S02 Wrap Up

God, would he would he would he extract Jim his chip and put it in his own head? He want to read. He loves it so much. He wants to integrate with her. Oh, my. Can you integrate with someone else? I put someone else's chip in your head and then reintegrate. I don't know what that would. I mean, a lot of that depends on which of our theories is right. Is this a partitioning?

like traffic cop or is this like a storage medium because if it's a petition then like i don't know what the fuck it would do Welcome to the Waffle Potty, the officially unofficial podcast for Severance on Apple TV+. I'm Jim. I'm Aaron. And this is it. We're back one last time for season two.

This is the wrap up. This is where we consider all your feedback, all your thoughts on what happened this season. What the hell happened? Yeah. Lots of, lots of opinions, lots of questions. I think primarily was what we. Saw coming in through the mailbox here. A couple corrections and some maybe predictions for the future. That kind of thing. All right. Thousands, hundreds, millions of emails came in this week. I don't know.

My inbox blew up. That's a lot. Yep. Pared it down as best I could. So apologies to anybody who doesn't get included, but you can only do so much. Aaron, do you have anything you want to talk about before we get into this feedback? Yes. I actually have a lot of things I want to talk about. Number one. This came out in the early morning hours of last Friday, or I guess mid-morning hours. Severance Season 3 renewed. Apple announced it.

Was there ever really any question, though? This is like their most popular show. People were like Lasso. you know, hyperventilating because at the same time that Severance is wrapping up, there's all these industry rags saying that, oh, you know, Apple's losing a billion dollars a year on this.

bid for the pop culture of america and i'm like you don't like doesn't google have like 80 billion dollars of just cash on hand like it's not even tied up in investments or infrastructure or stock it's just they have a lake of cash it's it's like and again to lose a billion dollars a year for a couple of years to try to get into like the top five streaming service in the united states is worth way more than a billion dollars so i

And I think that like Apple will probably be prudent and there's some shows I can think of that should be worried about being on the chopping block, but. severance that is both a critical darling an award season monster and apparently is more popular than ever in terms of streaming uh yeah no i wasn't worried at all

Yeah, Apple would have to like roll up their whole TV operation before severance would get canceled, I think. So, yeah, honestly, like if Apple wanted to waste even more money, they would do a binge format. Because I think that's one of the ways, sneaky ways that Apple is able to have, even though they have so much less content than Netflix and Paramount and Max.

I think one of this key, they're kind of like asymmetrical guerrilla resistance is the fact that they do kind of more or less one show a week. So Severance, like imagine if Severance, you know, just just put it all out. in the first week we would have been done talking about it over two months ago all the memes all the stuff you see on social media it had just been marching band memes and that's it which i don't know maybe that's a fair legacy of this season but

Yeah. Season three are new on. Also, I heard from the official podcast that the Stiller because they announced it there to the Stiller says that they're really going to try to compress the development. You know, obviously there's a lot of things that happened in the last one. Some staff struggles, some pandemics, some writer's strike. And I guess a couple of the season three scripts have already been completed.

I'm not so sure we won't see severance in 2026. Oh, that seems fast based on some of the other comments they've made about. the the show just taking a long time to produce regardless you just didn't know that season one took forever right yeah I mean it's I don't think it's 2027 maybe if they want to hurry it up a little we're only in March man like there's there's

Nine months left of this month and a full year of the other. It's like they can't. I think I think 12 month turnaround is not a crazy expectation, but 18 month, even on a complex show, like I, you know. There's no way this takes longer to film than like your average season, late season of Game of Thrones. And they were banging those out every.

12 to 18 months. So I'm hopeful we'll get in 2026. We'll see. Actually, I'm really hopeful for all of the shows to start coming back at a more predictable schedule. It's been really. I mean, that used to be the accepted, the expected. uh for a show right and that's back when they were doing twice as many episodes per season some cases almost three times as many uh granted the shows weren't getting as much of a budget and there wasn't as big of a production but uh

Yeah, I feel like they could do something quick, but I don't know. That depends. Do they want to release it at the same time of year that they have been? Because if you want to hit that February ish window, you know. You're going to have to do it in 12 months. Yeah. And then if they leak into 18 months, do they want to release it in the summer? Do they want to release it in fall? I don't know. Depends on what else they have on the slate over at Apple.

I want to ask you a couple things about some questions I had. Some of these came up with my conversation with Pete on Friday on reflection with him. Some of it is just I came up on my own. Do you think Rigabi was on the right track with reintegration and just had like shitty, you know, improvised equipment? Or do you think that she is conceptually wrong and her way of integration was never going to work?

No, I think she knows what can be done here. I assume so anyway. And the idea being like, hey, you need an actual procedure to get this done.

you know we can we can wave some wands at you with some magnets but ultimately you have to follow through and both of her subjects are not following through right pd obviously could catastrophically didn't follow through and then mark's been negligent as well do you see a role for ragabi to play in the series going forward or do you think that cobell as the expert and creator of the technology is going to be you know a frenemy enough that they can they can use her for any reintegration purposes

Well, I see Rigabi as the head of some larger faction or resistance kind of movement. I don't know. I don't see her as a rogue vigilante. necessarily. I see her as maybe more coordinated than that and more intelligent than that. Is that just a surmise or what evidence of that? Because I've never seen her talk to anybody. There's no evidence of funding.

No, it really is just kind of a feeling I get from watching her but maybe maybe she's just a rogue. Maybe she's just doing her own thing But but if she's not assuming she's not I think there's a bigger role for her to play that that cobell can't reasonably play because she's too bought into whatever cure philosophy is is out there yeah i wonder if uh cobell is now permanently exiled from lumen like she's persona non grata there or is this was is this an effort for her to discredit dr mauer and

Maybe drumming because I did. He was floating this theory. I think it was on Friday that. You can kind of in retrospect see a lot of Cobell's experiments with a candle and getting Jim and Mark together as her trying to kind of undermine what Dr. Maurer was doing with isolating and.

keeping those memories from breaking through. She was doing some extracurricular stuff. It could be that she she she I could see her coming back next season and being like, I told you this was going to happen. I told you couldn't do it without me. You've got to give me all and get her way and then back into the lumen fold. Or I could also see her. You fucking use James special birth cabin password.

To help some some some ratty innies. No, I could I could see either one. Yeah, it's hard to imagine why. Well, I don't know. Their experiment has gone disastrously wrong, but maybe not because the experiment was flawed, just because the innies were by their definition flawed.

and rebelled so maybe I don't know it'd be hard to imagine them letting her back in if their experiment was a success which I think the crib stuff kind of prove that it was it's just a success until mark came yeah himself came in yeah right so maybe they feel like they wouldn't need her still

Uh, what do you think happens if you pull the severance chip out? Now we saw that it had like backwards facing spines and it looked like it'd be problematic and it's probably why ragabi is trying to flooding route, but. If you took that chip out, do you think that you would instantly reintegrate? Do you think you would just lose access to the any memories? Do you think it would turn you into a vegetable? Like what what happens if you just like 52 card pick up someone's personality and memories?

Yeah, it's tough to say, man. What is the actual function of the chip? Does it simply control some sort of passing of neurons, passing of electrical current through different neurons? just like partitions it a hub for it yeah and keeps the different parts from interacting or is it Something that actually stores itself, like itself becomes a brain to store the different personalities. In that case, removing that chip might just remove all of the innies. Interesting. Entirely.

I would buy it as a more of like a traffic controlling medium than storage because it's like I just I don't know that I could buy that you'd fit 25 people in like Jim's case on on that chip of that size. How big is a person? In terms of memory storage, I have no idea. If you can boil you down to the four tempers or the four DNA molecules, then yeah, maybe, maybe. But...

Uh, was there any payoff to the baby? A lot of people I was surprised because this, you know, going into a different community and get cross pollinated with their, their crazy theorists too. But a lot of people on YouTube were way into Mark had sex with Helena twice this season, once with Heli, once with Helena. Is there any possibility she's pregnant? Sure. Is that an interesting possibility? Is that a possibility that you'd look forward to? Maybe down the line a little bit once.

you know just throw a number out there nine months from now or so uh maybe down the line when like there needs to be more complications in the relationship because right now it's really just dealing with How is any Mark going to ever relinquish control, I guess, to Audi Mark to be with Gemma? And knowing that he can't really be with Heli, but I feel like if they could find a way...

to kind of resolve that conflict then, Oh my God, this man who loves Gemma and is married to Gemma has a child with this other woman could be an interesting angle. Yeah. That kind of leads to my next question is how do you think they're going to or do you think they're going to continue with severed floor hijinks next year? Or do you think because I think we have to open there. Yeah.

I think we because we can't just leave. I can't imagine a show where we don't go back now. It's weird to say that because. In like two episodes from the end of this season, I was saying I can't imagine a season three that involves the severed floor. uh once they get gem out you know why would anybody ever go back down there but right the innies have chosen to stay there now so we kind of have to spend some time there um if not to just resolve what

the rebellion right now that's happening down there. Yeah. And a lot of people are like, well, they just should turn off all the innies and then you'd have no problems. But I think there's going to be. I think the hook next year that's going to keep the Severance stuff alive is because this season essentially Markell looming hostage with his ability to finish cold water. They established that.

James sees something in helly are that he likes and admires and seizes like the genuine key fire or cure fire. And he wants to do some kind of revolving soon. I wonder if Helen of Helly will able to take Lumen hostage with herself and the fact that she is also Helena and marking her hole up in the basement. They've got.

All of choreography and merriment. They've got O and D. They've got the goat people that are kind of roughly on their side or they've given stirring speeches where it seems like they'd be on their side. That seems like a pretty good sized army. I don't know what other like if Lumen has a department of. war crimes and butchery where they have like 100 guys that just just train day in and day and night with bayonets and submachine guns and stuff. Don't know. But barring that.

That's a that's a pretty good size occupying force. If you just want to take a basement hostage and say nobody gets out of here unless we have some guarantees and some assurances. And one of the things she wants is Mark. Yeah, no, it's I think that's the logical next step is for them to sort of take over the severed floor. um and make some demands i the thing is i'm not sure they realize that what kind of position they're in heli might um realize the leverage she has but

They don't really know what Lumen's up to. I think there has to be a process here by which they start to understand the leverage they have. I think so, because like I think if her and Mark just had like a long enough conversation, they'd realize like, why did we get away with so much shit last year? Like, how could you demand to get us back? And.

Well, they needed me and, you know, the Jame guy. Yeah, I think they could put something together like that. But now they don't need you because Jemma has been refined and also... Gemma's out, so there's no use for you anymore. Okay, well then how do we keep ourselves alive here? Well, that Jame guy seemed to really have a thing for me, so maybe we can use that.

That's one of the reasons I don't like the pregnancy theory is because there's already reasons that Jane values Helly above and beyond the fact that she's essentially a broodmare, you know, like. Mm hmm. He wants he wants an air. He wants to pass this on to somebody. So I don't know. I do. I do. You wonder if you could do a whole season of like the lumen severed floor under siege. A whole season.

that might be a bit much for me but because i'm well done this it could work i don't see how they get away from the severed floor stuff because that is such a key part of it. It'd be like if the final two seasons of Breaking Bad involved Walter White not cooking meth, you know, they just show evolved beyond that. And I'm like that.

