Severance Episode 7 Recap: Defiant Jazz
Watching Mark piece together his wife’s picture in the final scene of the episode with Billie Holiday’s “I’ll be Seeing You” playing, it clicked for me. This show, like a lot of shows and movies, is really interested in Love. Specifically losing love or more succinctly, grief. That’s what Irv is going through at the moment. Burt’s retirement, forced or not is death to him, he is losing not just a friend but his Love. Dylan’s Love for a son he saw for all of 10-ish seconds drives him to break Milchick’s skin and threaten to expose his antics to Cobel.
Now that that’s out of the way, YEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Ms Casey is Gemma????????? This show has zero chill. I’m not really into theories and theorizing so this is legit a mindfuck for me. I’m not going to get too far into it, but I did not see that coming. Very interested to see how they explain it.
Before we find all this, Mark and the person who I assume is Reghabi, have a conversation about basically the ethics of having an innie and subjecting them to unknown things before Graner appears out of nowhere and gets his head bashed in. Reghabi is intense and not very stable. I am not sure we won’t see something shifty from her in the future. Ben Stiller is back in the Director’s chair and the handheld shots we get of Mark running out of the college building are a great way to show his state of mind at that moment.
Mark gets back home and is confronted by Alexa about his whereabouts, he can’t come up with a good enough lie and ends up asking her to leave. I kind of wanted outtie Mark to find love and move on from Gemma, but I do not think he is ready just yet.
On the Severed floor we get to spend some time with Milchick as he prepares for the day, testing out the new doors at MDR and retrieving the card Dylan stashed away before heading over to O&D where they seem to be getting some work done early. There was mention of people never leaving the Severed floor. Could that be why they’re there so early? Milchick mentions that he has something special for Burt. Burt “retires” later in the episode and after Helly’s outtie sent her back in after she threatened to cut off her own fingers, I’m not sure how reliable these outtie messages are.
Dylan arrives at the office, looking for answers after the events of the last episode, he wants to know about his son, his name. Milchick withholds that information.
Mark arrives at the office to the new protocols. Meanwhile, Cobel is successfully helping Devon overcome her and the baby’s latching issues. Devon is growing more comfortable with Selvig/Cobel and shares some personal information with her and then lets on about her suspicions about Lumon carrying out Severance procedures outside their campus which Cobel/Selvig brushes aside.
Back at MDR, Irving is trying to conjure an excuse to go see Burt, when Milchick arrives in a turtleneck with the MDE(Music Dance Experience) cart and with Helly’s choice of Defiant Jazz they begin what is one of the weirder moments in a show that has had it’s fair share of absurd moments. The dancing and merriment drives Dylan crazy when he attacks Milchick and bites him, drawing blood. Zach Cherry and Tramell Tillman have been excellent all season and in this sequence deliver some of their best work of the season so far. Cherry brings a different side to a character who has mostly served as comic relief this season while Tillman goes all in on a dance number that will probably be memed forever.
Dylan tells his teammates about the Overtime Contingency, telling them he saw his son. Helly suggests they wake themselves up and they head to the security office.
Irving immediately breaks away to find Burt, while Helly and Mark head to the Security office using Graner’s key card. They find the Overtime Contingency Plan and hurry out when they find out Cobel is coming down. The crosscuts between Cobel and Irving in the hallway does not pay of when Cobel runs into the board via intermediary in the hallway. She learns Graner is dead, brings up reintegration again and secures a meeting with the Board at the Eagan Family Gala.
Irving arrives at O&D to Burt's retirement party. Burt’s outtie delivers a message to the team. Irving lashes out at Milchick, who lashes back in return but is calmed down by Burt. I thought it was a little weird how easily Burt talked Milchick down, but I’m probably overthinking.
Let’s burn this place to the ground.
Last week I thought we were headed towards answers. That momentum has definitely slowed but not for the sake of slowing. The answers we want will probably be given a lot slower than we expect. This is a show that will probably be hurriedly renewed. I’m not against holding off answers, as long as we are still getting a good story that is finding it’s way forward in ab believable and entertaining manner
Bits and Bobs
He’s agreed to count to a thousand which he then violated
The Music Dance Experience is officially cancelled
You smug Motherfucker
There were 2 needle drops in this episode, 3 if you count the Defiant Jazz track and if I’m counting correctly that’s the most in any episode of a show that typically relies on its score.
Sometime last week, Apple TV released the Lexington Letters, an in universe document that tells the story of a severed employee that I think may have some relevance at some point. I hope they continue to put out in universe material. The last show I watched that did something like that was Watchmen with Peteypedia and I absolutely adored those little snippets into the world. They’re a great way to bypass exposition. You can find the Lexington Letters here.
This episode was light on the comic relief obviously because Dylan is not in a great place, it works fine without laughs, but I miss it just a little.
