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Severance, 2.10 "Cold Harbor" - Mark S & Mark Scout's first confrontation Frankenstein - The Creature & Victor Frankenstein's first confrontation

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thinking about the progression of the concept of wholeness in severance. in season 1, lumon's wellness sessions involve having innies hearing facts about their outies. which serves as a kind of tacit acknowledgement that severance is indeed a wound. each fact as a pseudo-suture across the gap between severed selves. of course, in typical lumon minilove newspeak form, there is no actual wellness, or suturing happening. the framing of it as a rare treat mostly serves to remind the innies of their separation from, and subordination to, their outies. it’s more puncturing than joining. a controlled facsimile of something nourishing, like an egg split into sixths. the way the innies talk about their outies in season 1 also reinforces this relationship: a kind of yearning identification that emphasizes that there is something absent to yearn for in the first place. dylan’s fantasies about his outie’s life. helly thinking “my outie wouldn’t do that to me.” their hope that by reaching the outside world they’d be able to bridge the scission that defines their lives. someone will care, won’t they? the image of dylan straining across the doorway in season 1 finale is key. it’s the image of a stitch across two halves that don’t want to be whole.

i think it’s interesting that the show itself uses the language of “stitching” in reference to reintegration. petey in “in perpetuity” (1x03) says “it’s like having two different lives suddenly stitched together” and in “who is alive?” (2x03) reghabi promises mark that she “can sew together a version of [him] that loves [gemma] with a version of [him] that can—” with the rest left unsaid. the fact that both lines occur in episode three of their respective seasons creates even more of a parallel between them. there’s something suspect in this language. stitching parts of humans together suggests frankenstein and other horror. there’s no talk of healing, even if stitches can be used that way. the violent, mad scientist aspect of sewing and reintegration makes it feel closer to lumon’s seductive claims (via milchick) that one “must be cut to heal,” rather than a legitimate path towards healing. whatever that might look like. the physical imagery we get during mark’s reintegration is stuff like coughing, nosebleeds, a scalpel cut, an insertion—imagery of illness and injury.

the show uses the word “whole” several times too. milchick in “half-loop” (1x02) (and what a title, half of a rounded thing, roundedness being associated with wholeness, return) saying “the office feels whole” after helly joins. the anti-severance movement being called “the whole mind collective.” irving in “the you you are” (1x04) saying that “kier’s whole original vision saw us all working together.” mark s in “cold harbor” (2x10) saying that he and the other innies find ways “to feel whole.” 

basically, there’s an ongoing tension around what wholeness actually looks like. the starting premise of the show is that severance is a problem, but what’s the solution? because clearly, it’s easy to talk about wholeness, and dangle wholeness, without actually desiring it. and easy to be tempted by things that sound like wholeness, but may not really be.

and season 2 brings this tension to the fore. in season 1, there seemed to be a straightforward path ahead. severance is bad, but if the innies just make everyone aware of how bad it is, they’ll be able to heal, right? replace the fake wholeness with the real kind, right? but the fakeness goes deep. this is the role of both mark’s ersatz reintegration quest, and his gemma reunion quest. the two quests being, of course, directly related. the idea of wholeness is right there in the word “reunion.” you’ve been separated from something, and if you get it back (“i have to have her back”) you’ll be one again, a union. (the show itself doesn’t use the word reunion/union, so to some extent i’m just talking to myself with this, but i do think about how a marriage can be called a “union”). except this quest was always doomed, because it’s an attempt to make the wrong thing whole. mark scout is not trying to reunite the halves himself, the severance of which is the fundamental problem the show exists to explore. if anything, by trying to reunite with gemma, he is exacerbating the problem. it is the ultimate attempt to return to an unattainable past, to avoid pain. and so it’s no wonder that the end result is that mark scout and mark s finish the season the opposite of reintegrated. they’re no longer simply severed from each other; they’re actively opposed. 

