That’s not the problem with the explanation. The problem is that it leaves a ton of important things unanswered:
Why just Mark? Ok, so his feels are more in sync with Gemma’s? So, what happens if Mark doesn’t decide to sever at all? There is just no Gemma experiment?
What the fuck is everyone else doing? Do they just have a bunch of Gemmas going into a bunch of other rooms? What’s even the point of that if they don’t have the same Mark and Gemma connection? And if it is working, then what is so special about Mark?
Why do these MDR people need to be severed in the first place (i.e. everyone but Mark). Why not just get diehards like Cobel and Milchick to do the MDRing. Ms. Huang would have loved that shit and done it obediantly. Seems like less hassle then having them manage other people to do it. I’m sure Milchick would be happier if he didn’t have to deal with all of MDR’s shit and could instead just peacefully MDR himself and go out dancing every night.
I could go on. I also could conjure up some plausible explanations for all of above. But that’s not really my job. That’s theirs, and I really hope that they finish doing it in s3, but I’m not optimistic.
yes and would partly explain cobel’s weirdness for all two seasons. Her episode emphasized that she’s sad, over what idk, loss of faith in her religion (trashing her shrine, they screwed her out of her patent, theyre sidelining her career), loss of her mom, loss of her whole identity. So if the (stated) aim of lumon is to take away pain, then part of cobel’s urgency could be that she’d be super into that for herself, which would also explain why she’s been extra attentive to how Mark & Gemma’s innie relationship is going (and why she’s so motherly to outie Mark).
But (as you say) her idea is doomed because a life severed from pain isn’t human. The title of that episode was Sweet Vitriol. Which at least helps with the goats: empathy only exists with an understanding of pain, so if there’s no pain, we’re gonna have to teach people empathy
Feels a little pat? that a prime idea of the show is that pain is the sine qua non of humanity? Like ok sure, Mark severs to dodge the grief of losing Gemma, but sorry Mark, dontcha know that in the end you can only cope with pain by facing it? and integrating it? Cut to season three finale: Mark, listen. Mark. It’s not your fault.
I don’t think Severance is arguing for the value of a soulcrushing desk job, although it sorta does in Dylan’s case, though I think that’s more about the risks of outiehood, like the risk of feeling adrift without purpose and community. The show does spend some energy on which outies are living well—Mark and Gemma as a couple, Burt and his husband, maybe hilariously also Ricken (is ignorance bliss as long as it’s honest?)—and also which outies aren’t living well: most importantly Helena, who is a de facto severed outie, severed from her personality by her attachment to family expectations and privilege and freedom from worldly pain, and why only innie Helly has reclaimed the fire of Kier, but ok le’ts leave issues with attachment & expectations to White Lotus
Personally I enjoyed S2 and how it played out, it’s not better or worse, just different. There are less than perfectly satisfying explanations for a lot of things, but I don’t think S1 was any better or worse with that.
For all the people complaining about how the weirdness of S1 was better, there’s an alternate universe where they spent this season mostly just playing the greatest hits of “mysterious and important” and showing how goofy and naive the innies act, and the weird pomp and circumstance and formality of Lumon and its management, and all the same people here are just complaining about how they haven’t moved the plot.
I feel like people were expecting this show to be hard scifi in a way that it isn’t. It’s scifi in the tradition of, say, Philip K. Dick. Routinely in Dick’s stories, there are premises like “there’s a thingamajig where if you push a button, X happens to reality, or to someone’s mind” and if you’re like “OK but I need a schematic diagram of the wiring and to understand exactly how it works” you are missing the point. The focus is on philosophical ideas about the nature of reality, humanity, and minds in general. The sci-fi elements are enabling conceits in order to illuminate the concepts.
The mystery in Season 1 was “what exactly are the numbers that MDR are messing with doing”. The answer is “helping Lumon mess with/compartmentalize Gemma’s mind” and that’s enough for where the story wants to go. I can’t imagine caring about the fine details of how this works, it doesn’t matter to the story being told. It’s midichlorians, or something.
I really don’t think that’s what people (in this thread, at least) are disappointed about. Like, I don’t think a single person wanted to see more of cobel’s schematics or whatever in that episode. Everyone was fine with “ok, we now know cobel invented this shit and that lumon has a child labor problem, maybe we didn’t need an entire episode to get this one piece of information”
IDK if your story about Cobel makes a lot of sense to me but I have no clue what her role in the story is so sure, maybe.
Yeah, I do agree that if this is all there is to the point, it will be very pat. Major life events shape us into the people we are, no shit. I hope it has something more to say than that.
I definitely think the idea of meaning in life will be central to the show. Like, how could it not be. In the finale you had Outie Mark pretty much lecturing Innie Mark like oh, really sorry man, I landed you in a life without meaning, and Innie Mark being like fuck you, we make our own meaning in there. You have the sort of fake meaning of the Kier cult, you have Milchick struggling with meaning, you have Cobel, you have whats his face, Mark’s brother in law. It’s clearly a central idea in the show and I do think it will end up agreeing with the idea that a working life in a good job is one of the ways to attain meaning. I think you can do that without having to argue for the worth of a soulcrushing desk job.
If the criticism is slow pacing, I totally agree, and given that the creator once said the story he had planned could be done in “3 seasons or 6”, I have a sense of foreboding about that. I think that’s a very distinct criticism from the criticism that the show is Lost-like or heading nowhere.
I liked Cobel’s episode, but I do agree that blowing 10% of the season on it was a bummer. If S2 had been 12-13 episodes, and you still had time to let the other plotlines breathe a bit more (or introduce a new one or two), to remind us that Ricken still exists, etc., then I’m completely fine with it.
Even in this context. Gemma being the numbers is dumb :)
But the real annoying thing is it points me to believe they don’t know what’s going on
The goats and the numbers. It was just a cool
Something in season 1. They didn’t know Gemma was the numbers or what the goats were for. It was all just weirdness
Now they are trying to explain it and it’s dumb
That’s all
I’ve read a lot of PKD and I don’t complain about stuff like that
Same with the expanse. It’s just fun
Severance I felt had the potential in s1 going into s2 to be GOAT level. And it’s just sad it’s not. That’s all.
IDK, I think there’s a difference between a pacing problem and a spending too much time on the wrong things problem. This might be hair splitting I guess.
yeah this, like I’m fine with leaving some things unresolved, but if you’re going to resolve some things it should be worth it. Resolving the (literal) goat question was not worth it.
