's shoulders.

The gift of the portraits was the most insulting thing I had seen done to him blatantly. An imaginative portrait of Kier if he were black. An imagination of a world where you had power, except you don't. A weird piece of performative sympathy to make him feel like Milchick is important, and which Milchick knows the truth- that he isn't. Which also leads into why he works so hard to prove himself...

It's so devastating to see his character break when asking Natalie how she feels. It even makes Natalie break her plastic personality for just a glimpse. They both recognize the meaning of the gift. It's to keep them in place, under control. And yet she reverts to her Lumon-clean personality and shrugs it off. 

All Milchick does is not so he can get back at the innies, he's doing it out the need to prove himself greater than how Lumon views him.  I feel like his arc is proving to be so essential to show that even those dedicated to Lumon are also at its mercy, like the innies.

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I'll probably add more later, I'm tired... but that's all I got for today, but if you have anything else to share that you noticed or enjoyed, please share!!

- KB☆

also a shameless plug to my Severance playlist... or whatever...