Severance • Page 48

The different rooms seem to me all situations that one would typically find burdensome (dentist, being on a turbulent plane, writing thank you letters…). I wonder if Lumon is trying to create innies for any sort of life experience that would be considered unpleasant.

 

As far as the actual job of MDR it seems important that we know they’re adding rooms to Gemma’s day to day as time goes on, which seems to mean that MDR’s work prepares the rooms in some way. We know Cold Harbor is important because it’s the last room for Gemma and whatever they’re testing to get her ready for the real world will be complete once she experiences it. It seems to disprove the theory that it would wipe her memory. Once Mark completes it, presumably nothing will change for her before she goes in.
A few other stray thoughts:

I hope real Gemma is who we’re seeing, clones/new bodies is just less interesting to me
Is Mark going to be killed once his work is done? It was pretty heavily implied to Gemma that she would be going back to the world but not back to him, which feels hard to pull off if both exist irl

 

Also on a completely fundamental level regardless of plot this also might be the single best example I’ve ever seen of the difference between the look of film and the look of digital. So fucking sick to watch them cut back and forth between the two.

 

Take it one step further.

Lumon is trying to “cheat” the pain of death for the outies by making innnies experience it. Now imagine if you could package this offering and sell it.

 

LOVED that contrast. genuinely curious if those scenes were short on film or not.

 

did anyone notice how the people monitoring the severed floor look like mirrors of their person on the severed floor?

 

we also learned that Rickon belayed his first couloir in middle school. very important stuff.

 

very intrigued to find out if Gemma chose this from Lumon and faked her own death, or if Lumon staged the accident without her consent.

 

Why are you wearing that stupid sweater?

 

One of the best episodes of television I've ever watched, damn

 

Ok I thought I had missed something because I felt like a dumbass at the end of this episode not knowing what had happened. I thought the whole ep was leading up to telling us why she chose to be severed/faked her death but I guess it still hasn’t gotten to this yet.

I found the structure really distracting and unintentionally confusing. Would have probably preferred a full, more straightforward flashback episode to tell this story.

 

^That being said, I did enjoy what we got of that relationship in this episode. I find this whole show to be a little emotionally cold and this episode finally gave me reasons to like and care about Mark/Gemma as characters.

 

I didn’t catch this myself but evil dr guy was at the real life IVF clinic. While I think there’s a lot of ways what actually happened between her leaving Mark for the last time and ending up severed, it seems really really likely she was targeted for it

 

oops it was vampires not aliens my bad

 

Maybe mark was in on her being severed

 

Feels like the type of show where Gemma and mark will never be together again, and that’s painful. What a beautifully shot episode

 

Great ep. Normally, when a show pulls a flashback episode, me and my wife get pissed and it’s usually purely relationship/character-focused so you only get like a half shade of more understanding of a character in exchange for one hour and an extra week’s wait before the show actually resumes in real time. But this was character-building and world-building and plot-building in such a satisfying way. They’re doing some wild stuff here.