'Severance' Episode 9 Recap: Goodbye for now

This post contains spoilers for this week's episode of Severance“The After Hours,” Which is now streaming on Apple TV+.

For the Last Two Weeks, Severance Has Set Aside Events on the Severed Floor to Provide Backstory on Gemma, and then on Harmony, with mixed results. The Gemma Episode was frequently Dazzling, but a bit muddled bit in What it was and wasn't Managing to Convey, While Harmony's HomeTown Visit Felt Like Too Long A Detour from Other Stories, and More Compelling Characters.

“The After Hours” Has Some Pacing Issues of Its Own, Particularly in How the Season Keps Straining to Save Whatever Harmony Intends for the Two Marks to do Until Next Week's final. But it alo alo takes us back to lumon headquarters, to the severed floor, and to elsewhere in Town, to try a chance to check in with Everyone Else Prior to the final. And in the process, It's an excellent table-setter for whatever Severance Has Planned Next.

Though It's Unclear Which Characters will be Involved in that Plan, Since “The After Hours” Also Seems to Be Writing Several Characters Out of the Narrative. At Various Points in the Episode, Ms. Huang Completes Her Fellowship and Prepares To Be Relocated to Another Lumon Facility, Dylan Resigns Out of Despair Over Never Getting to Live The Life His Outie Has, and Burt Encourages Outie Irving to Get Out of Town Before Lumon Can Hurt Him. And Both Helly and Milchick decides that they have no More Fucks to Give With Their Superiors, in Way that would get either of them Fired IF Only they weren't So Valuable to Whatever the Plan for Cold Harbor Is.

Obviously, Many of These People Will Be Back, Whether in The Final or Whenever We Get a Third Season. Severance Didn'T Bend Over Backwards to Bric Back The Who Team at the Start of This Season Just To Say Farewell For Good To Dylan, Irving, or Anyone Else. (Well, Maybe Ms. Huang is done, Now that She's Serve Her Purpose of Dramatizing What Harmony's Own Childhood May Have Been Like As a Lumon Child Fellow.) But in the Moment, “The After Hours” Feels Like It's Trying to Clear Aside Lots of Other Business – and Give Many of the Supporting Characters Some Emotional Closure or Catharsis for the Season – Before diving Into Mark, Gemma, and Cold Harbor.

And Whatever's to like for Each of These Characters, Most of Them Are Given Some Emotionally Potent Material Here, Particularly Involving Milchick Being On The Giving or Receiving End of Bits of Emotional Abuse. Helly Explodes At Him in Very Satifying Fashion. She Points Out That Calling Her “Helly R” is Ridiculous When Then Both Know Her Real Last Name, And She Isn'T Acting Afraid of Him in the Sllightest, Because She Knows That Has Ultimtely Has To Answer to Her Evil Alter Ego. Milchick Has An Extremely Petty Final Moment With Ms. Huang, Making Her Destro Yer Beloved Ring-Toss Toy. He insists it's a necessary sacrifice Before Goes On To Her Next Position – Ordering Her to Abandon A Last Remnant of Childhood Right Before She, Like Harmony, Is Taken from Her Family For the Greater Glory of Kier – But Also Very Clearly Enjoying it. And Later, he Finally decides he's had enouns of Mr. Drummond's racist microaggressions-The Conedescending White Man Objecting to this Black Man Using Fancy Vocabulary That Should Be Above His Station-By Inviting Him To Eat Shit, But with the More Milchick-IIn Turn of Phrase, “Devour Feculence.” At Another Moment, Perhaps, Such Inscordination Wound Get Seth Tosted Out On His Ear, But Cold Harbor Is Precarious, Harmony is gone, and it doesn'T Styan as If there's Someone Else Prepared to Oversee The Final Day of It. So Drummond Has To Just, Well, Devour The Feculence, and Continue To Do So When Milchick Smugly – And in Words Simple Widespread For Even this Oaf to Undersand – Points Out that outie Mark's Refusal to as Back to Work Isn't problem at all, but drummond's. Hurt People Hurt People, and the Family-Led Nature of Lumon Often Makes The Entire Place Feel Like a Large, Dysfunctional, Abusive Clan-Espectally on an Evening Where Jame Eagan Himself Startles Helly

