Severance Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo” Spoilers Ahead
My notes for this episode are largely comprised of every positive adjective I could momentarily come up with. Beautiful, magical, breathtaking, gorgeous, extraordinary, sensational—a masterpiece, an inimitable work of art. Severance’s “Chikhai Bardo” is the type of episode that, years from now, filmmakers will be studying to understand the versatility and depth of storytelling. It’s the type of episode that’s a testament to the undeniably perfect performances, Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman’s screenplay, and Jessica Lee Gagné’s breathtakingly brilliant directing and cinematography.
As noted during last week’s “Attila,” Severance might not be a romance (in terms of guaranteed happy endings), but it’s certainly a love story. It’s a masterclass in depicting how starved human beings are for connections and how much of ourselves we lose when we relinquish love in the face of heartbreak. It’s Gemma’s story, it’s Mark’s story, and it’s an ode to their love story. It’s tangible proof of the fact that grief takes and terrorizes people to the point of no return. It’s an account of the measures people will take, how external forces play a tremendous role in how we heal, and it’s a character study all at once.
Severance’s “Chikhai Bardo” Underscores the Depth of Mark and Gemma’s Love
Adam Scott continually touches on Mark’s grief so remarkably during Season 2 that while everyone on social media is rightfully gushing about how devastatingly good he looks, what we see with present-day Mark S. is a man who’s allowed grief to swallow him whole. He’s battered and bruised, and he’s let himself go. A pristinely trimmed beard and slicked-back hair are replaced with a clean-shaven face to tell the story of a heartbroken man with longer locks. Anytime his outie is on our screens, we’re right back to the beginning, where all the uncertainties and gashes hurt in a way that’s almost unbearable to watch. We can fully comprehend why he’s here and how grief has changed him.
We see it clear as day in the way he adores Gemma.
Severance asks its viewers a painfully destructive question: if you could sever your mind and forget your pain, would you? And then it tirelessly shows us why that’s not the solution any of us are actually looking for. So, what are we looking for as human beings? How horrific does it have to be for people to take this procedure on and allow themselves beats to forget? How far do these characters go until their innies and outies bleed together in a truly catastrophic manner that will undoubtedly make things far worse than they were? Because of these ideas, Severance Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” focuses on Gemma and her pain while also exploring the ramifications of how wanting something and not having it can break people. It deconstructs how excitement can be eclipsed by pain, highlighting the perilous outcomes of wanting something with every fiber of our beings. It imprisons a vulnerable woman, shatters her, and expects everything to go as planned. But women’s hearts are unbreakable. Their strength never really dies, does it?
It’s Orpheus and Eurydice, and Hades, in this case, is Lumon. It’s how they’ve been in the shadows, watching and wanting and taking. I’d even compare Gemma to both Eurydice and Persephone in this scenario, except without the inarguable adoration on Hades’ end. At Lumon, it isn’t remotely close to passion. It’s tests and trials, and it’s maintaining control. The episode presents viewers with various rooms, leading to what we’ve seen teased as “Cold Harbor”—is it the department Petey thought he saw? Is it the end all, be all? Is it the eventual return to the real world? Is it indeed some sort of a bargain that will result in Gemma’s freedom away from Lumon and all the colossal pain they’ve caused her on top of the sorrows she’s lived through? Time, in that sense, will tell. Yet, this is a love story through and through, and Jessica Lee Gagné’s extraordinary vision captures the most intimately tender beats of TV we’ll all probably watch in a long, long time.
Gemma’s alive. We know as much. And as Severance Season 2 touches base with how humans can’t fight through life’s tragedies on their own, it deepens the sorrow that comes from experiencing something that feels exclusive. A miscarriage takes a horrific toll on women—it shatters them, and it can be unbearable. Both Gagné’s vision and Dichen Lachman’s performances give us every bit of this hollow pain, threaded together with moments of real love to encompass how ephemeral happiness can sometimes be. The stillness followed by the pain, the softness in their love, the easy banter in the beginning, it’s all imperative to showcase how and why it’s all coming back to Mark while he’s actively fighting in the present day.
Lachman’s work in “Chikhai Bardo” is so viscerally compelling that it’s acutely challenging to find the fitting words to describe the excellence we’re bearing witness to. Every expression, every word she utters, every move she makes is a work of art. It’s a masterful display of understanding a character so intimately that, as viewers watching it, it’s impossible for us not to feel everything she feels. It’s impossible for us not to ache or break or smile and laugh, then ache again. Give her every award come next year. The world witnessed TV history unfold with this episode, and these aren’t words I throw around lightly.
Every Frame Tells a Brilliantly Compelling Story
With all this thematically at the forefront, it comes back to how cinematography and directing amplify the words on the page. There’s something indescribable about frames shot exclusively on film, and as Gagné has spoken about in various interviews for Severance Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” it’s the nostalgia of it all—the raw, uncut, devastatingly sentimental emotions film captures, making it feel like we’re watching something that maybe isn’t ours to see. And in many ways, these frames aren’t for our eyes. What we see with Mark and Gemma is so profoundly personal, so achingly heartbreaking that watching it feels invasive. Yet, that’s exactly what makes it so all-encompassing. Since I first watched the screener ten weeks ago, the emotions have wrapped themselves around me in such a way that I still can’t seem to untangle it all. Every strap of the ribbon I undo reveals something so deep that it genuinely makes my heart ache. I can’t find the right words to voice how raw and vulnerable it all feels, even when these emotions aren’t personal to me. Every glow from the sunlight, every cloud in the sky, every frame glitching to another feels like we’re experiencing it right alongside Gemma.
Still, perhaps that’s where the brilliance lies. It’s the fact that every frame and every seemingly minute movement means something. And sure, this is something that every creative aims to achieve, yet it doesn’t always come across as effective. Sometimes, in fiction, empty space is just that— empty space. Yet, in “Chikhai Bardo,” every stretch of stillness is full of details waiting—begging—for someone to excavate them. It’s a haunting exposure of loss and grief and the mingling phantoms that push people toward holding on or slowly letting go. It’s an account that projects how our memories can sometimes feel like mots of dust lifting through the air, blurring as our eyes freeze around their disappearance. It’s a breathtaking reminder that a love that’s real never dies, but pain that comes in fragments expands and pulls until it’s taken full control of everything we know for certain.
There are genuinely few words to describe how perfect this episode actually is because that requires far more than ten weeks to sit with the emotions it evokes. Perhaps a whole semester-long course on the matter would do the trick, taught specifically by Adam Scott as Mark Scout because even the actor’s tone as the character matters in exhibiting every raw emotion still gashing inside of him. However, there’s also the idea that, as human beings, we’re constantly searching for answers that are only ever delivered to us in pieces. I suppose that’s what’s happening here, in the most wholly satisfying way as a TV viewer.
Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Apple TV+