Speaker 1: Before we dive in, here's another show you can enjoy
Speaker 1: in the True Story FM Family of Entertainment podcasts.
Speaker 2: Do you like movies? Do you like sports? And we
Speaker 2: never thought I never played that sport on the screen,
Speaker 2: but I really enjoyed how the movie made me feel.
Speaker 3: Well, then have we got a show for you. The
Speaker 3: Adrian Moment is where my friend Ocean and I discussed
Speaker 3: the triangulation of sports, movies and life.
Speaker 2: We dive deep into the movies, discussing how they relate
Speaker 2: to and have affected our lives.
Speaker 3: We will talk about why the sport matters to the movie,
Speaker 3: why you don't have to love the sport to enjoy
Speaker 3: the movie, and mine a few nuggets of meaning inside
Speaker 3: the story you may not have realized was really there.
Speaker 2: After listening to our show, come join us for more
Speaker 2: conversations about the movie if that portray the thrill of victory.
Speaker 4: And the agony of defeat.
Speaker 2: Find The Adrian Moment podcast on your Favorit podcast hat
Speaker 2: and join us while we cover the sports you love
Speaker 2: and the ones you never think about.
Speaker 3: You will never see sports or sport movies the same again.
Speaker 3: Meet and Zinnia being very polite to someone who is
Speaker 3: attempting to kid us her wife's saffron. You know, I'm wildly,
Speaker 3: madly in love with him and their best friend Goldie
Speaker 3: Glad we didn't miss all the fun. Swords in hand,
Speaker 3: they defend their city from the worst of humanity. I
Speaker 3: am Lord Buxton Blue.
Speaker 4: What are the Electric hairg Virgil Walcome Vicious Suad.
Speaker 3: Follow their adventures on the Swashbuckling Ladies Debate Society audio
Speaker 3: drama podcast available now at true story dot fm. Slash Swashbuckling.
Speaker 4: Commencing superhero ethics re entry procedure the podcast eennies of
Speaker 4: both Matthew and Riki have now joined the feed. What
Speaker 4: their audis are doing, we don't know, but their eennies
Speaker 4: are here within the world of the podcast to discuss
Speaker 4: Severance season two as well as the show as a whole.
Speaker 4: And now I will stop trying to be creepy. Welcome
Speaker 4: Reaky to this conversation and say, Reeky, we did some
Speaker 4: coverage on this show about season one. I think most
Speaker 4: of our listeners I'm hoping are watching Severance, but it
Speaker 4: is on Apple, which not everyone's gonna watch, and so
Speaker 4: we're gonna as much as we can talk about the
Speaker 4: issues it raises without going too deep into the show itself,
Speaker 4: and we'll try and kind of like make sure you're
Speaker 4: up to date with things. Of course, we are going
Speaker 4: to be spoiling things like crazy. So if you do
Speaker 4: want to watch the show, if you do have a
Speaker 4: way to get Apple TV, We're not going to ask
Speaker 4: you how you do it. We're just gonna encourage you
Speaker 4: to do it. Watch the show come back. But for
Speaker 4: everybody else, Reeky, let's just start with kind of what
Speaker 4: was your overall thoughts on severnce even season.
Speaker 1: One, season one or two.
Speaker 4: Season one just kind of catch us up to people
Speaker 4: have heard mine, Rob's thoughts on it. Just kind of
Speaker 4: catch up to where what your starting point was, and
Speaker 4: they will jump into season two.
Speaker 1: I would say that I liked season one a lot,
Speaker 1: a great deal, and so was looking forward to season two,
Speaker 1: and for me, season two was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a letdown.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that I kind
Speaker 4: of feel the same way. I feel like Severance more
Speaker 4: than anything, is a show that it started as what
Speaker 4: if we can use this kind of interesting sci fi concept,
Speaker 4: namely the idea that you could be severed in your
Speaker 4: mind and have a persona that exists only at work,
Speaker 4: and that while you're at work, you wouldn't have to
Speaker 4: have any of the thoughts or feelings or memories of
Speaker 4: the person you left outside your AUDI. But that also
Speaker 4: you're AUDI would not have to deal with any of
Speaker 4: the stuff that you were doing on the inside. And
Speaker 4: so it's a commentary on the way we try to
Speaker 4: repress our feelings and our memories and our thoughts. It's
Speaker 4: a kind of commentary on office culture and office you know,
Speaker 4: drudgery and now people similar to talk about wishing they
Speaker 4: could just disassociate for eight hours of the day, and
Speaker 4: it raised all sorts of great issues, And I think
Speaker 4: in season two. In season one, they started trying to
Speaker 4: build with it and play with it and bring about
Speaker 4: a plot. But season two they really tried to run
Speaker 4: with that plot a lot further. And I feel like,
Speaker 4: as we're going to talk about, I love the questions
Speaker 4: that they're raising, I love the way they're continuing to
Speaker 4: discuss them, but I feel like they tried to take
Speaker 4: us a lot deeper into that plot and to make
Speaker 4: that plot a lot more convoluted and complex without really
Speaker 4: answering all the questions that they're setting up instead just
Speaker 4: making things seem weirder and weirder and more surreal in ways.
Speaker 4: They kind of fit into a lot of the mystery
Speaker 4: bock culture stuff that I'm not really a big fan of.
Speaker 4: So I've definitely enjoyed season two. I'm glad I watched it.
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot to talk about, but I
Speaker 4: think I agree with you. I like season one more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you used the phrase mystery box because
Speaker 1: that was definitely at the forefront of my mind when
Speaker 1: watching the show. It does a good job of that.
Speaker 1: And then one of the things I've read about season
Speaker 1: two is that it asks more questions than it answers yes,
Speaker 1: and that that is like a hallmark of mystery box
Speaker 1: type shows, and I don't like it. I used to
Speaker 1: like it, but then I kept watching shows that didn't
Speaker 1: answer all the questions and kept asking more and more
Speaker 1: and expanding the lore and ways that are not satisfying.
Speaker 1: And that was definitely something that I felt in season two,
Speaker 1: was like, you're giving us like all these things, but
Speaker 1: they're still not connecting to me in a satisfying way.
Speaker 1: And I think you have to have some satisfying connections
Speaker 1: in a season of television that makes you go, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on, and that, in addition to the mystery,
Speaker 1: continuing mystery is what brings you back.
Speaker 4: And I think you're right about that. I think this
Speaker 4: is kind where we're going to start. And I you know,
Speaker 4: this is more kind of TV critique maybe, but I
Speaker 4: think it's connected because it talks about like the kind
Speaker 4: of what we enjoy in the journey that TV shows
Speaker 4: take us on and the questions that they raise, et cetera.
Speaker 4: This is a show that loves to play with a
Speaker 4: surreal where there's a lot of things that just everyone
Speaker 4: accepts as for granted that to us as outsiders, seem
Speaker 4: very weird and kind of completely out of left field,
Speaker 4: you know, and that they they have little dance parties
Speaker 4: among the group, and they melon parties are a way
Speaker 4: that people get celebrated, and there's just all kinds of
Speaker 4: random things like this. And I think part of the
Speaker 4: problem is that, you know, a lot of the plot develops,
Speaker 4: we learn more about sort of the lore of this
Speaker 4: company Lumen that's behind this sufference, because you know, we've
Speaker 4: moved from not just sort of asking this question of
Speaker 4: like what about if this was just a benign procedure,
Speaker 4: but now learning that there's actually this dark conspiracy behind
Speaker 4: the company that's leading this procedure. But at the end
Speaker 4: of season we still no idea really what that is.
Speaker 1: It's a cult. Do you get that feeling?
