Episode 305: Emile Is the Name of the Goat (with Paul Bloom)

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:16] The good news is, hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination. The bad news is, whatever humans can imagine they can usually create.

[00:01:19] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. We have Paul Bloom with us today. Paul, you were David's mentor when he was in grad school. Did you see the spark of Keir in him? He always had all of the humors. Wrath and everything. He was always the golden child. Is sexiness a humor? There was no surprise how well he turned out.

[00:01:50] Paul was a good father. I think it was the tempers though, right? Oh. Not the humor. You know, the humors are the real thing. Paul's taught intro psych for too long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The humors are the real thing. The tempers are made up. That's silly. So today we are going to be talking about the season finale of Severance. And also I think just about the season in general and the show and the philosophical questions,

[00:02:16] much like we did when you came on after the finale of the first season, Paul. One of my favorite discussions of you guys ever. That was, uh, and I listened to part of it again and how much I enjoyed that was season one. And we, I think when I do, I think we all enjoyed season two. So this will be fun. Yeah. Uh, actually my sister-in-law, it is her favorite episode and she hasn't listened to all of them, but she's listened to a bunch and that. Oh, nice. Yeah.

[00:02:39] First though, because this is a science and ethics podcast, we are going to be talking about, uh, a new journal article in personality and individual differences on the ick. Yes. Right up our alley. It's a concept that I've been wanting to talk about, uh, for a while. And to be honest, I think Tamler, you're the first one to even bring it up to me. I embarrassingly didn't know what it was. And then like, I don't know, it was a few years ago.

[00:03:07] You said something about the ick and I'm sure you heard. I got it from my daughter. Yeah. I hadn't heard of it until you guys sent me the article, but then, uh, Christina, my wife reminded me that I had, because we had watched together the show of the hot rabbi. Um, nobody wants this or something where this rabbi's hooks up with this Christian woman. And anyway, she wanted episode. She gets the ick because he brings a bouquet of flowers to her mother and the bouquet is too large. And there's a big thing that she's not attracted to him anymore.

[00:03:37] And do they use the term? Yes. That's right. Because like most of Seinfeld is about the ick. Yes. Man hands. And, uh, one word. Exactly. Low talker. As the authors make clear, uh, Seinfeld friends, you kind of get a sense of that. These are millennials. I would bet my life. So right off the bat, like, what do you think the ick is Paul based on your understanding now? Based on my understanding. Now, I think the ick is canonically something women feel.

[00:04:06] It could be that men could feel it, I guess, but a canonical form of prototypical form is women feeling it. And it's not merely discussed. I think the core thing, and this is the paper actually said this is the most frequent example, is when a man acts unmanly, effeminate or, or, or in some way, not manly. So some of these examples are great. My favorite example of all is chasing awkwardly after a ping pong ball. Yeah. I have been that guy. And after you're running around a ping pong, you can't get it. And you're going to bounce off walls. And then you realize you're losing status in front of everybody.

[00:04:35] And you're just, so yeah, I think that's, that's the fundamental form of ick. Yeah. I guess my understanding is, um, on the face of it, trivial thing, aesthetic or, or personality, whatever, that disproportionately causes you to lose complete attraction to somebody. Yeah. Right. Like, sadly. Abruptly. And trivial is important. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. It's not like you found out that, you know, they're, they're Nazis or something. Yeah, exactly. It's trivial.

[00:05:04] And also it just all of a sudden transforms your feeling radically towards the person. Yeah. And uncontrollably and you feel bad about it, but you can't really unsee it. My daughter, I asked her like what some examples were and she said, uh, chasing the ping pong ball is the, yeah, the paradigm case. Um, but she also says seeing men's feet, uh, certain kinds of flip flops, men wearing flip

[00:05:32] flops in general and tripping. Uh, and, and I was like, I do all of those things. So. One of the ones from the paper was wearing jorts, which are like, you're right. Right. One of my grad students said, uh, she got the ick when a guy takes out a guitar and plays a song for her or something. Oh yeah. That, that seems right. Writing love songs is another one. Yeah. Right. Bad, bad poetry.

[00:05:59] Um, so this article that we're sort of loosely using as a way, as a reason to discuss the ick, um, does it like gives a nice list of things, but it does have like this, this sort of mate selection evolutionary psych bent where they seem to claim that maybe the, these are actually diagnostic of something important. And that because women are the selectors usually that they're going to be extra cued into it.

[00:06:27] So their further question is what are, what are the individual differences that might be related to getting the ick? But they do think that I think that the much like a lot of, you know, it's like theorizing that this is a amplification of a reasonable process that, that women have to find, they have to be careful not to make the error of choosing somebody who's not as good. Basically. Yeah. Women who had the ick gene, um, had more offspring than women.

[00:06:57] Better offspring. Than women without the, uh, the ick gene. Yeah. Well, here's what they actually say. The icks may stem from an increased sensitivity to potential risks in mate choice. You gotta love evolutionary psychology. People are generally more attuned to potential losses than to equivalent gains, making them especially reactive to traits that might indicate incompatibility or relational risk. Kahneman and Tversky in 1979.

[00:07:23] Even minor aversions may act as protective mechanisms leading people to reject unfit partners before investing, uh, further. From an evolutionary perspective, error management theory, not to be confused with terror management theory, suggests that cognitive biases evolve to minimize the asymmetric cost of mating errors. People, particularly women with disproportionate parent parental investment may develop heightened

[00:07:50] aversion to even superficial cues that suggest incompatibility or low mate quality. I mean, are we supposed to take it seriously that this is some kind of evolved reaction bias to... Paul, Paul is you, you're, you're in the position of defending the evolutionary cycle. Paul, Paul, I'm, I'm, I'm super skeptical about this. I think, I think, I don't even think, I think the ick is extremely, something, something people thought up like 10 years ago.

[00:08:17] Um, I mean, the, the, the general idea that people, particularly women find some features unattractive or some things like that a guy could do to be really unattractive. That makes sense. But what makes the ick interesting is that it's something, it's sort of superficial and trivial. Yeah. And it has a tremendous consequence. And I, I, I, you know, I'm not even sure this is true as opposed to a funny thing people talk about, but, but if it is true, I think it's just a cultural thing. It's arbitrary to kind of some of the things that are the ick. Wait a second.

[00:08:46] It sounds like you're saying that there wasn't a huge benefit to picking up ping pong balls really quickly in the Savannah. You know, you see a guy just swiftly with one swipe, get a bouncing ping pong ball. And you're like, damn. So on the conceptual analysis thing, we were discussing this at dinner last night, a few of us and, um, and Christina coined the term the slick and the slick is the opposite of the ick.

[00:09:12] So if the ick is running after the ball, the slick is snatching it out of the air and without a single thought. And for just about every ick you could think about, there's a corresponding slick that would make women fall into your arms. Yeah. It's like the, whatever the Fonz can do. Exactly. Pounding on a jukebox. Exactly. That's right. That's right. While the ick is fumbling with the coins and dropping. You can't get it. The Fonz hitting the jukebox and making Godess the slick. This is good. Like, you know, so you could, I'm going to write like an Andrew Tate book of like developing

[00:09:42] the slick. Yeah. Um, there I, so I had to jump into the, the supplementary materials to see the actual things people said. And some of these are just, they're great. Oh yeah. So, um, one of the, so they separate these. They're ordered by male or female. And despite what you were saying, Paul, even, even though it is largely a female response in their survey, there are male responses in.

[00:10:10] So there's ones that you might expect too much makeup, but this one made me laugh. Feet don't reach the floor of the chair. Dangling, dangling feet. A lot depends how high the chair is, but yeah. When she spits her gum in the trash, like a guy. Yeah. Right. Right. Um, one of them said choking on food, which maybe speaks to your fitness. Yeah. But I don't know if it's like. I can just imagine I'm choking on some food as a woman.

[00:10:40] That's such a turn off. Ew. Into astrology strikes me as that's something that's a biased sample of like a rationalist borderline insults. Both beliefs and ghosts, Stamler. Yeah. Beliefs and ghosts is slick. So, so, uh, one of the guys said of a woman, she ordered a beer instead of wine, which apparently.

[00:11:08] So a lot of these, if, if it's for men being effeminate or non-manly, a lot of these for women are being too, too male like. Yeah. Maybe. You know, I, though, uh, Paul, I'm not sure if the ick is correlated with unmanliness. I think some of them are, but if you look at the chart, you know, there's one that's overly feminine, but the others are something that men could definitely be like misogynistic or being annoying or publicly embarrassing. Uh, yeah.

[00:11:37] The too trendy thing is. I thought the largest category involved, uh, not being manly enough. I forget what they called it. Yeah. Which isn't always effeminate, but it is like sort of physical incompetence. What, you know. I have to give this example from somebody I know. Um, this is now, uh, her ex-husband. Um, they go to a bookstore, it's just an outside bookstore and it's all glass walls and everything. And it's not clear where the door is. So he runs to the window and start frantically waving his hands to get people to the attention to find the door.

[00:12:08] That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. The one that made a lot of sense in the women complaining about men was, uh, you using baby voice to say, sorry. Oh, I think, I think that using the cutesy voice is probably like a real. Unless you're doing it with like multiple layers of irony of some. Yeah, maybe. Or maybe talking, hopefully talking to a dog, but. Right. Uh, it's okay that you get a little exception there.

[00:12:37] One thing that's kind of interesting about it is it can't be just like having bad breath or something like that. Yeah. Like that's too reasonable a turnoff. Yeah. So it really does have to be something that you wouldn't necessarily think was something disgusting or a huge turnoff to qualify as the ick. Right. Right. Um, uh, somebody said him getting robbed. Oh man.

[00:13:06] It really makes you feel like, Oh my God, I'm glad I'm not dating. I would hate to be worried about whether I'm going to, the one that hit too close to home was, uh, guys showing, seeing the guy's butt crack when he bends over. Yeah. Which unfortunately is a frequent occurrence for me. But like that one also kind of seems like it's a little over the line as kind of obviously that should be disgusting. Yeah. You know, like they would make fun of that on Saturday Night Live. Right. Right.

