[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol.” For coverage of earlier episodes, read our previous reviews.]
Effectively, properly, properly, look who’s again on the town.
It’s been over a month since we final noticed Concord Cobel (Patricia Arquette) fleeing the Lumon car parking zone in her white Volkswagen Rabbit. Preferring to take her probabilities solo, within the exterior world, slightly than go together with Helena Eagan (Britt Decrease) to fulfill with the board, Concord’s whereabouts — and loyalties — have been a serious query mark hovering over Season 2’s steadily escalating occasions. The place did she go? What’s she as much as? Who has her fealty? Episode 8 offers solutions — numerous solutions, together with a number of we didn’t know to ask — however it preserves the suspense round that final, important question: whether or not she’s turned on the corporate that fired her, or she stays loyal to Lumon, as she has her entire life (and, it seems, by way of censures far worse than getting fired).
However let’s begin with the place. It appears Ms. Cobel has been dwelling out of her tiny white automotive whereas touring to the seaside city of Salt’s Neck. That’s the place Concord grew up — working within the manufacturing unit that employed a lot of the native inhabitants. Now, like many American communities constructed round an employer who ultimately deserted them, Salt’s Neck is a ghost city. Storage sheds and barns are dilapidated. Homes aren’t far behind. As Concord drives by way of the secluded streets, there’s an eerie stillness to her environment that even a number of roaming residents can’t dispel.
Maybe that’s as a result of most of them seem hooked on ether — a byproduct, presumably, of working in Lumon’s ether mill. Concord spots one such wounded soul when she’s brushing her enamel, watching in silent judgment as he pops out of a rusty trailer to huff and puff from a brown bag. Then she’s on her technique to go to the city peddler, who owns and operates The Drippy Pot Cafe. Within the subtitles, James Le Gros’ character is simply recognized as “waiter,” however close to the tip of the episode, Concord calls him “Hampton,” and sharing half-a-homophone appears becoming given their chummy childhood bond.
When Hampton fingers a patron a small bottle of ether along with his morning espresso, it’s laborious to inform if it’s an act of compassion or commerce. He doesn’t take any cash for it within the second, however the man isn’t in any respect shocked to be getting greater than a caffeine repair, so it could possibly be a daily, mounted transaction. Regardless of. The desolation of their every day lives makes it laborious responsible both the giver or the receiver, and even Concord — who calls Hampton “weak” for being “larger than a bearded vulture” — can’t muster a lot condemnation, as she ultimately provides in to a fast sniff herself.
Earlier than stepping into what Concord uncovers (and what’s revealed about Concord) at her mom’s outdated home, it’s price noting the importance of Salt’s Neck itself — a seaside settlement that’s been stripped to the bone. “This city is older than I keep in mind,” Concord says. “Frailer.” You’ll be able to see it within the wrinkled residents at The Drippy Pot; how their weathered faces mirror the battered siding and stripped paint of the broken-down houses and companies throughout them. However whereas the city is crumbling, Lumon endures. You’ll be able to see it spelled out on the facet of in any other case barren buildings, together with the manufacturing unit the place Concord and Hampton meet in secret, nonetheless afraid of spying eyes from their company rulers.
Effectively earlier than we study Concord’s private historical past in Salt’s Neck, it’s clear what occurred right here: Lumon occurred. The manufacturing unit introduced jobs and alternatives, and when it left, so did they. Lumon took what it wanted from Salt’s Neck after which deserted the individuals it deemed expendable. It’s an American tragedy that’s not new, by any means, however nonetheless speaks to the ruthless nature inherent to the enterprise; the identical nature that might create the severed program.