Speaker 4: It's very much a cult. But I think what I'm
Speaker 4: going with, And tell me if this is kind of
Speaker 4: how you feel as well, when everything seems kind of
Speaker 4: like the next development is random, and the next development
Speaker 4: is out of left field, the next development is as well,
Speaker 4: it's hard to find the patterns. And I think what
Speaker 4: sometimes for me really satisfying in a show is when
Speaker 4: you can start to say, oh, okay, I didn't expect
Speaker 4: twist number two, and I didn't expect twist number three,
Speaker 4: but twist clue. Yeah, you can kind of like see
Speaker 4: the pattern, and now you can kind of start to
Speaker 4: anticipate and and you're viewing of the show changes as
Speaker 4: you're no longer totally out of left field. You're kind
Speaker 4: of thrown into the world, but you're starting to figure
Speaker 4: it out. And I feel like you're right. I just
Speaker 4: have so many more questions than I do, and I
Speaker 4: don't know if this is the case, but I think
Speaker 4: if I'm remembering correctly, things I've read from the people
Speaker 4: who wrote the show confirm this. I find that a
Speaker 4: good general rule about how much I enjoy mystery box
Speaker 4: shows is when the writers start writing the mysteries, have
Speaker 4: they already figured out all the answers? And there are
Speaker 4: shows that do that, and I think wind up being
Speaker 4: wonderfully put together because of it, because they do plan
Speaker 4: on coming up with the answers eventually for you, and
Speaker 4: they've already planned them out, and there's less of a
Speaker 4: feeling of like they're just throwing stuff at the wall
Speaker 4: and then, like you know, JJ abrams Is famously said
Speaker 4: about Lost that he didn't have any idea where everything
Speaker 4: was going, and I think it really shows in the
Speaker 4: show Battlestar Galactago, one of my favorite science fiction shows,
Speaker 4: a really good one, but I think really suffered because
Speaker 4: they kept adding more mysteries and they didn't actually have
Speaker 4: an idea of where it would end. And this is
Speaker 4: definitely feeling like that first one to me, and I
Speaker 4: think part of what I'm frustrated by it is because
Speaker 4: it feels like it's kind of obscuring the actual really
Speaker 4: interesting questions that the show was raising. About personality and
Speaker 4: about who we are and about the choices we make,
Speaker 4: and about office work and all these things, and so
Speaker 4: I'm just kind of like, yeah, I wish the show
Speaker 4: was doing more of the stuff that I wanted it
Speaker 4: to do, and and other people may love the way
Speaker 4: it went and that's totally legitimate, but it's for me
Speaker 4: is the ephesis. That's what I want to focus more on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, like the whole CULTI vibe. One of
Speaker 1: the big things we got in season two was the goats,
Speaker 1: or they expanded on the goats, and we got to
Speaker 1: learn like the whole department of mammalian whatever, and then
Speaker 1: they were getting ready to sacrifice the goat, and again
Speaker 1: that's like, this is some kind of cult, Like it's
Speaker 1: very satanic, et cetera, and we don't really know what
Speaker 1: that means. And at some point in theory hopefully they
Speaker 1: explain like this is what the goats are for. But it,
Speaker 1: as you said, it like feels random. It does not
Speaker 1: feel like a thread where we the audience can figure
Speaker 1: it out beforehand through the clups. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: take some random stabs at it, but it's just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, sure it could be anything. It could
Speaker 1: be anything well, and so let's pull it.
Speaker 4: To some of the questions that the show really is
Speaker 4: asking that I think are fun to talk about, even
Speaker 4: if we don't necessarily love the way they're trying to
Speaker 4: try to answer them. One of I think the big
Speaker 4: questions about the show is this idea of literally the
Speaker 4: severance itself of can you kind of have these two
Speaker 4: aspects of your personality? And I think, like a lot
Speaker 4: of good science fiction, a lot of what the show
Speaker 4: is doing is taking things that we think of metaphorically,
Speaker 4: you know, like I've got my work sona and my
Speaker 4: you know, work wife and stuff like that, and ah,
Speaker 4: isn't that funny? But of course I go home to
Speaker 4: my real life and things like that, And it's kind
Speaker 4: of taking that to a logical stream of what if
Speaker 4: you really fully could sever those things? Having now watched
Speaker 4: two seasons of it, if we take away the cult stuff,
Speaker 4: if we take away a lot of that, what do
Speaker 4: you think of this general idea and how it's playing
Speaker 4: out of can you is it ethical to have these
Speaker 4: two different parts of your person on it that are
Speaker 4: fully separated like this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, that's my favorite part still of
Speaker 1: this show is that essentially each actor plays two characters, right,
Speaker 1: and we are finally seeing the two characters in the
Speaker 1: same body start to interact. Not directly obviously, because that
Speaker 1: is impossible, but we do get some interesting scenes with
Speaker 1: the video camera recording and talking to themselves, right. But
Speaker 1: especially the character of Dylan right played by Zach Cherry,
Speaker 1: having a second relationship with his wife was probably the
Speaker 1: most interesting thing to me that happened in the season.
Speaker 4: One of the things the show sets up is that
Speaker 4: they want the any to really know almost nothing about
Speaker 4: the Audi, because they want it to be really just
Speaker 4: you're only there for work and you don't have these
Speaker 4: outside things. But they were finding that there's a natural
Speaker 4: curiosity and so they want to slowly give people very
Speaker 4: generalized information. And again it's all done in this wonderful
Speaker 4: parody of you know, sort of office self help culture.
Speaker 4: That's really great. But one of the things that happened
Speaker 4: in the first sevenment first season is that Dylan's Audi
Speaker 4: kind of broke containment. And there's a moment where when
Speaker 4: Dillian's sorry, Dylan's Innie, and so when there's a moment
Speaker 4: when Dylan's Inni is the one in control, of the body.
Speaker 4: He recognizes that he has a son and that he
Speaker 4: has a wife, and it haunts him because now he
Speaker 4: knows these things, and so he wants to start having visits,
Speaker 4: and the woman who his AUDI is married to starts
Speaker 4: coming to visit him, and he starts to develop feelings
Speaker 4: for her, And just to give you to the contrast,
Speaker 4: the two other kind of relationships that we have are
Speaker 4: the Mark Scott, Mark S, who's kind of our main
Speaker 4: character I think hid by second.
Speaker 1: The character is Scout, the actor is Scout.
Speaker 4: Thank you sorry, it's Adam Scout, Adam Scott playing Mark Scout,
Speaker 4: also known as Mark S. In general, the full name
Speaker 4: is the Audi, the initial is the Innie, and he
Speaker 4: is our kind of the main character who's figuring all
Speaker 4: this out, and his Inenie wants out, and there's a
Speaker 4: whole much more complication to his character. But basically, his
Speaker 4: Audi has realized that he and his wife were kind
Speaker 4: of like taken into this program without their full consent
Speaker 4: in some ways, that his wife, who we thought was dead,
Speaker 4: might actually still be alive inside the system, and he
Speaker 4: wants to use his Inni to go find her. But meanwhile,
Speaker 4: his Inenie is developing relationships for another Innie, and there's
Speaker 4: a conflict there about you know, what's gonna happen and
Speaker 4: if if Mark can fully get himself out, what will
Speaker 4: happen to the Innie. And then the third is the
Speaker 4: character of Henny and Henny's Inennie is kind of one
Speaker 4: of the most rebellious, one of the moones who's most
Speaker 4: fighting this one of the moones who's most like, I
Speaker 4: don't want to be an Innie. And we find out
Speaker 4: that her Audi actually is the daughter of the person
Speaker 4: running the company, and so her Audi is even more
Speaker 4: so like pushing her INNI to force her to be
Speaker 4: in there. And we saw some of that in season one,
Speaker 4: it becomes even more so in season two. All that
Speaker 4: is just kind of give context to the Dylan conversation,
Speaker 4: which I'm sorry interrupted, so kind of getting back to Dylan,
Speaker 4: what really struck you about how that played out, about
Speaker 4: having the Innie start to develop a relationship that he
Speaker 4: wanted with the woman who the Audi was married to,
Speaker 4: And the conclusion it comes to is that the Audi
Speaker 4: severs his severance. He wants to stop working at this company,
Speaker 4: which means that the Innie, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 4: ceases to exist and ask one of the questions that
Speaker 4: asked is that murder? Is that the killing of a
Speaker 4: person or persona or is it just a part of you?
