Innies Only: Breaking Down the Premiere of ‘Severance’ Season 2

Chris and Andy talk about the many tributes to David Lynch that came out over the weekend following his death and Andy’s pilgrimage to Bob’s Big Boy, Lynch’s favorite restaurant (1:00). Then they unpack the premiere of ‘Severance’ Season 2, an episode that was entirely spent with the characters’ “innies” (14:47), and the many questions and mysteries that this episode introduced for the second season (35:57). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andy Greenwald?

  What's up everybody, Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and The Mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I can't wait to link with you twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, right here on The Mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league.

• 0:18Andy Greenwald?

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  And also don't forget to follow us on social media, that's at Ringer NBA and check out the full mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of podcasting right on the Ringer NBA YouTube channel.

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• 3:18Speaker 05

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line, an innie in the sheets, an outie in the streets, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 3:37Andy Greenwald?

  That's good. I like that.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  I think I might have used that before.

• 3:40Andy Greenwald?

  You think?

• 3:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think I might be lapping myself, like I'm passing my outie and I'm like now coming up with the same intros I had three years ago. But who can blame me because we're talking about Severance and that was three years ago.

• 3:51Andy Greenwald?

  Also, nobody can blame you for anything because last week you broke the news to me live on the podcast that David Lynch had passed away. The next time I saw you, you were talking about it again on another podcast.

• 4:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  The takes are free-flowing. You can reuse some, it's fine.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  It's all one pod. Uh, Greenwald, it's great to see you. I'm sorry that I'm not in the studio with you. You know, we've got a lot of returns today. TikTok is back. Trump is back.

• 4:17Andy Greenwald?

  Any others?

• 4:18Speaker 05

  Severance is back. The Eagles are back in the NFC Championship.

• 4:21Andy Greenwald?

  Unbelievable.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  How are you feeling? How are your nerves?

• 4:24Andy Greenwald?

  And you're back on the East Coast.

• 4:25Speaker 05

  I am. It's a little bit snowy out. Uh, I had to come back to the East Coast, but I'll be back in studio for Thursday. Uh, Andy, I'm sorry I didn't get to watch Birds of the East yesterday.

• 4:34Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad you asked me about that, Chris, because not only were you missed yesterday, uh, during the playoff action, I really, without you there to balance me out, I saw something. It's like looking in the mirror and I didn't like what I, what I saw. I'm terrible. I, I am a nightmare. To be around and I'm not proud. I made sounds. I was on the floor at one point. I hated every second of it. And at the end of this excruciating victory, we were texting with our buddy Zach, who was just like, ha, ha, ha, ha. I feel alive. Sports are amazing.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  That was like one of the best football games ever. And you were like, I wanted to tear my skin off.

• 5:13Andy Greenwald?

  I need a blood transfusion. And I realized for as much as people tune in, I hope to this podcast because of the way we balance each other out. I think socially I need that as well because you are famously pretty even keeled and I was not. And I, we could use this, we could do this on mic. We could do this. I could do this in therapy, but like, I think I was working something out and I don't think it's worked out. Is how I, that's, that's basically what I want to say to you.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  Well, we, we live to fight another day and I just wanted to go over a couple of things, actually really just one main thing before we get into severance. This will be a little bit of a truncated episode since we're having some technical difficulties that are entirely my fault. But Andy, I know that you

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  made a little bit of a pilgrimage this weekend. You know, David Lynch, as you mentioned, passed away last week. We were recording our pod when we found out about it, but you actually went to his favorite restaurant over the weekend. To pay a little homage to him. What was that like over at Bob's Big Boy?

• 6:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there's the Bob's Big Boy in Burbank and it's not a bit like that really was his favorite restaurant. And I also know because of the small ways that our lives overlapped slightly over the last few years, that that is actually the only restaurant he would leave his house for when he did leave his house. There are framed pictures of him and Colin McLaughlin and Laura Dern on the walls. And I was not alone in this, like it was, it was actually quite beautiful because the restaurant was slammed as it always is on the weekend. But outside at the statue, well, also, first of all, over the, the cashier, they have a little screen that's usually showing like ads for the Bob's Big Boy merch you can buy. There was a, instead it was just a picture of David with, you know, a little in memoriam from his friends at the big boy.

• 6:53Andy Greenwald?

  And then outside at the statue had been turned into a makeshift shrine and it was really, really moving. Not only was it totally packed with fans and disciples, tons and tons of like Twin Peaks t-shirts and the lady carrying the, a stuffed log. But what people

• 7:10Speaker 05

  There's a lady carrying a stuffed log at Bob's?

• 7:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes. And I, and I don't want to, I don't want to humble brag. These were the stuffed logs that

• 7:18Speaker 05

  Paramount gave away at the F Y C event that I did a few years ago, so I was. Oh, wow. I, Chris, I have one. I have a stuffed log. So I, and it's currently in my go-bag in case the winds pick up again this week, but I've got it. And it was really, really moving. So the statue's there. It was covered in donuts, in cigarettes, in slices of pie, in blue roses, tributes to Twin Peaks, some stuff that was referencing straight story, deeper cuts. My personal favorite was a package of Marlboros in which someone had written the classic back and forth from a David Lynch interview, which was, would you care to elaborate? No. And then a bunch of people wrote really, really

• 8:02Speaker 05

  sweet messages that they left from saying how his art had made them learn more about themselves, be true to themselves, guide them through the world, or just some sort of sweet, you know, kind of see you on the other side stuff. It was so deeply unironic. It was so genuine. I hope he knew on some level what he meant to people. But also, I was just thinking about, like, how many people touched this many people in such a specific way? You know, I, I, I mentioned Twin Peaks shirts and the, and the log and stuff, but I don't know if it was one particular frame of film or project that drew people there. It was the power of the personality and the idiosyncrasy and uniqueness of the artistic

