This dentist is Max Creepy, though. I don't want my dentist. I think that's his name. Max Creepy. He looks like he's auditioning for the next sequel to The Human Centipede. This guy is so fucking weird looking. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't even seen any of the human centipedes, but I immediately know what you're trying to get at. Yeah. This is the guy who's would so mouths to buttholes just to see what happens.
Welcome to Waffle Potty, the officially unofficial podcast for Severance on Apple TV+. I'm Jim. I'm Aaron. And today we're talking Season 2, Episode 7, Chikai Bardo. Oh, boy. Aaron, I'm going to say I could spend. Sixty five years researching this podcast. I would probably have to attain enlightenment to totally understand the nature of it. But I think I'm I think I'm OK to talk about it. And any Buddhists that we have.
in chat are just going to have to like educate us or point us in the right direction when we get things wrong because you just can't I can't learn Buddhism in an hour and a half of research I'm sorry Some say it takes a lifetime. Some people say it takes multiple lifetimes. Yeah, so I've heard. What'd you think of it? This... Man, this is another classic severance move, you know, where we're trying to...
Figure out where it's zigging and zagging. It just completely does something different. And I think it delivers this very beautiful episode. This episode completely reframed how I feel about Gemma and Miss Casey. um previously i had seen her i guess as kind of like uh the princess peach you know she's the She's the damsel in a castle that Mark's trying to get to and rescue. And here I see that she is working for her own liberation.
as hard and as fiercely with, with many of the same frustrations and mistakes and, and being all alone. But if I'm getting what this episode is, is laying down, they're really. I don't think anyone's theory on what the hell is going on in the testing floor is correct. I don't think anybody... It's obvious now that a lot of the cloning stuff was way off. But it's also obvious that there's many, many, many, many versions of Gemma down here.
that they are messing with. And I'm not sure to what end. And they're not, you know, they're hurting her in some ways and they're abusing her and others. Uh, there's this wild dentist guy who I grew to hate over 60 minutes. And there's also like another, another thing I'm kind of debating is how much of this episode was. us watching Mark sift through his memories of Gemma and how much of it is Gemma sifting through her memories of Mark. Yeah. A lot of transitional stuff here that in.
in the typical language of cinema i think would tell you that mark's seeing something from a pov that he can't possibly have though it's yeah it's very strange in that regard it's it's Hard to decipher. And I think this also episode illuminates a lot of what we were talking about in terms of. Were there cracks forming in Mark and Jim's relationship? It seems like, you know, a lot that there were, and it was all around their attempts to have a child. Yep.
A lot of stuff you could infer from previous statements, just like hints around the edges of what went on here that, yeah, we just get a lot more clarity into. And that's ultimately I think what was exciting about the episode to me is just like putting a stamp on this and saying, OK, here's what this is. You know, here's here's what their relationship was. Here's what's happening on the testing floor.
Still many more questions to be answered, but questions that I've been yearning for an answer to were answered in this episode. A lot of them. Yeah. And a lot of people's pet theories in terms of, oh, what if Mark was the one driving the car? What if this? What if that? A lot of those are solidly dashed. I feel like that there's very little. There's not...
there's not a lot of comfort for the people who are looking for evil Rick and theories or Rick and being involved in, in Lumen theories. Uh, yeah. And it's, it's very, It's very exciting to me in that way because I was worried like I'm worried. You know, I've never liked the cloning theory. I was worried that there was something involving that. I'm still very confused by the goats, but.
you know we'll see what's happening with them later I'm sure yeah I just I felt a lot more grounded in the story after watching this episode and like the story itself was a lot more grounded like this wasn't going to spin off into some crazy thing where i don't know everybody's turned into goats or something like that that would be stupid right like let's jump the shark territory i'm glad they brought it back around
We needed something because I felt, you know, in our last feedback episode that it's like, this is really getting crazy. People are really going pretty far off the map on some of this stuff. Just trying to imagine what the most shocking and crazy thing would be, not necessarily what. And it's I feel like this is a nice. OK, get everybody back on the same page.
Yeah. You know, let's let some of these things that remember, you know, like what we're trying to do here and what makes a really satisfying kind of theory when we're theory crafting. But. Yeah. And I wonder like how transformative this will be for Mark, because there's at least some dark hints that maybe we're not going to get the Mark we knew and have grown to love back ever.
You know, like he's a we've talked about this with I'm leaving. I did last week with Pete. I think, you know, I talked about it on the feedback episode. The the idea that when you reintegrate Mark S and Mark Scout, you don't get. both of those characters in one person, you get a completely different person that's been transformed by those experiences.
And, you know, with what we've seen from Petey, it might not necessarily be the healthiest thing. And I think it's also interesting, the Regabi situation, like. That felt unresolved. At first, it's like, okay, Devin's threatening to get Cobell in here because she's scared for Mark and she doesn't trust Ruggabi.
And Ragabi's response is, well, I'm taking my ball and going home then. And then Devin backs off on that. So is Ragabi going to back off on her? Or does she, I mean, it still seemed like she took her ball and went home at least. Yeah. So. But she also says, don't call that woman. Kind of like, is this a test? Like, yeah. And what's Mark going to make of that? Because obviously Devin can't really do much to help.
on the integration side of things she can offer moral support and maybe be his brains custodian but uh You know, as far as doing the science or whatever the hell this is, limited, limited use. Oh, yeah. No, it's going to be interesting to see, I guess, who wakes up from Mark's integration experience.
and how how that affects the show going forward like are we going to now have a fuller view of the events happening inside the severed building Are we going to get more of the struggle from Gemma's side just as a matter of course in the show now? I'm kind of hoping so as they sort of both try and free each other from opposite ends of the equation. Yeah. That'd be exciting.
But yeah, I don't know where Gabi fits in now. I assume she's going to. And it's been a question like, where is Kobelvig? I could see her coming back into the story at this point. She obviously has to at some point. And with Ruggabi sort of distancing herself, they might not have no alternative. Like Ruggabi's decision here as she's saying, you know, this is your decision, not mine. She might be making the decision for Devin.
She might have to call in somebody who knows something and she doesn't know how to get a hold of her Gabby. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also an extra tragedy because just as kind of like Mark S is getting the closest to he's ever been to being fully realized and and. a functional individual. You know, he's got a, he's got a love life and a romance and he's got things, you know, on the inside that he cares about as much as Audi marks got on the outside.
That potentially that's going to be ripped away, you know, like what is the newly integrated Mark S scout? We want to call him that. How does he feel about, you know? Helly. How does he feel like now that he's got these memories of his wife that he was with for years and years and that their trials and tribulations and their loves and their losses and their hurts.
How does that stack up against, you know, Mark S's affection for Heli, which is very much a first love. It's like, you know, puppy love. I feel bad. It feels pretty intense to that character. Sure. It always, it does because you don't have any other frame of reference for it. And it's, it is, I mean, that's the thing. It's like, I.
I appreciate with my teenager, it's like, you know, because my parents are always trying to go, it's not real. Love is not. No, it is. It's just the first time you feel it and you're flooded with hormones and you're not experienced with it. And it's all overwhelming. Like you'll get more combat like I don't I can't fairly say to anyone that I described as loving as a teenager that I know I didn't really love them. Like, yeah.
Maybe I didn't understand the full depths of the meaning and all that kind of stuff. But like, yeah, it's still it's it's still the. The love spectrum you're feeling. So I think that's going to be interesting and perhaps tragic, especially to because I guess Mark is, you know, it's like he's like Dr. Manhattan, right?
Like, is he really affected by it or is it the people that love him affected by it? You know, is the people that are really going to mourn the loss? And this is all speculative because who the hell knows? He just blinked his eyes and kind of watered at us. Um, but yeah, like who are, or who are the people going to mourn the loss of Mark S or Mark Scout for the Mark S Scout version? Yeah. Yeah. Is Devin, is Devin really going to recognize him? We'll see.
And then I have questions like logistically, what happens if he tries to go back to the severed floor as someone who's. Yeah, what's happening when you flip the switch and the switch is disconnected, you know? Yeah. Is it disconnected or does it does it can they detect that it's not doing what it should do? I mean, can you go back to there is the question I have. I mean, it seems like that's she's very fairly confident. And there's also evidence that PD.
seemed like he was at least a partially integrated or maybe a damage integrated person for several weeks. You know, that's when he was mapping out the corridors and, and, and Mark was none the wiser. I thought that's interesting too, that PD was able to keep up his. pd presentation uh and not aroused suspicion so it seems like but again we know the pd was we don't know how perfected the technique was was he a one of one and now mark is a one of two
Were there others before then? But yeah, like PD didn't have a good outcome. No, not at all. I don't know if Mark will either, but. And there's so much other stuff to consider, like that. It does seem that like Jim, maybe Jim is the important one that Jim is the one that was kind of selected and groomed from this process. And. how someone like jimma gets on uh lumens radar and how lumens got their fingers and all these pies you know uh yeah yeah they kind of take us on a tour of that
And it's very subtle, you know, it's nothing super overt. It's like. a survey that comes in a mail or a psychological profile kind of thing yeah um it reminds me a little bit like how scientology recruits like they just have you know hey personality survey want to come in and take a personality survey and
That's how they get you. Now hold these plastic rocks and talk about how you feel. We'll measure it all. Fondle these breast implants as we met. That's some really weird... really weird e-metering going on in this episode um i mean there's so much to talk about maybe we should get into the episode uh before um we kind of talked around this but uh do you understand
what shikai bardo is getting at this this episode in no way in absolutely no way do i actually understand this um as i read though it's sort of a state is is a state of existence between death and rebirth it's really like a transition state yeah and specifically and bardo is is sort of
that generally it's a transition state the states of consciousness that people can experience yeah and i guess the bardo part is like any transition and they're happening continuously to you all the time but the chikai bardo in particular is the first state of this death bardo um between yeah Death and rebirth in a sort of like reincarnation cycle, the life cycle. Yeah. That there's, you know, essentially when a conscious being comes into existence that there's three states for your living life.
