Welcome to our weekly column Can’t Miss Episode of the Week! Every Saturday we’ll be spotlighting a different episode of television from that week that we thought was exceptional and a must-see. Check back to see if your favorite show got the nod — or to learn about a new one! Spoilers ahead.
Thanks is given to the Apple TV+ renewal gods for announcing a second season of its excellent thriller Severance earlier this week. We’re going to need more episodes ASAP after that season 1 finale cliffhanger, which aired on April 8. The entire season was a slow burn. Each episode builds in momentum so that by the time we arrive at the finale we are at peak intensity.
The show depicts Lumon, a company where some of the people who work there get a chip implanted in their brains that makes them “severed” – inside the office they can’t remember what their lives outside are like (these are the “innies”), and outside the office they can’t remember their work at all (these are the “outies”). The dystopian series weaves a clever anti-capitalist narrative where the innies never get to leave work – office life is their entire existence. In an era of television bloated with white collar true crime dramas centered around corrupt CEOs (WeCrashed, Super Pumped, The Dropout), the fictional Severance takes on a different point of view, and makes the lowly workers the focus, as they struggle against their corrupt corporate overlords. And in the finale, they finally enact their plan for freedom.
Our heroes? The four members of Lumon Industries’ Macro-Data Refinement division, led by widower Mark Scout (a phenomenal Adam Scott). We’ve been following Mark’s perspective throughout the season so we know both his innie and outie pretty well, but his coworkers’ – Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) – outies have been largely been kept secret, except for a few hints and scenes. Well, not anymore. The previous episode left off with Dylan flipping the switches for the Overtime Contingency, and waking up the others’ innies while they’re outside the office so that they can tell people the truth about Lumon.
From there, it’s a race against the clock for Mark, Helly, and Irving to complete their mission. Mark tries to get a moment of privacy with the woman he learns is his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock), and dodges his supervisor (technically ex-supervisor since she got fired last episode) Ms. Cobel (a sinister Patricia Arquette), who has infiltrated his outie life. Irving discovers his outie has been investigating Lumon. But it’s Helly’s outie who has the big shocking reveal. Helly is actually Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon’s CEO, and she’s at an event to give a speech advocating for the severance procedure.
This show is excellent at building an enticing mystery, and all season long it’s been maddening trying to figure out why Helly’s outie refuses to quit if her innie is so miserable that she’s even attempted suicide. It’s been equally perplexing as to why Lumon wants an employee who so clearly doesn’t want to be there. Who benefits? Now we know. Helena wouldn’t quit because she had undergone severance specifically so she could tout it to the rest of the world. After all, if the CEO’s own daughter has been severed and is praising it, how bad can it be? Helly’s outie is so much worse of a person than anyone anticipated.
Helly’s insider status raises the stakes. Telling normal people about Lumon’s atrocities would likely only come to so much. Mark tells Devon everything but despite her comments that her husband Ricken (Michael Chernus) knows journalists who can perhaps help, they’re likely to end up just screaming into the void. Helly, on the other hand, has the opportunity to truly take this public with her speech. As Ms. Cobel realizes that the Overtime Contingency has been triggered and arrives at the event, it’s clear she intends to stop Helly (Ms. Cobel’s level of devotion to Lumon even after they fired her is extra-disturbing, and an indictment of the company’s cult-like propaganda), but short of fully tackling Helly, it’s too late. Watching Helly say “I’m going to kill your company,” and then walk on stage and actually get to tell everyone about the awfulness of severance is extremely satisfying.
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Adding to the ticking clock is Mr. Milchick’s (Tramell Tillman) attempts to break down the door to the security office to stop Dylan. As he saws through the belt that Dylan used to tie the handles together he offers him the incentives that used to keep Dylan a content worker, but what Milchick doesn’t fully grasp is that coffee cozies mean nothing compared to the desire to know one’s own child, which Dylan has learned he has. Even enticing Dylan with information about his kids though doesn’t get Dylan to betray his loyalty to his friends. Once again, corporate stooge Milchick has overlooked the human element.
Amongst all this action, Severance doesn’t forget about the emotional core, embodied most poignantly this episode by Irving. Finding a map that his outie has marked with severed employees’ addresses, Irving drives like hell (amazing, since as an innie, he’s never driven before, but hey muscle memory is a thing) to make it to Burt’s (Christopher Walken) house in time. Part of it is that Irving needs to find someone he trusts to tell about Lumon, but even more so, he obviously sees it as an opportunity to see the man he’s fallen in love with one last time after Lumon forced Burt into retirement. It’s heartbreaking when Irving finally makes it to Burt’s place, only to see through the window that in real life, Burt already has a significant other. After overcoming his shock, he hammers on Burt’s door – emotions aside, the mission still stands – but doesn’t make it in time before Milchick busts through the door to the security office and tackles Dylan, who drops the switches that have been keeping his friends’ innies activated.
Rather than being preachy, the series is wonderfully minimalist, with very deliberate small details that later pay off in a big way, and in the finale, so much of what the show has already seeded is finally all tying together. A big part of that is Mark’s realization of something that we as viewers already knew, which is that Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), Lumon’s wellness counselor, is also Mark’s supposedly dead wife, Gemma. With the picture of Gemma/Ms. Casey in hand, he manages to derangedly run into his sister’s living room full of people yelling “she’s alive” right before Dylan is thwarted by Milchick. Hopefully Devon and Ricken understand what he means.
Of course, the episode leaves just as many questions on the table as it answers. How/why did Lumon fake Gemma’s death, and what has happened to her now that Lumon has fired her? Why is Irving’s outie investigating Lumon? What will Lumon do to Dylan, and what will happen to everyone else? (Mark will probably be kept from going back to the office by Devon, plus he was going to quit anyway, but Irving’s outie will likely be clueless. Dylan, however, is trapped down there.) The episode ends with Milchick tackling Dylan and the Overtime Contingency ending, so we can only speculate about what comes after. There’s so much more of this story to unravel, luckily a second season is on its way! It’s certainly one of the best shows on television.
Other observations we thought made this episode stand out:
- Helly, upon realizing the terrible actions of her outie, repeats the lines Lumon makes employees say over and over again when they’ve messed up, about how sorry they are for the harm they’ve caused this world, but with genuine remorse, which is a nice ironic reversal.
- Mark getting the chance to tell Ricken about how his book changed his life is a nice moment. It may be a cheap self-help book full of cliches, but for Mark, it made all the difference.
- Mark, Helly, and Irving’s outies interestingly all starkly contrast with their innies. Innie Mark loves Ricken’s book, while outie Mark thinks it’s trash. Innie Irving initially believes in the good of Lumon, while outie Irving is actively investigating the corporation. Helly hates Lumon with the fire of a thousand suns, while her outie is one of Lumon’s leaders. But since we’ve been following Mark, we can at least see how both versions of him have gradually moved away from Lumon over the course of the season.
- In an age of peak TV where episodes often run beyond an hour, Severance delivers an absolutely packed finale with only a 40 minute runtime. That’s how it’s done.