‘SEVERANCE’ Season 2, Section 4 Recap and Review: Woe’s Hollow

Severance’s fourth episode, “Woe’s Hollow,” begins and ends with Irving B. being drawn into this strange winter landscape and pulled out again. A birth and a death. Spoilers in front.

We open without credits to John Turturro’s face and we end up on it. But instead of a glance of confusion and fear, the farewell shot is one of acceptance and even satisfaction. He is dying; Not physically, of course, but in any other sense of the word. And yet he is at peace, after revealing Lumon’s deception with Helly R. Hans the quest to reunite with Burt was a hopeless, but he found the purpose and meaning of helping his friends. He didn’t really want to be here anymore, but he spent his last days doing well.

This was in many ways Irving B. episode. Of course, every other character in MDR gets their share of screen time, but it is Irving’s journey we follow. When he stare into Milchick’s face in the end, you can see both his disgust and a newly won confidence. It is now Irving B wearing a glance of complacent satisfaction after foiling their small plot, while Milchick (Tramell Tillman) stare back and jam in rage. Gone is the cloud, regular, fixed Irving B. In Season 1. In his place, if only a few moments longer, stands a hero. Exactly the kind of cut employees fear Lumon.

I love how this show is not afraid to pull the curtains back on many of its mysteries and do not leave us hanging before the end of the season to drop his big revelations. It only takes until section 3 for Mark (Adam Scott) to hear that his wife is alive. And the question of whether Helly R (Britt Lower) was actually Helena Egan is answered in section 4. Many other shows would have pulled out one or both of these mysteries until the last possible moment.

Of course, none of them were completely a mystery to us, the viewers. We were 99% sure that Helly R was a mole. And of course we knew who Mark S. was talking about when he shouted “She’s alive!” But to the characters in the show itself, this was mysteries. Mark did not know that Gemma (Dichen Lachman) was alive until Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) told him. And no one but Irving B. suspected that Helly R was not who she claimed to be. He suspected she was a mole when her story of a night gardener hit him as so completely unreliable, but he only knew for sure after the fire when she was cruel to him. “Helly R was never cruel,” he says Helena at the waterfall before pulling her to the icy pool to drown.

Of course, it is unfortunate for Mark S, or at least the timing is awkward. After the same moment by the fire, the two go into one of the blue, oh so much blue, tents and love love. It is a testimony to Helena’s obligation to the case she would sleep with a cut off employee just to get closer. Either that, or there is a part of Helena that craves that kind of connection. Maybe both.

This was one of my favorite episodes of resignation. Not only season 2, but the whole show. “Woe’s Hollow” brings us, and the MDR crew, to a winter wilderness that we learn is part of the Kier National Forest. Milchick lies and tells them that the waterfall they are coming to is the highest in the world. It is one of the small, relaxed lies that Lumon tells his cut employees who feels all the more creepy because of how absurd it is.

The MDR team is here for an Ortbo or Outdoor Retreat and Team Building occurrence. Don’t experience, remember you, but occurrence. It’s not something they chose, but something that happens to them. They wake up spread, Irving B. on an ice cream lake; Mark S up on a clipped. Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) somewhere in the woods. Here the strange double rooms of each of them see each dressed in the same black winter clothing.

The sky is very, very blue. Even when the night falls, the night is blue.

They are sent on something of a quest. We learn that Kier Egan had a twin named Dieter. The team travels from the bisar orientation -TV to a cave where they find a lumon tome with that number IV on its cover. This is one of Kier’s works and they start reading from it. They have to walk in the footsteps of Kier and Dieter, who went out into the desert on a kind of twisted pilgrimage.

There is also a card for Woe’s Hollow, and they do their best to follow it while learning more about Kier and Dieter, including some funny written descriptions of the latter masturbating in the woods while his brother listened to. Helly R. later makes a joke about this that disturbs Milchick enough that he instructs Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) to throw Marshmallows into the fire. Considering that this is actually Helena, we can of course assume that it is all part of the deceived.

Finally, after a meeting with what seems to be a dead seal, which Irving B. suggests, can make good desperation nutrition, they come to Woes Hollow, where Mr. Milchick, covered, all in white, awaiting them. He takes them to the camp and reads them from Kier’s book, while Mrs. Huang plays Theremin. It is a haunting and surreal camp.

All this, by the way, is the first time some of the cut employees have seen the sky. The first time they have seen trees or snow. And the first time any of them have ever fallen asleep.

It had to sink in for me, the last bit. Mark S and Irving B and Dylan G (and Helly R, if she had actually been here), only ever gone into an elevator and then gone back out. Irving B has been running on the job and accidentally slid into gossip for a short moment, but none of them have gone to bed, closing their eyes and falling asleep. They get one night to do this and only one night. One night to sleep, perchance to dream, and then it is back to the cut foor. Not for Irving B of course.