The first one is just like, you know, your state of consciousness that you get from conception and a last until death. And then there's subcategories. The second bardo is the bardo when you're asleep and dreaming. And then the third bardo is the state of mind you achieve when you meditate, when you achieve some kind of enlightened and calm state of meditation.
And as you mentioned, this just Chakai Bardo is that first, it's the transition to consciousness right after you die, that there is like a period of almost meditation. before the body starts to putrefy and you're just kind of laying there in state. It's like a calm, reflexive. And if you are, if you've, if you spent enough spiritual discipline in life to meditate, that you can concentrate on this divine light.
And you get enlightenment and then potentially you can just get off this plane and go to Nirvana. But those who aren't ready then experience a fifth state of consciousness, which is very similar to the lucid dreaming state. where you're seeing all these visions and your, your consciousness is trying to put in context your life with all the others, because apparently in the, this Buddhism that there's.
There's eight senses. You got your five fleshly senses, taste, touch, you know, that kind of. Then you've got the mental, your mental states and then like your anti mental state. And then there's an eighth what's called seed consciousness that can, that contains all the consciousnesses that you've ever experienced in the cycle of birth and reincarnation and all that.
That stuff. And and like that fifth stage is like, you know, you trying to kind of make peace between those. And then I guess if you're unenlightened, you go through these dreams and they kind of like nightmares and they're terrifying and they. tend to then boot into your next cycle of rebirth, which is I think that sixth state is just where you're preparing to be reborn. It's all very interesting. Grasshopper.
Yeah. And the ultimate goal of that in the Buddhist philosophy being liberation for people who don't know, you know, Nirvana from a 90s grunge band. It's. It's the idea of letting go of everything that ties you to all of your forms, physical and mental, and becoming thereby liberated. And that liberation results in your release sort of from...
that cycle of rebirth and death. Yeah. This, this fleshly drama, you just, uh, you, you become an enlightened spiritual being. Um, it's really interesting. And obviously it's super applicable to. just severance, you know, severance, like we have kind of seen it as kind of like, you've got these two, you know, almost like a life and death and underworld. It's literally underground and the above world that everybody walks around in the light. And.
But now it's like it's a little bit more complicated because how many freaking Chikai Bardos does Gemma have as many rooms as there are down in the testing floor? Because I definitely got the idea that. Once she goes in these rooms, none of the experiences she has in those rooms are connected with any of the other experiences she has in any of the other rooms, nor her main gym estate that is navigating the hallways and living in the apartment.
I think you're right. Yeah, I was strange to I mean, maybe we should save a lot of this for the actual recap, but like I was confused on that issue and I had to rewatch this and really look at like some of the. individual lines that's why i say it's like very subtle you know when she says it's it's always christmas That's telling you that this is a separate spinoff of Miss Casey that is not associated with the plane crash version, the dental version. Yeah, those are all...
And the way she reacts when she goes into these rooms is if she just stepped out of the room. Yeah, I was just here. No, it's been six weeks. Oh, can I get? Yeah, like I think there's definitely. And I look forward to people who don't watch the episode closely or watching their phones, like being confused about the stuff for the next few weeks. But yeah, I think there's enough here. If you watch it closely, you can make a lot of smart inferences about what's going on down here.
I also want to point out the themes of this Chicaibardo stuff are also and liberation in general I guess is also tied in with this Tolstoy novel But I also could spend the next 60 years of my life researching and not fully understand. But yeah, the death of even Ivan. I don't know how you say that. Ilyich is.
essentially about it's a novel about death and sort of recontextualizing uh the value of success defined by work i guess which obviously fits into subject matter of of what we're talking about here um yeah and and how essentially your your idea of success and pouring yourself into that is sort of a mask that you need to drop because it's disguising like a true success which is something something other than work it's empathy it's um it's connection
It's all these things, which, I mean, if you've seen the film Ikiru, which is, you know, the Kurosawa film, the 1950s Japanese film. Oh, yeah, yeah. We saw that last year, yeah. Yeah, that's based somewhat off of Tulsa's novel, which actually in thinking about it and recontextualizing that movie. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Sounds messy and complicated. As far as my philosophy, I'm all quiet on the Western blunt, baby. Don't need to worry about any of that stuff. Genius. Let your innie enjoy the next few moments. We'll be right back. The premium ad-free waffle potty experience is reserved exclusively for listeners in the top quartiles of intelligence and probity. For more information on how to enhance your listener status, see support.baldmove.com. We think the appropriate response to this information is gratitude.
Let's open the episode, Season 2, Episode 7, Chicky Chicky Bardo. And we open with Mark meeting Gemma for the first time. They're at the Gantz College Blood Drive. They're getting sucked in adjoining chairs. That's what you call it when you're donating blood. You're getting sucked by the vampires at the blood drive.
And Mark strikes up a conversation about what they're both reading. Seems like they're both professors and she's reading one of her students analysis, the themes of religious conversion and the death of Ivan. Ilvich, and he's reading All Quiet on the Western Blunt, which is an analysis of drug use by enlisted soldiers in WW1. Yeah, this is their meet-cute. Love at first sight. it seems like yeah he's immediately liked i mean obviously jim is a beautiful woman um i also was impressed by how much
More like Adam Scott. Adam Scott looks in this episode like this looks like he rolled off the community assembly line or not the community. I'm sorry. The Parks and Rec assembly line. He's younger, more carefree. significantly less lines and worry on his face like he looks like a man unburdened in this flashback younger like 10 years younger easily Yeah, no, they really fuck him up for severance. Adam Scott's a good looking guy, but he looks terrible. I think they tell him.
Every day before filming, they give him the groundhog treatment. It's like, OK, stay up for 24 hours. Don't eat anything but chocolate covered donuts and Red Bull and cigarettes. And then come in, come in ready to act like they just abused the shit out of him. Also wear this god awful wig. Yeah. Yeah. His hair is doing him no favors as Mark asks.
Yeah, no, he's a good looking guy. It's just boy, they the years have taken a toll on him and they do a really good job conveying that just with his appearance. And then, of course, his acting here is just completely on point. Yeah. And you can see, you know, that smooth mark kind of bleeding through. Next scene, we have Gemma, I think, in the present question mark. What does that even fucking mean in this context? She's.
Getting blood work done on what I'm going to call the testing floor. She sees memories or we see memories of Gemma and Mark kind of lazing in bed. This is the early stage of relationship where you're tracing your lover's body and you're memorizing every curve. And this might be the first time together. Yeah. And we see then that bleed smoothly in the Mark sisters, Devin and Rigabi arguing over his present unconscious state as he is collapsed as human wreckage on his couch. Mm hmm.
I'll say, we don't get any real insight into Mark Scout's outies foreplay in this shot, but we do get his afterplay. It's good. It's strong. So hopefully his foreplay is better than Mark S. Mark S just goes right for it. I mean, you know, he just wanders the valley there. So I'm getting that this is this is Jim is memory. Because it's clearly like her blood being drawn as part of the blood work on the severed floor is making her think of their first meet cute.
Right. Like that's I think I'm thinking we're seeing that's because that seems like the connection. And boy, there's there's a big difference in Gemma. Like they don't brutalize her face as much as Adams. But she's got what I would describe as a thousand yard stare. As she's getting his blood work done, just all the joy and life and verve has just been drained from her face. Yeah, I will say it was tough for me to tell. In any given moment, which.
version of gemma i was looking at whether it was miss casey or gemma until right i was able to contextualize it all with the elevator um and milchik and then i'm like okay this lines up it's just And I think I might have had it backwards at one point. I thought they were doing experimentations on Gemma and Miss Casey was roaming freely, but that's clearly the opposite. Yeah, I...
Boy, Rigabi's got the worst bedside manner. Like, I thought it was bad with Mark. But when her sister, like when Mark's sister is like, you know, I just came in. My brother's convulsing. This crazy lady comes up the stairs and starts doing medical stuff on him. And she's just asking questions like, what's going on? What are you doing? What are you doing? And like, Gabi's just completely treating her like a non-person. So finally, she's just kind of.
hysterically screams can you answer just one of my questions and like ragabi's like caesar for the first time um yeah might be some deficits yikes that's uh ominous what does she mean by deficits yeah right that's what i'm saying like what are there gonna be chunks of our boy missing is he gonna have a few extra chunks he shouldn't have like what's maybe both yeah
um but uh your brother's reintegrating and i i did find it maybe this is a this is a reaction ragabi's terrible bedside manner but like um Devin's asserting a lot of things that she doesn't know. Clearly, the fact that Mark is in this state implies that he was pursuing this. This isn't something that like Regabi captured him in the streets.
And forced him to undergo. But like his sister is like very adamant about speaking for what Mark wants. But the fact that he's in this situation without her knowledge speaks volumes to how much she really knows what what he wants. Especially when the last time they talked, right before he collapsed, he said, I'm pursuing a different angle, you know? Yeah. Clearly, it's his intent to go through with this.
And we've been told that, you know, Devin and Gemma were close, that they were all, all of these people were like the, the musketeers, you know, Rickon and, and. mark and all that but here we really see it because you know she's like mark doesn't know what he wants he just wants to know if jim is alive she is alive and she's like are you don't fuck with me on this and it kind of brings her to her knees the realization that
Her sister-in-law is still alive. Yeah, and it really shows just how much everybody loved Gemma. They talk a big game about that, but here you see it in Devin. Yeah. Next, we see Gemma undergoing a series of tests and questions. The blood work was just a preamble for to prepare her for her day, which will enigmatically consist of six rooms. After dressing, the nurse leads her to her first room labeled Wellington. Upon entering, we see her sever and she, her, any, her inner, any experiences.