[00:13:34] Uh, it was probably an academic version, you know, getting a poster rejected from certain conferences. Uh, I once had the worst, this like a, the worst experience in that regard where I got a poster rejected that was with Elizabeth Loftus as the coauthor to APS and she was, she's past president. So she wrote an email telling them that they needed to reconsider our poster. And I got like minutes later, I got a reply saying that my poster had been accepted and I've never felt so, so emasculated.

[00:14:03] That's what a real man does. I just got the, I just got the ick, right? Yeah. Yeah. That actually would be a funny segment is to think what are the academic versions of the ick. Using an ANCOVA. Death reject from, you know, childhood on. Death reject from a frontier journal.

[00:14:31] Uh, one KOT test. Uh, those are good. Uh, yeah. So the other thing, just to like, just to wrap up with this, what this paper said, they were looking to see if, if getting the ick was related to disgust sensitivity and narcissism and other oriented perfectionism. The more likely you are to say that you're easily disgusted, the slightly more likely

[00:15:00] you are to report having gotten the ick. Narcissists, uh, say they get it more. And this other thing I've never heard of before other oriented perfectionism, but that's almost like the, just the same measure twice. Cause it's just a, it's just expecting, uh, expecting perfection from your partner. Well, we'll just have to look to the extensive validation literature from that construct. Of the, of the oriented perfectionism. To, to see if you're right about that. Yes, exactly.

[00:15:30] I mean, this is more of a conceptual analysis thing. I found this guy, it was very entertaining and very interesting. I don't see it as properly in evolutionary psych, but more like this really interesting construct that we have, that we sort of pulled out from all the feelings we have to the trivial thing of great consequence. And it's so much often hooked up with humor. And I just think it's a very interesting category. Well, also being a real thing though, that can fuck up a relationship, I think. Although, yeah. It's not a good relationship. That's true. That's a great question.

[00:16:00] Yeah. I'm not definitely not. Uh, now that you say that, right. Because I think it's more, it could fuck up, you know, like a, a night where you're going to hook up with the guy and now you're not going to something like that. No second date or something. I think that this sort of specific category of the trivial that matters more than it should is a bit of play acting. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's Gen Z. There might be a lot of, yeah. There might be like a ton of reasons why a first date goes wrong and you just pick the one. It's kind of funny.

[00:16:30] So if you could really try to think of it in every age, like it could be like in Victorian England, you would get the ick because the man's like wig didn't have enough bows in it or something. In biblical times, your toga's too loose or something. Yeah. He had a little bit of snuff dangling from his nose. In ancient Greece, it's like, you only fuck like the 16 year old boys, not the 13 year old boys. The nails on your crucifixion, they're going to dangle.

[00:17:02] I have to say as somebody who always carries a backpack, the backpack is kind of an ick. If I was looking for potential mates, I would have to ditch the backpack. In a man. In a man. Yeah. But not in a woman. And not in a child. Not in a child. My child bride is okay if she wears it. I wear a backpack too and like all on campus everywhere. I wear a jacket with my ski lift tags on them, which is what everybody knows. That's the kind of guy.

[00:17:32] You haven't been skiing in a while if you think there are still. It's like 1989. It's like 1989. I wear my black belt just wrapped around loosely around my waist. I just walk out with my dick out. All right. Are we, do we have anything more to say? This is from personality and individual differences.

[00:17:59] We will be talking about individual differences in multiple personalities, the same personality. Uh, uh, that's all up for debate. So we'll be right back to talk about severance.

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[00:21:34] All right, let's get to our main topic, the season finale of severance and season two overall. First, we've talked about this a little bit off air, but I'd like to just get a general sense. Like what did everyone think about the finale? Paul? I really liked it. I was, uh, I had mixed feelings about some of the episodes that preceded it, but this was, um, this was fun. It was, uh, it was fun. It was surprisingly violent. It was surprisingly comic. You had these great innie outie interactions.

[00:22:04] And, um, and it ended on a, on a good cliffhanger. No, I think, you know, uh, no notes that they did very well. Yeah. I really liked it too. You know, we had talked at the end of last episode about the finale was going to need to bring something because the season was, I think for all of us hit and miss. Yeah. And we all, I think had a little wishlist of things that it should bring. And I, it hit, I think most of them for me and even hit some that I didn't know I wanted.

[00:22:32] But one of the things was like, it brought some of the funny stuff back that I thought was missing from some of the overly dramatic episodes. Yeah. You know, we got the context, like the, at least three of the four of our main beloved main characters together working on something. And, and I think most importantly for me, it just gave us that, like Paul was alluding to some of that innie outie philosophy of identity stuff. That's what got, I think all of us really into the show to begin with.

[00:23:00] And I love that the first scene of, of this. Yeah. Of Mark meeting his outer innie self. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like pretty much exactly along those lines. I love that it went back to these, you know, fun personal identity questions that were definitely what attracted to us to the show in the first place. And it's just like, does it in really interesting new ways and with multiple characters.

[00:23:29] So I think that, that was great. I loved that it had a kind of batshit energy to it, especially with the marching band and that whole, you know, the animatronic standup, uh, cure, you know, like I love that it went to that kind of goofball energy that it had and had seemingly lost and was getting a little dreary in some of the previous episodes.

[00:23:53] I like Dylan, how that whole story, cause I really didn't like how they handled that in the previous episode. And so him not being sullen and kind of pissy, both innie and outie Dylan, but actually kind of reconciling in a pretty beautiful way. I thought that was great. I loved that too. Yeah. And then, you know, the thing that I have said all season, which is like, I like Mark S and Helly R and that is the true love story of the show. That's the thing that matters most.

[00:24:23] And they had gone away from that most of the season, uh, after they did the deed, like they kind of went back to that in the biggest possible way. So it really delivered for me in terms of what I want, even if I still have a lot of questions and some of the central mystery elements are still either they don't make sense or we still don't know what the answer is, I would say. But overall, I was honestly like I'm worried about the finale.

[00:24:52] I was like, I might be, I might be just out on this show and not at all. Like I feel great about it now. I mean, there's so many good things about it, but I just, the kinetic, the energy of it compared to some of the episodes, which were sort of sleep, a little bit sleepy or imagistic. This had people running after each other, had them fighting, had them, them doing laugh out loud, funny things, you know, real battles between. And it's just like, you know, you couldn't take your eyes off the screen. Yeah. It's been heavy lately.

[00:25:17] And even though a lot of like really dramatic things happened, there was a kind of lightness to it, which I loved. And it brought back the emotions of the people that we care about the most. Like, you know, I get we needed the backstory for Cobell. We needed some Gemma. But in those like ostensibly heart heavy episodes, I didn't care as much because they're not the characters that I've like come to love.

[00:25:43] So for me, the scene in the finale where it's Mark and Helly at the computer finishing up the Cold Harbor project, that was like actually touching. Yeah. It was really, really beautiful. And what I wanted. But I also wanted to ask you guys if the I found that just if you can call it pacing when you're talking about an entire season, it was just a little off for the season for me. Right. Yeah, I agree.

[00:26:09] It was it seemed kind of arbitrary when one would follow the next, if not for plot reasons, though, sometimes like that Cobell show probably could have come any at any point. That could have come at any point. The Gemma show, too, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I thought of this as I was watching. So I am, you know, a big hater of the Gemma backstory because I just and not because I think that we can't know about Gemma. Obviously, Gemma is important because we have to break her out.

[00:26:38] And that's like the final prison break heist element of the finale that I thought was really fun. But what I think they should have done is just not shown us the meet cutes and the whole try to show the whole arc of their relationship of two people that we just aren't connected with at all. Audi, Mark, barely and and Gemma, not at all. Like, just we get it. They were married and in love.

[00:27:02] Like, we can fill in those details without having to see it in a, you know, kind of heavy, dreary episode. You know, one thing I have to say, though, I know you guys are a little bit against Gemma on Team Helly. But the scene where Mark and I know Tom, they're going to review things. But so but the scene where Mark sees Gemma in the room, dismantling the crib and then she leaves the room and she recognizes me. They folded her arms. I got teary. They're very good actors. And the music was and I just really, you know, it really killed me. Yeah.

[00:27:30] Tambler is more anti-Gemma than I am. I'm not anti-Gemma. I'm more like just. Well, you kind of don't like the actor. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's her fault or that there's really nothing to the character exactly. Nothing distinctive about the character. But in any case, I do feel like if they could have just kind of reoriented their approach to this season, it could have been a little better. But but you know what? It's still a great show. And I thought that was a really fun finale. Yeah.

[00:27:56] You know, have you guys listened to or watched any kind of post finale reviews? It's kind of mixed. Yeah. I've seen a bunch of the YouTube channels that I watch do do it. And somebody alluded to the fact that it was mixed. And I was like, man, it was so overly positive for episode seven. I don't know how it could be mixed for this. Like whoever these people are, we're looking for very different things in this show. How could other people be so wrong? This is where to go for your severance news.

[00:28:24] I do think like if you were into it for the puzzle box, this finale might have been a little bit of a letdown because not enough things were answered. I think the idea that the goats are just these kind of sacrificial ritualistic, like that's the mystery of the goats. I think people wanted cloning or uploading consciousness or something like that being confirmed. And all we got was a kind of bare explanation of what Cold Harbor is and that project is.

[00:28:54] And without even a real sense of why or how it works and what the mechanics behind it are. We'll talk a lot about that, I imagine. Do you want to do the summary? Yeah, let's do the summary. Then we can go through the episode, talk about some standout scenes. All right, here's the quick summary. Hastily written up because I've forgotten to do it. Mark debates himself on the plan to free Gemma. And then the aftermath, what happens afterwards. Helly R gets a heartwarming visit from her dad.

[00:29:22] He says, I do not love my daughter. But fortunately not referring to her, referring to Helena or Helena. And he tells Helly that he sees Keir's spark in her, like Paul saw in David. Dylan writes a really heartwarming and funny letter to his inner self. I really loved that. Mark S completes the Cold Harbor project.

[00:29:48] And then Milchick calls the Department of Choreography and Merriment to celebrate. Which involves a huge marching band in a very enclosed space. We see that Cold Harbor for Gemma involves taking apart a crib in her old clothes. The last clothes that she saw Mark in. And does it without emotion. Showing that the barriers of the severance chip are holding.

