How 'The White Lotus' Improved, The Internet Is Wrong About 'Severance,' and New Shows

You know you're listening to Taking It Down.

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We're one of the Alabama Takes family of podcasts.

We're the TV and streaming podcast for the site where we offer non spoiler thoughts you can use for recommendations on what you may like.

And after the break, we cover specifics on an episode or two of TV or even an occasional streaming film.

I'm Lane, editor in Chief of the website and usually Adam and Donovan are both with me as co hosts.

But today it's just Adam.

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So that's the spot to see us as well as much more of what's going on with the Alabama take and our family of podcast.

Let's get Adam in here and we'll begin the show this week, which will include a list of shows we're debating on watching, little bit of non spoiler talk on the White Lotus and then full blown spoilers after the break for the White Lotus Season three and Severance Season two, especially Severance's eighth episode of that second season.

Come back to those timestamped segments after you've watched Alabama take projection.

Adam, it's it's like the days of yore where it's only you and I talking to one another.

That's where it all started.

That's where it's gonna end for me.

No third seat this week, which means there's no Donovan.

I mention it because we may have new listeners.

They may want to know the format of Taking it down, which they also want to know.

We're in non spoiler territory.

Let's converse the ebb and flow of TV and streaming tv.

We go weeks without much and then we get this deluge of things that we may want to watch or that could be intriguing or could work for this podcast.

We won't be able to get all of these in our Future podcasts certainly.

And we may not even get into them personally in our lives.

When a mic isn't in front of our faces, I want to list out a.

It feels like a plethora of shows that we haven't watched and do a temperature check on you on how you feel about.

Okay them and how they sound.

And you've probably heard of many.

HBO and Max have a new sports documentary airing week to week.

We're not averse to such and I'm especially not averse to this one.

It's Celtic City.

I've seen it playing Bill Simmons documentary argument that the Celtics are the best NBA team over the history of the NBA.

Bill Simmons is a Boston apologist.

Shocking.

Put that square peg in a round hole.

So this is.

And I've been curious about this because this is a pure or a long view of the franchise.

That's what's happening.

Yes.

I think American sports, I love sports documentaries and I think American sports in particular needs a bit of myth making.

Like this or not like this?

I think like this.

Yeah.

I think one of the reasons, you know, a lot of people who live in Alabama, live in the south, love college football and maybe NFL doesn't resonate as much and I think part of that is the long history the game was more established at the college level, first regional ties, all these things.

I think the more we can self mythologize our sports teams, the more fun it is.

Yeah.

So you're pitching a 10 part documentary for HBO on University of Alabama football.

Not necessarily.

Alabama's doing fine.

I think we need to Alabama basketball.

That would be a one part documentary, 30 minutes long.

No, I thought about this when I, you know, I went to see the packers play the Lions this year.

Lambo, you loved it, man.

Loved it.

You became an NFL affectionado basically the last few years.

Yeah, to be honest, I always kept up with it.

But it consumed you there.

You really, you really bought it.

Yeah.

And like the, the shift of.

Of college away from what it had been my whole life.

You know, with the new.

Obviously there's things that I think both of the support pay the players.

Great.

Sure.

Yeah.

And they will hopefully get everything corralled back into place and it functions like a sport again.

But yeah, just going somewhere where like that team has been in Green Bay for a very long time and they have played the Lions for a very long time and they've played the Bears for a very long time.

That's the kind of deep history because you know, I'm also a huge European soccer fan.

Oh, yeah.

So those are.

Those are deep rivalries with profound connections to not just the cities, but the neighborhoods they're in.

So any way that.

Right.

We can bring that into American sports.

I support it.

Versus building a new stadium every 15 years or whatever.

It's interesting.

A symptom of capitalism, Blaine.

Late stage capitalism.

Yes.

Well, I watch about 15 minutes of the Celtics doc, episode one and definitely gonna watch it.

But they are your rooting interest.

They're my.

Yeah, they're my basketball team.

They kind of were my first sports team.

Even before Alabama football, I was too young to get the ins and outs of football.

It's kind of intricate.

Why are they only.

Why are they kicking the ball now versus throwing it?

Why are they, you know, this and that.

Basketball, you just dribble the ball down.

Down the court, you try to put it in the hoop.

That's it.

I don't ever remember not understanding football.

My dad was a football coach at one point in his life.

Came up through.

It was just on all the time.

It was on all the time in my house.

But I was always like playing with toys while it was on and thinking basketball was so.

And this is funny to say compared to football, but basketball very.

Stop and start.

Why are they shooting free throws?

Why is that buzzer going off?

Why.

How do you run a play when you're running all the time?

But it's still with.

Even with free throws.

Put the ball in the hoop.

That's true.

But I mean, all you're trying to do with football is put the ball in the end zone while it's being.

But that could be a little.

But sometimes it goes out the back.

Yeah.

So automatically you're like.

Yeah, for a kid.

Yeah.

Now I did know when Alabama won that that was fun and that was happy.

So when I'd hear dad or say.

Or happen to look up and see.

Oh, we won.

That was good.

Good stuff.

Moving on.

Hulu has a new 30 minute show that's getting some buzz in places.

It's deli boys described as half succession and half Guy Ritchie movie about these Pakistani guys whose dad has left them the store due to dying.

And they find out that, oh, there's a lot more going on with this store.

Illegal things.

Ah, yeah.

Intrigued by that.

Where is this store?

That's a good question.

Maybe New York.

Okay.

Yeah, that's a.

That's a good premise.

Yeah.

I got to figure out I'm going to go on a mini rant here.

So I.

I dropped Spotify.

Good for you after.

After flirting with the idea for some time and trying out other services.

Cheers.

But my Hulu was wrapped up in that subscription package.

Like, you could get the cheap version of Hulu for like.

Like 99 cents a month or something.

So I got.

I got to sort out my Hulu.

Everyone out there, if you're.

If you're listening, just consider making the switch.

If.

If only for the audio quality alone.

Switch away from Spotify.

That's what you're saying?

Away from Spotify?

Yeah.

Hulu perfectly fine.

This show sounds interesting.

Have you.

Have you seen anything?

An episode?

No.

No.

10 episodes.

They all dropped them at once.

You know, that can be daunting.

It's like, golly, 10 at once.

I plan to this week.

I'll give it a shot.

I think it does.

It's probably pretty good.

From the headlines of critics.

There's so much TV right now.

So much I'm not even done.

As we release on Tuesday, you know, we record on Sunday.

Regular listeners know that the new and reportedly last season of the Righteous Gemstones has come to hbo, its fourth season.

So they've aired an episode.

I've been a pretty big fan of it.

I know that you kind of miss the flag dropping of that particular race.

It's not that I don't think that you are anti Righteous Gemstones or anything.

Right?

No, just missed it.

There's so many things that I missed.

I think of, you know, whole conversations happening around that.

Obviously succession is a different thing, but haven't seen a minute of that.

Yeah, I haven't seen a minute of Better Call Saul.

Now, succession is one of those where we as a group missed even.

Like, Donovan didn't point us in that direction.

So we can blame Donovan for anything that we.

Donovan, okay?

Yeah, sounds great.

He's not gonna listen.

Well, hell no.

He'll never know.

Why would he?

It was so shocking when you did listen, when you were awful.