(telling that rescuing gemma is not what the show rejects. if anything, restoring her from a photograph—an object of grief—to person status, fits perfectly with the show’s criticism of the various ways one can repress humanity. it’s reuniting with her that’s the issue.)

in this light, there’s something bittersweet in mark s telling mark scout that they find ways to feel whole, clearly thinking of his relationships, especially with helly. something bittersweet in mark and helly reuniting with each other in “cold harbor” (their hug, their joined hands) versus the way mark scout cannot reunite with gemma (their interrupted embraces). and in the innies “union”-izing at helly’s urging. on the one hand, these unions are triumphant. they’re a win against the dehumanization and passivity of severance. the movement towards wholeness that they represent reads as real to me, because of helly's "i'm her" and the dylan innie-outie rapprochement in the same episode. but they also reveal the size of the abyss remaining. the innie rebellion is a stripping away of innocence and fakeness with regards to wholeness. but as with any rebellion, there's the graduate question of what comes next.

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i love how much the current season of severance is characterized by interpenetration. the first season was cold and isolated. severed. the innies and the outies were separate, and the leaks between them mostly only ominous hints. a tissue in mark's pocket. a dream of black goo. a blue band aid. an orange book. a recording from the break room. of course a reintegrated petey could not survive in season 1. in a severed world, it is the person trying to become whole who is the doomed, ill-suited freak. willing lobotomy should be grotesque, but when it is sanitized by corporate and scientific aesthetics, it can seem like the civilized thing, and anti-lobotomy that is grotesque. anti-lobotomy that is homeless, unshaven, and dripping blood.

this is why the we we are is so successful as a conclusion to season 1. it is a shocking violation of the boundary that existed all season. it is not just an ominous hint, but a total, almost violent obtrusion. as transgressive as the act of cutting, but in the opposite direction. and it makes the violence of the original cutting more salient in retrospect. (it's in the name, too--"we" instead of "you"; a coming together instead of a separation)

and now, in season 2, in the aftermath of that boundary violation, the boundaries start breaking down even further. helena on the severed floor. mark's reintegration visions. gemma being herself, even deep inside lumon's bowels. milchick visiting their houses. gretchen visiting dylan. mark in the birthing cabin. the innies outside at the ortbo. burt and irving being influenced by their innie connection. mark and helena meeting in the restaurant. the literal sex and romance and infidelity, involving not just innies or outies, but innies and outies. representatives of the inside and outside physically, bodily, commingling.

and it's against this backdrop that the characters in season 2 have begun to confront the boundaries within themselves. they've begun to ask how different and how separate they really are. do innies and outies have different souls? is infidelity with yourself really infidelity? it's almost cliche at this point, but really: does love transcend severance? clear narrative roles of hero and villain are decaying. former antagonists like milchick and cobel are now something murkier. meanwhile helly and helena, once seemingly so distinct, have increasingly revealed their commonalities. both trapped, both drawn to mark, repeating lines like "she's not your wife." the emphasis on helena this season is key. helly and helena embody self-division, given their initially divergent characters, goals, and narrative roles--one a hero, the other a villain. so for their differences to erode, for helena to get closer to the screentime that helly got last season, signals that this is a story in which self-division itself is growing suspect, unstable, untenable.

and then there's mark's reintegration. if of course petey couldn't survive reintegration in season 1, then of course mark can't complete his reintegration in season 2. season 2 is not a story of completion, it is a story of transition. it is messy, ambiguous, ambivalent adolescence. mark might want his innie's memories, but he has given no indication that he wants or identifies with his innie's self. as protagonist and deuteragonist, mark and helly are natural foils, and mark's forced and unsuccessful reintegration process is in contrast with helena's unexpected inching towards "natural reintegration", to use britt lower's phrase. in "attila" we see helena with her hair and manners loose, however awkwardly, playing at aspects of helly in a way that mark scout, as of "the after hours" (when this is written), would not consider doing with mark s. metaphorically, mark cannot yet reintegrate because his halves are not aligned. but they're not separate any more either. they're overlapping. they're at odds. but what will make them align? i assume that is what the finale and next season are for.