A dental visit. This is the guy. He comes in. whistling the wreck of edmund fitzgerald he's got his tray of dental tools and uh i'm getting that she has no recollection of anything that happens outside of this room because she says, I, you know, I don't want to be here. I was just here. Can I just have a little break? Like this is one of my versions of hell, just a constant dentist appointment that never.
Like I walk out the thing with my my jaw hurting and I come back in and oh, it's you know, you're here again. Crack open your mouth. Let's hurt you. Yeah, no, it's but it's simultaneously. my dream life from the other end of it, right? Like, can I just walk into the dentist, not remember a single thing and have my teeth be great all the time? Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, the other side is heaven, right? The ignorance is bliss.
Absolutely. And I mean, this is like everybody's the joke here is everyone hates going to the dentist. I mean, they even make that joke in the episode. So so it's it's nice. And I appreciated their various depictions of hell over the course of this, like it being in an active plane crash, being forced to write Christmas card. Thank you. Thank you cards for Christmas gifts with your off hand over and over for your entire life. Yeah. Yeah. None of these were pleasant.
None of these rooms were like what would feel like a reward. Absolutely not. And I think maybe the worst part of it all is Dr. Maurer himself. At least that's what I got from Gemma is she might be happy to just write the cards or just go to the dentist if I just didn't have to interact with this psychopath. Yeah, yeah. This guy's weird. I want to talk about the testing they're doing outside of the room visiting. We see some stuff that we understand, like there's a pretty standard blood...
Blood pressure, temperature taken. And then this nurse, I don't know if you recognize her, but this is Sandra Bernhardt. Famed stand-up comic from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Haven't seen her in a lot of stuff lately, but... Yeah, what would I know her from? She was like just this big kind of feminist bisexual comic that was known for being provocative in like the 80s and 90s. I know she was like...
She did a couple of nude spreads for Playboy. And yeah, she was just she's just as an edgy female comic that I'm wondering if Ben Stiller is kind of like, you know, giving her flowers here because she's like 70 years old. And she's the nurse ratchet in this situation. But then she also gives her these what I'm calling boob implants to fondle, which.
seem to be some kind of measurement of electrical resistance in her body yeah gotta be she asked if she's eaten has she done her calisthenics has she done her reading she says i've done 50 pages Um, presumably those are the books that she has. These are all, uh, you know, the death of, of, of Ivan Illovich was one of them. Uh, and then this one question in a mudslide, are you more afraid of suffocating or drowning?
She replies drowning. I'm trying to figure out the substantive difference here between suffocating or drowning because drowning is a form of suffocation. Yes. Yes. So what are we talking about here? It's I don't know, because it's like if you were buried alive, you wouldn't say you drowned, right? You'd say you suffocated because the weight of the.
Earth is pressing on your chest. The material is in your face. It doesn't allow you to get oxygen, but your lungs don't fill up with dirt. Whereas if you drowned. Your lungs fill up a fluid that keeps you from exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide and you end up suffocating. Right. But it's like by land or water and a mudslide is diffusion of both. So which are you more afraid of? But.
Yeah, right. It's a very Lumen survey question, right? It's just trying to like a question seemingly tells you nothing. But it's parsing some kind of fine detail about something. Is it or is it just Kafkaesque? Is it just being there to fuck with you to make no sense to be a test for test sake? I I would agree to that, except for almost everything we've seen before. Like we eventually.
Figured out that the survey questions are all trying to pinpoint like the depth of your memory and your memory about self, your memory about community. So it's like I. You know, and as we get in the fullness of time, it wouldn't surprise me if we figure out that these are trying to, you know, essentially refine her, trying to figure her out or something.
But yeah, she really seems resigned and she goes to her quarters. I noticed that all that this very luminesque, but color scheme, but but tending towards cool greens and seafood foams and whites. Mm hmm. Yeah, everything's Lumen-esque here. Do you think she associates particular outfits with particular stimulus? Because when she sees the red outfit, she's like, shit. She associates this with, oh, my jaw's going to hurt at the end of this day.
Uh-huh. I believe so. Yeah. And the robe that she's wearing is associated with Christmas cards. I'm going to feel worthless and my left hand is going to be cramped. Yeah. And then you've got the. calisthenics outfit that she's wearing at some point like a weird velour jumpsuit thing And it seems like the doctor is mirroring her in a lot of these. Like we don't see them, but like he is wearing a vulgar track suit of a very similar cut and color.
um yeah to what end like why theme all of these different rooms aesthetically i'm saying that like of all the theories i've seen in the last three years of what's going on in the testing floor That every file is its own room with its own experience. The gym is going to be severed from completely. So she doesn't like no one. No one had this. And the fact that there's this shadow MDR set up to monitor the real MDR and it's, yeah. Yeah.
It's it's more it's it's easier to talk about things that we don't know than things that we actually know. It's like a lot easier to like just eliminate whole swaths of theories than it is to be like, well, what is actually happening here? Because I still don't know. I still don't know what MDR is really doing. Right. I mean, it clearly has something to do with analyzing Gemma's or I guess Miss Casey's reaction to these events, to her experiences in these rooms.
because each room is tied to a case file that they're working on. But it seems like the thing that she has to do is experience it because they're like, OK, there's one more room. We'll find out it's Cold Harbor. It's the one that Mark is laboring on. And as soon as she goes in that room, she's done whatever the hell that means. So it's like, yeah. And then you don't have to.
But is that and is that literally true? Or do they have to run her through Cold Harbor like six times or, you know? Sure. Because because I'm wondering if like, are they trying to get her to accept these states as natural? you know like can you make a person think that this is the way air travel works the the plane is just constantly falling out of the sky but that's how it works like you know the the the the
The airline's barely in control of the thing. They are really trying to portray it as normal, right? Like the guy's trying to serve her a meal. Yes. Asking if she wants coffee or tea. Right. And the doctor, the dentist, you know, and that it's, you know, Christmas has a way. It's like they are trying to like get her to accept that this is a version of life and there's nothing unusual about it. And is that.
Are they are they are they trying to get that acceptance? Because I could see that in like, you know. trying to take over the world context being very important like you know in the matrix you got to have the humans accept the nature of their reality or they rebel against it and it all gets fucked and then you got to give them stakes
And that's expensive. Yeah. This doctor, this dentist is Max Creepy, though. I don't want my dentist. I think that's his name. Max Creepy. He looks like he's auditioning. For the next sequel to the human centipede. This guy is so fucking weird looking. Yeah. yeah i haven't even seen any of the human centipedes but i immediately know what you're trying to get at yeah this is the guy who's would so mouths to buttholes just to see what happens um
Did you see all the different lumen branded things or even like strangely branded things? I couldn't help but notice that everything here, the medical equipment is all lumen branded. And then you've got the eye test, which they have normal eye chart. Right next to a goat based eye chart. I saw the goat based eye chart for sure. For sure. I could see that from the depths of my hole.
Yeah. Yeah. And so here's another thing I'm going to say that I think is actually true. Everything on this floor is made by O and D. All the things like, why are they making axes? So. And watering cans. These are things to, as they flesh out the rooms, O&D provides Lumen-branded equipment to flesh the rooms out. Oh, she does love plants, too. I wonder if that has anything to do with the watering cans. Oh. Maybe Cold Harbor.
like the refuge is cold harbor because like not all the tempers are awful right like that's true so maybe it's like the peaceful existence But even and also I couldn't help but notice that there are some venues for Mark and Jim is life that like they're just like.
what I got is in kind of the depths of their childless despair. They have this Christmas where it's like, it's just them, but they got this big Christmas tree and they're sitting on the couch and Mark's trying to comfort her. And she looks sad. And it's almost the exact Christmas tree that is featured in the Christmas hell. Hmm. Are they trying to tease apart like difficult experiences she had with? Yeah. And.
Yeah, what rooms have we seen? We've seen... The other thing I thought... We just saw the dentist, the plane, and the Christmas cards, right? The plane crash, the Christmas card. Cold Harbor could be the fourth. which none of those rooms i would describe as frolic the ones we've seen no but whoa dreaded she's dressed in like a tennis outfit maybe maybe that's frolicy uh yeah
Maybe, maybe. I don't know. I'm thinking Cold Harbor might be Frolic, but we'll see. One of the ideas I had kicking around is, are these all... rooms that represent some kind of trial of cure, like from his memoirs. the difficult christmas the dreaded dentist visit the and like you know because i'm always trying to get back to my pet theory of uh
Mark and Jim would be an Adam and Eve and they're going to be the earthly vessels of the Kier and his swab girl, et cetera, et cetera. Sure. But I don't know. Cause like, like what, what the fuck would Kier know about flying? He probably was dead before the airplane was invented. So how could he have some kind of existential dread about air travel? Unless we're going to say like these are experiences from all the Egan CEOs.
Yeah, but even then, you know, which which Egan CEO had the experience of an overbearing husband demanding that she write left handed thank you cards, which is also something that Jimma dreaded. That's something from her. Kind of suite of memories, right? Was it? I can't remember.
Well, there's a scene where like she's there. The third time's a charm. And she's like, I'm going to send out a thank you card. Like if this I think they're intimating this works, I'm going to send a thank you card. He goes, you hate writing thank you cards. Yeah, I forgot about those lines, but. there could be some connection there. Right. And are they mutually exclusive? Like, could these be partly Egan, partly Gemma?
