Review: Severance, "Hello, Ms. Cobel" | Season 2, Episode 1
Everyone involved in Severance remains really good at what they're doing—whatever that is
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of the much-anticipated, long-delayed second season of Apple TV+ drama Severance. As always, this first review is free to all, but subsequent reviews will be exclusive to paid subscribers. To learn what your support of the newsletter will get you in the months ahead, see our full Winter Schedule.
“Been a minute.”
In the behind-the-scenes feature appended to the end of the second season premiere of Severance, Adam Scott suggests that the premiere picks up “right where season one left off,” but I must protest.
On the one hand, yes: we pick up precisely when Mark S. wakes up after the Overtime Contingency, flashing from his time at his Outie’s sister’s house to getting off the elevator onto the severed floor. But we’re not picking up where the show left off—we’re just picking up where the character left off. Those are two different things after a first season that regularly used Mark’s Outie as a vantage point into the worldbuilding of severance as a part of the social and political order. The Overtime Contingency was transformative for the Innies, yes, but it would have also reverberated in the outside world in a substantial way. And as Mark continued to run through Lumon’s hallways, the camera zooming to follow him through the maze with seemingly little progress, I realized that it was likely his futile search for Wellness and Ms. Casey would mirror the episode’s approach to addressing those larger questions.
This is not a critique, necessarily: “Hello, Ms. Cobel” is probably smart for limiting its perspective to the Innies, even if I’m a bit shocked that Apple would go against their past willingness to debut two episodes of a season simultaneously in cases where they function as a pair. But whole it’s possible the producers wanted this to stand fully alone so we could stew in the questions a bit longer, I’d argue it’s a bit limiting when they’re the same questions we had coming into the season. Although the episode notably presents some claims about the aftermath of the “Macrodat Uprising,” the limited focus means that we have no reason to trust any of it, and in fact are as much in the dark as the characters about what “right where season one left off” really means.
As I note, this is useful in terms of reorienting us with the characters. Logically, there was lots of discussion coming into the season about whether it would be necessary for viewers to revisit season one, what with the nearly three-year hiatus. However, because we’re spending time with characters whose perspective is so limited, there’s not a huge reliance on plot or the more lore-heavy components of what we saw in season one. The “Previously On” is maybe a bit more extensive than it might be for a show that just aired a season last year, but it doesn’t overexplain itself. Its central goal—maybe its only goal—is to give us enough information to understand what is motivating the four Innies once they eventually reunite, and I’d say that comes across clear as day.
What I appreciate about the character focus is how differently the characters are approaching their newfound knowledge of their outer selves. In Mark’s case (I don’t want to keep saying the S., sorry not sorry Mark W.), his realization about Ms. Casey has emboldened him. He knows now that he isn’t actually as severed as he was supposed to be, and now sees his goal as actively serving his Outie in his grief. It’s consistent with their goal to upend the system, and you’d think that everyone else would be on the same page. But what Helly saw on the outside sent her in the exact opposite direction: she now knows that her outie is the system, and remains in an adversarial relationship with her. It’s a fact she doesn’t tell her colleagues, either out of shame or a belief that it would lead the others to distrust her. Irving’s line of questioning about the logics of a night gardener suggest that there may still be some distrust over time, but for now we have one character who is actively trying to help their outie and another who knows that they’re on opposite sides of the conflict, encouraging Mark to see the search for answers about his outie’s wife as being in support of Ms. Casey, “one of us.”
Dylan and Irving aren’t maybe as central to the core of the show and its understanding of severance, but their motivations also shift in the wake of the Overtime Contingency. What Irving saw makes him want to quit entirely: he now realizes the idea of being with Burt on the outside is impossible, and that separation just brings him more pain than anything else (not the mention the pain reflected in his paintings). He’s the only one who seems to really want to leave when given the opportunity, as Dylan is in some ways the most motivated to fight on as the only person who didn’t really experience the outside world in the way the others did. But he’s also the only one who knows that he has a family he’s never met, and that’s clearly central to his decision-making as he calls on Irving to help them gain answers (and to keep this found family he’s using as a stand-in together).