I don't know. Is that something that what I want to see, like two seasons of Walter White being Gus Fring and being kind of like the manager and kind of, you know, doing logistics and highlight? I don't know. I don't know. Because I'm. once the heli helena or maybe there's a pregnancy once once you eliminate that it's like what is the reason to keep this particular cast involved with severing type stuff and even

during the sea, like if you theorize, there's going to be some kind of seizure hostage taking thing. How does that get like, could you get Irv back in that circumstance? Could you get Dylan back in that circumstance? Like, sure, I would love to.

I don't know. I think one of the interesting things, though, is that Mark is also reintegrating during this process, and that's going to be a complicating factor, I think. Because he warned himself. So you think it will continue? He was like, you're going to...

experience some weird shit right like memories and flashes and so is any mark always going to be any mark or is outie mark wanting to get back to jimma oh that would be sabotaging him a little If he reasserts himself and there's almost like a Helena.

heli type of subterfuge where audi mark is just trying to escape but he knows that's kind of interesting that's kind of interesting making audi mark a partial antagonist uh-huh and at the same time putting him in gemma's role too uh for seasons one and two where they're trying to get him out yes yeah it's i like a lot of the symmetries that we're setting up here

For sure. A couple of questions I had. That I that I saw, this is just like dangling part dangling chads from the season. Number one, the guy behind Mark in the first episode. We know that guy is played by the same guy as Shadow Mark in the Woes Hollow episode. Are we? Why? Why? Why was he back there? Why was he back there? Why have Mark kind of notice? It's. I, I don't know. Maybe he is like.

I want to say observing Mark, but he can do that from his computer, right? Like that's the that's the thing that I came up with is like it was Lumen being kind of serious about the no mics, no cameras, but. More surveillance based on workstation and you know, they also have a man on the inside with with the heli down there Yeah, but I don't know it just doesn't feel

Yeah, it's a little weird. I do wish they would have given us that answer because that was a point of confusion, I think, for pretty much. It was such a big point of like, what is it so mysterious? And so one that's right up there with me. What is the deal with the seal in Woe's Hollow? There is a dead seal that Lumen hauled up a cliff. What? Why? What? I don't know. I'm not really. What does that mean?

I'm not hung up on it either but I'm like that's something that never came back to like kind of mean anything is introduced this season didn't come back it's what I'm trying to hmm What do you think or have you given us any thoughts since last week? Have you got any more thought of what the point of Cold Harbor is? Yeah, we have a bunch of pretty good emails.

you know, theorizing stuff. But I don't know. I mean, the point of Cold Harbor is to, in my estimation, bring together to fruition rather the... goal of being able to fully sever someone and remove all pain. I mean, I don't think there's any real big leaps you need to take. They've kind of told us everything we need to know on that front. In my opinion. I think the thing that I've thought about and seen the most that I agree with is.

One of the problems with severance, as we see today, is you have this uptake training period where a person wakes up, they're disorientated, they don't know why they're there, they want to flee. You know, that that's depends a lot on their, I think, default personality state or some things that like Lumen just doesn't have control of. And you could. You'd have too many wild cards. You can't have one out of four people that you sever end up being a rebel, right?

or a rabble rouser um it would fuck with your yields too much so i wonder if like jimma you know going with the creation of consciousness rather than to sever that because jimma goes in out she'd never been in cold harbor before agree agree That was a brand new any. Yeah, there was no flopping on the ground. Where am I? Who am I? Why? What is this voice? What am I doing here? Am I dead there? She just like went into the room.

Accepted direction and ask any question or answered any question she was asked and went to work instantly without question or complaint. I wonder if that is the point of Cold Harbor. Just subservience. And it also might be a key to where, you know, James is coloring outside the lines because we know that Kier wanted to end all pain.

You know, like he's an ether man. Right. So it's all about anesthetizing people and balancing their, you know, their tempers. Right. Taming their tempers. Yeah, maybe. But but like, I don't think that Kier wanted. necessary to control people. Maybe Jane, like going further, it's like, you know, like like here, wanted to end people's pain. And you could see that there's part of that in Gemma, like if you are just hung up on.

losing a child or something you could go through some kind of severance where they could filter out those things that are kind of holding you back or keeping you stuck in a cycle of grief um but then jame up the ante with also we can turn them into perfectly servile

lumen robots and employees that could be yeah it's it's something we've been discussing all season right is the is there a divide between lumen and cure uh the philosophical goals of both of those entities and i think that's definitely still possible um yeah i just don't know

Man, did we get any more information on that? How would we get any more information on that? We'd have to have characters having discussions about like, this is not the intended purpose of Kier's philosophy. You're ruining it. You're corrupting it. I think Kobe is that person. Yeah, because there's already hints that, you know, that it's not just that she's mad that the credit was stolen from her because that's an old wound.

That she is just like she's had 20, 30 years to come to grips with. Well, you know, all knowledge is cures and I don't I don't sign the checks around here, but like a perversion of the technology. not just stolen credit, but a perversion of the technology, I think would be given another nuance, another layer to her discontent with Lumen, if not here. So.

But yeah, I'm interested in that. I got a couple others, but that's mainly all of it. You know, I got questions like, you know, how did Gemma end up in a severed floor? Was she kidnapped? Uh, would she like just identified as likely to help and they kidnapped her? Was this, uh, was she going along with the faking of the death or did she agree to it, but didn't agree to like be kidnapped and.

fake death and all that stuff. I don't know. Cause it seems like that Jim doesn't know she's dead down there, right? She has the hope of going back and being reunited with her husband. She's aware that time has passed, but I don't think she thinks that she's dead on the outside. Yeah, I agree. All right. Well, I think that's most of I imagine, you know, maybe I'll comb through this again after we get through the emails. But those are the ones that I really want to talk to you about.

and get your kind of take on before we got to other people's. But yeah, severance at baldmove.com all season long is how people have gotten a hold of us. I want, before we get into the meat of this, make one last pitch. There's a lot of things that we're doing right now. We're covering Yellow Jackets.

We are just about to start covering, we are covering season one of Andorra, the best Star Wars there's been in 30 years. The Last of Us, we've got a preview, I think, of that coming out two weeks from now. The Last of Us 2, I think that's going to be great. There's a Night of Seven Kingdoms on Max later this summer. There's a lot of stuff that we're going to be covering, not just Severance.

I hope some of you guys that found this during Severance maybe can explore the rest of our catalog. Man, we got back catalog too. Some of your old favorites, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones. Just about 5,000 podcasts worth of back catalog at this point. yeah and i'm not exaggerating at all no we just did a 15 year retrospective because we've been there for 15 years and one things we it's like to to a pretty close approximation 5 000 podcasts and uh

Yeah, I think if you I think we figured out if you if you release a podcast a day for 15 years, it would be something like 5700 podcasts. Well, that's crazy. Lots of them out there. You might like a few of them. All right, Jim. Severance at bald move dot com. You pried it open. Letters came flying out like Harry Potter getting invited to muggle school. What?

That's gonna generate some feedback, but we're on offseason. So who cares what they say? Well, they got to say Jim They had no idea that's the funny thing like he has no idea if I'm pulling his leg or fucking with him or well I know what a muggle is and I don't think they would have to school for muggles but well I mean that's yeah because like what are you going to throw a kid that doesn't even know there's magic into a magic school you need like some kind of like

Magic as a second culture school experience is muggle school. Yeah, you go through. Yeah, it's like it's like kindergarten preschool. And then once you get through a couple years of muggle school, you get thrown into the magical kids. OK, fair enough facts or.

All right. Don't write in about Harry Potter because we're off season. I won't see them. Time to go to the break room for mandatory promotional material to opt out of future break room sessions. Check the relevant portions of the employee handbook at support.baldmove.com. Break time over. Back to Severance. But I have seen a lot of emails to the tune of literally hundreds, but I've selected a smattering here. A lot of them...

I was going to kind of open with a series of questions and you didn't quite cover every question that the feedback deals with, but you covered a lot of them. We'll start with. mdr employee rob m here who is is observing a lot of conversation about the finale being excessive and fan servicey amongst other problems but then appreciating the season as a whole

I'm kind of in the opposite boat, he says, with that. I thought the award show monologue and marching band performance was absurdity that only Severance could pull off, and they did. The remix of the milkshake dance and Dylan victory lines put there for the fans to have fun. As I did, as always, the episode was extremely well made and not sure if Adam Scott will get enough credit for the acting job. He did conversing with himself.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I was put off by some of the many unanswered questions. And he's got a list here. Start off with one you didn't touch on. So who was Irving working with and what was his path to his investigation? Excellent question. Excellent question. We do not have an answer to that yet. Yeah. I wonder if a woman even knows.

That's they were watching. I would have an idea if he cared to let Lumen know that this guy is having a bunch of clandestine. You know, he observed him on at least two occasions going to a pay phone and making a phone call. and then leaving like that's weird behavior definitely I don't know we'll find out more it gives me hope that we will see John Turturro again because that is a loose thread that

You don't have to pick at that thread via John Turturro, via the Irving character, but you could. You definitely could. I can see I've said this on Pete's the thing last Friday that I can see Irv like going away from most of last season.

And then there being like a standalone episode and like seasons or episode seven or eight, where it's just like what Irv has been up to. And then him getting pulled back into the situation late in the season. I think that would be a cool way to go. PM is scared. And a lot of the chatters did because.

there I guess I didn't know this but John Turturro had made some kind of like loop warm comments about severance and like oh you know it's not it's a great show but you know it's not something you know you don't want to get pinned down to

Made it seem like that he didn't want to come back, that this was going to be a final role. But I also noticed over the weekend, there's a couple of interviews that released where he's saying, oh, you know, there's a lot of obvious threads to pick there. So I wonder if Turo was just.

playing along you know he knew that there was some finality to his character and he's just kind of like oh you know i don't know if i i got bad i did batman two years ago i'm not sure if i'm going to come back to this uh But yeah, I think he will. Yeah, he can't very well say, you know, I've been in talks for season three and they're paying me X number of dollars to come back in this episode.

So, yeah, he's probably being cagey for a reason. And how else would you pull that thread? Like, obviously, there's a ton of threads with Irv. And if he's just got the other end of it. I guess, yeah. It would be less satisfying without him, I think. Like, Irv's gone dark, so I gotta try to reach out to, you know, yeah. Yeah, the other end of whoever's on that phone. Anyway, we kind of...

Hinted about or talked about regabi a little bit, but what is regabi's real motivation or backstory? It's another question that Rob has I don't know. It would be interesting to learn a little bit more about that. Like, how did she decide she was done with Lumen as a former employee who was doing the... implantations of these devices yeah I'm there to here I think that

To me, this just smacks of a religious schism. And, you know, the church we grew up in, Jehovah's Witnesses, when its founder Charles Taze Russell died, there was a big struggle. And some bombastic guy named Judge Rutherford took over and, you know, did a whole bunch of changes and completely reformed the organization kind of in his image while still giving lip service. He's kind of like a Stalin.

linen type figure. Lots of the religions have been through this. Obviously, a man named Jesus died. Some crazy guy named Peter took over and he became the Pope. The Mormons had Brigham Young taken over after Joseph Smith, but you also had... King Strang going to Michigan. And so it's like I feel like this is like there that that Jane and it's always happens after the death of a leader. And there's something there about. The Myrtle Egan.

Only serving. She died young, only served for a couple of years. And then Jane took over. I think that there was a coup, a religious coup, and it was over how to use the severance chip. And that is, you know, Harmony is. But I would say the Harmony is true blue for here, except for a lot of the.

sweet vitriol episodes seem to walk that back where she's kind of like maybe she's walking the path of her mother now instead of her aunt that kind of fucks up my whole well it's a religious dispute and it's a doctrinal dispute But it's not that she doesn't want to be doesn't believe in Keir's philosophy or the tempers or anything more. What do you think of that? Yeah. About about Cobell or about for Gabby that she was.

