Severance Finally Gives Us A Gemma Update, And It's A Doozy
Severance shed some much-needed light on Mark's wife Gemma and her backstory this week... while also hinting at what's going on at Lumon in the present.
Friday's episode starts out by taking us back to the day Mark and Gemma first met as professors, giving blood on a college campus. It also dips into present-day, where Gemma is giving blood in a mysterious white room, while Reghabi reassures Devon that Mark is fine — despite him, you know, collapsing. She explains that Mark is reintegrating ("It's what he wants") and adds that Gemma is alive, which sends Devon into tears. Gemma is giving blood at Lumon, we learn, with a nurse played by Sandra Bernhard taking her vitals and asking her bizarre questions like "If you were caught in a mudslide, would you be more afraid of suffocating or drowning?" How many rooms does she have today, Gemma asks? Six, she's told.
Gemma puts on a red dress and is led down a long hallway past rooms with names like Cairns and Dranesville, stopping at a door labeled Wellington. The nurse scans her hand to let Gemma in, and Gemma does a severance switch as she steps inside to find a dentist's chair. The dentist says it's been six weeks, but she feels like she was just here. Later, she walks out holding her jaw... and passes a door marked Cold Harbor (!). Meanwhile, Mark is still unconscious, and we flash back to when he and Gemma were first dating. (He bought her an ant farm as a gift, but he misheard her; she likes plants, not ants.) He buys a crib, and when Devon offers her wine at dinner, she refuses, so it seems like they're expecting... but later, Gemma winces in pain as blood runs down her leg, and we realize she lost the baby.
Suddenly, Mark is back to his Innie self at Lumon, and Ms. Casey approaches, explaining she's there to observe Helly R. for signs of sadness. Then we whip back to a Mark-and-Gemma flashback, going to doctors and getting injections, with Mark telling her "there's a kid out there just waiting for us." Then Gemma is back at the dentist, telling him she's been to six rooms today. The only one she hasn't been in yet, actually, is Cold Harbor. She asks if she'll see Mark again once she's been in all the rooms. All he'll say is: "Mark will benefit from the world you're siring." Back at Mark's, Devon says she knows about a cabin for Innies, and she thinks they should call Ms. Cobel to help. But Reghabi warns her Cobel is still loyal to Lumon, and when Devon calls anyway, Reghabi packs up her stuff and storms off: "Then I can't be part of this."
In another flashback, we can sense a distance between Mark and Gemma after the miscarriage. She's silent to him, and they fight when Gemma reveals she's doing a test for a fertility clinic. Inside Lumon, Gemma puts on a blue dress and opens a door to find herself aboard a plane in the midst of heavy turbulence. Mark is stuck at 96% on Cold Harbor: "The nosebleed set us back," Mr. Drummond grumbles as he tells the dentist guy, "When he's done, you'll have to say goodbye to her." In another room, Gemma writes thank-you notes for Christmas gifts, complaining to the dentist guy: "It's always Christmas." He tells her he loves her (!), and she gives him a weak "I love you" in reply.
While Mark gets frustrated building a baby crib in a flashback, Gemma tells the dentist guy: "I want to go home." He informs her that her husband remarried and has a daughter now, but she doesn't believe him. He asks if she feels drawn to any of the rooms, and if she ever feels things there she never felt with Mark — and then she smashes him over the head with a chair and uses his card key to escape! She sprints down dark hallways with the nurse chasing after her, but she gets to an elevator, where she switches. When the elevator doors open, Milchick is waiting for her, telling a confused "Ms. Casey" that her Outie got in the wrong elevator and convincing her to go back inside to her Lumon time-loop hell. Noooo!
In a flashback, Mark and Gemma say a terse goodbye to each other as she leaves for an art exhibition — and then later that night, Mark watches as cops pull into his driveway. When Gemma gets out of the elevator, she switches back and sobs as she arrives, collapsing into the nurse's arms. And back at Mark's, he finally regains consciousness as Devon holds his hand — and as visions of Gemma run through his head.
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