SPOILERS for Severance Season 2, Episode 6 ‘Attila’
I don’t know what Lumon is putting in the water over there, but this is by far the horniest episode of Severance to date. While still drip-feeding us with morsels of information and hints towards the various mysteries at play, this episode is much more character and relationship-focused. You know the writing on this series is stellar when it can take a step back from the fast-paced chaos to delve deeper into the emotional side of the characters and still keep you captivated for a whole 50 minutes. While we inch closer to Mark’s complete reintegration, we get to follow each of the MDR team as Cupid flies around getting trigger-happy with his arrows of love. That actually explains a lot; I must have been hit with an arrow because I’m in love with this show.
Remember, You Are One.
Picking up immediately following Mark’s (Adam Scott) brief bleeding experience where he came face to face with Gemma (Dichen Lachman), he’s very clearly in a world of distress. He’s opening up to Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) about how the hallucination felt like a nightmare, and they have a brief yet deep conversation about the bargaining stage of grief.
Cut to Mark’s innie, and Dylan (Zach Cherry) is telling both he and Helly (Britt Lower) about Irving’s sketch that he found of the black hallway. He’s still very reluctant to assist with any of the uprising activities so as to not lose his family-visiting privileges. Understandable, but frustrating. This scene also gives us the best Helly quote of the season; “did everyone sever their balls in the elevator this morning”. This garnered a big laugh as she really channeled her inner Dylan with that one. The big kicker of this scene comes when we get the first real sign of Mark’s innie bleeding into his outie’s memories. He’s transported into his living room and visibly confused by what he’s experiencing.
As much as I enjoyed these moments, I have two minor gripes with them. One being the whole Testing Floor/Exports Hall content. It was back in episode three where Irving found out its location from Felicia, now we’re three episodes later and still no closer to the MDR crew getting there. Granted they were interrupted with the ORTBO, Helly coming back and now Dylan being a cockblocker, but it’s being very drawn out. Another thing is that Mark seems all of a sudden on cool and calm talking terms with Helly after giving the whole team a world of attitude just last week. I don’t know where that switch came from, but maybe he’s more bipolar than just being severed… tripolar?
Work experience at Lumon? Sure, why not…
After the weeks of questions and speculation surrounding Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), in which I convinced myself of some wild theories, it turns out she’s maybe just a human. Mr. Milkshake (Tramell Tillman) calls Huang into his office to give her the details of his performance review and intimidate her into not speaking ill of him to his superiors again. The intriguing part of this conversation comes when he reminds her that she can’t graduate from this fellowship until he deems her Wintertide material. There we have it – it’s not a concrete explanation, but it seems that Huang is completing some sort of placement or short course at Lumon that would get her into Wintertide, presumably a top Kier-based university. This leans into the theory I had that Huang is similar to Ms. Cobel in that she has been raised at the Myrtle Eagan School For Girls and now approaching university. Perhaps Cobel’s hometown of Salt’s Neck is the location of these schools… it did look quite wintry.
Let’s stick with all of Mr. Milkshake’s scenes for now since they’re very isolated from every other events of the episode. Throughout the episode we cut back to him putting paperclips on documents, making sure to not put them on backwards and get told on by Miss Huang again. His hand starts trembling and he looks in a world of stress and anger. He then focuses on the first point of contention from his performance review – using too many big words. He goes back to something he just said to Miss Huang; “you must eradicate from your essence childish folly”, simplifying words and becoming more menacing as he cuts it down to “you must grow up” and then all the way down to “grow”. It’s unclear if he’s now just referring to Huang or talking to himself too, but he gets very intense and it makes me scared for the Mr. Milkshake we’re about to see next week.
“She was the apple of my eye and your potential wife”
For his continued good behaviour, Dylan is rewarded with another meeting with Gretchen (Merritt Wever). Gretchen is telling him all about their first date, Dylan’s hobbies and the many phases of his life. With this session, it’s even more clear that Gretchen is liking and falling back in love with Dylan’s innie more than his outie. Perhaps this Dylan is more like how Dylan’s outie used to be, which is more appealing to Gretchen. Their meeting not only ends with a wholesome hug… but with a kiss. And there it is, the defining moment. What makes this scene even more impactful is it’s intercut with scenes of Helly and Mark experienciong heartbreak while Dylan is finding love.
Later on we get a quick scene which cement’s Gretchen’s feelings – she lies to outie Dylan that the meeting with his innie was cancelled. So effectively, Gretchen is cheating on Dylan with… well… Dylan. On one hand poor Dylan, but on the other hand I’m happy for other Dylan.
“It’s complicated” is an understatement
Mark and Helly hide in a toilet stall while Mark tells her how Mr. Milkshake intimidated him in the elevator last episode, then he just casually drops the bomb that he had sex with her outie. That obviously doesn’t help with Helly’s mental state, and despite Mark pleading that he thought it was her, she’s visibly distraught. She goes on a walk to break down the hallway, while Mark sits at his deck and stresses out. Relationships… right? The momentary heartbreak is temporary as they both come to, reconvene and decide to have sex to fix it all… for real this time. They then pull a shifty and go into one of the many unused office rooms to do the dirty. This whole arc is like watching teenagers navigate having sex for the first time… only they’re adults at work. It’s strange but also beautiful in the most perplexing way.