Speaker 4: Or how do you frame that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to go back real quick. The
Speaker 1: character played by Britt lau Or her name is Helly,
Speaker 1: Helly sorry, thank you, the Inny character and the Audi
Speaker 1: is Helena.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes? But yeah, so where to start? Like the thing
Speaker 1: with Dylan is I found it. I guess funny because
Speaker 1: he's essentially in a love triangle or square, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what kind of shape it is, right, because
Speaker 1: his Audi is married to his wife and then she
Speaker 1: comes to visit the Innie on the on the severed floor.
Speaker 1: And then, as you said that, the Inny also develops
Speaker 1: feelings and falls in love and even reproposes to his
Speaker 1: own wife. And she's in this position where it's it's
Speaker 1: the same body, like it's the body of her husband
Speaker 1: that she loves, but the persona, the personality is so
Speaker 1: different that she actually my belief is that she falls
Speaker 1: in love with the Innie as she's falling out of
Speaker 1: love with the Audi, right, And we get these interesting
Speaker 1: scenes of that conflict and part.
Speaker 4: Of what's going on in that is that, as mentioned,
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why some of these people do
Speaker 4: severance isn't just because they don't want to have to
Speaker 4: deal with the drudgery of office work. It's because in
Speaker 4: their day to day life, they're carrying all this pain
Speaker 4: with them or sadness or on wei or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: and they don't want to deal with that eight hours
Speaker 4: of the day. And in Dylan's case, it's made him
Speaker 4: kind of a jerk to his wife. And so part
Speaker 4: of the issue is not only that the Enny develops
Speaker 4: feelings for the woman that his Audi is married to,
Speaker 4: but also that she starts to develop feelings for him
Speaker 4: in part because she reminds him of the Dylan that
Speaker 4: she first fell in love with, who the guy she's
Speaker 4: actually married to, isn't really that guy anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what this show does with Dylan is it
Speaker 1: asked the question about like work experience and skills and
Speaker 1: you and Rob talked about this in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: But Dylan, the inny is good at his job right right,
Speaker 1: and he's proud of that. He's got his little like
Speaker 1: achievement awards on his desk, and the out he doesn't
Speaker 1: have those skills So there's a brief moment at the
Speaker 1: beginning of season two when Dylan is fired for having
Speaker 1: instigated the incident at the end of season one, and
Speaker 1: he goes to these job interviews and he's like, on
Speaker 1: his resume it says he worked at Lumen, but he
Speaker 1: was severed, so he doesn't have any skills from that.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have work experience that he can cite and
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I'm good at this. And that's part
Speaker 1: of the part of what I guess drives Dylan's depression
Speaker 1: or on WII as you called it, right, and makes
Speaker 1: makes that character less desirable to his wife because he
Speaker 1: is not gaining that satisfaction of doing a good job
Speaker 1: at work. And that is like in our real lives,
Speaker 1: like that can be a part of your personality, and
Speaker 1: what makes you a person, right, is the happiness you
Speaker 1: gain from a job. I mean, you talked about wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be nice to sever and just like disassociate from
Speaker 1: your job. But it's a you know, approximately a third
Speaker 1: of our lives or a quarter right time wise, and
Speaker 1: that can can make you who you are.
Speaker 4: No, I think that's definitely true, and I think I
Speaker 4: think we span job there to talk about like you know,
Speaker 4: homemaking and stuff like that. It's not just like being
Speaker 4: paid to do something. But one of the things I
Speaker 4: think is so fascinating, again, this is the kind of
Speaker 4: thing I wanted the show to explore more, is like
Speaker 4: I think one of the points of the show, especially
Speaker 4: in season one, but also in this one, is that
Speaker 4: a problem with the modern office environment is that a
Speaker 4: lot of people aren't getting that because what they're doing
Speaker 4: is just moving numbers around from one's box to another,
Speaker 4: or you know, shuffling papers and emails, and they're one
Speaker 4: cog in this much larger machine, and it's hard to
Speaker 4: see that they are actually getting anything, and that a
Speaker 4: lot of people go to work and don't come home
Speaker 4: with that kind of feeling. And that what the show
Speaker 4: kind of posits is the idea that if you actually
Speaker 4: part of it is that there's this this disconnect between
Speaker 4: the part of ourselves. As you said, that's all those
Speaker 4: other things that we bring with us into the office
Speaker 4: that want to be doing more than just moving numbers
Speaker 4: from one box to another. But that if you cut
Speaker 4: all that off, you know that that Dylan with all
Speaker 4: that cut off, where all he knows is the number
Speaker 4: because it literally is just moving numbers from one box
Speaker 4: to another without any idea of the context of it.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the mystery boxes that's kind of
Speaker 4: teased at but not really fully explored in the show.
Speaker 4: Again to the frustration, But the point is very much
Speaker 4: that the workers don't know. But because they don't have
Speaker 4: any context for that, and they are given these little
Speaker 4: awards like, hey, you did well, you get a melon party,
Speaker 4: you get a dance party, you get these little things,
Speaker 4: it is enough for Dylan's any And I think that's
Speaker 4: the irony as You're right, I think Dylan's Audi is
Speaker 4: completely denied the satisfaction of a good job at work
Speaker 4: that Dylan's INNI gets. But I think what we're supposed
Speaker 4: to think is that if Dylan's Audi was doing this
Speaker 4: kind of part of why it happened in the beginning
Speaker 4: is that if Dylan's Audi was bringing all of himself
Speaker 4: into the office, he'd be incredibly dissatisfied but doing this
Speaker 4: kind of work, and that that's kind of the catch
Speaker 4: twenty two at the heart of all of it.
Speaker 1: I disagree with that, okay, because I mean, any Dylan
Speaker 1: is very happy like with his work, right right, and
Speaker 1: and the work itself, Like you say, it's just moving
Speaker 1: the numbers, and we don't we are the characters don't
Speaker 1: know why they're doing it, but it is shown that
Speaker 1: they gain like a weird emotional satisfaction from doing it,
Speaker 1: and they don't know why, they just feel it. They're like,
Speaker 1: these numbers feel good, these numbers feel bad, and moving
Speaker 1: them into the correct boxes like gives them an emotional satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and that's why they keep doing it, even at the
Speaker 1: point where they are trying to rebel against Luman. Right.
Speaker 4: I agree with you, I guess I guess my thought
Speaker 4: maybe this may be my bias because I'm someone who's
Speaker 4: never been comfortable in an office setting, so maybe I'm
Speaker 4: the wrong audience for this. I feel like part of
Speaker 4: the point, though, is that the reason they're able to
Speaker 4: find that satisfaction is because they're bringing nothing else into them.
Speaker 4: You know, they're not thinking about their brother in law
Speaker 4: who has a job that they really love and gets
Speaker 4: to do this meaningful work and they're comparing themselves to that.
Speaker 4: They're not thinking about all the stuff they've seen on
Speaker 4: TV about people who have good jobs or bad jobs.
Speaker 4: They're just not bringing all that baggage in with them,
Speaker 4: because you're right, I think Luman has created a situation
Speaker 4: where for these people's any is they can be very
Speaker 4: satisfied at work, and here again is our frustration because
Speaker 4: maybe we wish they'd explored this further. My take was
Speaker 4: that they were saying, like, but if a fully realized
Speaker 4: person wouldn't be satisfied with this in the same way,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't get that same emotional satisfaction, And maybe dialing
Speaker 4: with the exception, but I think for the most part
Speaker 4: it wouldn't be the case.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's that they wouldn't gain satisfaction. Again,
Speaker 1: this is the mystery box aspect, but I think what's
Speaker 1: going on is that they need to be severed in
Speaker 1: order to be able to do that work, is what
Speaker 1: seems to be implied. Yeah, so I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like a I don't know. I think it's that something
Speaker 1: they're going to show, that something in the brains needs
Speaker 1: this disconnection, disassociation in order to be able to identify
Speaker 1: the four where are they the four humors? No, that's
Speaker 1: not the word, but it's like the four emotions of
Speaker 1: kier Egan as part of this cult.
