division
For the first time since I wrote divisionI have to say that I have mixed feelings. Season 2, episode 8 (which has the special title ‘Sweet Vitriol’) is a strange episode of bottles, hot to the heel of last week’s episode of bottles. Two bottles in a row is a difficult sale even in the best show, and getting this much time away from the main story is a strange creative choice. Spoilers ahead.
This was not a bad episode, in any way. But the big discovery at the end lets me feel. . . Unresolved, and not in a good way. Not in a “ooh, cool twist” way. In my spoiler review of the second season, I wrote:
If I had to summarize it in a phrase, that would be: Season 2 is not so hard worked. This is most noticeable in the second half, when a couple of episodes felt a small bottle, disrupting the season’s pace as a whole. I’m not sure if this would play better week for weeks instead of a bang (I looked at all ten scanners over three or four days), but I admit that I was thrown a little of the decision to place two episodes that felt too much abroad with the rest of the season, grinding his moment in a stop.
I can feel different in a second hour. At least one of these episodes ends with a great discovery that I was not particularly loving-a choice that felt somewhat after the fact, used to expand the story of a character in a way that I really didn’t see credible, which was probably missing the narrative problem of the first season, or I felt a little treated. The other bottle episode gave us a lot of backstage, but never revealed the most important details that Backsory was exploring. The two let me feel unhappy.
First, I feel different in the second hour. I liked the episode of last week Gemma (Dichen Lachman) for the second time, and I think this is because I looked at both of these back-back episodes first, and it was strange to have two episodes completely detached from Mark’s main story (Adam Scott) and the rest of MDR Crew in a line. I still think it’s a little strange in terms of season structuring, but my second glance at last week’s episode hit me in feelings more than the first time around. My second gaze of today’s episode made me appreciate the dreamed nature of the Harmony Cobel visit (patricia arquette) in her hometown of Salt’s neck.
Side Note: I’m not sure where it is supposed to be in fiction, but I immediately thought “this looks like Newfoundland” and in my second glance I thought, “This looks like the Bonavista of Newfoundland” and is apparently where it is filmed. I visited Newfoundland and spent some time in Bonavista in 2019 and is truly a fascinating, beautiful place of the other world. There were no glaciers sailing when I visited, but it was in October than the dead of winter.
In any case, I find Odyssey of the convincing harmony. Returning to a city of Lumon’s company that was once flourishing thanks to Mill Lumon Ether Mill, just to find it dying, its “older” and “weaker” people as Cobel says, reveals much about Lumon’s past. The city is sick. Many of its inhabitants are dependent on the ether now. Almost everyone is deeply anti-linguist. Only one remains loyal to Lumoni: Aunt of Harmony, Sissy, who lives only in a rocky peninsula outside the city. We learn that it “still lives from nine” which makes it a community party.
We also learn that Mrs. Huang (Sarah Bock) is not the only child employed by Lumon. When harmony stops from a cafe to talk to an old friend, Hampton (James Le Gos) we learn that the two once worked at the Eter Mill as a child. Child labor is much one of Lumoni’s secret practices. There is another connection with Mrs. Huang here: when Cobel was young, she was also a Wintertide friend. Earlier during the season, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) tells Mrs. Huang, “you can’t graduate from this society until you consider you Wintertide materials.” It seems that Lumon Rinia is considered to have great potential to be offered a special path with this Wintertide society, though its details and the rest of the child labor force remain unclear.
Cobel returns to her childhood home with the help of Hampton, a man who now makes the local addicts who hides her in the back of his truck if there are people who look at the house. This sounds paranoid, but we learn that Mr. Drummond (ólafur Darri ólafsson) has called Sissy, and at the end of the episode a vehicle approaches as Cobel speeds. Hampton stands behind as apparently to keep them away. “Tame these tempters,” he says severely as the headlights approach.
We learn some things in Kobel’s childhood home. First, her mother died after a long illness once she was taken from her car for life support. Cobel blames Sissy for this, telling her she would take care of her mother if she had not been away from school. “I don’t even say goodbye,” she tells Sissy, a mixture of grief and rage that fights inside it. Or perhaps a more appropriate phrase: miserable and malice.
We also learn that Cobel was deemed worthy of Fellowship Wintertide after proving how diligent she was as a “student” in the factory. Her schooling was “more important” than being able to see her dying mother, at least according to Sissy, who is the most fanatical Akolite of Lumon we have seen outside Eagans at this point. It was Sissy who formed the harmony in what it was finally done; Her mother was anti-playing through and through.
But the biggest and deepest and most variable discovery of history comes to an end when we learn that it was really Harmony Cobel who invented the detachment procedure. And overtime continent. And the Glasgow block. All this was her invention, her idea, her work and Jam Eagan (Michael Siberry) received the loan. Not only did he get the loan, Lumon forced Cobel to remain silent about him or face expulsion. Sissy tries to burn the letters with Cobel’s models, but she grabs them back in time.
Here I am deeply separated – separate, if you want – in this turn. On the one hand, it is a delightful turn. Jame Eagan is a scam. The division was not cooked by the Eagans of everyone, everyone, everyone, but by one of their luxuries. On the other hand, an annoying doubt has entered my brain. This means that Cobel is not just a ruthless middle manager and a devout lumon (now lost). She is also a great scientist! That is. . . strange.
For one thing, I liked Cobel’s role as it was. I don’t know that I really like to learn that she is really a great scientist who came up with all this. There is an aspect of “chosen one” for this change that bothers me. Cobel as a fanatic soldier Lumon and MDR’s strange manager of MDR (as well as her strange person of Mrs. Selvig) was quite perfect. It makes sense that, after being reprimanded and expelled from Lumo, it would have a crisis of faith and light the company with which it was once dedicated to it, and we really didn’t need this background to embody it. Now Cobel is a completely different character with a much more vital, basic part in showing the procedure of separation and its implications.
That’s just a lot to swallow, but there is a part of me who continues to think this was a change made as season 1 was already out. That was something not in history from day to day, but it was resolved as a twist for season 2. It just doesn’t fit so much organically in history as everything else, and it bothers me. It worries me because even though I know that there is always an element of “doing it while it goes” when it comes to television shows, I don’t want it to leave the rails like many others before him, and this moment feels a little away from the rails for me.
I also preferred detachment as something of a mystical technology. Did not need an inventor or an explanation.
After all, Cobel receives the call from Devon (Jen Tullock) and learns that Mark is reintegrating. She asks her to put her on the phone and says, “Tell me everything” as music collects and she runs her at night, again towards Kier and again towards the main history we have left in the arms for the past two weeks. Only two remaining episodes, the most beloved readers. What new fresh hell waits?
Did you think about this episode (too short) Cobel-Centric? It seems that Mark’s reintegration is not moving forward, so he will go to the last two episodes of the season mostly mostly new -integrated. Will what does this mean for his psyche? And will they pass with Devon’s plan to use his birth cabin to talk to Mark? So many questions, so little time.
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Read my episode 7 summarize and review here.