One scene in Severance Season 2 is a running joke

Please try to enjoy the following Spoilers Equally. This article is about “Severance”, Season 2, Episode 2.

Each episode of “Severance” brings more and more mysteries into the mix, but is it possible that viewers have been asking the wrong questions all along? Our most pressing concerns to this point relate to who Lumon Industries is truly What to do with Ms. Casey/Gemma (Dechen Lachman), what Adam Scott Mark S and his colleagues actually get done on their computers all day, and why new deputy director Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) is a baby. (Okay, that last question is the easiest to solve: it’s because of when she was born.) But perhaps we should wonder where the idea is This amazing Apple TV+ offer is here In the first place.

In the second episode of the new season, titled “Goodbye Mrs. Selvig,” director Sam Donovan and writer and executive producer Mohamed El Masry made sure to include one modest scene that actually contains a major Easter egg. Midway through the episode, we follow character Dylan Gee (Zach Cherry) after he was unceremoniously fired from Lomon due to his internal actions in the season 1 finale. While looking for a new job to support his family, he ends up interviewing at a factory called Great Doors. Although this scene is fun on its own, this moment signifies something greater for series creator Dan Erikson. This cheeky joke is actually a reference to a real job he once had — a job that directly inspired what eventually became “Severance.”

For creator/showrunner Dan Erickson, “Severance” marks his first major production in the industry… and the process of transitioning this from script to screen was no easy feat. As he told /Film’s Ben Pearson in a recent interviewhas a specific endpoint in mind for the show to conclude if the streamer greenlights enough seasons for the creative team to see it through. However, the precise origins of this black comedy set in the most squalid office in all of fiction may be more revealing than its possible ending.

So how can one dream of a world as heterogeneous and absurd as the one in “Severance”? Well, getting first-hand experience in one of the most boring and most mind-numbing office jobs can certainly help. While Mark Scout’s reasons for agreeing to the separation procedure stem from grief over the loss of his wife Gemma, Erickson once felt similarly about wanting to skip the menial eight hours of the workday. In a 2022 interview with NYU Tisch Alumni Relations (the prestigious university where he studied dramatic writing), Erickson revealed how he first came up with the concept for “Severance” — and it will sound very familiar to anyone who watched the last episode:

“When I moved to Los Angeles after graduation, I had a series of temporary jobs, and one of them was at this company that made and repaired doors. It was a weird little office with no windows – there were really nice people working there, and I got to know them and like them, but at the time It wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I found myself heading into work and thinking, “I wish I could move forward and be at 5 p.m. so I could do the things I wanted to do.” I realized that’s the kind of annoying thing you want to do. It is exciting To worry is to think that you will give up some of your precious time on this earth because you are not happy with what you are doing during those hours.

“If you could be any kind of door, what would it be?” A strange, disgusting question like this one might seem right at home during Mrs. Huang’s creepy ball game in the tiny, cramped kitchen with its cut-out Lomon flooring, but something tells us that this line from Dylan’s interview at a door manufacturing company has an element of truth to it. Dan Erikson may not have any real-world experience dividing his brain into internal and external personalities, but who among us couldn’t relate to a terrible desk job that we’d give anything to escape from? (If any of my former co-workers are reading this from my old office job as a very underpaid secretary at a university that shall not be named, it would have come as a surprise. Joy.) For Erikson, his own experiences in a factory like this gave rise to the phenomenon that later became “separation.”

The entire conversation between Dylan and his interviewer highlights just how important the series is. In terms of plot, the scene gives us a rare look at how the outside world perceives and discriminates against those who choose to be cut off. Interviewer Mr. Saliba (played by Adrian Martinez, whose appearance is not coincidentally similar to Zach Cherry) seems to accept Dylan’s passion for doors — give or take the tasteless “door prize” joke. That is until Dylan makes the mistake of admitting that he is a cut-off former employee of Lomon. In the blink of an eye, Saliba’s entire demeanor changes and he becomes completely hostile. Not unlike the anti-cut protesters we saw in season one. Thematically, this inside joke also doubles as a further commentary on corporate America and how LeMon isn’t the only culprit trampling on workers’ rights. (When asked about the benefits, Saliba initially replied: “There is a coffee machine.”)

“Severance” tends to hide clues and mysteries alike in plain sight, but for once, they were combined into one scene that gave us an inside look at how the entire series came to be. You can watch new episodes on Apple TV+ every Friday.