Spoilers below.
At last, a grieving Mark has been granted his greatest wish: to see his wife again. But, in both our reality and Severance’s warped version of it, no one earns such an astounding opportunity without paying a price. And as this week’s episode underscores, Lumon is very good at extracting consumer value.
Episode 5, “Trojan’s Horse,” opens with an ominously ambling sequence, in which a mysterious man—whose face we’re not permitted to see clearly—rolls a cart over to Optics & Design; receives from Felicia and her co-worker a set of what appear to be dental tools; and then strolls away down the dark hallway to the elevator from Irving’s paintings—the elevator to the Testing Floor, about which we still know virtually nothing. But it’s possible, if not likely, Mark’s wife is down there.
We then cut to Outie Mark back in his apartment, counting out a handful of pills, which we can assume are medications intended to assist in his reintegration process. (He also drinks from a nasty-looking bottle of what I’ll call Reintegration Juice in his refrigerator.) As he readies himself for work, he takes a call from Devon, telling her that he did indeed agree to let his Innie go on the ORTBO (“the weekend thing,” as Devon describes it) and that Lumon told him his Innie “fell off a rope” and “got a little wet.” (Well, that’s certainly one way to describe what went down last episode.)
Reghabi then appears, and we learn she’s living with Mark to avoid rousing suspicions over her comings and goings. “I haven’t remembered anything else,” he tells her, antsy to experiment more with the reintegration procedure. “Right. Well, maybe your Innie has,” she replies.
Indeed, Reghabi’s got a good hunch. During the ORTBO, Innie Mark witnessed a reintegration flash—seeing Ms. Casey/Gemma in bed with him—while he was canoodling with Helena Eagan, an experience he would now very much prefer to forget. For her part, Helena has recovered from nearly freezing to death in Dieter Eagan National Forest, but her colleagues have decided not to inform her father about the “contretemps,” a.k.a. shitshow, that took place there. Natalie and Mr. Drummond recommend Helena undergo another “obligement session” to deal with her “residual trauma,” but she insists she’s fine. (No idea what an obligement session is, but it sounds vaguely messed-up.) It’s only when they tell Helena that her Innie must go back to the severed floor that she demurs. “I’m not going back down there,” she says. “They’re fucking animals.” But they insist Mark won’t complete Cold Harbor without Innie Helly.
And so we get our beloved Helly back! As she returns to the severed floor, Miss Huang is waiting at the elevator to greet her. Helly—who has not yet met this literal child—can only reply, “Who the fuck are you?” Miss Huang ignores this question and guides Helly to Milchick’s office, where Mark, Dylan, and Milchick himself await. Milchick then explains, in typical Milchick-ese, what happened at the ORTBO: “Helena Eagan, in her executive capacity, was conducting valuable research.”
Helly, rightfully, is horrified at the violation. “By stealing my fucking body?”
Milchick attempts to smooth over her anger with a bit of folkloric propaganda, which, as we know, is a Lumon speciality. He recounts the Swedish story of the Gråkappan, in which a king would go incognito amongst his own people to “learn of their grievances.” Kier Eagan himself, Milchick posits, did the same thing in his ether factories; Helena was essentially following in his footsteps. None of the refiners buy this convenient excuse. “This smells like horseshit,” Mark says, with Dylan tagging on, “Yeah, Swedish horseshit. And Irving is still dead.”
Oh, yes, about Irving! We know from the end of tonight’s episode that Irving is not, in fact, dead, though neither is he on the prolonged cruise voyage Milchick claims he’s enjoying. But it does seem as though Innie Irving will not be returning to the severed floor after the events of the ORTBO. (He’s even been erased from MDR’s framed in-office group photos. What a gut-punch!) Dylan demands they hold a funeral in his honor. Begrudgingly agreeing, Milchick and Miss Huang ready a “bereavement kit,” something usually reserved for Innies who die on the severed floor, but thanks to the “Affections Index” for Irving being in the “high 60s,” Milchick is making an exception. (An Affections Index! Fascinating!)
Miss Huang thinks this is a terrible idea. “You shouldn’t let them have a funeral,” she tells her boss as they ready the kit together. “It makes them feel like people.” Here, Miss Huang is reading directly from the Helena Eagan playbook like a good teacher’s pet. She then asks, pointedly, about Milchick’s upcoming performance review. Is this tween coming for Seth’s job???
Milchik isn’t the only one feeling threatened. Mark is equally tense and ill, coughing at frequent intervals thanks to the stress of his Outie’s reintegration attempts—but also, perhaps, due to the awkwardness of being reunited with Helly. When Helly confronts him in the bathroom, he keeps her at arm’s length, eager to forget what happened between him and Helena at the ORTBO. (Remember, this is still Mark we’re talking about. Even though his Innie has demonstrated a warmer, more open-hearted side of his personality, Innie Mark and Outie Mark are still fundamentally connected. They are both deeply avoidant people, particularly when it comes to rehashing and processing their emotional trauma.)
Mark realizes he might not actually “know” Helly at all, considering how easily Helena fooled him. But what does “knowing” someone look like when their identity is bifurcated? What constitutes the core of a person? To me, that’s one of Severance’s most fascinating questions, and I love the little ways the show tries to address that premise without falling into didacticism.