Although we could have a discussion about whether the Innies qualify as “human” in their own right, this is an inherently human conflict, and there’s a real thrill seeing the four characters come together to start refining more macrodata at episode’s end. There’s some gestures to a more dramatic change in the show’s dynamic, considering the guest stars who populate the department when Mark first arrives and Irving’s emotional farewell to Dylan by the stairwell, but the thesis of “Hello, Ms. Cobel” is that the Overtime Contingency didn’t change the team’s resolve to see this out together. Will that resolve be tested by Mark’s flashes of Ms. Casey, Helly’s lie, Irving’s existentialism, and Dylan’s yearning for a family he doesn’t know? Absolutely, but the premiere wants us to feel a sense of relief that “all is well” once the characters are returned to sorting random numbers into boxes.
Where “Hello, Ms. Cobel” explores new territory is in the actions of Mr. Milchick, who is now in charge of the Severed Floor after the alleged “erotic fixation” on Mark led to her firing.1 This is a fundamentally inscrutable show, and what’s clear is that any time Milchick interacts with the Innies he is performing. Whereas we knew that Cobel had gone rogue, we have no reason to believe that Milchick is similarly inclined, based on how he is approaching the task at hand. And so we have to ask ourselves why Lumon wanted Mark to return alone alongside a new group of severed employees…or, honestly, whether they were severed employees at all. We have to question everything we see, and consider its utility to a company that has loftier goals for severance than whatever it is Mark and the group are doing in that basement.
As I mentioned above, I will state plainly that everything Milchick and the claymation video say about the impact of the “Macrodat Uprising” is bullshit. The idea that they would be praised as heroes and on the verge of meaningful social reform on the issue of severance is a fiction Lumon wants them to believe, but we know it can’t be reality: there’s no way Helly’s Outie would participate, because her whole goal in becoming severed was to normalize the process from within the company. Lumon wants them to see themselves as heroes, but it also doesn’t know exactly what they know, which is what I think Mark’s initial reintegration was all about. It’s possible that Lumon would also have a reason to extend that fiction/fantasy to other severed characters, but I’m left to wonder if Alia Shawkat is actually a Lumon employee posing as an Innie to figure out what Mark actually knows about his experience. Because he was with Cobel, his reintegration is the most complicated, and the whole song and dance of a new department strikes me as a strategic move to give them time to plan how best to move forward.
That does end up manifesting as the whole team being reunited, but with the very structured experience of the “Lumon is Listening! “ video and its accompanying inspirational posters (which includes an image of Dylan holding the buttons). It’s theoretically another piece of lore, giving us information like how many countries Lumon operates in (206) and hints at future perks (Pineapple Bobbing sure is a thing). But once we get past the weirdly upbeat narration from an uncredited Keanu Reeves, you realize that this feels micro-targeted to these subjects, and the idea of Lumon showing this to every Innie seems like a clear lie. They’re trying to clean up their mess, figuring out the best way to undercut the team’s efforts while also—and here’s where things get confusing—keeping them as employees.
That’s what I’m really hung up on after this premiere. We could get lost in smaller questions, like the idea of a child working as Milchick’s deputy or the suggestions from the short-lived refining team about how their workspaces differed from this one. But what’s unclear at this point is why exactly Lumon is keeping these people on despite their threat to the process. Milchick is obviously enacting a plan to try to peel off Dylan, as the character whose love of perks means he can be manipulated into making selfish decisions—the “Outie Family Visitation Suite” is a fiction designed solely for his benefit. But is the “work” they’re doing really so important that they can’t just be shown the door? Even if we argue that Helly needs to stay, is it really worth the risk to have someone like Mark who knows that his Outie’s dead wife has been reanimated on the severed floor showing up to work every day like normal?
The best answer is that the reality of the outside world is one where normalcy is key, and where it would be more suspicious if Mark were to suddenly be removed from the program. And while Milchick may suggest Cobel has been fired, it’s telling that her name is still popping up on his computer screen, frustrating as it might be for him. I honestly believe Milchick that he doesn’t want to be their jailer—he did not sign up for the shit that they put him through last season. But we still don’t have a clear grasp on his sense of agency, and what few scenes we see with the character alone suggest a degree of frustration with having been turned into a shambolic rube (like when he slams the door on Miss Huang, who really is just a straight-up child, huh?).
Which is all to say that we don’t have the full lay of the land yet to understand what exact story Severance intends to tell this season. What we do have a clearer idea of is the season’s vibes. We don’t suddenly rush into answers, and the claustrophobia of staying exclusively with the Innies is a calculated risk of sacrificing narrative clarity for emotional clarity. It’s a risk that mostly pays off, even if there’s a part of me that wonders what airing next week’s episode—which I haven’t seen writing this—might have given us a better place to start theorizing from, even if I believe Apple sees abject confusion as a vital part of the show’s appeal.
