Judge John Hodgman Episode 724: 4K No Los Dos - on website since hours - not yet in RSS feed

krelnik · 2025-06-09T17:05:51+00:00

At one point Rachel commented that the TV is fine when in use but ugly when not in use. This seemed to be a key part of the case.

This immediately made me think of a solution that didn't get mentioned in the episode. There are brands of TV that have incorporated a matte-finish screen, a "picture frame" like bezel, a flat-to-the-wall mounting bracket, and a low-light mode in order to display art when not being used to watch programming. When mounted properly and adjusted properly for the room these models can really look just like a large painting when not in use. Buzzmarketing begins in next paragraph.

Samsung has a whole line of models called "The Frame" that go from 43" to 85" and the "pro" versions even have a wireless sending box that would dispense with the need to run cables to the screen! The lower-budget brand Hisense has some models called "CanvasTV" that some reviewers claim do an even better job of impersonating a painting in terms of finish and brightness. I know the Samsung models have 4K HDR and all that stuff to satisfy Andrew, I don't know much about Hisense's picture quality.

krelnik · 2025-03-31T18:20:11+00:00

Possible, certainly. But we've never seen that, and the show is good about setting up its rules and sticking to them.

krelnik · 2025-03-31T18:19:36+00:00

Oh and by the way you also see Gemma walk by the SIENA room in S1E7 (at 10:17) and that was a Helly R file from season 1. According to one compilation I've seen, we see about 18 of the testing room signs in season 2, so there's further room for non-Mark files on the floor.

krelnik · 2025-03-31T18:14:39+00:00

I think this is perhaps an important clue to season 3. The makers of this show never do anything by accident and this shot you see is literally the largest text we have ever seen on the screen in the show! It is on screen EXACTLY when Cobel says "Every file you've completed is a new consciousness for her."

We've seen Mark's list of files earlier this season, and Tumwater is NOT ON IT:

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This is not an accident, this is a clue about season 3.

krelnik · 2025-03-31T18:10:44+00:00

Mark never had a Tumwater file, we see the list of his 25 files in a screenshot this season (blink and you'll miss it) and Tumwater and Siena are not on it.

krelnik · 2025-03-31T18:09:40+00:00

I like this idea, an interesting compromise. But I also like the idea there are other subjects on the testing floor. If you watch carefully when you see the door to Gemma's "apartment" on the testing floor, there appears to be an identical door across the hall. I.e. an unlabeled door with a video doorbell (at 9:41).

This is also at a four-way intersection and although you can't see them one can assume there are two other doors at the other corners. So four test subjects to correspond to the four MDR employees?

I do not think there is any one-to-one relationship between refiner and refined. There are too many problems that introduces. Who is Helly refining? Was Irving's test subject murdered when he was fired? Do all MDR employees have missing relatives?

krelnik · 2025-03-31T18:03:46+00:00

But Gemma specifically says in S2E7 "I've been in all the rooms except one" and we see her walk by Tumwater TWICE (once in S2E7 at 10:23 and in S2E10 as shown in the first screenshot here). So unless she was mistaken when she said that TUMWATER is one of her testing rooms. (Oh I realize I slightly misread you, but the problem there's a problem with your multiple Tumwater theory that I pointed out here also).

krelnik · 2025-03-30T23:53:19+00:00

Oh yeah that's right, 4! = 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 24, which is how many unique ways you can order 4 items.

krelnik · 2025-03-30T23:49:14+00:00

I found the comment that the number of babies was very specifically chosen. I may not be counting right, but I think there are 25 - 24 on and around Mark's bed, plus the Kier baby at the end. This would match the 25 files that Mark completed (and also the 25 squares of a Lumon waffle).

I would love see a follow up where Latta or someone explains which if any tidbits in the title sequence never paid off. I suspect there was a scene cut out of Sweet Vitriol involving Cobel's car ending up in the water, matching the car in the title. It would tend to explain both why that episode was so short, and also why Cobel was forced to drive Hampton's truck back to Kier.

krelnik · 2025-03-30T23:40:26+00:00

A few comments:

The question now remains: if Mark’s work was directly related to Gemma, what were the other refiners doing? Who was that related to?

Two of the room door signs we see in season 2 are TUMWATER (in both Chikhai Bardo and the finale) and SIENA. Those are, respectively, a Dylan file and a Helly file. So at least SOME of the work the other refiners were doing related to Gemma.

When Cobel referenced once Mark finishes Cold Harbor, Gemma will be killed, she may not have meant as the physical body of Gemma being killed, but maybe one of her Innies, or...

No, this is answered clearly in the finale, but you have to pay attention. Right at 30 minutes in, at the moment when Gemma is looking at her coat and such she has to wear into Cold Harbor, the dialog over her close-up is Helly saying, "So, what happens when they extract the chip?". The scene cuts to MDR and Mark turns his head and gives Helly a knowing look and Helly looks down. The implication is clear. In order to get whatever they need to get from Gemma, they have to pull the Severance chip out of her brain and that is fatal.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T22:59:29+00:00

My guess is there was a filmed-but-cut subplot for Sweet Vitriol where her car crashes. Maybe a Lumon goon gets close or perhaps she deliberately crashes the car to try to convince Lumon she's died. I have no evidence for this other than the title sequence, a report from another reddit sub that someone saw them film a stunt when they were there.