Oh, because we're going to be seen very secular. She's just a technician that is pissed about something. Mm hmm. But yeah, you got to wonder in a town like here if anybody's just a technician. And why would they use just a technician that is kind of agnostic about their bullshit to sever people? It seems like everyone that's involved in severance is a cool is a cure Kool-Aid person.

Especially when they have apparently facilities with very high levels of education where they could create their own technicians in the image of Kier or something. I don't know. I mean, with it's it's very. It's still up in the air for me about Coppell's motivations. I think you're right. I had kind of an image of her of being true blue for Lumen and here going into that episode with, uh, for salt snack.

And that kind of spun it a little bit in a different direction. And, you know, her dismissal, I guess, from Lumen also had a hand in that. I don't know. I haven't fully calibrated on her. And I think that's an interesting place for her to be. Just me questioning what her motivations are. And there's like, that's the thing is like, there's no short of fault lines in Lumen.

Like Milchick is discontented. Helena seems like she's discontented. There's hints that Natalie has had. I've not met a single person at Lumen that didn't have a big problem with Lumen. Even even Drummond had a problem with his underlings thinking they were idiots and, you know, right. So it's like no one has been like rah rah lumen without reservation. So. Yeah. Another question, how is Gemma's testing going to be one of the greatest moments of this planet?

To me, this is like, yeah, like I said in the beginning, this is a hijacking of Keir's ethos of taking away pain to add to it in a way to make a perfect servant. without any kind of I think this is the part that would offend here without any kind of. Work to get there, it just happens automatically.

And he might like, you know, like you can sever pain with ether, but you're not like you can't just stay on ether all the time. You're not a person. If you're just like a crazy ether head the whole time. So like, you know, that's like that gives you pain that lets you do surgery that then lets you do rehab that lets you recover as as much of a human being as you can get. I think here would like the idea of severing as a way to like block some intractical emotional pain to allow you to.

do work on your tempers to where you can be the ideal person but just turnkey boom you are the ideal person i don't know what you think about that i don't know He's kind of like a lot more Uber mentioned and like in that niche kind of way than than that to me. Yeah, I think you really got to earn it like everybody should have to melt their masturbating brother's head in a cave.

In order to. I mean, that's what I've been saying. Yeah. Yeah. What is the Egan CEO revolving? Got some ideas. We, you know, think maybe it's. Something to do with transplanting consciousness into another person simply could just be some weird ceremony they do akin to like a waffle party when they pass the torch of Lumen. There are many things.

Could be, I guess. We don't have any more real information on that. How did the Gemma abduction play out? At times she felt like a reluctant volunteer. Yeah, we don't... really have any more information on that either we know that there was some grooming involved yeah um but perhaps not even known to her right it might have just been information collection prior to

capturing her yeah let's look the things we know are that lumen had a lot of information on her they had her blood tests they had her in uh you know in in um reproductive therapy Through that method, they started reaching out with personality tests and, you know, logic puzzles that further refine her suitability. Then we know she left Mark one night. and never came back. And there was an apparent suicide or not suicide. There was an apparent vehicular death. There was apparently a burnt corpse.

And then the other thing we know is Gemma did not act like she was a prisoner exactly down there. She act like a person who had. been compelled or agreed to do a certain amount of tasks and then she would be let go So the possibilities are, did she say that she wanted to sign up for some kind of like advanced intensive lumen child therapy? And then she figured she reported duty later and they just abducted her.

Uh, did she know that they were going to abduct her and went along with that? Um, was that the plan? Like, okay, well this is, you know, if you want to. have a baby. You're going to have to do this and go away from Mark for a couple of months. They probably undersold. I don't know. I don't know. It's impossible to say. Yeah. I also wonder how they. Hints around the edges, but we don't know yet.

I also wonder how they pitched the Miss Casey to her because her whole existence is going to different doors. But like every once in a while, we're going to send you up the elevator. Like what? What does she think was happening? when she was going in the elevator and not through another door. Like, how do they explain that? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Really just don't know yet. And there's some questions, you know, about the.

I don't know the animatronics or, or shadow refiners and the watchers who look like all of the innies. We don't know like why any of that is the way it is other than to say that Lumen is weird and they must, they must have some internal.

rationale for it whether it's you know a religious sort of rationale where it doesn't need to actually accomplish anything other than sort of just being symbolic um Or if it's some important part of watching that these people must be like the people they're watching in some unspecified way, which includes appearance, apparently. Well, see, that goes back to like, you know, the understanding of the humors where, you know, and like combating like with like, like, you know, again, the.

The plague is accompanied by strong smells of death. Well, maybe that's how it's smelling. So you want to combat that with sweet smelling, you know, keep a pocket full of posies on you. And there's a little bit of that of like, oh, well, if you're, you know, you're.

choleric humor, which is carried by the blood, is overbalanced. You got to drain the blood. So it's like I could see them almost like. There is some kind of phrenology or like for like that we need a mark watching over a guy who looks and acts like Mark. major's personality tests involved too maybe maybe mark's look just have a look a look to him i mean some some people say oh you know you don't look like a sean or a barbara you look like a mark

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, maybe marks have a temper all their own. I'm going to say that kind of takes us into what I'm going to call the dissatisfaction. portion of this uh feedback because a lot of people were writing in with things that they saw as flaws in the show and i kind of want to address them

Sort of on their own terms here as we go. So I'm going to start off with Justin B. Says, I don't want to critique a near perfect episode, but I've noticed a lot of people feel the reintegration plotline was underserved. I think all they need to do is have a five second blip for Marcus as he's about to walk away from Gemma at the door. And it would have been perfect to watch that little gasp of Audi. Mark tried to break through and we could spend the next year wondering how it will resolve.

As it stands, I think season three will echo the Orange is the New Black season where the inmates riot and take over the prison. Okay, so a lot of people were speculating about that too. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, how much show... And how much. Just no, you know, show versus no, because like I'm thinking about these things as I'm watching these scenes. And sometimes what really annoys me to show is where they don't trust their audience to be thinking about.

the past or even the present and the ramifications, the implications of what they're doing. To me, that's part of watching the show. When you're actively watching, you're thinking about what's come before and you're thinking about what. This means for the future. And in my mind, watching any Mark walk away is a is a horrible thing for Audi Mark in that moment. I don't really need to see him try to break through.

and and not be able to and lose that because i'm thinking he's losing it while i'm yeah and it's a different To me, you're wanting to watch a different show because if they wanted to suggest that Mark was so emotionally moved that he's breaking through, they would have done that. I think that this is kind of...

Did we even say this on a podcast or is this something I kind of realized looking at other people's coverage? But I think you're supposed to understand that the end of this season is kind of the ultimate vindication of severance working. Because if there was ever going to be a chance for Audi Mark to break through and influence any Mark to do something, it would be right as he's inches away, separated by two layers of glass from his wife. And she's screaming at any Mark to let him.

letting you know yeah yeah we definitely have people writing about that too i think that is like underlining the fact that like severance you know uh and i always wonder if um Have you heard about the the Phyllis? I think it's this is a philosophical mental exercise, but about the philosophic donkey. not by that name, maybe in principle. Let's see. So there, this is something about free will and choice, which I think is something that the show that there's this donkey.

and he's hungry and the the thesis is you know if um a donkey doesn't have sentience or free will they don't have any ability to make a choice to evaluate you know one thing or another so if you put a donkey that is, I think, hungry, or maybe it's thirsty.

And there's two buckets of water and it's exactly the same distance, exactly the same temperature, exactly the same bucket. Since there's nothing to differentiate the two, the donkey would just sit there and die of dehydration because there would be nothing to. To cause it to go to one bucket or the other. Okay. Do you see where I'm trying to go with this? Like, you know, does Mark have the choice?

Can he can he make can he make that choice? Does he have free will in that instance? Yeah, but I wonder if it's like a philosophic that there you got two buckets of water And Mark is two different donkeys. Right. But they're like lashed together and each one's trying to go in the opposite direction. But.

Or one, it's like you tied in together, but so like their backs are tied together. So only one of them feet touches the ground. And that's the one that's. Yeah, fair. That's so any mark clearly prefers the heli water. To the generalist, I don't know what I'm trying to say. Something about milk monkeys, probably. Yeah, probably. Let's go to KT to talk about another... So some dissatisfactions here, maybe in a little more detail.

While I love Severance, I'm concerned that we have all been a little blinded by its style and insufficiently critical of its substance. From the very start of Season 2, we let them get away with an unsatisfying resolution to the helly aspect of the Season 1 cliffhanger.

We were led to believe that Helly's brave announcement would have reached a wide audience and have significant implications for Lumen. By Season 1, Episode 2, it becomes clear that we won't see any meaningful fallout of this kind. We're asked to be satisfied. with an insubstantial explanation that somehow Lumen's PR team just managed the situation. The season proceeds to present us with a series of loose ends. What was Irving up to? Can we talk about that?

To me, these were all answered. It's just you don't like the answers. They established that, yes, Heli, they did. Heli and Natalie did a crash PR thing to a room of largely friendly outlets to Lumen. to explain that she just got, you know, as a drug in. I mean, how many times have you seen this in a real world where someone gets a little heat for saying something like, oh, I was on Ambien and I had too many beers and.

You know, like this is this gets people if you're inclined to believe them out of jail. And it was a private event. It wasn't open. It wasn't like CNN was there broadcasting live. So, yeah, they yeah, you're supposed to believe that because that's what the show told you. Yeah. For sure. And Ellie was brave levels.

And it did affect things. But also Lumen has complete control over the situation. And they were trying to pull, you know, they're trying to manipulate these innings, which is fairly easy to do. I just like again, this is all very I thought very well spelled out.

It's just for some reason, you know, it's like, well, that's style over substance. But you just you just didn't like the answer. You didn't like the substance. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot more to this email and I don't want to. OK. pigeonhole it in that but in that regard yes i agree like people are going to have different levels of suspension of disbelief and different different tolerances for specific explanations and for some people it's not

not going to work and for some people it will it it mostly did for me i i don't have a big problem with Yeah, especially Lumen being the biggest company in the world. We put out a statement and just kept rolling. I mean, I look around us today and there is no faux pas you could possibly make where you couldn't just put out a statement and keep doing business as usual and you would ever suffer consequences for it. Right.

yeah the only way yeah like there has to be a critical mass of people that give a shit before that is even a possibility it seems like so and you could have every mainstream newspaper writing articles about i think the indies are in hell and they're they're slaves and we need to shut down Lumen and 99% of people wouldn't care and nothing would ever get done about it.

Especially on that same editorial page, there'd be counterpoint. Lumen is God, actually. And they save people's lives all the time. And severance is good. And my aunt is severed. And, you know, it's like. Who do you believe? And also they make your toilet paper and your toothbrush and everything in your house. And if you didn't have Lumen, where would you be, you know? Yeah, right, right.

Let's continue here. The season proceeds to present us with a series of loose ends. What was Irving up to? They've been setting up Irving's mysterious outside contact and investigation since first season, but nothing comes of them. Are we really satisfied to wait five to six years for an answer to the question of who he called in the season one finale? Feels like an unprecedented lead time. What was the outcome of Mark's reintegration efforts?