Speaker 4: MM hmmm, sense. Yeah, So what did you think of
Speaker 4: the way it ended in terms of the Audi getting
Speaker 4: to decide that he's going to I think I think
Speaker 4: most of us think it's perfect legitimate, take a different job,
Speaker 4: go to a different area, do a you know, change
Speaker 4: what they're doing, but that the result of that is
Speaker 4: that this aspect of their persona that's given its own
Speaker 4: sentience and its own worth, is just ended turned off,
Speaker 4: which is an effect killing it.
Speaker 1: Uh, you're talking about Dylan right right.
Speaker 4: We're gonna get Marc ass faces that conundrum and fights
Speaker 4: back about it in a way that any Dylan doesn't.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that, but I think Dylan's for that reason,
Speaker 4: We're meant to see Dylan to kind of frame the
Speaker 4: question that then mark As is going to wrestle with.
Speaker 1: I think for Dylan's sake, Dylan, initially it's the any
Speaker 1: Dylan who asks for termination, right, and then Audi Dylan
Speaker 1: actually denies him that.
Speaker 4: Oh no, yes, you are correct. Okay, Yeah, so I
Speaker 4: apologize to our viewers. Normally we try to watch these
Speaker 4: things right when we try to record these things fairly
Speaker 4: soon after we've seen them, or if not, at least
Speaker 4: just kind of keep them fresh. In this case, it
Speaker 4: finished a little while ago. We were trying to record
Speaker 4: with Rob but schedules just didn't line up, So we're
Speaker 4: now recording a little bit after that. And in that time,
Speaker 4: both Last of Us and and Or have been coming
Speaker 4: out which have been incredibly heavy, and so I'm mixing
Speaker 4: up some of the details. So that's my apology there.
Speaker 1: So it's also just confusing because it's again the same
Speaker 1: actor and we're trying to talk about two different versions
Speaker 1: of him, and the word you know, Innie and Audi
Speaker 1: are not normal words that we really use contextually normally
Speaker 1: for characters. So I'm going to try to rephrase this again.
Speaker 1: So the Inny Dylan has been meeting his Audi wife
Speaker 1: fall they fall in love and he proposes, and she's
Speaker 1: like no, like I can't do this, it's too weird,
Speaker 1: and leaves and that breaks any Dylan's heart, I guess
Speaker 1: you would say, and he just wants to end it
Speaker 1: essentially like I would say, like he wants to commit
Speaker 1: suicide right by ending his existence. Like that's that is
Speaker 1: the implication that this show wants us to have about
Speaker 1: the any Audi situation. And when an indy terminates their
Speaker 1: employment at lumin like they are going to cease to exist.
Speaker 4: Right, And I think they're You're right, nipology and you're
Speaker 4: thinking it's all coming back to me. It's also it's
Speaker 4: raising kind of a related issue of that, you know,
Speaker 4: what rights do the ani have? Because I think part
Speaker 4: of what comes up for him is that what he's
Speaker 4: realizing is that the AUDI creates this person in order
Speaker 4: to serve their own desires and needs, and they make
Speaker 4: very legitimate ones, you know, to not have to deal
Speaker 4: with in office eight hours a day, or do not
Speaker 4: have to carry with you the pain of the loss
Speaker 4: of a wife, as Mark Ast does, Mark Scout, et cetera.
Speaker 4: But that part of what happens is this sense of like,
Speaker 4: if you're creating a whole other persona, you're creating a
Speaker 4: whole person whose literal purpose of existence is to suffer
Speaker 4: so that you don't have to suffer. And I think
Speaker 4: that's part of what Dylan's pushes back on. It's like, Hey,
Speaker 4: he doesn't want to carry all this weight for Dylan
Speaker 4: the Audi if he can't even have relationships, if he
Speaker 4: can't have his own self actualization with a woman he
Speaker 4: has come to care about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Audi Dylan denies the request and writes him
Speaker 1: a letter and it was it was a beautiful letter
Speaker 1: and really like, I think that letter is why the
Speaker 1: Dylan story is my favorite, because Audi Dylan talks about how, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the reason like this is all happening in this
Speaker 1: way is that Audi Dylan has lost some of his
Speaker 1: spark for life, right, and he recognizes that his wife
Speaker 1: sees that spark in any Dylan, so he's like, that
Speaker 1: is still a part of me somehow, And I think
Speaker 1: he uses a phrase like I want to be the
Speaker 1: man that you are like for my wife, right, like
Speaker 1: to find that again in myself. And I just found
Speaker 1: that really touching in an interesting way because it it
Speaker 1: asks this question of yeah, like who are we like
Speaker 1: what is identity? And you know other characters have gone
Speaker 1: through reintegration and you wonder like, is this going to
Speaker 1: end with Dylan being able to reintegrate is two different
Speaker 1: personalities and be like the single happy person again.
Speaker 4: And I think this is also where the metaphor of
Speaker 4: it becomes really powerful, because you know, I think Severance
Speaker 4: is taking this to an extreme that that none of
Speaker 4: us go to. And I do want to say here,
Speaker 4: by the way that they worked with science advisors most
Speaker 4: uh specifically, I had a name of a second hold
Speaker 4: on that they worked with science. They worked with a
Speaker 4: number of science advisors, most specifically UH A doctor V. J. Argowall,
Speaker 4: who is the medical consultant for the show and also
Speaker 4: the chief of the Skull Base and Mini minim Minimally
Speaker 4: Invasive Neurosurgeon uh EF and also the chief of uh
Speaker 4: Skull Based and Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery Division at Mountfior Medical Center.
Speaker 4: And and the one thing very clear on is that
Speaker 4: they didn't want this to be seen as a reference
Speaker 4: to disassociative identity disorder what what used to be thought
Speaker 4: of as multiple personality disorder. That this is scientifically distinct.
Speaker 4: So I'm not using that as part of the metaphor
Speaker 4: because I think they're very clear that that's not what
Speaker 4: this is. But you know a lot of us coaches,
Speaker 4: which a lot of us do, have a persona that
Speaker 4: we adopt with one group of friends, but not necessarily
Speaker 4: with another and or maybe with work or versas with family,
Speaker 4: and especially in you know, I have not had to
Speaker 4: personally experience this to be sure, but this is definitely
Speaker 4: true for people who are you know from backgrounds where
Speaker 4: where you know the dialects and languages and are just
Speaker 4: accents that they use are really judged in the workplaces
Speaker 4: that they go to or the culture or things like
Speaker 4: that for racial reasons or other kind of discrimination reasons,
Speaker 4: but also just people who just you know, have like
Speaker 4: they want to have kind of like you know, I
Speaker 4: have my my baseball friends, and I have my magic
Speaker 4: gathering friends, and I want to keep myself kind of
Speaker 4: separate in those ways. And this is really kind of
Speaker 4: pushing that to the extreme of of asking like what
Speaker 4: to what extent is is you know, using how are
Speaker 4: you kind of using one part of you to serve
Speaker 4: other parts of you? And what damage does that do?
Speaker 4: And I just you're right there. I'm having trouble talking
Speaker 4: about it because I think that's I don't want to
Speaker 4: get again. I don't want to get into art critics
Speaker 4: about the show. But I think this is the storyline
Speaker 4: that I wish we'd gotten so much more of. Excuse
Speaker 4: that I wish we'd gotten so much more of instead
Speaker 4: of maybe some of the lumin lore, because I think
Speaker 4: this is and maybe it's just because they weren't really
Speaker 4: ready to explore this and more depth, but I wouldn't
Speaker 4: really interested to hear more about this of of how
Speaker 4: these you know, how these characters feel about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Dylan stuff again to me, like this was
Speaker 1: my favorite part of season two, and exploring the fact
Speaker 1: that he is the same person, like the Audi talking
Speaker 1: about like I used to be like you and I
Speaker 1: lost that and like I want to try to find
Speaker 1: that again. And it's it feels truer to what I
Speaker 1: want Severance to be versus the Mark Scout stories. So
Speaker 1: you know, that's like part of my personal projection. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's certainly interesting from a drama perspective that Mark, the
Speaker 1: two aspects of Mark are in conflict with himself themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to phrase it right, but
Speaker 1: it's less interesting to me as a moral and ethical discussion.
