Looking for a recap of season 2, episode 5? Lumon is listening.
Can someone tell Severance that Valentine’s Day was last week? Because season 2, episode 6 forgoes all (okay, some) of the show’s usual concerns—expanding the Eagan lore, vague mentions of Cold Harbor, and watermelon sculptures—in favor of exploring the desires of the four leads.
Seriously: Every single member of Severance‘s main quartet is horny this episode. The most pure-hearted development is between Gretchen and Innie Dylan; what starts as another too-long hug turns into a steamy make-out session. Then, there’s Outie Irving, who leaves his dinner with Burt and Fields with the heavily implied decision to leave Fields out of the second date. And, at long last, there’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Innie Mark and Helly have sex. For real, this time.
Episode 6 reminded me of what series creator Dan Erickson told Vanity Fair before season 2 premiered: “In season 1, the Innies are basically children. They’re adults in some ways, but experientially they’re children, having your first crush and finding out things about yourselves,” he said. “Season 2, it’s a little bit more of an adolescence story. There’s more of a sense of finding your own autonomy and deciding who you are going to be, as opposed to who you’ve been told you are.”
Turns out, Erickson—at least in some small way—meant that season 2 is a lot more of an adolescence story, in that the Innies (save for Irving, RIP) are falling in love for the first time. Sweet, right? Just take a moment to savor that thought, because we have some not-so-fun things to get to later on…
Apple TV+
The saga of Burt and Irving takes a turn this episode.
Welcome to the Throuple Tryout
This week, I want to start with Outie Irving and his lil’ beard comb, because his dinner conversation with Burt and his husband, Fields, really frames the entire episode.
Fields welcomes Irving to his home with an insult that would make Ms. Cobel (someone please file a missing persons alert for her, by the way) proud: “What your innie ever saw in this Philistine is beyond me.” What follows is the weirdest, cultiest, and most philosophical ham dinner in the history of ham dinners. We learn that Burt and Fields are devout Lutherans—and making it to heaven is very much a concern. During one sermon, the priest at their church declared that each Innie is “a complete person with a soul and can be judged separately.” Well, Burt was apparently a “scoundrel” in his younger days, so much so that he biffed his chance at salvation. The idea: Burt severed himself so that at least some part of his soul can join the (apparently) sinless Fields in the promised land. Sure!
Fields has a few too many glasses of wine and lets it slip that Burt worked for Lumon as far back as twenty years ago, even though the severed floor was built twelve years ago. Before Burt can protest too much, Fields loudly speculates whether or not Innie Burt and Innie Irving had unprotected sex. “Are you done humiliating our guest?” Burt asks. “Innies deserve to experience love,” Fields says. “I mean it. And I hope it was beautiful.”
In an episode that significantly develops, well, the love lives of the Innies, I appreciate that Severance finally makes room for some philosophical discussion about whether or not Innies are people. I’d reckon that most people reading this recap would say yes, but we can’t really say the same about the characters in the series. Helena Eagan’s disgust for Innies is on record, Mark is casually dismissive toward his Innie, and Dylan is turning into Mr. Steal Your (Actually, My Own) Girl. Are Innies entitled to build out their lives without restraint? Or does the Outie retain autonomy over their own body at all costs?
While you reckon with that one: We see two short scenes featuring Mr. Drummond, who is snooping around Irving’s footlocker, where he keeps his valuables–including his list of severed employees. You already know that the Severance Wiki recreated the entire list (!), but what does Drummond want with it?
Jon Pack
Will Mark’s reintegration… kill him?
Grow… Grow… GROW! (And Gretchen Cheats on Her Own Husband)
Yikes, Mr. Milchick! Following an awful string of luck in season 2 so far, we see Milchick lay into poor Miss Huang. “You cannot graduate from this fellowship until I have deemed you wintertide material,” he says. Someone tell him that half the Internet thinks she’s a clone—Miss Huang knows not what she does! Milchick spends the rest of the day trying to improve his aptitude at paperclip use, which leads into a pretty horrifying “Are you talkin’ to me?” moment where Milchick is simply screaming “GROW!” to himself in the mirror. To try my hand at a Milchickian phrase: I remain steadfast in my firm belief that Mr. Milchick will instigate a coup d’etat of Lumon by season’s end.
Elsewhere in this episode, Gretchen cheats on Dylan with Dylan. During another visitation event with his Outie’s wife. Again, she does her husband zero favors, continuing to paint him as a miserable slouch who is good at absolutely nothing. “Maybe I’m trying to find something I excel in up there,” Innie Dylan suggests. “Like I do down there.” Nope! He’s just not happy! “I wish we could really be together,” Dylan says. “Like, all the time.” He then requests a hug, which is incredibly sweet to watch, until they start kissing. Even worse: Later, when Outie Dylan asks Gretchen about the visit, she lies and says that Lumon cancelled it.