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something about the fact that mark, gemma, and cobel are all people with an intellectual past who don't act like it in the present. lumon not liking milchick's big words, but being interested in ricken. they found an intellectual buffoon and still didn't think he was declawed enough. dylan is smart but it only manifests in being good at obscure grunt work. talk about severing your mind. i know it's all very obviously "the point of the show" but nonetheless. they've made a point this season of how lumon isn't just shutting off people's emotional life, but also their intellectual life (which stands out given how much the season focuses on the emotional otherwise). it's kind of refreshing that it shows the two are intertwined. your love of history, literature, scientific curiosity--that's a love too. that's a human thing too. lumon's evil isn't about wanting the triumph of reason over feeling. at most, lumon is interested in a validating veneer of reason. instead, its evil is about wanting control over everything that makes people human, rational and irrational included.

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i do think it's interesting how the primary misstep people seem to make when it comes to analyzing severance is seeing the innies and outies as entirely separate characters. when i think the coolest thing about the way the show has gone about doing its doppelganger concept is the way it so thoroughly problematizes any attempt to do that. normally when stories do a doppelganger, that character is either an unambiguously separate character who is only metaphorically the same as the protagonist, or an alter ego who represents a piece of or exaggeration of the protagonist. or a literal twin, or clone, or double. in all cases the story is usually about that which we consider falsely other to ourselves. and maybe the story plays the monstrous otherness straight, or maybe it's about the consequences of seeing parts of yourself as a monstrous other. but regardless of what exactly the story is doing the doppelganger in question is in some sense made literally other, whether physically (frankenstein's creature) or in terms of character (mr. hyde, tyler durden).

whereas in severance the only difference between the innies and outies is their memories. no one's been possessed, or lost their soul. repeatedly, elements of the innies or outies bleed through. and yes of course, philosophically, you can argue about whether--by having different memories--this does make the innies and outies as separate of people as say, clones might be. ie, people who also have different physical existences. and i don't think the show is running away from that discussion or something. clearly, given the whole conversation about "do innies and outies have separate souls" from 2x06, it's a question that's on the table.

but the point i'm trying to make is that for the purposes of metaphor, by making the innies and outies share a body and a selfhood, it immediately and viscerally becomes painfully obvious that severed characters really are otherizing themselves. they are punishing themselves, ignoring themselves, betraying themselves, fighting themselves, dehumanizing themselves, abusing themselves. they are doing that to someone who is a person, because the person is them. the false otherness isn't a surprise, it is deliciously plain, almost pathetic or mundane. and that is a different and interesting kind of horror.

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hellyna in white when she's about to be taken her bodily autonomy away from her yayyy

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obvious but the tragedy of Helly / Helena is not that they are two polar opposite mortal enemies doomed to share the same body but rather that they are one woman who hates herself so bad she can’t even agree to be properly suicidal about it

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maybe an unpopular opinion, but my journey with "love transcends severance" began with a scoff and a mental "yeah, right". as in, it might be something that plays out thematically along with stronger psychological themes, but by itself it's a bit cheap. and even as a markhelly shipper seeing now plenty of comments from cast&crew suggesting something like it — which i do enjoy —, i still feel basically the same way because markhelly is in fact the most enjoyable a theme like that could play out for me. 

first of all because it's anything but easy. what starts as a base attraction between two people at their most primal becomes extremely complicated by their  circumstances both inside and outside. and second because the stage being set for their love to eventually transcend severance is a practical multifaceted one. there are actual interactions between their multiple sides that inspire all sorts of feelings beyond love and attraction and their connection feels stronger and earned because of it. innie helly completely changes innie mark who in turn completely changes outie helly who has already completely changed outie mark who is reintegrating and so will be completely changed by innie helly: all of this for better or worse and both are equally juicy. tie all this with the fact that both outie mark and outie helly's arcs are primed and perfect for the arrival of an all-consuming transformative love fueling and following their respective paths of learning they have personal worth (both in and out!) and are deserving of it in the aftermath of a profound grief that keeps recycling itself and the breaking free from the cult of your evil family. and so they will learn to stop being the actors of their own prolonged misery.