[00:30:16] We learn the secret of the goats. Mark and Drummond, this is Audi Mark at this point, have a James Bond style fight with the goat killing weapon. What's that called? Bolt gun. Is that the weapon from No Country? Yes. Same mechanism. Yeah. And Mark frees Gemma, much to Robbie Benson's chagrin. Mark S takes Gemma to the exit door and lets her out.

[00:30:44] But then runs to his true love, Heliar, so they can spend however much time they have left together. Nice summary. Thanks. Okay. Can we just start with that first Mark scene? Yes. Because there's one thing that I just wanted to say that I appreciated so much. And that is, I think a lesser show would have not trusted that we would be patient by watching the setup and the changing of the camera.

[00:31:12] And they would have transitioned right away to some version of them just talking to each other. They did at the very end. Exactly. But they would have done it a lot earlier. I thought that just the time that they gave us with that, like it was so good and so worth it. And I think Adam Scott does such a good job showing us the real conflict in both of those and like the true differences in both of those characters as he has for a while. I thought it was just brilliant.

[00:31:38] And I thought that that argument that they're having with each other just gets to the heart of what it means to, you know, in some ways it's what we do with our, we bargain with ourselves all the time. But to make it so explicit like that just was great. I totally agree. One of our complaints about previous episodes was that some scenes seemed rushed. The Dylan Gretchen scene was just seemed really whipping through it. This one took their time and they developed it. And I love the back and forth. And I really concluded, and I don't think it's just to the detriment of the show, that outie Mark is kind of an asshole. Yeah.

[00:32:08] And any Mark got his number. He said, you're going to get her back and you're going to forget about me. And of course he is. Yeah. And he's a little bit condescending and a little bit dickish. Totally. Can you understand it to relation if you have what we have it like so much more? Yeah. Yeah. You think you're in love, buddy? Yeah. And he, I don't think he realizes that he's an asshole. And this is another part of the performance that I really loved. I think he's in real time realizing like I might be the asshole here.

[00:32:32] And the sincereness of Mark S, any Mark, is the sincerity with which he's like, well, okay, explain it to me. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I agree that it was crucial that they extended this because also what's very cool at the beginning is before they get into their argument, it's just so cool to see this other part of yourself like that half the day. Totally. And they both, like, they let them both, Audi and any Mark, have this moment of like, whoa.

[00:33:02] Holy shit. I love that. That's exactly how we would be. We'd be like in this state of delight. Yeah. And I said in our last conversation, I had no idea how they meant by having Indy Mark and Audi Mark talk to each other. Yeah. And I thought, oh, that's what they mean. Yeah. And they played that really well. And just the idea, at first you're like, you do ask yourself, I think you brought this up last time, like, why don't they just talk on the phone? And then you're like, oh, wait, no, they can't because it's the same exact guy. Like, they can't just talk on the phone. So I thought that was great.

[00:33:32] I agree about Mark, Audi Mark, even Devin, who I don't totally understand her character much this season. But she also is just like, all right, we got to break Gemma out. And, you know, seems almost taken aback when Mark S asks, well, what happens to us? What happens to the innies? Devin's like, what do you mean? And she says, what happens to every innie on the severed floor? And then she just says, yeah. Yeah. It's just like, it's weird.

[00:34:00] So it's like she also has, though probably less than Audi Mark, this kind of sense of, oh, yeah, I forgot about you, even though I am about to ask you to do something that requires kind of the ultimate sacrifice. It's like they haven't really appreciated the personhood of the people inside. And I thought it was just a nice little parallel to the discussion of child labor and just the exploitation that any corporation of that size does.

[00:34:28] It's like, yeah, we are building our corporation on the backs of kind of helpless people who we're exploiting. And, you know, these are all by and large rich people with interests that don't involve the grunt workers. And they're kind of even good people. Like presumably Devin and Audi Mark are like, oh, yeah, I guess I never really thought about that. Yeah. You actually think you're people. Yeah.

[00:34:54] But the thing where, so at first Mark gives this apology and the apology itself is already kind of patronizing. But then when Mark, any Mark says, well, you know, you calling it a nightmare that's not exactly that. Like we kind of made a life down there together. And that's why your plan scares me. Like we find ways to make it work. Yes. Right. Yeah. And then he says, can you understand that? And then when Audi Mark gets that, his response is, of course I can. Such a good point.

[00:35:24] That's when you're like out on Audi Mark there. He's just so patronizing there. And then he starts talking about reintegration. And like I think it's left open the degree to which he is outright lying here or he's self-deceiving or maybe he's sincere. But no matter what, there's no reason for any Mark to trust him on that. And nothing he says like the thing with, oh, that's so cute. That's adorable. You have a little girlfriend in there. Yeah. What's her name? Helen?

[00:35:54] Yeah. Which it totally pisses him off, any Mark off, which is exactly how it was. Just like when Helena. Got Gemma's name wrong. Gemma's name. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. That was their ick. Yeah. You also learn that any Mark isn't stupid. Yeah. And he's fully as smart as Audi Mark. He just has different experiences. Yeah. And in fact, Audi Mark, he gets the better of him. I think because Audi Mark just underestimated like every aspect of him and just, I guess,

[00:36:24] just expected them to all sacrifice themselves so that he could have his wife back. And yeah, it's an interesting thing. It's like, is there a big difference between how Audi Mark feels about them and how Helena feels about the innies? I don't know. Like not much, not as much as I would have thought. Yeah. I think it's like interesting. They had never been confronted with a full, like fleshed out person that any Mark actually is. And they're surprised.

[00:36:52] Like they do expect him to be naive or a shell of a person. And if you think about it, there's a big difference between how Dylan treats his any, which is with some degree of respect. No, that's the great juxtaposition. I think Dylan is the one person who treats his any with respect. Partly because, yeah, like his wife chose him over it. But whatever the reason. I love the point that he made. Well, look, dude, even if we reintegrate, I have like what, two years of memories and

[00:37:22] you have 10 times that or more or whatever. So it's kind of like dying. But, you know, I'm like getting the short end of this deal. And when Audi says, well, I'm not sure it works that way. I got the sense that Eddie Mark had no intention of doing this. Yeah. Yeah. Because I wouldn't. I get my wife back. Am I really going to risk whatever psychological disintegration is caused by bringing in some other self? Yeah. He just wants him to go away. Also, he has no idea how to go about it. Is Robbie coming back?

[00:37:52] Like, yeah. So and yeah, when she was there, she did something. She drilled a hole in his head and it didn't work. But do you agree with that? Like about what any Mark is saying? Like, what if he just has all the memories? Does that mean it's just like all of a sudden I had a ton of new memories. Would I not think that I was me or like and then how does the like what is we are called the reintegrators. But what actually does it mean to reintegrate?

[00:38:20] Do both of them lose their personhood? Do they become like how do they merge into a single felt consciousness like an ego? And then how do the memories work? Any Mark loves Helly. When they integrated a love Helly 50 percent. Like, how does that work? Yeah. Has it created a new ego such that there's not just two people just because one has more memories? It's still going to be like the average of the two egos or do the memories matter so much

[00:38:49] for our identity that we really are different people? There is a not to out myself as too much of a nerd. There's a really philosophically interesting episode of Voyager Star Trek where there's a transporter accident that merges two people together. And they learned sort of like it's integration of two completely previously separate people. And when the captain says, I figured out a way to separate you guys to be, you know, two people again, the new person says, so you're going to murder me.

[00:39:19] Like, that's that's what you're saying. And the captain's like, no, I don't. What do you mean? I'm separating you. He's like, yeah, but I am a new me. And you're essentially saying, like, I don't want this new person. I want the other people. And in the end, the captain decides to do it. And it's actually like a brutally cold episode where you feel like it's murder. So my intuition is like that, that the reintegrated person is a third thing. I don't think there's I think we're coming to conclusion. There's no such thing as reintegration.

[00:39:47] If there are two people and it's certainly one loves one person, one loves another person. You can't smack them together and get and keep the two. You get a third new person or you kill one of the two. But look, I'm a different person than I was six months ago, like four months ago. But it's not like I feel different from the inside. So it's possible that you could preserve that feel from the inside.

[00:40:12] You know, maybe it's at a core, more abstract kind of level of a you-ness feeling. But you could think that that might continue in the same way that a lot of things can change about our experiences. And that doesn't change. I think that's right. But you're pretty similar to yourself six months ago. It's kind of it'd be more like me, you know, you and you and David integrate into a single body. Like, in the end, Audi mark are very, very different. Whose penis would we get? That's the real question.

[00:40:40] You know, would it be like an average of the two? A sum. Yeah, that would bring mine down a bit. Of course. I look forward to it. But Tambler, it sounds like you're actually the Buddhist is arguing for a continuity of self and this strong self. A little bit, maybe.

[00:40:58] Or at least raising that possibility that in the same way that the whole Buddhist conception of the self is that it's all kind of an illusion of continuity that maintains itself through these weird habitual patterns and mechanisms. But two people could maybe still have it within now the same body. Because it is the same body also. Which does, that is a difference between, you know, if you had with me and David.

[00:41:26] You don't have to average the two dick sizes with him. It's just one dick. It's the same one. It's interesting. I do like that if in canon what Paul said, that what the real answer is, is that reintegration as we understood it is a fiction. Like that Rigabi has been on this wild goose chase. And maybe that Cobel knows that it's not possible. But in however way we mean not possible. That it's not actually possible.

[00:41:53] Like there is something that still lingers about what the fuck Rigabi was doing. Did it do anything? Was this just like, was she just giving him like weird seizures and trippy like flashes that were just not actually even getting close to reintegrating? Well, so, but we do know that Petey had more success. Like Petey was a little more integrated.

[00:42:16] But I think that, you know, if there was a flaw with the season, I think high up there is it's a big deal when he reintegrate, when he starts the reintegration process in episode three. Yeah. I remember we were like, oh, shit. Oh, what's going to happen next time? Like, is he going to be fully reintegrated? Mark, what does that mean? And then that just completely didn't pan out at all. And by the end, I think it's kind of clear that they're complete. Mark is completely severed. And that didn't work at all. So what was the point of that?