Staring on the desolate city, contrasted so superbly by the pristine nature threatening to reclaim the land as its personal — the snowy landscapes and the fading daylight captured so elegantly by director Ben Stiller — I couldn’t assist however consider Bruce Springsteen. His basic closing observe to “Born in the united statesA.,” “My Hometown,” got here to thoughts first, with its melancholic farewell to a small city on its final legs. However its religious successor, “Dying To My Hometown” (launched on 2012’s “Wrecking Ball” album) feels all of the extra becoming by episode’s finish:
The grasping thieves who got here round
And ate the flesh of every thing they discovered
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Who stroll the streets as free males now
Ah, they introduced dying to our hometown, boys
Dying to our hometown
Lumon, the grasping thieves. Lumon, the robber barons. Lumon, whose crimes towards Salt’s Neck have gone unpunished; Lumon, who might solely be held accountable if this technology of staff revolt — earlier than it’s too late. Earlier than America, if not the world at massive, faces the identical destiny as Salt’s Neck.
Concord is essential to that revolution, and now it’s all of the extra evident why. Based mostly on the sketches she retrieves from Celestine “Sissy” Cobel (Jane Alexander) — who I assume is Concord’s aunt? — it seems that Concord truly invented the severance process. Her recovered designs embody frequency patterns like those Asal Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) was following whereas attempting to find Mark’s chip, in addition to many diagrams of the human cranium. Maybe Reghabi got here up with the precise process and Concord created the chip itself, however both approach, Ms. Cobel is aware of way more about the way it works than it as soon as appeared. If that’s the case, that might additionally clarify why she’s at all times been so fiercely targeted on the severed ground. She desires to look at her creation first-hand; to see the way it works within the area, slightly than hearken to experiences upstairs. Perhaps she’s satisfied herself she cares in regards to the severed workers. Perhaps in her personal twisted little approach she does care.
However does she care about them greater than she cares about getting credit score from Lumon? Her roots with the corporate run deep, and Episode 8 emphasizes her current battle with painful readability. It is a girl who didn’t say goodbye to her dying mom as a result of Lumon didn’t inform her. Her work was extra necessary, an appalling competition Concord has been struggling to acknowledge for years — as evidenced by the respiratory tube she brings along with her to Sissy’s home. We first noticed the tube close to the tip of Season 1, when Concord was fired and smashed her private shrine to Kier. The tube was a part of the sparsely adorned prayer website (one other of which we see in Sissy’s bed room, the place she retains the important thing to Concord’s mom’s room).
Now, regardless of realizing Lumon may be on the lookout for her there, Concord can’t assist however hook up the respiratory tube to its authentic machine, lay down within the mattress the place her mom died, and go to sleep, inhaling and exhaling, attempting to really feel her mum or dad’s presence yet another time. The scene emphasizes how a lot she’s given to Lumon and the way a lot Lumon has taken from her. “Why have you ever by no means spoken of this?” Sissy asks, when first introduced with Concord’s work. “I used to be instructed Kier’s information is for all,” Concord says. “That if I sought credit score, I’d be banished.” If her work actually was extra necessary than her household, how may the corporate probably deal with her this fashion? How may they cover her accomplishments? How may they relegate her to such a restricted function? How may they hearth her?
The reply, after all, is that Lumon doesn’t care about Concord. It cares about preserving its established deities and defending its backside line. Concord, for all her accomplishments, is a dwell wire and a risk. Ultimately, the outcomes of her creations grew to become extra necessary than the creations themselves, and Lumon made certain to maintain her underneath its thumb, earlier than ultimately attempting to crush her. That it failed to take action presents fairly an issue: If she does assist Mark reintegrate or in any other case assist him free Gemma (Dichen Lachman), Lumon goes to be in quite a lot of bother. But when she sides with Lumon as an alternative, it’s laborious to think about how the employees will overcome the return of their tyrannical chief, now with extra energy.
“Candy Vitriol” instills Concord with a tragic backstory. She, too, is a Lumon worker who’s been used and abused by the corporate — left for useless after serving her goal. However she’s not useless, neither is she purely sympathetic. A villain with unlucky origins continues to be a villain. The query now turns into whether or not she’s on the street to redemption, or bringing dying to extra hometowns.
Grade: A-
“Severance” Season 2 releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+. The finale is scheduled to premiere March 21.