• 8:45Speaker 05

  voice. And it just cuts across so many unexpected lines, I think, in the country. I was really, really, really blown away by it. It was very moving. Yeah, you know, I don't think I appreciated the level to which Lynch not only leaves behind a filmography, but also a field of study and also like a, not a lifestyle maybe, but like a, a way of defining yourself in the world. And those kinds of people, when they leave us, are like, you can really feel the void. I think, I think I felt that when Bourdain died. I think I felt that, you know, when Tom Petty died. I think I felt that in various ways with, with people who've passed on. But like, it really hit me that this isn't just a guy who made 10 really good movies and a couple of really important television

• 9:29Speaker 05

  shows, that this is somebody who gave people a language through which to understand not only this world, but the world inside of their heads, you know, and, and the, the life that they live when they're dreaming or daydreaming and. What an incalculable gift to give people, you know, it's like there's only, how many, how many people do that, you know?

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  Not many, increasingly fewer and fewer. Um, I feel like people who are listening to us, um, are aware of this, but Kyle McLaughlin wrote, he wrote a beautiful tribute on Instagram last week, but then he wrote something in the New York Times that went up yesterday that was kind of breathtaking.

• 10:09Speaker 05

  I know you, you instantly go to the op ed page, so that's where, that's.

• 10:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I've been glued there for the last few days and I was like, ah, this doesn't, this is, this is about the world of entertainment. So I'm less interested. Um, I was just breathlessly seeing what the latest was from Pamela Paul and I learned that she's, whatever reason, been exiled. So, no, but in, in all seriousness, Kyle's a beautiful writer and a thinker. And what was amazing about this piece was, it was reinforcement of something that I was trying to suggest when I talked about what it was like seeing him and Laura and David in person at the event a few years ago. He just is basically like, David Lynch invented these characters for me to play, but in many ways he invented myself for me. Because he saw a capability in me that I would never see in myself. And that that gave me the strength to be a certain way. And I was thinking about the, um, and he, he goes on to talk about the specific way

• 10:56Andy Greenwald?

  that he talked to actors and it's very funny. He would say things to Kyle like, more wind or think Elvis. He talks a lot about why David didn't like to do interviews, something I experienced firsthand. And basically was being very generous, being like, he, if he could say it, he would have said it. Instead, he made this movie or he made this TV show or he took this picture, he built this table and that was how he operated. But the, but the thing that I keep coming back to is just this thing, the, the, the personal element to it. Why he kept working with the same people. And you think about Naomi Watts, who's also been, been posting about what he meant to her. It's like Naomi Watts, brilliant actor, right? There's no question about it. But would she have the career that she has had if he hadn't, if David Lynch hadn't just seen something in her?

• 11:40Speaker 05

  I think she's been explicit in saying no.

• 11:43Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 11:43Speaker 05

  And she'd been, she said she was auditioning for 10 years in Los Angeles when he saw her from Mahal and Falls.

• 11:48Andy Greenwald?

  Mahal Drive, yeah, exactly.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, Mahal Drive, sorry.

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. And, and, and I should say, if people are fans of her work in that era, like she did make a movie with my friend Scott Coffey, who was very close to David Lynch and was in, in Land Empire and in Lost Highway, uh, called Ellie Parker. It's about her life auditioning. But we, what we see out of actors, and sometimes we like to talk about when we see things that we love, we're like, oh, we didn't know that, we didn't know he or she had that in him. Or who, who was it that saw that thing in them that allowed them? To become that person. And sometimes it is just a roll of the dice, right? Like Naomi Watts, like traditionally beautiful blonde actress. There's a thousand of them here at any moment, but she could do that thing. And it opened up a whole world for her. And that's just another, I mean, look, we could do, and I'm sure people expect.

• 12:33Andy Greenwald?

  People might be wondering if we're ever going to talk about anything other than this loss, but like. The.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  It's been two days. I think we could, we could.

• 12:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, but you know, the, the unique eye, it's not. Great directors. It's not just their ability to see a frame in their heads and or like a, like a, a mental storyboard and bring us the pictures. It's also what they see in others and the ability to communicate that and bring it out. And that's so rare. And actors spend, you know, most of their career not, I'm sure they would say this, not being seen. So it's kind of an amazing thing. I was watching. I know we both dug in the crates a little bit this weekend and I was watching Lost Highway, which has never been in my. Never been in the top tier of Lynch for me.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  In a heavy rotation, yeah.

• 13:15Andy Greenwald?

  And, and, and frankly, I think with good reason. Watching it again for the first time in a long time, I was like, oh, he was just kind of. He was still working this stuff out in Twin Peaks, The Return. And in many ways, The Return, I think, was more articulate about some of the stuff he was messing around with in Lost Highway, even though the I'm in your house right now scene may be the most disturbing thing ever on film. I would just put that out there. But like, the actors in that movie, whether it's Patricia Arquette or Balthazar Getty or Bill Pullman or proper Blake, like. Other people didn't see these people the way that Lynch saw them, you know?

• 13:49Speaker 05

  I certainly have never seen Bill Pullman as a, as a vibrant saxophonist before.

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think he's always seen himself that way. You could tell that that was his most alive. You didn't, you didn't think that that was the one thing missing from Independence Day?

• 14:02Speaker 05

  He's been blown on a sax.

• 14:03Andy Greenwald?

  If he gives the rousing, I mean, he was playing Clinton, right? Like, it's kind of all there.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. What did you order at Bob's?

• 14:12Andy Greenwald?

  I, I was feeling, you know, I wasn't really feeling, thank you for asking. I, it wasn't really like a burger day for me. So I got the club sandwich, which is always good there. Comes with a lovely salad, a side of fries. Vanilla milkshake's always on point. Or you can get a vanilla coat.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  Do you have a standard diner order like when you go or is it, is it like your kind of like time of day, how you're feeling?