Speaker 1: Like I just love the way that Dylan gets gets
Speaker 1: to act with himself and the Mark. The Mark scene
Speaker 1: where he talks to himself via a camera and video
Speaker 1: camera recorder and like listens to himself and then records
Speaker 1: this reply and like switches back and forth. Is interesting.
Speaker 1: It was a fun scene. It was very you know,
Speaker 1: Gollum and Smeegel, But I just didn't I didn't love it.
Speaker 4: No, I think it's fair. Let's go into more detail
Speaker 4: about what this is all about. And you're gonna have
Speaker 4: to help me with character names, because you know, I'm
Speaker 4: terrible with this and sometimes I edit it out, but
Speaker 4: I'll be very honest here about mate with character names. So,
Speaker 4: and I think the identity of these people is very
Speaker 4: important as we're going to talk about. One of the
Speaker 4: things that we learn is that part of why Mark
Speaker 4: Scout wanted to go through severance is as I alluded to,
Speaker 4: that one reason people do is to like not have
Speaker 4: to carry this great pain with them. And then in
Speaker 4: his case, his wife died. As he understand, his wife died,
Speaker 4: and we get to see a lot of their background,
Speaker 4: that both of them were academics. He's a white man,
Speaker 4: she's an Asian woman, and they were both kind of
Speaker 4: connected to the same university and had this really beautiful
Speaker 4: love story together and he kind of just learned one
Speaker 4: day that she was killed. And what is her character's name?
Speaker 4: I know the actresses one who have seen before. She
Speaker 4: was in Altered Carbon. She had a fantastic role and
Speaker 4: she said a couple other smaller parts, but do you
Speaker 4: do you have on hand the name of the actress.
Speaker 1: So the actress is Diechen Lochman. Okay, as you said
Speaker 1: she was in All Her Carvin. She was also in Dollhouse,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if you remember that show, but
Speaker 1: we may want to talk about the similarities right shows
Speaker 1: her character. So her character the Audi or the person
Speaker 1: who was the Audi is Gemma Scout because they were married,
Speaker 1: and her Innie is called miss Casey, right, and we
Speaker 1: don't really know why.
Speaker 4: And her Innie is presented in season one as though
Speaker 4: she's part of the staff and that the staff don't
Speaker 4: have oudies in anies, they just are people, but they're
Speaker 4: there to kind of keep the keep the innies on track,
Speaker 4: and that she's kind of a she's kind of like
Speaker 4: a therapist combined with hr in your worst nightmares, and
Speaker 4: that she's her there, her role there is to kind
Speaker 4: of like keep you on track and to prevent you
Speaker 4: thinking things you shouldn't think. What Over the course of
Speaker 4: season one, Mark realizes that, uh, this is miss Casey
Speaker 4: is his wife Gemma and because there's a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of shenatigans that lead to that, and so in season two,
Speaker 4: again through a bunch of Shenanigans that I feel we
Speaker 4: kind of kind of skipped. He finds someone else who
Speaker 4: worked for the program who's tried to kind of reintegrate
Speaker 4: the Audi and the Inni, and he has that happened
Speaker 4: to some extent where he can now at least remember
Speaker 4: the Inni's memories and to some extent can kind of
Speaker 4: switch it will or at least with some help between
Speaker 4: his Audi ands Inni, and he now comes up with
Speaker 4: a plan that he wants to basically like use his
Speaker 4: Inni to figure out what happened to his wife and
Speaker 4: to get her back, which seems I think completely reasonable,
Speaker 4: And and things go along and the and the plot develops,
Speaker 4: and his some of his audi's friends and family are
Speaker 4: helping him until at some point the Innie realizes what
Speaker 4: it's expected of him and that if they go through
Speaker 4: with this, the Inni will eventually just be fully cut off.
Speaker 4: And that's where we're really thinking about a persona a personality,
Speaker 4: but that a personality that in its own mind is
Speaker 4: fully sentient, a fully separate being, is going to stop
Speaker 4: existing and and perhaps therefore the word for that is die.
Speaker 4: And further complicating matters is that he has developed the
Speaker 4: the Inni has developed very strong romantic and sexual attraction
Speaker 4: and feelings and that are are requited like they have
Speaker 4: a relationship with Helly. Helly is Hella or Helly.
Speaker 1: The is Helly Helly thank he and they they very
Speaker 1: like intentionally make that those distinct because they are very different.
Speaker 4: And in right very different than like Dylan where it's
Speaker 4: literally the same, or Mark Scout Mark Ass who are
Speaker 4: fairly similar. And then in the last episode big spoilers here,
Speaker 4: the Enny agrees to go along with a plan, even
Speaker 4: though he's very hesitant about this and uncomfortable with it.
Speaker 4: But in the final moments he allows much to escape
Speaker 4: and gets like you know the Enny, you know fully gone.
Speaker 4: The Gemma has escaped, but instead of then going back
Speaker 4: outside so he can be Mike Scout, he can be
Speaker 4: Mark Scout and go off with Gemma, he decides to
Speaker 4: stay inside and be Mark s with Helly. And this
Speaker 4: is where both me and Mary, my spouse who was
Speaker 4: watching this with me, had a lot of problems, both
Speaker 4: for ethics reasons and and but even more so for
Speaker 4: just it didn't seem to make logical sense to us.
Speaker 4: We didn't really understand what was happening. It felt like
Speaker 4: a betrayal, but also understood where he was coming from.
Speaker 4: But I think it's a got I want to let
Speaker 4: you talk about it first, because I think you pointed
Speaker 4: out some stuff that I kind of had a surface
Speaker 4: grasp of, but you really saw it a lot deeper.
Speaker 1: I just fully got mad. Yeah, and after we finished
Speaker 1: watching the final episode, I think I even use the
Speaker 1: words I hate it, yeah, and like I don't hate it,
Speaker 1: like it was still an enjoyable season, but it left
Speaker 1: me with a really bad taste in my mouth at
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 4: So talk more about why.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, first off, like it just feels like
Speaker 1: the wrong decision you said, like from a logic right,
Speaker 1: from a logical perspective of character, or like the premise
Speaker 1: of the show.
Speaker 4: Like this is not Mark and Helly going back into
Speaker 4: everything being fine. This was like a prison break where
Speaker 4: multiple people from the Lumen staff were killed. The idea
Speaker 4: that Mark and Helly are going to get to go
Speaker 4: back to normal is yeah, completely not the case.
Speaker 1: So from a logical perspective, Mark s and Helly are
Speaker 1: the innies. They can only exist on the severed floor
Speaker 1: because of the way this technology works, right, So at
Speaker 1: the end they run off together, but they're trapped on
Speaker 1: this floor. They can't like live a life together outside. Right,
Speaker 1: and more to the point, Helly her audi is Helena Egan,
Speaker 1: one of the bosses of Lumen. So like when the
Speaker 1: executives at Luman realize what has happened, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: be happy and they're not gonna let her stay Helly.
Speaker 1: They're gonna force her to become Helena again. Like they're
Speaker 1: gonna remove her from the floor be like what the
Speaker 1: heck happened down there? So there's like no happy, happily
Speaker 1: ever after here at the end of this. So like
Speaker 1: they run off and they're like holding hands and it's
Speaker 1: like the music is like yeah, like triumphant or something
Speaker 1: like what the heck? Yeah, this isn't gonna work out.
Speaker 1: So that was like my A level response, which I think,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, is like the logic of the situation, right.
Speaker 1: My my B level response was as a as like
Speaker 1: a television movie fan slash critic, and it's like I
Speaker 1: rolled my eyes. I was like, well, here we go again.