It beats me. Beats me. And honestly, at this point, it's all up in the air. The only reason I'm trying to put Annie Egan on at all is because this has got to have something to do with their perpetuity business, I think. Yeah, like there's no reason to... just test Gemma for the sake of testing Gemma. They've got a goal in mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The question is, like, does that apply broadly to humanity?
Or more specifically to some kind of Ian Renaissance kind of thing. I don't know. So in the present, we see Devin continually fretting over Mark's unconscious body. She asked him to come back in their little twin language. I need you. I need you back, my lady. And she asked for Gabby if he's dreaming. Meanwhile, we see a sequence of just a montage of happy interludes in their in their life. They're dancing. They're reading together.
French as fuck, man. Like, if the music wasn't telling you the style, my God. I referred to this in my notes as the up episode. okay yeah of severance because this is like efficiently telling a story of like these people falling in love and how great it is and There's laughter and not even just the things are really fun, like going and doing experiences and having sex, but like blissfully sharing and chores, you know, washing the dishes together.
Um, and then we see Mark bring, yeah, living in life. And then Mark brings home a baby crib because you know, it's a, they were on sale and something we can kind of do to get, get ready for this. And. Then we see a scene where it kind of reveals the closeness of Devin and her where she goes to pour Gemma some wine and she demurs and Devin understands the significance of like, oh, my God, you're not drinking. Get the fuck out of here.
and that smash cuts to jimma suffering apparently her first miscarriage yeah um and this is where like all the sadness in their life starts to creep in right this turns from the beautiful, uh, wonderful life, French film montage, French art house film montage to yeah. Uh, darkness and sadness and the drinking and yeah, all that. It goes from we're going to Angel Falls to actually we're not having children and actually you've got cancer. If we're doing the up analogy here.
Rickon, what is wrong with Rickon? I agree. What is wrong with Rickon? Yeah, Mark has always been kind of like holding this dude at arm's length, right? And this version of Rickon? fine totally tolerable why are you giving him shit for being a good climber like i know he doesn't have the frame for it but apparently he has a skill Bit of a boaster. I think, you know, he's using these big words to, you know, saying like, oh, I've been belaying. What's this fucking crevasse? Since I was.
in high school and i i didn't know what the fuck this is but apparently this is a mountain term for a narrow gully with a steep gradient so like imagine like like like uh uh a chimney Except for one of the sides has got like, instead of it going sheer up, it's going at a steep angle. All right. I don't know. I didn't feel like he was being inseparable. They brought it up.
Like he had a person take a photo of him doing something awesome. There's nothing wrong with that. They brought up the rock climbing and he simply responded. But yeah, maybe maybe the words are a bit esoteric, but. So you can see that that Rickon wants to get to have this relationship with Mark, because as Jim and Devin have this, you know, kind of like mutual awareness of what's going on with the reproductive cycle.
You can kind of hear in the background that Rickon's like, you know, Mark, you and I should ramble together. And Mark's like, I don't know if I need to ramble. And it's like, oh, I want to know you better. And he's like, ah, you know, how much money? Like, yeah, Mark is. That friction has always been there, it seems like. Yeah, you're right. For sure. It's certainly from Mark's end. Do we see it now? Do we see why Devin is with Rickon?
Is it because he's a bit of a renaissance man and his stories are boastful tales? They're simply lived experiences and he's a well-rounded individual. She pushes, he pushes her outside of her comfort zone and gets her to do incredible things that she wasn't sure she was capable of. Yeah. Now he still could be. like a selfish, self-centered, deluded prick, you know, the bumming off of genuinely poor people. But like, that's an interesting guy, you know?
Yeah, I do wonder if trust fund babies can legitimately be interesting people. They get to have amazing experiences and opportunities. And I think about the Catherine Zeta Jones character in High Fidelity, you know. okay yeah it's like that's an extremely interesting person but a nut like a person that lives an authentic life of hardship and strife and would be like well you're just a fucking poser but yeah yeah
What's her fault that she wasn't born in some war-torn Eastern European country where she can authentically have us angst? I don't know. There's something so artificial about the Rickon we see in the current timeline. that I wasn't really feeling in this scene. He felt more genuine. Is this a result of, like, number one, them being traumatized by Jimma dying?
The fact that like he's always wanting to press Mark and he never does. So he just keeps doing more. And Mark is effortless. Mark's just a fucking history teacher at a college. It's not like he is Bear Grylls or. some special forces operator. He's just a dude. But like Rickon is trying to do these more outlandish things to out accomplish him or get or get maybe one genuine accomplishment. Yeah, I mean.
Mark's accomplishments are they're of a mind, not body. I get the impression that, you know, anybody who's a professor of anything probably has to be at least somewhat intelligent. So. yeah maybe he's trying like ricken's capable of all these physical feats right of climbing up some cool yard or whatever it is yeah uh but his intellectual
acumen just isn't there compared to mark and compared to gemma and he maybe starts to feel inferior over the course of that and that's why he comes out with philosophy books and tries to pretend to be this very high-minded person Whereas maybe he should have just stuck to rock climbing. Drop 80 pounds and be a climber. I thought it was interesting that, you know, we had this this this this tragic transition to her, I guess, at night. Maybe it's early, early in the morning and late at night.
There's blood running down her legs and she just climbs into the shower and gets into a ball. And Mark finds her there fully dressed. Looks like maybe he's ready to go leave for the day. And he checks on her and he like, you know, crawls in the shower with her, comforts her. And this is.
connected with i think these are marks processing memories maybe because this is uh um also tied into him having a memory of miss casey uh observing heli are for suicidal sadness which that has to connect those mental states together right like what jim is feeling with what heli was feeling this hopelessness this despair Yeah, I mean, it definitely like Gemma's remembering that time fondly, like because when you think about it.
Miss Casey. Miss Casey is what's remembering that time fondly. Miss Casey gets these experiences that are all universally awful, as far as we can tell. And that was a reprieve for her. Like it really recontextualizes her assignment and her her saying, like, I really enjoyed being up here with you guys, you know, because it's a reprieve from pure hell. Yeah. As best we can tell. these are most these these are the most people i've ever like four people is the most she's ever seen and i yeah if all
All she experiences is the nurse and Dr. Maurer, although even she wouldn't be aware of that. She like Casey just gets on an elevator and dings and like, what the hell is going on here? You know, like it's a completely different. It's a completely different experience than the rooms that she's used to. Yeah, I do wonder because, you know, we're hypothesizing that like.
Each of these rooms, the different version of her that is isolated from the others. Is there some kind of overall Miss Casey that does have access to those memories? I don't know. Why does she say this is the most people I've ever seen? Right. Because it's true. It's the longest time I've ever been active. Would she know that? Well, she wouldn't know. I guess she would.
She wouldn't know from the context of like Gemma or any of the Gemma innies, but she would know for the context of the Miss Casey construct that she's only been awake for like, what, 40 hours. And eight of them were the day, the time she spent. Most of them were 30 minute sessions. And the day she spent with Mark was her longest, most continuous time. But like, yeah, like I and we've never this this implies like a depth of.
severance fracturing that we didn't know was possible we were speculating like oh maybe you can reset in any or maybe you can have like maybe you can be severed twice but holy shit we're talking about being severed three different layers and on the bottom layer it's been severed times 40 rooms or whatever and we're talking about dangerous territory here i think because then you can say okay well
Which versions of how many versions of Mark are there? How many versions of Irv? How many versions of Helly? Right. And what would what would reintegration look like when you're talking about a person's been fragmented into dozens of.
parts does that make reintegration more dangerous um is it something that she can't survive maybe she can't be reintegrated the way mark has is there a limit couldn't take it yeah how many times can you capacity for it yeah don't know uh One of the reasons I thought that this this memory that we see is connected to Mark is because we kind of have this really interesting interstitial shot where we go inside the like Mark's monitor.
And we go down through the IT infrastructure of the severed floor and down to the testing floor. And then we go up and we follow this cable to what I'm going to call a shadowy version of the MDR department. And we see Mr. Drummer talking to this dentist guy about Gemma, but they are observing Mark and her interacting on the severed floor. Yeah, I think it's...
Important, though I couldn't say how, to point out that these people are doppelgangers yet again of all of the MDR employees they're monitoring, they're watching. Why? And also not exactly because this is something that Pete clued me into. The man that's out of focus over Mark's shoulder in the first episode that we called is like, is there going to be the new Grainer? Is that like a shadow Mark?
That guy in the Shadowmark, his twin in the Dieter episode, the Orpo episode, are credited as the same guy, Adam Jepsen. But this this guy who's credited in the credits as Mark Watcher is Eric J. Carlson. But I couldn't help but notice it looked like the other three were essentially.
great value versions of irv and heli and dylan yeah and i think this guy's meant to be a great value version of mark too um it's just a different guy it's not it's not the same guy and i don't know what that means it's very confusing and i don't know why they would need the people watching them to look like them i mean there's something with the the
tempers and the connection between the watcher and the watchee and it's like a third level it's one level removed from what's happening with Jemma and Mark Mark is the watcher of Jemma essentially through these numbers but like Why? Why? Well, so it reminds me a lot of like the turn of the century, like 1920th century.
Kind of like racial science and eugenics where it's like, oh, you can tell how smart someone is by how many ridges they have on their skull. And people with high foreheads tend to be this and people with. you know they did like that it's for knowledge yeah and morphology like what you what you look like reflects what's going on the inside and i wonder yeah since keir was born right in that period if they have some kind of like almost alchemy
Well, this guy looks like a Mark. So he probably is a Mark on some level, right? Like his, if his humor, if his, if his, if his tempers were any other balance, he'd look different.