[00:42:46] That's true. The whole thing was kind of was a red herring. You could have done a whole show without any attempts at reintegration. And it would be pretty much the same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unless there, you know, this might be me giving too much of a pass to this finale. But I keep thinking for all of the mysteries that weren't solved that they need to save something for the next season. Yeah. And maybe we'll get a more fleshed out story of what Rigabe is doing. And maybe she was actually working with Irving. Maybe there is this resistance that's been working behind the scenes.

[00:43:15] But yeah, as of now, what the fuck was that? So one thing I want to say about the scene before we move on is that after, you know, he starts getting mad and he starts saying multiply that by thousands of days. And also, like, and I was, you know, I was so distraught. I got fired from work because I would show up, you know, to my as a teacher drunk. And then he said he put all Gemma's stuff in the basement so he wouldn't have to see it.

[00:43:43] That's such a good metaphor for the severance process. Right. Like, oh, I'm putting like I'm not dealing with it. I'm not confronting my grief. I'm not confronting. I'm putting it away like downstairs where you can't. Yeah. It's the Freudian iceberg. Right. It's the pushing down into the non-conscious areas of the mind. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing I just wanted to say is I think I like the way Cobell just realized this is not going to work. Like he's not stupid. And then just she tells him the truth.

[00:44:12] The numbers are his wife, different consciousness says this is the 25th time. Once that happens, you're dead. And there's no happy ending with you and Helly because Helly is Helena who controls the whole thing. So, like, either way, you're fucked. Might as well do the right thing and help this poor helpless woman escape, I guess. Is that what she's saying? That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what Cobell's motivations here are. We never know. It has never made clear. Yeah.

[00:44:41] And I hope the show recognizes that. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That's another big thing that hopefully we'll figure out in season three. What did you guys think when she yells out to Mark, like, I care for you? I remember the exact words. Is she just like, is this an example of somebody who's just nobody's all bad? Like she actually does have affection for in some ways somebody she helped create?

[00:45:06] I believe that more about Milchick than her, but just because of how she treated them, you know, in the break room and stuff like that. But she doesn't treat people well on the outside either. So maybe, you know, she has. And I think she was just doing little experiments with them. And, you know, I think having Gemma down there was her idea, probably for scientific reasons.

[00:45:33] But maybe, you know, I don't know. It's a good question. But what about the explanation that she's just bitter because they betrayed her? And so she wants to bring the whole thing crashing down now because fuck them. I feel like that's the surface motivation for what she's doing. Yeah, I think so. I guess it was a straw that broke the camel's back situation at the end. And that's why now for the first time in however many years she goes to retrieve her chip plans because, like, she wants to bring something.

[00:46:02] I believe she might not really know what she's going for. We can talk when we talk now about Cold Harbor, about something that you were saying, Tamler, over text, which I think gets to the heart of what's going on here. Like, I think the emotional center that Cold Harbor was supposed to be, or at least like the plot center, what we really learned this is all about, it is all about Mark and Heli to some extent, that the Gemma thing is not as important as having, as you might have thought,

[00:46:30] given that they tried to give us a whole episode, artsy episode about Gemma. By the way, you just said something that hadn't occurred to me, David, which is that this whole episode where Covell is retrieving the document saying that this has been stolen from her, it kind of doesn't make any sense anymore because they're going to destroy Lumen in this other way. And so what's the point of this document? Who's she going to show it to? What's the issue there? Yeah. She's going to take it to a judge. I want to talk about that theory because I, you know, I had a theory, which I don't totally buy,

[00:46:57] but that the Cold Harbor project, like in design was about Mark rather than about Gemma. But let's just talk about what they say it is and see if we fully are agreed on what that is. So all these numbers were the tempers, you know, I guess various combinations of the four tempers. And whenever they would put it into a box or a certain number of boxes,

[00:47:24] that would create a new consciousness of Gemma, right? So that like, and they needed to do 25 of them for all the different rooms that she would go into, which would explain why Mark was so important, but doesn't explain why all these other people are also working on creating Gemmas and why Mark himself was not even the project manager until Petey tried to reintegrate and then got fired.

[00:47:51] So like, yeah, what's like, how do you understand how this is supposed to work and why these particular people are doing it? No idea. No idea. No idea. What Irving and Hollywood, what they're doing for those numbers. No idea. Okay. So there's a couple of things that one may be less important, but I still don't get what exactly those numbers are doing. Like why it's necessary for them to be binning.

[00:48:19] Like on the one hand, if what you're doing is you're picking Mark because he has an emotional connection to Gemma and somehow he recognizes those features of her mind, that's interesting and cool. But why does that, why is that required for creating essentially these blank slate innies? Right. I think they're just hand waving. Like maybe there are smarter people who have figured out that there's a true, deep, coherent thing that's being alluded to. But as far as I can tell, it's kind of hand wavy.

[00:48:48] I don't know why you can't just hard reset or whatever, like a consciousness, so that every time somebody walks into a room, you've essentially created an amnesic, you know? Like why does she need her humors in some organization for each? Unless there is some very, very specific reason that they need this particular ratio of the tempers to each other in order for Gemma to be tested in that situation.

[00:49:15] Or maybe they need to have a specific combination, you know, that's maybe highly complex just to create a consciousness at all. And so given that they have this one consciousness that they can study, then maybe that's why they do it is because they have to, otherwise they just create something that doesn't work and never is sentient or has consciousness in the first place. Right. You never get to consciousness. Yeah.

[00:49:43] But, yeah, but then I just don't get then why the other people would have any idea how Gemma, like what her particular combination of tempers are. I'm puzzled as well. I was assuming for a while there, to the extent that I thought about it, that everybody was working on the file of somebody that they might have been close to. Yeah. And that's why it makes sense. But I think it's pretty clear that some of the projects, like whatever project that gets completed for Dylan's waffle part, the one that he succeeds in.

[00:50:12] I think that was one of the rooms. I think that was one of Gemma's rooms. It's like, why would Dylan have anything, like unless they all knew Gemma in the Audi world somehow? But that doesn't make sense. They didn't. Right. I don't think they did. Yeah. So I don't know. I really don't know. And you might think, okay, well, they're just doing some sort of like help work for Mark's primary work. But it seems like Dylan was like badass at whatever he was doing. And he was winning the finger traps. And they also got the same feelings looking at the numbers. Yeah.

[00:50:42] Right. And we see that because Helly also recognizes those. Yeah. Yeah. And she says when they complete it, at least it's a happy one, which is interesting that a happy one would complete Cold Harbor. But yeah. Yeah. And then let me ask one other question. With the other rooms, she had to go in there multiple times because we get the sense this is like, I was just at the dentist. I've been there like five times. And then with this one though, she just had to do it once. And then the project was complete.

[00:51:11] Like what's the deal with all that too? Maybe this is nitpicking and this is the kinds of questions we shouldn't be asking. And we should talk about like some of the fun stuff. But I mean, these are the kind of questions they want us to ask. And it matters. I don't know the answer to it, but it matters because if the real test here is whether the barriers will hold, like it matters what exactly is being tested. And I think that we're supposed to think

[00:51:38] that somehow Cold Harbor was such the pinnacle of pain experienced. It was the tragic moment for Gemma. And so it's strong enough that really they want to see if the one time, it's not like the dentist or working out or whatever. And notably there's a difference on all of the other ones. It is any Gemma in the various rooms experiencing pain. And they're testing to see whether Audi Gemma has a recollection of it. This time they're doing the inverse.

[00:52:06] They're seeing if any Gemma gets bleed from Audi Gemma. And it's not that bad to take apart a crib if you have no terrible connections to it. That's right. And so maybe Cold Harbor was one of the difficult ones to recreate because essentially they have to, they're testing something they hadn't yet tested, which is the bleed from the Audi into the innie. Yeah. Which might have been happening. They just doesn't seem to have been part of the previous ones. Because the thing that they want from the,

[00:52:33] like the dentist office is for you to go to the dentist, not like, and then you're walking out of the dentist's office and you don't feel the effects of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the other thing I wanted to say about this whole what's going on in the testing floor. So Nikki was expressing, I think, some disappointment with the answers that we got. And I think she was expecting more. She's like, they've built up Cold Harbor so much. You know, the final episode is called Cold Harbor. We're supposed to think, you know, she wanted something more dramatic.

[00:53:02] Like she's actually dies in the way that she, she almost died when she hit the tree in the accident. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, like, I think it works if you really buy that Lumen is just a company trying to develop a product. Like them saying, like, you are the most important person in the world. This will be the greatest achievement. It's like Steve Jobs introducing the iPod. Yeah. It's not really this emotional center of this story.

[00:53:31] The emotional center is the fucked up thing that happens to these people that they're creating. And the story that occurs because these innies, like, are different people with their, you know, they become these different people with conflicting interests. That's the heart of it. That if you think the whole thing is about the mystery of Lumen, I think my realization at the end of the finale is Lumen's a corny corporation. They're a corny corporation that has retreats and they have these, like,

[00:53:56] dumb activities for their employees and they really care about a product that they're launching. Yeah. And I think it's more than just, like, a soulless kind of capitalistic corporation. You do get the sense that they moralize what it is they're doing. Maybe, like, you know, Musk will moralize, like, SpaceX or something like that. Yeah. But, like, they think that this is a foundational step for humanity to live life pain-free, without pain, without suffering. And I think that's why it has these cult-like elements, too,

[00:54:25] in addition to the large corporation exploiting its workers' elements, which it also definitely has. Yeah. It's like a parody, too, of just the cults that really seem to be created in these corporations, where people do worship the leaders. That's right. So, I mean, this gets to a major thing about this finale, which is different from season one, which is season one ended with a series of revelations, including the She's Alive. Yeah. This is none of this. Cold Harbor was kind of what we thought it was. Yeah, something along those lines.

[00:54:56] You know, the goats, okay, you know, sacrificial, but nothing, they're not clones, they're not robots, they're not souls of other people. Yeah. And I, in fact, felt that that helped with the way they set up the show, which was to have this, you know, heist, prison break-out thing. But it had, if you think about it, very few surprises. That's right. And we, if there's one thing that we did, we were wrong about is we thought there would be something that would just, a big reveal that we are not expecting, like the first season. And there was absolutely nothing like that.

[00:55:25] Instead, what it did is deliver, like, kind of the best of the show without that big twist. I was even wrong about my kind of lightweight prediction that Milchick would turn and end up with the good guys. And instead, he gets still more humiliation. I think that will happen, but yeah, they're saving it. Yeah. One more thing about the Cold Harbor thing. Well, unless you guys have more.