Speaker 1: A white guy just left his Asian wife slash girlfriend
Speaker 1: for the manic pixie dream girl, white girl. It very
Speaker 1: much reminded me of Scott Pilgrim versus the world in
Speaker 1: that sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of other problems with with that, and
Speaker 1: like the age of knives Chow, but like.
Speaker 4: An underage Chinese girl who's part of the power structure,
Speaker 4: and it's a very weird way. That is what I
Speaker 4: thought I would He mentioned Scott Pilgrim, But I think
Speaker 4: you're so right about the racial dynamics there, especially because
Speaker 4: and don't get me wrong, I love Adam Scott as
Speaker 4: an actor. I think he's phenomenal, and I think the
Speaker 4: character of Mark s is great, and I don't want
Speaker 4: to live in a world where, like you know, we're saying,
Speaker 4: like no white man can ever be heroes. But it
Speaker 4: is kind of striking that, like of the four people
Speaker 4: who are in there with him, you know, his three
Speaker 4: other coworkers who were a gay man who has been
Speaker 4: kind of pushed back onto the outside and tried to
Speaker 4: build a relationship with his Audi is trying to build
Speaker 4: a relationship with the person that has any fell in
Speaker 4: love with another man and kind of gets rejected and
Speaker 4: then kind of just disappears from the show.
Speaker 1: He's left.
Speaker 4: There's the black man who's part of the staff, who's
Speaker 4: kind of just their enemy who they're fighting against the
Speaker 4: whole time. There's the white woman who he has run
Speaker 4: back into prison with, but there's never really a discussion
Speaker 4: of her getting freedom. And then there's the Asian woman
Speaker 4: who has been freed, but also freed as much as
Speaker 4: she understands it, watch her husband rejector for the white woman,
Speaker 4: and it's one of the things where I don't think
Speaker 4: any of those racial dynamics are intentional, but just when
Speaker 4: and and also of course the man of color, Dylan
Speaker 4: having a pretty negative experience compared to that, and so
Speaker 4: it was just it was when you mentioned the thing about,
Speaker 4: you know, the dynamic there of him leaving the Asian
Speaker 4: woman for the white woman, which I confess I don't
Speaker 4: think I really kind of thought of consciously in the
Speaker 4: first moment, but I remember hearing you say that and
Speaker 4: looking at through the further lens of just everything else
Speaker 4: that happens in the season and the dynamics, it really
Speaker 4: does not leave a contation of the mouth, right.
Speaker 1: So it's complicated because I'm not what do I want
Speaker 1: to say about this? So there's this concept of like
Speaker 1: it's called yellow fever, and what it, especially when it
Speaker 1: pertains to Asian women, is that Asian women are exotic, right,
Speaker 1: And this goes back to like the whole Madam Butterfly thing,
Speaker 1: and like the way Geisha have been portrayed in media
Speaker 1: and used in Western media, and there are very few
Speaker 1: cases of like in rom coms, there's very few cases
Speaker 1: of like a white man and an Asian woman pairing
Speaker 1: in rong coms. And of course, like you could make
Speaker 1: you could say that there have been very few Asians
Speaker 1: right like as as the romantic lead and especially like
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties they were just like the
Speaker 1: comedic side characters right right, and and that was definitely bad.
Speaker 1: And in modern rom coms, especially since like crazy Rich Asians,
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot more Asian Asian pairs. And then
Speaker 1: like even now Asian man white woman like Henry Golding
Speaker 1: is like the the dude right now in like in
Speaker 1: terms of rom com leads. But even there's a great
Speaker 1: rom com called Love Hard, which I just love and
Speaker 1: it's based on love Actually and Die Hard, like the
Speaker 1: two quote unquote Christmas movies and like smashing those names together,
Speaker 1: and the lead in that movie, the male lead is
Speaker 1: Jimmy O Yang, who is a Asian comedian who like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, like he looks like me, like you,
Speaker 1: I would never be mistaken for him. But he's a
Speaker 1: dorky Asian guy with glasses and he's the lead in
Speaker 1: a rom cam and like that to me is like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is great, this is a revolutionary. But he's paired
Speaker 1: with a white woman. And that's what I mean, is
Speaker 1: like the Asian woman in media is often like the
Speaker 1: exotic person, but is not is not the romantic interest
Speaker 1: of like a traditional rom cam.
Speaker 4: I think you're really right, because as I was thinking about,
Speaker 4: I was thinking of but wait, there's lots of times
Speaker 4: when the Asian woman is the romantic counterpart to the
Speaker 4: white man. But it's in action movies.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wish Michelle Yale.
Speaker 4: Yeah, almost as good as Hung Fu as he is
Speaker 4: or whatever the martial art is, but still gets to
Speaker 4: fall for him. And I don't remember if this is
Speaker 4: something I've completely come up with my own or I'm
Speaker 4: sure other people written about this and I just I've
Speaker 4: probably seen it but also was thinking about it beforehand.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but like I would love to see
Speaker 4: people have done analysis that I feel like In many ways,
Speaker 4: the manic Pixie dream girl is a whitening of the exotic, sexy,
Speaker 4: mysterious Asian woman, you know, in the kind of the
Speaker 4: same A lot of ideas, especially when you look at
Speaker 4: like how much of the manic Pixie dream girl aesthetic
Speaker 4: is kind of like the anime girl aesthetic. And I
Speaker 4: think you're very right, it's not in rom comms because
Speaker 4: it's not there. She's not taken seriously as there she
Speaker 4: would have to be taken seriously as a romantic lead,
Speaker 4: as opposed to in the action movie where it's kind
Speaker 4: of just like a you know, you beat up the
Speaker 4: bad guy, you get the girl.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, yeah, I mean absolutely the and Michelleyo actually
Speaker 1: like she was in a Bond movie I think it
Speaker 1: was Tomorrow and ever A, where she was also the
Speaker 1: final Bond girl and they have their romantic fling at
Speaker 1: the end, and that was really revolutionary, I feel like
Speaker 1: in terms of the positioning of Bond girls, as she
Speaker 1: was also like a tough spy, like a competent counterpart
Speaker 1: to him, which they have had, you know, like going
Speaker 1: back to the spy who love Me from Russia with
Speaker 1: love I think, but I think it was she was
Speaker 1: like very different and very modern. Right.
Speaker 4: Well, in a lot of those movies, as you said,
Speaker 4: there's the final Bond girl, because we've talked in other
Speaker 4: episodes recently about how Bond often has a first woman
Speaker 4: who he seduces, who's connected to the villain, who then
Speaker 4: gets killed because she was with Bond. And there's a
Speaker 4: number of those movies that I remember. I think this
Speaker 4: is some with Sean Connery, but a lot with Roger
Speaker 4: Moore where he's infiltrating some you know, you know, Chinese
Speaker 4: potentate or some you know, again very racist portrayed, and
Speaker 4: often like he's the first girl he's with is Asian,
Speaker 4: but then he winds up with a white woman by
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and plenty of other action movies like when an
Speaker 1: Asian woman's cast, it is often because of their martial
Speaker 1: arts skills, right, So they are like a sidekick in
Speaker 1: the action movie, but not not the love interest. So
Speaker 1: that that to me like with this show, like it's
Speaker 1: not a it's not an action show, but the fact
Speaker 1: that like they focused on Gemma as this objective. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's the damsel in distress literally, right, and they rescue her,
Speaker 1: and that should be the happy ending, like you have
Speaker 1: rescued the damsel and now you're gonna beat with her
Speaker 1: but not and she's Asian and like it's it was
Speaker 1: very difficult for me watching that to not make that association.
Speaker 1: Like obviously, like the show will go on and they
Speaker 1: will address it and they will be more drama that
Speaker 1: happens between all this, but I'm just like very worried
Speaker 1: that somehow she's in the at the end of it all,
Speaker 1: she's not going to be his wife anymore and he's
Speaker 1: going to end up with Helly is slash Helena.
