User reviews

I liked this episode. Shame to see so much negativity here about this episode.

Beautifully shot, beautiful sceneries and landscapes and a great insight to a character I've wanted to see more of.

Harmony Cobel once stunted, and emotionally cold opens up to her fanatic aunt in a rusty dried up town destroyed by Lumon.

We get an insight to who she was, her tragic backstory, and why she is the way she is.

I feel like this episode will age well in the end if the season ends in a satisfying way.

This episode shouldn't be an email. I WANT to see Harmony Cobel being vulnerable, I WANT to see how lumon affects other areas after ripping them apart.

Could it have fit in as a side story in a longer episode? Yes I would agree but just can't sign on on the idea that this is a bad episode.

...this episode would be the lowest rated of the entire show.

It contains single character focus on Cobel and none the 4 main "employees", no "office" scenes, very slow and deliberate establishing shots and 1 percent action (one character slaps another). This episode is very slow and unremarkable out of context.

The greatest shows are always the best on a rewatch and Severance is continually setting itself up to reframe everything we know. If you take what you get out of this episode and apply it to the historical record, it explains Cobel in ways that only showing, not telling, reveals.

While the ending is slightly rushed, the episode gets to the point and rockets forward with what is going to be an explosive finale. Nearly every character's tension level has turned up to 11. And I think the setup is complete, just like last season. Now it's time to watch the fireworks show.

This one was different and it touched on a lot of things that I think people will appreciate more as time goes and story is revealed. I can't call it a misstep. I think it's important and too premature to call it out so much.

There are a lot of deep themes that those who were raised in deeply religious communities will relate to and that we'll find out as the show progresses and fans will see and appreciate it more in its own merits. Patricia played the part beautifully and this episode is artistically a whole vibe in itself of the emotional emptiness one feels when they're questioning with their deeply rooted religious beliefs. I didn't love it, but I really liked it and believe that I'll love it when future events are revealed. Solid bridge.

Basically this short episode was just an overstretch of a small story that could have been told in 15 minutes, tops, there is no reason for the runtime of this episode be 37 minutes long.

So people were missing Patricia Arquette, I was too, she does an amazing Harmony Cobel, but will we settle for something as mediocre as this? Some said this is a filler episode, it is not, it is really important to the story, however it should not have been a whole episode of just that. Cut down the 37 minutes length to 15 minutes and divide the relevant events of this episode in 3 acts, mix it with other events related to Mark, Devon and Reghabi.

I am sure that some fans will be able to do a super cut of this season and discard most of the things in this episode and combine it with episode 7 (maybe even episode 9, who knows?), but waiting a whole week for something like this is pathetic.

Wah wah bad pacing Wah wah no big reveals every episode

So many people crying about this episode and some even regarding S2. Understand this show!

Yes, I get the frustration of waiting weekly to get a slow episode that does not focus on the main characters themselves but acting like the series fell off or it's the worst episode of all time it's so ridiculous.

Severance is NOT a fast paced series rather its built on a slow burning plot, mystery showcasing the mundane and slow thematics of the world itself. These people should know this by now if they paid attention to it. (clearly they didnt) Just drop it and stick to Stranger things or some marvel/disney shows for action packed scenes and the lack of attention span and tolerance about pacing some people have.

These kind of episode filter out fake "fans" from real ones.

This felt like an odd episode. Cinematography was absolutely gorgeous as always, and Patricia Arquette does an amazing job as Cobel. However, nothing really happened in this episode. We did get one reveal about the origin of Severance, which is very interesting, and raises a lot of questions, however, this story could've easily been told in a two minute cut scene.

Overall, I'm not freaking out just yet, but I really do hope that the endgame plan for this season is strong. So far all of the clues in the season are very interesting and I'm excited to see where the trails will lead us. Interesting that Ben Stiller directed this episode as well because he usually directs the most important episodes so maybe there's some important details we missed.

Looking forward to next week's episode!