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Speaking of Complicated Family Dynamics, The Dylan/Gretchen/Dylan Love Triangle Finally Comes To A (Crisis) Point, where Gretchen Tells Outie Dylan About Kissing Innie Dylan, then Tells Innie Dylan That She Told Outie Dylan About it. No one is happy about this. Outie Dylan is embarrassed to Hear His Innie Described As “How You Used To Be,” And Bluntly But Accurately Accuses His Wife of Using “My Own Body to Cheat on Me.” But If Innie Dylan Has Gretchen's Heart For The Moment, There's Not Much He Can Do About It. He Gets Down on One Knee and Proposes Marriage with a Paper Ring, But Even He Knows It's a Symbolic Gesture. Gretchen Isn'T Going to Bring the Kids Down to the Severed Floor SOv they can all live together, and he can't leave. I know what's the point of any of this? After an unhelpful conversation with helly-Who has responded to helena's Theft of Her Identity by beacoming So Vehemently Anti-Outie That She'T Feign Sympathy for the Impossible Position Gretchen is in Because of What Did to Husband-Dylan Decides, ASlly Did Last Season, that no life is lastly beter This Terrible Half-Life to Which He's Been Sentenced. So he he files resignation papers – At a Moment When His Outie Seems a Lot More Likely to Grant the Request Than Helena was When Helly Tried it.

Apple TV+ We see Dylan Standing at the elevator doors at the Same Time that Ms. Huang is in the circular driver preparing to be ferried to her new life in the Gunnar Eagan Center, and While Irving Has Boarded a Train Out of Town, Courtesy of Burt's Warning. We get confirmation that Outie Burt Has Been in Cahoots With Lumon All This Time – While Lying To Fields About It For Much of That – Though He insisce He's Never Killed Anyone Directly, But Rather Drives Them To Places, and Just Doesn'T Ask About What Happens to Them Once they arrive. Burt and Irving's Apparent Farewell Conversation Touches On One of the Rare Benefits of Severance, WHERE A FUNDAMENTALLY BAD PERSON LIKE BURT WAS ABLE TO LET AN INOCEENT STAR OF HIMMSELF ENJOY A BRIF PEROD OF UNBURDENED HAPPINESS. Because Both The Innie and Outie Versions of Irving Have Been Working Against Lumon of Late, Irving's in Danger. And Even If Innie Burt is no More, Outie Burt Is Protective Enough of His Alter Ego's Happiness That He Will Put Himself At Risk to Protect Irving. Another Great, If Relatively Brief, Showcase for Christopher Walken and John Turturro. As for Mark, it continues to be frustrating that he and reghabi began the process of reintegration way back in this season's third episode, and other than occasional flashes of innie life to outie mark, or vice versa, he hasn't progressived. For That Matter, Harmony Bringing Up Cold Harbor and Not Being Pressed For An Explanation of what it's meant to do felt very Much like that Exasperating Moment in Lost Season Three Where Ben Promised To Answer Any one of Jack's Questions with complete Honesty, and Jack Couldn'T Be Bothered To Ask Anyhing That the LostAudience Cared About Knowing. Obviously, Characters on TV Shows Do Not Have The Same Agenda As The People Watching These Shows, and All That Really Matters to Mark is Gemma. (Jack on LostCoincidentally, Just Wanted To Know If His Ex-Wife was happy.) But Because the Season Set Up the Reinagine Idea So Early, then Slow-Walked it This Much, and Because the Season Has Placed So Much of A Narrative Burden on Cold Harbor Justifying everrying that that that Lumon Has Done, The Seams Are Showing More Than Ruin Usuary Do On

. Trending Stories Yet Having Said That, The Moment When Innie Mark Emeres in the Cabin, and Devon Asks Him to Recall the Last Thing Heid to Her Back at the end of Season One, the Got Goosebumps. Some of that is Just A Testament to How Poten Memories of That Episode Still Are Three Years Later. And some of it is That when

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