We were talking about the IRA and Northern Ireland.

I listened and like I told y'all, it was a little frightening because it sounded really good.

And the thought of someone listening to anything that I have to say in an environment that actually sounds legitimized, horrifying.

I still relish that compliment.

Y'all sounded great.

I'm so proud of that.

All right, so has Daredevil, Born Again, Disney plus?

Has it been seen at your house yet?

Has it been on the screen?

Frequent co host Natalie's our Marvel connoisseur.

I feel like even.

Even Natalie has been dropped by Marvel.

I don't know that she is keeping up at series to series in the same way that we would have immediately after Avengers ended.

Marvel for me is now become a I can duck in and out.

Probably watch the first two episodes.

It's the they released two on Tuesday, if I'm not mistaken.

They'll release one a week.

It seems I'll probably watch those first two and make a decision.

I like the character.

I like the actor Charlie Cox.

I'll make a a call you and I have intends on watching more of the Netflix half hour series Mo but the Houston denizen and Palestinian who faces down deportation that's kind of on the back burner.

I'm continuing the Pit, which I wholly recommend.

We're eight episodes deep now, but that's quality tv.

I got a piece on the Alabama Tate right now about why I don't spoil anything.

I don't even say.

I don't even say what it is, but I kind of examine what it is about me that couldn't watch a many scenes in episode six.

If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.

All right.

Last on my list.

Dope thief on Apple TV plus begins Thursday or Friday this week probably Friday.

Probably.

They have it in their package to lure people who are coming down off the severance season that's ending in a couple weeks.

Does that ever work?

I don't know this one.

I don't know if I was watching Severance and I was planning on ending my subscription after Severance.

This one could get me if I like the first two episodes, which is what I would have watched with Severance by that point.

Can I tell you the only like HBO used to be the obviously the networks do this all the time.

Like.

Like you want to be the Simpsons used to always come on right after the Super Bowl.

You know, things like that.

Like we want to retain this audience, but surely no one's really paying attention anymore after the main event has happened.

Except hbo.

Pretty good at doing this and they used to have pretty entertaining mashups.

Girls immediately after Game of Thrones.

And I'm watching both.

But man, the whiplash.

Yeah.

Nope.

And sometimes you need it.

Sometimes you did.

Sometimes it was a great palate cleanser.

But we're talking about watching things on cable versus streaming.

Right?

And I don't know how much the only thing that hooked me that I would not have watched otherwise.

And I still have never watched it enough to understand like the the actual story arc or who anybody is.

But I found myself getting completely wrapped up in episodes of Ballers back in the day when it played after something on hbo.

But I don't know.

On a streaming service like when that program ends, I usually just close out the.

The app.

Yeah, so do I.

But if you know it's there and you're.

And you're on the fence about canceling for the month, for the.

For two months or until severance comes back, even then, that might.

You know, there's something.

They try to plug something in there a couple weeks ahead to lure you say stick around for another month.

I admire the energy of people who are able to subscribe and unsubscribe based on the shows they want to watch.

I read an article about it this week and it sounds exhausting.

I would rather just pay the $10 a month to not have to think about it.

I know.

Which is completely privileged wasteful thinking.

Oh, I'm grateful to be able to do such.

I used to not be able to.

There was a long run in college.

I did not have cable at all.

So anyway, dope thief on Apple tv.

Plus, it begins Friday.

And this one' sounds intriguing with.

It's got Brian Tyree.

Henry is.

I think it's main star.

But it's a story of two friends who pose as DEA agents to rob a house and that turns into some really deep, some prolonged, maybe even something.

But now you.

But you've got a show or something you said you've been watching.

That would surprise me.

I watched a movie.

I don't know if it's going to surprise you.

Gladiator 2.

You got it.

It's on Paramount.

I thought you saw that in theater.

Never.

Never made it to the theater for that one.

What's your score?

What's your grade?

I mean, I almost thought about preparing a series of questions for you to see if this would pique your interest.

You know, if you'd be into it.

I think I can just ask one Are you intrigued by battles to the death happening in a flooded coliseum, complete with very, very hungry sharks patrolling the waters?

The sharks, by the way, do not look good.

Oh, CGI don't look good.

CGI doesn't look very good.

Or they're unhealthy.

They're underfed.

Sharks.

Sharks.

Not in good shape.

Really hungry.

Concerned about.

Of all the other bad things happening, animal rights in ancient Rome.

Yeah, not for you.

Mm.

No, the sharks are very healthy and very, very athletic.

Very quick.

That's odd that you mentioned.

And the answer, I suppose is maybe it's possible.

But the answer's not an overwhelming yes.

It's not an overwhelming yes.

But you're not getting the remote in our house.

Yeah.

Because you loved it.

Like, if we see.

Like this looks like a really terrible disaster movie.

Yep.

That's been noted on this podcast that you and really Natalie has noted it.

It's like a cover band version of Gladiator.

Wow.

But suddenly there are these CGI sharks that look like they have been copy pasted from like a Sci Fi Channel end of the world movie.

Maybe malnourished.

Definitely bad cgi.

They look like they have been working out, these sharks.

Oh, bluff.

Yeah, they're good.

I had a friend whose opinion I value say that Gladiator 2 was absolutely great.

I really enjoyed it more than I think I can say that was not a good movie that I enjoyed.

Yeah, it cracked me up.

These sharks.

Didn't Donovan say this?

Or maybe I'm.

I don't know if he ever did.

I don't think so.

See, Donovan is the kind of guy who would like have a problem with the field maneuvers of certain Roman legions.

You know, like he knows too much.

Like, they would not have gone for a flanking move there from that position on such a.

You know, he knows.

He's an information specialist, Adam.

Professionally and personally.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When he.

When he told us this week he was an information specialist, I.

I thought that.

I thought as a career or.

It's just.

Yes.

Some information we won't get to.

Until the spoiler half is.

We're going to cover severance.

So let's just put that back there in.

In its eighth episode.

We're gonna talk very briefly about the White Lotus right here.

Third episode.

It's the most recent for us.

You guys may have seen the fourth one as you listen to us.

That's cool.

Before we specify those two severance and the White Lotus, let's talk about the White Lotus third one, titled the Meaning of Dreams.

My quick non spoiler thing is it improved the season for me.

It should have been the second episode or even the first one in a revised manner.

I could see that.

I don't know what they accomplished with the first two that could not have been collapsed to allow this to.

You know what I mean?

Like.

Oh, I do.

That's exactly what I'm telling you.

Yeah, yeah.

You've got to establish vibe.

Sure.

And maybe they're trying to lull us into nothing's happening, but.

Yeah, that's true.

Maybe they didn't take into account that their audience at this point are all watching everyone with a keen eye and being incredibly observant to what they do and say.

Could you imagine the pressure of that?

I can know no.

Does Mike White ride alone?

Because if he's doing that's a task.

The way that say, like severance.

They came up with a great concept and now are essentially fleshing it out.

And obviously there's a lot of people who think this is lost 2.0, that they're not going to answer questions, that they're in over their heads, et cetera, et cetera.

White Lotus, you have a runaway success with something that's completely self contained.

And aside from the idea that people are going to be in one luxury hotel, he's got to dream it all up again every time.

Yeah, that's tough.