Speaker 4: Oh. I think it's absolutely the way it's going, unless
Speaker 4: there's some way. I mean, like you know, the polyamorist
Speaker 4: in me is always like, come on, lets everybody find
Speaker 4: a way to be together. But I don't really know
Speaker 4: that works with the severed personalities. But I think for me,
Speaker 4: like all the stuff you're talking about is very true,
Speaker 4: and it's doubly frustrating because to me, there's a very
Speaker 4: interesting question of at what point does the any have
Speaker 4: rights of its own, At what point does the ENnie
Speaker 4: stop being this part of the AUDI that the AUDI
Speaker 4: can use and if need be discard for its own
Speaker 4: actualization versus being a fully sentient being that has therefore
Speaker 4: to all of its own rights and be killed. And
Speaker 4: I find the discussion between Mark Scout and Mark S
Speaker 4: over whether Mark S should be destroyed in order that
Speaker 4: Mark Scout can have a happy life fascinating, And when
Speaker 4: that's reduced to which woman will he be with, it
Speaker 4: feels like it very much cheapens Gemma and all the
Speaker 4: racial aspects you're talking about there. But it's also just
Speaker 4: kind of misogynistic in general, because it's also like saying, well,
Speaker 4: the whole the whole conflict is now just about like
Speaker 4: which of this love triangle aspect instead of this philosophical
Speaker 4: question of who is he and can he be a
Speaker 4: unification of these two selves or does he have to
Speaker 4: pick one or the other. And Yeah, it just felt
Speaker 4: like deciding to represent those two as one woman or
Speaker 4: the other, it just felt very tropy. And maybe I'm
Speaker 4: coming down so hard or not because of the show
Speaker 4: that has for the most part passed those bars so well,
Speaker 4: but I felt like it just it changed the question
Speaker 4: away from the one that I thought was really interesting
Speaker 4: towards one that we've seen a million times before.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And I just want to go back real
Speaker 1: quick before I move on on that to the whole
Speaker 1: rom com thing. I want to acknowledge that there have
Speaker 1: been several good rom com I think on Netflix there
Speaker 1: was to All the Boys I Loved Before, which I
Speaker 1: believe the romantic lead is Lana Condor.
Speaker 4: Yep, and she's Korean and half Korean, half white, and
Speaker 4: their career there were a really beautiful story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were two. There were two of those movies
Speaker 1: in that series, and I loved them and they're really good.
Speaker 1: So like that, I think the trend is definitely changing
Speaker 1: and getting better, and I hope to see more of it.
Speaker 1: Lilian Dash was another one I watched, So I want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that. And I'm not saying like throw them
Speaker 1: all away, like but but we need more, we need
Speaker 1: better always like that is my desires, like more and
Speaker 1: better please, like let's keep going and let's not let's
Speaker 1: try not to regress too much. So there's that regarding
Speaker 1: Mark in that Gollum conversation with himself, when Mark Scout
Speaker 1: the Audi mentions like the reintegration process. I think that
Speaker 1: any like correctly brings up the point like well, you've
Speaker 1: lived thirty years and I've lived for two you know,
Speaker 1: two years slash only at work, so like a third
Speaker 1: of two years. And what is that going to look
Speaker 1: like if we reintegate, Like you're gonna be ninety percent
Speaker 1: of us or me? Right? And yeah, like that ends
Speaker 1: up being boiled down into this which woman thing? And
Speaker 1: I agree like that it's much more The question is
Speaker 1: much more interesting than which woman will we end up with?
Speaker 1: Like the aspect of like ninety over ninety percent of
Speaker 1: him will be the AUDI is to me much more
Speaker 1: interesting and like, oh yeah, what would that look like?
Speaker 4: Right? Yeah, I think so, And I think it's funny.
Speaker 4: I was trying to think about curious where we would
Speaker 4: come down on this show, and I didn't think we'd
Speaker 4: wind up being this negative. And again, there were a
Speaker 4: lot of parts of the show that I really enjoyed,
Speaker 4: and I am looking forward to season three, especially if
Speaker 4: you know, but I really want some firm answers. But
Speaker 4: I think that this just was a I don't know,
Speaker 4: it is so hard to capture lightning in a bottle twice.
Speaker 4: And we'll talk about and or a bit in the
Speaker 4: bonus section for members, but I you know, I think
Speaker 4: there's a lot of questions about WOD. Season two sort
Speaker 4: of capture that again. And I think season one was
Speaker 4: just so interesting and so out there, and season two
Speaker 4: really had this question of like, are you going to
Speaker 4: therefore continue down those roads or you're gonna sort of say, Okay,
Speaker 4: now that we've built this really interesting sandbox, we're just
Speaker 4: going to tell you stories you've heard before. And I
Speaker 4: just I'm just disappointed they went more of the second direction.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that I really enjoyed maybe like the
Speaker 1: first two thirds three quarters of season two, but I
Speaker 1: just think that the ball was dropped at the end, like,
Speaker 1: if we want to talk about stuff I loved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the episode where the audis go on like the expedition
Speaker 1: and the snow covered mountain was a fantastic episode. Not
Speaker 1: just like how interesting it was, but the cinematography was
Speaker 1: great and.
Speaker 4: Myotography was gorgeous, and the you know, it's funny how
Speaker 4: both this and a couple other things I've watched recently
Speaker 4: have felt like that the writers were really good prognosticators,
Speaker 4: because they were basically saying, if our current situation continues,
Speaker 4: it could turn into this like parody of the end
Speaker 4: of the line and the reality is it's turned into
Speaker 4: that already, at least to some extent, you know, because
Speaker 4: all of this corporate you know, the cult of the corporation.
Speaker 4: I think they very much were thinking about Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: They very much were thinking about Steve Jobs. They everyone
Speaker 4: for thinking about these sort of cults of personality that
Speaker 4: have built up around these people. And you know, they
Speaker 4: didn't write it in the last year and a half,
Speaker 4: but certainly in the last year and a half, like Auto,
Speaker 4: people probably ben't forgotten about people like Bill Gates and
Speaker 4: Steve Jobs because Elon Musk has so much become that
Speaker 4: and the degree to which, like I was watching this, Wow,
Speaker 4: we were really starting to realize all the ways in
Speaker 4: which Elon Musk has so much power in the government now.
Speaker 4: And it was just hitting both me and Mary so hard.
Speaker 4: Like these people predicted it, this is exactly what's happening,
Speaker 4: and it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely it is. I also want to mention the
Speaker 1: other episode kind of in the middle of the season
Speaker 1: that I loved was when Harmony Kobell, the character play
Speaker 1: by Patricia Arquette, goes on her trip to her old
Speaker 1: hometown where Luhman had like some kind of factory and
Speaker 1: like where she grew up and where she was indoctrinated
Speaker 1: into Luman and that that those are the aspects of
Speaker 1: mystery Box that I love, where they sprinkle in these
Speaker 1: details and it's like what does this all mean? And
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of stuff in the background or
Speaker 1: the things that they said and dialogue that we don't
Speaker 1: understand yet they will the connections will be made. And
Speaker 1: I think that was a great mystery Box episode killing
Speaker 1: killing a goat not there for me, what.
Speaker 4: I think, especially because one thing you captured really well
Speaker 4: is my favorite mystery Boxes. And I think this again
Speaker 4: goes to where the authors know all the answers when
Speaker 4: they start. The process is ones where by the time
Speaker 4: you get to the end, you can now go back
Speaker 4: and watch it again and the goat makes sense, you know,
Speaker 4: and all the little weird details about the Lumen cult
Speaker 4: you now have the contact that it fits into and
Speaker 4: you're like, oh my god, this show is even better
Speaker 4: watching it the second time, knowing what I know about
Speaker 4: the answers were finally given. And I think that's gonna
Speaker 4: wind up affecting a lot of how people feel about
Speaker 4: the show is whether or not we get there or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the stuff in Kobel's hometown mm hmm.