mind you, all of this with love being the least advisable thing anyone with a Safe&Sound outlook would encourage on these two messy people and yet it doesn't matter. in so many ways they are already on that path because their innie lives matter and the way they will let that touch each other's lives matter. and that is why, with all due respect to the other 3 love transcends severance conversations, is why markhelly in particular is crack cocaine to me instead of the wishful thinking of "it went so right in one side, so why shouldn't that by itself fuel the other?". i am confident though that if severance maintains half of the elegance it had with writing its characters in season 1 that at least two out of these three scenarios will pan out in a satisfaying way. nothing should be that clean and neat, least of all the most complex and messy human emotion.

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blog defunct but may post some severance takes here anyway for lack of better option

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Eighty-Six Years — Chapter Eleven:  Home

The road is dark and in the distance a car rumbles along a driveway, tail lights pulling away and then vanishing. Skyler sighs again. “I said too much last time.”

Kim curls a palm over the back of her neck, shaking her head. “If we could just talk—”

“I’m not going to testify.” The line crackles with surety.

Kim takes another deep breath. “I’m not asking you to testify.”

Chapters: 11/? Wordcount: 71k  Relationships: Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler

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Eighty-Six Years — Chapter Four:  Robles and Goto Partners

Viola sits behind her desk now, as if establishing a clear division. There, by the bookshelves, in the soft chairs: Kim’s civil suit, and the approach to take with Cheryl, and how to return Howard Hamlin to the Albuquerque legal community.

Here, with the heavy reclaimed desk between them, it’s—

“Mr. Goodman,” Viola says, tapping the end of her pen on a printout. “Sorry, Mr. McGill. Uh, Jimmy.”

“I call him Jimmy,” Kim says simply.

Chapters: 4/? Wordcount: 23.7k Relationships: Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler

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I'm rewatching s1 of BCS (as one does) and I keep noticing how big Chuck's house is. Nothing new under the sun, but. I was wondering, do you think Chuck knows that Jimmy is living in his office (and what kind of office)? Do you think that if he knew, he would offer a spare room in his house? (It's really big, even for two people, for sure it's gotta have a guest room).

I'm not saying that Jimmy would have immediately accepted the offer but... Idk, i wanted to know your opinion abt this bc i really love how insightful your metas are and the relationship between the McGill brothers is MESSY.

ah, thank you! that's honestly a really interesting question. i've never thought about it before. my best guess would be that he didn't know because he didn't ask. he didn't seem to know that jimmy was broke in the first episode, which leads me to believe he didn't know much about jimmy's living situation. however, had he known, i don't really think that he would have offered, but that's kind of complicated by the fact that he doesn't leave the house. the way that i see it, a lot of his neurosis regarding the house and electricity seems to be about control and needing to control his environment. considering that, i wouldn't really hold it against him if he didn't want jimmy to live there since his inability to control jimmy seems to be a major source of anxiety for him. especially back in s1 he also seemed to feel that his expression of kindness towards jimmy was in holding back the all resentment and bitterness that had accumulated towards him, basically that his contribution to their continued relationship was in not constantly attacking jimmy (i think this ultimately did way more harm than good, but he had good intentions). that also leads me to believe that jimmy living there would be a major stressor because i don't think he'd be communicating, he'd be repressing more and more, and the tension would start building faster than it already was. it's definitely not impossible for me to imagine alternative scenarios, but that seems the most likely to me, and if on i'm the right track then i think it was probably for the best. i feel like jimmy and chuck as roommates would start as a sitcom and then very quickly turn into a horror movie.

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I know I've seen a few people talk about how depressing and sad the BCS finale is, and that's a perfectly fine opinion to have, but to me it feels very hopeful. The open-endedness of it all allows you to imagine whatever may happen next for him and Kim. Their story is up to you now, in a way that never would have happened if Kim and died or if they'd betrayed one another or if she hadn't called to see if he was alive. Sure, they might never see each other again after that visit, and he'll languish away in the prison forever, but perhaps Kim continues visiting him, continues fighting for him, and returns to the law like she'd begun to in the finale. Perhaps things go like he says- "But with good behavior, who knows?" He gets out early and they move in together, maybe to a quiet town by the Rockies and she opens a pro bono legal aid business while he bakes, and while things are different, and there definitely is no time machine that can turn things back, at least they have the possibility of a peaceful ending together. And the potential of that leaves me feeling very satisfied.