You know, last week I think I said it's time to shake the template up.

This most recent episode that we've watched, episode three, it could still make me work once more, but I think if he does another season, it's.

He's got a really play around with, with some of the ideas he tends to use as a, as an outline.

Well, let's get into spoilers.

But before we do, to give you a line in the sand, here's one of our sets of friends who also have a podcast you might like.

Do you love music?

Do you want to explore classic albums?

If you answered yes, then check out Polyphonic Press.

I'm Jeremy and along with my co host John.

We rely on the patented Random Album generator to pick an album for us to review at the top of each show.

We have no idea what album we're going to be listening to.

That's what keeps it really exciting.

We did read real deep into these albums, so if this sounds interesting, come along with us on this journey because you never know what you might find.

We release a new episode every Tuesday morning.

That's Polyphonic Press and we're available on every podcast platform.

We're back.

We're going to kick off spoilers with the White Lotus Episode 3, the Meaning of Dreams.

I noted that the soundscape did gave more distinction in this episode and I wrote that down because it was super weird that I hadn't noticed it yet.

Plus I also noticed that it was this combo between old instruments and new ones.

Like if I may, like you would do on a guitar doing sounds like that.

It's an odd statement, but I think that that alone made the episode a tiny bit better.

If that's all it had done.

Are you experiencing any fall off with the show that is consciously or unconsciously related to the theme song not going nearly as hard as it did in season two.

No, no, I'm fine.

Now that you brought up the sound.

No, no.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Did I had the volume set right last Sunday evening.

I have no idea.

But I was just like, man.

In between edits, there's some odd choices with the music, the sound.

See if it happens this week because it's like these ancient, maybe even Eastern plucking strings, and then you get a guitar coming in with like a fuzz.

I'll keep an ear out.

I mean, that's one of the things that elevated the show in the first place in season one.

It wouldn't always be sound, necessarily, but, you know, they would have what you could call cutscenes or B roll or whatever that lingered longer than most shows take the time to.

And the.

But the sound was always really good with it too.

And it was almost like they were little slow TV or ambient pieces set inside the program.

And I think that they're still doing a good job of that.

Okay.

Yeah, Yeah.

I don't know how.

How do you keep that fresh?

I mean, it's a silly thing to say because, like, why do beautiful things have to be kept fresh?

But it was so interesting in season one, and now we're kind of maybe accustomed to that happening.

Though I'm still pretty.

I have thought a lot about the environment, the almost suffocating beauty of the kind of rainforest, Southeast Asian setting.

I gotta.

Now I have to listen for the sound.

I'll crank it up this week.

I don't think that they have to keep it fresh when other shows aren't mimicking that particular sound.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's good.

Oh, we got a pretty funny bit from Mr.

Jetta this week as a comment on the Alabama Takes page for the podcast.

He says, appreciate the shout out, fellas.

It's an honor to be included in the discussion.

Well, hey, we.

We love that you're a listener.

Three episodes in, White Lotus is falling a bit short of expectations, he says.

And.

And I.

I agree, though.

I.

I'm happy that the third episode was a little better.

He says the characters are almost imminently hateable.

One of the few exceptions is the hopelessly naive security guard.

He's already been attacked once, but it seems like something much more sinister is going to happen to him at some point.

Belinda is an objectionable, but her character just hasn't been developed much.

Her role will probably become more prominent now that she's identified Uncle Rico.

And that's the part that gets me.

I love it.

And two more little tidbits which was fun.

You can stay at the hotel.

You want to guess how much a night?

I don't know, but I'm going to guess so.

The only thing I know about this is that the.

Where they do all of the wellness stuff is a pretty considerable distance away from the.

It's like a Four Seasons or something that they film at.

Right.

So we're talking about staying in one of those suites.

Villas.

One of those suites.

One of those villas a night.

2500Am I way low?

15,000.

15,000 per night.

We're talking upper echelon.

We're talking the 1 percenters.

Like every time they go and show the group of women gossiping about each other.

Yeah.

It strikes me how big the.

The footprint of the place that they are, you know, because they're all looking at it.

So it.

Okay.

And the rat lifts to have this huge space.

Yeah.

Anyone could live in more than comfortably.

Yeah.

The last info, which I didn't know that he offers is Walton Goggins was bit by a snake during filming.

Huh.

That's not to be mean because the man's okay.

But that.

That's some funny, very Walton Goggins shit.

Did you look into this where during the snake scene?

I guess.

Yeah, I.

I suppose.

And I did read an interview with this snake caretaker.

There's probably a very official word for that.

It's probably what my daughter will grow up to be.

The juxtaposition of intent versus result, which in the case of Rick here, it's.

You know, he intended to be helpful to nature, but the result would be a lot of those snakes are not native to Thailand.

He would be right.

Kind of sending them to their demise, probably.

And there's a certain ecosystem about that you can't disrupt too much.

The guy in the interview also said that it was a pitiful scene there.

And those kinds of shows are tourist trap.

Pitiful and barbaric.

Barbaric.

He was very struck by the lady just sipping on a soda eating some chips there in the middle of a steak show.

I mean, that's the.

We're supposed to be disgusted by everything happening.

Yeah.

And we.

I was.

Yeah.

I mean in the.

Even the scale of the bags of chips.

They were not sharing one large bag of chips.

They each had their own.

Oh, wow.

That's a detail I missed.

I just remember packing her mouth full.

They didn't get this from the gas station for the road trip.

You know.

They're not the.

The lunch size, family size.

They were.

You buy them at the grocery store and take them home for the.

The family, but they're just shoving their face full of them.

Yeah, it's.

It's there too.

Yeah, it's there to disgust you and it's there to push up against what.

What Goggins character Rick is doing.

It's disgusting and it's indulgent and insensitive.

The whole thing is grotesque and we already said barbaric, but it's like maybe they're playing a little bit with class.

Like, we instinctively understand that these people are behaving badly, but the people that we've spent all this time with already are also behaving badly.

They're just rich and doing it in a different way.

Yeah, I think that's a great claim to make.

You know, our guy 87 Jetta says they're all hateable with the exception of maybe Belinda.

I still think Chelsea.

Oh, I kind of like Chelsea.

I do too.

I feel like she's.

I don't know if they're like playing with a femme fatale is not the right thing to say, but like she's going to end up being both stronger and wiser than we were led to believe in episode one, I think.

Oh, yeah, she's already showing signs of that.

Yeah.

The interview with the steak expert said that she would be in the hospital for a couple days to.

I was shocked when she was just at dinner.

He did say that the bandaging was accurate and that she obviously didn't do anti venom because that would keep you in the hospital for a couple days.

So maybe they're drinking.

Glass of wine.

Well, he says that maybe the snake did not.

It gave a warning bite and didn't release venom.

Gotcha.

Which, okay, feasible.

She nearly died two days in a row.

This vacation is not going well.

There are signs.

All right, here's my big, big question.

It's just hovering in my mind all week.

What's wrong with Greg?

I think there are a couple camps here, maybe three.

I'm of one, and that's that he is less lively and it's due to his illness.

Now that's not the camp I'm in.

But he is low energy.

He is sleepy.

Joe.

It could be a ruse that he used on his illness.

It could be a ruse that he used on his ex wife Tanya, whom he.

Yeah, like, had a hand in killing, seemingly.