Speaker 1: What it is is it feels real. It feels like
Speaker 1: a real place. And then like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what mystery took place there is interesting. And then like
Speaker 1: if there are hints and clues that later do make
Speaker 1: a connection, you'd be like, oh, yeah, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: As a goat. You can explain the goat and tell us,
Speaker 1: but there's no way for us to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that I should have known that's what the goat is for. Like, no,
Speaker 1: there's no way to know what the goat is for.
Speaker 1: They're just gonna make something.
Speaker 4: Up filling people in part. What we learn in this
Speaker 4: episode that it's really kind of a bottle episode is
Speaker 4: that there, you know, there was a story about why
Speaker 4: she left her hometown and why certain people feel the
Speaker 4: way they do about her and her the way she
Speaker 4: feels about them, and like a mystery box, you're jump
Speaker 4: You're dropped right into the middle of it. There's no exposition.
Speaker 4: She doesn't like tell someone here's the situation of going
Speaker 4: back home to But by the end of the episode,
Speaker 4: you figured everything out, even to the point of you're
Speaker 4: starting to be able to guess and make those predictions
Speaker 4: because you know, A leads to B leads to C
Speaker 4: and now you can predict me and E and so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think I think it's it's kind of funny. That
Speaker 4: episode was a really good microcosm of what this thing
Speaker 4: could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it did such a great job of developing
Speaker 1: her character as well. Like obviously she was in most
Speaker 1: of that episode, and I feel like it informed us
Speaker 1: about her and why she is in this cult and
Speaker 1: why she she believed or still believes, and and now
Speaker 1: like what why she's trying to take it down? Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know. We still don't really know. And it
Speaker 1: also connects to the little girl Miss Swang haven't even
Speaker 1: talked about. I think I think we should quickly talk
Speaker 1: about Miss Shwang and Miltchick, right, who are like the
Speaker 1: two supervisors on the severed floor after Kobel leaves is fired.
Speaker 1: I guess right, because it it's fascinating. I like, I
Speaker 1: still that's the part of this show that still intrigues
Speaker 1: me a lot, is like Miltchick, He's scary.
Speaker 4: Milchick is to me again that perfect representation of the
Speaker 4: worst aspects of customer service slash HR because he's the
Speaker 4: person who smiles all the time, but the smile never
Speaker 4: reaches his eyes. You know, he's constantly being like, Hey,
Speaker 4: isn't it great that we have good attitudes all around here?
Speaker 4: You wouldn't want to have to happen with what happens
Speaker 4: with bad attitudes. We're not like, it's just he's cheery,
Speaker 4: he's upbeat, and it is so clearly like even say
Speaker 4: that it's insincere because I utterly believe that he has
Speaker 4: drunk the kool aid that he is.
Speaker 1: He's a true believer for whatever reason.
Speaker 4: But he's also like he has no interest in actual,
Speaker 4: sincere office conversations. He wants that fakeness. He wants everyone
Speaker 4: in the office to not bring in their politics or
Speaker 4: their feelings, or to argue about the game last night
Speaker 4: or argue with the movie. He wants us just to
Speaker 4: be about the work and just to be about the
Speaker 4: joy of the melon party that you get if you
Speaker 4: do the work well.
Speaker 1: But he's still also very sympathetic in a way, like
Speaker 1: when he gets showed out by his boss and he
Speaker 1: tells his boss to f off or whatever the specific
Speaker 1: phrase he used, like you kind of cheer right, like,
Speaker 1: good for you, even though like you're evil, You're still
Speaker 1: a part of this evil. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: actor Trammel Tillman. I think he's doing a great job.
Speaker 1: And the dance sequence is like, I hope we get
Speaker 1: a dance sequence every season with him, Yeah, because he
Speaker 1: absolutely kills it every time.
Speaker 4: He really doesn't like the set piece at the end
Speaker 4: of the escape. Part of it is that like he's
Speaker 4: brought in this marching band to celebrate this huge accomplishment,
Speaker 4: and then the marching band is kind of like caught
Speaker 4: up in the midst of the fight as they try
Speaker 4: to escape, and it's yeah, it's phenomenally done. And then
Speaker 4: but at least I have some grounding for him. We
Speaker 4: then get what's wrong to the purposes, I think like
Speaker 4: a twelve to fourteen year old Asian girl who is
Speaker 4: just she plays the same kind of role as Meltchik does,
Speaker 4: and a couple of people joke about her age, but
Speaker 4: there's never any explanation. It just is one of those
Speaker 4: surreal things of there's a fourteen year old girl who's
Speaker 4: telling all these people in an office what to do.
Speaker 1: But they give us the hint right like at the
Speaker 1: end when Miltchick sends her away, there's like a name
Speaker 1: for the fellowship or something like that, Like you're being
Speaker 1: awarded the Fellowship prize, right, and that's the same one
Speaker 1: that Kobel earned or won when she was a little girl.
Speaker 1: So that's like the connection there is that Miss Wang
Speaker 1: is like showing us where Kobel came from, how she
Speaker 1: was Yeah, how she was integrated into this indoctrinated so
Speaker 1: that that that to me was like an interesting connection
Speaker 1: between them.
Speaker 4: For sure.
Speaker 1: I have I have read fan theories that try to
Speaker 1: connect Miss Wang to Gemma and like, get out of
Speaker 1: here with that nonsense. Nice because it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like there's two Asian people, they must be somehow related.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it'd be kind of shitty, h So that would
Speaker 4: not be fun. Well, this has been a great discussion.
Speaker 4: I feel like that, like I kept wanting to jump
Speaker 4: into the much larger question that I think. Frankly, I
Speaker 4: think we're going to do our own app so and
Speaker 4: on it because this show brings it up. But other things,
Speaker 4: you know, it kind of ties into two vis it,
Speaker 4: ties into so many of these things. It ties into
Speaker 4: a big episode question age of the Shield, which is
Speaker 4: the question of like can this kind of severing happen
Speaker 4: ethically or is it always going to have these kind
Speaker 4: of problems and and and there's so much there to discuss.
Speaker 4: We'll definitely get into all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I mentioned Dollhouse earlier, which was a show
Speaker 1: that Dejin Lockman was on, and that I was like
Speaker 1: rereading the plot. M hm. It's like very similar in
Speaker 1: terms of like basically personalities are wiped out and then
Speaker 1: like new personalities are rewritten over. It's like which one
Speaker 1: is the real person.
Speaker 4: I've just meaning to watch Dahouse for a while, so
Speaker 4: I think we're definitely gonna do this as an episode soon.
Speaker 4: This may actually even be our members only episode, uh
Speaker 4: for May. We'll see. I'm gonna let everyone know. Now
Speaker 4: you probably heard last week we did a rebroadcast of
Speaker 4: the Star Wars episode. I'm gonna do my best to
Speaker 4: make sure we're getting you new content every week. But
Speaker 4: with a lot of family things going on. The young
Speaker 4: Padawan is coming into my family pretty soon, some other
Speaker 4: family illnesses and events and funerals and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: it's just gonna be a crazy time. So we'll do
Speaker 4: our best, but we'll definitely have that episode for you soon,
Speaker 4: as with a lot of other great content. I'll probably
Speaker 4: watch Dollhouse soon so we can talk about that one.
Speaker 4: And of course if that is members only or but
Speaker 4: if not, something else, it'll be great. And members only,
Speaker 4: do you get that by becoming a member? It's only
Speaker 4: five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year, all
Speaker 4: the informations in the show notes. You can subscribe today.
Speaker 4: It's really great to help out the podcast. Do you
Speaker 4: get ad free episodes? You get bonus content at the
Speaker 4: end of most episodes. We're gonna talk about and Ora
Speaker 4: just a moment as our bonus content for this episode,
Speaker 4: although of course even members you can skip it until
Speaker 4: you've gone and watched and or which really should have
Speaker 4: done well. I'm not going to get into that. I've
Speaker 4: talked about that last week, but either way, please think
Speaker 4: about becoming a member. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: We have spoken