It'd be heavier, lighter, sadder. Yeah. Uh, yeah. No, that's a good hypothesis. This also pours a little cold water on... cobell going row hold on because i want to expound on that like so that says maybe why they have these people kind of as doppelgangers but what purpose does that serve for lumen itself like why have a mark watch a mark i don't know what are they doing in this room are they trying to are they doing a double blind test here with like
Mark is watching Gemma because she somehow matches up with him in a weird way. And then Mark is watching the Mark doppelganger is watching Mark because he understands Mark and can get. what out of that process i don't it does kind of fit the whole matchy pseudoscience proto medical like you know that like the plague is accompanied by bad smells
Uh, it must be the odor that's carrying the plague. So if you are a plague doctor and you shove your beat full of posies and things that keep that, that pushed a bad smile, you can't get it or. You know, this you got these humors that are like blood and phlegm and all this stuff. And if you're blood, if you're running a fever, it's because you got too much blood.
so drained it's very matchy match like pokemon you know oh you got a fighting type cold so it's going to be worse it's going to It's going to be vulnerable to a psychic type plant or, you know, it's, it's stupid, but that's how they, that's how they did things. 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. So are they just trying to make sure that the severance is working properly? Like the severance floor is also a tested floor, testing floor rather. Well, that's what I was getting at, because I think this revelation of Mr. Drummond sitting there and they're considering, you know, Mark talking to Jim, who's Miss Casey, and they're saying, are the Severn's barriers holding? Yes, the technology is working.
we thought that was miss coble cobell um just kind of going rogue doing her own little experiment but it seemed like i don't know if she's aware of it but it their awareness was had at the highest level of what she was doing and the effect that she was testing for. Yeah, so maybe in fact the severed floor is where they're doing the testing and the severance procedure, but then there's something deeper. The work is even more mysterious on the testing floor.
Well, there's even some weird timey wimey shit because like the way this is introduced is like the doctor is meeting her for the first time. It's like, oh, you're going to like her. Well, she's easy to like and she's fond of me, too. Didn't she try to break your fingers? Mm hmm.
So is this are they talking about the Miss Casey? Is this like a new version of Gemma that's brand new off the assembly line? And you'll like this one because he's already had his fingers broken by Gemma. So how is he meeting her for the first time?
I don't know I'd have to go back and see exactly how that's worded because I didn't if he's talking about like meeting her for the first time I don't I didn't catch that hmm well i'm like i said it's just like it's like it's like you'll like her like what will you know like that that yeah there's like yeah i'm just i thought he said you you like her which doesn't imply the first time meeting
All right. Yeah, we took a took a quick severance break and watch the episode. He does say you like her. He's making an observation. OK, yeah, that's OK. So. not as much here i did notice that the doctor is wearing uh complimentary because we're watching jimma walk down with this kind of sleeveless legless onesie it's blue and white almost like a superhero outfit um and
The doctor is wearing a track suit version of the same outfit. Yeah, I get the impression they were probably doing calisthenics together. I think this is the calisthenics suit. Could be. Yeah. that's it's really again the very 70s coded i guess here yeah for sure Did you get the experience or the feeling that these watchers that are corresponding to the four MDR people upstairs, that they're playing like a cooperative game?
Like the inputs that Mark is doing on his numbers, they're doing something in return. Like they're generating the stimulus because like... It looks like they're not just observing that, but that they were typing and doing things like it's a call and response. Yeah. Huh? I hadn't considered that, which could be right. All right. Well, anyway, this transitions into a flashback of Mark and Jim of visiting what we apparently think is a lumen affiliated fertility clinic.
One of the doctors we recognize as the sinister dentist from the Wellington room. This is the Buttsman Fertility Center. And. It doesn't say Lumen, but it's got the dentist and it's got the Lumen logo at the top of the patient intake form. Yeah, totally. And also the soundtrack hits the sinister music heavy when you notice the lumen thing. So, yeah. Yeah. And it this transition that they do to the next shot. Obviously, this can't be the exact same space, but.
The waiting room at the clinic here and the room that Miss Casey inhabits down on the testing floor or sorry, Gemma inhabits on the testing floor are identical in shape. The clinic has a window as opposed to just a blank wall over there. But yeah, they're really connecting the dots on. Oh, this clinic is is lumen all all the way. And that, you know, along with some other stuff, I guess, in this episode really says that Lumen had their eye on Gemma for a long time.
they the i agree that she gets in the mail whatever test kind of thing that is is sort of testing maybe her tempers or something along those lines to see if she's a good candidate for whatever experiments they're doing um Yeah, they've been sizing her up for a while. And I imagine it started with, if not her miscarriage, maybe even like... Her. Meeting mark like I I wonder how far back this goes. Because that is a blood drive part of it.
yeah because that's yeah it's like i again you got this connection between the lumen taking her blood and then the blood drive there i didn't see any banners or if it was affiliated with that college but
I think it's interesting that this college gives Regabi cover to like operate within, you know, because I think that they established that, that there is some kind of understanding at the higher ups of college that she could be there. Yeah. Just how Grainer kind of got a lead on her in the first place. But. So I looked into what Mark says about Gemma to Alexa, the midwife that helped Devin.
with her birth. And he mentions, you know, they talk about, you know, she asked him if they ever thought about having kids and he said, oh, they tried for a while, but it wasn't working. They talked about adopting, but then they thought that was the life that they were given, and they saw it as another life they didn't get to have. And Alexa says, well, that's healthy. And he says, well, I admit it's mostly Gemma. She's very pragmatic. She always had a plan B.
Does this jive with what we're seeing in these memories? Because it doesn't seem like Gemma accepted any of this, that she was. In fact, she's apologetic. Like I and I started to get to like. Mark. is willing to do what it takes to make her happy and pursue her happiness. But he's starting to, you know, the fact that she's apologizing for doing this, you know, and the fact that it's a third time's a charm and like he's, there's. I don't know that she ever was like Zen about this.
And that always had a plan B. I wonder what that meant. Like, did Lumen offer her some kind of crazy way to have a baby? And that's how they got her hooked onto this thing. Hmm. Maybe. If so, we have no evidence of that yet. All right, well, let's keep going.
Because we see Gemma in her testing floor department or apartment rather. And we drift into a memory of her and Mark preparing what they call a third attempt at some reproductive treatment. And they're both trying to keep a positive attitude. And we see. Mark is starting to be disconnected from her. She says that she's nervous and he kind of doesn't respond to that. And she has to, you know, ask.
him to come back to her and he's given her his pep talk. It's like, you know, this is a lot of people's final step, which is a weird thing to talk about the third time you've tried something. And there's a kid out there. We've got to reach out and grab her. And he's like, what if it doesn't work? And he kind of makes a joke, turn around and bend over and he gives her an injection. But yeah, what, what, there's a lot of meaning here.
But I feel like we don't have the context to fully understand it yet. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I'm. I don't personally have the context. I don't know what the procedures are like for whatever regimen they're on here. Right. But yeah, I read. I read this more as Mark being very positive and very. encouraging, but maybe in a slightly oblivious way. And Gemma being very nervous and afraid that it's not going to work. This being sort of, you know, the last.
of the shots that they need to take this is it this is the time where we'll we'll figure out if this procedure is actually going to work if we have any hope of becoming parents um i view this more as like him very much trying to help the situation not not being oblivious not not like being disconnected from her in any way he's a little checked out though is he's not i think
Well, when she says, like, I'm nervous and he just doesn't react. He's not feeding into her nervousness. He's he's trying to encourage her. I thought he was trying to encourage her. I think so, but it's something that he's making an effort at. It's not something I did. It felt like they're not as united in what they're trying to do. Huh. Okay. I wasn't reading that, but sure.
And I could be wrong. You know, it's just the this is just my impressions of it. I did think that this is definitely her memory because it's kind of like a reverie that starts in a lumen hallway and then. You know, there's a POV here that Mark can't possibly have. So can't really be his memories. Also, there's some blended imagery of what I think is the night of the car crash.
in this recollection which is yeah there's like a little mixed in of those like nighttime scenes of the road and it's very blurry and oh okay interesting Suddenly, we're back in her living quarters and the dentist is asking her about her day as her head is framed by some sort of imaging equipment. She asks if she can see Mark once she's visited this final room, Cold Harbor. But he's pretty. Lumen evasive with his answers. Yeah, this looks like a dental x-ray machine is what it looked like to me.
Like you got the electron gun and you've got the imager thing and her head's right between it. But I don't know if it's a purpose. Does that serve, though? Like getting pictures of her bones as she's having a conversation does you no good. Well, unless you're a phrenologist. That's all I was thinking. It's like, my God, the amount of radiation she's getting from this. And it's almost like they leave her here to sleep.
Cause he's like a pleasant dreams and he's kind of walks off and she's just sitting there with her head in between. Maybe it's a sleep enforcer or something. I don't know, but whatever it is, it probably isn't good for. None of this is good for her. I really felt for her just like, can you please just for once talk like a normal person? Yeah. And yeah, that's a big no. That's a big no on that. Sorry. Yeah, I'm I'm a creepy like borderline Nazi medical experimenter.
And this is just how we talk. He asked her a bunch of questions about like, you know, how are you feeling? Your mouth hurts. Which room made your mouth hurt? Wellington. How many rooms did you visit? Do you remember anything? When you're in the hallway, did you remember feelings of despair, fervor, gaiety? And she informs us that there's only one room that she hasn't been to that has previously been unlabeled, but she noticed it's labeled today and it was Cold Harbor. Yeah. And.