The other camp is that he's.

He's sick.

And then there's.

That was a Put on.

And then there's.

He's way more dangerous than even that death entails.

And I really would like to see that.

I get the feeling that it is the third option, that he is really dangerous.

Like a truly scary guy who didn't bumble his way into what we saw in season one and two.

That maybe there's a pattern before that.

But I also think that can be true.

And once.

No, it's almost like you read interviews with people who attain a certain level of success.

You hear bands that, like, blow up and they get everything they ever dreamed of, and then they look around and they go, what do I do now?

Oh, yeah.

So this guy has, until Belinda shows up, gotten away with crime.

He's done crimes.

He has money.

Enough money to jet set around to these fancy places.

And he just looks miserable.

He looks miserable.

He looks sick.

Because you're still gonna be you wherever you go.

Yeah.

You had to do horrible things to attain this.

And was it even remotely worth it?

Yeah.

You're telling me he didn't get all that money from the blm, the Bureau of Land Management.

Maybe he took the buyout.

It's hefty buyout.

Yeah.

Tim Ratliff is tired of all the calls and notifications from the government about how he's going to go to jail for some sort of business fraud.

And he makes his whole brood give over their electronics.

I count myself as one who needs a phone detox.

And I include the entirety.

Rest of the world in that statement.

But I still felt incredibly itchy watching the fam give their phones, watches, computers, iPads.

There was something in that scene I felt like, ooh, that was a good.

Moment to hold a bit of a mirror up to us to say, you watching this show, you enjoy a sense of superiority over these people.

Envious times that they are living in such a way.

But you know, you're like, these people are assholes.

And I know it and the other people watching know it.

But also, I would struggle to give up my phone.

At least I'm not like that.

And then they give up their.

They struggle to give up their electronics.

And I suppose it was the computer part.

Like, I would.

I think I'd gladly hand over my phone for day two.

Three.

It's the computer.

It's because.

Because I don't spend 17 hours on the.

On the computer screen.

I'll check an email, type it up, get out of the room.

Sure.

I'll tell you what I would miss.

This is, you know, people joke about, did I even eat that meal, if I didn't take a picture of it, was I even in this place?

If I don't have a photo of me there, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

Did I even go anywhere?

If I wasn't getting on Wikipedia to look up all of the places that I went past, you know, the monastery, I would need to know.

To be digging through the footnotes on Wikipedia.

Really.

It'd be tough.

But when they give it up and the.

The women, particularly in the family are very excited about this, you think, man, what a.

That that is true luxury to have enough money to not be able to worry about people getting in touch with you and just disconnect.

Because in their usual reality that's a possibility.

Now, that's not a way.

I've considered it.

It's a luxury to be able to do that.

What makes it a luxury to.

Because we.

We live in a.

And maybe it's a byproduct of being a musician.

And I've talked about this with other musicians.

You almost feel like you have to be.

If you're away on.

You're on call at all times because if you.

You just never know when something.

Things have broken for me at unexpected times that were a good financial windfall.

So if you can't answer, what are you going to miss?

You know.

But then you use that as an excuse to just continue engaging with the bullshit part of the phone.

So to be like, I got a pile of money.

I'm probably going to continue making my pile of money is going to make me more money while I'm not looking at my phone.

What an enviable position.

Yeah, good way in some ways.

But to me, this episode proves that when you get people off their phones and on drugs, things get so much more interesting.

Tim pops one of his wife's atavans and he likes them.

And who does it give me a couple.

It won't be that long.

That brother Tim will need a pill for his heartburn.

He'll need a pill for cholesterol.

He'll need a pill for his depression.

Somebody ought to write a song about.

That every time he gets the feds phone call.

Yeah, yeah.

We're supposed to believe any comment on Tim becoming, you know, seeing instantly he likes the Ativan.

It's fun on a few levels, both that it's funny and you just.

You get the sense that he kind of hates his wife, you know, or is like sick of her.

And so for him to take it and be like, you know, a part of his brain is like she was right.

Yeah.

She's on.

Yeah.

It get humor for me.

Is that how quickly, like, he wakes up?

He stumbles a little and then he's just like, dig it.

Where's them peels?

It's usually not quite like that.

I thought they did a really good job with the stress.

I know you weren't into the phone calls in episode two.

Yeah.

But you maybe don't.

Do you care at all about his drama?

I don't think I do.

Unless it involves Rick.

Again, no, I don't.

You don't care about the phone calls.

You just want to see Rick blowing smoke in his face.

I want to see he and Rick, you know, either they either need to come to a head and maybe, you know, argue or, you know, take it physical or maybe just sit down and realize.

You and I, we're a lot alike.

Yeah.

Both doing a little of this and that.

I think I'm more entertained by his business failings than.

Than you are.

Wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking that he's going to get his people.

Certain people in America will.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Again, you're in this luxurious place, and possibly that pile of money is not making you money.

It's burning back home.

And you're could be apprehended by federal agents when you land back in America.

That'd be a good time.

But, you know, you see a part of the oldest son, Saxon, who we all detest at this point.

Yeah.

You kind of see his.

It humanizes him a bit, I think, to.

To see him so desperate and, like, willing to accept his dad just bullshitting him on the fly.

Like, he can't.

He can't see that he's being manipulated because it's this guy that he inherently trusts with his life.

You know, there's some Arrested Development there.

The show.

Or just as a term, both.

But as a term, like, you know, you would think a guy.

How old are we supposed to think Saxon is?

Mid to late 20s?

27, 28.

Yeah.

Starting in his career.

Probably should have figured out that his dad doesn't have all the answers by now, but.

But does it?

Very naive on that front.

He's naive.

We're supposed to believe this energy master who's helping the three ladies that he's Russian.

That guy's Russian.

He has the.

The shipping skyline tattooed on his.

But he doesn't sound Russian.

And I get that people can lose their accents, but he dips in and out of that one heavily.

A lot of people are doing it this season.

Are we?

Are we Here to judge people's accents.

I am.

I'm not judging it.

I'm simply saying that he doesn't sound Russian and that alone makes him red flagged.

He's.

He's not on the up and up, this guy.

You don't think so?

No, I do not.

He's sneaky.

Piper visits the monastery again.

Can't get in for a meeting until Friday.

You know, for a gal who's there to do some work and writing on a Buddhist monk, she sure hasn't been there much or tried to schedule anything that seems like day one thing.

She does go on day one, right?

She does go, but she doesn't try.

Yeah, right.

She's playing the classic, like, yeah, I'm different than my family, but also I can live at a pace where we're paying $15,000 a day to be somewhere and I'll worry on day three about, you know, scheduling the meeting that I'm there for.

Yeah.

I was surprised at such a blatant use of Trump.

Usually they only say Republican or conservative because it, I suppose it helps in long term viewing.

You know, someone watches seven years from now catches up about this a lot.

Okay.

It was, it was shocking.

It shocked.

And I am not the guy who says, let's leave politics out of this thing, you know?

Yeah.

I think for the reason that you said, like, is this going to date it?

Is this going to.

It probably won't when he gets his third term.

Oh.

And it's not because this is such a.

Everyone forever will know that this was an insane time, even if things calm down or not.

I would hope that at some point in my life, the United States is not as divided as it is now in rhetoric.