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad you asked that. I, did we talk about this in the pod? Maybe I got a lot of shit the other. For talking about what the standard diner order was in high school at the Lanark Diner, which was later made famous in

• 14:41Speaker 05

  When we did Silver Linings, you talked about this, yeah.

• 14:43Andy Greenwald?

  We talked about the diner order, right?

• 14:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:45Andy Greenwald?

  Which, which for my cohort was mozzarella sticks and black coffee.

• 14:51Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I'm not saying that's like, uh, you know, that's not like a, like a warm embrace for your gastrointestinal system, but I'm saying when you're a young man, that, that, that was fine. Is that a pro- like, what was yours?

• 15:03Speaker 05

  Uh, I am, I used to just

• 15:05Andy Greenwald?

  I don't do that now.

• 15:06Speaker 05

  Two eggs, bacon, hash browns, and now I've added, as I, as I round third in this life, I've added two banana pancakes to the mix.

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  God damn.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  But I like, I like making that like a, a table, a table pancake if I'm with people, you know? Come one, come all.

• 15:22Andy Greenwald?

  But you're, you're an all-day breakfast kind of guy.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 15:26Andy Greenwald?

  I cannot wait for breakfast to be over. I, there's no, like, I, I, I would like to be ordering from the savory all-day menu at like 9 a.m.

• 15:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're like, don't you have like salmon and rice for breakfast and stuff?

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  Hell, yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  Can't do it.

• 15:42Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want, I don't want

• 15:43Speaker 05

  A giant bowl of Crispix.

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want breakfast later. I just like, keep that as limited as possible. I was a big boy, great restaurant. Used to be one near my house in Philly.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  Um, I was wondering, like, do you think you will, when is the last time you fully watched Twin Peaks all the way through?

• 15:59Andy Greenwald?

  Um, like, all, like, every episode of all three seasons?

• 16:03Speaker 05

  When's the last time you fired up Twin Peaks? Cause I was thinking about, about taking a lap.

• 16:06Andy Greenwald?

  It was last year when I did the Stick the Landing pod with Joanna, which I had such an amazing time doing cause we were both just so deeply in our bags that it was very emotional.

• 16:19Andy Greenwald?

  That was, that was the last time. I mean, when The Return came, I, I dove back into the original series, but then for the Stick the Landing pod, I really, I, I watched more than I intended to, to get back into it. And because we did the finales, we considered the finale of the original series.

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Of two and three.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, which was like an infamous cliffhanger. And then The Return was also kind of an infamous cliffhanger and how it was, it was really fun to work out something. Thing that I feel like I I I'm never not thinking about, which is that by ending my favorite thing in an impossible place, he kind of, and it wasn't intentional. They did not know that that was going to be the last image for 25 years of the show. And I won't spoil it for people who haven't done Twin Peaks yet, but I feel like that taught me something so, so valuable about how to feel about art and what to expect from it and how it isn't just a vending machine where you can always get more, more, more, and sometimes you're left with what you're left with and you have to make peace with it.

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• 17:47Andy Greenwald?

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• 19:32Speaker 05

  Should we get into talking about Severance?

• 19:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you know, I know we were both scouring the trades for other news today, but it seems like there's some other big event on the East Coast near you that that seems to be sucking up all the oxygen, so.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think people are pretty quiet right now. There's not a ton of TV news to go over, but I think that what's happening with Severance is pretty significant, both on-screen and just as an off-screen thing. Because with everything Apple, like I have no idea how many people are actually watching this series, but based on my like informal, unscientific and anecdotal research, this thing seems to be a rocket ship. There are already more than 200 comments on the Vulture recap. There are reams of posts about it on Reddit. Grown men on the street are coming up to me with tears in their eyes, saying, sir, what is Cold Harbor? You know, there's like a lot of energy around this show. We talked a little bit about the pop-up performance that they did at Grand Central Station. They were at the Knicks game.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  I feel like they've done as good of a job as I've ever seen Apple do, setting up this show for success. And it seems to be, at least right now, meeting that success, even though I don't know what that means for Apple. I guess my first question about it is just like, look, man, it's been three years. For us, it's been five months for the Innies.

• 20:49Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  And obviously spoilers for the first episode of second season going forward. How did you feel about getting back in the Lumen elevator?

• 20:57Andy Greenwald?

  My experience with the show, I think, is kind of unique in my memory of things that we've covered. In that I feel slightly severed. I know I've probably used this analogy before when we've talked about the show. I was very, very happy to watch the show again. I was enjoying it. I was surprised. Chris, I'm gonna level with you. I was delighted on two or three occasions. I also emotionally felt very little. I felt more like upstairs Mark, who we didn't see on the inside. But I enjoyed the experience. And I'm always fascinated in the ways that shows that have been off the air for a long time

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  address that, whether overtly or subtly. And to that point, I thought that Dan Erickson, who's the creator of the show and who wrote this episode, ran at it, ran right at it in a pretty fun way. Having Mark still be as panicked as he was when we last saw him and literally run for quite a long time, until he reached a room full of complete strangers?

• 22:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:07Andy Greenwald?

  That hit. That worked for me. But so what was your emotional temperature? Because there are shows that when they come back into our lives, we are thrilled. There are shows when we're skeptical, like Wind Me Back Over. I can't say I felt on either end of that polarity with this, but I was very pleased.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  I found, I think if I remember correctly, and I haven't gone back and listened to our episodes, but when we talked about this show three years ago, I think we were happy to have something to unpack. I think that our gas ran a little low as the season stretched on and the episodes felt a little glacially paced and maybe maybe felt like they lacked direction, or not direction like on set, but direction of where is this all going and what are we doing here? And I think I realized, like, you've often talked about shows teaching you how to watch them. I think I realized what kind of audience member I am for this, which is like... To me, this is not really gonna, I know that this series may broadly be about coping with

• 23:11Speaker 05

  trauma through disassociation and compartmentalization, or the obliteration of the work-life balance, and what happens to people in late-stage capitalism as more and more of their lives become in service of a major corporation, or whatever you want to say it's about, but it's about Severance. And it's about the technicalities, mysteries, twists, hints, clues, sneaky side pathways that they are able to create because of the density and stability of the structure that they've built. And sometimes a house is just a house, you know, and that's kind of how I feel about the show in a really, really positive way.