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Eighty-Six Years — Chapter One: Miracle City

On the desk, next to the ash-filled saucer, the packet of cigarettes waits. The plastic wrapper is crushed at the bottom end, catching the light, but she doesn’t smoke anymore.

Not unless she’s with him.

Chapters: 1/? Wordcount: 5.8k Relationships: Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler

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Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk arrive at the 69th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 17, 2017 in Los Angeles, California

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i find it really interesting how in many ways jimmy is an inversion of the typical conman. we talk about how his cons are a way of taking back power or gaining a sense of control, but i don’t know that i’ve seen anyone point out (though i’m sure someone has) how his tendency to go after powerful people is the exact opposite of what most conmen do. usually a con artist or a scammer will go after whoever they see as most vulnerable, like a wolf picking off the weakest member of the heard. they target the people they think will be most likely to believe them, the more desperate or well-intentioned the better. jimmy’s father is singled out as a mark because he’s so eager to help people. they don’t care that he needs the money and they don’t feel bad about taking advantage of his kindness. jimmy’s marks, in contrast, tend to be that same type of person. he pretends to be the vulnerable one, and rather than taking advantage of their willingness to help, he leads them to believe that they’re taking advantage of him. 

the man that he and marco trick into buying the worthless coin involves himself as soon as he thinks they don’t want him listening. he says “hey, money talks” feeling that he just came out on top of someone else. they never directly sell him on anything. he took it upon himself to buy a coin that was being sold to another person. in the flashback in 1x04 the man yells “later, sucker” as he runs off with the fake rolex (which he thinks they stole off a semi-conscious man passed out in an alley, even if said man was a dick). both plans very clearly hinge on jimmy and marco appearing as the “suckers” and their ‘victim’ taking advantage of that of their own accord. you see it with the stockbroker he and kim scam in the first episode of s2 as well. they lure him in by presenting themselves as people who have lots of money to invest, don’t know what they’re doing, and are very suggestible and desperate for advice. after they leave he goes, “wow. just… wow.” as if he can’t believe his luck in finding two people with so much money that are so easy to manipulate. if you scam someone by pretending to be a mark, it would follow that the people you scam are people looking for marks, or at least are happy to seize the opportunity when it’s presented to them. even in s6, the first guy we see jimmy scamming as “viktor” is constantly trying to trick him into losing bets, unable to believe jimmy keeps falling for it and yet very much enjoying humiliating him and taking his money. jimmy targets walt, who sees himself as superior to those around him and bullies his wife and jesse more than anyone else, exploiting their emotionally entanglement with him. the first person walt singles out to help him in his power trip is a drug addict, someone vulnerable that he feels will be easy to control. he prefers vulnerability to reliability, telling gus that he likes jesse because he can trust him and he does what he tells him to. jimmy never really engages with skyler and jesse in the same way walt does. he actually tries to help skyler deal with the man she cheated on walt with without telling walt, and uses walt’s money to do it. if you wanted to be generous (and i do) you could even read his attitude towards skyler, especially with regards to car wash, as his half-hearted attempt to prevent her from becoming involved. 

however, i think that the most glaring and clearly intentional contradiction in his conman role is his involvement with elder law, elderly people being the quintessential stereotype of a scam victim. despite the fact that “old people love him” and he’s clearly very good at charming them, his elder law practice is genuine. when marco asks if he’s “ripping off old people” he seems somewhat incredulous at the suggestion. far from exploiting them, he actually uncovers and exposes sandpiper crossing for defrauding their residents (a plot which repeatably brings up how vulnerable old people are to abuse and manipulation by citing various legal sanctions). the one time that he does manipulate his former clients as part of a ploy to close the sandpiper suit, his plan would actually result in them getting money, not losing it. when he realizes that his exploitation of their trust had real negative repercussions he calls it off and mitigates the damages by creating a situation that would cause them to see him as the bad guy, the kind of person who actually would happily manipulate and exploit old people without scruples, despite the fact that his elderly clients were some of the only people to genuinely like him. it doesn’t benefit him in any way and he actually says that he really doesn’t want to do it, but he makes the sacrifice anyway because he feels guilty that he exploited their trust in him. 

