- "OK, kids. Let's find out what's for dinner."— Irving
We open on outie!Irving reading outside what appears to be his home. He enters his house and begins painting with black paint while drinking coffee and listening to rock music. He soon covers his whole canvas.
Cue theme song.
The Lumon team begins work, Helly works feverishly, insisting that she’ll “get there” despite Mark’s worries. The rest of the team has been finished with their shares of the work for a week, with Helly the last one still refining. Milchick and Cobel watch on the security cameras, also concerned. Cobel wants to schedule another wellness session for Mark, which Milchick expresses trepidation at. Helly finally hits quota, triggering an animated message of Kier Eagan expressing his pride. Irving looks at Mark and says “so it’s on now?”.
Cut to Mark laughing with Ms. Cobel in her office about the close call with the quarter quota. Cobel asks who should get the “waffle party”, and Mark suggests Dylan. Cobel tells Mark to drop by the wellness center. At the wellness center, Mark notices how bare the room is and Casey informs him she’ll be retiring. Mark offers to talk to somebody so she doesn’t have to leave. Grateful, Casey tells Mark that she enjoyed spending time with MDR. She’s a part-time severed worker- her time as an innie has only been 107 hours long, she says, and most of that time was in half-hour wellness sessions. The hours she spent with Mark’s department were the most valuable of her short life. “Why do you care what happens to me?” Casey asks. Cobel watches rapturously over security cameras as Mark answers: “Because we’re people, not parts of people… no one gets to just turn you off”. Cobel cuts the feed. Milchick says it’s good that Mark and Gemma/Casey don’t remember each other, as it means the chips work. Cobel seems unconvinced, and asks Milchick to take Casey down to “the testing floor”. He complies, and Casey is taken to a dark hallway with an elevator that seems to go down, to an even deeper level of Lumon.
Milchick comes to MDR to reward Dylan. He brings an egg bar and a gift that the audience doesn’t see. The MDR gang has a Lumon-approved egg party, where Helly offers to stay instead of Dylan. Dylan tells her he’s ok with staying back, because this is only the first step. Irving reads from the Lumon handbook and scoffs.
Cobel goes back to her office and finds Natalie waiting for her with pictures of Helly’s attempted suicide. She wants to know why the board wasn’t informed. Natalie implies that Cobel’s second life as Ms. Selvig isn’t Lumon-approved, and tells Cobel that she’s fired.
Back at MDR, Helly and Mark are talking about their plans when Milchick bursts in and announces the party is over and he needs to go, because a “management issue” has come up. The pressing business that he needs to leave for is escorting Cobel out of the building. Cobel leaves through the stairwell exit.The MDR crew goes over the plan again: Dylan has to stay late to attend his waffle party, so he’ll slip out and activate OTC while the other three are outside of Lumon. Mark quotes from The You You Are, and off they go. Before getting on the elevator, Helly pulls Mark into a passionate kiss. “In case we don’t come back” she says, “or, I don’t know, in case we do?”.
We finally see what a “waffle party” entails: Dylan eats a big plate of waffles,and washes it down with a glass of milk. And then he puts on an eerie mask of Kier Eagan. And then 4 scantily clad dancers dressed as the 4 tempers come out. Dylan manages to escape while all they’re dancing.
Cobel has a full-on Villainous Breakdown while driving home, ranting to herself about Natalie. She goes home and smashes up her Kier shrine. She gets a ring at her door, and Mark is there- he wants to know if she wants to come to Devon and Ricken’s party. Cobel hesitantly agrees. At the party, Mark reveals that he’s been thinking of quitting Lumon. Cobel tearfully tells him to get away from them.
Outtie!Irving comes home to his dog, puts some coffee on, and gets to work painting. It’s revealed that he’s somehow painting the elevator to the testing floor.
Dylan makes it to the control room and sets down his gift. It’s revealed to be a holographic glass cube of the MDR team. He struggles to reach both switches at once, but finally… he wakes up the innies.
Tropes found in this episode include:
- Art Imitates Art: Rare in-universe example: the waffle party dancers seem to be mimicking “Kier Taming the Four Tempers”, a Lumon propaganda painting.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Irving saying "Let's find out what's for dinner." sounds very badass in this context.
- Retraux: The congratulations method from featuring Kier is rendered with low-fi pixel art, like something from a 90s PC game.
- Surreal Horror: The “waffle party” is creepy to say the least.