• 23:53Speaker 05

  There are shows where I'm watching them, I think I keep thinking of Lost when it comes to this, because Lost also had both the gift and the curse of around every palm tree and down every little literal hole in the ground, you could discover a whole other universe. And there were all these different permutations of things, but I think because the flashbacks in Lost did so much heavy lifting about making these people feel real, and making their experiences that led them to the island feel palpable, whereas Severance

• 24:35Speaker 05

  is kind of existing intentionally in a diorama. And I wonder whether or not, as we go on in seasons and episodes, like that diorama is going to become more obvious, you know? I think I, basically, it's like, it's like riding a roller coaster, and you just are like, the ups and the downs are thrilling, but I don't get off the roller coaster and think about Western civilization. So, like, I think that, like, I'm really into Severance as like a game, but maybe not as something that's teaching me what it is to be alive. I think that's well said, because I think fundamentally, and I, and we'll get into the things that work for us, probably.

• 25:13Andy Greenwald?

  That didn't work as much specifically because it's a whole season ahead of us. But I think the main difference, the Lost example is a good one, especially in terms of how hungry people are for rabbit holes to to fall into. The stakes on Lost were always very, very clear. These were people who had histories, who had lives, who had wants and needs and were unable to return to the world. They were in peril. Severance is weirdly, to my taste, uninterested in the larger world or that journey. Because, and I think, look, the best shows make hard decisions about the stories they want to tell. They do not try to tell all of the stories all of the time.

• 25:57Andy Greenwald?

  So I want to be clear that I that I I think I am understanding a decision, a creative decision that was made by Dan Erickson and or Ben Stiller in where they wanted to pivot the show in its second and potentially third, for however many seasons they've decided to do of this. But it told us a lot that the entire episode was an INI episode. That there wasn't even a whisper of the Audi world or the Audi people. I'll say, that is less interesting to me, just fundamentally. Not less entertaining, the the bizarro cheerful, is this real or is it not sensibility? And the aesthetic showmanship of the INI world is dazzling.

• 26:40Andy Greenwald?

  It's so fun to watch and engage with, just as it must it must be incredibly fun to play. Whether you're the production designer, whether you're Jessica Lee Gagne, the cinematographer, whether you're Ben Stiller directing it, whether you're Tramell Tillman acting in it, like, they must be having a blast doing that. I I don't begrudge that at all. But you said, when you were speaking about it, that there's this sort of existential, American capitalist question. Of why would anyone do this to themselves? Why do we have this relationship both with our actual lives and with work? That would push people to a literal breaking point? By only being inside and seemingly declaring that the show is actually a slavery liberation narrative for

• 27:23Speaker 05

  I thought that that moment where he finds out that they have become the face of what Severance Liberation or whatever it's called and one of my major curiosities about this show is what is going on in the outside world? Now, I have no, there's no reason for me to not believe that something like this, given the circumstances of our current world could happen, you know, like where

• 27:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'd sign up

• 27:51Speaker 05

  It's not like it's too far fetched.

• 27:53Andy Greenwald?

  I'd sign up for four years of it. It sounds good.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  But what I don't get is like

• 28:00Speaker 05

  I, we're only learning about the world in so much as we learn about Severance or about Lumen. We don't learn about whether, who, you know, what is happening? Where in America is this set? Is this upstate New York where it was shot? Is it Wyoming? Because, you know, like, what are we, what are we seeing here? What is, you know, has Lamar Jackson failed to win the big one in this world? Like, what are we kind of seeing? And where is it taking place? Now, I'm pretty into the idea that this might not be taking place. Even the Audis might be a certain experiment, you know? I like teasing around with this stuff.

• 28:44Speaker 05

  I really, really enjoyed reading about this show in a way that I maybe haven't since Concepcion was writing about Thrones and there was all the like, here's what Bran's vision means stuff.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of binge mode, I just like the drive by you just did on our

• 28:59Speaker 05

  Mallory Rubin, who is still processing her loss yesterday. Unbelievable. Let her, let the watch be a safe space. I was trying to think of like, a real world sporting equivalent that wasn't more birds and so. It's true. I guess I did think of a bird. As Philadelphians, it's hard to think of any examples of lasting failure.

• 29:21Speaker 05

  I, I understand why you would look south to our neighbors in Baltimore. Fine, let's, in, in this, in the world of severance, are the Dodgers deferring all these salaries? Yes, that must be tough. Okay, thank you. Well done. Please continue. Anyway, this is all to say that I'm very fascinated by like the outside world. We didn't get a lot of it in the first episode. That's okay. I think I prefer having one episode up to talk about than three. Me too. Great point. And so let's talk about a couple of things that happened in this first episode. I, I jotted some stuff down that I really liked.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  This has been debated a lot online. I think almost the, the sentiment seems to be that yes, this is, so when we see Helly come back in down off the elevator, she is obviously pretty disoriented. At the end of last season, we realized that Helly is in fact the heir to the Egan Corporation, or is at least Egan's daughter, Jamie Egan's daughter. And even though she throws down this gauntlet about the mistreatment happening to severed people, she is also still compromised by her, her relationship to the corporation. She shows up back downstairs, I assume. I think it's down.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  And gets off the elevator in this sort of grand reunion that happens towards the end of the episode. And she seems the most off. She doesn't have a convincing story about what her Audi did. Yep. Or what it was like when she was in her Audi's world. She lies about what she did that night. She, um, seems a little bit confused about Mark and his relationship to the Gemma Casey dead woman who's still alive. Not confused, but maybe a little all over the place about her feelings with Mark. Right. And I'm pretty into this. I'm pretty into. Burt Lauer playing like a, a kind of double agent.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  And it's fun to kind of analyze her performance and analyze those moments. Knowing that she might not have the best of intentions.