What was the end goal for Helena replacing Heli? All of these questions are intentional questions. And I personally. Here's the thing over over my career of watching and talking. about television and watching other people talk about television there is a I hesitate to even call it schizophrenic kind of thing because the internet is not a singular entity. It's a billion different entities that kind of speak with this schizophrenic crazy voice. All the voices in our head, yeah. Right, but I see...

Plenty of people say things like. when they when they look at a show that goes back and mines their history like breaking bad or something they praise its brilliance they're like fuck they set this up three seasons ago that's amazing best thing i've ever seen And then you have people who are like, we didn't get the answer to the question this season, so fuck this show. It's garbage. Both of those things exist, and...

Different people are going to react differently to each one. I understand what you're saying here. Maybe you want answers to these questions. I do too. I'm willing to say, okay, we didn't get them this season.

Maybe we'll get them in future seasons. And they know that those questions are out there. They're going to be looking to answer. If you think they just brought up this phone call with Irv and they're never going to talk about it again. Sure. Maybe you're mad at the end of the season, but I know they're going to.

Yeah, they're going to or I'll or, you know, we'll go after them if they leave all these like, you know, things where they're just kind of going one way or another. But like, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt that, yes, since we have gotten pretty satisfying answers as we've gone and yet as we keep. on asking bigger questions. I give him a lot of I go back to like, you know, my gold standard is like lost. I bailed on lost and like season three because I'm like, OK.

All right. I've already, you know, you've already like Walt was the chosen one and now he's just gone and we haven't seen him for a season to have. What the fuck? And but I don't know that I would have had that reaction if I had not just.

previously, a few years ago, been burnt by the X-Files where I was so into like, oh, they're going to get answers to everything. And we're going to find out what happened to Fox's sister. We're going to happen with the black oil and the aliens. And the movie came and I'm like, this is the year we're going to. And. Nah, the movie just kept on kicking the can and kicking the can and kicking the can down. I mean Yeah, like if severance ends in season 10 and none of the original cast are there

Then we can be like, OK, where are the failures of? But like, yeah, so I don't know if this person was hurt by a show like I was by X-Files and they carried that, you know, into because, yeah, I would have gone the whole distance with Lost and. Maybe I would have been disillusioned by I don't know if I went on the whole ride. It seems like people are 50 50 about whether they thought that was worth it or not. But. Yeah.

I don't know, man. I'm willing to wait on that. Yes, it is long lead time. I'll grant you that, like five to six years to get two seasons, if that's what we're talking about here, is a long time to answer some of these questions. I agree, but... I don't know. I don't think of it in terms of what's the time between seasons. I think of it in terms of the show that we're actually watching, you know, especially when it's clear that this season.

you know the the a lot of the delay this season had perfectly logical explanations for it you know oh yeah you got factory making widgets and that factor is being bombed You can't be like, you know, after the war when they're like, well, we can make, you can wait, we can make widgets twice as fast. You can't be like, well, you struggled to be, make the widgets during the world. Yeah. Because the factory is being bombed. You know, if you.

When actors and writers and directors all go on strike for the better part of a year. That's that's a year delay on top. So it's like if that hadn't happened, if it hadn't been coming right after pandemic, I don't know that we wouldn't that we would have waited three years for a new season. So I have hope that everything's going to be fine.

But the other thing is, like, if you get to the end of the season, you're like, fucking bullshit. This thing is fucking with me. I'm not mad if you stop watching it. You know? Oh, of course. You don't have to keep watching it. but also like it seems premature to, you know, if you think that like we're not going to get answers, I think that's a premature thing. If you're unhappy with the answers you've gotten so far, which does seem like you are, then I mean, shoot.

But the show... we're kind of going to have yellow jackets that i thought the yellow jack is going to be a lot more prestige mystery boxy uh take itself serious than it seems like it is and was that the show's fault for not living up to my expectations is it my fault for having expectations i don't know but it happens sometimes i mean there's some oft-repeated stuff here too that i i understand um the impatience with like there's some glaring issues with writing um

In this show? Yeah, in regards to the show desperately needs to address the issue of understaffing. It's stretched all credulity at this point that, you know, this massive company would have. issues with staffing down there that's clearly causing all the problems, right?

Yeah. So I brought that up Pete two weeks in a row and both Pete and the guys I was on there with pushed back pretty hard against it, which made me think, well, maybe I'm just got this a bugaboo. That's like, well, how many people do you think are cleared for severance work? And I'm like, well, it's a multinational company. I would think like 100 at least. And we know that they had a whole other factory. It was more advanced, bigger, 5X. It got closed down.

Could we not transfer some of the management personnel from there? Are they not here enough? So it's like, but again, I had no idea there was four dedicated watchers down on the testing floor the entire time. Like. That's still a little understaffed, but they had twice as much staff as I thought they were doing dealing with. And they've also told me that some of the understaffing is a deliberate management philosophy of. You know.

giving the innies the illusion of having freedom that they don't have. It's much easier to keep people. It's, it's the matrix. It's easier to keep people in a simulation if they can reject it for whatever reason. And you give them an outlet for that. So like, I don't know. I'm only I'm only going to be pissed if it turns out it's only been Milchak and a 12 year old girl. And that was it. That was it. That was it. Yeah. And maybe Drummond getting his weekly reports or whatever.

And that's the other thing is like, we don't know what these people, we didn't even know they had a 30 man marching band until last episode. We have no idea. There's Peter's houses, people living down there to some kind of giant mind chip. That's just shit. The PD knows about. We haven't seen. you don't think he was talking about the room that Gemma was living in right as like I don't think he knew about the export hall right because it just seemed like it was all on one floor there was no like

levels to it. There's no evidence that Petey knew about the exports all right. So I think everything you saw is stuff that you could get to. But also that stuff changes all the time like. We had a security station became an any spouse visitation room. Mm hmm.

But did they do this thing? Did they move this stuff around module like to go to go room didn't have a giant goat field last year, or at least we didn't see it. So it's like, does this thing move around like holodeck? Yeah, I can certainly do some remodeling. They got those accordion walls and just kind of open and close like big convention spaces or what? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Your Audi is a friend to children and the elderly.

Your Audi likes films and owns a machine that can play them. Your Audi avoids ads at support.baldmove.com Please try to enjoy each ad equally. This concludes the wellness session. Now, get back to your desk and listen to more Waffle Potty. Let's go to Sean G here. So this is more of a dissatisfaction. What's that? Sean, she holder of the 10 rings. No, Sean G. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Uh, so the scenes early in the episode when Indy and Audi Mark interact via the camcorder were really good.

I laughed out loud when I heard Aaron say on the podcast that he bought a camcorder 18 years ago, used it once and hasn't touched it since. I also thought the ending where Mark stiff arms Gemma and decides to run off with Heli was impactful, devastating and very well done. It brings me to my issues with this season. I mean it when I say the show has had its head up its own ass.

It comes across so pretentious at times. The three standalone episodes this season felt more like the filmmakers checking boxes off the resume bucket than it did part of the story. The whole season felt that way to me, honestly. Reintegration turned out to be nothing more than a cheap early season trick so that they could end an episode with a holy shit moment. I admit when Eminence Front began to play at the end of episode three, I was all in.

I really thought we were in for something special at that point, only to be let down by most of what followed. What was the point of the reintegration storyline? I think we haven't seen the point yet. And this comes back to what we were talking about with the last email where... I'm just letting some of these questions be for the time. And knowing that they will get back to them, there are some obvious questions that they must answer. Reintegration is 100% one of those.

And they know that like this. This is a this is a thing that's incomplete and impartial and it isn't finished yet. I. I wish I could ask questions to the email or did like, what was pretentious about the standalone episodes? Cause I didn't think there were like, I've seen some pretentious like artsy fartsy airy. You know, deep symbolic, you know, I've seen some of that and like that's I didn't feel like that was what this these were. These were.

you know, world building episodes, episodes are flushing out of characters, motivations, letting us understand, building the emotional stakes required to make the finale work. And. You know, I do know that that that was a discussion they had in a writer's room. It's like, Jesus is a lot. Should we break this out and do like five minutes of Jim? disconnected from everything else as a cold open. It's kind of like building towards the finale and they're like, ah, that's not. And I kind of like.

Knowing that those are the two ways you could do it. Spool it out a little bit of over or just hit them. Just like just take a detour while Mark's reintegrating and kind of have this as a. as a reintegration clip show for a season that didn't exist, a season zero of the seventh. I thought it worked great, but like, why is it pretentious? Like when I think pretension, I'm thinking like, you know, crazy camera angles and lots of symbology and super, super deep dialogue that shows how.

smart the show writers are i mean there wasn't any i think westworld and david lynch when i think pretentious those are the two shows to the two the two places i go and i didn't feel either of those in this so I don't know. I mean, we're just not on the same page, obviously. Let's talk about the marching band in the final episode. Really solidified why I didn't enjoy this season.

Why? Why? Just because the show can and wants to? It's like the writing room said, hey, people loved Milchick dancing in Defiant Jazz, so we need to find a reason to have him dance this season. It was so forced, confusing, dumb, and unnecessary. All right, this was the one that really got. My goat. No pun intended. Look, the show, nobody asked that about Defiant Jazz.

It was a discovery of how fucking weird Lumen is. And this is a follow on of how fucking weird Lumen is. Why? The answer to why is because it's Lumen. What did you expect to happen? Nothing. when you complete the most important project the planet has ever seen no you pull out all the stops you go bigger and better because the goal and the achievement is bigger and better than ever of course lumen would do this yeah

Yeah, I made an analogy on because this came up on Pete's live thing on Friday. And I'm like, it's this this this saying that. the celebration for to lumens mind the biggest thing that happens on the earth that that's like you know just a

a flourish for the show. The show's doing it just because that's what it's known to do. Number one, is that bad? Like, were people, um... I think we maybe there were some at the very end, but like, you know, the fact that the cooking montages were a thing on Breaking Bad. Oh, we got to get a fucking cooking montage in this season because that's what this show does. Like, yes, it is a signature of the show. But also it's like it to me, it's like going into like St. Peter's Basilica.

in rome and looking around that like the spalted ceilings and the painting and the gilded everything and it's easter sunday and all the bishops are in these robes with the funny hats and the staffs and being like This is all a bit much. I mean, what the hell are we even? It's to glorify something bigger than yourself. And I think that's what I as much as Kier is a weirdo, he also.

As the guy who had frolic as one of his core features, like he did, you know, he did enjoy music and dancing and merrymaking. probably in balance with his corporate stuff. But that's that's something that was a part of him. And. I could see like what didn't, you know, like Harmony's clear school had sports and I think there was a choir like so.

I don't know. I look at this stuff and I go, well, you just want to be disappointed by this show. You're looking for a reason to not like this show as opposed to enjoying the things that it is actually presenting you with. Yeah. To me. more of the thing I loved. It doesn't become a problem until it's way further down the line here. Like you're giving me too much of this thing. And I can tell that all you're doing now is giving me this thing. And.

Again, perfect example. I think Yellow Jackets is starting to lean pretty heavily on the things that they do and it's disturbing it. But to me, this was not near that line yet. This is like an acknowledgement of what... Lou of how Lumen acts and also what the audience loved. And I'm, I'm totally okay with that. Give me what I love. Yes. Especially since that in episode nine, or I think the feedback for nine, when we're talking about like, what are expectations? I said.

you know i am i am a little bummed that we haven't gotten like a defiant jazz you know like a real feast of the you know like some kind of like just really silly kind of fun So I was like when the band thing started to happen and Milchick was getting into it and doing it. To me, I was like, if it's fan service, it was for this fan and I was serviced.