She says, what happens when I've been in all the rooms? And he says, you will see the world again and the world will see you. Will I see Mark? Mark will benefit from the world you'll sire. and kate kate here will take his pain away just like he has yours has cure taking her pain away she seems like she's in a lot of angst down here her mouth hurts for number one yeah that's true she's experiencing some after pain um
I don't know. That's a man. I still they're doing a really good job of keeping the true nature of this. experiment this work from us keeping it mysterious right um because yeah everything he's saying here i just don't have enough context to place it like the world will see you again All right. You'll see the world again in the world. We'll see you. That sounds like, oh, we're letting you go, you know, where Jim is going to be out and about in the world. But, you know, it's not that. Mm hmm.
i don't know what are their plans for him yeah what are the plans for mark i mean she asks if she'll get to see him let's assume for a second that you'll see the world again means jemma gets to go back out i don't know how that would work considering they think she's dead but they let her go right uh is is mark like his answer about mark uh or non-answer
saying you know you're creating a world that mark will benefit from essentially is basically saying you won't see him so does mark come down to the tested floor next is he like proving somehow that he's next in line for testing jimma went through all that stuff with on the outside with the clinics and the surveys and that proof she was ready for testing now he's doing the same unknowingly
I don't know. I did. You know, this it's I'm always making inferences to our cult background. But, you know, I one thing that's different about you and me is both of your parents were quote unquote in the truth. They were both. you know, Jehovah's witnesses and my dad never converted. So there's this awkward thing about, well, you got to be a Jehovah's witness. If you're going to survive the great tribulation, your dad's not a Jehovah's witness. What's that going to mean? And.
The elders would use that scripture. It's in Revelation, I think, 21, three and four, where God will wipe out every tear from their eyes and they will no longer remember the former things. And they're like, well, no matter what happens, God's going to make sure you're not sad about it. And I'm like.
the fuck is God going to do to make me not sad that my dad's not here in paradise with us? I always thought that was like, okay, I'll take it on faith as a child, but it was a profoundly creepy, like, will I even be me? If you take away my love for my father. Yeah. Yeah. What does that and I got strong wipe out every tear from your eyes vibes when he's talking about here taking away your pain. Yeah. Like literally the person that you remember.
and you're sad about poof they're gone like they never existed that would do it and it's also oh go ahead I'm sorry I wanted to point out here that the doctor's hair is getting a lot lighter in these scenes than you see him at the very beginning so time is passing lots of time it's the only the only time that can pass is two years though like no
No, why do you say that? Because Jim has been down there for two years. She's been dead for two years. Is that true? Mark joined the Severance two years, and it was... fairly quickly like within months of jimma dying then why are they lightening his hair so much because it's definitely lighter is it just the okay wigs wigs also yeah representing his different ages And you also see him in like bright light versus dark. And I wonder if, you know, but yeah, I didn't even notice that.
i did notice though um when in the context of her wanting to see mark again there is a memory of her Looking at thermometer crying. Clearly this third attempt didn't work. And Mark is saying, hey, Jim, a coffee is ready. And she just shuts the bathroom door like this is, I think, telling a story of them both being disconnected from each other because of this experience.
Yeah, no, definitely a street. Definitely. At this point, they are disconnecting. Mark is getting. Depressed and and angry and bitter, maybe at her. I mean, that's. That to me felt like what that apology was from Gemma. I read her apology as like, I'm sorry I can't do this for us. Like, I'm sorry I can't make a baby for us.
Well, maybe it's Mark Swimmers. Yeah, totally. Who knows? It could be either. I mean, presumably the doctor would not be giving. I was going to say, they probably know at this point whose quote unquote fault it is.
Yeah, but that's the thing, right? It's nobody's fault. It's just a thing that happened to them. So like... that's got to be part of the pain of like you know you both want a baby and it's like well your sperm's good my eggs are why or my eggs are good your sperms are crippled like there's got to be another layer of like yeah it's nobody's fault but also
If your sperm weren't fucked up, we'd have a kid. You know, there's there's still. Yeah, no, there can be some bitterness there for sure. That's got to fuck with you. Yeah. Whether it should or not. Yeah. And I think that's why he snaps at her when she's filling out this.
clinic survey thing like why are you bothering with this we've been through this process both of us feel very bad about it and you're here filling out surveys and then and tests for this clinic that now just reminds us of our awful fate here like why are you doing this like he's being an asshole in that scene for sure but I also detect like bitterness at her. It's not just he's mad at the situation. He's mad at her, which is kind of shitty.
Uh, we're back in the present as Devin maintains her vigil over her brother with Rigabi there. Devin threatens to call Harmony, Coble, Cobell in desperation and Rigabi counters with pulling her entire supportive Mark. Mark manages to mutter Chikai Bardo before we lose lucidity with him. Yeah, sort of.
Again, Rigabi is a dick. Like, I think that this is a natural, like, you know, she's like, hey, I know of this place where they severed pregnant ladies and it's a cabin room. What if we take Mark there and we can sever him and we got. we gotta be like well they're two totally different things you idiot and it's like just adversarial relation just shuts her down like nope this is that this is the only way fucking with your brother's brain is the only way we can get it and it's like
I mean, I, I, I believe Rigabi. I do not think Rigabi is evil, but it's got to be a lot for Devin. And she's got, the thing is, is like, Devin's got to be desperate and not trusting Rigabi to call fucking Kobelvig. into this situation yeah yeah for sure uh i mean she thinks mark is potentially dying she's just trying to yeah although it's hmm So what does she think is going to happen if she takes Mark to that retreat? Is he going to snap?
awake as is any and be i think that's what she thinks i get her in that room and he'll be he'll be any mark and we can get we don't i don't think it's gonna she sees as an option for treating him it's like instead of us doing this to his brain why don't we just take him to a place
where we can interview any mark and collaborate with them um yeah no fucking which i think would work if he wasn't in the process of integration already well plus now that we know there's different levels to it i'm not sure that walking through that birthing cabin would do anything to mark It might have been an OTC type of thing where they have to flip switches for you. Yes.
And I think this episode also gives us strong evidence that there is no one. There's not like a Mr. Wizard in the background flipping people switches manually. This is a process that just triggers because of physical travel through some kind of gate or key.
Uh, because obviously no one would flip Miss Casey at, in the elevator if they had any control over it. So, but, um, and then you know we we know this about harmony but it's interesting to get a third person's perspective that like she's looming through and through she was raised by them she's a soldier like that yeah
That's a good way to put it. That gives a level of commitment. A soldier will die for their cause. Yeah, although I have to say... things can change and this is one person's perspective on another person's devotion uh i every time i see somebody put a firm marker in the ground on where somebody stands i'm always like well do they anymore and and when does that change i guess when is the line crossed and coel no longer believes because as much as you can be indoctrinated you can be
You could be deprogrammed. So this transitions into Mark and Jim bantering about some new project she's working on that she got through some mailing list at the fraternity clinic at somehow connected to Lumen. He's very dismissive and skeptical and, but she's engaged by whatever she's doing for them. And they just don't seem to be communicating very well. Like Mark's being an asshole and Mark's.
Trying to tell her how she should feel about stuff. And it's Mark's clearly frustrated that, you know, it's like, well, it just didn't work. Let's move on. Let's let's. And but but Jim is stuck at this, you know, phase and he's. you know, losing connection with her. She's losing connection with him. It's oh, yeah, it's bad. And I couldn't help but notice that like. Like Mark comes across as like Adrian and Rocky.
You know, like Rocky, when he's like, oh, I beat the shit, Adrian. I don't know if I can do it anymore. Like he doesn't want to hear Adrian says, well, didn't stop boxing rock. He wants her to be on his look. Keep going. This is the darkest mode. We got to keep pushing on. And Mark is Adrian in her. When she's like, I beat the shit. She's not saying she wants to stop. She's just saying, I.
This is really hard on me. I need even more support, more encouragement. And he's hearing I'm hurting. I should stop this short of the goal that I'm trying to get. And I think that's everyone thinks Adrian's a big, fat, wet blanket. and rocky and mark is being a big fat fertility wet blanket to jimma here that's my read although i don't i don't see rocky's goal as a feudal one That's driving him insane without any hope of ever.
Some job or Italian from Philly beat an account of Monte Fisto? World champ? Ridiculous. No one thinks he can do it. It seems on the face of it impossible, but it's not actually impossible. It could very well be actually impossible.
For Gemma to conceive a child. But when would she be convinced of that? When would Mark be convinced of that? And what is the actual truth? That... is where being an asshole trying to convince your wife that you can't have a kid is pretty shitty like just in general right yeah give up give up we're not we're not having a kid thing yeah No, but it's painting a very obvious picture of how all this spiraled into Mark's deep depression and then just top it off with the cherry that is Gemma's death.
and you're like oh yeah no of course yeah I have no idea this is the one of the imagery that I did not understand but there's this scene that's about five seconds long of a field of thistles at night that divides this last scene from another scene of jimma preparing for another day on the testing floor this time she dresses up as a fancy 70s business lady with fancy Jackie O kind of hair cloth and she gets on like a seventies airplane. That's just a disaster. It's just a disaster.
it's it's shaking there's people screaming there's equipment malfunctions there are people screaming though she's the only one on this plane aside from the doctor who's got the cart food he's trying to serve yeah It's such a weird, artificial situation. Can I get you some coffee? As he's getting dashed to the floor by the turbulence. Okay.
Here's my biggest question about this scene. How are they doing this? Are they doing this with virtual reality? You know, here comes the simulation people saying it's all. No, fuck you. It's not, but you can still have VR and something not be a total simulation. Yeah, I think it's literally this thing. You can't smash this doctor against the ceiling and the floor repeatedly for years on end, right?
Can you stage a convincing stunt scene with like gimbals and shocks and servos and have him because like for him, this is like her first experience, but he knows like.
