Hey Devon is your brother okay, he keeps staring at all the mundane little knickknacks in your house with total unfamiliarity and childlike wonder. which is y’know kinda weird considering that at every other party of yours I’ve been to he just gets sloppy drunk, calls your husband a bitch, and cries in the bathroom really loudly.
It’s a testament to how batshit insane this entire episode was that I keep forgetting about the part where they find a rotting seal carcass and irving earnestly suggests they eat it.
Game so bad you convince the person you’re trying (and failing) to hit on that his corporate overlords are onto him and he should actually reconsider his decision to not impulsively get experimental brain surgery (for a third time).
Helena is so emotionally stunted that out of all of the people in the world, she specifically chose to romantically pursue someone who 1) only has two years of life experience and 2) is effectively owned by her family’s company and is unable to leave said company’s building.
This thought really hit me when I saw the Chinese restaurant scene for the first time. She manages to establish a little bit of rapport with outie Mark sure, but at the end of the day she just can’t keep up with a version of him that has actually lived a full complete life.
I’m not quite sure where I stand on the whole ethics of outies/non-severed people having sex with innies debate, but it is kind of giving “dating teenagers because you’re immature.”
So much, so fucking much going on, so much to say… oh my god.
I was so dumbstruck immediately after finishing this episode that when I ran into my roommate right after she asked me if I was okay and if something had happened.
Spoilers and rambling under the cut
So… talk about a cold open amirite?
I legitimately unironically love that they just decided to just go off in a completely different direction after last episode without resolving its cliffhanger. It enhances the “what the actual fuck” factor of the extreme location change even more. We are left just as confused and untrusting as the characters.
Not knowing whether this Mark is innie Mark, outie Mark, or some amalgamation of the two while also not knowing if Helly is Helly or Helena creates an insane amount of tension, or at least it did for me. This uncomfortable ambiguity manages to make what would otherwise be a very standard sex scene weirdly unsettling. To be fair, it being intercut with Irving wandering the woods having visions and almost freezing to death probably also contributes to this effect.
Also can we talk about the use of color contrast during that whole sequence? The cinematography and imagery in this episode has me so excited for when the gifset makers get their hands on it. I’ll probably redraw a screenshot from this episode at some point, the only trouble is picking which one.
Also in Irving’s dream the MDR software is in light mode. Truly nightmarish.
And Irving… oh my god Irving. Sometime in the last few hours I believe I reblogged a post that said something about him becoming more and more like his outie, and holy shit that sentiment has aged like fine wine. Now he too has become Nancy Drew, Destroyer of Mysteries. In all seriousness I love the implication that his drive for the truth is at least in some small way an innate quality of his character regardless of his experiences along with his passion for art. Either that or he gets to keep outie Irving’s investigatory skills since the logic severance operates on doesn’t count them as memories. Both are interesting prospects.
Also! The way that immediately after the Glasgow block is deactivated Irving pulls Helly into a hug!! The sudden shift in his body language the minute the person he’s threatening to kill turns back into his friend!! Holy shit I’m losing my mind!
I also love the exact moment in which Helena’s identity is confirmed. There’s no build up to an admission or anything because her life is quite literally on the line, all pretenses have to be dropped immediately. Her calling Milchick by his first name is a great touch, sort of a payoff to that offhand line from Dylan’s wife’s visit in the last episode that specifically demonstrates that the innies don’t know it.
While I was watching the episode I remember being a bit disappointed that there was so little focus given to Dylan, but then there was that whole interaction between him and Irving at the end where he apologizes for not listening to him and starts yelling at Milchick to leave Irving alone… I have so many feelings about it.
I’m completely in the dark for how Mark’s reintegration factors into this episode at all. I might have even guessed that this episode takes place before he was reintegrated if it wasn’t for the fact that his outie clearly had to be involved in getting his body to the retreat in some way and I really don’t know how they could’ve avoided mentioning it previously if that was the case. The Mark in this episode seems to be either innie Mark or a reintegrated Mark that heavily favors innie Mark, since I really don’t think outie Mark or a reintegrated Mark that is functionally just outie Mark with access to innie Mark’s memories (a la Petey) would be down for sex with Helly, especially considering how the last episode ended. I think the most likely explanation is that there’s something strange about Mark’s reintegration, although I couldn’t tell you exactly what. Either that or the reintegration failed, but that’s kind of a cop out and I have more faith in the writers than that.
Honestly I hope that the Mark in this episode is innie Mark, even if it’s pretty unlikely, because I’m evil and I think he’s the least emotionally equipped to deal with the trauma and aftermath of rape by fraud (which this is a pretty clear cut case of, while there is generally a lot of contention over what does and doesn’t count as rape by fraud, having sex with someone under the pretense that you’re a specific person they know when you’re actually somebody else unambiguously counts. Regardless of which Mark he happens to be, their dialogue before and right after they sleep together very much establishes that he believes her to be Helly R not Helena Eagan).
Overall I think the way that Lumon has been pitting each member of MDR against one another really comes to a head this episode, which is funny considering that company retreats are usually supposed to be for team building purposes.
I can’t wait until next week when we finally get to see our girl again! Unfortunately for her she’s probably going to have to clean up Helena’s mess.
I watched the BTS bonus feature for this episode as well, and I am insane about that part where Dan Erickson said that season one was in many ways about childhood and how season two is about adolescence because the innies are figuring out who they are independent of their outies. Also I loved that comment Tramell Tillman made about how Milchick wasn’t technically lying about it being the tallest waterfall in the world, since the innies have never seen a waterfall before, therefore it’s true for them lmao.
EDIT: I forgot to mention it, but clone theory believers are fucking THRIVING today! Good for them!
Milchick’s progress review was literally “you are too smart and nice please stop it.” But in all seriousness, the revelation/confirmation that all the improvements at the start of the season were specifically his idea feels significant.
Also Lumon trying to argue that innies are like, ontologically different from other people in a particular way that just so happens make working at Lumon the best possible environment for them to exist in. Yeah sure okay…
Also of course Trojan’s Horse comes from Ricken.
Speaking of which: shut up dude you clearly do not need that money.
I’m really excited to see where Devon’s character is going to go this season. Idk it just kinda feels like they’re building up to something with her.
It is incredibly realistic that at the start of season two, after spending the entirety of season one overcoming some of his (cult) conditioning and gaining even just the tiniest modicum of self confidence, Mark S immediately becomes The Most Annoying Person On Planet Earth. And I love that for him.