To me, this is a greater deal than Marks loses its virginity. There is something so in -depth worrying about the fact that chalk never sleeps. So diabolic about lumon prohibits and punishes unintended cats.

To his side rather than cozy in a warm, blue tent, Irving B wander out into the woods after his confrontation with Helena. He loses his torch and loses his way and ends up sleeping outside in the elements. When he sleeps, he dreams of the only place he knows, but MDR is now surrounded by a scary forest. Not the inviting green of pine, but the winter branches in a barren forest. There is to write on the keys in the next closet. And there she, the little bride, woe, clicks away. She turns her pale eyes to Irving.

Then there’s the screen. The numbers are scary.

When he wakes up, it is as if he has found his decision out there at night, in the trees, in nightmares or maybe just in his survival of the elements. “I spent the night outside,” he says Helena. “I could be dead.” Of course he does in the end. But he goes out like a boss.

Helena almost fooled me this episode just before Irving threw her mask. She lies with Mark S after they love and tell him, “I didn’t like who I was out there.” He tells her that it doesn’t matter who she’s out there, only who she is now. For a moment, I might think that’s all it is. Maybe this is not a scheme. Maybe Helly R is really just too shame on his outie’s identity to tell the truth. Maybe that’s why her lie was so clumsy. But there is so much evidence beyond the night gardener. There are so many clues that she is not actually Helly R, that even in my moment of doubt, other conflicting doubts went into war with each other. Of course, I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out the truth.

The last scene is shocking and breathtaking and intense. Irving B. Helly confronts the waterfall and then pulls her to the water and is constantly shouting for Milchick. Mark S, Dylan G and Milchick Race over when they hear up. “She’s been an outie all the time!” Irving yells while the others reach the top of the waterfall. “She is a *$ ing mole!” Irving says. “I kill her Mr. Milchick!” He keeps her head underwater like Mark’s panic above, he and Dylan ask their friend to stop. “She’s not Helly,” Irving says, when he pulls her back off the water, “she’s an ego. Turn her back, Mr. Milchick! Turn her back! “

It doesn’t take much time to thump under icy water by a murderous indie for Helena to shout at Milchick “Seth, do it!” Much to the confusion of Mark S and Dylan G that have no idea what’s going on or who Seth is. Milchick comes on his radio and says, “It’s Milchick. Remove the Glasgow block now. “

When he does, we see Helena disappear and Helly R returns, still underwater, but when Irving pulls her from the pool, he can already tell. He pulls her to him, shakes and softens wet and confused and scared and embraces her. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry for Helly.” Mark S and Milchick run to them. Dylan G is too much in a state of shock to follow. Milchick tells Irving to get up. He is more furious than he has ever been.

“You’ve threatened collegiate murder in the pond to Woe’s Hollow,” he says, his steel. “For this, there can be no punishment, but immediate and permanent dismissal. There must be no formal valediction, abandoned or otherwise. Your Outie will be notified immediately. “

Dylan G. shouts from the top of the waterfall, “Irv, I’m sorry I should have listened.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Irving calls back. “Just remember: Hang in there. “

Milchick asks them to stop fraternizing. “Turn over!” He commands while Dylan shouts from above, “Let him be in peace!”

Irving goes to Milchick and the two glare dagger against each other, though Irving’s expression changes from anger to almost something like entertainment. “Go into the forest,” Milchick orders. Irving smiles. There is no fear in his eyes, only the knowledge he has won. He enters the woods as Milchick condemns him to death and erases:

“Your work area will be cleared,” he says cold, “and any personal items that are discarded. Your file, including any and all professional interactions and personal relationships, will be cleansed and destroyed. It will be as if you, Irving B, never even existed or pulled a single breath on this earth. May Kier’s grace follows you into the eternal darkness. “

That Jittery Seted-Elevator music plays as Irving closes his eyes for the last time and the screen goes to black.

I can’t really put into words how big all this was or how contributing. Ben puts this episode again directed and it is one of the finest he has done so far. I’ve already seen it three times and each time I notice some little details I missed before. But for the most part, I just want to take a moment to gush about John Turturro’s performance. Everyone was good here. Especially Tillman was such a perfect antagonist, and the two standing from there at the end must be one of the best moments in the series so far. But Turturro, an actor with many glorious performances across many roles in television and film, puts a career best in this episode. He is able to do so much with his eyes. In the last scene alone, the selection of emotions and expressions is so amazing that I really hope he wins the best supportive actor for this role comes awards.

The episode itself answers some questions but is traveling new. The fact that Lumon is capable of using a “Glasgow block” to prevent the resignation of occurring is fascinating, and I suspect it is important, even beyond Helena’s questionable infiltration. What’s going on now? Irving B is dead. What about Helly R? Will she return, and if so, how will the others receive her? Or will lumon try to fool them again? Ortbo was an unmatched disaster. Will there be consequences? So much to consider, and six episodes left in season 2.

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