A woman wakes up on a table in a locked room to a disembodied voice asking her to answer a “brief survey”. Disoriented, she questions the voice and tries desperately to escape the room as the voice continues to demand she answers the survey. Eventually, she relents. The woman is subjected to some basic questions for things like her name and place of birth- and to her horror, she realizes she doesn’t remember anything about herself. The source of the voice steps into the room, and tells the woman she got a perfect score.
Cue title card.
It’s earlier that morning, and the source of the voice is sobbing in his car. His name is revealed to be Mark Scout, and he’s an employee at the Lumon Corporation. He clocks in, greets the security guard, and descends to the “severed floor” on the lowest level of the building. As soon as he starts work, his sadness seems to disappear.
Mark’s day at the office has barely begun when he’s called to the office of his boss, Ms. Cobel. Cobel shocks Mark by telling him his supervisor Petey has stepped down. Mark will be promoted to Petey’s position, and oversee the process of initiating his own replacement with Irving. Said process is the survey at the beginning of the episode, now seen from Mark’s perspective.
Immediately after the survey, Helly demands to leave. Unexpectedly, Mark says this is fine and points her towards the door. Helly walks out… and instead of stepping outside, she somehow ends up right back in the office. She asks Mark if she’s in Hell, which he denies.
Helly is brought to Cobel’s office to watch a video. It turns out to be made by Helly herself saying she’s voluntarily undergoing the process of Severance. Employees who undergo the process of “Severance” have their memories split so they remember nothing of their time at work, and vice versa. From a severed worker’s perspective, they clock in at 9 and clock out at 5 feeling as though no time has passed at all. However, as long as they’re at Lumon they can remember nothing from their personal lives. This effectively makes them two identities sharing a body. The change is irreversible. Mark tries to comfort a devastated Helly by telling her “every time you find yourself here, it’s because you chose to come back”.
Mark attends a food-free dinner party with his pregnant sister and brother-in-law, which becomes awkward when Mark’s severance is brought up. While spending the night at his sister’s, he spots a disheveled man in a suit staring at him through the window before disappearing. While he’s getting dinner alone, Mark has a frustrating conversation about recycling bins with his elderly neighbor Ms. Selvig. Suddenly, the mysterious man from last night sits at his table and tells him to hang up. The man tells Mark that he’s Petey, Mark’s best friend from work, and he’s somehow managed to reverse his severance procedure and is now on the run from Lumon. Petey gives Mark an address on a piece of paper, tells him to trust no one, and leaves.
Mark arrives home and greets Ms. Selvig, who turns out to be Ms. Cobel herself. Roll credits.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Alien Geometries:
- Lumon's severed floor apparently consists of bright white, unending hallways, and offices that are too big for their purposes.
- Played With when Helly tries to leave the floor. Every time she opens the door to outside, she instead ends up going back inside. It's just because, once she crosses the threshold, her Outie regains control, turns around, and goes back.
- Bathos: Petey's cryptic letter to Mark is written in a "Happy Birthday Niece!" greetings card.
- Business of Generic Importance: Ricken's guests discuss what does Lumon exactly do. Apparently, they started in the 1800s with topical salves, and later branched out to include medicine and technology at least.
- Cringe Comedy: The entire "foodless dinner" scene, mostly thanks to Ricken's unsufferable guests.
- Deadpan Snarker: Outie Mark is one, a trait he shares with his sister Devon.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Initiation to the Severed floor evokes a new innie being "born" into the workplace. Helly wakes up lying down as if spat out into the world by Lumon itself, and she spends her first moments in a compact chamber banging her fists on the walls and doors. The only other thing in the room is an intercom, the only cord to the outside world she has at the moment.
- Eating Lunch Alone: Lumon gives Mark a gift card for one for a local steakhouse in compensation for his workplace injury. This translates in Mark having dinner on his own, in the steakhouse's "VIP area" (really the end table cordoned off by a simple sign).
- Innocently Insensitive: Ricken casually drops the news that Mark is severed, a matter that he would have preferred to keep for himself. He then later affirms that despite severance being a controversial procedure morally, ethically, legally, socially... he still supports Mark.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Ricken's friends, and especially Mark's main interlocutor Patton.
- Occam's Razor: Patton, one of Ricken's pretentious friends, tries to argue that World War One was known as "the Great War" at the time because calling it "one" would be insensitive. Mark, a former history professor, replies that they didn't call it "one" just because World War II hadn't happened yet.
- Once More, with Clarity: The events of the teaser are later revealed to be the orienteering process for newly severed Lumon employees, and the voice on the other side of the speaker is Mark.
- The Oner: The shot of Innie Mark walking through the corridors of Lumon's severed floor to reach his office is done in one single, long take.
- Vertigo Effect: A subtle one when Mark uses the elevator to get to and leave his workplace, marking the transition between his Innie and his Outie.
- Wham Shot: Ms. Cobel and Mrs. Selvig are the same person.
- You Wake Up in a Room: Helly wakes up lying on top of a conference room table with no memories and only an intercom to guide her. Dialogue from Mark implies that this is standard procedure for all newly severed employees (apparently, Lumon finds this more appropriate than letting them sit in a chair or lying in a bed, for whatever reason).