Fair. So, yeah. And if you were like, if you were like, God damn, I mean, we almost got through a whole fucking season without a big dance breakdown. Thank God we're not going to do that every season. But why were you watching Severance? Like Defiant Jazz was a big reason that people watched and thought Severance was amazing. 100%. If I was going to use an analogy, I would be like, this is like salting food, right?

If you don't salt it at all, it's going to taste boring and bland. Right. Nobody's going to eat it. If you salt it a little bit, if you salt it enough. people will love it. It'll taste amazing. If you salt it too much, people are going to get tired of it and say, ugh, this is disgusting. I don't think we're anywhere near too salted yet. I think we're just approaching the place where we are perfectly salted.

And especially since people being people, there's some people that like their food bland and there's some people that you couldn't put enough salt on it, you know, to turn them off. So taste vary. But even then, like, yeah, I think there is a. There's a too much defiant jazz that this show could be pulling where it's taking away from the storytelling. And then you're doing that instead of servicing character beats and moving the plot along. But again.

You know, I'm not a guy who likes his food tasting like a salt lick, and I'm not a guy who likes his food bland. I'm somewhere in the middle. Yeah. We're nowhere near being too salty. when it comes to defiant jazz on this show for me all right let's move on from the dissatisfaction um there were some other people who were a little dissatisfied but a lot of it was redundant a lot of it was the same points and

Yeah, those are a lot of the things I've seen brought up. I'm surprised no one mentioned. There's some people just pissed that Mark chose Heli R instead of Gemma. Isn't that the intended effect? Is there any feedback? It's part of it. It's part of it. It's part, but also like, well, what is he even like, you know, he's got no shot at being, he's got nothing that, but I keep coming back to, cause I've watched this episode again since we recorded it.

and when jimma when jimma was or when when heli was convincing him to go forward with the jimma scheme Because she's like, we're boned either way, but at least you'll make somebody happy. And the last thing she said is, I just wish we had more time. At the end of the day. Even if this running around on the severance floor is futile, he is giving the woman that he loves the one thing that she wanted, which is even a few more minutes of time. And they were enjoying it like.

At the end, it's a little pensive because like what's going to happen now. But like when they ran off hand in hand down the flashing corridors of the sevens for they were like giddy. They were happy because they were getting. the thing that they wanted more time. So like I think.

You know, first of all, we don't even know this is like kind of a cliffhanger, a moment of inflection. But second, it's like, yeah, it perfectly tracks why Mark would choose the woman he loves and try to get more time with her. Then. you know, doing everything for Marco or the Maui Mark rather. Yeah. And I, I love how conflicted I am in that moment, right? Like I'm supposed to be angry at any Mark because I want Mark's.

God, no, not Mark Scott, Mark Scout. Sorry, easy mistake to make to be with Gemma. But there's this like tragic, romantic. feeling at the end of this season that I never really thought they would get to. It's kind of crazy. They're doomed. It's like Romeo and Juliet almost. I was about to say that. yeah romance star-crossed doomed lovers who are just running off into oblivion together it's it's really romantic but at the same time it's heartbreaking

Yeah. And the other thing is that helps it work for me is I'm as invested in Mark S and Helly are as I am in Mark Scout and Gemma Scout. Yeah. And that's only after the gym episode. Before that, I was like 90-10 on, I kind of hope, fuck this Miss Casey. I haven't even seen her this season.

Um, but they did, they did make it real. Like, you know, they'd made it real Mark and her relationship and that one episode. But like, yeah, I'm like, I'm kind of, like you said, torn, you know? Yeah. You're supposed to be. It's it's a it's a shit situation. I don't know how anyone gets out of because the central tension of Helena is helly and.

You know, you could you could say that maybe Mark S and Mark Scout would want to get reintegrated. They got their shit together, but there's no no fucking way does Helena Egan want to integrate with Helier. Mm hmm. yeah so i don't know i i really love the finale and you know some people will have different opinions or same opinions and it's okay we'll all be back for season three yeah uh

Brian. That's why that's the other big thing is like these people that have questions and they did. They hate it enough that they're not going to come back for next year. Cause that's the only thing that's, that's the only way you can really lose a fan is that there's like, fuck that. And it's like, man, being out on the show after two seasons, everybody's different though. So.

All right, Brian S. says, quick thought as I listen to the recap of the finale here. When Dr. Mowers, oh, a lot of people wrote in about this. This is just the one I picked out to represent. When Dr. Mowers is running down the hall screaming, you'll kill them all.

I think he was referring to the 25 different consciousnesses of Gemma. Dr. Maurer throughout the episodes has seemed preoccupied with Gemma. And I think his fixation on killing them all is his fear that all the work he's done on the 25 different versions of Gemma.

through the different rooms will be eliminated if she leaves the facility. Let me point out also, he loves her and he loves all 25 of these women, which is creepy and weird in its own right. But yes, I think he's also referring to like. You'll kill all 25 of my creep victims. I think that's a fine theory. I don't know that it's proven.

Because it could be him saying you'll kill them all. I mean, you'll kill all of the Gemma's. It could be you'll kill them all. I mean, you know, you're killed because like that was the. That was certainly the thing that Mark S was worried about and the thing that would probably stand out in Mark Scout's mind that like, you know, you're doing this could, you know, that could be something to give him a moment of doubt to like hesitate or something. But.

Well, this should be enough of him to believe that he's fallen in love with these versions of Gemma and that he, that would be his primary concern. But just taking her out won't kill them like, you know, they could capture. And she's the other thing that doesn't make sense about that is they were dying anyway. Or was there some kind of ascendancy with this goat where he's going to get to take home his very own copy of.

Jim is. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. Oh, I want to know what this creeper is doing with Jim again. Would he would he extract Jim his chip and put it in his own head? He loves her so much he wants to integrate with her. Oh my, can you integrate with someone else? Can you put someone else's chip in your head and then reintegrate?

I don't know what that would I mean a lot of that depends on which of our theories is right is this a partitioning like traffic cop or is this like a storage medium because if it's a partition then like I don't know what the fuck it would do but

Probably. Yeah. And also be, I can see someone doing that as like a Romeo and like it's a desperation move. Like you can't have somebody, but you got their chip. So you want to feel closer to them, shove their chip in your head. He seems like that kind of wacko. Good Lord. Yep. maybe a hundred years down the line, there'll be a funeral rituals where they don't, you know, they don't bury the body. They don't put the ashes in an urn. They just put the chip in a little case on your mantle.

That's how you remember your grandma lost loved ones. Yep. There's grandma all 25 fucked up versions of her Joe writes in, any thoughts on the Kier statue? It seemed to me that it was more than just an animatronic comedy routine. Is it possible that Kier's consciousness was actually in there? aka was he he was actually there to witness spark complete cold harbor like cure himself now you're sprecking mine sprick uh i know you're really in on this

The thing is, I keep coming back as my co-host is a smart man and he keeps on flummoxing me with like, how the hell would Kier's. Data. Props, prom, you know. get from the 18th century to 21st century. And I always come back with like a tongue in cheek. Well, maybe there's like an Edison wax cylinder that he was recording his humors on. But like, how would you measure like the day? And that's why I was going like those little E meters that they had that they were hooking Jim up.

with. When were those invented as like a biomedical feedback device? Surely not in the 18th century. Or I guess 19th century is what we're talking about. We're talking about 19th, 20th, and 21st. But that's the thing. I just can't. They didn't have the chips. The chip was invented 20, 30 years ago. Maybe they had a way to record some things in data and mainframes in the 50s and 60s, but you have to go into steampunk, you know...

elseworlds kind of technology. If you want to say that, like somehow Kier is alive in a, even though I like that theory and that's kind of like one of the things I've been, I just don't see how it works out. yeah because there's the idea of like yeah you can record some data right let's let's put this in terms of like human bodies

We probably had a pretty reliable way in that period to record like your heart rate You know you can write it down and get out of pocket watch and you can write it down write it down right there boom moleskin pressure. Yeah Yeah. Right. Does that encompass all of what a human being is? What if what if you then, you know, write down how many times they blink?

in an hour like you know how much data because there's this idea also I was thinking about this in terms of you know people freezing their heads and all this stuff to to kind of try and get some part of them preserved in the future could maybe be woken up. Right. And it's like, well, are you preserving actually the thing that we're going to discover in the future is, is something that gives us the ability to actually do that, you know?

It's like this data loss. Once data is lost, it can never be recovered. So you have to have all of the data you would need at the time of your death. to somehow in the future bring that person back. And I just find it so hard to believe that the recording instruments like. even even if you got the entire output of of his brain electrically onto something yeah we we don't know if that's actually what makes an entire person

Or if that's going to be useful data in the future. And the show can tell us that yes in fact it is. And you know this is exactly what they were doing. And I would believe them. Because that's what the show is telling me. But I find it really hard to believe. I will say that there's so one of the ways I've looked at is like we know now the DNA is essentially sequence of these four pairs of I don't know what are they proteins acids the AGT.

see stuff right and you could conceivably like i just looked it up apparently if you wrote the human genome or you recoded a person's dna strand with just those numerical or those those letter sequences, it would take about 300 novels. And that's just your physical blueprint. I would imagine the neurons in your brain and your personality and your memories would be orders of magnitude more complex than that.

so they wouldn't even have a storage medium with enough capacity also here's the thing with severance being a show it works if they went to some cave And there was a leather bound 300 encyclopedia thing that said, this is the tempers of cure. And all you got to do is pay some monkey to punch these numbers into a thing. I would go with that. I wouldn't say that's impossible. Yeah, yeah. And I could see something, you know, again, this company is so infatuated with perpetuity and eliminating pain.

And, you know, achieving I could see them wanting to live forever and and that there's something appealing to that. So it's like I think they could do it, but they would have to. They'd have to do a lot. And it also gets away from the more interesting thing of hundreds of years after a person has died, people fighting over the legacy and what it means. It'd kind of be cheap if Keir himself stepped out of the...

the wax hall and said, here's what I meant by taking away pain. And this is what I meant by having employee and, you know, like you guys are just wrong. Yeah. Yeah. It would be an interesting, uh, It's like if Jesus came back to the earth and went to see Peter's Basilica and said, this is all a bit much, you know, we'd have to start thinking about how we're glorifying God, you know, because he's got an opinion on it, it seems like. But.

In absence of that, what, yeah, what would you do? Yeah, I don't know. All right, let's move to Tom. Therapist Tom here with some actual therapist stuff this time. Oh, it's been a while since I heard from Therapist Tom, I believe. Yeah, I think so. Mr. Robot, a mainstay, I believe. Uh-huh. He's got a bunch of stuff he wants to talk to us about, but to save y'all a bitch of an email, I'm going to choose the most digestible, which is this.

Lumen has a fundamental misunderstanding about how trauma works, which means severance as a solution to suffering will never be a success. Trauma. OK, this this is a therapist.

asserting this don't blame me don't write me if you know better or think you know better this is all tom write him you know you can't have his email address uh trauma there if it's tom at baldmove.com trauma is stored in our body more than it is in our mind and he says read the book the body keeps the score for a better understanding of this

Trauma is instinctual and reactive rather than a thought out, well reasoned response. Think of an ex-soldier hearing a firework and going into a fight or flight response. Soldier isn't thinking through the logistics of if he's actually in wartime. His body is reacting in a way that helps him. prepped him for survival. Severing one's consciousness does not solve for this problem, as our consciousness is not the thing making that choice to react. Our instincts are.

