For the sake of clarity in this recap, let’s go chronologically, starting with Mark and Gemma’s evolution from flirting on the college campus where they taught to gifting ant farms to setting up a home together. We know it’s short-lived domestic bliss, but Scott and Lachman give it their all to make Mark and Gemma’s bond feel lived-in with sweet, sexy vibes. Of course, the disorientingly colorful and sunny flashback montage—in stark contrast to Severance’s usual dreariness—aids this endeavor. As Jacques Brels’ “La Valse À Mille Temps” plays, they plant flowers, fill up bookshelves, hang out in the backyard, and buy a crib before she’s even expecting. Oh, yeah, Mark and Gemma very much want to be parents. But it’s harder than they anticipated. Mark had alluded to this in season one while on a date with Alexa (Nikki M. James), and we now see the severity of the situation.
Once Gemma gets pregnant, as revealed in a sweet scene of them having dinner with Devon (Jen Tullock) and Ricken (Michael Chernus), she sadly miscarries. The two don’t lose hope though, opting for IVF in a facility that, unfortunately, spells out their doom. It’s likely a Lumon-run clinic where the creepy Dr. Mauer also works (We see him walk past them very briefly in a hallway). I’m guessing he deduced that Gemma is somehow the right specimen for the Kier-worshipping villains to take advantage of, even if we don’t know the nitty-gritty of why she was chosen or how long Lumon was after her. Does it somehow make her an easy target that she’s despondent over not being a mother and that, with the IVF not taking, the atmosphere at home is sullen?
There is a pointed itchiness to Mark and Gemma’s interactions after multiple tries. It’s the kind that settles in when you live with a partner but aren’t on the same wavelength so you’re walking on eggshells around each other. This creeping distance dampens their last night together, even if they don’t know it’s their last night yet. Gemma heads out to meet friends while Mark stays home. He doesn’t even reply to her “I love you” till she repeats it. That’s a hard pill to swallow in retrospect when officers are at his doorstep hours later to tell him his wife has died in a car crash. Severance finally reveals the moment Mark internally switched off. No wonder he chose to officially go through with the severance procedure. With Lumon pulling the strings, his innie lands up in the same building where his wife is being kept, a mere few floors below MDR. Tragic feels like understatement.
The crux of what Gemma goes through as Lumon’s captive reflects the show’s big mystery: Can the implanted chip erase feelings or trigger points permanently and how evil will they get to achieve this? It seems that’s what Lumon wants to determine through Mark and Gemma. She is a guinea pig (perhaps one of many) to take this theory to the next level because she’s split into multiple innies, none of whom remember each other. Crucially, Dr. Mauer wants to know if Gemma carries the sensation of what’s being done to her outside of the rooms? Can her tempers be balanced in any of these situations? “Did you feel any despair, fervor, gaiety?” he asks her. Each time Gemma enters doors with different (and familiar to us!) project names, a new innie springs to life and suffers some form of torture: In one room, she’s going through dental treatment. In another named Allentown, for which Mark won the crystal head in season one, she’s a housewife whose only job is to continually write thank-you notes, even if her fingers might fall off. (A flashback scene specifically states that Gemma hates writing thank-you notes).
There’s also a room in which she goes through near-death experiences in a simulated flight crash. (Regular readers know how I feel about the show’s Lost nods, right? This only furthers my love for it.) To put it into a dark perspective, each of her innies has only known that life. Imagine a nameless existence that thrusts you directly into a dentist’s chair or living out Christmas morning constantly, with Dr. Mauer pretending to be your husband. (Even his “I love you” mirrors the way Gemma said it to Mark on that fateful night). The realization, time and again, that time itself has no concept for all innies is never easy to digest.
Despite going through these horrors, Gemma’s fighting spirit doesn’t completely evaporate. She carries resentment and fear, loathing Dr. Mauer for what he’s doing. I’m curious about how much Gemma knows about why she’s been kidnapped and the purpose (?) she’s serving. But those are questions for later. For now, she wants to escape. When Mauer is in her cramped living quarters one evening, she bashes his head with a chair, steals his badge, and runs the hell out. We’re used to seeing Lumon hallways flooded with fluorescent white lights, but on the testing floor, it’s all dark as Gemma slithers and runs to avoid detection in a scene straight out of an action-thriller. She almost escapes, too, going up to the severed floor where Ms. Casey dings to life. Gosh, I thought, imagine if Mark S. and Helly R. are just outside in the hallway right now? Instead, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) finds her in the dimly lit corridor and sends her straight back to her homebase—but not before she tries to ask him, “Where’s…?” She was going to ask for Mark S., right?
