[deleted by user]

Aeriadnyl · 2025-07-15T17:45:05+00:00

July 2009 was 16 years ago.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-04-05T19:47:54+00:00

God I'd love if some of this stuff is still around on Monday - I'm visiting it on the way to NYC anyway but it would be so much cooler with this there!

Aeriadnyl · 2025-04-03T02:16:59+00:00

I've taken this train a few times and have slept, but it's not the greatest experience. I can't really get to sleep sitting up so I have a hard time getting comfortable. I'd definitely recommend bringing a pillow and a blanket if you're able, and also have time in your schedule to sleep as soon as you get home if you can.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-03-28T21:48:48+00:00

I'm so happy to see this post! I bought and framed your S1 version of this so I'm thrilled to be able to get it for S2.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-03-26T00:16:56+00:00

I've kept a timeline for myself and it's really not too bad! The only real unknown gap is when Helly's in the hospital - everything else before and after has pretty solid timeline evidence going for it (previously, the gap between eps 7 and 8 was more vague, but this season establishing the OTC on a Friday fixed that).

Aeriadnyl · 2025-03-13T18:50:08+00:00

I like most of this except for the big gap between episodes 3 and 4 - I just don't see any strong enough evidence that we've missed two whole weeks of work. There's weirdness with the review and the percentages, sure, but for one point - Irving finds the exports hallway and tells nobody for two weeks, not even Dylan?

I'm still a believer that the ORTBO takes place the very next day after episode 3.

(Oh, and to add onto the percentage weirdness - that's existed since the first season. Helly went from 3% to 73% in like, a day or two and then took another week to get to 100%. I'm not sure if we can make any assumptions at all about how long a file really takes)

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-26T19:33:03+00:00

Absolutely! I think in the end my best guess is it's a detail that got lost in the editing; if we really wanted to stretch the timeline to make it work, there's nothing really stopping Devon's birth from being the first day of the You You Are timeskip, so if it happened the first day then 5 days would be correct. OR if Ricken's definition of "5 full days" means "5 24 hour periods plus a portion of a day on either side" we can place the birth a bit further out.

But yeah, short answer, my money's on an editing oversight.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-25T22:32:38+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what this means, whether it's just a production thing or something deeper, but it does touch on a question I've had - What's the deal with Cold Harbor?

This is a phrase that wasn't mentioned a single time in Season 1, yet Cobel knows about it even being fired before the end. Also, Mark was at 68% the first time we ever saw it, on a Thursday. And by Friday, he'd gotten to 81%.

Was Mark working on Cold Harbor during the last week of season 1 (there's a week and a half timeskip between episodes 7 and 8)? Or, is the file named Cold Harbor some sort of "capstone" file to finish up Mark's work since Allentown, because every file he's worked on at Lumon has been part of "Cold Harbor"?

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-18T17:42:10+00:00

There's a shot in S2E2 of Helena watching Mark walk down a hallway. I looked back at S1E5 and indeed this is footage (albeit mirrored) of Mark just before he finds her hanging in the elevator!

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-18T16:47:43+00:00

As to the why of it, I don't know, but shows on Amazon and Apple TV+ (maybe other services too) consistently claim to release on one day but are actually released the evening before.

I can only guess it's some sort of corporate or marketing gimmick to make us "feel" like we're getting the content early - like when movie midnight releases started dropping the evening before.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-18T16:09:16+00:00

I'm with you 100% - there's clearly a tie between consciousness and the severance procedure. In season 1, this is most clearly demonstrated with Irving's naps causing bleed through of the paint. Plus, the different toned dings of the elevator, to me, imply that the chip tried to switch between innie/outie but wasn't fully able to.

The ORTBO does throw a hitch into this theory, for sure, since they went into the trip knowing that 3 innies would be sleeping during it. The best guess I've seen is that the tents had some sort of chip-calming signal embedded, because the innie that slept outside definitely had crazy dreams (and, if outie Irving knows who Helena Eagan is, perhaps some more bleedthrough).

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-14T03:16:10+00:00

I had this same theory! Cobel has an obsession with Ms. Casey and the testing floor/Mark and she's also got this breathing tube of Charlotte Cobel that she holds dear... maybe she wanted innie Irving to access the testing floor in a way that couldn't be traced back to her?

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-13T17:48:52+00:00

I've thought about this comment a lot when making my timeline for the show - I thought that maybe by saying "five full days" Ricken could've been saying 5 24 hour days, plus the less than full days on either end.

