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Chikhai Bardo

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tubbagoob

My most anticipated episode here we go

Actuarial Lurker

That opening scene looks like Nassau Community College on Long Island....its not to far away from Cold Spring Harbor where the real world medical tech company is located.... Did a quick Google and yep= it is....my guess is that Kevin is wrong. I suspect that they are both faculty at the same University go to a blood drive set up by Lumon to lure in victims and then the Eagens try to lure people back on their own free will. With this couple under the guise of fertility treatments

Anjali Agarwal

A few notes: 1. Gemma is NOT a Lumon plant and she is not a "personality". She is a normal and real person, just like you and me. She and Mark just happened to donate blood at the same time and that's how they met. She was then kidnapped by Lumon ("car accident") and they are now testing the "personalities" on Gemma on the testing floor - which is what they are showing in the different rooms. All the scenes with her and Mark are real - she is not a "fake personality" in those scenes. It's the REAL Gemma. She is a now a prisoner at Lumon and has been a victim of this evil corporation for two years. 2. The names on the doors of the testing floor are the files/personalities Mark is working on. So every personality that Gemma is being tested with on the testing floor has been refined by Mark for all those torture rooms - it is incredibly messed up! Every single room is a nightmare scenario and customized to her personal dislikes - which now makes you wonder what the real purpose of the chip is. Clever and terrifying move by Lumon: eventually marketing the chip to the public as "you will never feel pain or discomfort again". 3. Timeline: What is happening on the testing floor is current day. Not in the past when she met Mark. This is after she was kidnapped. Remember, she is a real person who has been targeted and taken by Lumon and is being held prisoner. 4. The "Chikhai Bardo" cards that Gemma got from Lumon as part of the mailing list are the same ones Burt and the O&D team were creating in season 1. Just another form of Lumon propaganda. 5. The fertility clinic scene... you can very briefly see Dr. Mauer walk by. He most probably first set his sights on Gemma there - SO creepy. Random thoughts: 1. Dichen Lachmen was SO good in this episode. We'd never seen Gemma and Mark together before and this episode made me fall in love with them. 2. Outstanding cinematography throughout - they shot all the "past" scenes on film. 2nd best episode of the season for me (the finale is #1).

Actuarial Lurker

My speculation a few minutes into the episode as they experiment on Gemma ROT 13 Ybbxf yvxr gur ebbz anzrf ner gur fnzr nf gur svyr anzrf ba gur pbzchgref---ner gur frirerq crbcyr nanylmvat qngn sebz gur gbegher rkcrevzragf orvat pbaqhpgrq ba Trzzn?

Erin

This was such an important episode and so beautifully directed. Up to this point, we don’t know Gemma all that well and her relationship with Mark. This episode really brings her to life (so to speak) and adds much needed context. I will say the placement of this episode in the season is odd, but then again where else would the writers of had fit it 😅 Also wanted to add how well Jessica Lee Gagne directed this episode-very light and airy…a bit reflective of a happier time in Mark’s (and Gemma’s life). And to add an edit here…I was like you guys and initially thought that there just couldn’t be a happy ending for anyone, but Dan Erickson has said in an interview that the show is like a hard ball on the outside but on the inside it is very warm, almost like a love story. So there’s hope we’ll have some characters that’ll achieve this by the shows end. In that vein, I agree with you on Mark and Gemma’s relationship in that if Gemma DOES makes it out of Lumon, what kind of relationship would her and Mark have? She’s been through some serious trauma and that changes people.

Leah W.

In case you didn't catch it, all the names of the rooms are the names of files that macro data refinement has been refining.

Crawnch!

The cinematographer of the show directed this episode. It was her directorial debut and she absolutely killed it.

I🖤Kraken

I will say, that the Allentown housewife and the dental patient aren't passive acceptors of their fate. They are both rebelling against what's happening to them. They just haven't reached the point of violent rebellion yet but you can see in the housewife that it is coming! And Gemma is definitely trying to get the hell out of there. Frolic said, "Didn't she break your fingers once?" As our dearest Irving once said, "Let's burn this place to the ground!!!"

dys

One of the best episodes of the series for sure, incredible visual storytelling. I'd forgotten how different a character Gemma is from Ms. Casey, now that we finally get to see the real Gemma here. Fantastic performance from Dichen Lachman. A few of us have mentioned that Joss Whedon's Dollhouse explores some similar ideas, and the directions this episode goes are probably closest to that. Including some ways you guys speculated this might go, are actually what Dollhouse plays with to the limit. A lot of the episode also reminds me of that opening scene of Pixar's Up.

dys

On Helly and Helena being different people: I think the ways in which they ARE the same person is really fascinating. They both have the exact same strong will, it's just that with memories of privilege that strong will manifests in Helena as entitlement to that privilege, while in Helly that strong will means she stands up for her rights and the rights of her friends as an oppressed person. Of course I'm not saying that if you gave Helly all of Helena's privilege now she would become her, I don't believe for a second that she would abandon her friends if offered everything Helena has.

Clare Manion

Totally agreed - this is quite possibly the best episode of the entire series. It’s so beautifully shot and absolutely heartbreaking; revealing so much and yet, somehow, nothing at all. Kevin - my theory is very similar to yours. This all has something to do with Mr. Egan’s “revolving.” And the psychological conditioning. And all the genetics stuff. And the fact that she was trying so hard for a baby… Which is just, the most horrifying part of the whole thing. Also, I didn’t think about it too much the first time I saw it, but having Gemma read Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” is a great choice. It’s about a judge who suffers a random accident, then has a long period contemplating the meaning o life, death, and society before he eventually succumbs to his injuries. How fitting. (Also, in Russian, Ivan is pronounced closer to Evan. So it’s ee-VAHN IHL-yich… in case you were wondering, lol.)

Roland

The medical equipment is another fine example of the retro-futurism that the show deploys all the time. We see some kind of state-of-the-art blood analyser (pinprick security access system?) and then immediately an old school manual sphygmomanometer...

Suzanne Whyte

This one is my favourite episode. It is heartbreaking but we absolutely needed to see Gemma and her relationship with Mark. I prefer Mark with Gemma because the relationship feels more real. They are more complete and complex people than say Innie Mark and Helly. They had a life with jobs, friends and families, hobbies etc. They had struggles but they laughed and danced and seemed very happy with each other. Innie Mark and Helly have a connection but it seems based on a shared trauma and a need for connection. I don’t see their relationship as some great love story. They don’t and they can’t know each other well enough for it to be love.

Daniel Andersen

Cults prey on vulnerable people, so it's not that surprising that this is how Lumon recruits people

Suzanne Whyte

Scared of the dentist? That’s ok, your innie can see the dentist. Scared of flying? Your innie can fly for you, Don’t want to experience the pain of child birth? No problem, you have an innie. Hate doing boring and repetitive tasks like writing thank you notes? You never need to do anything that makes you scared or uncomfortable again. You can live an easy half-life where you erase the parts of the human experience you don’t want.

Carl Wilson

When you said that Lumon could just "upload" the information to Gemma to be a professor - we haven't seen them do anything like that. The severed workers don't wake up with some whole training to do their jobs, they have to be taught on the job. It seems like each severed personality is a relatively blank slate (aside from basic functional memory about the world) and it's the environment they're put in that's meant to condition them.

Erica

I think Dichen Lachman (who plays Gemma) might genuinely be one of the most beautiful women in the world. She's in Dollhouse, and I was so captivated whenever she was onscreen. That was about 15 years ago and she's still so magnificently stunning