I’m choosing to believe Ms. Casey was going to ask for him because love does transcend severance. It’s made clear with Burt/Irving already. As Ms. Casey, Gemma found comfort in spending time with her husband’s innie. He’s the first person she thinks of in this moment, too. Gemma is torn between worlds—or, as the episode title suggests, between stages of life and death. Chikhai Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist term for the transitional phase of the rebirth cycle. In a flashback scene, Gemma gets on the mailing list of that damn fertility clinic and receives a pictorial test from Lumon. It’s the type of idiographic card Dylan stole from O&D in season one, in which a man is battling his duplicate. Gemma describes the concept to Mark as “the same guy fighting himself defeating his own psyche—ego death,” a foreshadowing of both of their loss of identity. With Mark’s outie barely surviving reintegration and Gemma under constant torture, they’re both on the brink of ruin. Can their consciousness be saved? Will they save each other? What about Helly/Helena?
There are still overarching WTF questions about everything because this episode expands on Severance‘s lore and what the chip is capable of doing. But it’s clearer than ever that Severance wants to put all of its protagonists through the wringer about their senses of self. (As if “Who are you?”—Mark poses the same question to Gemma during their meet-cute—wasn’t enough of an indication.) At long last, Severance also gives Lachman the spotlight. The actor secures her Emmy spot with a visceral, moving performance. Lachman’s expressive eyes are a window to her character’s soul here. It’s not a shocker that Gagné ends the episode with the camera lingering on Gemma’s twinkling eyes—one of many, many unforgettable shots in her directorial debut. What a final note to wrap up on to ensure we’ll think about “Chikhai Bardo” long after the credits roll.
Stray observations
- • Sorry to be shallow but it was nice to have Adam Scott sporting his usual hair and looking hot instead of the floppy style he has as a grieving Mark. A coworker called it “emo hair” last week, and she’s right.
- • The two Tolstoy novellas Russian professor Gemma says she’s teaching in class are The Death Of Ivan Ilych (about the themes of religious conversion and pondering illness/death) and Hadji Murat (about a commander who joins forces with those he has been fighting to seek revenge). The writing is on the wall, people.
- • The gut-punch edit of “Chikhai Bardo” is when we cut from the scene of Mark comforting Gemma in the shower after the miscarriage to Mark S. turning around to see Ms. Casey standing behind his desk at MDR in a moment from season one. A close second is the split screen of Mark, in the past, looking at the police car outside of his house in disbelief, and Gemma, in the present, crumpled to the ground after returning to the testing floor.
- • When Gemma says she wants to go home to Mark, Dr. Mauer hits her where it hurts hardest by lying that he’s moved on and has a child with another woman.
- • Dr. Mauer: “Mark will benefit from the world you’re siring. Kier will take away his pain as he has taken away yours.”
Gemma: “Can you please talk like a normal person?”
- • Here are some of the rooms Gemma passes on the Exports floor that MDR has been “refining” as projects: Allentown, Cairns, Dranesville, Sienna, Loveland, Tumwater, and, of course, Cold Harbor.
- • A part of this episode is also about Devon and Reghabi disputing how to deal with Mark’s reintegration crisis. Devon decides to call Cobel for help. It’s a choice Reghabi cannot stand by, so she straight-up abandons her seriously sick patient and runs out of there. Damn, girl, what the hell? She also drops a casual “Cobel was raised by Lumon” tidbit.
- • Dr. Mauer and Drummond stand in a room with four refiners who look eerily like the MDR core four. Are they simply observing or even refining Mark S. and possibly Dylan G.? My head hurts thinking about the types of severed floors Lumon has built underground. Also revealed here: Mark S. is 96-percent done with Cold Harbor.
- • So, if you were caught in a mudslide, would you be more afraid of suffocating or drowning?