• 31:31Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think anything that bridges the gap between the worlds, which one has to assume is where the season is heading. Is of interest, you know. As you were talking, I was thinking back to how the show began and how much of it in the first two episodes was set in that, that like absolutely depressing slushy Audi world. That made the any world seem appealing. So the complete.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  Well, it's always dark despite it being five months later, or at least allegedly five months later, it's still winter.

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  Well, we don't know. We haven't seen it. I'm saying like, I'm saying like there's the, the complete. Erasure of that outside perspective in this episode was noteworthy for that reason too, because so the only carryover we really had other than what. Milchick says is what Helly. Does or doesn't do. I think that does kind of open up. So I, I find that compelling. I find that very interesting. I mean, I like the character. I like the performance. That is also. Really the only. Characterful. Expression of the larger story that. Stiller and Erickson and everyone else seemed to be invested in. By that, I mean.

• 32:40Andy Greenwald?

  Helena, who is the Audi Helly, right, is the heir to this family, to this larger corporation, to everything that Lumen, Keer, all of that. Means. Putting it inside of a character who is relevant and present in both halves of the show is so, so, so much more meaningful to me than baby goats. Or murals.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 33:03Andy Greenwald?

  You know, like, like put it in the characters. So I care about it. So it's present. It's not just received history. Like one of the things about the. You know, I always. Find it very cute or convenient and hopefully people don't find annoying when shows lend themselves to a way of talking about them with by that I mean like my engagement is is severed here like I understand being told that there are 200 sites of severed floors all over the world doing macro data refinement is absolute kindling for what's for the the the idea and take bonfire that's raging online like

• 33:45Andy Greenwald?

  feed that beast that is working people love engaging with shows that way and I am not above it finding out that there's 209 or whatever the number they say in the episode is other examples of this for the version of the show that I like engaging with dilutes it so what is special about this moment then other than these this is the site of the Keanu Reeves narrated macro dat uprising or whatever you know like I look Chris you poke me and I bleed I loved that sequence that whole the video is fucking funny the talking building the the everything about the way it staged with the with the projector is awesome do I feel any particular way about it emotionally store no but I enjoyed it

• 34:31Andy Greenwald?

  that's not wrong right but yeah but it but I bring it up here to say that like Helly's got a lot to carry this season if she's gonna be the the hinge point for both sides of not just the story but both sides of the severance engagement experience

• 34:45Speaker 05

  you know the person in this sort of Fab Four of the the macro data refinement crew that I maybe find the most interesting right now is is Turo slash Irv because he's having a very emotional experience obviously because he found love in a hopeless place down there and had that taken away from him and in some ways he has the most mappable emotional arc going on right now like even Mark in his quest now to find his outies thought to be dead wife that's a little like ornate whereas like

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Irv's crisis is one that I I feel like is recognizable like it's

• 35:33Andy Greenwald?

  who among us hasn't fallen in love with Christopher

• 35:36Speaker 05

  And it's like a deep sadness and I think he also is really, you know, at times last season, I thought he felt a little bit outside of the proceedings because you had Mark and Helly and Adam Scott and Britt Lauer doing their kind of will they or won't they and then Zach Cherry providing a lot of the comic relief and the audience POV like what the fuck is going on? What the fuck are you talking about stuff? And Totoro felt like a little bit outside of that and I found myself being very affected by him in this episode. I thought he was fantastic.

• 36:07Andy Greenwald?

  He's delivering a beautiful performance and speaking, you know, at the top of the show, we were talking about like what some directors can bring out of actors, what some directors can see in actors. There's a flip side of this, right? There's, there's some actors lose themselves into aesthetic choices or bits and some actors can somehow do both, give themselves completely over to a stylized performance and in so doing, show us the soul underneath it. He is, I mean, he's a beautiful actor, um, always, but it is like, it is already one of my favorite ever performances by him because he is-

• 36:44Speaker 05

  And he feels very suspicious of Helly, like, or seemed quite suspicious of Helly's Night Gardener stuff and, you know.

• 36:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Is it because he hadn't read the George Pelikanos book? Isn't there, isn't it the Night Gardener?

• 36:59Speaker 05

  Well, Constant Gardener is a Le Carre book.

• 37:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a classic Eastwood-

• 37:05Andy Greenwald?

  So really Irv's at fault here because there's been a lot of gardening action done all-

• 37:12Speaker 05

  At all times.

• 37:13Andy Greenwald?

  At all times. All right. It is, by the way, Night Gardener, 2006 by George Pelikanos.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  There you go, brother. I enjoyed Dylan the Achiever, even if it's, um, if it's fake. I like the idea that he is like, I'm actually doing well down here. I got this special dispensation maybe to have family time, which is an interesting gambit that they would allow the innies to see their outies, you know, because that was like the, the room that he's showing them.

• 37:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 05

  What did you think of that?

• 37:46Andy Greenwald?

  This, these are the things that I'm, I'm, I'm curious because the- Show is so well done. I'm not.

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not having the reaction I'm having being like, I'm out. They're interested in the part of the show I'm not interested in. It's like, okay, show me. Because it is an example of, I mean.

• 38:07Andy Greenwald?