chuck could be taken as another prime example of someone that the typical conman would see as a perfect mark: mentally ill, often desperate, vulnerable, and dependent on him. instead we’re immediately shown how upset jimmy is at the idea that howard is taking advantage of chuck (“wave bye-bye to your cash cow, ‘cause it’s leaving the pasture”). he switches the numbers only after he feels like chuck exploited kim’s hard work just because she had less power than him and he felt entitled to it. he only retaliates against chuck after he feels chuck knowingly and callously twisted his trust and concern against him. at the same time, they make absolutely clear that jimmy holds total legal power over chuck’s autonomy at multiple points and yet he only ever does what he thinks chuck would want him to, no matter how mad he is at him or how badly chuck’s hurt him. he’s uncomfortable with even having the power in the first place, the thought of abusing it would never even cross his mind (not necessarily applauding him for this, but it’s still worth pointing out how it subverts the expectations associated with the archetype). 

the only thing to snap him out of his dark, pain-fueled scam spiral at the end of the series is marion telling him, “i trusted you.” that phrase triggers something and all the fight appears to go out of him. he was relatively unfazed by the man with cancer, and to be honest, his argument wasn’t totally invalid. while having cancer certainly makes you vulnerable in many ways, it doesn’t really have anything to do with how trusting you are or if you’re easily manipulated or if you manipulate other people. the walt example wasn’t inappropriate. maybe jimmy wouldn’t have been as willing as “saul” or “viktor,” maybe he would, but if you’re looking at the criteria he uses to determine his marks, having cancer really isn’t relevant. this is different though. he’s manipulated plenty of people that may have been more vulnerable, but it’s always in service of a bigger plan and in a way that he thinks won’t hurt them (i.e. manipulating the sandpiper residents but only when he believes they would also benefit and willingly taking a hit to reverse the damage he caused after seeing his mistake). at first the nippy lie did seem to fall into those parameters. he wasn’t trying to hurt her in any way, he just wanted to get to jeff. the bleaker his mental state became, the less consideration he seemed to put into who he was hurting and why, but the second that he became cognizant of the fact that he’d manipulated a vulnerable person into trusting him, then exploited that trust, and was now about to see them suffer for it, he stopped cold. even at his darkest and cruelest, that was a horrifying realization. 

none of this is exactly news, but plenty of people exploit and bully those they see as weaker or more vulnerable than them as a way to feel more powerful (walter white is a prime example of that. his entire arc is basically a how-to guide on it.), so i find it interesting that jimmy inverts the conman figure, which does represent that personality type in a lot of ways. his conning is still very much associated with power, as much as he hates feeling small or weak or vulnerable or exploited or without control, he never turns around and takes it out on someone less powerful. it’s a weak person that claims victory by picking a fight with someone they know can’t hit back. that’s not to say he doesn’t do damage or he never hurts people who don’t deserve to be hurt (whatever that means), but in juxtaposition with walt it works perfectly. both stories follow men who make bad choices in an attempt to stop feeling powerless, but if there’s one thing jimmy’s never been, it’s a bully. to use the archetype of the con artist is genius because once you actually put jimmy in that mold it’s immediately obvious how badly he fits. he’s not shameless. his entire character arc is about shame and desperation for approval from others. he’s not ruthless. he’s overwhelmed by guilt over his own collateral damage. walt is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, using his harmless appearance to trick attack those more vulnerable than himself. jimmy is a sheep in wolf’s camouflage, trying to cloak his own vulnerability by playing dress up with someone else’s clothes, clothes that never fit quite right. 

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AND HIS NAME IS ____ _______!