But we will always remember, you know, that that means these people almost cannot be friends.

It might have more impact to a viewer 20 years from now if they just so happen to go back and watch it, which is, you know, that's, that's quite the ask.

Yeah.

But if that happened, they might think, oh, shit, this woman voted for Trump.

I've heard bad things about that guy.

Maybe what shocked me is not including politics, but including a brand of it that is forever a moving target, you know, like, who the hell knew?

How could you know what Trump's going to do the week that this episode airs?

You know what I mean?

Like, it could be fairly benign or there could be like a nuclear weapon in the air while the show is on the air.

He could be praising an astronaut lady's head of hair.

We're not mad because he's not funny.

I'm not mad because he's not.

I'm telling you, the Dana, the Dana Carvey line is the best interpretation.

I want to live in a world where he's always running for president but never winning president.

That's pretty funny.

Just giving us the one liners.

Yeah, you, you thought about this a lot, so give me some more.

What about that conversation at the table?

Did you want to say?

It's a send up of what I have seen women on social media say is a unique brand of female friendship.

There's a certain, like, cattiness or other things that we use to describe female interaction and emotion, possibly in a misogynistic way for enemies.

But that's a, that could be a.

That's me more universal what I was.

I think that it, it can be uniquely female, but also just true of.

You know, we, we talked this weekend about the fact that, you know, when I look at my phone, the most recent text, most of them are not people who live within 100 miles of me, you know, that my friends are far flung and that you can know a version of them that's always connected to the time and place that you coexisted in.

And then say you may go visit them or meet in a neutral space.

And you're like, wow, this person is.

This, this entire human being is a little different than I remembered.

Or they have changed because people change over, over time.

I think it's interesting that they're playing with this idea of like, how well do you know someone?

Not long after the same friend went up to Victoria Ratliff and said, oh, we spent time together at that baby shower.

And Ratliff is like, why do I care?

You know, that was 10 years ago.

So that's, you know, when you say Trump, you're dropping a bomb into whatever scene you're working in.

And we really haven't seen it done in fictional worlds like this that often for as much of the bandwidth as he's taken up in the last decade, there has obviously been illustrations of tensions between progressive conservative, different social views.

That's been explored left, right and center.

But to just say his name.

Maybe it was a genius piece of writing because we're talking about it now and it was so.

Oh, I think it worked.

Jarring that scene.

Word.

And Kate never does truly admit.

Right.

She never says yes, which is exactly what somebody.

Who.

She does all of the defense mechanisms.

Oh, it was real world shit.

Yeah.

And it's framed in what you said, real world where she's describing, oh, I go to church.

And they're kind of surprised by that.

And that kind of classic.

And this is a thing that you and I have to do as people who live in Alabama or else we'd go crazy.

It's like, these are very good people a lot of the time who, friends, even friends, certainly at least respected co workers or community members, whatever, who for whatever reason vote in a way that's completely inexplicable to me.

But like, how they deserve humanity, you know, And I would expect the same in return when they don't understand why I think the way that I do.

But trying to give other humans grace for a second and then it slowly comes out like, oh, I also.

Why is it weird?

The whole time you're like.

It was almost like watching a horror movie.

Is this your way of saying that Donovan voted for Trump?

They're miles away.

You don't really know who they are now.

It's what I've wanted to talk about for months.

Fine program.

Since he's not here.

It was well played, well written, and it definitely gave us a original.

Semi original with the use of a specific name.

A semi original way of reconnecting Carrie Coons character with the actress that's, you know, got them all together again.

Yeah, yeah.

Because we, we have to have all the three women have to be in all the configurations.

Right.

Somebody has to be the odd man out at some point.

That's a way a threesome works.

There you go.

I think the.

For a show that would be accused by the Fox News viewers of the world is like, oh, another liberal elite program doing whatever.

Yeah.

I think they gave the one friend quite a bit of like, you feel for her when she's watching her friends talk about her.

You know, there's like a level of humanity still there that it's not just outwardly dismissive.

Yeah, maybe so.

I.

I think that's fair, though it.

May still be asking the question, like, how do we still be friends with her?

With a person who's done a bad thing?

Which is.

Which is judgmental.

So she catches them talking about her later.

Right.

I think you still.

The show wants you to feel something for her other than disgust.

Yes, I agree with that.

I think another improvement of the episode was getting some people away from the resort.

With Rick and Chelsea, there were some more interactions between people yet to talk, which was Sack talks to Greg's.

What girlfriend Belinda and Greg finally interact.

I love that scene.

He can act.

Credit to him because he gives such a nice little Side eye to his.

It looked as though he was looking at his.

His girlfriend, where he was like, who the hell is this?

What's going on here?

I don't know.

Yeah, well done.

It's so promising too, that.

That Saxon got an off screen invite to Greg Shot.

We need more people on Greg Shot.

I think a lot of people are going to be partying on the yacht.

Yeah, it's possible.

And I hope this is not the case that the show was planning on doing this whole soon I'm going to Bangkok from Rick.

And then the next episode.

Yeah, I gotta get to Bangkok soon.

And then, oops, I didn't make it.

You know, where's that?

You saving it for the penultimate episode?

If so, why bring it up so soon?

Does he end up on the boat or is it just Chelsea hanging because he has to leave?

I don't know.

There's a couple ways to do that one.

But let's get him in a pack of cigarettes on that boat.

If he's on the boat, there's going to be a pack of six.

Yeah.

Or two.

Maybe a joint.

If Tim's on his Ativan and Rick's puffing it up, I think they could really sit down and realize we're basically the same guy.

Let the chemicals speak to each other.

I still think the employee stories are dull when you compare them to the previous two seasons, especially last season, just not hitting for me.

Yeah.

As patriarch, Tim is kind of severing himself from working and play with advan.

Let's get into the very series that separates worker to person outside of work.

Is it weird that we don't have a word for person outside of work?

Like.

Well, we do now.

That's normal.

Though that's probably a good thing because being inside and devoted to work in such a way that you're completely different.

It's a new industrial age notion.

Okay.

And with that, it's time to.

I mean, do we want to talk about that?

It's part of what we're getting at here.

Yeah.

With Severance overall, not maybe this week, eighth episode, Severance, titled Sweet Nothing by the Velvet Underground.

It's.

I like that song.

Sweet Vitriol.

We're into the final three of the season with this one.

Adam, can you guess who messaged the podcast?

Donovan?

No, who was it?

It was a Ben Stiller.

No, it's Mark Falk, the genius behind the music of Semi Athletic.

Again, I am so thankful to Mark for reaching across the aisle in these divided times.

I hope he doesn't shoot Me, Canadian.

Mark Falk, he sent us a DM on Instagram of a real.

He must have sent it to you.

He did, yeah, yeah.

It's the reel that explains how the directors on Severance achieved that surreal effect of the actors changing from Audi to any in the.

In the elevator dam.

It's likely our listeners have seen this.

It could be.

Unless they've made a move for the better and quit social media completely.

So this move is called the Dolly zoom or the Hitchcock zoom.

Either one toward the lens of the camera, zooms outer end simultaneously as the camera itself is physically moved towards or away, depending on what they're both doing the same thing.

The fascinating thing for Severance specifically is that it is applied to actors where there's no real background other than a blank elevator metal.