As happy as I am for Innie Dylan, I hate that Lumon is using Gretchen as a weapon to keep him motivated at work. With Innie Irving gone, Dylan making moves on his own wife, and Mark and Helly outright shagging on the floor of an abandoned Lumon office, the MDR crew is more fractured than ever.
They Sure Shared Vessels, All Right
Speaking of our favorite lovebirds, let’s get to the main event. Honestly, everything in the world of Severance has been so damn intense lately, that let’s just appreciate Mark and Helly’s big moment for what it is: Two people in love. There’s this: “Ta-da. A tent.” And this: “I don’t want her memory. I want my own. Would you like that?” My heart!
Now, here’s the scene that I’m sure will take fans a full week to dissect. Mark is enjoying the best Chinese dinner of his life, when his not-so-secret crush shows up to say hello: Helena Eagan. Helena’s vibe is outright… flirty? She sits in a booth facing Mark, locks eyes and gives him a big ol’ smile, then hits him with this brilliant pickup line: “Mark… Scout. Thought that was you. I’m Helena Eagan—I work at Lumon.” She resorts to the middle-school playbook, roasting him as means of flirting. “I hope they’re feeding you at work,” she quips.
The conversation turns serious for a moment—Helena apologizes for the Overtime Contingency—then it pivots to outright weird. She blurts that Mark should meet her creepo dad who called her a “fetid moppet,” to which he says, “You want to take me home to dad already?” Helena: “You’d be the first.” She then offers condolences for “Hannah,” intentionally screwing up Gemma’s name and leaning uncomfortably close to Mark. It freaks out Mark enough to make him ask for a needle in his head minutes later. But I have to say: I think Helena is mostly genuine here. You could definitely sell me on a storyline where we eventually learn that she was mistreated by her psycho family growing up and they forced her to undergo the severance procedure. Living a fucked-up, sheltered life for thirty-some years, Helena figures out that her Innie found love—and does everything she can to take it for herself, whether it’s with Innie or Outie Mark.
By the way, did you notice the name of the restaurant? Zufu. It’s a Chinese word for “paternal grandfather.” If you want to get all Severance-y about it, we know that there’s another restaurant in town called Pip’s Bar & Grille, which is named after Phillip “Pip” Eagan. Guess who is Helena’s paternal grandfather? Pip Eagan.
Once again, I ask: Who is Irving calling on the payphone?
Someone Give Mark a Burger!
Reintegration makes poor Mark hungies. Episode 6 begins with an increasingly unwell Mark telling Reghabi about what he saw in his last “crossover memory.” (Reghabi coins this term later in the episode.) “I mean, why is she rattling off a bunch of facts?” Mark asks. “The Gemma you know is still in there,” Reghabi says, assuring him that she’s “important” to Lumon somehow. Aside from the maybe-glimpse of Innie Mark’s screen at MDR—which shows Gemma’s face with what looks like her vitals—we’re still no closer to learning anything about what’s really going on with Ms. Casey/Gemma.
That’s not great for obvious reasons, but especially because Mark is hacking up a lung, having nosebleeds at work, and losing a sense of when he’s at Lumon and when he’s not. Reintegration is clearly killing Mark. Just as Miss Huang asks Innie Mark if he’d like petroleum jelly in his nostrils, Outie Mark wakes up in his basement-turned-operating room. Reghabi claims that they need to speed up the process by flooding the chip inside Mark’s head, even if there’s a slight chance of brain hemorrhage. Mark loses his shit at Reghabi yet again, refusing to continue the reintegration process. Then, he storms upstairs for a snack. (I don’t think he’ll find anything. Episode 6 makes it clear that this man’s fridge is simply a vessel for shitty beer.)
Following his brush with Helena, he returns to the basement and says, “Sorry for being a dick. Let’s do it. Tonight.” Reghabi peels open the back of Mark’s head. It’s a shot that’s reminiscent of this season’s opening credits, where we see Mark peek out of the back of his skull. The procedure goes about as well as you’d expect—Mark seems to suffer a seizure, in which he sees flashes of Gemma in a white hallway and his Innie’s view of his sexscapade earlier in the episode.
Mark hears his sister knocking on his door, so he defies yet another Reghabi order (sit still!), and runs upstairs to let her in. Interestingly, Devon brings up a deep-cut moment from season 1: the Damona Birthing Retreat. Remember when Devon met a senator’s wife there, and later learned that she severed herself before giving birth? It seems as if Devon has an idea related to that, but Mark grows hostile, then faints and hits the floor before she can elaborate on the thought.
Don’t worry, readers—I’m (nearly) sure that Mark isn’t dead. But I don’t know how much longer reintegration can go on. Regardless, as we enter episode 7 next week, it feels like we’re at an inflection point. If Severance wants to finally deliver some answers, time is running out.