  Especially today, the word bravery gets thrown around a lot. But. They are running towards the parts that make your head hurt. Right? Because they are fully committing to what would it mean to just basically carve out a completely different person using sharing a brain and a head? And a body. And a life.

• 38:28Andy Greenwald?

  What? How far do we push that? I mean, this episode was about that. It could be. I haven't watched ahead, but the next five episodes are Audi centric, and this was just an important sort of counterbalance to remind us that for whatever the Audis are doing, the Innies feel like. Consider themselves to be living people and their decision to quit, for example, would be suicide, as we saw with Erb. That they deserve a chance to see or share in some of the accomplishments, both professional, but more specifically in the case of Dylan, personal. That their Audis have. It's risky. But it's interesting.

• 39:08Andy Greenwald?

  I think, though. I'm curious where you are about a couple of things. So like my. My headlines for the episode. My reaction to it. Was like, the Italian guy. Is really funny. Like, that was really like I that the child secretary. Is great. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's not nothing. Like, I know.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  Peter Baker, New York Times. I'm loving this Italian guy.

• 39:34Andy Greenwald?

  It's a podcast, man. If I was, if I had to, you know, give you 2,000, like finely crafted words, I probably would do better. But what I'm saying is. To come on this podcast, week after week, year after year, and watch it like American primeval, which I cannot quit, by the way.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know. I know. You keep texting me, Betty Gilpin. What are we?

• 39:56Andy Greenwald?

  Betty Gilpin, W Y D. It's like my most sent text of January 2025. I can't then receive something that is this rapturously produced, this expensive and this culturally apparently relevant. That is also goofy as shit. I can't take that for granted. Like Bob Balaban being. Like, why are you a child? Okay, I'm, you got me. The Italian guy is really, really funny. I'm sorry, I don't have his name in front of me. And I love that about the show. And frankly, Chris, I love that for the culture. That we can, that people are taking the show very, very seriously.

• 40:37Andy Greenwald?

  But when it matters, it does not always take itself seriously. And that is why I keep watching.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  I thought that, you know, you mentioned Bob Balaban, you mentioned your Italian friend.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  And that was both my favorite and my least favorite part of this episode was the introduction of this other MDR team. And especially Aliyah Shakat as Gwendolyn, who seems incredibly

• 41:08Speaker 05

  inquisitive about the outside world in a way that I couldn't tell along the same lines as Helly was also perhaps had an ulterior motive. Perhaps this is the best way to articulate my lightest frustration. Which is, that's a very cool, brave thing to do, to introduce this new team. But the TV part of this needs a moment. When everybody from the first season gets off the elevator and they have a group hug. And then they all go back to work.

• 41:42Andy Greenwald?

  They sure did.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  While music, while a needle drop drops. And I, I really, I, I got it, but I couldn't help but feel like at the end of the episode, we had sort of spent an hour getting back to exactly where we were in the first season.

• 41:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, that is the TV of it. And I think generally

• 42:03Andy Greenwald?

  in this, generally, this is true with recurring TV shows. It's especially true. It's kind of what I was alluding to when I was talking about shows with long gaps. Like, how are you going to handle that? Are you going to pretend it didn't happen? Are you going to address it? Are you going to half move towards it and then? Circle back and huddle up again. Considering the amount of work this episode had to do to both move things forward, but also reset a table that had been unattended for a very long time. I thought it made, on the whole, a series of very good choices. The, I can and I probably will, over the course of the season, be like, okay, maybe that's a little too much whimsy. What are we actually doing here?

• 42:42Andy Greenwald?

  Had we spent more time with Bob Bell, Ben Aliashakot, and Stefano Carnante as Dario R. He has a name.

• 42:53Andy Greenwald?

  Chris.

• 42:56Andy Greenwald?

  Okay? I think it would have outstayed its welcome. You know, I think that it was, it was well staged. It was fun and then it was, then it was time to, to huddle up. One thing we didn't say, whether when we were previewing the season last week or so far in our conversation today, is that for whatever issues we had with season one, the finale was fucking amazing. Like, that, that was absolute the top of the top tier in terms of not just all the crazy stuff that was happening, but just in terms of the show absolutely coming into its own with a marriage of story momentum and aestheticism. Because it was, I believe Stiller directed that one as well. It was beautiful, it was propulsive, it was exciting.

• 43:40Andy Greenwald?

  It did the things that it was threatening to do, which you said it, not me. So I, so it's not a drinking game when you talked about shows, teaching you how to watch them.

• 43:49Speaker 05

  Well, I did it quoting you, so technically you should probably have a half a shot of, of two different liquors.

• 43:54Andy Greenwald?

  Great. I think Kaya's hoarding liquor in the studio for the next four years, so I'll go, I'll go grab some.

• 44:02Andy Greenwald?

  That was a marker put down, that they're willing to do this, they're willing to do the things. They're willing to, to, to go all in, to shake things up. So the reset is just kind of part and parcel of watching an ongoing TV show. Where it goes from here, I don't know. Well, anyway, I, my main goal for talking about this show this year is I don't want to be stuck in a bit of a five-month loop myself and every week be like, I don't know if it's what I care about. Because it is what it is and it's successful. So I would rather probably go through like, I know it sounded foolish, but I was like, Miss Wong, that's funny. It's funny that there's a child. That's great. Do that. More of that, please.

• 44:45Andy Greenwald?

  Because not only is it funny and is it surprising, it isn't portentous necessarily. You know what I mean? Whereas the thing that I still, let me take your temperature on this. I know you're on the boards more than I am. You live a resolutely online life. Like, what percentage of your unsevered brain is devoted to curiosity on the subject of what they're doing at their computer stations? I'll go first. 0%. You go next.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  More than 50.

• 45:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, wow.