[00:55:50] At first, I was like, well, okay, the barrier worked because she doesn't seem to be right. Like, as they're looking on in the creepy way, like, you know, James is viewing what's going on, Dr. Mauer is viewing what's going on. And this is seems like it's a successful test of the barrier because she doesn't seem to be having any emotions at all. Somebody pointed out that at the end, when Mark comes in bloodied and says, take my hand, trust me,

[00:56:17] that she actually reaches out and trusts him is the failure of the barrier. She was remembering something deep down, but emotional that she could trust this man because otherwise a bloody guy runs in and says, like, take my hand. You're not going to do that. And that's why James and Dr. Mauer are like, fuck. Like, that's why they're upset because they realize that her taking his hand means that it was a failed experiment after all. Yeah. What is she at this point?

[00:56:47] She is just like when we're first introduced to Hellia in season one in the pilot. 30 seconds old. She's 30 seconds old. So she doesn't know what the fuck is going on. But that's the thing. It's like, why does she not ask questions and be like, what's going on? Where am I? What is this? She like, is there something like hypnotic in his voice? Like why? I didn't understand. This is the other part of Cold Harbor that I don't understand. It's like they create her already kind of docile and not inclined to ask what's going on.

[00:57:17] Just, oh, here's voices. That's a general question, which we were wondering about in the Gemma heavy episode, which is, okay, they fake her death. They kidnap her. But why is she so docile? Yeah. Like I view it as somebody who just got their head knocked and they're like currently experiencing amnesia. But it did seem as if the Innie for Cold Harbor, the Innie Gemma for Cold Harbor was especially devoid of a personality.

[00:57:41] And maybe they were creating an extra clean and extra refined consciousness to test out whether they could create something that had no bleed. Like you might expect some of the other Innies. They have memories of the world that are a result of Gemma's experience in the world. Like they know what some things are, as we were talking about in a previous episode. This one seems more blank slatey than before. But when she reaches out for Mark, I feel like they're trying to show us that she recognized him. Yeah.

[00:58:06] It is, I think, weird that she just kind of follows orders down there without much resistance. And I don't know if that's something they've done to her, if that's just her personality. Maybe that's one of the reasons they had. We just don't know that much about her. We don't know if she agreed to do this because of a deal that she made, which would explain why she's been conforming, at least up until the point where she knocks Maurer on the head with a chair. You know what I think it might be is that she doesn't have the spark of cure in her. And, but you know who does is, is Hallie.

[00:58:35] And I love the scene when, you know, any Mark just demands the next thing I better see is the elevator door opening. And it's a great cut. I love that cut. It's such a good cut because you just see that they, that's them knowing their beat. Even Devin's like, he's not wrong about like asking about reintegration. So we didn't need to see them deliberate what to do. We just see that they gave in. He had the power.

[00:59:00] But then, so he gets out, he sees that painting, which is very funny and like very in line with the show. And it's a couple things about the painting. There's no Drummond in the painting, almost as if they anticipated. I didn't notice that. But there's almost everybody else, even Miss Wong, the dearly departed Miss Wong. But then Hallie comes in out of the elevator too.

[00:59:28] And any Mark and Hallie have this hug where it's just very sweet. Like they really love each other. And they're both like learned some heavy shit just now. And they're going to like face it together, which leads in, you know, they're walking through these darkened hallways. They see that cure animatronic statue. It reminded me of like a teen adventure romance, you know, like they're running down these corridors. There's this weird statue holding an envelope for him.

[00:59:57] You know, that's where you see these two kids are in love. Yeah. They're young and in love. Now we have the Dylan story. Do you want to talk about that? The letter? Yeah. You said some about it already, about the touching nature of the letter. But so this is in response to Dylan's request to not be, well, his demands to quit. Audi Dylan writes this super touching letter.

[01:00:23] And as both of you were saying, I think we'll agree that like they really redeemed this. We thought they gave him short shrift. And even though this wasn't a long scene, the way that he expressed himself in that letter where he says, first of all, fuck you. Super relatable. Yeah. Like just like honest. It shows respect. It's not patronizing. None of that condescending shit that Mark was doing says, as Paul was saying in text, like the hilarious, like makes sense. We both have the same physiology that we'd like. It tracks. Yeah.

[01:00:52] It tracks. It's such a great Dylan line. I think I was. It's so good. Yeah. So he says, dear Annie, I've organized my response into three points. It's, it's, this actor is great. Point one, fuck you. And then he says, what you did with my wife is deeply fucking indecorous. He said. Point two, I get it. She's perfect. And given our shared physiology, it tracks that you'd agree. Yeah. He's treating him like a real person. Okay. Let me, here's where I just, I just want to give you my, my theory or question.

[01:01:21] So that shared physiology, right? It's like, of course you're going to be attracted to each other. You're going to be attracted to her, your Annie version and your Audi version. But here's the thing. That is not true for Mark, for Mark S. Right. So it's another juxtaposition. Like Mark S does, has no feelings for Gemma on the inside. In fact, you know, like he, he is presented with an Annie version of her.

[01:01:48] And then he also presented with just the Gemma version of her and has no feelings for her. But Audi, Mark and Helena had a little more chemistry. So maybe what they're saying is Helena, both sides and Mark, both sides are more meant to be in the same way that Dylan and Gretchen are meant to be than the Gemma and, and Mark.

[01:02:15] I think that the chemistry between Helena and Mark in that Chinese food place is sort of manufactured. Like, I think she was flirting. I think we could have gotten that with anybody who, who just was a good flirt. So fine. Forget that then. Just, but still, it's not like any Mark has no feelings for Gemma. That's right. So I think that, that Dylan is cool as he is, is probably wrong about why they're both attracted to her. It's not that this is just biology.

[01:02:43] It's that they both genuinely see something wonderful about this woman and whatever it is, like that it really is different. I mean, it's not your physiology that determines who you're attracted to. It's your mind. It's their, it's their physiology. I took that as more metaphorical than literal, uh, in terms of like, of course we are, we are the same body, the same, you know, DNA. And so it makes sense.

[01:03:11] We'd be attracted to the same woman if we're, we're meant to be with that woman, but maybe Mark is not. Yeah. I took it to be that this, it's a great, as you were saying, contrast between the two characters. But Dylan also has any, any Dylan has had a good chance of getting to know her. They've shared some intimate moments. Any Mark has not really had that opportunity. Although no, he's had plenty of, of, uh, wellness sessions.

[01:03:36] So yeah, maybe they're saying like that wasn't meant to be, maybe they've been telegraphing this, like, uh, that maybe that's not a relationship that is working even on the outside. Maybe they wanted us to be repelled by the episode seven scenes. And instead everyone was like, oh, it's beautiful. Best episode of TV ever. Ever. I'm going to, I'm just going to skip to something else about the scene, which is, it is tremendous comedy. When Milchik says, he says, this is going to be very emotional. So I'm going to leave you to read this yourself.

[01:04:06] And he says, I'm, I'm, I'm duly swamped, which is, you know. And then he bolts from the room full speed. That is one of the funniest visuals. That was such comedy. That was running with no, no ick at all. It was just thing. Because if there's one thing Milchik is not going to miss, it's, uh, like a performance. It is such a funny visual. Like, uh, yeah, I'm going to use that gif, I think a lot. Yeah.

[01:04:32] So since you already mentioned animatronic cure, do you guys think that this was a, is there anything weird going on? Are we supposed to believe that there is an actual cure consciousness or are we supposed to believe this was just very clearly some guy? I was confused by it when I saw it and, and, but I just assume now it is just some guy. Wait, it's a robot though, isn't it? It's an animatronic. But what I'm asking is a lot of people seem to believe that there is some preservation of consciousness in a machine going on and that this is actually cure's consciousness.

[01:05:02] But that makes no sense because they wouldn't have had any of the technology to even record his, his personality or consciousness in 1865 or whatever the fuck. Right. And also the, the, the sniping at Milchik about his loquaciousness, you know, is just straight out of the current corporate culture, which is really destined to get my hard time. Yeah. I wonder if they've overplayed a little bit of the microaggression things about his big words.

[01:05:29] Like we've certainly gotten that quite a bit overall, but it did raise the point of whether this robot, like the last thing when Milchik kind of makes fun of him for being actually shorter than the animatronic robot, it kind of shuts him up in a way that makes it seem like he didn't. Now, cause I had thought it was just a recorded voice in there in the first place, but. And that it was timed. Yeah.

[01:05:52] And that, but then it seemed like maybe it had a little, so, so if it is a cure consciousness of some kind or, you know, one of the later generations, it's, I think it's woefully incomplete. Like it can't think on its feet, but it might be able to like engage in some interactions. There was a scene right there. I think it was right at that point where I felt somewhat uncomfortable. It was, it was about to call Milchik a name. And it says, you know, well, let me tell you something. You're, and then there's a long pause and it said, Seth.

[01:06:21] And, and I, I was wondering what it was going to go with. Right. That was when it seemed like reactive to call him Seth in that. Cause he would, that was after the, the insult. So yeah. One thing we didn't mention is he enters to the Alan Parsons project song, which is the music for the, like the nineties bulls, like the Michael Jordan bulls. Every time they would come onto the floor. That that's so awesome. This is where it gets a little batshit.

[01:06:47] The show just gets kind of goes off the rails, but in a way that I just loved like the whole time. Yeah. I love the two. One of you guys mentioned, I think Tamler, that, that it was fan service. Yeah. And I have like both of those feelings. Like, yeah, it's fan service, but I'm a fan. They had said that even in a podcast, they said, we wanted to talk to waffle party. How could we do that? And we want to bring in more dancing. Yeah. It's not like it's inconsistent. Like this is just a feature of that character. So it makes sense that he might also do something like this.

[01:07:17] Milchick just wants to dance. That's what he wants. That's what he was born to do. It's like Billy Elliot. Yeah, exactly. I think at the end of like his end, like in the series finale, he should just be part of some like dance group or something. That's a total 60 minutes of him dancing. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's weird at the end where he says, thank you for the feedback, Seth. And it's just like, what do you mean by feedback?

