Spoilers ahead!
Apple TV+’s hit show, Severance, released the episode, “Sweet Vitriol,” which has the record lowest IMDb rating in the show’s history. Despite its low rating, many passionate fans defend the importance of the episode, with a wealth of fans who thought the episode was relatively lackluster.
“Sweet Vitriol” follows Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) as she makes the emergency trip back to her home town, Salt’s Neck, after she runs away from Lumon. Here, we learn her past as an outstanding young worker at the town’s ether mill, a hidden childhood romance with the town’s ether peddler, Hampton (James Le Gros), a deranged relationship with her much older sister, Sissy (Jane Alexander), her true contribution to the science of the severance procedure.
The episode is virtually Mark-less, Helly-less, and Gemma-less. In the previous episode, “Chikkhai Bardo,” audiences enjoyed seeing the story of Mark and Gemma before Lumon. This episode didn’t have the whirlwind of switching between two different timelines and the lushness of the Ganz. Instead, the episode was filled with B-roll content of glacier waters, snowy planes, beat down architecture on ports, and more action than dialogue.
The drastic change of pace seemed to shock viewers, but it’s worth it to take in the absences for their implications. Here’s what audiences may have missed in “Sweet Vitriol”:
The writers tackled economic disparity of the blue-collar class as a result of Lumon’s actions.
Salt’s Neck is a town that didn’t exist before Lumon, according to Sissy. Between ether abuse (“Sweet Vitriol” is the vernacular term for its use as a drug), the name, “Lumon” faded on old wooden buildings throughout the town, an aging population, houselessness, and Cobel’s upbringing in the ether factory, it is clear that Salt’s Neck was created as a neighborhood for this site’s ether mill workers. When Lumon ventured from ether production and into severance technology, they left their loyal employees (and formal child laborers) for dead.
This completes the transfer of power of this season’s antagonist, yet leaves more questions.
Ms. Cobel was the bitchy middle manager of Season 1 that seemed obsessive to audience members about the condition of Mark, as she paraded as Mrs. Selvig in Mark’s outie life. Arquette’s borderline-slapstick acting conveyed Cobel to be an employee looking to smooch to the higher-ups as an over-achiever and delusional, yet justified, believer in the reintegration process.
Throughout the first half of Season 2, we see the emergence of Helly as Helena Eagan on the outside, otherwise known as the daughter of the inventor of Severance. We find out in “Woe’s Hollow” that what we thought was Helly was actually Helena the entire time. The death of innie Irving did nothing but help fuel this hatred towards Helena. Up until now, we haven’t really seen much of Cobel and didn’t really know in which direction writers were taking her.
When we find out that Cobel is the inventor of Severance, the acting cues that we had been using to debate whether or not Helena was Helly in the first three episodes reveal more things as well. For one, Helena does not have respect for the severed workers, calling them “animals” after she was caught. In “Who Is Alive?” we clearly see that Helena is utterly dumbfounded when stumbling upon Mammalians Nurturable with Mark. Now that Cobel has undergone this change where she is not the villain of the show entirely, we have yet another reason to hate Lumon, as they are able to pass off other people’s knowledge as their own. Furthermore, it this shows that Helena is not as powerful as she seems to be.
The writers know how to write female characters.
Dan Erickson, Adam Countee, and K.C. Perry were the writers for this specific episode. Erickson may have thrown some audience members for a loop with a majority white, male cast, (personally) unfair lighting for Mr. Milchick, and a lack of scenes where women get to speak with each other.
With the introduction of Mr. Milchick’s (Tramell Tillman) promotion, we see that they didn’t isolate this universe from racism (not seeing how they would get away with it if they did). In this episode and at the end of the previous one, the female characters make choices that leave more for their arcs that audiences have not picked up on.
Devon’s (Jen Tullock) decision to call Cobel despite where they last left off shows the sacrifices that she will make for her brother. Even though she has been one of the most staunch action-takers against Lumon in the show, keeping her brother in her life is shown to be a higher objective.
Asal Reghabi’s (Karen Aldridge) objectives complicate further as well. Throughout Season 1 and 2, audiences were left speculating on why she left Lumon to go underground. Up until now, she was one of the only characters to have any actual authority on the science behind Severance, claiming that she was the one that put the chip in Mark’s head. Whether metaphorically or literally, we don’t know. Now that Cobel is a truly verified author of the science, we are left to wonder about her past with Reghabi. For all we know, Reghabi had been running away from Cobel, her symbol of Lumon, but had the Eagans been running after Reghabi?
Lastly, of course, there are now no more two sides to this coin, with Cobel being one of the “sides” in this war. Even though she is helping Mark and Devon out from this point on, her claim to the science could be what’s motivating her. After all, she is Lumon “through-and-through” and she was able to watch the torture of Gemma after all these years. With her relationship with Lumon being pulled under the rug, who knows if her moral compass will turn for the better.
None of these questions will be resolved if the women in the show don’t continue to speak to each other.
Happy Women’s History Month!