• 45:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, because it's either going to be something really significant. And it's funny because every time I've read a Reddit theory about like what they're doing, people are like, that's not big enough. Like this needs to be something really significant. And, you know, people have pointed out that when Helly first arrives in the first season, she says something like, am I food? Like, am I going to be someone's food? And he's like, yeah, we didn't paint your nails and get you dressed to make you like, to turn you into soiling, you know, to turn you into soiling.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  And I, but I always say that to illustrate when you are in this game of we're keeping this behind a curtain and there will be this slow or grand parting of the curtain to tell you what this is about, it's crazy how people like get carried away and they're like, well, that's not important enough for me to have spent all this time thinking about it. Now, to me, it just kind of what they're doing reminds me of, God, what was that Philip K. Dick novel where the guy is really good at like puzzles in the back of a paper? And it turns out that he's charting an Earth versus the Moon rocket war? And he's like basically playing Battleship.

• 46:31Andy Greenwald?

  That's so sick. I don't know.

• 46:33Speaker 05

  It's so sick, but it's like, that's what this is making me think of.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  But it's definitely like a big deal. If this is nothing, or if they don't have an answer, or if there's like, we don't, we don't know what Lumen is. Like, I'm gonna be like, well, then what are we watching?

• 46:49Andy Greenwald?

  And I think everyone will be like that. And maybe, maybe I can do something.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  Except for Big Buddha Andy.

• 46:55Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe I can do something beautiful here and say, connect this every part of this podcast. I began this podcast by saying there was something deeply broken inside of me that causes me to watch sports from a fetal position, taking no pleasure from them. And so maybe there's that person, let's call him Sunday Andy.

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Sandy.

• 47:16Andy Greenwald?

  That is at play here. Because there's a little part of me that's like, they keep writing checks that almost no show can cash. You know, like, there was a period of time after Lost Hit, when every network busted out, like, The Event and all these other similarly named television shows, that were all about a mindfuck of a premise, and not at all about characters who are going through something in their lives. And they all failed. My, my, my deepest, darkest Matthew Stafford is completing this past fear

• 47:56Andy Greenwald?

  is that this show is the most beautiful, artistic, aesthetically pleasing version of one of those shows. Now, does that make it a failure? No, but I, but I'm on edge in a way that doesn't feel productive, first of all. So maybe I should just let it go. But like, give me more about people who are at a place in their lives, or a world that forces people to do this. Give me the top-down story, not the bottom-up revolutionary story of made-up people who actually have baby emotions because they're new and have never seen a sky before. Do you know what I mean?

• 48:35Speaker 05

  What if we find out that Mark? What if we find out that Mark? Yes, he was traumatized by his wife's death.

• 48:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  But the real reason he needed to go into a severed existence is because he can't handle watching sports.

• 48:47Andy Greenwald?

  What if it's because he can't handle watching Kellen Moore run this offense for another two weeks? What if it's as simple as that?

• 48:55Speaker 05

  The Jalen bail is crazy from you, man.

• 48:59Andy Greenwald?

  The Jalen what?

• 49:00Speaker 05

  The bail you shoot Jalen on like not being able to throw a seven yard pass is nuts.

• 49:08Andy Greenwald?

  I, no, I'm, I'm not, I, you want to talk about that? That's really all I want to talk about. I'm very concerned about what's going on in his super weird brain.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  Talk about severed.

• 49:22Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:24Andy Greenwald?

  Because he can throw 40 yard passes with pinpoint precision. We've seen it. But he also can't? So what elevator is he getting on at the stadium is my question? And can we reroute it somehow? Or punch the overtime?

• 49:41Speaker 05

  Daniel's taking an elevator to like.

• 49:45Andy Greenwald?

  Some kind of overtime protocol. I, I don't, I don't know. But what is your, let's, let's keep it in the sports world.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:52Andy Greenwald?

  What is your Sunday afternoon? I'll just have a beer, a light beer and a half, and I'm cool with this. Version read on this because you are, I, I, with real enthusiasm, you are, I think, vibing on the appetite that the larger television viewing public has for this type of show. And it can be incredibly fun and people are clearly engaged. But do you have any personal meter running that's just like, well, wait a second, this is.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, because this is basically what I was going to ask you. I know that this is really not a very new criticism way of looking at things, but I, I find it as interesting as I do the Reddit theorizing, which is the fact that this did take three years to get back on screen that.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  You know, Matt Bellany wrote about the overages with the budgets. I think Dan Erickson is still a part of the show or works on the show.

• 50:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 05

  But Bo Williman was reportedly brought in to work on the show. Stiller is in, Stiller is out, Stiller is in again. Like, there's a lot of like musical chairs. I'm not saying that that was contentious or not, but like, it just feels like there is a lot of like, cooks in the kitchen and a lot of like, what should this show be going on behind the scenes? I honestly find that stuff really interesting. Now, when you get into a specific kind of experience where you're like, every single shot has been thought about, considered, and has some sort of, it portends to something else than what is just on, in the front of your mind. Like, Helly's outfit coordinate, color coordination, or Milchick having this,

• 51:30Speaker 05

  or a red circle that's on the painting of the rebellion, or something like that. Like, everything that's just like, people are seeing, like, in five dimensions in the Library of Love from Interstellar on this show. But what if these guys are like, we're just trying to make our day? At what point does the tension between like, everything here is about something and means something versus like, we thought it would be cool if Aliyah Shawcat could do two days?

• 51:59Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there's also, again, we don't know any, we don't know, and maybe we're vaguely interested, but we're certainly not interested in like, you know, gossip mining here. But, but there's no, but there's no, so regardless of, we don't know anything about like, tumult.

• 52:13Speaker 05

  No, I didn't say that.

• 52:14Andy Greenwald?