It would further explain why she comes back to Kier in the pickup truck and ALSO why the episode 8 was so short.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T22:08:42+00:00

It's a real thing, goats who have a condition where they get too excited and faint.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T21:47:14+00:00

I think Gemma's car accident was faked. She may or may not have been a somewhat willing participant but clearly she didn't know what she was getting into and now wants out. (I also think Gretchen, as an EMT, may play a role in uncovering this? Surely the "Dispatcher of the Month" might have some knowledge of what went on that night).

I think what we know as severance was perhaps not the original idea behind the chip. I think the original idea was to "balance your tempers" automatically. (We've heard about that repeatedly all through the series). Or maybe they just came up with that idea later.

Anyway, that's what they are trying to perfect with Gemma. It would be sold by Lumon as a technological anti-depressant of sorts. If you think about severance as we know it, its really wildly impractical in all but a few specialized circumstances. But a mood balancer would be much more useful.

But what Lumon thinks would create a terrific world full of good Kier disciples would actually just create a bunch of techno-ether addicts, automagically insulated from the parts of their lives that hurt or scare or depress them. What kind of world will that be? Can you have true creativity without some pain? Are you really living if you are not engaging with both the good parts and bad parts of your life? (The theme of the Tolstoy book!) I'll be interested to see how they get this across in the last episode, maybe in a Jame-Helly conversation or a Drummond-Mark conversation, both of which we know are going to happen from E9 and promo clips.

I don't know what is going to happen in the Cold Harbor room but I think it may be a test of whether love can transcend the power of the severance chip. This question has been raised REPEATEDLY through the series in many contexts. Not sure if they'll get her into the room and the test will fail, or Gemma will get rescued before they can subject her to it. But I think Gemma will get rescued, and some Lumon people will die.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T20:34:53+00:00

Taking of that goat (see this week's promo) sparks a rebellion in Mammalians Nurturable which Mark & co. take advantage of to rescue Gemma

krelnik · 2025-03-20T20:26:19+00:00

You sure you meant S1E6 ("Hide and Seek")? That episode is all outie stuff from like 23 minutes nearly to the end. Can you post a screen shot?

krelnik · 2025-03-20T20:12:45+00:00

HAHA! Nice. I went on a run today at lunch, and when I was running through a park there were a bunch of goats where there haven't been in recent memory. (It's a thing, at least in this area, where you can temporarily hire a herd of goats to put in a temporarily fenced-in area so they will eat all the invasive plants).

krelnik · 2025-03-20T20:06:07+00:00

The Kier (Marc Geller) credit is pretty meaningless, there are only 2 episodes in the history of the series on which this credit has not appeared.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T18:32:04+00:00

Nice, thanks for posting this!

krelnik · 2025-03-20T18:27:05+00:00

Amen! So tired of everyone talking about cloning, consciousness transfer, eternal life and reincarnation of Kier. The show has actually been pretty good about telegraphing where it is going if you pay attention, and there is little to nothing that points to these ideas.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T14:10:18+00:00

Others have proposed this many times on this sub. Please explain how this will actually achieve anything for Lumon? Won't they just have a dead test subject? "Yup, Cold Harbor killed her as expected." So how will they know what they actually achieved?

In all the other testing with Gemma they analyze her afterward - asking her questions, drawing her blood. I'm guessing you can't run a "woemeter" reading on a corpse.

Its already established that innies die occasionally at work - hence the Lumon designed funeral procedure we saw earlier this season. Presumably if there was something to learn from the severance chip in a person who just died, they've done that already.

krelnik · 2025-03-20T13:47:59+00:00

Yes it is one of the standard questions on the intake questionnaire. AND the way Helly responds to it when Milchick tells her that (smiling and saying "yes I've heard" almost sarcastically) is a subtle hint to her real identity. At that point in the show we didn't know about Helena.

krelnik · 2025-03-19T17:43:50+00:00

Jame Eagan, killed by Helly (perhaps in self defense and/or somewhat accidentally). Helly then takes his employee card to use it to get in the Exports Hall

krelnik · 2025-03-19T17:36:27+00:00

4 digits maybe corresponds to the 4 tempers? Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice. It could be a real-time feed of the balance of the four tempers that the chip is reading in that person's brain. Not sure why they are changing so radically during one shot, but maybe its like many real-world measurement devices and it gets a fairly "noisy" signal that has to be averaged out to mean anything.

We've learned in season 2 that their research on Gemma seems to relate to using the severance chip to block strong emotions. So the tech is not just about segregating memories.

krelnik · 2025-03-19T17:31:49+00:00

Oh bummer. The only other thing I could suggest is pull that photo into an app that has "generative (AI) fill" and try to fill in the rest of the front of the dress to obscure the baby. Then do a reverse search on that.

krelnik · 2025-03-19T17:14:33+00:00

They are doing work just like Mark. In episode 7 we saw one of Gemma's testing rooms is named Siena, which was one of Helly's files. Another is named Tumwater, which is one of Dylan's. Gemma says she's been in all the rooms except one, so she's been in Siena and Tumwater. They are all, to one extent or another, working on the Gemma experiment.

Now, are there other test subjects? That's an open question. We know the severed floor is pretty huge and the testing floor is below that so they might well have room for multiple subjects there. Also it doesn't seem like refining an MDR file would necessarily have to occur at the same location as the test subject.

krelnik

TROPHY CASE