At Irving’s funeral, the refiners enjoy pieces of Malaysian watermelon in the shape of Irving’s head while Dylan gives a heartfelt, profanity-laden eulogy. (Irving “put the ‘dick’ in ‘contradiction’” nearly made me spit out my coffee.) Behind him, a sign reads that Irving B. worked from “Quarter 870 to Quarter 882,” which means, if my math is correct, that Irving worked at Lumon for only three years. As Helly and Dylan try to honor those three years, Mark is gunning to get back to his desk and bury himself in work—the only distraction available to a severed employee such as himself. He’s being deeply annoying and cruelly uncaring toward Irving, but his frustrations aren’t totally unfounded. He feels as though MDR’s pursuits to fight Lumon are now fruitless thanks to Helena selling them out. Helly insists the subterfuge wasn’t her fault—which it wasn’t!—and pleads that he learn to trust her again. It’s clear Mark wants to, but I’m not sure he knows how.
Dylan, on the other hand, has changed his tune in the wake of Irving’s “death.” In previous episodes this season, he was eager to remain in Lumon’s good graces so as to retain visitation privileges with his Outie’s wife. And while those privileges certainly still hold their allure, Dylan has experienced Irving’s sacrifice as a wake-up call. When he uncovers Irving’s directions to the Testing Floor behind a poster declaring “Hang in There!”—as Irving hinted during the ORTBO—Dylan carefully returns the note to its hiding place to avoid the risk of Lumon discovering it.
That’s a smart strategy, because Lumon is putting its foot down when it comes to MDR’s antics. When Milchick goes in for his performance review, he pauses to ask Natalie—in so many words—if she, too, felt like the “re-canonicalized paintings” from episode 3 were super problematic. She betrays nothing. “Mr. Drummond’s waiting,” she says instead.
Before Mr. Drummond, Milchick undergoes a dehumanizing review. He is criticized for his use of “too many big words”; for putting paperclips on his daily logs incorrectly; and for failing to get MDR to work efficiently. Milchick protests that he “is not Harmony Cobel,” thus his desire for “kindness reforms” on the severed floor. But Drummond claims the “kindness reforms” have done little to move Mark closer to completing Cold Harbor, nor, of course, did the the revelation of Helena Eagan’s identity at the ORTBO. As Drummond reminds Milchick, “Mark’s completion of Cold Harbor will be remembered as one of the greatest moments in the history of this planet.” He recommends that Milchick “go back to the basics” and treat the MDR refiners as “what they really are.” And as we already know from Helena’s comments and Miss Huang’s, Lumon’s policy on severed employees is that they’re not real people.
Milchick takes that reminder to heart. Back on the severed floor, he corners Innie Mark in the elevator as the latter attempts to go home “six minutes early.” When Mark mockingly tells Milchick, “Whatever you say, Mr. Milchick—praise Kier,” his boss steps threateningly close. “Did you tell [Helly] that you fucked her Outie at the ORTBO?” Milchick asks. “Helena Eagan, leader-in-waiting of this company.” Mark looks thoroughly put in his place.
Outside Lumon, Ricken is writing his Lumon propaganda-filled version of The You You Are—much to Devon’s disapproval—while Outie Irving (who is indeed alive!) takes another call in the mysterious phone booth outside his neighborhood of Leonora Lake. “They fired me,” he tells the equally mysterious person on the other side of the line. “I think they knew what my Innie was up to.” He sees a car idling nearby, the same one from earlier this season, and confronts the driver: It’s Burt!!!
“I got this thing,” Burt tells him. “When somebody shows up on my doorstep screaming my name, I want to know why.” Irving admits he doesn’t know why his Innie went to Burt’s house during the overtime contingency, and Burt shares that his own Innie was fired for having an “unsanctioned” relationship on the severed floor. Slowly, they begin to understand that their Innies were in love. Burt does not take this as an indication to step away, however; instead, he invites Irving over for dinner at the home he shares with his husband, Fields. I cannot wait for this scene.
Finally, Outie Mark returns home to Reghabi, who’s been rifling through Gemma’s things to find “pressure points” for his memories: her knitting, her necklace, even what Mark had thought were her cremated remains. (Apparently, Lumon “knows people” at the morgue.) Reghabi says it’s not yet time for another reintegration session—too “risky”—but as Mark climbs the stairs up from his basement, he hears Gemma’s voice (or, rather, Ms. Casey’s voice) whisper, “Your Outie can parallel park in less than 20 seconds.” He then experiences a visceral reintegration flash, in which he walks from the Break Room into Lumon’s severed floor and sees, for the first time, Gemma. “Your Outie is going to—” she begins, which marks the first time Ms. Casey has given a future-tense fact as opposed to a present- or past-tensed one.
As Mark gazes upon his wife for the first time since her death, outfitted in the garb of Ms. Casey, his face melts into a combination of shock, confusion, relief, adoration, and fear. Adam Scott’s performance here is fantastic—and I’m thrilled to suspect it won’t be the last time we see him embody such a wild mixture of emotions. In the meantime, we have Burt, Irving, and Fields’s dinner party to which we can look forward.