[01:07:42] That's what made me think, oh, this is some very basic AI or AI, but with a little cure sprinkle of something. But we really have no, they haven't given us enough to have any opinion on that. Yeah. So here's where the all out fight occurs. The marching band comes in. And this is a part of the episode, maybe the part that I was slightly annoyed by the most, which is we get Heli and Mark.

[01:08:11] They have to implement their plan because, of course, the marching band comes in or sorry, Milchick comes in. They do the stand up bit. This is all happening as soon as they finish Cold Harbor. We know that they have to like get to Gemma right away. So they're under this pressure to get there. And then this marching band comes in and it's going crazy. I love the wacky cameras, like the GoPros on the drums. And there's chaos. And Heli realizes she has to create a distraction. So she steals Milchick's walkie-talkie. Mark's trying to get out.

[01:08:39] Milchick, though, is dangerous at this point. And we get Dylan flying into the room and pushing the vending machine to block him in the bathroom just in the perfect time. Yeah. And he's like, hey, you know, it's like very action movie, like Indiana Jones kind of, you know, like. Yeah. Right. It was a Dylan ex machina where he's just like right at the right moment. And I just thought that was. I loved it. I liked it. Yeah. I see what you're saying, but I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. Because we wanted Dylan to come back.

[01:09:09] He just had the letter. You could see him being a little inspired by the letter. Yeah. He just had to clock everything that was going on in that instant. And, you know, maybe he's just a badass. Oh, I wanted to ask this about the Dylan letter. It's not clear or am I wrong from the letter whether any Dylan, if he chooses to live, will get to see Gretchen anymore? It's not clear. It's not clear, right? It's not clear. No. You would think, given the spirit of the letter, that, okay, you can, but you just can't fuck or something like that.

[01:09:36] You can do hand stuff. Yeah, exactly. On my birthday, we could maybe blow a job. But, like, then he also just gives him the choice, like another sign of respect. And you have agency. And you see that he didn't check, accept or reject the request. So it's up to you. And so you could see from that him going in.

[01:10:03] And, yeah, it's convenient that he just all of a sudden knew what was going on. But, you know, he sees Hallie trying to keep Milchick in the bathroom. She must have her reasons. And he was just kind of an asshole to her in the last episode. So this makes it up to her. I liked it. It's corny, but I like it. Yeah. We didn't talk about, before this, Hallie and Mark, you mentioned that you almost cried in this scene, and so did I, of just them talking about the equator and what the equator might be. So good. And then, you know, I wish I had more time.

[01:10:32] And that's where you really get the kind of poignancy of it. And then that's right when they finish Cold Harbor. And then that transitions into this completely insane, chaotic, bad shit scene. But there's a real emotional moment that happens right before. And now it does become more of an action, like James Bond movie, heist. But it's not quite well planned enough to be like a kind of perfect heist thing because there's a lot that kind of goes wrong during it. Right.

[01:11:01] Mark is so outmatched by Drummond originally. He's very clearly getting tossed around like a rag doll. Here's a question. I don't know if I'm missing something, but wasn't Mark supposed to book it for the elevator? What room was he trying to get into? I don't know. I had that same question. And especially on the rewatch kind of thinking, is that going to be answered? Yeah. He was supposed to go to the elevator. Is he on the testing floor when he tries to enter that room? I don't think so. No, because he then takes the elevator to the testing floor. He does. Right.

[01:11:31] So the goat that they're going to take to sacrifice is on the severed floor. And that's why Drummond is there. They were going to sacrifice it right there. Yeah. So maybe that door is just right, left, right, left. And then he messed up or something. Like, we don't know. That's what I was thinking. The only thing is he messed up. That's what made me remember. I think it looks clear that he got messed up in the direction. He got confused, right? They were very confusing directions because you have to start from O and D. Like the instructions say start from O and D.

[01:11:58] So the only thing I was thinking is maybe he's running to O and D so he can get like his bearings because the directions are like from O and D, turn left. Yeah. The woman of the goat, by the way, was Brianna from Game of Thrones. Brianna. I didn't know that until I read. Oh, you didn't? Oh, yeah. Did you watch Game of Thrones, Tim? I watched the first season, but that's it. Oh, she came in there later. Yeah. This is where you, you, I feel like it makes a lot more sense that she beat the shit out of Drummond if you already have her registered as Brianna. Yeah.

[01:12:25] I mean, it made enough sense to me as it was. It is funny, the scene with them fighting Mark and Drummond, and he just decides, I'm going to kill Mark S right now. Like, well, I'm not sure exactly why. Like, he doesn't know what he's doing. But I guess he knows Cold Harbor is completed, so. Yeah, they don't need him. Right. But like, even for Audi Mark, that does seem like, you know, because then there's the sister going to raise a fuss or whatever. Like, I don't know what their purpose was.

[01:12:54] Well, I mean, they're killing people, right? We're to understand that they're creating these car crashes. And we have Bert as a driver who's supposed to be taking care of Irv. When Mark kills Drummond by accident, that was also a comedy scene. And it was, it was, it was straight out of a Pulp Fiction scene. I don't know what it is. It was a variable. It would have gone by accident. Oh, shit. Apparently when you, when you go from, from Indy to Audi, you tense. It's like hitting a bump.

[01:13:20] And it's just so funny for Audi Mark to just wake up like he has no idea what happened. Last thing. With blood gushing. Yeah. With blood gushing and this huge guy who he doesn't know, right? He doesn't know Drummond. Does he? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Unless he's seen him when he's walking into the building. No, he's smart enough. And this is a James Bond sort of thing to use his blood to get into that room. Yeah. I love that. That was very clever. It's, again, action movie stuff. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

[01:13:49] So the goats are, or no, no, the mammalian's nurturing department raises the goats to be sacrificed to, uh, with the people who are also sacrificed to be guided to cure. So like, do they in their own fucked up way actually care about these people that they're sacrificing? Do you get the sense that the way that he talked about Gemma with reverence, like for her sacrifice, that at least they're going through the motions of treating this as like a sacred thing that they're doing?

[01:14:18] Has it verved? He asks about the goats. Has it verved? So good. And, you know, it actually makes the, the original scene with the goats when they walk in and that man is just the first random guy who sees the goats and he says, like, they're not ready. Like, it's so sad now that you think that that's what's been happening. I think like, I know some people are not at all satisfied with that as an answer to the goats. To me, that's perfect. Yeah. It's perfect, man. People don't know what they want. I feel this strongly.

[01:14:45] People think what they want is for the goats to have been consciousness and like what they don't, they don't want that, that they would actually be, I think, less satisfied. You need some, some mundaneness in some of this stuff. Like it's already hard sci-fi. It's already like these chips are crazy. Like you don't need every single fucking thing. Yeah, I agree. But people want something that it may not be possible to, to give them like some fully

[01:15:13] satisfying thing that is both profound, uh, philosophically interesting and like fits perfectly with all this, the other parts. Yeah. But in any case, whatever. I think the show is aware that they're out there and maybe feels like, you know, I did see, I think Dan Erickson say, people are focusing too much on the Easter eggs and not enough on the, like the story. And I was like, that's, but it's kind of their fault because they put in so many, you

[01:15:40] know, but it seems like then to be like, no, you guys don't read too much into this. You're right. The Easter eggs and the actual eggs. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of eggs period. It's a very much a show about eggs. It really is. So then Halley starts a revolution with the, uh, choreography and merriment, uh, marching band. You said this in the text time where it was, they really went quickly.

[01:16:06] Like, yeah, I think I said that, that like that, that they turned disloyal in like an instant. Yeah. And I didn't realize like at first, I was maybe slow that they were innies, that they were, that they're a different department on MDR. I'm sorry, on the severed floor. And maybe they're easy to turn because, you know, they're not that sophisticated. I think everybody on the innie floor with the possible exception of Bert and the managers are innies, right? Yeah.

[01:16:33] I just didn't know if they had brought down because people clearly can come down to the severed floor who are employees. Like they could have just been hired out musicians. That would seem more efficient. Yeah. Just that's like 40. And he's just waiting every year for the, yeah. How many of these are there doing? There was also like a bit of a, um, it wasn't a fully black marching band, but I couldn't help but think that there, there's another race thing going on there. Oh, I didn't notice that. Yeah. Like it felt very much like a historically black college marching band.

[01:17:03] I don't see color. So I didn't. Yeah. They zoomed in on one, on one kid who was black. There is definitely like, uh, they were focusing on some black people, especially that one person. Like when she calls out about the revolution, I think he's the first to get everybody on board. Yeah. I don't know.

[01:17:23] And then it's almost a little disappointing that Milchick in the end is kind of still a frustrated company man getting, uh, you know, trying to break down a door, you know, like it seems like a slightly less satisfying resolution to his arc. But I think it's, his arc is just longer. In retrospect, I think I would have been, I would have thought it a little too much to have him turn right away. Um, not right away, but, but yeah, we didn't need it this episode. I realize I'm confused.

[01:17:51] So Helly gave the speech to the marching band, but what is it she wanted them to do? Help with Milchick because Milchick was breaking out. Right. Oh. And she wanted their help in preventing Milchick from getting out and, and getting marked presumably. But then she was appealing to them. And Dylan says, fuck you, Mr. Milchick. Yeah. Yeah. Because now they can stop him with the people. The idea is they would stop him from. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:18:16] So like the, yeah, we get this wide shot from, you know, that's like, okay, now they're all against him. And he's like, oh shit. There is this one shot of him looking at himself in the mirror right before he, he breaks out. And I think I read it as, what are you doing? Why are you on this side? And, but I think they're just waiting to, to carry that through. So, uh, like the Billie Holiday music when she's taking apart the crib,

[01:18:44] but then, uh, I got, uh, Audi, Mark breaks in, takes her. It's a very funny thing where they go up to the severed floor. And so they, they kiss in the elevator. Oh, that's right. Even for Gemma haters like me, that's a nice moment where Audi, Mark gets to kiss Gemma. And then, but they only get the testing floor to the severed floor. When they get to the severed floor, it's just Adam Scott kissing Miss Casey. I mean, uh, uh, Mark S and they're like, yeah. And it's very funny.

