Here we have Burt closing his front door We know it's his front door because it matches the one Irv knocked on in the season one finale We also have this shot of him here This could all be a part of that dinner Irv was invited to This episode was notably absent of Miss Cobell However here we see her in some sort of underground tunnel or cave At an Asian restaurant we see Mark leaving with Helena in the background I wonder if Helena will tell him that they slept together We also have these what appear to be flashback images of Gemma and Mark making love Speaking of Gemma there's this psychedelic shot of her and Mark back at Lumon which might just be another side effect of Mark's reintegration And is this Helly or Miss Casey walking down a barren hallway to what appears to be a window with a snowy landscape outside We're now halfway through the season and I can't wait for more answers to come our way way

Ricken is hard at work editing his book The You You Are so that it can be read by Severed employees and Devon isn't too thrilled about the changes Rickens had to undermine his own work in order to be in line with Lumon's values a company which Devon says hurts people The creative and financial opportunity however is just too lucrative to deny However Rickens mentions he could use the book as a quote Trojan's horse which is also the title of this episode Why he says Trojans instead of Trojan is beyond me but it could be a way for him to sneak ideas into the innies to quote beget a revolution But in its current state it's far from that

I also want to take a moment to discuss the files Mark sees in the Lumon Rolodex 5 of these names are cities one is an area in Mexico where the asteroid that made the dinosaurs extinct landed and cielo means sky in Spanish Then there's Cold Harbor which I believe is the fictitious place in Kier where Miss Casey died They all follow past Severance Files we've seen which are all locations Allentown also happens to be Ben Stiller's wife Christina Taylor's hometown

If last episode wasn't painful enough for Milchick our MDR manager has a pretty abysmal performance review But before we get to that he asks Natalie her thoughts on the paintings he received last episode which depicted Kier as a black man She too received the same gift however we saw Milchick store his away Usually not something you do if it's a gift you like Milchick has to carefully word what he says here stating that they both faced similar experiences and challenges in life and asking her what she thought of the complicated feelings these paintings evoked He can't be candid with her and just say look we're 2 black people isn't this gift kind of f***ed up But Natalie doesn't answer instead ushering him to Mr Drummond who will be conducting his review We learn that Lumon managers are routinely urine-tested and receive an entire booklet outlining their accomplishments and areas of improvement And for Milchik there's lots to improve How dare he use big words or forget to put on a paperclip the right way But those contentions as they're called pale in comparison to his failures These include the short-lived new refining team ineffectiveness of his kindness reforms the calamitous retreat and all the way back in Season One the theft of card 7197G by Dylan We still don't know what these cards are for just that they were created by optics and design But even with all these shortcomings Milchick is allowed to continue on as manager Lumon believes his particular quote level of energy rare in the ranks of middle management provides an excellent ballast on which the employees can anchor their days The use of nautical terminology harkens back to that wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald perhaps foreshadowing the destruction of the MDR department Milchick is ordered to quote go back to the basics by treating the employees not as friends but as subjects inferior to him to which Milchick states he will tighten the leash We can already see this manifest when Milchick chastises Mark for leaving work 6 minutes early and his intimidating and manipulative talk with him in the elevator in which he reveals he knows about Mark's affair with Helena

Something we don't get to see is what happened to Irv once he turned back into his outie at the end of last episode What on earth would he think when he awakens to find that his innie attempted murder His first scene this episode sees him putting away the export hallway paintings he's obsessed over It was all an attempt to communicate with his innie via dreams He kept painting them over and over again to burn this image into his mind while staying up late drinking coffee and blasting metal music so that his innie would be so tired he'd have to fall asleep at work Now that he's fired he doesn't need those paintings anymore He'll venture back to that payphone and call his mystery contacts We never hear a voice on the other end so we can't be sure if he's actually conversing with someone or leaving a message In my episode 202 video I theorized a few people he could be calling including Burt Reghabi Cobel and Petey But I want to throw in a new theory a contact from Dorner Therapeutics In Severance Season One's bonus material there's this file you can read called The Lexington Letter In it is mention of a rival competitor to Lumon called Dorner Therapeutics If I were Dorner I'd want to get someone on the inside so Maybe Irv is talking to someone from a rival company We can also cross Burt off this list as when Irv confronts him for following the 2 do not know each other Burt followed Irv wondering why this man was knocking on his door screaming his name in the middle of the night He puts two and two together that the both of them must have worked as innies at Lumon Another interesting bit of information is that Burt was fired even though his innie was given the full retired treatment I'm interested where Irv's storyline will go considering Burt has invited him over to talk about what happened