And that remains deeply refreshing. As you’ve read as I posted my reviews of season one over the past couple months, Severance was the first show I covered here at Episodic Medium, and by the time of its finale the site had garnered enough subscribers for our conversations to harken back to the golden age of taking television seriously on the internet. From the show’s presence at the top of Apple’s recent viewership rankings to the level of critical discourse coming out of the hype cycle, it’s clear we want this to be that show, and “Hello, Ms. Cobel” largely suggests that Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller want to deliver on that promise. There’s some frustration built into that which the season will have to resolve in time, but right now there’s no pressure: it’s fine to run in circles for an episode provided where we end up leaves us in a productive space of dialogue and debate.
The sustainability of that over an entire season is one of those pesky unanswered questions that we’ll be ruminating on through the rest of the winter.
Stray observations
Normally I’d give a disclaimer here that despite having screeners, I haven’t seen beyond this episode so we’re all in the same place in terms of theorizing, but Apple used a tiered system to send out the first group of episodes and hasn’t responded to any of my follow-up emails to try to get access. So at least for now, I’m in the same boat as y’all, so no need to worry about gesturing to things I’ve seen but not yet written about. (And these might sometimes not come until Friday morning).
“Would you be open to using a different first name to avoid confusion?”—Bob Balaban remains a delight, even if nothing he does will ever top his concern over a two-dimensional banjo for me.
In addition to the uncredited Keanu performance, the “Water Tower” character is credited to SNL’s Sarah Sherman.
“Did you see any buttes?”—this whole line of questioning strikes me as suspicious, per the above, but I appreciated the return to the weirdness of the Innies not being allowed to know what state they’re in.
Every time Mark got sent up the elevator, I keep hoping we were going to follow his Outie, which I took as a conscious tease given the unanswered questions there. An effective device, even if it became extra confusing when Mark was “fired” and then seemed to get off on a different floor entirely?
The idea that the Perpetuity Wing is a marker of the age of a particular unit, with some having animatronics and others brooms with plates, is a lovely detail that I hope we eventually see come to life. I wanna see that choreographed dance.
Sarah Bock plays Miss Huang, and doesn’t seem to have a lot of acting experience, but the way she corrected Mark that she wasn’t his friend? Chilling, and makes me wonder how much of her story the show intends to tell (she is a series regular).
If you stayed through the credits—which were notably not in the opening title sequence, which the show skipped—then you have an idea of who is or is not still a part of the show moving forward, but the trailer and the “behind-the-scenes” thing basically already spoiled most of it, so doesn’t seem like they really want to keep it a secret.
And thus begins our journey back to Severance. Back in 2022, I predicted this would happen in 2023, and would potentially be among our first shows to return for another round of coverage. Instead, we’d heading into the end of our third year, and I’m thrilled to be returning to the show alongside a lively and thriving community. Let’s see if we can’t dethrone some of those Better Call Saul reviews (sorry, Donna!) from our top-commented posts—I feel confident this can become one of the best spaces online to discuss the season, so thanks for being here and I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to be an even bigger part of it.
My boyfriend pointed out that the subtitles got this wrong: they say “neutoric fixation,” which doesn’t track with the throuple theory.
> It’s a fact she doesn’t tell her colleagues, either out of shame or a belief that it would lead the others to distrust her
A far too compelling theory is that it's because she's Helena, not Helly
I’m very much on team “Helly = Helena,” with Lumon kind of switching off the Severance chip (assuming that’s possible) so they can gather information about what the others learned/told people on the outside. Her behaviour seemed kind of off and unnatural throughout, and it just doesn’t seem like it would make a ton of sense for Helena or Lumon at large to willingly let Helly back in with the others after the MDR team presumably caused such a ruckus, which was probably a PR disaster. It also explains why there’s no microphones or security cameras.
That raises the bigger question though - what happened to “our” Helly? Does she still exist somewhere, will she be able to come back, or is she gone? At the end of S1 Cobel suggested that the Helly identity would be more or less killed after the gala with the others “left to suffer”, which could be what we’re seeing here. I hope that’s not true of course, and I’m guessing Mark and co. will figure out something’s off pretty soon.
I’m sort of fixated on the person Mark saw standing behind him in the hallway outside wellness - the body type kind of looked like Mark himself, so I’m wondering if we might be seeing some kind of reintegration with Mark? Or at least, the boundaries between Innie and Outie Mark blurring a bit. Lots of question, and a hell of a first episode. Somehow even more excited to see where this season goes now