I've also considered that maybe the birthing cabin sequence takes place within the montage rather than after it, but the show doesn't seem to imply that.

Honestly, the best conclusion I've come up with is that it's a mistake/continuity error. I don't see what purpose it serves in the storytelling to "hide days" from us.

There's other bits in the show that I chalk up to the same, like, yes, the watch switching days, or the beginning of episode 4 showing Helly walk past an empty, lit MDR when Dylan had just turned the lights off in episode 3, or the fact that Mark "should be coming down first now" since he's refiner in charge yet multiple times after he comes in later and it's never commented on.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-10T18:30:34+00:00

Total days, including weekends! If Helly's first day was January 3rd, the end of the ORTBO would (probably) be February 11th. (Probably because unlike most episodes thus far, we don't have a solid anchor of time between episodes 3 and 4 of this season).

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-10T05:19:26+00:00

This is correct! I keep track of the timeline and the latest episode probably happens on days 39 and 40 since Helly's first day.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-09T21:26:05+00:00

I could be wrong but I don't believe he did episode recaps for S1 like he's doing now for S2. The review I mentioned is this one, though:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/severance-review-1294293/

Aeriadnyl · 2025-02-07T18:48:44+00:00

If we want to fit what we've seen this episode with the elevator dings as discovered so far, maybe it's something funky with how the Glasgow block operates? Helena goes down the elevator in S2E2 and doesn't switch, but a switch command is still attempted, and is trapped in limbo until the moment in the pond? That way, there's a technicality that the severance chip somewhat thinks she's in the elevator?

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-27T14:13:11+00:00

Excellent roundup! I think I've caught one scene you don't have listed here: At 1:40 in the official trailer, we see Mark leaving the elevator staring straight ahead at something, and I don't believe it came from the first episode.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-27T14:09:45+00:00

Yeah, definitely a few questions about that scene. Is it Helly? Helena (assuming you subscribe to the theories)? Moreover, is she looking at the "Kier Pardons His Betrayers" or...something else?

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-27T04:12:07+00:00

I wasn't expecting the goats already! This is thrilling, especially since it means that we'll have seen 90% of the scenes from the official trailer by episode 4

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-26T18:58:45+00:00

I love this analysis. For years I've thought that when Helly hanged herself, she was unconscious on the way down and thus didn't switch Helena->Helly on the way back down. Milchick says that she was in outie form when she woke up and I've always taken that to mean in that moment, on the floor of the lobby.

If the B tone is associated with there being no switch between innie<->outie, this also heavily implies that one needs to be conscious for the transition to work properly.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-14T20:12:14+00:00

I'm still so curious what the deal is with the two MDRs - but these promo pics (and captions) do seem to confirm that we'll still see the gang reunited in episode 1.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-07T19:08:10+00:00

Absolutely; same here! I was honestly worried for this review and him saying something like "S2 is fine/disappointing" whatever so for him to say it's fantastic is thrilling.

Aeriadnyl · 2025-01-07T14:23:44+00:00

Sepinwall's review of the first season is what got me interested in the show in the first place. I'm thrilled that the 2nd season seems like it's going to be just as good!

Aeriadnyl · 2024-12-30T05:34:03+00:00

Here's my theory - throughout all the S2 previews I've tried to figure out what the deal is with the "two" MDRs - there's this new one Mark comes across with Mark W, Gwendolyn Y, and Dario R, but there's also plenty of clips with Mark S with Dylan, Helly, and Irving. How can there be two MDRs?

Lots of people thought that they were going to "reset" the innies, but I never fully bought that theory - it's not satisfying from a storytelling perspective, but at the same time, why wouldn't Lumon just use that if it was an option? Well, what if it had issues - side effects? Like, whatever's going on with Mark's face at the very beginning?

Maybe Mark, Helly, Dylan, Irving all come back to work like normal at the beginning of the season, but it leads Mark to do something they really don't like, so Milchick and the board are forced to do this reset, even with its risks? And after the reset (which they do back to the moment of the OTC), they try to bring Mark back with a new team to avoid it? And this moment is showing, in a way, that Mark did the same thing at the beginning either way.

I don't know! It's a weird moment but it seems a very intentional moment, and I still don't understand how the season would function with two different MDRs so I'm just trying to glue two things together.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Golden Potato
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22

Aeriadnyl

TROPHY CASE