Huang and Milchick's preparation for the bereavement ceremony offers us some interesting clues Notice how there are mugs for Mark Helly and Dylan yet when we see our innies at the party they're all holding Irv mugs This suggests these mugs are pre-made in the event one of them dies The mug handle is a B for bereavement We also hear that management keeps an affections index for our innies which Irv scored in the high sixties Huang also asks Milchick about his performance review These 2 have a very tense working relationship I don't think either of them really like each other And I wonder if it was Huang who submitted some of those anonymous complaints about Milchick to Mr Drummond At the ceremony we see the mournful signage which shows Irv's work life of 12 quarters or 3 years They give him 9 seconds of silence which coincidentally is roughly the amount of time it takes the elevator to descend to the severed floor Dylan feels bad that he didn't go with Irv to O&D in episode 203 essentially preventing Irv's knowledge of the exports hallway from reaching the other innies However Irv's final line to Dylan in 204 is actually a cryptic clue Just remember hang in there It's behind the hang in there poster that Irv left his drawing of the exports hallway with directions on how to get there I imagine Dylan will want to check that out There's just one problem They'll need one of those black key cards to do so There's also some other cool posters here like the Grin and Baird It poster a pun of one of the Lumon's former CEOs And No Malice Palace Malice being one of Kier's 4 tempers I think the creepiest thing is this watermelon carved into the image of Irv and it appears the trolley it's brought in on is the same kind as the dentist wheeled at the beginning of the episode And after Helly chews him out for being an asshole she says that he just has to trust her Not everything down here is a lie which I'm assuming is a nod to her true feelings for him

Dylan suggests they hold a funeral or as Milchak calls it a bereavement ceremony something Mark isn't too thrilled about Sure as long as it's quick Now Mark is a total asshole this episode Not only is he a dick to Helly and Dylan he's completely disinterested in the funeral of their beloved co-worker and no longer has any interest in finding out where Miss Casey is Put yourself in Mark's shoes This is a guy who's come to the realization there is no winning against Lumon They've been one step ahead the entire time He thinks everything about this place is a lie including the woman he fell in love with and now he vents his frustration by taking it out on his co-workers I also thought it was a fun throwback when Helly goes to talk to Mark in the washroom saying I'm coming in Which is exactly what Mark did to Helly in season one Because I'm coming in He withholds the information that he slept with her which will no doubt come to bite him in the ass But later in the episode we'll find out Milchik also knows this Is that because Helena told him or because he always has eyes on them It's this piece of information that he'll use to quote tighten the leash on the head of the department

Speaking of Helena the doctors have given her the A-OK after nearly being drowned to death stating that her tempers will rebalance quickly There is also talk if she needs a quote obligement session which my mind only wonders what that could mean The big debate is what's to happen with Helena going forward Do they risk taking her back to the innies where she's almost been killed twice Now Mark won't work without Helly and his work on the Cold Harbor file is so important that Mr Drummond says it will be the greatest achievement in mankind's history Helena does not want to go stating that innies are effing animals An interesting thing to say since last episode she had sex with one Unfortunately she has no choice It's kind of ironic for being the next in line of this giant company she has almost less freedom than her Innie Notice how when Innie Helly descends to the severed floor for the first time since episode 108 her fists are clenched In her mind she is just coming back from the frigid waters of Woe's Hollow Now if you're Helly the last hour would have looked something like this You kiss Mark goodbye wake up to find your Helena Egan and are tackled as you try to expose the truth wake up to find yourself being drowned to death and boom you're right back at work f*** are you That's gotta have a crazy toll on your psyche The entire MDR team is taken to Milchick's office where they're given a debrief from everything that happened last episode Irv has been fired and is now on an elongated cruise voyage Something we know is BS as we'll later see him up top The big betrayal however was Helena posing as Helly And there's no one more pissed off about this than Helly herself It was a total violation of who she is as a person And Milchik tries to frame this as a patriotic endeavor by Helena to learn more about the innies Recounting the story of the Glücksraben where the Swedish prince would disguise himself as one of the people to get a better sense of what their true grievances were Kier Egan himself did this in his ether factories It was an ether factory where he met his wife Imogen Dylan is arguably the most vocal about Irv's dismissal calling Milchik and Lumon murderers Is he right Technically Irv's body is still there in the outside world but the person who was Irv's innie is gone As Mark states He's not dead He's just not here Any memory of Irv has been wiped from their office His desk is gone and he's been photoshopped out of their workplace photo Dylan suggests they hold a funeral or as Milchick calls it a bereavement ceremony