Okay, I'm about to be dashed to the floor, so I'm going to roll on the floor's path. I don't know. You're asking a level of fidelity that I haven't even thought of yet. That's the thing. I wanted to know how they... Because the other one's fine. You can get a dentist. You can get... yeah sure all that stuff but there's motion no problem but yeah this is a violent experience right how do you do that day in and day out for her without
Without actually putting somebody through that. But this is this is also a company that's got three and a half acres of goat patch in some cubicle farm. So it's like, yeah. They're kind of like a spare no expense type of outfit. No, they are fanatics, and I could see this guy volunteering to get smashed against the ceiling and floor every day, but maybe that's how they do it.
So we see this and after the disaster flight, she's doing yoga and we see Mr. Drummond and the doctor observing her and they are observing Mark's progress on. Cold Harbor, which is stuck at 96%. Mark's not at his desk. Mr. Drummond explains this nosebleed situation set us back. And he warns the doctor that when he's done, you'll have to say goodbye to her.
because they're gonna let it go they're gonna send her back out into the world gonna put a captive bolt gun to the back of her skull and and and reclaim her and the tinder cassava and flaky dinner roll um bone marrow macerated but um as they're discussing she's selecting these like dehydrated dinner cubes they're in the shape of lumen drops of water
um and she dumps them into this heated water to redirect and then she did they're arranged on a plate like uh like a high-end gastropub and the doctor says i'm aware Mr. Drummond says for Keir and he agrees for Keir. But then he says, why are you wearing that stupid sweater? And we notice that this guy is wearing what I think is a very attractive Christmas sweater and pajama get up. Okay.
You don't like this? It's ugly. It's ugly. How is it ugly? I don't know. I don't think this is an ugly Christmas sweater. This is a well put together. Got snowflakes. It's it's I don't know. I have a Christmas sweater quite a bit like it. OK, well, you're biased. I see. Why is Mr. Drummond manifesting contempt for this guy? Why does he not know why he's got, does he not, does he not know that what, what game he's playing with Gemma? He has to.
He definitely knows. He's just like, like, why are you still in that sweater? Couldn't you have changed before you came here? Although you see him doing the same thing with the tracksuit, the stupid mustache and all that stuff. Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Like he just came, he's either going to or came from the Christmas room. What do you, what do you want? Yeah. He could have changed. Um, but I, yeah, I don't, I don't know what we're supposed to take from this food.
um thing it's very clinical it's very almost like astronaut food uh the next room we see is jimma's christmas morning where she is forced by a pleasant but kind of domineering husband to torturously write thank you cards for inane christmas gifts there's a stack She's she's currently writing a thank you letter for a grouter, which I've never heard of, but I assume is a router that's designed to remove grout from tiles because he describes it as.
She's like router. Yeah, she's she's writing and and, you know, clearly I don't think she's left handed because she looks like what I would look like trying to write left handed and her hands are covered in ink and it's cramped up and. She's saying, you know, thank you for the lovely gift of a grouter. Nothing says Christmas so much as grouting and he corrects her. It's actually de-grouting, but. All right. Electric grout remover. Yeah, that's I guess it's a thing.
I don't know. Yeah, man, I. What is what purpose does this serve? This feels like the room where he's trying to get her to love him. Yeah. I think that might also be every room. Maybe. To what end? I mean, is he like a reincarnation? I'm going to go down the cure. reincarnating you yes is he and i don't like it doesn't feel good that's why i like it even more he's reincarnation of kier
He's trying to make her somehow through all this testing, the reincarnation of Imogen, Imogen, however you say it. But this is the room where he like tests if that's working. I couldn't help but notice every role he plays in these rooms is either a benevolent authority figure or caregiver or sometimes both. Yeah.
He's a domineering husband in this room. A flight attendant is there to take care of you, the passenger. A dentist is there to take care of you. But has authority over you, too. They will arrest your ass. They will have you arrested if you misbehave. And a dentist is there to... Take care of your premium face bones that are not covered in other medical coverage. But he also can hurt you and knock you out and grind on your teeth bones.
and uh you know a husband is you know that's the ultimate this is like the madman era husband where it's like boy i hope i have a good one that doesn't beat me and cheat on me because i got p campbell god damn it i can't even own a bank account this is guy's permission fuck fuck yeah it's it's a quiet desperation um but you're right he is
You know, and here's again more evidence that she is not in conscious awareness of her other rooms because she's like, do I have to do this again? He's like, no, I told you you're done. But, you know, Christmas is a way of coming back each year. And she's like, it's always Christmas. Mm hmm. And then as she's leaving the room, he says, I love you. And she scoffs, but then he pulls a Midwestern. Oh, if you heard me, but I said, I love you. And she says.
In a voice dripping with something. Oh, I love you too. Is it contempt? Disdain? All of it. It's annoyance. It's. Are you fucking kidding me, dude? It's everything. I noticed that this outfit requires her put on a wedding ring and. of all the things that she's put on she balks at that the most like it really she's like just this does because she's as she's preparing she's aware that she's still married to mark and loves him and now she's putting on a wedding ring the fuck
Like that's got that's got to be a little ominous. Man, I wonder if the entire podcast here, I feel like I've been percolating an idea of what they're doing down here on the testing floor with Gemma. Is this a reverse any situation where they are trying to test if there is a way to take. An any and have them transfer a lot of their learnings to their Audi.
so that they don't have to be severed anymore. They can do a sort of conditioning as an any that would transfer outside. It goes the other way. yeah well and there's hints of that like you know like when mr milchek is explaining to mark that like i gotta believe that some of that peace some of that bliss he's experiencing down there is going to trickle back up to you just give it time
And then his description of like, well, the thing you're doing here is going to create a greater world for Mark to live in. Like, if they can figure out how to transfer some of the stuff from any Mark out to Mark Scout. just make them all credulous obedient happy people right no matter what circumstance they're in they just accept it and you can do it without them knowing it yeah yeah Yeah, I think you're onto something there. Maybe.
Uh, great needle drop got Billy holiday. I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places. This is clearly, you know, she's reminded of Mark and, but she's put in this weird, bizarre situation where she's forced to accept this other man as her husband. And it's, uh, it's all bad. And it's all juxtaposed with a memory of, I think it's her memory of Mark where Mark is bitter. He's drunk. He's frustrated and he's angrily trying to put together his baby crib.
and he like you can hear him kind of raging and throwing shit and you can see that jim is hearing this and reacting to it it's this is where i'm starting a pleasant christmas with him too though so like they're they're It's so mixed, right? I will see. So like I.
I compared the, cause they're, they, they do have that, but it felt like a cold Christmas. It felt like a Christmas without joy and also leads from them, you know, that they used to do dishes and they were joking and laughing and hugging and now they're doing dishes and like just stony silence.
yeah yeah and this is where the maybe i wish i'd listen more drank less i think comes in because for sure you know whatever you're trying to do to support your wife if you're fucking angry drunk trying to do it that's uh a misstep on the next scene we see the dentist which we now find out is dr mauer he checks in on jim at the end of another day
She asks when she can go home, but he informs her that Mark has remarried. Now he has a daughter, and he's moved on with his life. He idly wonders if she's moved on in some way in one of the many rooms she's been forced to visit. She takes advantage of a momentary distraction and beats him over the head with a chair, taking his master key card and fleeing towards the testing elevator. Unfortunately, on the way up, she severs into Miss Casey.
And that's going to be it for her escape attempt. But like I said, this, this really reframed her as a person who's trying just as hard to get back to Mark as Mark is trying to get back to her, except for she has certain knowledge that he's out there. and alive but perhaps moved on like they're just lying to her we know that's a different kind of despair right mark has the despair of loss she has the despair of separation it's like yeah Both equally intense, just different vibes. Um...
And he's like, you know, what do you think? Are you moving on when he's where are there any rooms that you feel yourself gravitating towards? Have you felt things behind those doors that you haven't felt with Mark? Maybe I've seen something like that. I don't think he has. But he's trying to get her like, which version of me do you love? Which version of me are you gravitating towards? Right.
Okay, yeah, I hadn't considered that he's trying to groom himself to be something that she can love. But that makes a lot more sense because he's got different personas. He's not the same guy in every room. right and it also ties into drumming cautioning him it's like you know when she's done this is over and he is really taking a shine to her yeah okay 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. We see then Mark begs off going to a night of charades. I wonder if this is a Rickon event. Under the guise of a crushing work deadline. This is it. This is the night. This is the night she goes and has the car accident. And I kind of realized it as I was watching it.
Meanwhile, in the present, Mr. Milchak hurries to meet Mrs. Casey at the testing floor elevator hallway and barely almost out of breath tells her this is all a mistake and you really should turn back around and head back down. And I'm like, Miss Casey, how many hours of existence do you have to have to grow a spine? Tell this motherfucker, no, push, push through. Yeah, it's. So I also want to point out the Denali thing. Rickon is still trying to invite Mark to go climbing, I assume.
oh right obviously that being a mountain like i assume that was an invitation yeah ridiculous uh but yeah so this gets really interesting with miss casey um It's such a flimsy excuse, and we've talked about all the flimsy excuses that Lumen seems to come up with. for various things from, you know, the, the gift cards where they tell you how you got a paper cut trying to do a copier, uh, fix a copier machine or whatever down to, uh,
You know, what happened with with Dylan or Irv or whoever attacking people, all that stuff. And then to Heli sort of having time, but a poor. when it comes to what her Audi experienced. Here, this is a very flimsy story as well. Like, look how she's dressed. You think this is how you turn up to a public art exhibit? This is how you dress as Miss Casey. Like, why would your Audi be wearing these clothes?
