"In Perpetuity" is the third episode in the first season of the Apple TV+ thriller series Severance. It was on the twenty-fifth of February in 2022.
Synopsis[]
Mark takes the team on a field trip, but Helly continues to rebel. A deteriorating Petey struggles to tell Mark about Lumon's misdeeds.
Plot[]
Intro[]
Outside the bathroom, Mark asks Petey if he's okay. Petey says he is and that he just slipped, "You should invest in a bath mat maybe." Mark says his neighborhood is quiet to which Petey replies, "Fortress of solitude." Petey flashes back to his time in the Lumon basement and his own mention of "Sunset Park" and then returns to the present and tells Mark his sickness makes him disoriented but it's temporary. Mark asks him what Sunset Park is, to which Petey says he doesn't know.
Act One[]
Harmony Cobel is at home. At Mark's home, Petey explains, "It's like having two different lives suddenly stitched together, but the relativity's fucked. So my first day at Lumon's as far back as my fifth birthday and with two pasts, it blurs the present, too. But they said it would get better." Petey explains that he's talking about people who "know Severance is a blight on mankind and they're going to do something about it" and that he's not talking about the protesters Mark saw on the street. He asks Mark if he doesn't want to know what he's doing in the Lumon basement. When Mark says he's not going to unsever, Petey says he's talking about reintegration, but Mark says severance hasn't been a blight for him, that it's helped him. Petey says Mark might be helping Lumon do terrible things and that there's a department that "you don't get to leave" but then says he's "not going to talk about it in here. I don't know if monitors are bugged or if Irving is going to walk in." Mark says they're not in Lumon to which Petey says, "Then where the fuck is June?" Mark asks who June is, to which Petey says, "June is my daughter." Cobel watches Mark from her home, seeming to express concern for him.
Mark watches a TV debate about Severance that includes a Lumon representative and falls asleep watching. The next morning, he goes to the basement and wakes Petey up. He tells Petey he's not going to reintegrate, and explains that he lost his wife and severance is helping him. Petey says Mark would sometimes come to work with red eyes, "We had a joke that you had an elevator allergy. There was even a song for it." and that Mark carried the hurt with him. "You feel it down there, too. You just don't know what it is." Mark leaves without commenting on this.
Outside, Cobel conveniently appears when Mark is leaving and tells him she'll bring him more cookies. He approves and drives off. At work, Mark gets an envelope with a photo of the new team. Helly tells him she "did a thing. I deleted the scary numbers" the day before, when Mark was absent. She tells Mark she put in her resignation request so "you won't get sent to the Break Room any more." Milchick appears and Mark reads announcements as the new department head as Milchick takes photos. The last announcement is that Helly's resignation request was denied. Helly says, "That can't be right. My outie wouldn't do that." She hurries out of the room.
At Mark's house, his sister Devon and brother-in-law Ricken pull up and Ricken leaves a copy of his book on Mark's front porch which Ricken says will make Mark "so excited." After they pull away, Cobel walks toward Mark's front door and takes the book. Petey is in Mark's basement writing/drawing something and then flashes back to the Lumon basement where Mark sees Petey drawing something surreptitiously (the floor plan) but Petey hides it from him. The flashback and Petey's present in Mark's basement merge in Petey's mind, which frightens him. Cobel enters Mark's house with a key to his front door. She looks around and then goes down the basement steps. She inspects the basement but doesn't see Petey. She gets a phone call and while she's on the phone we see Petey hiding in the basement and then running up the stairs dressed in the bathrobe Mark gave him, unseen by Cobel. Outside, she gets in her car and leaves while Petey hides in the bushes. He flashes back to Lumon, walking a hallway in the bathrobe and obsessing over the floor plan sketch.
Act Two[]
Mark talks to Helly through the restroom door. He enters and sees that she has put lettering on her arms in an attempt to defeat the lettering "detectors" which Mark tells her won't work. He tells her to wash the lettering off - "Do you want Graner to use the bad soap?" "There's bad soap?" she asks. He leaves the restroom and Irving, having listened from outside the door, tells Mark he's troubled by Mark "having high-stress exchanges like that so fresh off your food poisoning" and "the loathing with which she spoke to you." Irving says if Helly wants deeper meaning in her work, she should see the Perpetuity Wing.
Cobel arrives at work and Melchick asks her, "How'd the check go?" She gives him the book package which he opens to reveal Ricken's book. Mark arrives to see Cobel and tells her about Irving's idea to take Helly to the Perpetuity Wing. Mark expresses concern about Petey's departure, which Cobel downplays. When Mark questions her, she throws her mug at him and says, "Get MDR to its numbers." As he turns to leave, she tells him, "What I just did was something I knew you could handle and grow from. It was very painful for me. I hope that you will let it help you." He asks her if she wants her office door left open or closed to which she replies, "Both." He leaves it open.
Helly hides a note saying "I don't want to work here" in a pen cap. She gets a glass of water and goes to swallow the note & cap but it interrupted by Mark who tells her the code detectors "can read messages hidden inside the body as well. Also, when that happens, it's Michick's job to extract the message from you, and when he asks how long ago you ingested it, I really can't recommend honesty enough. It's easier for you both if he knows which end to start from." He holds out his hand and she spits the cap into it. He tells her they're taking a trip.