Generational trauma tells us that we can even carry the suffering of our descendants without having experienced the trauma ourselves. Petey actually sums this up perfectly when he says the sadness follows you down there. You just don't know what it is. So all the trauma you subject your innie to will still come through in your Audi. Sounds like you're somewhat familiar with this concept.

Well, they came out in the Watchmen, the epigenetic changes that stress can do to a body. So if you have a population, one population that was like really stressed out. And one population that wasn't the stressed out population, even generations later, will show more reactivity, more responsive fight or flight, higher cortisol levels, because, yeah, like it makes sense that like as humans, if.

We went through a time of like peace and abundance that we kind of like get cooperative and lovey dovey and we work together. And then when like famines come or a war, you kind of get hard and you swallow a bag of cement and you go about your business and that. helps you survive. So, yeah, this is something that that it actually fundamentally can alter your genetic markers. Then you pass those on to your children. My question is.

I don't know that Lumen not understanding the actual way that stress works in the human body and the genomes and the hereditary of it. I don't know that that would affect how severance would tell the story. Because that's not common knowledge to a lot of people. Like I didn't fucking know that until Watchmen and I started reading about him. And I actually looked into that book and there was a magazine. There was an interview with the author of that book that I looked into. But like.

Severance is not beholden to real science. They could just be like, well, fuck all that. The severed chip just, you know, just roughshods over the endocrine system. The yeah, it's just it's just every just just controls everything. It's you, the you you are. and you'd have to accept that even though it's not right yeah it is ultimately a sci-fi show um or at least it has a sci-fi conceit at its core yeah um

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't necessarily have to, but I think it's interesting to think about. Maybe it is something the show is going with, and if so, Lumen is just delusional. It could be. That's another track. Ms. Cobell could be pissed about. It'd be another thing that like Ragabi is pushing back against that. She's you know, she sees the fundamental impossibility of what they're trying to do. And.

Yeah, maybe we'll get more information about that now that the kind of notes about severance are out there, like details on exactly how it works, right? That notebook that... Yeah. And we're just like some of the more interesting severance theory crafting happened like a year after it was released where people had marinated and watched it a couple of times and lots of podcasts and videos like it.

who knows what we will think by the start of season three, after people have gone over these things with a fine tooth comb and watched it multiple times and all that. Yeah. But I think you're right. Ultimately, like most people don't think in those terms. And so the show I don't I don't think the show has a responsibility to address that question, I guess. Yeah, it's not common knowledge.

but it isn't yeah it is it is interesting it's just like all the you know everything about that i know now about uh how space works if your body gets thrown out in space like There's a lot of science fiction I enjoyed in my youth that I could go back. Well, that's not how that works. You can't do that. Well, by God, I just last night watched Geordi LaForge and Beverly Crusher emphasize how important it was to hold your breath.

Before they're exposed to the vacuum. Do you remember this episode where the shuttle craft, the shuttle bay was on fire and the only way they could put it out was to vent it to space because the enterprise was damaged and they couldn't. The doors were and they were going to die of radiation and temperature. So they open.

the main bay doors and blew everything out to space, including the fire. And then they walked across the deck acting like there's. But we know that your lungs would literally explode if you try to hold your breath. Read a bell. But it worked. It worked for them. Did physics change to the 24th century or did those writers just not know what the fuck is going on? Maybe. I mean, they have Heisenberg compensators, so maybe they have some.

Tech. I mean, they try. They tried to make it up a techno babble. But at the end of the day, you still have these two people holding bubbles in their mouth, walking across the vacuum of space. But. All right, let's move over to a question from BJW in Charlotte. Why are people from Mark S's Audi life in the painting? Like his sister and Rick and. Oh, it. Yeah. You know this? I think I got a good reason for this. Yeah, I think I do, too, because any Mark had met them.

And they are being sort of integrated into the story here. Am I wrong about that? I think you're exactly right. I think that everyone pictured here was the goat were the goat people there, too. They were right. I think this mural represents literally everyone Mark S knew in the entire world, which makes it even more epic.

You know, like the like your entire known world is looking with apprehension and approval at you completing this task. Oh, man, how cool is that? Yeah. No, I think you're right. Your spiritual advisor, Rickon, is there. Your Audi sister's there. Your next door neighbor, crazy ladies. Yeah, everybody's there and looking at you. All right, Scott B.

It says, I had a potentially interesting thought about the conversation between Indy and Audi Mark. When Indy Mark points out that if or when they reintegrate, that he'll be a mere 120th of their shared personality, Audi Mark might have said this. Maybe you're right.

I'm not even sure reintegration will work anyway, but think of where you are right now. You're not on the severed floor, but you exist. This should prove to you that with the right technology, your life can go on, even if Lumen does not. So if you help me get my love back so I can live my life with her, and if you don't want to reintegrate with me, I promise to make sure you have a place like this when to spend your life with your love. We'll share each day just as we always have.

I don't see any other way for either of us. What do you think? I think the whole point of that is you're supposed to understand that Mark. Yeah, you're right. If he had thought about this in advance, but Mark doesn't understand reintegration. He doesn't know that it works. It's extremely dangerous. and poorly understood. He didn't say any of that. He did. He just held it out as like and even like, I think the show even tells you that this is a this is not a well reasoned. This is a ploy.

Because when Mark is recording that and he's kind of smart and I want it, I want to share this life with you. And he hits stop in his face instantly. He's like, God, fucking this guy. None of that sincere. And I think that's what Mark S is responding to as much as the words like it's just the fact that Mark is got not a lot of answers and there's not a lot of self-confidence and there's not a lot of like, oh, yeah, we thought this through, buddy. You don't have to worry about it. We got your.

back like this was all just new thoughts to them and that's what scared mark s so mark would have to have been a fundamentally different person who viewed his relationship with his any fundamentally different but that's that's Wasn't isn't that one of the big revelations of the season that even outies that we admire and should be more on the ball are kind of callous about their innies? Yeah, I think so. No one really views them as people.

Like even Mark Lassie, he was he'd go to fight with protesters about how they're they got no souls and it's just me and who gives a shit. And it's like a fingernail clipping. So like there's yeah, I think it's I think it would felt unearned if he was 100 percent. on board with the innies because I think there's another thing they're trying to say is like, yeah, this is, you know, when you're trying to.

You're trying to represent as a member of the privileged class, an underprivileged minority. A lot of times you can do that in cringe, clumsy, bad ways. You know, if you don't think about their experience and you don't talk to them and you don't, you know, take an extraordinary effort to subordinate your egos and desires to actually what this community needs and wants you to do.

It's easy to make that mistake. And I think that's kind of what at least a little bit what what Severance is hinting at, too. For sure. I like the point I liked in here was that there was another option. Right. And there was one that's pretty convincing. Like, hey, you're outside of the severed floor and you're living a life. What does that tell you? Yeah.

and the fact that again like you said that mark doesn't acknowledge any of that it doesn't think of any of that shows you that yeah he has not thought about this any as a real person or someone who would have a life that they would try to protect There's a little part of me that is broken free and I want to reabsorb into Mark Prime. That's what it seemed like. Totally.

All right, Chris, this is a lot of talk about how there's no happy series ending possible, but how about this? Mark S. and Heli R. get to spend one weekend per month.

In the birthing cabin or some other frequency, whatever. Instead of permanent work, they're any personalities, no permanent vacation. The obvious problem with this is that Helena wouldn't... uh donate one week in a month for any to get free with mark s but wouldn't she helen has already slept with mark s because she was jealous uh they have about two seasons to develop character motivations they want but i think mark heli

Helena are already close to this resolution Gemma hasn't had a chance to develop a tolerance for this arrangement, but we can get there So I like the I I like the turnaround for that. Like, okay, you've been living in constant hell. Now what if you lived in constant paradise? That's kind of cool.

Yeah, and I can see a judge can compel all that. They can compel, like, who gives a shit what Helena thought? You should have thought of that before you start severing people and turning them into slaves. Yeah, and you're legally not the same person, and so you have no say over what this other person does.

You're going to have to share time or make, you know, you're going to have to acquiesce to this. That's interesting. And then also Lumens got enough. Like, I don't think severance is a big enough deal yet. And they are rich enough that they could probably afford.

to just pay a damage lawsuit you know like a payout to the annies so they would never have to work again and they could just live on permanent it's like you know if a company like what happened to tracy morgan like a ups truck ran him over and now he's permanent like you know he sued ups or walmart i can't remember and she's now like what happened super fucking rich yeah yeah

Like, yeah, sometimes. And I'm sure he was OK before, but now he's like rich, rich. And he, you know, so it's like, yeah, like if the company fucks you up and I can't think of how any more fucked you could be than in a severed situation.

they might have to give some money. And then, like, yeah, Mark would have to give up some time. Gemma would have to give up some time. There would have to be... yeah yeah there'd have to there would have to be a lot of a lot of legislation written because i'm just thinking about like yeah can can mark s sue mark scout for making him fat If on his like market scout just decides to get it big into foodies and rich food and butter and.

you know, desserts. And he starts packing on the mark. Ask us. Do you got a fiduciary responsibility not to make us fat, man? Or like, what if Mark Scout decides to shave his head? because jimma likes like shaved head men but heli likes men with hair like whoa whoa you get to shave our fucking head what how would you adjudicate that i don't know man

I don't know. It's like, I guess you could look at identical twin law because there are some really weird boundaries. You know, that's a very uncommon thing to have a Siamese twin, you know? Uh-huh. A conjoined twin. I'm pretty sure Siamese is no longer. Yeah, you didn't even recognize the old man racist term I was using. Yeah, the conjoined twins, which to me is two separate bodies. And I was really confused there. That's bad science. They share a soul. Okay.

Uh, yeah, but, but, but conjoined twins that, uh, you know, uh, one of them's got a college degree. The other one doesn't one of them's married. The other one doesn't one. I was like, how does that fucking work? I guess they have to make it work. but like yeah like you said legislation we would have to feel out the boundaries of that we would have to yeah define it it's a new a new facet to human existence that we have no precedent for right

Would be interesting. Speaking of interesting, Brit W has an interesting question along these lines, at least in my mind. They say it's interesting that Lumen and Kier's purpose is to rid the world of pain. But what did they consider pain? I've assumed based on the information the show is presenting that Lumen agrees with Rickon and changing a child's bed would cause trauma. But why would a company who makes eight year olds work 10 hour shifts care about that? So this got me thinking.

There are there are some types of discomfort or potential pain that I think severance could not provide a solution for or or if it did, it would render. the point of that pain completely useless think like personal growth or yeah like education right it might be painful for you to sit and study for 10 hours to cram for a test but you couldn't have an innie do that you couldn't rid yourself of that pain otherwise you wouldn't have that knowledge that you needed to pass the test

Yeah, you'd have to go into the test and sever and have DNA take it. But what does that gain you? You don't have the knowledge. Why spend the time to do the thing if you're not going to get the results? And like, especially with personal growth, like doing things that you that would grow you as a person can be very painful at times and scary and intimidating. And you might want to sever those pains, but. then you don't grow as a person. Just how it works.