But how would she know that? She's only got hours of life experience, you know? Maybe this is how everyone dresses. But you're right. She's just inexperienced and naive. She doesn't know Milchak like we know Milchak. Right, and that works on... these children but i feel like we're damn we're threatening a two-hour podcast and i still
keep remembering things that we've forgotten or we've missed connections because for example, I, I just scrolling back my notes and that scene where Mark is dismissive and skeptical of what she's doing at Lumen could have, but notice that she's reviewing the. combat cards that Owen D made. Yes. Right, we didn't even talk about that.
And she's saying that this is a guy fighting himself. He's undergoing ego death because his hair is the same. So like, it's completely different context than the one we experienced with the grim barbarity of optics and design. and it's where they name check the episode that buddhist idea um right like the the transition between life and death so right yeah death and rebirth i should say yeah
Um, so, uh, I'm trying to think if there's anything else that we, Oh, here's a crazy thing. Mark's freshman fluke was for refining the Allen town. file and record time. Allentown is the name of the room where her husband forces her to write thank you cards for Christmas. oh you're right what a wild connection that is because we always thought that's like the reason they had to have something to do with jimma because it's mark and he's refined but like
They're all Gemma, but that also makes sense of that. That was a breakthrough. Once they cracked Allentown, all the refiners were able to refine that efficiently.
as you pointed out though it's also the room where she is married right which is interesting um and there is a core there is a core bit of that that's real because like that that christmas scene that we see her flash back to that tree is almost exactly the same the same live tree same tinsel same day i mean it's a lot more 70s decor but right right
It's like the equivalent of the candle in the wellness center. And it's experiences that Gemma is remembering, right? Or we're getting a POV of her memory. So I don't know if she's actively remembering these things, but like. It's something that clearly meant a lot to her. And so to connect it to a room where Mark had a very quick or profound, I guess, refining session.
Yeah, there's something there that is bleeding through both for her and for Mark. I couldn't help but notice that this last night. They both say what seems like a sincere I love you's. Does this mean that they kind of got to a good spot or are they putting brave faces on things? Cause I feel like Mark is withdrawing. Like this is really affecting him. He's not doing the things that they used to do as a couple. And she's forced to kind of.
Well, even though she's kind of the center of this trauma of not having to try, but she's kind of having to go and keep up appearances for them. But there's something kind of sad and wistful in the way she says, I love you to almost like. Is this did Lumen manufacture a car accident to abduct her into this facility? Or did she knowingly sign up for this, knowing that they were going to do it? Because there's just something the way she says goodbye to him.
But also, why would she offer to take him with him if she knew? Yeah. Yeah. Just something. Yes. I think that I think maybe the thing you're picking up on is that. She loves the guy he used to be and she's hoping that guy will reemerge at some point. And kind of sad that it's not now when she asks him to go to this thing. Yeah. And Milchick with those on you goes, man, those are. Yeah, those are irresistible for any. Yeah, how amenable everyone is to suggestion here. And I guess if you.
fully think you're trapped there's not much alternative but the big question i have is who is she going who or what is she asking about when she says turns around and says where's and milchak interrupts her right how long have i been mark where's yeah yeah yeah yeah where's my mind like i think she's gonna like how long have i been down here and what happened to mark and everybody and yeah
Also confirmation that Miss Coble has not been active since she got sent down that testing floor elevator. Like this is her coming back up as the first time she's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark is then visited late at night by police officers who presumably give him the terrible news about his wife's car accident. Gemma is sadly escorted back to recorders by the nurse.
And Mark regains consciousness with his sister. She asked him, where did you go? And the episode ends. I thought that was really interesting because the episode began. With Jim's thousand yard stare getting blood work done and a nurse asking her, where did you go? Making connection between the experiences that are both having here. Um, but like Mark's fucked up. Mark doesn't, he feels like a guy who went on a bender and slept it off and he woke up and he doesn't know where he's at.
Like he doesn't know who we like. There could be some profound brain damage here. We don't know. Yeah, he doesn't speak at all. She said there would be deficits. Brigabi did, so who knows what that'll entail. He flashes back to that first day he met her in the library during the blood drive, and there's like this scene where he just sees her eyes.
Yeah. And then that's how the app and Mark seems very sad. He's got tears in his eyes. Yeah, they're using this crossfade, this face to face crossfade thing. Oh, I love this. Which, yeah, it really serves to connect the characters and their feelings. It's a good visual trick. The stages of grief before bargaining, there's denial. And I got a very strong vibe that they're both like Mark is in denial that she is dead. Like he never believed it. Like from the time the cops told him.
And then they're doing that crossfade dissolve. And she has just been told that your husband's moved on and he's abandoned you. And they're both like, just, I, I cannot believe this is true. I cannot believe she's dead. I cannot believe he's moved on. And they're both fucking right. Yeah, turns out. But like I said, this is just a beautiful episode. It really fills in.
In a, in a way that I found real and satisfying Mark and Jim, his relationship sold us on the love sold us on the fracture and disillusionment and. present some theories of how they got to be where they're at. And I don't know whether Jim, because it's doesn't seem like Jim is down here against her will. Like she knows what she's down here. She's no, she's doing something. She knows she's working for Lumen and. I read that as she's resigned to her fate a little bit more than going along with it.
going along with their purpose i i read it as like she's kind of trapped down here knows it yeah because i mean otherwise why would she try and escape right i was gonna say she did knock the dude out and then try to get away so yeah that she isn't accepting But she's not saying like you're kidnapping me. You're holding me down here against my will or you're, you know.
feels more like an innie that knows that they can leave at five o'clock and they're just waiting for the time to roll around but again like there what is the exit game for her um there isn't one that's the thing that's so devastating when she comes back down that elevator it's like
there's no exit her she she put herself back down here that's the fucked up thing right it's the same thing we saw with heli it's the same thing we've seen with anybody who's tried to escape severance the ultimate hold they have on you is you putting yourself trap yeah yeah it's a it's it's a finger trap the harder you try to pull out the more it grabs you and like i said i don't know um i am no closer to knowing what the fuck they're doing
than i was before because all of the theories that we had about like well maybe it's something to do with water maybe it's something to do with rival technology and they're trying to suppress it maybe nope it's just putting it jimma through bizarre ass experience that she is severed from we know what they're doing just not why it's like it feels like is this purgatory like you know she's not um
like like like it's it's a level in between severed and non-severed and she's aware of herself but she's not aware of her innies experiences and her audi is miss casey but that's not a yeah i don't know man I'm going to need some audience participation to go through these circles of hell until she figures out a way to get out of it. It's fascinating though. Yeah. I mean, if I'm looking at the Tolstoy.
uh connection there you know that that uh chasing after success is not actually going to give you or our definition of success is not going to give you a happy life or fulfilled life that kind of is really tragic in combination with you're the one you know who sends yourself back down to the severed floor every day even if it's hell it's like yeah you're the one striving toward that success and your death is imminent
It's it's coming and you're using your time to imprison yourself in this idea of what success looks like that isn't actually going to make you happy. Feels like they're doing that. to themselves. Yeah, I noticed that Tolstoy is known for his tomes, right? Oh, yeah. This death of Ivan Ilyich is a novella.
It feels like something that maybe I could get my arms around in a, in a, in a week. I might read this on between now and feedback. Cause yeah, if I, if I can like imbibe 170 some page or something and get, and get a better. yeah i just read the wikipedia description yeah because i said there's i i did too but like you know that the he's he's got this like split between what he considers an artificial life and
what's the true meaning of life and like an authentic life. And, uh, clearly it applies. I'm just not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. um and also like at the end that the some force strikes him and he it's it's brought in the presence of a bright light which ties into the uh chica bardo Because that's like you are hit with this impenetrable light of truth. And if you can perceive it correctly, then you can follow the light into enlightenment. But if not, it scares you and has you.
reliving things in your past lives and sends you back to the plane of torment that there's a lot of connections but uh i don't know uh i i might try to to take a read of that because otherwise we're just waiting a couple days for see what the rest of the world makes this episode yeah anything do we leave anything on the table i'm sure we did because like i said i can't believe after talking for two hours how many things i'm like oh yeah i forgot to talk about that i forgot to talk about that but
Hopefully this will tide you over until the feedback episode. Uh, we can, we can find out what everybody else is thinking about it, but wow. Again. Every time they set you up for like, oh, yeah, or surely we're going to do Mark integration. Nope, we're outside with the Orpo. Surely we're going to figure out something with Bert and Irv and this connection to Lumen. Nope, we're just going to do a Jim a bottle episode. And it's it doesn't feel like pacing. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.
But we're in the final stretch. We're in the kind of like defiant jazz stretch of the previous season where we've got Reamer episodes to go. Lots of answers, probably lots of more consternation ahead. I wonder what the big thing is going to be this year. I mean, last year they jail broke their aunties out. Yeah, I can't. It was so fucking cool. Are they going to rescue Gemma? Or maybe they just get to they get to see each other in the flesh. For a moment, something like that.
I mean, they already have an assuming that Mark's reintegrated. He's going to have that realization that like, oh, my, you know, we saw how powerful it was. Like, yeah, I just like this wasn't a memory of her. I was seeing her and it was it knocked him on his ass. So. And they are hurt. I mean, they're not not hurting her down here. This is what I would call some kind of torture. Psychological, physical, like.
Yeah, definitely is like less for Gemma and more for Miss Casey or whatever, however many versions of her there are. But yeah, yeah, it's still torture for Gemma too. Yeah. Crazy, crazy. Severance at baldmove.com. If you want to give us a piece of your mind, your severed, fractured mind, we'd like to hear it.
Also, if you'd like to help us continue to make podcasts, get ad free feeds and extra bonus audio content for yourself. And you can also follow us for free just if you want to keep up with our latest releases and stuff. You can do that at support. That's going to do it for this week. We'll be back in a couple of days after the weekend with the feedback episode. Until then, I'm your host, Aaron. And I'm Jim. Hang in there. you