Severance
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We all owe Harmony Cobel an apology.
[Cobel voice: Oh, Maaaark.
What are we in for?]
After being absent for the vast majority of the season, our favorite unhinged lactation fraudster is back.
Since the OTC, she has mostly been severed from the main narrative.
That meeting didnt go so well for Harmony and she fled.
Apparently, shes been driving ever since then.
However, I adore Patricia Arquette and everything shes doing on this show, so your mileage may vary.
As Cobel arrives in her old hometown, we see that its mostly abandoned.
Now, we finally get her origin story.
Shes truly a product of Lumon, having been a golden child of the Wintertide program (a.k.a.
child labor) and a model student at the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls.
She got out, but the town and its complicated relationship with Lumon and the cult of Kier remained.
Its implied that after Lumon closed the Salts Neck plant, the community was devastated.
We know that Kier was working in an ether mill when he had his purported epiphanies.
So … he was totally high all the time, right?
Did he invent the tempers and virtues in the midst of an ether hallucination or an episode of withdrawal?
We cant rule it out.
To paraphraseHunter S. Thompson: One thing that really worries me is the ether.
Cobel has traveled to Salts Neck to hunt down a mystery item.
(She turns out to be right.)
So, she stops by a cafe and gets the attention of the bedraggled man who owns the place.
Obviously, given their old power dynamic, were meant to understand that he never really had a choice.
(See: Devon and Marks relationship in the very first episode.)
The result is a fully-formed bond, created in minutes of screen time without flashbacks or frills.
like that in her life when she was younger.
(There are dystopian shades ofInfinite Jesthere with that unconventional Year designation.)
Sissy is not kind, and shes Lumon brainwashed all the way.
(give a shot to be gentle on your remotes during these sequences, friends.
Theres a lot of fun stuff to see.)
Sissy does make a run at appeal to Cobel by telling her that Drummond called looking for her.
During the search for her mystery item, Cobel enters her mothers old room, and she grieves.
She goes on a nostalgia tour, willing the memories of her mother back by engaging her senses.
Cobels woe makes her sleepy, so she passes out on top of her mothers bed.
Cobel giddily accepts a toot, and says that she hasnt gotten high since she was eight.
Oh man, what was Lumon doing to these kids?
Between the ether and an electric smooch from her man, Cobel gets a spark of an idea.
An apology is available upon request, Ms. Cobel.
I truly underestimated you.
Hes basically a piece of stale bread on legs, not a genius!
As the Lumon police descend on Sissys house, Cobels old flame lets her abscond with his truck.
Hes got a lot of Lumon baggage, too.
Cobel doesnt even bother to go get her car.
(RIP, white Rabbit.)
She heads straight back to Lumon, phone in hand.
And now she has a minute to answer the repeated calls shes been receiving from Devon.
She picks up, hears that Mark has been reintegrating, and breathes, Tell me everything.
This turn of events is curiouser and curiouser.
Say it with me: This is adeparture episode, not a bottle episode.
A departure, not a bottle.