Act Three[]
As they walk to the Perpetuity Wing, Irving pontificates on company history. The four encounter Burt and his assistant Felicia at a hallway junction. Felicia says their department is working on an egg-drop challenge, which Dylan seems to think is some kind of subterfuge. Irving looks longingly at Burt.
Cobel enters her office to find Natalie who tells her the board will join them for a virtual meeting to discuss Peter "Petey" Kilmer. Cobel tells the board the search for Petey continues and that before he left, "there were some troubling signs of … reintegration." Natalie listens to her earpiece and then tells Cobel the severance process is irreversible and that Cobel should know that and that MDR needs to make its quarterly numbers. Cobel starts to reply but Natalie cuts her off, telling her the board has concluded the call. Cobel tries to speak again but Natalie again cuts her off and leaves.
Dylan tells the others about the company's history and of Optics & Design, Burt's department, attempting a "coup," and saying that MDR is good and O&D is evil. Irving says no one knows how many departments the company has. Mark says he's 99% sure the coup story is a fiction. Helly jokes about fighting O&D to the death. Dylan gives Mark and Helly paper bingo cards for the Perpetuity Wing. They enter to see a statue of Jame Eagan, current CEO. Irving is impressed. A sign on the wall quotes Jame Eagan: "History lives in us, whether we learn it or not."
Petey walks snowy streets in his robe, looking in a daze at the floor plan sketch in his hand while we hear an old, recorded speech by a previous Lumon CEO discussing the "four tempers" that supposedly control human behavior. Discussing their innie lives, Irving says, "It's an unnatural state for a person to have no history. History makes us someone, gives us a context, shape. And waking up on that table, I was shapeless. But then I learned that I work for a company that has been actively caring for mankind since 1866." They pass a wall of photos of smiling mouths, supposedly those of people helped by Lumon products. Dylan is cynical. They go to the "Kier part" of the wing which contains a replica of Kier's house. They visit his bedroom where Irving finds the bingo card in Mark's pocket and berates him for not taking the visit more seriously. As they talk, Mark realizes Helly has disappeared. He runs after her in a long chase down many hallways.
Milchick sits in a conference room reading Ricken's book. Helly breaks a window in a door with a fire extinguisher which sets off alarms and flashing red lights. She holds a note through the window but is grabbed and tackled by Mark. Graner appears and tells her to come with him. She gives Mark a dirty look before following Graner away. Garner sends her down a narrow, dark hallway by herself. Milchick waits for her in the Break Room and gives her first aid on her arm cut from the broken glass window. She tries to talk to Milchick about the situation — "Don't you see how fucked up this is?" — but he's having none of it. He sets up a projector, puts on headphones, starts a tape recorder and tells her to read the "compunction statement." She says she doesn't want to to which he says, "No. Do." She reads the statement — "Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me, and only in me shall their stain live on. I am thankful to have been caught, my fall cut short by those with wisened hands. All I can be is sorry, and that is all I am." He says she doesn't mean it and must read it again. She reads it again. "Again," he says.
Back in MDR, Dylan leaves for the day as Mark stays behind in the dark. He takes the old team photos that include Petey and begins to replace them in their frames with the new photos. On the back of one of the old photos he finds a version of Petey's hand drawn map of Lumon. The map includes the long hallway to the Break Room. As he looks at the map, we see Petey in a gas station convenience store having a breakdown and then collapsing, blood around his mouth. Mark leaves work and walks to his car in the rain. He descends into his basement but Petey is gone. He drives his car and sees an ambulance driving under siren & flashing lights. He follows the ambulance to the gas station and arrives in time to see EMTs helping Petey out of the store. Petey sees Mark across the parking lot and then collapses to the ground. Mark gets back in his car and drives away. Back home, Mark goes back down into his basement and eliminates evidence of Petey having slept there. As he's leaving the basement, he hears a phone vibrating. He turns to see Petey's phone getting a call.
Cast[]
Starring[]
- Adam Scott as Mark Scout
- Zach Cherry as Dylan George
- Britt Lower as Helly Riggs
- Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick
- Jen Tullock as Devon Scout-Hale
- Dichen Lachman as Ms. Casey (credit only)
- Michael Chernus as Ricken Hale
- John Turturro as Irving Bailiff
- Christopher Walken as Burt Goodman
- Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel
Guest Starring[]
- Yul Vazquez as Petey Kilmer
- Sydney Cole Alexander as Natalie
- Claudia Robinson as Felicia
- Michael Cumpsty as Doug Graner
- Michael Siberry as Jame Eagan
Co-starring[]
- Alexis Cofield as Checkout Girl
- Alexandra Ferrara as Weather Channel Voiceover
- Marc Geller as Kier Eagan
- Michael Cruz Kayne as Steven
Trivia[]
- This is the third episode overall.
- At some point when Irving (John Turturro) is walking in the hallway (around 30:10), he talks about "Ambrose" being the black sheep of the family. This may be a reference to his character Ambrose on Monk (2002) being a recluse and misunderstood. It is a slight nod to his other character.
- Mark has a red and blue fish in his tank, reminiscent of the red and blue pills in The Matrix (1999).
- At 10:50 into Episode 3, there is what looks like two goldfish in the fish tank. A few seconds later you see it is one that merely appears as two due to being reflected on two screens at once.