Afterwards, during a cute kissing moment, Mark’s nose starts bleeding, prompting a health checkup by Miss Huang. During said checkup, he has another major bleed/crossover and gets confused about whether he’s at Lumon with Miss Huang or in the basement with Reghabi. We don’t see his innie beyond this point, so we don’t know how much of what he was blabbering on about was heard by Miss Huang, but I suspect not much at all. Back during the reintegration process, he starts becoming overwhelmed by the memory crossovers and loses his cool. When Reghabi mentions they’re going to flood the chip, he storms out to eat.
Oh hi coworker… boss… girlfriend?
As it turns out, Mark was hungry for Chinese food… but so was Helena, who appears to have been following Mark for reasons entirely unknown. Maybe she’s taking over the Ms. Cobel role since she’s gone AWOL. The whole interaction is an awkward affair. Mark immediately recognises her, but whether that’s from her public position as a head of Lumon or through his reintegration crossovers, is a little unclear… but that changes shortly. She apologises for the chaos that happened with the ORTBO and proceeds to blatantly flirt with him, suggesting they catch up again. However it’s clear she’s not well versed in the art of flirting as she brings up Mark’s (not) dead wife and even calls her by the wrong name, Hanna. This prompts Mark to storm out and rush back to his house.
Helena’s motivations for this catch-up could be one of two things. Either she’s continuing her spy persona to pull more info from Mark, or she’s genuinely whipped after their tent sex and trying to spark something. As much as it’s easy to say it’s the former, I still believe there’s part of her that is falling for Mark and craving some sort of affection, so I’ll place my money on the latter.
In a fit of urgency, Mark demands that Reghabi complete the reintegration process immediately. In a scene that’s brutally tense and not an easy watch for the squeamish, Reghabi floods the chip and fast-tracks the reintegration to completion. Mark is immediately met with another crossover where he’s seeing his innie having sex with Helly, something that only happened that day. Reghabi’s interrogation of him is conveniently interrupted by Devon (Jen Tullock). While he and Devon are talking, he starts crossing over and crumbles under the pressure, seizing up and collapsing.
Is the devil in the room with us?
Despite everything going on, this is by far the most unexpectedly exciting arc of the episode. Irving (John Turturro) takes Burt (Christopher Walken) up on his offer for that dinner and rocks up with a bottle of wine. Immediately one thing becomes clear – we have an inconsequential little recast on our hands with John Noble taking on the role of Fields. Noble is exceptional, so I’m immediately excited to see him in the role. As they get talking over wine, Burt mentions that he was driven to joining Lumon through the Lutheran church and Jesus himself. According to the church, innies are complete individuals with souls that can be judged separately to their outies. The assumption here being that Burt knows he’s destined for hell, so he severs himself so his innie can join Fields in heaven. However as I’ll soon discuss, I don’t think we can trust anything Burt says.
When we catch back up with their conversation, they’re now discussing the history of their endearing “Attila” name for each other. This is where things take a turn I could never have seen coming. While Burt remarks that the name originated 10 years ago, Fields corrects him that it was 20 years ago as he recalls they had drinks with Burt’s Lumon partner. Burt’s entire demeanour completely shifts and that charming smile is wiped away immediately. Irving then questions the statement by mentioning that the first severed office opened 12 years ago, to which Burt shuts down the entire conversation.
Cut to the end of their night as Burt is letting Irving out the door. Burt then tries to ensure Irving doesn’t think anything of the 20 years comment, explaining it away as Fields’ mind failing him… but I don’t think he or anyone else is buying that. Burt then suggests they catch up again, with or without Fields, before giving an ominous look as he shuts the door.
All while this dinner was happening, Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) took the opportunity to break into Irving’s apartment (with a key mind you) and snoop around. He ended up finding Irving’s research on Lumon and its employees, which means Lumon and Helena will soon be onto Irving and whatever he’s planning.
Lingering thoughts
I’m sorry… what is Burt hiding?
This episode just managed to subtly drop what could be one of the biggest twists to hit the show. Burt, the loveable O&D employee who was a fantastic part of season one, is in some way deeply involved with Lumon beyond being a severed employee. When Burt’s innie was forced out of work last season, his outie came on camera to give a wholesome farewell message and state that he’s been working for O&D for seven years. While that may be true, we learn through Fields that he’s actually worked at Lumon for at least 20 years… that’s eight years before the invention of the severance procedure. Coupled with Burt talking about how his outie is going to hell, as well as the ominous looks he gave Fields when he dropped the 20-year bomb, Burt seems to have a greater involvement with the company. This means his stalking outside of Irving’s phone booth was less about getting to know him and more about spying on him.
Also this would mean that Burt planned the dinner alongside Lumon to have Mr. Drummond break in while Irving was out. It’s too much of a coincidence for Mr. Drummond to go search the apartment at the exact time Irving is safely located inside the house of a Lumon-affiliated individual. Forget Gemma and the Testing Floor, I need to know what’s the go with Burt, stat!
In the end, this episode kicks off with a strange little recalibration from last week’s events, but gets immediately back to business by giving everyone love life updates. After going through an “it’s complicated” patch, Mark and Helly seem to be all loved up. Dylan is in the middle of a tough situation where his outie’s wife is falling more in love with him, causing a rift in the outside world. Irving is being sucked into a love triangle with potentially sinister motives. Plus Helena is awkwardly trying to spark something with outie Mark (maybe). Love is in the air, and while this episode is somewhat of a detour, there’s still ample progress made on the many mysteries at play… including a little more closure on Miss Huang. Then there’s the Burt revelation, one I’ll be thinking about all week no doubt.
9/10
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