[01:19:13] I love that they just choreographed this nicely. Like the, all the implications of who's turning into whom, like are nicely demonstrated here. You know, she's innie Gemma turns into Audi Gemma when she comes out of the room with the crib, turns back into Miss Casey. He's turning like, so we're seeing this all happen. It reminds me of like dark in that way. It's just like, it gets crazy at a certain point.

[01:19:36] I'm like your half sister and your great aunt and your grand niece or something. It's very funny. And I like, they always have this funny way of talking. Mark says, Miss Casey. And she says, Mark S, what's taking place? One thing, I hadn't thought of this until you mentioned it, David, but, but it's done so well. You don't notice it. Like there's never a stage where you're wondering, wait, wait, innie or outie? Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know that that's going to happen. At any point. Yeah.

[01:20:06] And that's because the acting is very good. It's very skillfully done. And it feeds you just enough info for you to like, there's sound cues. There's all sorts of things. And there's a little thing that they do with their face. Yeah. Yeah. Also like when Brianna from Game of Thrones says, Emil thanks you. That's the name of the goat. Yeah. That's the name of the goat. He's unnecessary. And then Mark is like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Adam Scott is very funny. In this.

[01:20:35] He's so, he's so good. People are going to correct me. So I'm just going to say it's Brienne of Tarth, not Brianna is what I was saying before. By the way, just going back on something, Ben Stiller was saying, or this was interesting details that Apple very much did not want Adam Scott to be the actor. To be Mark. Yeah. To be Mark. They fought against it. And Stiller insisted. And they fought against it. Really? They might have wanted something more classically handsome or something. They don't say why. They really didn't want him. What are you saying? He's ugly? Is that what you're saying?

[01:21:03] I'm saying he's not classically handsome. He's handsome enough. Or maybe they wanted more of a name actor. I don't know. But they said they didn't want it. I thought he had such good casting though. He does have the ability to be kind of blank faced. And he has that biting. Did you guys watch Party Down at all? Yes. That's a funny little show. Yeah. He has good comedic chops. And he can be a true innocent, but then he can also be a total asshole. Exactly. And I think we're finding out that the show needs both from him. Yeah. Right.

[01:21:33] Okay. So now it's Mark S. Miss Casey is... Mark S knows what's going on. Miss Casey has absolutely no idea. God knows how long it's been since she's been Miss Casey. And Mark just takes her to the door. Now, according to the plan, Mark is supposed to go with her, turn into Audi Mark with Gemma. Gemma. And instead, he just takes Miss Casey to the door, puts her out. She then turns into Gemma.

[01:22:00] Looking through the glass, this is another great thing, at Mark S. And Mark S. has to decide whether to go out or not. And he hesitates even before he sees Helly. But then when he sees Helly, runs off with her. And I just love... And this is a good acting by that actress. When she first sees Helly, she gives this look like, who is this bitch? You know?

[01:22:25] And then just watches him run off with Helly as everyone I think who's watching is rooting for. Not everyone, as it turns out. No, a lot of people not. Yeah, which is insane, I think. There's something wrong with you if you didn't want him to run with Helly. So, he runs away. And it occurred to me that Gemma, does she know that that's not her Mark? Oh. No, she doesn't at all.

[01:22:53] She thinks that he's living out in the real world. Like, she's been told... The only thing she's been even told is, no, your husband got remarried and has a kid now. Right. And she wouldn't have any memory of what happened on the severed floor. She has no idea that Mark is severed at all. And so, just when she sees Mark run away with Helly, she thinks that's her Mark. Yeah. And I'm thinking she might think Dr. Maurer was right. He actually did leave him. Yeah. Like... Or, sorry, moved on. And had a kid, which... And she's probably pregnant. So...

[01:23:23] Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Tough, tough beat for Gemma. They had one moment of happiness. Yeah. Like you were saying, Tal. Right. That was it. She was kissing him and all of a sudden he's running away with Helly. Yeah. Yeah. Again, great performance. She's just like, Mark! Mark! But she's like mad, you know? Yeah. And rightly so. And hurt. Yeah. One thing that wasn't clear to me is why she can't just go back in. Because the whole point of that exit door was they go back in. They don't keep it locked.

[01:23:52] They might be locked from the outside, right? Or no, that's right. They do go back in. Because we saw in episode one. But maybe the idea... Maybe they keep it locked except when they're doing this test or something. Right. In any case. Okay. Let's... I think that was the obvious thing for Mark S to do. He sees Helly. Like, I think he thinks if I walk out of here, that's it. I'm done. I'm dead. Yeah. There's no happy ending in the sense that we'll live our lives together. We can spend another... If it's just another half an hour together running through the...

[01:24:22] The world might end. Yeah. It's very much like... The world is going to end anyway. Why would I end it not with her? Since they love each other. But then there's a lot of people thinking it's irrational. It's stupid. What's he doing? And I just don't even understand the reasoning behind that. Right. Like, what were you feeling about what he should do in that moment? It was... I sent you guys this. Somebody juxtaposed a picture of them running off with a picture from The Graduate where this,

[01:24:48] you know, Dustin Hoffman disrupts the wedding and he runs away with the bride. And they're both crazy in love against everybody in the world is fighting against them. Yeah. And I think that's what they were trying to evoke. This was the case for Crazy Wild Love. Yeah. And so how could you not be in favor of that? Somebody pointed out that they switched to 16mm right then at the end for that shot, which I would have thought it was just, you know, something. And they have Meltorman music playing during it too.

[01:25:15] And like, it's very 60s kind of like aesthetic, the whole episode, I think. And I love the ending on the freeze frame. I just love that aesthetic. Yeah, that's Butch and Sundance ends on a freeze frame. A lot of the movies from this period, Wild Bunch ends like that. Okay. So here's... I don't disagree, Tamler, with what you were saying, but I think that you know how much Audi Mark has been in pain about this. He's singularly been focused on this.

[01:25:41] And so it's not that I think Mark S., any Mark, should have gone out. I totally get that both why he wouldn't and maybe why he shouldn't. In fact, if he survives, he'll be out there with her soon enough. Right? I mean, and she'll just be like sad that who was that bitch that you were running off with. Audi Mark will have some explaining to do. Yeah, exactly. But in that moment, there is no good answer to this.

[01:26:07] And in some of the ways in which for Dylan, there's no right... There's no... You know, you were saying like, what is he going to do? Is he going to let him see his wife during visitations? Like there is no answer that could possibly make everybody happy. And I just felt for the fact that he genuinely is thwarting the happiness of this other character that we also care about, Mark, Audi Mark. And so if I found it hard to be like, woohoo, you're doing it. Yeah, go.

[01:26:37] Because I know what's at stake. Yeah. I found it easier because of what we were talking about. Audi Mark seems like a bit of an asshole. Certainly a lot of very self-absorbed. It's called grief, Tamler. Yeah, it's been a few years. You were similarly indifferent when any Mark got raped. Get over it, Mark. No, but then... And also he's weak. You know, he refuses to confront his grief. You know, like he created this whole thing.

[01:27:05] And so like, I don't think any Mark owes him like a sacrifice of his remaining time with Heli. Especially since, yeah, it's going to suck for Gemma for a bit. But like you said, however this happens, unless he gets killed, which is definitely possible since... Although it seems like they killed the one enforcer or security officer that works for the entire corporation. So... He'll deputize that if he can march again to go do it.

[01:27:33] Yeah, I just think like, I don't see any inclination that he should go out. No, it's tragic. It's just tragic. Yeah, I guess it's tragic. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if he died. You know, I don't think he'll die because there's more seasons. But if that's the choice that he's making, he... In some ways, that's the outcome of this selfish Audi Mark. Not doing what Dylan did and saying like, you got this, whatever you need to do. He...

[01:28:01] I think that might have even pushed any Mark to be more likely to run off with Heli. Yeah. And not consider the circumstance. But you're talking about strategy. And I think that that's right. I think that that strategy might have worked better on any Mark. But you can't blame Audi Mark for just... No. I want to get back together with this woman who's... Who the fuck are you? Yeah. And some weird work replacement robot half-human thing is getting in my way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's like Tamra was saying.

[01:28:30] Like, that's the upshot of what he... The decisions that he's made. Yeah. And Audi Mark also knows what they're doing now also, which is creating these little torture consciousnesses to undergo every like annoying or painful thing. Wait, does he know that? Don't we get the sense that Cobalt told him what the deal was with... Something was explained to him. Yeah. Yeah. But did she say that like they're like undergoing... She's undergoing pain? She must have told him about... Well, no.

[01:28:59] I guess she wouldn't have had to tell him about the crib and all that because it wouldn't be him. Strictly speaking, Gemma isn't undergoing pain. Yeah. But you're creating 24 creatures to feel pain. Whereas you might have only had one. Yeah. Nikki was saying we're going to discover that Keir is just like Jeremy Bentham. That he was in order to minimize the hedonic negatives. But that only works if you don't attribute suffering to the innies. Yeah. It only works as a joke.

[01:29:28] Tell Nikki, well, actually, that doesn't work because the utilitarian calculus... The sad thing is I probably did say something like that. I can mansplain it to her later. But I don't know. Like, I guess I think it is tragic. It's doomed. It's like the end of like a post-apocalyptic movie or something where the world's about to end. So let's be together and go out, you know, with a bang.

[01:29:57] And that's what I think they're doing. I also think Gemma is brokenhearted. She's not just angry. She's brokenhearted. She's brokenhearted. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just at the beginning where she's like... That's fine. Who is this white bitch? Yeah, exactly. You like white girls now? Totally. You lied to me. Yeah. I mean, there's going to be a season three. So we know it's just this plot armor. They're going to live. Yeah. And stuff's going to happen. Right. But within a character's knowledge, they're surely doomed.

[01:30:25] I mean, they're in ease running through a building where they're entirely dependent on other people to live. They don't have food. Yeah. If they live. Right. And certainly... That vending machine is fucked up now. They can't even get snacks. That's right. Thanks, Dylan. Good job. Somebody pointed out that the way... Remember in the claymation when they're putting in these new stack machines and they showed the claymation, Dylan being all excited, and real Dylan is like, what the fuck?