It's only that light blue color of the elevator.

And it makes that effect more pronounced and gives you only the actors to watch.

Causes the face shape to suddenly shift and gives that uncanny valley feeling we all get and we didn't know why or I didn't for a while.

And the camera lenses used to film the outside world is a long lens.

And it's the opposite supplied to the inside world of Lumen.

And that too does something on how you view.

So it's a short lens in Lumen inside the offices.

So both the worlds have these distinct characteristics from how everybody's playing it to also the camera choices.

And I love that, you know, a huge, huge fans of everything trying to have a purpose.

I'm big on that.

I think that's when shows really operate on excellent upper tier level.

It's genius.

It's great.

Now you knew that because you sent it to me.

And also Mark did too.

Well, Mark sent it to me, right?

So he beat us to the.

The punch there.

Beat me to the punch.

If you don't know what that camera technique is, once you have seen it once, you'll see it.

Famous scenes like Jaws, you know, the beach zoom.

Once you know, you'll know.

I think we talked a little bit about this last week, that there was a practical effects shot where they sent a camera down the wire.

Right.

Or the tube or whatever it was.

This show seems very committed to doing things practically instead of doing it analog.

Interesting in the face of what they're examining also in the story.

Yeah, excellent point.

We got a message from Samantha Simmons, editor on the Alabama take side one.

Good to hear from Samantha.

She notes she's a bit behind us, so I want to bring it up here.

Therefore she's Catching up on our podcast, too.

Thanks for going back to listen because that's viable option for anyone who isn't caught up on a show and doesn't want to be spoiled.

She says Helly in episode five, takes off the shoes because high heels suck and are a symbol of Helena's control or oppression of heli.

Love that.

Remember?

I.

I think I made the question.

I wonder why she brought.

I think it was me.

Severance lets privileged women skip the shittiest parts of womanhood, like high heels and childbirth.

Or.

Or maybe even it's Lumen that's doing that.

So that's the same episode where she makes the comment about, she dresses me up like a dollar every day.

That's good.

It sends me down here, which was such a good summation of.

You know, we've talked again and again about how this show takes profound ideas that are simple.

The whole premise is simple.

Right.

You're just not.

You're going to zone out and go to work and then come back.

It makes it this very haunting philosophical question.

And when they do things like her saying, she dresses me up like a dollar, that's such a visceral gut punch kind of way of.

Of understanding what she's feeling.

And the.

Yeah, I didn't even think about the high heels kind of her taking them off, being like, yeah, screw you.

You know, I don't want to.

You chose this.

I didn't choose this.

Why do my feet have to hurt?

That's great.

And it sadly points out that our ideas and analysis are sometimes hamstrung by being men, you know, at times.

But so.

But that's why we have listeners who write in and we appreciate that so much.

That brings me and us to Harmony Cobell.

She's back.

She back.

This is.

This is the Harmony Cobell episode.

That's where we are.

Here come the spoilers for episode eight.

Sweet Vitriol.

She drives further out in the land that's always winter to what looked to me like a fishing village.

At first.

She sees a guy huffing glue or gas or some other substance.

We find out it's ether.

Right.

I'm just talking about, like, the initial thinking I did.

She ignores Devin's phone call, and then she stares down a small diner's waiter whom she knows now.

How cool are you?

With a Harmony Only episode, I usually.

Can manage to avoid spoilers of all kinds until I watch Severance.

The Friday night or Friday release makes that pretty easy.

But now people are watching, like, as soon as it drops on Thursday night, And sometimes I'll catch or like two.

In the morning kind of thing.

Well, it dropped.

It's late evening, I think.

So it's.

It's entirely feasible to watch it.

Thursday night I caught wind that some people don't like this episode.

I knew that going in that some people thought it was a speed bump, you know, kind of derailed the momentum that the season has had.

I even saw boring.

Boring.

I was shocked to see people online declare this one to be slow.

Yeah, I don't know that that slow is the word that I would use.

I don't it.

I think if you were to watch this show, obviously we don't know what the end of the season and season three will hold, but this would be, you know, say you're binging it.

This is a pretty strong outlier.

No matter what.

Whether you like it or not.

I agree with that.

I.

I enjoyed it.

I think that there was a lot of meat on the bone for propelling the story forward.

That wasn't.

Wasn't just about Ms.

Coble, you know.

And she was not my favorite part of season one.

Yeah.

I think that season two has maybe moved a little more freely without her daily presence in the office.

I don't know.

Maybe it's because she's just like scared me.

Like I watched some of the.

She's a pretty stilted character.

Yeah.

She's hard to read.

She's.

You know, some of the reactions that she had to Mark I saw on like a YouTube wrap up kind of thing.

It's like, oh yeah, she like yelled at Mark in the office.

You know, in addition to being the weird next door neighbor and the it all outgrowing.

Not outgrowing her, but the world expanding beyond her made the story feel bigger than just.

My next door neighbor's weird.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like there's some weird relationship here.

So I don't.

I don't mean to say that she's a bad character and certainly not bad acting or writing, but her disappearing has symbolized the story growing in a nice way.

But I, I enjoyed returning to her.

There might have been a little less external action for this episode, but I was hooked on what it was going to reveal next.

What every.

Everything it was showing me.

Why is this town so small?

What?

Why are there only elderly people eating at the diner?

And so I was waiting on the next scene for some explanation or hint what happened at the factory.

I loved all these images of the town.

No matter where they were in the world of severance.

Those all Gave a life after the apocalypse feel and the grime said, you know, what more can they show us of the Lumen office where Mark works or any of those characters that wouldn't wrap up several answers that they're probably needing to do in episodes nine and 10 to close the season and set up some of season three.

We know that this is a multi generational family business.

And if you go back, you know, I mean, it's.

It's classic industrialism.

You know that they needed the factory beside the body of water to do what they now do with computers.

You know that it's almost like a hierarchy of needs.

Right.

Like they started making a physical product and it slowly moves up into whatever the hell they're doing in the basement.

Now, whether it's.

I mean, they've already altered consciousness.

Right.

In some way and possibly, if you believe the conversation at Birch House, they have split human beings and created profound questions for the religious establishments around the world.

So.

But it had to start.

If they're a massive corporation, you have to have an influx of cash from selling something at first.

You can't only be in the business of destroying the entire history of philosophy.

I guess it comes down to.

For viewers, do you need to know all that?

Do you want to know all that.

In a show that's been doling out its own myth, the myth of Kir.

You know, we had the.

Yeah, the Excursion episode where we learned about Dieter, brother to Kir.

And interesting comment online that points out diethyl ether is the.

The full scientific name.

Right.

Looks a lot like Dieter.

Take out a few of those middle letters and you could squeeze the word Dieter.

Yeah.

And if you were trying to alter consciousness, a rag soaked in ether.

It's a tried and true way to do it.

Yes, it is.

Hunter S.

Thompson noted all the drugs he would just pop, but when it came to the ether, he kind of dreaded that one.

Oof.

I love that the show is making me, helping me understand what's going on and still leaving a few things ambiguous enough for me to have fun.

Yeah, I mean, you could, you could be watching this and only thinking, I want to know what the people who have been on screen, how their lives are going to end up.

Just watch it at a surface level like that and it'd still be a very rich, rewarding show.