This is a good episode, but just considering the length and how disconnected it is from the over arching story so far, this shouldve been wrote as a B plot that spanned over 2 other episodes rather than it's own episode in full. Cinematography is great, the acting is great, and we learn more about Cobel and the general backstory of Lumon. I definitely would not call this episode a skip and I think it does a good job at expanding the world, but I do also feel like it didn't need to be it's own episode, especially with how short and slow moving it is. This episode really could've been condensed into 20 minutes of B plot, but I still appreciate the world and character building.

An overall muted but incredibly important episode. One people are gonna hate on from the outset, but I think this episode will end up more beloved over time. We get Cobel / Selvig lore and a big reveal that makes sense and definitely recontextualizes the entire story so far (aka Severance's bread and butter). We also get probably the biggest glimpse of life outside of the town / area where most of our characters live in when visiting Salt's Neck. Here we see Lumon has a long and pretty apparent history of destroying entire livelihoods in the name of power and fortune. This feels like a good set up to have our characters come together for the final two eps, while not overstaying its welcome (clocking in at a solid 37 mins). Looking forward to see if how they stick the landing.

This episode Felt like i was being ripped away from the main plot for some mediocre exposition,i feel like it could have worked if it wasn't a whole episode, and was just a plot point in a main one, like it usually is in severance, I feel like they slowed the momentum down for absolutely no reason with this, and without the other main characters to keep us company it felt lacking and mildly dull. But i think it's still early to say, maybe it will pick back up and fit in neatly with the season once we have the full picture.

Then again it's not a bad episode, Just a mediocre one in the sea of good episodes.

What a waste of time. Going from one of the greatest episodes that I've ever seen in peak style, beautiful editing, terrific pacing, amazing payoff and top tier emotion. And now we get 37 minutes of the LEAST interesting character in the whole show. Honestly extremely disappointed. I don't understand the quality drop in these two episodes. In my opinion, this is the biggest quality drop between two episodes I've ever seen. The ONLY compliment to this episode is its signature Severance style. But why? Why this episode? We find out one thing we could've found out in 10 minutes of runtime. It's just a drag. And we're dragging in characters that we don't care about. Just a bad effort all around. Little bit of confidence lost so I hope next week proves better.

I was initially put off by the short runtime, which ended up being about 37 minutes without the credits. But this was an excruciatingly slow episode that harkened back to Stranger Things 2.7 in that it felt completely out of place in this show. So the short runtime ended up being a small mercy in the end!

Nobody asked for Harmony's backstory, but I imagine anyone who thought we needed this will still hate the execution here. There's barely any new information, and the acting and writing come off really badly for a change. Look, you can enjoy the cinematography and Arquette's acting in other episodes that have something to offer narrative-wise. So please don't say this episode is good just for those when you don't need to tolerate the abysmal pacing of this episode to get those elements.

I honestly think this entire episode is skippable, which is crazy given how essentially every scene in season 1 mattered to the overall story. But here we are!

I think S2E08 on it's own is very important as we learn who Cobel really is, or atleast a significant part of her character, she's been kind of extinct this season which honestly makes me believe they didn't set the finale of this Season up with this Cobel episode but rather Season 3's plotline. The episode isn't a filler episode, but my god it was slow and complicated. This is by far the most confusing episode of Severance as no matter how many analysis video I've watched, I still don't fully get 30% of this episode other than the last 5 minutes.

I loved the plot-twist as much as the next guy, but the slow-pace, Cobel's monotonous tone, didn't give me tension, and at the end where she was basically was like "Let's finish this together guys!" I found it a complete 180° for her character, where did that came from? Regardless this is probably the only 6-7/10 episode of this season/show, but I'm glad it exist, altough it could've been a lot more fast-paced and tension-heavy as I expected from the third to last episode of a Season, cause this is where Season 1 started to get CRAZY good. (Tbfr S2 was Crazy Good up until this point imo)