[01:30:54] And so his use of the vending machine, his fucking up the vending machine is sort of... That's tragic in its own. That's his thwarted love story. His trolley. His trolley. Well, let's talk about next season and what you think will happen. Let me lead it off by... So I texted you guys this theory that occurred to me, which is that the real Cold Harbor test

[01:31:15] is not can a new blank Gemma consciousness construct a crib and not have her memories of the trauma of doing that, which I guess they did or Mark did in an earlier episode in that episode seven. Yeah. The crib was actually named Cold Harbor. If you free-framed in on it. Right. So, like, but what if that wasn't the real test? The real test was exactly what happens at the end.

[01:31:42] Could Mark, any Mark, see his wife, his dearly loved wife, at least his Audi version, seems to have loved her desperately and is grieving and has been grieving for the last two years. If he runs away with Helly, then that means he has no connection to his Audi Mark at that point. And so the test of whether the barriers will hold, that's the greatest test of all.

[01:32:08] Because not only when he sees Gemma, I mean, he's been seeing Gemma this whole time as Miss Casey, but when he sees Gemma out there, he actually knows that's his wife. Yeah. And still goes off with Helly. That's a big barrier that's holding there. And now, if that was the real test that everybody was conceiving of, that doesn't work. On rewatch, like you said, Paul, Jamie Egan, he's furious that this is happening.

[01:32:38] He even says fuck, which I doubt he curses too much. But I do think maybe I had a thought. This is how they'll try to spin it. They'll say, congratulations, you passed the test. That would be a way to keep the kind of Innie experience and even another project restarted is by pretending that this was all something that they planned and it worked out perfectly. It showed that you're making progress or something like that.

[01:33:07] Yeah, just like they did with the Innie rebellion and turned that into propaganda. So season three will begin with them in Milchick's office, having more newspapers. Yeah. Yeah, right. Okay. So at first, my initial reaction was, yeah, it doesn't seem plausible for the reasons you just said in terms of everybody being in on it. My thought is, because I really like that, even if it wasn't planned in practice, that's what it showed us. Yeah, exactly.

[01:33:32] And so my thought was, if Cobell had any agency in the events, because Cobell was putting Innie Mark and Miss Casey together regularly. Yes. In order to see this, like she was using them as guinea pigs to see if there's any bleed. And you could just tell she was fascinated either scientifically or whatever that like it's working. Like they're not, they don't know anything. Right. And that's why she was so shocked to find out that he knew whatever.

[01:33:56] So in Cobell's mind, she's still, if we're to believe that she's a scientist who created this technology, I think she'd still be curious as to what's going to happen when Mark is confronted with this. So she's kind of looking on with a little bit of delight that she gets to not only burn Lumen to the ground, in the process of doing that, she gets to see what Innie Mark is really going to do. Like, is it, is her chip going to hold? And so she might get some satisfaction. And it's her chip. It's her chip. Yeah.

[01:34:26] So, and maybe since she, presumably she had to have like designed the prison break, maybe she designed it to give them that moment at the door at the end, because that is the final test of her, of her chip. And yeah, in that sense, none of the other people would have to be in on it. Yeah. They're just wrong. Like they're less sophisticated than her. She knows what the real test was. Right. Yeah. I guess I don't find it tremendously expensive. Will the chip hold?

[01:34:53] Because for all two seasons, there's been no doubt that there's no connection with Innie Mark and Outie Mark. There's not the slightest hint that, that, that Innie Mark gets Outie Mark's information bleeding in. No, but they get like, we're given hints over and over again that the pain, that Outie Mark's pain will creep into Innie Mark. Really? Yeah. We're told like PD says at some point, like you might not know it, but like the pain that your, your Outie's experiencing will make its way in. And he has a sadness.

[01:35:22] He just doesn't know what the sadness is. I have an Innie Outie problem where my, my, my Innie forgets all about PD. Right. Yeah. But also Innie Mark has never had a test like this. He's never had a test as severe as Popper would put it. But as you guys pointed out, he saw his wife all the time. Yeah. But not knowing, oh, that's my wife. Yeah. Okay. I mean, but yeah, I think that was also a test. You know, this may be the next stage of that test. Yeah. Those tests were P-hacked. This one was the real.

[01:35:51] This was pre-registered. This one was 0.001. Not just 0.04. Do you please know if as they were finishing off season two, they had an eye towards season three? Because my understanding is it just got, got greenlit very recently. I do think they knew that it was a good possibility because they got a good budget. I think they were working. They were writing it. Yeah. Season three. They've been writing season three. But I don't think it got officially greenlit until after they were done.

[01:36:20] But I was saying that, you know, if it ended, like I am glad it's not ending. It would have been okay if they ended as it was. Yeah. It would have been a tragic ending. Bonnie and Clyde. It's a Mark S. and Haley R. love story. And a lot of these love stories end with them going out in a blaze of glory. Yeah. We would have been left with some unanswered questions. But the unanswered questions, they would have bothered the mystery box people. A lot. A lot. I'm just worried because I could see this ending right as it is. It's actually a beautiful ending.

[01:36:50] And I'm worried that they wrote themselves into a corner. And right now there's like writers like, what the fuck are we going to do now? It's always a concern. I think they say they have. Unlike the Breaking Bad writers that would purposely paint themselves into a corner and have no idea what they were going to do. I think Dan Erickson has an idea, though I'm not sure. Okay. So somebody tweeted that that switch to 16 millimeter film at the end with the Haley R. And Mark S. Hand in hand.

[01:37:20] That the scene, the flashback scenes that were the love story of Mark and Gemma on the outside were shot in 16 millimeter. And that what this is doing is it's like, it's pointing out that this was the true love story. Like this ending, that was a true love story. And somebody tweeted that and Ben Stiller replied, DM me. Wow. Oh. I know. He should ask. That's what I've been saying this whole time. Why don't I get to DM Ben Stiller?

[01:37:50] Oh man. Everybody's fantasy. I do think that that is a kind of a, if not a clear, at least a plausible reading of this episode especially is to make that very clear that this is about Mark and Haley. And that's why the Audi Mark really does feel like he's on the outside of this whole episode. Like, like a child just yelling and protesting and like, well, what do you mean? What do you mean you're not going to do it? You know?

[01:38:18] So there was a scene where Mark and Haley are in a very romantic scene where he's finishing off Cold Harbor, where they're talking about what would happen to them. And she says like, I'm her. Yeah. Referring to Helena. Yeah. Did you guys get what that meant? Okay. Okay. So I heard some people speculating that this is either actually Helena in that moment, which I don't, I don't buy, or that somehow there's an official reintegration process that she's privy to. I think what she meant was more along the lines that we didn't really talk about the

[01:38:48] scene where the father, where Jane comes in and we, we mentioned it, but where he says like, I see the spirit of the fire of Kier in you. And that's when she has this realization that she actually just probably is Helena. She has to come to terms with it. And I think she's sparing Mark's feelings a little bit. But I think she's saying like, I know this, this thing is doomed. So in fact, I think she would have let him go to Gemma without protest. Yeah. That's my reading of it. That's what she's saying.

[01:39:17] She's saying basically Ms. Cobell is right. Like we are fucked. Like there's no saving us. So you should go and save this, you know, innocent woman. And it's only when she says, I just wish we'd had more time that I think she kind of pulls back a little bit from that. But I think what she's doing is the very generous thing of giving Mark permission, Mark, any Mark to go and rescue Gemma with that line. That makes sense. Yeah.

[01:39:46] And in the final scene, she doesn't run after Mark. She sort of stands back. Yeah. And lets him choose. Yeah. Yeah. Another, another sort of way she's respecting him as an autonomous person. Whereas Gemma is like, get out here, you. Right now I'm going to count to three. You know, I lived at the dentist for two years. Yeah. For you to do this.

[01:40:14] This is maybe taking a step back, but like, I don't even know that I have a fully formulated thought, but I find this show so interesting in, in as much as it's illustrating something just about our relationship to ourselves in a meaningful way. Like we are, we have to treat our future self and our, even our current self, our past self as an entity with interests. And sometimes we respect, we respect it. And sometimes we don't. Sometimes we make decisions that are really shitty to our future selves.

[01:40:42] And I just love how this device, this sci-fi device allows for an explicit conversation about this. And also about like the different parts of ourself that we're willing to face and accept and confront versus the parts that we just want to repress or hide away or avoid. And like, I do think one of the messages of the show is to integrate in like, in a little

[01:41:08] bit of like the Jungian sense of like, you know, the shadow self and the, uh, the ego, like kind of merging successfully, like that's the thing that is going to make us whole is to not try to push our suffering away, but to just accept it as part of this larger integrated whole. And, you know, we certainly do that, not just to our future self who I treat like absolute shit, um, my future self, but like to our current selves, just different parts of us, you know, that we push away.

[01:41:37] So like, it's another great metaphor for that. So I think that's what we wanted from the show is just a lot of interesting things like this to think about. And it delivered it at the end with some meandering along the way, some fucking around. Still remains the most philosophically sophisticated show ever. And most in a good sense, not just sort of, you know, just really engages you. Yeah. Um, in the podcast I listened to Ben Stiller jokes, you know, so I hope you enjoy season three. We should be coming out in 2047. Yeah.

[01:42:07] Yeah. It's bad. It's unfortunate. They haven't started even pre-production on it. I don't think they're still cracking it out, but hopefully, yeah, we said last time, you know, how the quality of the finale would probably determine whether we would do this again for season three. I think I'm fully on back on board for doing another one of these. They got me. Same. They got me. And in between there's Ted Lasso. Fuck you. Fuck you. You're out. I'm going to get my own podcast.

[01:42:34] Get Yoel on the phone. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, with that, we'll have like animated end credits sequence, Saul Bass style for our podcast as well. Um, we really enjoyed doing this. If you want to listen to us talk about the other episodes this season, become a Patreon

[01:43:03] supporter and you will get access to all of those or a, uh, small potatoes sub stack, uh, supporter for Paul. Uh, it's available both places and for, uh, since this is supposed to be technically a bonus series, we're just going to have a little like, what is, what does Robert Wright call, call it? Like after time, like overtime, overtime, overtime. Yeah. Overtime contingency. Yeah. All right. Thanks for joining us, Paul, as always. Our favorite guest.

[01:43:34] Yeah. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me. This is great. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards. I'm waiting.

[01:44:21] Just a very bad wizard. Thank you. Thank you.