Winning an award is always an achievement worthy of noting. The first season of Severance, the superb Apple TV+ thriller where characters sever their brains to become two people (an Innie for work life, and an Outie for home life) earned several but the one that feels most salient to mention is the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design. Season one of the show contained this incredible title sequence, where tiny versions of main character Mark (Adam Scott) bustled around, entering illuminated doorways and emerging with several limbs amongst other alarming images such as Mark interacting with semi-decapitated heads.
Not often do you find that shows adjust their title sequence without relevant seasonal footage but the second episode of Severance season two, Goodbye Mrs. Selvig, debuts a ravishing new sequence that is more unnerving than the award-winning credits of season one. Where little animated Mark flitted around figurative Lumon Industries spaces, this new version finds him at odds with an Outie version of himself, where hands claw at faces and tiny demon babies emerge from crevices. It feels apt to mention that this is leaning much more into subtle body horror, in ways that could foreshadow what is to come across the next nine episodes.
We ended episode one Hello, Ms. Cobel with Mark, Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) resuming their positions as MacroData refiners within Lumon. However, episode two begins with a flashback to Mark’s big outburst of “she’s alive” that bookended season one. The gathering he was at has dispersed, and his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and brother-in-law Ricken (Michael Chernus) are discussing the mysterious connotations of Mark’s words.
In typical Severance fashion, the Outie Mark doesn’t know why Innie Mark said those words, layering another mystery onto the thick fog of confusion that each averted character experiences. This is aggravated by the appearance of Lumon employee Milchik (Tramell Tillman) who appears with a corporate smile and giant fruit basket in hand to apologise, and to ensure Mark returns to Lumon come Monday morning. It can’t be understated how excellent Tillman is as Milchik, whose disarming smile always threatens to give way to the mysterious corporate synergy lurking behind his actions.
This episode also reintroduces Mrs. Selvig/Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), whose actions at the end of season one prevented the ‘overtime contingency’ from continuing. Arquette is once again an absolute firecracker in the role. Where Milchik is uncomfortably blasé, Cobel is laying her high-strung emotions out on the table, culminating in one of the strongest images of the seasons thus far. Cobel is promoted for her actions by Outie Helly, who we know as the daughter of CEO Keir Eagan, in a scene that is both revealing and another enigma to unravel if we are to know exactly what role Helly has within Lumon’s severed floor. With her Innie lying about what she saw, could this Innie Helly actually be her Outie? The show appears to query this as a potential story point with minuscule gestures from a superb Lower who is seen doing damage control as Outie Helly.
Episode one of season two introduced us to the idea that it has been five months since the outburst, but a few off-hand comments made throughout Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig complicates the timeline. Firstly, we are made aware that there has been some kind of reform at the hands of their Outie selves within this time. But we do witness Milchik firing Dylan, who begins attending job interviews. One of these results in the show getting the opportunity to further Severance lore around how severed characters are maligned within normal society.
Cherry is once again a humorous bright spot in his smaller role this episode. After the antics of Mark in the previous episode, Dylan gets extensively persuaded to commit to Lumon to appease Mark. It’s unclear exactly how long Dylan is unemployed because the script of Severance consistently increases the incredulity of a timeline that it has told us outright. This is a symptom of the constant unease curated by Stiller’s direction and the dynamite cast but to compact an entire media campaign of reform simultaneously to these few months breeds discontent towards what Lumon suggests is the timeline to the Innies. However, Mark and the team are not completely subservient due to their newfound access to the hallways of Lumon, as the hilarious educational video spoke about in Hello, Ms. Cobel and their so-called freedom allows them some minor adventuring through Lumon.
The entire show seems to be as intricate and as compelling as a grandmaster chess match to place a cliche comparison on it. If the Macro Data refinement team are pawns at play, they’re on the sixth rank and at this point, feel very close to threatening a promotion and usurping Lumon’s potential threat. We still do not have even the faintest clue as to what threat there is, what the mysterious numbers that float on the screen – which need ‘refinement’ – are, or an idea as to any of the many secrets that the show keeps close to its chest. With more layers being added, there’s a risk the show will begin alienating audiences should they not start giving something tangible for audiences. Right now, though, this season is bubbling away nicely.
Severance Season 2 streams weekly on Apple TV+.
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