But you could have paused, I don't know, two dozen times during this most recent episode and found.

And I did.

Which I don't usually get everywhere.

Right.

Yeah.

When she's first driving through the town and passes a very faded sign that clearly says Lumen on it.

Yeah, I gave it, you know, you immediately.

Yeah, you do.

The Leonardo DiCaprio point at screen.

But then not knowing that it's going to be another 35 minutes of that on steroids, you know, hey, what did.

Thomas Wolf know about never going home again?

Because Harmony, that's actually her old hometown, Salt Snake, which is.

You saw the sign in the previous episode.

You didn't know what that was.

Well, it's her hometown, apparently.

Her time.

Her line very early in the episode about the town being older than she recalls reminds me so much.

I immediately went to Scout.

Not Mark Scout, but Scout from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, where she asked her neighbor, this is an old town, ain't it, Miss Marty?

And Miss Marty misconstrues what she means by something being old.

She, you know, she is the town itself been there for a long time.

Or are the people old?

Harmony means it same way as Scout of the novel does.

But she knew maybe everyone as young and vibrant or at least a little more life in them when she was there, or just older and vibrant.

Maybe there were some 40 year old folks running around with some kids.

And this is the effect of Lumen, which her old sidekick hints at later with the factory's location.

They come in, they take, they leave.

I don't think they let his character drive that home quite well enough.

That's my only qualm with this episode and it is tiny.

I wish he would have just said a little bit more blatantly.

When Lumen leaves, they folks get old and everybody moves away and you only have us few.

He gives a very funny response to her in the cafe right when she's old.

But it's, it's like very academic.

Like you don't expect all of the words that come out of his mouth to.

And when the dissolution of certain power struck, you know, just.

I forget exactly how he says it.

But yeah, I love it.

You see the guy huffing in the, the empty box car or whatever that is.

You see three people in the diner, which at first you're like, oh, we got a little R and R diner going here.

Is this a little, a little R.

And R Twin Peaks action?

Huh?

Maybe a little bit, but that, that falls apart fairly quickly.

This is not super small.

Yeah.

Not a charming little forgotten town.

So you see, we've seen four people.

The old huffer, the three people in the, in the diner.

Do you see anybody else until it's just completely abandoned?

No cars Moving what few there are.

Beautifully shot again.

Yeah.

As everything in the show is, though, they.

Until earlier this season with the excursion, they.

They don't get to flex on big landscapes very often.

Yeah.

And they really did it this time with, you know, her driving in.

People have pointed out the S curves of that road look like the reintegration thing that Mark is going through where they're trying to line up the.

Again, if they were able to do that on purpose.

Oh, man.

Chef's kiss.

Bit of a shining opening too.

You know, driving through the snowy landscape into who knows what kind of madness.

Isolated madness.

It was great.

They use new phoneland.

As I said, the notion that Lumen would use child labor should come as no surprise to me.

But it's.

It's the same low that they do.

It points back to that eye exam for children from that last episode of With Gemma.

And wasn't there a Hershey school that recruited or brought in or stole orphans to work for them under a guise of education in school?

Was there?

I mean, there's a long history of, you know, like, taking, say, native children and forcing them to go to English boarding schools, that sort of thing.

So the more the series goes into its second, much better season, the closer it brings the lines of capitalism and religion quite close to one another in their parallelism.

That's maybe one of my big questions about the show.

And it's not that I don't believe them.

I just want to know how a several genera.

What four generations old company is Kier.

Kiera de Heli is.

Her dad is the grandson of Kier.

That does sound right.

Whatever it is, they have not been.

They started in 1865.

Right.

I think I remember some Civil War dates sticking out in my brain.

How do you start a company that ends up having a complete fanatical religious hold on?

Well, both Harmony and her aunt, you know, Harmony also has the little Kier shrine in her house.

But then you.

You meet her completely devoted and at this house, like, how do you build that much of a ethos and devotion in a fairly short time?

Scientology is even younger.

Yeah, I mean, that's the response is that cults do it at lightning speed compared to that.

And then Scientology, obviously is a good bit younger.

I really do think that they're using.

Either using Scientology as a reference point or they're directly poking their finger toward it.

Newfoundland does have a lot of very square structures, don't they?

A lot of.

A lot of square wooden houses.

Yeah.

Anyway, turns out Harmony's mom was not A Kier believer.

You know, she says two different things to Mark, to Audi.

Mark.

She said in season one, my mother was Catholic.

To any Mark, she says my mother was an atheist, and then starts explaining why.

Kier is a great solution from what I remember.

So she's given two different definitions of what her mom was.

Huh.

Regardless, she's not.

Not a believer.

Right.

And not that both can't be true.

You could be Catholic and become atheist and then.

Or vice versa.

Sure, sure.

But I took the.

The one to mean she was a practicing Catholic, but yeah, no, that's a good point, but still, her mom's not on the wagon with her aunt and daughter.

You're calling her aunt?

It wasn't a sister.

It wasn't older sister.

She.

She was a little too old to be her older sister, in my opinion.

I was on the aunt idea too.

Yeah.

It's her mom's sister.

Right.

That's what I was thinking.

Has it been said otherwise online?

No.

Okay.

No, Nothing proven, nothing substantial.

But Sis, as they call her, does mention a wintertide.

I thought she said winter time.

A wintertide apprenticeship.

And that's been brought up before.

That's exactly the explanation of Ms.

Huang.

Yeah, that's what she's going for.

She is talking about some sort of apprenticeship, or maybe Milchek uses that term about her, about what she's doing.

She needs to perform well, because he would be the one to recommend to her, degrade her in some way as to whether she's gonna get that or not.

Okay.

And apparently that's a euphemistic term for child labor.

Well, as Harmony says, when she does the ether, she says, I haven't done that since I was eight.

Yeah.

And then they said, should we go do a 10 hour shift above the vat?

Now, I'm not one to judge, but is 8 too young to be getting high?

She quit at 8, so this is not her first one.

She swore off the stuff at 8.

She already had a habit before that.

She's huffing around five something.

I.

I would assume so, yeah.

I have a certainty, though, that young Ker Egan is merely Paul Rudd with a really thick beard.

So it's no wonder these cats worship him.

It's understandable.

Seems like a cool guy.

Yeah.

As people tend to do.

She.

She hooks up some.

She gets into her mom's room.

Finally she has to find the key.

She hooks up some medical tubing to an antiquated machine, took huge breaths from it, which appears to be of just plain air.

Lays on the bed, cries and fall asleep.

I did this daily.

This was so.

Just completely macabre to me.

Like, the.

Even the tubing from the first season that we see.

And then she's bringing it with her.

Yeah.

It's covered in dust.

And you just.

You know.

You know how that feels in your hand.

You can imagine the way it probably smells.

And she just hooks it up and goes to town.

She's not seeing mom that much.

Regretting not getting to see mom in her last days so much.

A lot of questions about that house, huh?

I mean, you.

You've explored the.

Is the aunt, the sister, whoever.

Is she severed?

Why did she not go up the stairs?

I mean, the easy explanation is that maybe older people are not going to go up the stairs.

She's clearly moved all of her stuff into the.

The bottom level so she doesn't have to deal with them.