  But what we do know, no, but I, I, I think it's of interest. And what we do know is the origin story of Severance is that Dan Erickson, in a, you know, like, like many people out here trying to make a career, trying to make a name for himself, wrote a brilliant spec pilot script that was basically a calling card. Like, this is the type of thing I like to do. He wrote it with a full and free heart because it was just for him. And it was 60 pages, and here's who I am on the page. Ben Stiller did something, to his credit, that most people don't do, which is, yeah, I'm, I had you in for a meeting because I like your voice, but what if we just did the thing you want to do? So then you sort of have to retroactively build. A show, a series around a pilot. There's no sin in that.

• 52:59Andy Greenwald?

  Some of the greatest shows of our time have operated that way and have found themselves as they go along. And one of the most encouraging things about Severance, season two, to me, is the small, really super TV things like Tramell Tillman, not a household name or a familiar face to me in season one.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  Got pushed up in the mix, yeah.

• 53:16Andy Greenwald?

  Clearly.

• 53:17Speaker 05

  There's no Patricia Arquette in this episode.

• 53:19Andy Greenwald?

  No, and that's a plus to me in this episode. Making, giving Milchek more to do, having him smile instead of frown at these provocations by Mark, that's a smart TV pivot. Like, let's bring, let's run towards the things that are working and bring them in in surprising ways. I love that.

• 53:38Andy Greenwald?

  At the end of this, though, I'm gonna give you, here's my, here's my deepest, hottest take. And I'll be careful with it. I do not, I do, we've never met Dan Erickson, I don't know anything about him. We, Ben Stiller has been on this podcast on the telephone once, walking in Manhattan, which meant a lot to us, because he's a brilliant director who has been a part of our creative, like, movie-going and TV-going lives for a long time. My, one of my all-time favorite things was him saying that he loved us. I don't think that he, I don't know if he listens regularly.

• 54:07Speaker 05

  I mean, he listens to real ones, I think.

• 54:09Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so maybe we'll find out, okay? But we are fans, regardless. Here's my deepest, most secret take that I, I may be wrong about, but I'm gonna put on the record, because, you know, I believe in, in speaking my truth, even in this dark time for America. Which is, if Ben Stiller is driving the show, I don't know if his interest in the show is the same as what Dan Erickson's interest was at the beginning. For one reason only. The thing that I think is universal about the show, and it's a human appeal, is that work is really hard and can suck, and can suck all of us. And we pour ourselves into this hole named work, and it can take things away from us, and we are willing to do crazy things because they fall into the rubric of work.

• 54:55Andy Greenwald?

  Ben Stiller has worked his whole life and done incredible things. I don't know if he's had a soul-killing day job before. And thus, the show, in its second season, based solely on the premiere, does not seem to be interested particularly in the psychology of soul-killing day jobs and why most people have to pour themselves into them regardless of how they feel.

• 55:17Speaker 05

  It might just be that it's not about that.

• 55:19Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. I think that was an interesting thing that, without question, was at the root of Dan Erickson's journey to writing this show. It might not be that anymore. It has grown so far beyond a spec script that he wrote, you know, and then walked into a general at Red Hour with years ago. That's awesome. But if the show is now this like, you know, day glow surreal, absurdist slavery narrative about newly-formed half-people, whoa, okay. Then we may have this season and one or two more shepherded by Bo Willeman, also, who fucking gets it done, is a really smart writer and thinker.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  This may be day one of a whole new era. How about that? How about I bring it full circle and say that?

• 56:06Speaker 05

  I think that sounds good.

• 56:07Andy Greenwald?

  And I will let go of-

• 56:08Speaker 05

  You're nodding a new Andy.

• 56:09Andy Greenwald?

  I will let go of these old, you know, concerns. I won't be marching or doing any of the old stuff, I promise. I submit. But that is, that is, that is the secret take at the root of some of my perception of this episode.

• 56:24Speaker 05

  I think that we are both, we're happy to have it back.

• 56:27Andy Greenwald?

  Oh my god, this is so fun to talk about.

• 56:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, man. Well, I love talking to you about anything.

• 56:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, you don't. You, the degree to which you could have salvaged Sunday, though, is really, like, I don't think you get it.

• 56:38Speaker 05

  It's a lot to carry.

• 56:40Andy Greenwald?

  I know. I'm not saying you should have. You're under no obligation.

• 56:42Speaker 05

  And we're kind of minimizing my enjoyment, right?

• 56:46Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you, you know, you keep it pretty even. Like, then- When necessary, you tackle me like that. You have, when it's time to celebrate, you are wholehearted in your celebration.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  I'm one of the best celebrators out there when it's time to celebrate.

• 57:01Andy Greenwald?

  You really are, just like the Eagles secondary. You have a whole routine that you've had in your back pocket the whole game.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:08Andy Greenwald?

  But you do not live or die with every drop back.

• 57:12Speaker 05

  It was really nice talking to you today. This is almost old school, just because it's audio only because I forgot my camera and also the right microphone cord. So I apologize for any technical difficulties, mostly to Kaya and CT.

• 57:24Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, once again, you are just sin eating for this podcast. I think the real reason we're not on video is because I walked in today and Kaya was like, you wore that last week.

• 57:32Speaker 05

  Well, now you're giving away your game.

• 57:33Andy Greenwald?

  I have nothing, if not radical honesty at this point.

• 57:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure Kellen Moore appreciates it.

• 57:42Andy Greenwald?

  Who is, who is more likely to have listened to this episode? Ben Stiller or Kellen Moore?

• 57:47Speaker 05

  Ben Stiller.

• 57:48Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, but neither of them are listening to this episode.

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Neither of them.

• 57:53Andy Greenwald?

  Who would I rather have running the Eagles offense? Ben Stiller, okay.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  We'll be back in the studio on Thursday to talk about what Ben Stiller can do with the Eagles offense hitting into the NFC Championship. Thank you to Kaya and CT. Sorry for technical difficulties today, but we'll be back together on Thursday.