Back topside Mark deals with the side effects of his reintegration taking an assortment of pills and the grossest looking liquid I think I've ever seen which is likely to mitigate the sickness Both of these items can be found in the intro credits This is all taking place after the Innie's Weekend ORTBO Retreat where Mark's outie was told the reason he was a little wet was because he fell off a rope But we all know the real reason If we take a look at Mark's fridge we'll see 2 interesting bits of information An 1871 cartoon from Harper's Weekly depicting a Russian bear surrounded by young American women A reference to Russia's Grand Duke Alexis's tour of the United States where he was treated like a celebrity Then there's Leo Tolstoy's Auferstehung I hope I pronounced that right Originally a Russian novel whose translation is Resurrection an apt title considering Miss Casey has seemingly risen from the dead The Russian ties suggest these items were placed on the fridge by Gemma considering she was a professor of Russian literature in the outside world our innies during their ORTBO retreat wore Russian-inspired winter outfits It turns out this reintegration process isn't a one-time thing It takes several tries so Reghabi will be staying over until Mark is successfully reintegrated In order to maximize the effectiveness of reintegration Reghabi goes through Mark and Gemma's things looking for what she calls pressure points in order to rattle Mark's memories We'll find this necklace of hers knitting supplies and even her cremated remains or at least what Mark thought was her remains She's not dead she's just not here If you look at the back here we'll also see something Gemma knitted with the same colors representing the 5 electromagnetic waves that Reghabi used to reintegrate Mark Reghabi also notices Mark's cough something both his innie and outie experience Is this part of his reintegration sickness or the aftermath of being in the frigid cold all weekend I went back to look at Petey's scenes from season one and he doesn't really cough Mark wants to know if Lumon could be hurting Gemma but that's a question Reghabi can't answer As Mark makes his way upstairs he hears the voice of his wife and his Innie's memories seep into the outer world His reintegration seems to be working as we'll end on Mark seeing Gemma in the Lumon hallway saying your outie's going to be but it cuts off Now the copy of the show I had didn't have subtitles but I'm assuming we're not supposed to know what she says The line is particularly interesting because it refers to something that will happen in the future During her wellness sessions Miss Casey would only talk about an outie in the present tense Your outie values water Now if the subtitles end up revealing what she did say then disregard this next sentence but what does she mean when she tells Mark your outie is going to be I think the craziest thing would be your outie is going to be a father Last episode Mark's innie hooked up with Helena Egan and Come on we gotta assume there weren't any lumon condoms around so it's possible this might happen

hope you're all ready to go to the dentist because that's the vibe I got from this mysterious man Picking up from Irv's talk with Felicia of Optics and Design last episode this is most likely the man responsible for bringing items down the exports hallway Felicia told us that O&D used to take the items themselves but now this guy does We'll hear him whistle Gordon Lightfoot's the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald which would suggest he's not severed Our innies don't have any knowledge of songs from the outside world The tale of the Edmund Fitzgerald is also considered one of the most mysterious maritime disasters of all time In 1975 all 29 of its crew perished during a storm on Lake Superior But there was never a distress call no bodies were ever found the ship was split in two and the last known radio transmission was from the captain saying we are holding our own It's all very creepy You can parallel how these crew members mysteriously vanished with Miss Casey's sudden disappearance But why has this man come for a set of dental cleaning supplies Correct me if I'm wrong but the show's only real connection to teeth happens in episode 103 and the mouth wall It's not called the mouth wall Damn they took down the chick I like Helly even says So what are we like a dental company If we're to believe Irv these are the smiles of people Lumon has helped in the outside world But our dentist taking these tools down the exports hallway suggests these smiles aren't those of outies at all rather those taken down the elevator like Miss Casey