But for a show that's already introduced us to the idea that women could be severed for childbirth, the possibility that someone acting as a caretaker could be severed to do that job has to come up, I think.

Yeah.

Well, you probably bring it up with almost any character.

How severed are they?

Or if they are.

Yeah.

Right.

And what would inspire harmony to create severance in the first place?

You know, is it to, like, take away the pain of her mother or those who are around her mother?

Like, how do you.

Where does that spark come from?

Oh, well, since she made it earlier, I think it might be the pain of child labor.

Not being a kid.

No.

Innocence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it.

Yeah.

Like you mentioned, turns out it's not Jamie who's been credited for it.

It's Harmony.

She says in a very Shakespearean manner, she would be banished if she ever revealed she was the inventor.

But I think that's what she's wanting to do.

The Egans, though, are.

It's a very poetic little town, Very.

Antiquated way of speaking.

They had read their canon.

I'll be honest.

I'm not a captions guy.

Not a closed captions viewer.

I had to turn them on this time.

I am not one, and I had to turn them on.

I luckily have the feature that you can.

It'll do like, a 15 second back.

And when you do that button, it also turns on the closed captions because it's a very good feature.

They were mumbling.

Yeah, they were.

They speak very softly in this town because her.

Her friend.

Hampton.

Hampton.

Thank you.

Had a very good line about the lumen car coming from a distance.

I wouldn't have heard that otherwise.

I wouldn't have either.

I thought he said something else.

But the Egans are just anti woman religion, like a lot of others I know of.

Or are they now?

They're pretty anti woman.

It's not just anti harmony.

How do you think that plays out?

I'm not disagreeing.

I'm just.

The things that she says.

Her accomplished being accomplishments being minimized.

You know, the idea that she was supposed to give this up, that seems inherent in not only religion, but also capitalism.

You know, like you.

It's for the good of the team.

Yeah, the team.

That's.

That sounds more communist, but it does.

Which you're lulled into thinking, like, we care about you.

You're a valued member.

A rising tide lifts all ships.

So, you know, why would you want to stand out when there's this great system you can work in, that sort of thing?

Yeah, it does sound a lot like communism or totalitarianism.

Yet Lumen itself kind of operates in a very capitalistic manner.

Well, a totalitarian manner, for sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

And maybe they're not really supposed to be like a religion or political theory as much as some Frankenstein mix of the worst of those and the most evil of all of those things.

Back in 2022, though, Scientology was busted for human trafficking and child labor.

I mean, I think we're supposed to.

Maybe we saw the same thing again.

Question.

The Keir love story that he met this woman working at this factory.

At an ether factory, Right?

Yeah.

And she was his employee, and they're surrounded by ether.

And this is a guy whose other generations would go on to sever people to do God knows what to him.

Yeah.

Did he dissociate enough to sever himself.

Somehow with all the ether, or was he drugging her?

Lumen's whole point is to help capitalism, or at least their ways and means of money.

They want to power on the proletariat so that they no longer rely on a God to get them through the day.

You could be severed.

You guys kind of stopped believing in God anyway.

Here's this.

And they never really call him a God.

Here's this that you could believe in, and you can also be severed from your.

From your job.

To me, this episode did such a nice job of like.

Like, I.

When I thought back, I thought of Mark and his co workers in their, by comparison, cushy, nice office jobs as, like, the tip of this iceberg, that they are both.

Both in that, like, you're only seeing the small thing, that now we're investigating everything that led to It.

But all of that effort, whether they knew it or not, that factory on the frozen bay, you know, all led to what Mark is doing now in some way.

Yeah, it did.

We're supposed to slowly make these connections and question how.

How what they're doing now is any different than, you know, the.

The ethics of the people involved didn't change.

Just the.

The setting and the technology.

Yeah.

Thanks to Harmony.

Yeah.

The episodes endings of the season have been stellar.

With the music for the closing credits this week is that banger Firewoman by the Culture.

That was one of my favorite songs from 1989.

And in like three, four or five episodes, they ended with a who's 80s hit song, Eminence Front.

I like.

I love that song.

It'd be really something if in my memory's failing me here, if they were closing each episode with a song from the 80s and each one got closer to the end of the decade, that.

I don't think that's happening.

Is it happening?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Listeners.

Do y'all know you could be onto something.

And anyway, it also closes with what seems to be a very obvious hint that she and Marker are now going to be in cahoots, or at least after the same thing.

Now, shared intent, working together.

I mean, we're supposed to question if she's a good person or a bad person for the purposes of the story.

Like, is she gonna take Lumen down or is she trying to take Lumen over to carry on the mission?

That seems more accurate to me.

She seems too.

I know she kinda says fuck you to Lumen there with sis.

That she come to that conclusion, but she came to that conclusion awfully well.

Maybe not quick because she has tried.

She has been dealing with them, debating going back, deciding not to go back.

Helena has kind of pissed her off, you know, through firing her and all kinds of shit.

I think she scared the out of her.

That's a good read too.

Like, she.

That was one of the early cracks in the.

The Internet's theory of, like, how many people are severed.

Is everyone in this show severed in some way?

When.

When she says, I think we need a reset.

Helena says this to Harmony, and it's like, that's.

That's a threat.

If Harmony goes in that building, there's a very solid chance that she never comes back out alive again.

She knows this because she knows presumably what's happening on every floor.

Yeah.

And never given credit.

Helena is kind of front and center these days, but she's a Woman.

How much control does she have?

Of course, her dad's here and there berating her, calling her these weird, outdated terms.

I don't know.

I mean, they're already setting up that we're supposed to feel bad for her in some way because we see her framing things like nature versus nurture.

We see heli become this, like, very likable person.

Yeah.

With a strong moral compass were rooting for.

And then you see what the family has turned the same theoretical raw material into in Helena, who's kind of the big bad.

And you.

Season two introduced the question of, like, how much.

How much of the unconscious or the subconscious is seeping through the severed process?

Like, are we actually.

Should we be rooting for Helena's liberation from Lumen?

Like, you get the feeling that with Mark, part of it is she's never had a boyfriend or she's never known love or whatever, and she wanted to experience that, even if it's in this really messed up way.

And I think everybody has.

I mean, there are people questioning, like, is Mark gonna end up being a bad guy somehow?

Right.

We brought that.

Yeah.

We had a listener bring that up last week.

There is no black and white, so.

And I think we have to question how, again, how severed is everyone?

Is harmony also severed in some way?

Or was she.

I mean, she knows rugby immediately.

Did they work together studying how reintegration would work?

Did she try it?

And, you know, what's going on here?

Rigabe has to be fleshed out a little more.

Somehow or another, we're a world of gray and complexities, and Lumen's simply trying to make things black and white for everyone.

That's a good way of thinking about the show, too.

Yeah.

I mean, absolutely.

If you want total control.

No, if you want total control, because the human mind wants things to be one way or the other.

Right.

Good and bad.

Makes things easier, faster.

If you could offer people freedom from not just suffering, but boredom and tedium and make everything black and white.

Yeah.

That's like the authoritarian fascist handbook, right?

Yeah.

It certainly helps them.

Well, that's the end for this week.

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Leave us a comment on the Alabama Take website.

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That's it for us.

For Adam and the missing Donovan, I'm Blaine.

And wishing you an excellent week free of terror.

Us.

Until next Tuesday.