But there's some things you would justly get benefit from. Like if one of them got it's totally into health and, you know, lifting weights and exercise, you would get to be a healthy body and free. Right. But like internal intellectual. Philosophical intellectual improvements would be. Severed.

yeah that's interesting yeah which comes down to like what do they define as pain you know right emotional pain mental pain and yeah why um It was painful for me to sit two hours on a Sunday and listen to a sermon and read a Watchtower or an Awake or whatever and be like... uh i don't believe any of this i don't want to do this that was painful but lumen would definitely want me to do that with you know their appendices or whatever they've got going uh their history here yeah

And why the hypocrisy between wanting to end pain and having child workers where you're, but I guess if you let them have ether, so they're, you know, three sheets to the wind, they're not feeling, they're feeling no pain. All right, let's go to Mark L says, my thoughts on the finale are such. Kobel acts odd. She states that she cares for him. I'm talking about Mark. Could she be Mark's real mother?

sired by jame there is you know that this is this is one of james right um making mark and heli are step siblings which would be really weird Also, with the murder of Drummond happening in the elevator with the CCTV, could Mark S. be arrested for murder in season three? For killing Drummond? Yeah, I had somebody who wrote in and said that that might be a point of leverage for. Lumen, like if Mark threatens or if Gemma threatens to take things public, if Mark.

threatens, you know, or Heli threatens not to be Helen anymore or something. It could they hold that up as like, well, we have tape of you murdering somebody and we're going to go to the authorities if you try any of that. So mutually sure destruction. Yeah. What would the self-defense.

like unlawful prison imprisonment but then you know mark signed paper and said it was yeah you're right you're right that that's that's how then you have to decide all those things you just talked about yeah with the unwritten unconsidered laws And then also the it's you're you also you can threaten a lot of stuff that you couldn't get away with. You know, a lot of a lot of a lot of lawyering is threatening people and heading legal action off. Yeah.

Like, hey, you better stop doing this or we're going to have to get a judge involved and he won't like it. You better take it on that three seconds of, I don't know, Kendrick's song that you used and commented for an hour about. Otherwise, I'm taking you to court.

You tell Andy Mark, hey, we got we got you murdering this guy on camera. Andy Mark doesn't know anything about the justice system. And you're going to go. You're going to you and Andy Mark going to go out of here in chains like that. Mm hmm. Even though there's that's that's a huge, complicated legal question. Any mark would be ignorant about it, you know, completely. Yeah.

Let's go to Neil B. who says, now that we know the purpose of the goats, I think we're meant to shift a bit more of our attention to Lumen's cultish nature. Instead of eternal life through clones or being implanted in the brains of others, maybe this is all about bringing back Kier with good old-fashioned Jesus-style second coming, which can be ushered in only by the sacrifice of a human without untamed tempers.

Seems that everything leads to Lumen possessing someone that can have their brainwaves changed into perfect harmony and be offered up to the heavens. With the goat of the greatest verve in Wiles, of course. So the cure can usher in a new world of sorts. Yeah, that's that's where my head's at is like this is a religious thing to them. This is. This is not something that is literally trying to re-embody Kier through these goats. It's symbolic in any ways that actually matter.

I'm open to it actually being more than symbolic. But also, yes, that is. I am, too. I'll say like I'm not I'm not going to be angry or disappointed or anything if it turns out to be more than that. That's just that's where my head's at right now.

You know, the other thing is I was thinking is like, are we looking at this from a too secular perspective? Like what's the show's perspective on souls and God and religion? Because it's also we could be looking at this from the wrong angle that like, well, how would you preserve Keir's essence? Well, maybe Keir's essence is just waiting at the.

Golden door. And if you've prepared a suitable vessel with the right tempers, he could just inhabit it like he just literally possessed night. I don't know if I would like watching a show where you actually have souls and ghosts and spirits. but I couldn't, I would, I also wouldn't say it would be an invalid way to tell your story because it is science fiction and you are making a, you are making a lot of shit up, but yeah, it's true.

There was an interesting note from Jenny here about Quindle and Christie's outfit in this finale. I noticed Quindle's outfit in the goat sacrifice scene resembles a Norwegian bunad. I'm going to say B U N A D a beautiful and traditional festive costume that we Norwegians treasure. It's quite expensive, typically costing around two to $3,000. So seeing it in all black was unique and interesting. It's usually like.

Some fairly intricate patterns. Hmm. I'm struggling to come up with anything to compare it to. But what is this thing called again? Abunad, B-U-N-A-D. If you look it up, it's a lot like what she's wearing, except it's brighter. It's usually like a white-red type combo, at least as I've seen it. Could also read as like Pennsylvania Dutch. Yeah. Yeah. You know, very simple, old timey kind of clothes. 19th century milkmaid type of apparel. Swab girl type apparel.

But it's in line, you know, with the other like Svalbard and Gunnel. I was going to say it does have the Norwegian. I was just about to say it does have the Svalbard angle. And pointing out, I know you had mentioned how much you liked the line art stuff that was happening in the...

credit sequence. Jenny also says the end credits caught her attention. They felt like a direct homage to the line that we always see in fear at the end of each episode. You know, that line that cuts through the screen before telling you the episode's over. And now the line got its own expansion of its universe with all the end credit imagery just being made out of that line. So I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. I do too. Dig it. Jefferson S wants to talk about Frozen Heli.

Did Heli R. stop short from stabbing Jame Egan because of her own self-restraint? Or was it some reptilian brain recognition that Jame was her family? Or... Was she frozen because of some inhibitor device in the brain? Mental conditioning. Well, I mean. Maybe more concrete than that. uh she didn't just look conflicted she looked frozen almost like she couldn't couldn't move her arm forward even if or though she wanted to and james stepped toward her with zero fear almost gloating

Would it be safe for human cage master and fazillionaire Jane to walk around the cage to innies without a bodyguard unless he knew he could not be harmed? I. so i did not pick up on this i i like everyone found it very disappointing that she did not stab him uh right in the heart that's gonna what do we just talk about like there's a great what if of what if someone had just killed somebody

instead of letting them go. Oh, it was an Andor. Like, what would happen if Andor season one, if there's, you know, if someone is killed instead of let go. Yeah. This is going to be a great if. Like, what if Heli just stabbed this fucker right here, right here, right now? You think it's possible she couldn't like physically because the chip to me, it didn't feel like she was like if they want to tell the story of her being physically halted by something beyond her control.

I think there's a way to do that. And she wasn't acting that it's more of like, you know how Arnold hesitated to kill the predator. It's like he gets up there at the big rock at the end and he's a baby looks at it's like coughing up blood and he's kind of like. there's like this kind of pity or disgust. I think it's that it's like she went and then she just saw how old and weird and also she's never killed anybody. Hell, he is not a killer. Yeah. And I like.

People, people overestimate or underestimate how hard it is to kill people. Like a lot of what the army and Marines do is get people over the inhibition to kill people. And even then, if you look at. Like any like study of actual war, the shots fired versus shot hit is so high. There's a lot of explanation. Number one, people just firing blind because they're scared. But a lot of times people are there. There still is that like, OK, I'll shoot at the enemy.

But I don't know if I can just like kill that guy. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. It's it's not a theory that's crazy. And if they hinted that I would be I wouldn't be like, well, this comes out of nowhere. But it's also. easily explained by other other things, I think. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm with you. I would not be shocked. It would not disappoint me if that were true, but we'll see. We need to find that work-life balance. We'll be right back.

Reintegration is complete. To avoid further non-worker-related interruptions, please see the company policy on advertisement avoidance at support.baldmove.com. Now I get to the section of the feedback that I call refining Gemma. There's some questions about, you know, what MDR is doing exactly and how it relates to Gemma and a whole bunch of Gemma stuff. So let's go over this, starting with Guy from Montana. What do we know about the numbers being refined in MDR?

the refiners sense one of the four tempers while looking through the matrix of numbers and bend them presumably to remove this perceived negative thought pattern thus creating a consciousness free from the four tempers Okay, that's your first assumption. I'm not sure I'm on board with that assumption. I don't think that is part of what Kobel told him, right? She just said they relate to the four tempers. I don't think we know.

Yeah, man, was there all the other complication is, is four tempers into five boxes. Mm hmm. What's up with the five boxes, right? That's that's why I said in the finale, I'm a little disappointed we didn't. find out about that fifth box here in this, uh, tell all. I feel like that there was what, but now I'm also thinking vaguely that there was something in regabi's equipment that.

explain the five boxes. But no, that was two lines on two oscilloscopes, which would represent the four humors or the four tempers. So yeah, I'm not sure why you would put the four tempers into five boxes. yeah i don't know either um but let's let's go with this you know yeah i'm doing it to remove these from the thought pattern

Okay. And they do this to prepare an any for one of the rooms to then perform a fidelity test on the any to verify the severance is holding. Yeah, I think I think that's a plain reading for sure. uh we can deduce this because gemma has never been in the cold harbor room and once mark s finishes the cold harbor file gemma's new innie created from this refinement can go into the cold harbor uh to have the final fidelity test performed on her

Which is like I said, that's that's a huge deal because like the five person questionnaire is a bit of a efficacy test, right? Like that's what we've kind of surmised that it's a real quick test of the five different.

levels and types of memory um oh maybe that's the five boxes that's the five boxes the different because i forget what they all corresponded to but it's like right spatial uh location familial childhood adult like there was like there's like five different uh types of memory access and uh yeah um but like that that could be it

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm theorycraft on top of this guy's theory. I'm sorry. No, you're good. So if Jim is any that will experience Cold Harbor is brand new the moment she enters the Cold Harbor room. How are there data patterns for Mark S to refine? What is the consciousness that is being refined prior to any entering the room that ultimately performs the test? I think that could be answered by a base.

version of jama potentially like if you're going all the way back to the first room how would there be any data at all it'd probably be a base version of jama and then perhaps as you get through you know rooms one through 24 it's getting more and more refined We're getting more deeper and deeper of a test and he's refining iterations essentially of Gemma as they go that add up to that final one.

Why does Jemma's innie go back into rooms they've already been in? If the refining process only handles innies that have yet to go into their testing room, what is the point of going back into a room that's already been tested? Is this just crazy doctor sadism, or is there part of the process we haven't seen yet?

That's a fair question. Well, there's different combinations like, hey, if you lead with the dental and then you go with the airline and you follow with the Christmas, is that do something that if you start with the Christmas and you lead into the.

uh paper cut and then yeah i don't i don't know because like i said i don't there's so much mystery to this that you know i'd be hard-pressed to come up with a theory that's just impossible but um yeah there's also this like this is also big part of science is repeatability you know you got an interesting result we'll do it again with the exact same thing see if it turns out the same so like it could just be now that Doesn't explain Cold Harbor. It is like a one and done. Right.

But I think the interesting thing is, is that the gym is attitude coming in. There is different than any other newly severed people person we've ever seen. It's different than other because some of her other personalities down there are defiant. Like, you know, she doesn't like. the christmas guy and she you know complains about it and says she wants to stop and she complains to the dentist guy and

She's not really that way with the, you know, the the airline Stewart guy. But like, I do think the big thing there is the fact that she is just a perfectly blank slate, perfectly compliant. Perfectly obedient. A voice comes on and says, do something. She does it answers any question. Honestly, it's like it's the ideal employee. And I don't think we knew that you could just create a new like like like that kind of blank slate, you know. It's like a one that doesn't kind of play out a little bit.

yeah yeah that just has that like yeah it's just it's it's she seems scared and confused but not to the degree that like heli was throwing shit at people and Well, yeah, but is that her bait? Because like I said, you know, because we know that like. They told about like all the different things the other and he's did like Mark threatened to kill PD or if I forget what violent reaction he has. It seems like it's it's the rule that you have a violent.

This is not right. I don't want to be here. Who the fuck am I? Why am I? And then you kind of calm down and get conditioned. But, you know. I would think if you want this to be mass adopted, you wouldn't want, you know, you wouldn't want to. Yeah. Imagine if you're trying to sit and you just want to sever someone for a dental procedure. You got to go through a four hour intake procedure just to get your any ready to do it. You know, like, fuck, just put them.

out like why you know just just use just use just use anesthesia but ultimately guy you know wants the show to make sense and hopes that the writers really thought through this stuff and while i do trust them for now logic issues like this give grist for the mill for people screaming look see this is lost again

Ultimately, I really like the finale and the season as a whole. I think the exploration about the same human body sharing different motivations is fascinating, and this is where the story shines. I just hope they're able to close the holes in these logic issues. Yep, you and me both. I have a lot of faith that we will learn more about why they're doing things more explicitly. We've had questions around.

All of this MDR stuff for so long. And then Cobell just comes out and says exactly what it is to Mark. Yeah. And I think that's important. I think they'll do that with pretty much everything here eventually. Yeah. Yeah, there'll be hints and theories and then let's confirm it. And I think I think it's good that they do that so that we can move on. Like, you know, no more like I wonder if what if it's this or what if it's now we we now know.

Like you'd have to. Yeah. So it's nice to get everybody on the same page about some things we can all go forward together. For sure. Dallas in Nashville says, I was thinking about all the rooms that Gemma goes in throughout the season and how all of them are supposed to be areas of her life that were hard or difficult or things she doesn't like. How does Lumen know all these things about Gemma?

Were they monitoring her before the accident or did she give them information voluntarily when she got to Lumen the night of the car accident? I doubt any of this was on her survey papers she was filling out at home. Yeah, these intimate details, right? Like the Christmas setup. Like that's something that she would basically have to tell them. And in what context would that be relevant and important? And not weird, not weird to be asked about.

Where did Mark and her have the conversation about thank you cards? And he says, you hate thank you cards. Is that in their home? Or is that was that like when they was in their home? I thought it was maybe they were in walking in or out of the birthday because I'm trying to think of like, was there like if could they have enough cameras or surveillance to get some of this couple stuff? Could they have.

was like the freshman fluke somehow mining reverse mining mark for this information. Like he wouldn't even know what it was, but it's, you know, like it's coded memories of Jim and he.

puts it yeah I don't fucking know because I could see refining a personality but how does that fit the scenario maybe it's it's Scientology shit right like From what I've heard, there's some surprising things that people are willing to reveal in these sessions because the whole idea is to get that information out there and then...

you know, you can process it or whatever. Like, why does anyone go in and tell a complete stranger all the things? Well, because there's a, you know, you're doing salvation. Yeah, that's a good point. It also could be like Jim was down for two years. It could be that they did a whole psych evaluation on her and ask her all these questions like, you know, what are your top five?

Pet peas, what are your top five biggest fears? What are your top five greatest pleasures? What are your... They could have done things like... There's nothing that suggested that Gemma was afraid of flying, I don't think. But if she says, oh, I love to travel... OK, can we make a situation where you love to travel? But like, but can we beat that out of you? Or can we make you not want to travel because it's so a bad experience or just but.

We only saw three or four of the rooms and there's 25 of them. Maybe five of the rooms we saw. It's hard to make a situation where she's there against her will where they've kidnapped her. You could break someone. in two years pretty easily to tell you whatever you wanted to know about soldiers have cracked under last time yeah so I don't know clearly I think they got that information from her somehow

All right, Steve J. Last one here on Gemma. Quick one with the dangers we've seen of reintegrating the innie and outie of Mark or Petey. I wonder, is it an order of magnitude more dangerous to reintegrate Gemma and her 25 personalities? Oh, boy. Yeah, I think that would. Yeah, I never thought about reintegrated 25 different people, especially when they're such bizarre out of.

You know, like one existence is all about crashing in planes and one is all about a dentist hurting you. And one's all about writing with your. Like, what would you even do with all those memories? Presumably she wouldn't want those memories reintegrated. Like, why would you? But does her any have rights to it? I mean, it doesn't matter what Gemma wants. Like, we've kind of established that already.

Ah, sure. I don't know. I hadn't thought about, you know, the ramifications of that. I would suspect that as intensive integrating two personalities would that integrating more would be. I mean, there's nothing that says that, but it stands to reason. You would think so. Yeah. All right. Let's get to some predictions. Got a couple of emails here for predictions. All right, Chris.

It says, here's what I think is going to happen next season. The Indies are going to take over the building. I think this is a pretty solid prediction. Think about it. Here's the situation. Drummond is dead. All the Indies feel they have nothing to lose. The Indies seem willing to unite in an insurrection. They have Lorne and her sheep and the fucking marching band army. Egan even thinks Heli would be better at running the company than Helena. Milchick has no love for Lumen. If they can, well.

He's got beef with Lumen. I don't know if he's got no love, but he definitely has manifest beef. But if they can gain control of the building, they can control the severance chips. That means the innies stay in control. It's also a way to get Irving back if they flip the switch on him.

Miss Cobell is a wild card, but if she works with the innies, they can destroy Lumen from the inside out. And then on the outside, Mark's wife and sister will be wanting Mark S to release their brother back to them. Would make for interesting storytelling. Yeah, I think that's a good way forward, because we do know, at least in season one, the controls for their chips were on that floor. Which presumably can we go back and.

Now with the foreknowledge, benefit of foreknowledge, ask, why the fuck would they put the security room on a severed floor? Yeah, that seems like a security problem that you could easily avoid. Yeah. And secondly, where the fuck is the security room now? Cause they're executing Glasgow blocks and stuff. Can you just like hack into the mainframe from anywhere or do you have to be on the cert?

I do. Yeah, because the one thing about the hostage taking possibility we've mentioned is like, I don't know how they would pull. I guess they just literally take Helly hostage and say, we're going to do we're going to kill her if we don't get her demands. But like it, it'd be a lot easier if they knew where the security office was so they could like, you know, guarantee that no one's going to Glasgow block them or clean slate them or.

reverse otc open house them you know yeah if they could get control of their chips that's that's the only way that they could succeed i would think because you can always just flip a switch and then you have nobody on your side you just have a bunch of confused people like what the hell are we doing where are we and then you have mark

scout down there who would be like here's what we were doing everybody we were trying to get jim out and they'd be like who the fuck i don't care i'm going home i have this marching band uniform on it itches right this trombone is heavy i'm getting out of here right And let's go to Daniel T. XJW. I wanted to throw this in here just because we've got a kindred spirit here who's been with us since Breaking Bad days. My God.

That's pretty old, as we just reviewed in our 15th anniversary podcast. His theory is, for moving forward, is that since Mark killed Drummond, lumen would hold it over him and use it oh this is the mutually assured destruction email yes yeah we've done yeah exactly so credit to daniel t on that shout out to a fellow xjw um and

Finally, Brian says, I've been trying to think how the extended how how to extend this storyline for four to five seasons. Do you think they might have a cure origin story season as some background or filler?

An entire season? No. I think that would kill this show. A flashback episode, but yeah, no. Yeah. I could see an episode. I would want to see an episode. I would be happy to see an episode of Cure Flashback. I will say... I would like to see less seasons than more seasons and not because I want less severance, but I've seen shows that try to take like a very strange concept like this and keep pushing and keep pushing because they got something.

And very rarely does that go good places. Yep. A hundred percent agree. I want them to tell the story they want to tell and not try and extend it artificially. And I'd said there's not I've heard nothing from any of the principles on the show that makes me think that they want to do anything but that. But I don't know. I didn't need this shit, right? No, but Dan Erickson. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. But I also wonder, yeah, like because I have heard them say like, oh, maybe it's three, maybe it's six. And like, I don't know that I like that. You should. I think I think you should have a better idea.

of how long the show is going to be going into the third season you know if it's going to be three or six um but i just yeah it's like it feels like it's going to get harder and harder to come up with a viable show as the show continues to go on based on you know the structure of the show like it's gonna get harder and harder and maybe that's part of the charm is they get that they like that challenge but oof yeah it's rough though because like the fate

of the innies is something I'm deeply concerned about. And I don't see, I don't see a road to a positive ending that satisfies. so many of the questions we've had about the logistics of it in one season. I don't see season three being, you know, the war for... the innies independence and then that somehow being satisfied by like what

The Senate decides to write a bunch of slapdash, not thought out laws that then like have to be tried all the way up to the Supreme Court. And like, how do you how do you satisfy that? concept in a single season in an interesting way that people are not going to be like, oh, this turned into a procedural law show. I'm not interested. That's what I'm saying, man. I don't like I can. I.

But you kill him. I mean, you kill the innies. That's that. Yeah. Satisfies that it's it's bad. But I just keep coming back to last year when we were going over the show. We're like, how in the hell? Can this just go back to being about macro data refinement? But by God, by the first episode, they were back to macro data refinement. And they never really, other than the episodes were kind of one shot, Gemma and Cope Cobell episodes. They never really went away from that.

So it never felt like it was forced either. I felt like they had an answer to how do we stay on the separate floor? I'm like, oh, yeah, cool. And even some fun misdirection where it's like, oh, the trailer is going to imply that we're going to have a completely do MDF team. But it's going to be very much like the old MDF team. But then that was just for a one episode goof. And we went away with something else. It's like.

Man, I have no idea how they'll do it, but I believe that they could do it. Yeah, I'm with you. I think that's a good place to leave it for this season. We'll be back in... Three years, I guess. I think I'm calling it now. I think we're going to come back late summer 2026. That's my official direction. If they've already got a couple of scripts written.

And there's going to take the rest of the summer. They start filming in the fall. They finish filming in late winter. Then they got like a whole spring and summer post-production. Yeah, come on. Come on. All right. Well, we can play this. Not that many special effects. We can play this recording back during pandemic number two.

Well, that's true. Six months. And that's true. If there's a world war or a massive pandemic or some kind of general strike, then who knows what's going to happen? But yeah. Assuming the world order stays intact for the next two or three years. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Well.

As Jim said, that'll do again. We'll love to invite you along with the rest of our coverage this year. Just the stuff we're doing facing publicly. We got and or season two coming up. If you don't remember and or season one or you haven't seen it, we're doing a recap. Retro rewatch of season one right now. The Last of Us 2, a great science fiction post-apocalyptic zombie show on HBO Max was great.

It's been off for a while. It's coming back this season in just a couple of weeks. We're excited about that. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, another Game of Thrones property, the bear final season. I'm assuming at the end of June they haven't announced, but it's always been into June so far. I feel like I'm forgetting something. Something big. Stranger Things? Stranger Things? Last season of Stranger Things? Final season.

We're still wrapping up Yellow Jackets. We're we do first run movie reviews and even more if you're a club member. Subscribe to Bald Move Pulp or Prestige if you want to get all of our. prestige quality entertainment or revolver like zombie dinosaur space rocket ship stuff is pulp.

And also, if you're a new fan, we just did a 15 year anniversary podcast in both pulp and prestige. So subscribe to that. And if you if you care to support us, there's a lot more bald mover that come from support dot bald move dot com. But that's it for this season. I hope that you find a way back to the Shores of Bald move before Season 3 of Severance. But if not, I guarantee we'll be here waiting for you. Until that time, I'm your host, Aaron. And I'm Jim. Praise gear.